2010 Classic Literature Round Up

One of my more rececnt posts about George Bernard Shaw has caused a bit of a maelstrom. Indeed, I was wrong, or at least misreading the quotation. It seems as though experience is not valuable for its capacity or breadth, but for its quality. This goes back to Nietszche. The Superman stands on the subway platform and feels the rush of wind whip his hair, he knows the pulse of the city, paces the heartbeats of the individuals in the cramped cars. The ordinary man waits for the doors to open.

Anyway, enough of my metamodernist rehashings. Post postmodernism has been very good to me this year. Some notes I'd like to make on the close of 2010.

As much as I hate Sarah Palin, refudiate is a cool word.

Here are my top three books of classic literature that I read this year:

1. Sentimental Education: A superb bildungsroman in the French style. Flaubert's masterpiece.
2. White Noise: Talk about post postmodernism. This book is entertaining, funny, and profound. A must read for anyone who enjoys classic literature.
3. War and Peace: A sprawling masterpiece, this book is a great way to learn about the Napoleonic wars, but it's clear that Tolstoy's best moments are domestic descriptions. That's why Anna Karenina is better.

That's it guys! Hope you have fun tonight, and I'll write you next year.

Daniel Adler's Room in Post Postmodernism

So remember Christmas in Post Postmodernism? I'm getting a $40 gift certificate for pretty much anything I need.

I need a dresser. The two small endtables I have in my room in which I store my undergarments are literally overflowing with clothing, especially after having visited my Uncle Jacques and receiving a number of cashmere items.

So I'm going to get a dresser. This will be good for a couple of reasons. 1. It will organize my clothing and 2. it will prevent me from owning another pair of shoes (boat). In the meanwhile, boxers pile high on top of my open drawers, and turtlenecks are drowning under t-shirts and sweaters.

I'll also be able to store more books on top of my new dresser, which will be a boon. I'm starting Thomas Wolfe's (not to be confused with the asshole in white pants) Look Homeward, Angel. It is a serious American bildungsroman that takes place in North Carolina and Harvard. You can look forward to many posts about post postmodernist examples from this book.

The Value of Experience

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
-George Bernard Shaw, The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, "Man and Superman"

Unless I am wrong, which I often am, this means that the wisest men are the men who are most willing. Which means that those who have tried the most drugs, had the most lurid sexual adventures, and have lived most unlawfully are the wisest. Surely this is not what Shaw meant? Or is it?

Central to the Shavian paradigm is the idea that man wants to better himself. So all of the experience that can, and does, benefit man will also enlarge his wisdom, right? Take hard drugs for example. The willingness to encounter alternate states of mind must be worth something, but not to the point of detriment. Robbing banks would be applauded by Socialist Shaw, but if it endangered your life, which it most likely would unless you were a professional, the act would be condemned.

It seems then that we, and I, Daniel Adler especially, have to strike a balance between breaking down our most rational thoughts and fears, and understanding what will harm our being in the long run. In other words, as long as you try what comes your way at least once, you won't be lame.

The Life Force: Post Postmodernism

The setting of the scene is a good example of post postmodernism: This after shoveling a long driveway for thirty bucks. The excercise made me really sore and really sweaty, like a sewer rat. I felt powerfully alive as I saw the wind kick up the top layer of the snow dunes, from behind winter glass:

The Life Force. It blows through the trees, and whips up the snow dust-like. It ricochets through the ages, through Siberia and Assyria, Boston and Normandy. Now I sit in the kitchen, watched the pines sway and I feel it in the lactic acid buildup in my forearms and the soreness of my quadriceps as I breathe in the blue skies: that there is untapped life.

I shiver and get goosebumps from thinking about a woman, who will one day rear my children and show them that there is life to be lived. But even before then when we go to London and Los Angeles and feel the warm sun or cold mist, we will experience as much as the world can offer.

And when it comes time and we feel there must be a pathway to more resistance, we will follow and change accordingly. And we may depict the soft golden light on a red country silo, or it may be in the dark shadows cast by looming skyscrapers, but either way we will feel it and love it.

Your JFK Flight Status is: Cancelled

It is snowing in New York. There are 50 m.p.h. winds and an expected foot through tonight. Luckily, I am in the warm confines of my great uncle's house, where we are drinking malbec and eating crab cakes with remoulade and brussels sprouts (the crisp browned leaves and healthy vitamins make it a personal favorite. They grow on stalks, and are not baby cabbages, btw.) It isn't helping much, because I'm getting really fat as you can see.

My baby girl is in L.A. and was supposed to come home today, but when she checked her JFK flight status, her flight was cancelled. Now she's coming home Tuesday or maybe even later. This is actually a southeaster, so if you're thinking about flying to the Philadelphia airport, you're out of luck.

Meanwhile, I'm reading George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman," which is supremely dope. The introduction alone outlined the difference between the men who act as artists by modeling the great writers and studying how to write, but lack the creative passion that separates the artist from the amateur. Shaw goes on to mention that David Copperfield and Hamlet are lesser characters than those allegorical figures in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, because they are mere puppets through which the authors enact their own thoughts and feelings. While these characters are some of their most interesting, they are not representative of a cohesive philosophy or religion, and thus, come up short. These notions sprawl through my mind at present like the clouds that pour the tiny flakes that blanket the tarmac at JFK airport.

Christmas in Post Postmodernism

For Christmas this year, I received an e-mail from a company offering a $40 gift certificate and the chance for you to have a tv stand, if I blogged about it on my site.

During the process of my decision, I vacillated between the notion of selling out, and remaining true to my cause. Maybe my followers will scorn me for a truer blogger, more dedicated? But this is also a sign of how big your blog has become in the course of a year – that this post which took ten minutes to write, is itself worth $40.

 I decided that the mention of the decision I had to make would be an excellent example of postmodernism (due to the self-consciousness of this post), and that the sentiments of guilt and resultant intrigue in being able to choose a material item from the site, which I have no doubt I will not need – although an attractive pair of boat shoes caught my eye – will be a good example of modernism and will ultimately be overshadowed by my greed and covetousness.

In any event, this is my Santa tracker. And I hope the expression of my fears and ideas about the process provides a good example of postmodernism; my attempt at relaying said feelings has succeeded, and that the vacillation between these two styles is a good example of post postmodernism.

Merry Christmas!

David Copperfield is So Post Postmodern

Young Charles Dickens

 So I'm reading David Copperfield, which makes Great Expectations look like chicken feet. Dickens employs certain techniques that are very far ahead of his time, such as switching from the past tense to the present for a rush of immediacy. Take this sentence from chapter XVIII, "A Retrospect:"

"I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides, I shall be one and twenty in no time almost."

Here, the narrator, a much older man writing his bildungsroman, remembers his youth with great perspicacity. Sorry. But the way he moves to the thought process of his younger self is worthy of emulation and the hinted second person address is similar to what I'm working with.

J.D. Salinger knew it too. He mentions ol' Davy in the first sentence of what is obviously the best bildungsroman of the 20th century:  

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."


Dickens is a boss. 'Nuff said.

Metamodernism, or Post Postmodernism Redefined

I was talking to Anthony last week about my shitty novel, and I described my attempt to make it fit into metamodernism, with the oscillation between first, second and third persons. "This will show," I said, "that the narrator is able to pass judgment upon himself, and encourage the reader to do so simultaneously."

Anthony looked at me blankly. He suggested that one of the characters be allowed to pass judgment on the narrator. That’s metamodernism. So I found a scrap of paper and noted this point before it escaped my memory. But how to make it happen, I wondered.

Last year I realized that what would make my work stand out from others is the character’s ability to talk to himself through time. That is, his younger self can address his older self, and vice versa. Dave Eggers does this, kinda, in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He uses a Real World interview that is ultimately conducted by himself, to address unconscious questions that plague himself and the reader. But this is the only part of the novel in which it happens.

Gabriel’s older writing self will be the prophet of his younger, passionate self. The younger self will be able to pass judgment on his older self, and vice versa, making the heart of the novel a self vs. self conflict. That is metamodernism.

The Cockroach Knows

    How often have you walked down the street, completely tuned out to your surroundings, focused on what's ahead, or worried about some arcane blasphemy that will never pass? That is the opposite of philosophizing.

The philosopher admires the wind blowing the tree limbs, the orange clouds of sunset floating across an azure sky, and thinks to himself that this is life. He remembers death, and understands life. This is what it means to be in the now, and the birds know it, and the dogs know it, and even that three inch long cockroach that sat on top of the manhole, waving its antennae around in the air, breathing in all the beauty of the midsummer - he knows it too.
 
That's why I couldn't kill him. Oh boy was I tempted, as he perched there fluttering his tentacular antenae, and I looked at the older man sitting on the stoop, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his salt and pepper hair whiting from the roots, to see if he saw this creature, this enormous confident creature. He didn't, but he looked at me and nodded. And I looked back at the cockroach, staring at him, and I said to him, "You can stay. You have the right." And I walked on down the street, with my hands in my pockets, admiring the night and examining the people, my neighbors.

-Welcome to Post Postmodernism, or maybe Metamodernism. This will be addressed tomorrow,
 Love,
Daniel Adler

Life Lesson #42

At a dinner party when he was seventeen, Gabriel remarked that this dressing smells like his favorite. He held the wooden salad bowl and healthfully scooped two servings before he passed it to his left. His Uncle Charles helped himself and handed the bowl to Peter, who received the bowl with a scant amount of balsamic vinaigrette-covered salad left. Two more people to his left still had empty salad plates.

Peter knew that there had been an injustice done and remembered his son’s comment. He saw the sizable portion on Gabriel’s plate and told him that he had taken too much. “Put some back,” he commanded. Gabriel defended himself by showing how much he had taken, and was confident that that he had done no wrong. But beneath Peter’s vehemence, he began to see that he had more before others had any.

Peter passed the bowl back across the table. Gabriel’s cheeks burned as his aunts and uncles looked on approvingly, silently. He put a serving back, returned the bowl to his father, and dinner proceeded.

Le Petit Mort

It’s called Le Petit Mort not because it makes you feel like dying, but because it’s the closest thing to pure life that we can know. The male brain cannot think about anything during the few seconds during which it occurs. Try it. Nothing. Your gaze will blur as your mind goes blank and then your eyes refocus and you can think about work tomorrow, or what you’re going to eat for dinner, or how your socks smell.

In studies, most people are happiest during sex. That takes into account all other pleasurable activities, such as eating, sleeping, reading, and blogging. This is no surprise. The transience of the act is part of why it is so appreciated. Obvi.

It’s called Le Petit Mort because it is ultimate life. And life and death are two sides of the same coin. You feel so alive, so consummately in the now, that the only thing it relates to is death. You want to be kept in that position forever if you could , with your brow furrowed and sweat pouring down your hot stretched oh-face. It would be perpetual bliss, but the only thing you’re even close to being forever locked into is that point sometime in the future when you will no longer exist. That and taxes.   

And when you are old and impotent and death closes in, you will feel nostalgic about your youthful virility. You will wish you had some of it back, but you can only enjoy the memories of her spread-eagled, like Candice Crawford, on the floor, and the sounds of the grainy softness, and you will feel both closer to and farther away from death in the distance of those memories. That will be Le Grand Mort.

The Strabismics Pt. 5

  There is a violence to snorting. It takes physical force to ingest, more than smoking.  Buckley licked a wet finger to make stick the little granules that didn't make it into his nose. He gummed them with a finger like a fishhook. He pressed one nostril and sniffed, and did likewise to the other before looking to to the ceiling. Gabriel watched his friend's Adam's apple bob and tried to control his shock.  Buckley looked at him with the look of people who have just removed their glasses but he was still wearing his glasses.
   
Kevin snorted a line. They leaned back into their respective couches and relaxed. Gabriel smoked another bowl and watched wisps billow from the huge bong's mouth. After a few minutes of relaxation and mental labyrinthing they stood up to leave. They dapped Kevin, saying thanks, and nodded at the kids on the couch.
   

There's no doubt that drugs are a social cohesive. Alcohol is a social lubricant - you drink to make friends easily. If you are with people as they try a drug and you don't partake, you are on the outskirts of their social circle – you aren't able to relate over the most basic feelings; you are on a different plane. As a result, you grow farther apart, watching them herd buffalo, you cry like an Indian on a ledge, judging their actions, dissociating yourself (that fundamental human instinct of categorizing and differentiating that has created such vast gulfs between groups and classes, races and ethnicities, creeds and beliefs) as patently different because they separated themselves by choice.

Due to that choice they fundamentally disagree with you, since you were offered it too and rejected it. So it's not surprising that Buckley and Gabriel grew apart over the course of time, especially when Buckley got deeper into opiates.

Your comments and critiques on this vignette are appreciated.
Love,
Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 4

 During the meanwhile, they load the bowl of the largest bong, and smoke it. Reality goes hazy at the edges and expectation about the future becomes anxiety about the present, what are those kids thinking, no, don't worry about them, building tension settles into complete relaxation and mental wandering, whose cat is that?

Gabriel stands up and moves towards the cat. He had a cat growing up. You have to work for their affection; running to them and rubbing them like dogs doesn't work. Cats and animals in general, but especially cats, are super-sensitive to energy. They have to be relaxed to permit your touch and only feel relaxed if you feel relaxed.
  

This cat is large. It has a clearly unhealthy paunch, but he is good natured and lazes sleepily. Gabe plays with the cat by sliding it back and forth on its excess skin and fat. He does this for about a minute, then scratches the cat's head one last time before he sits back down.
   

Buckley and Kevin finish preparing the powder. They chop it up with credit cards until it is fine. They analyze the color, decide it is too dark and swear. Like chemists, they pipette four drops of water. This is perfect. They chop it again and then again. Now it looks like umber salt. Buckley produced another Jackson and Kevin weighs him out its worth on the cleverly disguised Neil Young CD case scale. Buckley waits patiently, watching the powder the while. When it's in his hand he empties some onto the table and with his credit card, lines it up, chop...chop. He rolls his last 20 tight, puts his nose to it as he leans to inhale and jerkily snorts it in a spray and a twitch.

Pt. 4 of 5 -Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 3

    Kevin wore a black hoodie with an American flag bandanna and thin gold rimmed glasses. He strutted toward them and they began introductions. He was medium height with a short aquiline nose, sallow cheeks and sleepy eyes. His fuzzy hair fell to his shoulders under the rag Gabriel complimented for its patrioticness, for which Kevin thanked him. As they turned to walk back to Kevin's apartment,which was the same building they had leaned against, Kevin lit a cigarette. Gabriel noticed two natty dredlocks resting on his left shoulder.

They turned the corner and waited for Kevin to smoke his cigarette to the filter.
 He opened the door and led them up two flights of stairs and along a badly scratched wooden floor. Long spartan-gray walls showed a hallway without any signs of life. When they stopped Kevin opened a door to expose a room clouded with cigarette and weed smoke. The loft had a staircase that overshadowed the vestibule. Chili pepper light bulbs hung on a string over the large bright windows at the room's opposite end.

They walked to the seating area where there was a record player, a couch with two kids with half-closed eyes who nodded at Buckley and Gabriel as they sat down next to them, and an armchair for Kevin.  The coffee table was littered with bongs, scattered and trayed ash, empty cans of cheap beer, and cigarette cartons.  From where they sat they saw, on the other side of the staircase, a kitchen with exposed shelves of granola, cereal, and canned goods of a various assortment.
   

Kevin extracted what must have been about half a pound of weed from an open backpack that courted his chair's leg, looked up at our two friends, and asked how much. Buckley looked at Gabriel and said “Eighth?” Gabriel nodded and took out a twenty. Kevin placed clots of green onto his digital scale, picking up and removing, replacing like a great chef. He handed Buckley a drug-filled plastic sandwich bag, which he had rolled up and licked to keep sealed, the way most drug dealers do.

Gabriel took it from Buckley, who was thinking about his ultimate goal of the trip. He unrolled the bag and inhaled. It smelled like Jamaican petrichor – the way Bob Marley's backyard would smell after the first rain of the season. When he looked up, Buckley was pointing to Kevin's lap at two different viscous liquids, one russet, one chocolate colored. Kevin pointed to the chocolate one. Gabriel asked what these liquids were. Buckley, without looking at him said, "Resin. They need to dry a little before we add Tylenol PM."
"Why do you add Tylenol?"
"It allows for easier nasal ingestion."
"Oh."
"Once we add it, we chop it up to create a powder. It'll probably take 20 minutes."

3 of 5- Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 2

They took the 6 train to Union Square and transferred to the L train. Bohemian accordian music floated hazily along the platform. Their bellies fluttered with the unknown. After a few minutes the silver train bulleted to a slow stop, humming as the robotic man's voice said, Stand clear of the closing doors please.

By the fourth stop in Brooklyn, they were alone with a little Mayan-looking mother with a brown sugar colored baby in a stroller, a girl with a pallor that oddly matched her pink hair and fishnet leggings, a dude in a tank top and colorfully inked sleeves, and a couple of punks wearing denim vests and baseball caps with the brim flipped up. The subway rumbled to their stop, and the punks joined them in waiting for the doors to open. They walked up the stairs and the indigo spring sky devoured them.

 Buckley strutted into the brisk swinging a jean-jacketed arm as he held his other to his ear to call his man. There was no answer. Buckley left a message. They would wait five minutes. They stood in the style of rebels without a cause, arms folded, smoking cigarettes, a booted foot bent at a 90 degree angle, propping them against the brick wall.
  

Around them square buildings sat clunking in industry. Mesh steel fences hovered gravely as shreds of plastic bags caught in barbed wire flickered in the wind. Behind the fences was more of the ubiquitous brick plated with black steel grated windows and smokestacks filtering into the sky. Wind whispered at them through newly budding trees.

On the opposing corner was an organic food store and what seemed to be a cafe. They ventured down the empty street eyeing straggled hipsters smoking outside the cafe.
 Five minutes was up. Buckley called. Luckily, their man answered. He would be down in a minute. They went back to the brick building built on the subway station and waited ten minutes. First thing you learn is you always gotta wait.

The Strabismics Pt. 1

This is the first installation of a chapter in my forthcoming book, Hot Love on the Wing. To my younger readers, proceed with caution, it is rated M for Mature.

It was Easter weekend and he hadn't seen Buckley for a few weeks.  Their friendship had plateaued due to Buckley being set on making new friends at school and spending most of his time there, although he missed Gabriel.
They manhugged, with their arms x'ed around each other's shoulders and an arched gap between their pelvises. It was Friday afternoon and the evening sunshine darkened so when they sat down there was an odd play of sunshine across Buckley's bed and onto his face; it looked like a nasty birthmark. Gabriel hadn't been smoking weed and didn't miss it, but social smoking was a delight. Buckley packed a bowl eagerly and he said this was the last, melancholically, but that he knew a guy from Stony Brook who had a friend who lived in Bushwick.

“Bushwick? Isn't that in Brooklyn?”

“Ya man, it's off the L train. Supposed to be real fire.”

Although most druggies won't admit it, the adventure of picking up the drugs is half the pleasure of consumption. Since Gabriel had never been to Bushwick he decided it would be fun to go.

As he felt his thoughts and worries begin to evaporate, Buckley took out a piece of aluminium foil with a black letter on it and an empty pen. He lit the black letter with a lighter and hovered the pen over it as he sucked in the fumes. 

“What the fuck are you doing, man?”

Buckley nodded profusely as he finished inhaling the last of the smoke. “Dude, I'm trying to quit Oxycodon, so I smoke this opiate resin.”

Gabriel looked at him like he was five feet underwater. “What? So you're smoking heroin?” He tried to be amiable, unjudging about Buckley's habit. This is my friend, he is a good guy. Maybe it isn't the way it looks. But it looks like he's smoking crack. All those times we smoked weed under the bridge and now...

“Dude, it's not heroin. It's much safer than heroin because you couldn't possibly smoke enough of this to die.”

“You might as well smoke heroin. You look like a crack fiend.”

“Trust me man. It's much safer.”

“I just don't want you getting caught up in these drugs man. Mary is one thing, but this resin shit is weird.”

“Try it and see for yourself that it's not that weird.”

For a second, Gabriel debated whether he should try, but his gut warned him. “Nah, I'm okay.”
    Buckley finished his drug and his phone vibrated. It was a text message from his man in Bushwick. "He said go to the Morgan stop and he'll meet us there."


Lamb and Mouthfeel

 I always get the purple wine lips. We like pinot noir best. I ask her what she detects and we don't look at the label. Sometimes chocolate, a hint of vanilla, blackberry, and usually cherry. We playfully talk about mouthfeel and the tannic nature of the grapes. But every joke is half serious.

Perhaps with a lamb shank, with ripples of flaky meat in a white bean Cassolet Toulousain and a bed of leafy greens with a balsamic vinagrette, the pinot is ideal.

What is it about lamb? Maybe it’s something in the cultural unconscious that takes us back to the days of animal sacrifice. Every time you eat lamb it’s like you play god.

Moment of post postmodernism: I always write about food. I love food. It is one of the three most carnal urges, along with sex and sleep. And although sometimes you don’t have the best meal, you know that you still need it and it is gratifying in itself. It just helps when it’s especially dank. Like lamb shank with pinot noir.

PB 'n' J 'n NYC

I eat PB 'n' J every day at my desk in Brooklyn, New York. Sometimes I'll blog while I'm eating it, or social bookmark, or read the New York Times.

The bread, for the sake of variation, is changed loaf by loaf. Right now, I have two slices of Potato Bread, but this is aberrant; tomorrow I will buy a fresh loaf of whole wheat/oat bran medley.

The Peanut Butter must be natural with or without salt added, but processed peanut butter is really nasty. Once, when I was in college, I bought the peanut butter and jelly in a jar combo, thinking it would save me time (because I was really busy smoking weed and reading Denise Levertov). It was a bad idea.

The preserves must be 100% fruit, or at least close to it. Jam has corn syrup and jelly has all kinds of nitrites and other shit in it.

I don't mess with organic milk because I'm a lowly writer, but I dig the 1%. You cannot drink anything else with PB n' J. If you do or try to deny me, I won't be your friend. I buy it by the half gallon and drink it from the carton. By Friday I'm usually running low, but it's a Friday so it's okay.

It's healthy and sweet, packed with protein and omega-3s and vitamins. I love my PB 'n' J with milk.

Daniel Adler's 100th Blog Post

Hey Guys and Gals,
This is my 100th blog post, and it has been nearly a year since I started this thing. I want to thank y'all for staying tuned, and I want to reassure you that there's a lot more good stuff to come. I hope you've enjoyed reading excerpts from my forthcoming novel, Hot Love on the Wing (which believe me, still needs about a year of work). My ideas and thoughts on our moment of late postmodernism, post postmodernism, metamodernism, or whatever you want to call it, are always subject to interpretation based on our the definitive quality of our interaction. And my hopes and love for Brooklyn and New York can always be enhanced with more information.

If you have any ideas for me as to what I should blog about, feel free to drop a comment. To all you new viewers, don't be scared to follow me. I'm working hard to make my blog the most interesting one on the internet, and with your help and my hard work, it will be.
All my love,
Daniel Adler

Lunch Time in Post Postmodernism

Gabriel enjoyed lunchtime the most. For thirty minutes every six hour shift, he was allowed a meal, usually a hero, or a sub - a sandwich, for those who don’t understand late 20th century regional dialects that have probably died out by the time you’re reading this. Interesting how certain accents are becoming less and less prominent today. The American Southern accent is becoming increasingly infused with that California lilt that ends sentences in a slightly interrogative tone. If you watch the old Hollywood movies with Katharine Hepburn, you can see the pronounced rigidity of her New England accent “William, my dear, I absolutely love you.” Try it yourself with your jaw unmoving, admire Cary Grant's perfect Mid-Atlantic accent, the one they taught in acting school. By the time you future generations read this, there will probably be an American accent that has taken the place of regional dialects, or who knows, those regional twangs may become more prominent due to the regionalization of our huge country.…anyway, where was I, yes, the hero.
  

 It was toasted so that the bread sometimes burned and cut the roof of your mouth if you weren’t careful. And of course Gabriel added all the trimmings - mayo, mustard, pepper salt, oil vinegar, lettuce tomatoes, pickles, red onions, jalapenos and bell peppers, provolone.  If his shift were five and a half, he would stay on extra to get lunch, which did not bother O’Donell in the slightest; he enjoyed watching the lad eat. It reminded him of his own youth and  the nostalgia he felt took the place of the son he had never had. Gabriel ate ravenously, scarfing the sandwiches as if they were his last. O'Donnell pretended to chop, but actually watched tv and glanced at his employee to make sure he was enjoying his idea of fine food. Gabriel usually worked weekend afternoons, which was enough to give him money and the nighttime to play when he wanted.
  

-Hot Love on the Wing,
Daniel Adler


Paris and New York in Post Postmodernism

In Paris the boulevards beneath skeiny tree branches and high stone apartment buildings suggested exclusivity and history. Glances of emptiness from men and those of mild interest from women showed that it was their Paris. With the confidence of Napoleon they walked past him. In passing the Champ D'Elysees, the Louvre, or as he meandered along the Seine, he played the tourist, removed from people and focused on the sites. These were international symbols of French greatness. This was theirs, their history.

 New York was just the opposite, he mulled. It depended on foreigners, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There was less to be collectively proud of in New York. You could easily become a New Yorker, but when you talked to your neighbor about the oncoming spring, there was expectation, not pride.  In Paris even the cherry blossoms were French.

The regions of the United States won't understand that for some time yet. When Americans appear as that, instead of a melting pot of races, the stew will have a distinctive taste. Although New York and Paris share seasons, equal lengths of spring and fall. Weather unites denizens. Sun all year round spoils you, can lead to complacency. In the best cultural capitals, wet winters and hot summers represent life's extremes.
-Daniel Adler

Resignation

Endless ages come slow to those who fight,
Sweet sadness' inevitable delay;
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

Old men and young carry venomous spite,
Because they know dusky soft ends of days,
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.

In their longings for clear foreboding sight
They drop to their knees, count red beads and pray.
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

Even the men who lived lives full of right
A lovers'sharp glance makes them beg to stay,
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.

And in the blinding brightness of sunlight
She calls it off and it begins to fray
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

And when our crops have pestilence or blight,
We hope for a ripe, more bountiful day.
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

-Daniel Adler

Stella's Birth

Another passage from Hot Love on the Wing, describing Stella's birth:

In the humid July heat of 1956, Tessie's hormone swollen face flushed pink with pain. She called my eldest aunt, who kept the other five children at bay and led my grandmother down the five flights of their Morningside Heights apartment building. A 12 year old has trouble hailing a cab while balancing a belabored Irishwoman. Amid the traffic and the busted-pouring fire hydrants, a mustachioed Italian man driving a Wonder bread truck – a bread that my mother and her siblings longed for while growing up instead of the 3 for $1 wheat bread loaves from the A&P that Leo bought and which they despised as a sign of their inability to assimilate – slowed to a stop and worriedly said, “Ya mutha? She gonna have a baby?”  Maureen led her wobbling mother into the truck and she and the mustachioed man zoomed away to an uptown hospital that no longer exists.

These Irish born children had no idea at the time, but when Tessa was birthing them with a midwife in a cabin in Mayo, there were no drugs to induce the process. The only thing utilized was a nice warm stout to ease the flow of breast milk after the stress and pain of parturition. When my narrowback mother (so called because she never had to experience the pear shaped disfiguration of working the potato fields) was born as the first in the United States, they gave her mother scopolamine. This drug in high doses causes extreme euphoria, much like an opiate. In a transdermal patch the average dosage is .4 mg and can often cause memory impairments. It is no surprise that it was used to ease the pain of my grandmother when her fourth child was brought into this world.
   

When they whirled Tessie into the obstetrician's office, she felt precipitously like there was a dramatic difference with this one; oh yes, a definite firestarter, a real hellacious one. Without going in to the unsavory details of childbirthing, I will say only that my mother immediately began a route on which she would stay for the rest of her life – one of howling and rubicund fury mediated only by her feminine capacity to love and shelter.     

Two months later, my mother was in her pram enjoying the late summer sun just outside of Van Cortland Park in the Bronx (funny how THE Bronx is the only borough with an article in front of it; in a way that makes it less particular, as if there could be another one somewhere). Suddenly, a Wonder bread truck slowed to a stop, and a mustachioed man yelled, “Ey, so wuzzita boy or girl?”

-Daniel Adler

Stella, the Mother Cat

A tad of a chapter from Hot Love on the Wing:

 Stella’s routine was such that by eight or nine o clock she had those wide red Sauvignon splotches across her cheeks that showed, similar to the rareness of a steak, that she was not ready to be tried. At that point, the children avoided her having learned from years of verbal abuse. If they did have to ask a question, they were greeted with a strabismic glance and the kind of bobble headed shake that meant she was thinking of how to respond, and that it was not going to be a real answer, but an attempt at witty repartee – if she were in a good mood. In joviality she assumed any conversation was an attempt to test her, and her inability to cogitate resulted in one of her favorite aggressive lines. If she were stressed or broken down, the kids ran away, because like playing with broken glass, sooner or later you're bound to bleed, and you should really just avoid it altogether, or if you’re responsible, clean it up instead.


On more than one occasion Gabriel came home from Buckley's and, hungry for a snack, searched the refrigerator for food. The only noises she ever made were from the cracking of her joints as she walked and the light jingle of her gold bracelets, which she never took off. They consisted of  1. Tiffany bracelet with a quarter sized golden heart that she had received when she graduated nursing school, 2. a charm bracelet, (again, she was a fervent believer in superstition) 3. a thin gold bangle, 4. a twenty four karat chain, and 5. a white gold elliptical link bracelet.

All of this jewelry together gilded about four inches of her wrist. It made the sound of a bell on a cat's collar, jangling with every movement, and my mother was the mother cat. They say that if you can take care of a cat,  you can take care of a woman - they're so different from dogs, the way they sense negative energy and back away. They also say that cats have to feel comfortable with space, and that's why when they do, they go around rubbing their cheeks on everything, which is where their pheromones are, so that it kind of becomes their property through their scent. Yes, to live with a cat can teach you a lot, and if you don't like cats, it's probably because you've never lived with one (or you're allergic, and for people with allergies, I'm sorry).


Madam's Organ and the Fat Rasta Chick

Last night Matthew and I went to a popular party district in D.C., Adams Morgan. We arrived early, around nine, and surveyed the strip for the right joint. I had always seen Madam's Organ when I was younger, envious of those old enough to enjoy the nightlife, and so we did an about face at the end of the road and walked back to see what all the fuss is about.

Inside was a host of taxydermied  animals: bears, falcons,  boars, a marlin, upside down deer,  even a lion's head with raging paws. Matthew and I discussed life's travails for an hour until the blues band came on the stage. The  soprano/baritone saxophonist and electric guitarist killed it. At one point, maybe after "Roadhouse Blues," just two beers deep, I stood before them, eyes closed, taking the moment. When I opened them again, there was  an open circle of about a foot around me. I  would have had less room if I had been maniacally dancing. 

They had quarter pie slices at Alberto's, which were "well seasoned" according to the myopic, double-chinned, red natty dreaded chick whose face I apprehended from about five inches away to ask whether the pizza was good. And Matthew wanted to go to  Pizza Mart across the street...Ha!  When we sat down to eat, Matthew asked her  "a serious question:" "Which do you prefer, relationships or financial success?" And she answered that with the way her parents treated her because of her hair and her friends still there for her no matter what, and her mother still supporting her, and her husband and her baby, obviously relationships. She didn't invite us to smoke a blunt.

When she went next door to the Rasta club, and we walked to the empanada joint with the kick-ass hot sauce, we marinated on her and her answer.
 Tourisitically,
Daniel Adler

Arcimboldo, Chester Dale and Post Postmodernism

 Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93) was  a painter at the court of  Ferdinand I  in Vienna , and later for Maximilan  II and Rudolf II when  the Hapsburg court moved to Prague due to religious reasons.  His work is easily recognizable for its use of fruits, vegetables and flower depicting human faces. Scientifically correct, these paintings were likely in vogue at the time, and do not represent a crazed artist's work.

Currently Washington D.C. has the first ever Arcimboldo exhbit in the U.S. at the National Gallery, one of my favorite museums.

We drove past the White House, where Obama was nursing his stitches. The exhibit was great. My favorite was "Water" (right).

You can see the crab that makes the breast, the ray that is a cheek, and my favorite, the baby seal that comprises the forehead (so cute). These depictions were definitive of the era's concern with natural wonders, or wunderkammer.

There was also an exhibit of all the works acquired by stock broker Chester Dale. At the end of a large collections of Picassos, Matisses, Renoirs, Monets, Manets, and tons more was a portrait of the man done by Dali.

Isn't this weird? It really struck me as one of those portraits definitive of an epoch. Look at what Dale's wearing, that black poodle. This is a 20th century painting. Makes me think of how people in post postmodernism will remember last century.

The Best Gravy Recipe

Among the contenders for best Thanksgiving side are stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce. I can limit it to these three because of their importance to the rest of the meal. White meat, when cooked with the entire turkey is often dry. It is best to break off the legs of the turkey and allow them to cook for longer than the breast. The white meat is made supremely dank with cranberry sauce or gravy. Gravy doesn't need starch; you can just spatula the turkey gravy recipe from drippings back and forth in the pan until it gels. If you don't have the twenty or so minutes, add some flour at the end. The necessity for gravy with mashed potatoes, and  the way it increases the savoriness of my turkey and stuffing, it is, I must conclude, the most important Thanksgiving side.

I don't know about you, but I don't dig it when my cranberry sauce gets all up in my mashed potatoes. The Thanksgiving mush, as little Matthew says, is a good thing for him, but I like keeping my turkey away from my mash. De gustibus, I suppose.

I understand the importance of a fine gravy - a weak one has ruined many a Thanksgiving - but my personal favorite is stuffing. Stuffing is only had at Thanksgiving, at least in my family. A dry stuffing can only sometimes be saved with a dank gravy. You can mix it with any of the other sides, such as sweet potatoes, and chances are it will taste better. It is one of the most versatile dishes, and because I only see it once a year, it's my favorite.

Daniel Adler's View on Verb Subject Agreement

I take issue with writers who have trouble keeping their subjects parallel with their verbs. Granted I do it too sometimes when I'm sloppy, but there are more specific problems I'd like to address. For example, I know it’s common practice these days to say “that band are playing tonight.” How about when referring to people we keep it plural, but when referring to the singular nature of “the band,” we go singular?

Part of what helps keep my subject-verb agreements straight is proofreading. I’m not going to go on and on about the merits of re-reading what you’ve written, because as every writer knows, it’s almost more important to edit than to write, but I will suggest that some of you writers read the Times’ After Deadline column, which I find to be a nice take on good and bad journalism. It’s fascinating how bad some of the writing is, not to sound pretentious and say that I'm better than most of the journalists on the staff, but you’d think that as a writer for the New York Times, you’d know to say “a couple of hundred.”

-Humbly,
Daniel Adler

Postmodernism Began in 1968

Today we’re going to talk about what came before post postmodernism: postmodernism. Postmodernism began around 1968, due to shifting values in the United States and in Europe. A generation had settled down to have children since WWII, and the Baby Boomers were coming of age. Vietnam and the ascension of America as the pre-eminent global power brought to the zeitgeist a self-concerned, slightly ironic viewpoint. The power of corporations became recognized and the idea that power corrupts absolutely was reinforced after Watergate, perhaps the height of the historical movement.

In literature, we can examine postmodernism in the works of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Samuel Beckett, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace, all of whom experiment with notions of assortment and conglomeration in terms of plot, content, and character. In the visual arts, Warhol’s “Marilyn” is the best known example. Postmodern art works on the premise that it can be reproduced with variation to evoke emotion – even when those emotions are base, as in the case of the pervasive ennui,  shock, and irony  we find in many postmodern works.

I’ve written that we’re emerging from the throes of postmodernism today, and that very soon we can expect to see the beginnings of a new movement. Perhaps it will be in 2011, when the seventh billion person is born. Perhaps it will be in 2012, before the putative end of the world. Or perhaps it could take another ten years or more. Although with all that’s changed recently, I doubt it will take that long.

English in Post Postmodernism

English is changing in post postmodernism. I have speculated that internet keywords are the way people are trending into speech. Dropping (or adding) the apostrophe to plural nouns will become increasingly frequent. Prepositional usage will become less relevant. And of course we will start to adapt new foreign words into our language. My new friend Sushrut used the word “Kalyug” when we were discussing what it means to live in our era. It approximately means “century.”

The reason English is the one global language is that it borrows words from other languages and bastardizes them to make them its own. German attempts to retain the original pronunciation. “Department,” for example, they pronounce, “de-par-mon,” and of course, sound rather silly (when unpracticed) moving from their guttural throat clenching pronunciation, to the light mellifluous French pronunciation.

I can’t wait to start using Indian and Chinese words (the latter will probably take more time due to the difficulties of transliteration). Look for more Spanish pronunciation and less use of English’s more difficult tenses, i.e. simple past substituted for the pluperfect. Not to say that this will happen overnight, or even over the next fifty years, but eventually, colloquial English speakers will get weird looks, as we do today when we casually use the subjunctive.
Foresightedly,
Daniel Adler

Winter in Post Postmodernism

Can you feel the winter? It’s approaching and everyone knows it. I’m a big believer in the idea our lives are governed by the seasons. After all, it was the determining factor in how our ancestors lived and farmed. That’s why we feel like we have so much to do during the spring, during the sowing, and right now, before it gets really cold, everyone gets a little crazy preparing for the holidays (the reap). Black Friday, for example, is a circuitous proof of this point.

I’m actually kind of afraid of winter this year. I dread January’s bleak nights. The cold wind will be bitter on the industrial truck route I take to work before I start to sweat. But in the darkness of the evenings, and my reluctance to leave my apartment, I will write prodigiously.

But I’m also excited and somewhat anxious about 2011, that weird odd year when we become more comfortable in this decade and get a little closer to the end of the world. Don’t expect any major breakthroughs next year; I bet it will be a year of expectation. Scoff, do you? The cultural unconscious is a powerful thing.

Propitiously,
Daniel Adler

Ode to Work

Recently I’ve been thinking about work. Not just work, but reconciling public opinion and the drive to get ahead in the rat race with my own intuition and creative drive. And I’ve realized that they don’t have to be necessarily reconciled. All it takes is work.

If you are a young writer who wants to get published, you may be thinking about how to direct your efforts to appeal to said publisher. Or on the other hand, you may think about how you don’t care if you’re going to be published – you want to create art for art’s sake.

I know the answer. It comes from deep in the smithy of the artist’s soul. All you have to do is listen to yourself and understand how much more work you have ahead of you. What you’ve done so far is the tip of the iceberg. Underneath, your unconscious, intuition, and drive to duty must be revealed. And the only way to do that is to work. Ravenously, savagely hard. You are a shitty writer, I tell myself. The hundreds of hours you spent working on your novel so far have been a preface to the work on it you have yet to do. I now understand why many writers in the past have burned entire manuscripts.

So please, just shut up and keep working.
Entreatingly,
Daniel Adler

The Hipster's Diminishing Cultural Capital

A review of the new book “Whiter Shades of Pale” has me lamenting the continuous barrage of self definition and satirical placement white people love. The author of “Stuff White People Like” may have a point in mocking his fellow whitey, but in a way, isn’t he perpetuating the system? White people love to feel guilty about being white. An essay in the New York Times discussing “the hipster,” examines how this has occurred.

De gustibus non est disputandum, or, concerning matters of taste there is no dispute. The hipster and the modern white person show that there is. Elevation of one and suppression of another is what being human is about, but what if, instead of feeling a sense of superiority or political correctness, we could simply observe and appreciate the average lower-class and the aging middle class hipster, in the same non-disparaging way?
  
We know that there are levels of quality in everything, but to justify our knowledge of quality over others is the mark of Bourdieu’s “cultural capital.” We want to prove to ourselves that we deserve what we have because of what we know, and that those below us economically must know less. In fact, they know about different things, or perhaps have learned the same things in a different way. True artists  should be able to appreciate all kinds of people and ideas without condescending or pretending, or even feeling layers of guilt for political incorrectness. That should replace the ironical self-consciousness of postmodernism.

The Power of the Metaphor

Ah, the power of the metaphor. I love metaphors – they are so much less fickle than similes, which require a prefatory ‘like’ or ‘as’. And the inherent symbolic comparison strike the reader as much more powerful.

Giambattista Vico believed that each era of humanity has a linguistic equivalent. The divine age, associated with the Ancient world, was when man found himself in nature and used metaphor to explain natural occurrences, the lightning bolt of Zeus for example. The heroic age of feudalism  was one of metonymy, which were supported by figures in charge, like the baron and king, representative of their estate and the serfs over whom they ruled. And finally the democratic age is one of irony – the barbarism of reflection eventually leading back into the poetic age of the divine, a.k.a. post postmodernism.

Yes, I’d like to believe that the age of irony is at a close and that we will soon return to a simpler Golden Age, when words were more symbolic than literal. But listen to me blabbing on about metaphor. Here's a good one: my girlfriend is mad at me and said that my words were like spears piercing into her flesh. Makes me sound like a killer, right?
-Pondering,
Daniel Adler

The Universal vs. The Cliche

Last night we watched some experimental music at Brooklyn Fire Proof East, and began discussing what makes the cliche a universal. The former is boring, the number one no-no in writing, the latter, genius. But where's the line drawn?

I find that when listening to music for example, when I'm expecting a rhyme that doesn't occur, like "keeps lingering on" with "love that's strong" instead of "waiting for so long," there is a glimpse at the universal.

In short, the cliche satisfies our expectations, or as David Foster Wallace would say, "massages our egos" while the universal gets at the same ideas by disappointing them, pleasurably, or in the case of films like "Blue Velvet," unpleasurably.

But you aren't satisfied with that.

A lot of it comes down to phrasing. In writing, even word order can make a big difference. But original comparisons, like instead of being shot by cupid's arrow, being stung by the sting ray of love, can help us to achieve a universal emotion in unique terms.

Have any other ideas? Let me know.

Inquiringly,
Daniel Adler

Can We Call Brooklyn Its Own City Again?

Brooklyn has recently been drawing literary agents and basketball teams to its friendly confines. The Nets won’t be called the New York Nets, they’re going to be the Brooklyn Nets. Last night I met a biker from Denver on my way home and welcomed him, telling him that this is the best city in the world (I meant Brooklyn, nothing against Manhattan). That said, is it fair to treat Brooklyn as its own city?

Oakland and San Franscisco, Baltimore and DC, Brooklyn and New York –can we put the last pair in this group? Until 1898 Brooklyn was its own city. The Economist calls it Manhattan’s Left Bank, but for the past decade Brooklyn has regained its status as a city worth living in. The development of North Brooklyn especially has added to this, as Williamsburg has taken Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village spillover, and reclaimed the young artists and creatives as their own.

Part of this is due to the increased safety of the city – downtown Manhattan is no longer “rough;” unless you live in deep Bushwick, you don’t have to worry about walking home late at night. So I’m advocating Brooklyn not just as a sister city, but as it's own city. Manhattanites have to really just how uncool it would be if it didn't have the creative center of the universe a mile away. After all, with almost 2.5 million people, Brooklyn would be the sixth largest city in the country on its own. That’s pretty cool.

 Excitedly,
Daniel Adler

Sonnet for the Fields

The sonnet is the truest form of poetry known to man, and it's not going anywhere in post postmodernism.

In the cold winter of our heart’s content

It was easy to forget rosy spring.

Green eyed jealousy’s missiles were not sent

Before a storm came under love’s warm wing.

To  think the vinous juice of love runs dry

Because clouds cluster over fertile plains

Is to forget casks in winter’s supply,

And deny fallow fields will sprout again.

Autumn’s glow brings fears of colder winters:

And old men study grey skies on porches,

Speculating over the harvest’s yield;

Study, focus, fail to see small splinters

And as you gallop your hobbyhorses

Horizonal sun breaks onto the field.

I’m not the first man to be a damn fool

Ruminating on the future is cruel.

-Daniel Adler

The Sylvia Plath Effect

Stuck inside my head with the thinking about the future blues again. Ohh, you’ve written this before - too many artists have succumbed that way. You need to back out of your own mind again. Think about Shakespeare, think about whatever it is you have to to take your mind off of what it is your thinking about. Then get back to me.

Write it down. Get it all out of your mind. Free the stuff bubbling within you. Talk to your best friend. An outside perspective will help you keep reality and illusion separate.

List of famous artists that couldn’t stop thinking and succumbed to the Sylvia Plath effect:
Ernest Hemingway
David Foster Wallace
Syvia Plath
Vincent Van Gogh
Ashile Gorky
Frida Kahlo
Mark Rothko

Not that I’m in any way close to killing myself. It’s just that if you don’t take a step back, outside of your own head every once in a while, either your personal life suffers, or your art suffers. Sometimes both, but usually the conflation between the two suggests you put more eggs into one basket. Deep breaths. Relief.

New York City: 21st Century Cultural Center of the World

I recently let my good friend Gio Serrano read a bit of my book. He gave me meaningful feedback about the form that it will take, which I will get to eventually, and we did the bohemian thing at Swallow Cafe all Saturday afternoon. What I immedately understood was that I needed to omit, or at least rewrite my description of New York. "Cliche," he said, "What makes it your New York? The reader knows all about Broadway and the Statue of Liberty."

I just read this essay about what makes New York the cultural center of the world. In part, it is its outward-lookingness. New Yorkers are constantly aware not of what is going on in the other parts of the United States -lord knows we’re the center of it all anyway - but the rest of the world. That very notion is manifest in  the hundreds of enclaves of immigrants we retain. And in the same way Paris retained its status as world capital for perhaps a hundred years after the beginning of its decline, it's apparent that New York will do the same for its ability to attract people not as a great place to live, but as a great place to do what you want.

New Yorkers live in New York because of the options, they want to be part of something bigger. And it is a big city with tons of culture, restaurants, and bars. You can have whatever you want in New York, right next door to what you would never want. In that sense, New York is the most international city in the world.

Any ideas on how to treat this notion in my book?

Hapax Legomenon, David Byrne, and Hemingway's Love

Hapax legomenon. I learned this phrase the other day. It is an instance of a word occurring once in a language, the work of an author, or a single text. It’s a very pretentious phrase but one that has great import for writers. This fact has been motivating me to keep writing: 44% of Melville’s words in Moby Dick are hapax legomena. That means that almost half of the seven hundred pages contain words  that sonofabitch never used again in the book. I guess that's what happens when you are a scribner for eight hours a day; you write one of the best books of all time. I'm scribing six hours a day, maybe mine will be half as good.

I’ve been going a little bit crazy lately, just a tad. I think I’m going to start wearing oversized suits more, for one, and living deeper in my brain, for another, with only David Byrne to help me stop making sense.

I finished For Whom the Bell Tolls the other night. It moved me to tears. Some books you know you’re going to love as soon as you start reading them and you don’t want them to end. Some books are good, and get better in your memory when you’ve finished them. Some books are a drag and you want to be done with them already. This book I knew I was going to love, found myself wishing it was over at times, and then at the end felt it to be justifiably his masterpiece. It made me better understand the importance of loving life.

Yours forever and always,
Daniel Adler

Food in Daniel Adler's Kustlerroman

  It's incredible how food can show love and reveal a person’s character. “Oh you don't eat meat?” We probably won't be good friends. It's nothing personal against vegetarians or vegans, but it's a major difference in paradigm. How when we have canines made for ripping into meat can you shun it as if it's unnatural? I'm sure you have a good answer. But better yet, how can we enjoy a meal together when you are eating a meal without the weight, the chutzpah of mine?  Give me a meat-eating, spicy food loving girl any day of the week. She's adventurous, likes a bit of pain, and knows about tolerance.

Being lactose intolerant or having celiac disease I could probably forgive, but I'd still look at you a little funny. When people are picky though, that's when I know that we can't be friends. Once I went out with a girl who said she didn't like eggs. You don't like eggs? Then how are you going to make them for me in the morning?  After our first date I walked her home, and knew that this would never materialize, even though I stayed with her for more than two months. I should have listened to my gut. Always listen to your gut.

Personally I'm not a fan of celery. But recently it's been growing on me. In dips or soups, you know. I'll eat anything because I'm adventurous and I like different flavors, consistencies, textures. People bond over food, and rightly so. What else can you ingest and release? Drinks, check. Smoke, check. That's it.

Daniel Adler's Blog is Too Pretentious

 Recently people have been calling Daniel Adler's blog pretentious, which I, and I’m sure you too, dear reader, have trouble believing. This vastly overused word needs some clarification.

It has two primary definitions. The first is: making claim to distinction or importance, esp. undeservedly. I know that I know nothing. I am not published. I am a fledgling artist working on a book, like millions of other people out there. I am especially unimportant. So although I hope to be great one day, a hope that is necessary for any writer to rise from the muck, I try to keep my blog free of the tone of pretension. I’m sorry if it sometimes seeps through.

The second definition is: having or creating a deceptive outer appearance of great worth; ostentatious. This blog layout is relatively simple. It is worth only what you take from it. Comments about how I use an RSS feed to generate traffic from facebook to my blog, and my linking to my website as pretentious are not worthy, because those are simply good SEO practices and do not stem from an ulterior motive of ostentation. An internet presence is important if I want to be read, especially by more than just an online audience, no offense. It is not pretension.

In any case, my friends, any feeback is good feedback, so please, keep it coming. Btw, the meta-ness of this blog, and my usage of the word meta, is kind of pretentious.

Horseshoe Staches And Childhood Laundromat Intimacies

I shaved myself a horseshoe mustache. It differs from a fu manchu mustache in that the latter has shaved sides so that the lip hairs hang wispily down, whereas mine grows along the sides of the mouth as well. That part of the mustache is the "pipes." It is excellent and I proudly wore it to the Bushwick Mega Laundromat. Sometimes I forget that it is on my face and I am surprised at the looks I get from people and then I remember, that’s right, they think I’m an asshole.

Which is why I was so surprised when last night, I had a moment with a little girl. I noticed her noticing me, and glanced up from reading. She quickly looked away and I went back to reading. Back down, little girl. I’m a mean mother with a horseshoe mustache. Then to my surprise, the little one crawled onto the seat next to me and there she sat, nervous and scared. Yes, that’s right. But I'm really a nice guy underneath the stache and she knew that; she scampered away after a few moments.

When I moved my laundry to the dryer, she came up to me in her little black pea coat with her ponytail rising from the top of her head, and what did she do, but offer me candy. Dumdum, Tootsie Rolls or Grape Trident. “Thank you,” I exclaimed, “that is so nice of you!” I said fingering a couple of pieces of gum as I tried to take one. “You can have more than one, it’s okay,” she said insouciantly. “That’s very kind, but I’ll just have one. Thanks.” And Daniel Adler never saw her again.