Duck Snort

A duck snort is:

That surreal, sort of yellow color, before a thunderstorm splits.

The aloe Vera stains on your pillow case the next morning after burning your neck during a double header spent in left.

Dreaming about a plane hit a building and then seeing a second plane hit another, over and over again in your mind and each time you try to scream, but your mouth is full of sunflower seeds and Big League Chew.

Everyone screaming at Torre, because the infield’s in, and Mariano’s throwing that cutter of his.

Your father not being able to throw out the grey silk gloves that were given to him to use as a balm barer at his ex brother-in-law’s funeral.

Riding your bike, and hearing the crickets in their separate trees and as you glide past each tree, it’s like someone is playing with the volume control as their hum goes up and down and up and down.

Josh is harmlessly tossing a foul ball into the right field bleachers and then suddenly the flames along his forearms are changing colors and he’s back in his trailer hearing Daddy Daddy Daddy.

Having to tuck your batting gloves into your pockets when you’re pitching, but being able to shine your nose with SPF 30.

Watching a bee swim in a candle holder, while you hit balls off a batting tee in your backyard when the sun is rising, and wondering how Caribbean should really be pronounced.

Want to be able to do my amazing duck snort? Hold your hands to your mouth in the shape of a tepee and make the sound, duck snort. 

Texas Forever

This month, Friday Night Lights and the Harry Potter films, sadly come to their ends.

This Grantland article/interview transcript, http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6766070/clear-eyes-full-hearts-lose, summarizes my favorite drama on network television. I will miss a show that isn't about football, but about marriage,  a real marriage, above all else, but also about community- a new community for anyone who hasn't grown up in Texas- and the special bond between coaches and players.

I'm sad. I also haven't seen Deathly Hallows Part 2 yet. I would like to put it off for as long as I can, so when I watch it I'll have forgotten it is the last film. But, I will always know the truth.

lighthouse

i want to own a lighthouse:  http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/286133

Hamms

The night started off by going to see King Kahn at West Fest. He disappointed, needless to say. My buddy and I picked up a 6'er of Hamms. We went back to his place, drank, played some hoops and watched old reruns of Curb and King of the Hill. But, the entire time I could help but think about Dybek and his story "Breasts." How the lonely characters  sit at the bar, drinking and humming the Hamms theme: "from the land of sky blue waters..."

Yes!

Okkervil River are coming to Chicago!

New Tallest Man... song: http://www.twentyfourbit.com/post/7386449367/the-tallest-man-on-earth-weather-of-a-killing

So close to finishing Shoeless Joe. Desperately want to watch Filed of Dreams.

The Haunted House

When I was trading baseball cards, playing with Legos and preparing for the zombie Apocalypse in pillow forts as a young boy, I always wondered if girls were doing something similar, or at least had that weird sense of imagination and hobbies that only your best friend shared. After reading Marisa Crawford's The Haunted House I think I have my answer. The girls in this collection of poems play tag on the telephone ("Ivy, The Name of This poem is Secret), trace their names into the living room carpet ("Perfect Blue Orbs) and listen to '80s songs on repeat.  

Some of these poems leave the reader haunted. The narrator keeps "a picture of the forest burning in my locket" ("Artifacts"). Or haunted and almost tongue tied: "Sometime's peoples fathers shoot rabbits and eat them when they are hungry and sometimes a child that is a child as she is a child is hungry but cannot eat and instead will cry, will dribble tears for days and weeks until their bones show." 

My favorite line, prejudice be darned: "Baseball diamonds rocked themselves to sleep at night." ("Indian Summer"). I enjoyed the feelings of nostalgia, that childhood imagination, that is so necessary and those friendships, those best friendships that get us through our childhood. It may sound cheezy, but I want my imaginary daughter to grow up like the girls in this collection of poems. I want her to have best friends (and lose them, because everyone needs to experience a best friend moving away) and have a wild imagination. I want her to have weird obsessions (90210, gull) but also love Emily Dickinson. (There is a photo of Emily Dickinson that looks hauntingly like me when I was about 10.)  

On Deck: The Poetry Chains of Dominic Luxford

In the Hole: The Museum of Clear Ideas by Donald Hall 

Random Thoughts: 

~Breaking Bad is possibly the best drama on television.  

~Berries plants growing in my neighbor's backyard (I may steal them, but I don't if they'll be tart or poisonous) 

~My strawberries aren't growing. 

~American Water by the Silver Jews is a great listen

Beer; Mix and Mix 6 packs at Mariano's:  

Summer Reading: 

Kings of the F**king Sea

"The sun rose out of the road, burning it gold until it passed right through me" is the first aside/prologue to Dan Boehl's brilliant collection of poems. When I was in the Scouts, one summer I spent the week at camp getting my Sailing merit badge. My favorite part about getting it, other then being out on the water, tying knots and turtle diving(flipping the ship completely over in the middle of the lake and having to re-flip it, which was a lot more fun than it sounds) was the rocking sensation of being on a ship, as I lay in my cot late at night. I went to bed usually several hours after I was out of the water, as we spent hours playing capture the flag and joking around the campfire, but the rocking sensation stayed with me. I loved that feeling, and I never got sea sick. It was like I was still out on the lake. I experienced that same feeling after reading Kings of the F**king Sea; it stayed with me. Almost every page had me chanting, yes, f**king, yes. I'll list some favorite lines, but I have to cut myself off, or I'll just end up typing 3/4s of the book.

"Remember how smoke/
issued from the stacks/ like the dreams of factories/
when factories were the dreams of cities/ and cities were the dreams/ of our immigrant parents?

Kotex (Romanov): The whole poem is brilliant. The jump in time, the confusion, the knot in your stomach that you know means doom is swimming below, and you are the stupid naked swimmer in the ocean at midnight, during feeding time.

[The Asides were amazing!] [Here's one: Gitau's mother's knotty fingers weaving the bark baskets, and how it can't be seen where the fingers begin and the basket begins.]

Conference (Regatta) "I mean, the sea is how/ we find our place in the world/ but it's also our place."
I feel, deep down, that this is talk of real men at sea, or I like to imagine it to be.

[The Hunt for Pink October (yes, not the greatest name for a fictional ship)] ["I carry you always in my heart like a bundle of dogwood blooms, their pink springs eternal like the river of immigrants who suffer because of your greed." A letter from our beloved captain to the enemy captain.]

The LE MISE ET LES MAL-HEURS DE LA GUERRE section

This section reminded me of Leonard Cohen's The Partisan, and not just because Cohen sings in French for part of the song. Both are haunting:

Cohen: There were three of us this morning/ I'm the only one this evening/
but I must go on/ the frontiers are my prison

Boehl: (The Hangman's Tree) "1000/ people hang from one tree. There/ is this part I never told you./ Half of those people used to be my/ neighbors./ The other half were my friends."

The meta-ness. A injured sailor (in "The Hospital) writes in his journal: badly wounded in/ arm has suffered/ much and some peaches/ don't forget {lines from Whitman's Civil War journals} and bureaucracy at it's best (Distribution of Medals): "..the government program designed to bolster the proliferation of arts, a program that teaches the amputees returning home to write odes to their missing limbs."

The last section gets really Spider Man 3-y, kind of so much that you want to watch Spiderman 3 again. Which I strangely loved.

Pickup (Gaza): "Sell your cleverness/ and buy bewilderment."

[Ballad of the Seven Passages]  "Nobody wins. Some just lose more beautifully." Sounds like baseball advice.

I loved the final lines: "One day/ when I return/ I hope to find a manuscript/ on the coffee table/ written by someone else./ I'll take it out with me/ and let the pages/ topple in the wind."

 I was at the Shedd for a free admission day  last week. It's amazing to be be in the darkness and see all the colors, that don't even seem like colors. My photos don't do justice.

Looking in the tanks, I was reminded of a friend who told me he would always would hold his breath when watching a film or television and character went underwater. I always thought that was the goofiest thing I ever heard. Still do.

under & out