In the hottest bar in Wisconsin
the singer sings about blind white panic
and crys­talline faces com­ing in from the cold.
The dying singer sings about love,
and I can see the band behind her
sigh­ing into the lights.

In the morn­ing, red crows bang
the high-water pylons and fold back into the sky.
The mild sounds : a moist wing, a fin­ger in a trout,
the girl with the hiss­ing lantern
comes down the stairs like water under ice.
The pines are deep in snow, but they don’t know it yet.

One year, I thought I’d try writ­ing a nov­el in Novem­ber. This is the entire result of that her­culean effort :

Lordez is the girl, the one that was at Lisa’s baby’s par­ty, Lordez Rodriguez, which you’d think her mom could’ve said out loud to make sure it didn’t rhyme – no, not Rodriguez, it’s some­thing-ez though. When she told me I want­ed to say “Pleasedez to meetez you.” I think I did say it actu­al­ly, but she didn’t hear me because the rain sound­ed like some­one was hit­ting her car with ham­mers. We didn’t talk at the par­ty, but when it start­ed rain­ing I was ask­ing every­body for a ride and she felt sor­ry for me. We didn’t talk in the car either because the rain was like ham­mers, except she said her name was Lordez Her­nan­dez, and she’s the girl I was talk­ing about the oth­er day.

What are you now ? The por­tion left to sleep is
cry­ing in your sleep. They want to take your leg.
Your oxime­ter chirps behind you. Behind me,
Ban­dit steals a kiss from the Frog.
Ssome­how we smoked and snorted
our way into the same bed, moth­er and son.
If the Snow­man and Fred saw us like this
they’d chew each oth­er to the bone.

Alan fled New Brunswick and his peo­ple there ear­ly last spring, fled their ven­omous cui­sine and their aim­less hump­ing, their fid­dle­heads and their home­made maple rum that inflamed even the old­est of turds to fits of pri­apic square-danc­ing and, lat­er, rut­ting against the cor­ner of the bar ; he fled his moth­er, who had con­vinced her­self it was her shy­ness and crip­pling pas­siv­i­ty that drove Alan’s father to walk into the sea, and who, after hav­ing found the need to “ideate” a new life for her­self, sat down one evening in Feb­ru­ary, shut her eyes, and imag­ined a dar­ling baby, “a beau­ti­ful baby all my own” (Alan found that par­tic­u­lar­ly galling), a baby not made of skin and bone but of fear and anx­i­ety, bun­dled and swad­dled just like a real baby, ten­der and needy just like a real baby, the idea being that car­ing for her fear baby would help her come to terms with her weak­ness rather than let it shame her as it had all her life, which seemed to make sense to Alan, except after a few nights of this, he found his moth­er in her chair, red-faced and groan­ing, her hands crush­ing each oth­er in her lap, and it didn’t take a genius to fig­ure out she was chok­ing the ever lov­ing shit out of her fear baby, which now she was call­ing Alan ; but most of all, he left Monc­ton because Veronique was­n’t ever going to come back.

I’d rather have a cubic zirconium
Than acer­bic meconium.

I fell asleep for a bit this after­noon and dreamed that I got a call from my agent. James Fran­co had request­ed me per­son­al­ly to teach him bird calls, specif­i­cal­ly Cal­i­for­nia shore bird calls, which appar­ent­ly were my spe­cial­ty. I was skep­ti­cal, not sure I could deal with a dilet­tante try­ing to learn in a week what had tak­en me my entire bird­ing career, but I took the job. When I arrived, James Fran­co was sit­ting on a met­al chair in a poor­ly lit con­crete bunker, in an orange t‑shirt and brown pants, whistling like a lunatic. Uncer­tain if I should inter­rupt, I start­ed to set up my play­back sys­tem, which involved reel-to-reel tape recorders, a Super‑8 movie screen, and cock­pit head­sets. Fran­co stopped me. He didn’t want to learn how to iden­ti­fy birds by their calls, he said. He want­ed to learn to whis­tle like the birds. I told him that wasn’t my thing, and he said, “David, we have to learn to speak to the birds. They’re nev­er going to learn how to speak to us.”

What does it mean when you dream you’re at a gallery open­ing watch­ing a video instal­la­tion of Madon­na in a night­gown and tear-stained make-up slap­ping a young, blond, naked Alec Bald­win with a gun ? (One mon­i­tor is a wide shot loop, one a wide slo-mo, one a close-up of the pis­tol nip­ping Alec’s stamen.)

Ask­ing for a friend.

I start­ed run­ning today. I’m not a gam­bler, but gun to my head, I’d say the odds that I con­tin­ue run­ning in the com­ing days are as close to 0 as as my ass is to the ground. Oh, wait that’s my stom­ach. “So you’re say­ing I still have a chance…”

Not real­ly. I’m 54. I haven’t run in 15 years. I’m what­ev­er word comes after “mor­bid­ly” in the obese con­tin­uüm. (My vote goes to “Mor­bid-Pro”.) Also, I hate run­ning, and I have an arthrit­ic knee, flat feet, and neuropathy.

So, I’m kin­da hot­shit, is what I’m saying.

Tonight I ran like this : one minute run, then one minute rest. Repeat that sev­en times. The good news ? On the last rep, I actu­al­ly ran two blocks before I gassed out.

The oth­er good news is I have done this before. When I was in my ear­ly 30s I decid­ed to start run­ning. I was in ter­ri­ble shape then too, and I start­ed the same way, increas­ing the time by one minute every week and slow­ly decreas­ing the walk­ing. And it worked. I was run­ning three miles a day in two months. At one point, I was up to sev­en miles a day.

So I know this can work, which does­n’t mean it will. Espe­cial­ly when I don’t real­ly care if I can run sev­en miles. Or three. I just want to be able to run and hike as eas­i­ly as I ride a bike.

Because as out of shape as I am when it comes to run­ning, I have sur­pris­ing­ly decent cycling con­di­tion­ing. After not rid­ing for three months (thanks to the holy trin­i­ty of crap­pi­ness : ill­ness, weath­er, and ill­ness), I got on my bike and was back to rid­ing 15 – 20 miles on my lunch hour rides in a few days. I want to bal­ance things out : glutes and quads, not one or the other.

Plus my cycling goals now are so time con­sum­ing. 100 miles a week, 50 mile rides once a week, 2500 feet of climb­ing a week, etc. That’s hours of rid­ing, which I would love to do, but I don’t real­ly have the time. To reach a huge run­ning mile­stone, all I have to do is run twelve min­utes with­out walk­ing. One mile. If I could do that, I’d call the Queen and take her to lunch — it would be a big­ger accom­plish­ment than rid­ing a century.

It’s not going to hap­pen, but I’m post­ing this just in case.