reassembling

i am back by request. hasn't been that long. i am so moved cuz of a movie again. the immediacy of a movie, the immediate movement it creates. there were actually two movies today. maybe three. all connect as always in my scary mazelike funhouse head. i watch the movies in pieces often. perhaps i've said this before. cuz of the repetition of cable, cuz i have no tivo. so i won't write about the movies as wholes, in one paragraph. i'll do it as i saw it chronologically:

last night:

the year of the dog - i started watching this. got like an hour into it. got it from netflix. i've been slowing down with that lately. have two other movies i haven't watched for a month. this one is an indie by mike white who did school of rock but i love him more for chuck and buck. school of rock rocked though. i love chuck and buck cuz it's secret name is chuck and buck suck and fuck. this year of the dog stars molly shannon who i often find a little too much but she was mellow and there were plenty quirky indie characters some played up more than others. laura dern kinda overdid it but there could be someone as annoying and blonde and suburban as her character in the world. a little bit of the same with regina king but i was so happy to see her be something totally different, perky and prissy and in denial and hot, like a black white girl. she was a real-life annoying possibility too.

today:

hollywoodland - i saw this some weeks ago at my fam's house, they of the endless cable and large-screen tvs, from whence i came. i watched it for what i heard about ben affleck in it, that he is not half-bad, to see if that was true. he plays the dead george reeves, the 1950s tv superman. it's about whether he was murdered or committed suicide. adrien brody is a shady private dick who looks into the death. it's long and done in flashback and i think it got mixed reviews but it has grown on me after several viewings. i got to see it from the very beginning but had to stop cuz i was hungry and needed to go to the supermarket and get some food for this bare fridge. fuckin workin in an office makes me forget about my fuckin needs. i stay eating out and not dealing with the barrenness at home. so yeah, so i watched like an hour and a half. i do enjoy the failure tales, that's really what it is. george reeves is hella disgruntled cuz his career is going in a direction he doesn't dig and i guess that's why everyone digs ben affleck in it, cuz he's got a well to tap into with that one. he wears a fake nose too, like nicole kidman in the hours. it sometimes makes me notice that it's him more, him in a fake nose. but he sinks into it. there is a comic sadness, he stays cracking a joke when he's real down, like chandler on friends. using humor to mask the pain. don't we know about that.

star wars part 3, the one where darth vader is born - of all the recent star wars, even perhaps of all the star wars, this one is hard for me to fight watching. it is great contemplative shit. i just have it on as background while i do whatever, use the toilet, wash the dishes, read some articles on the net. there are just little lines that work for me. like yoda with some shit about fear of loss leads to the dark side, something like that. yoda my guru. i know that this particular series of star wars is hella cheesy but this last one that considers the formation of darkness is just irresistible. oh and i think this time around i changed my mind about how i felt about padme. i was calling her a chicken for the longest and she is in a way but she is the one too that says all the important shit about the war and the government's deception. but she wants love to make everything ok somehow and i would get mad at her cuz she was so fierce with the larger picture but the smaller one, she couldn't see cuz of luv. she couldn't see that not only what was going on with the senate was evil, so was her man. her man was a problem and i just kept telling her, i am so sorry your man is the devil. i also thought that obi-wan got punked by anakin too so padme wasn't alone in the chicken coop. i understand punkedness as of late since i had to deal with a friend who's way harsher than i thought and i was way softer with her than i wanted to be. but i'm soft like a punk chicken, like padme and obi-wan's love child. at least today, in the last 24, 48 hours. i definitely have some anakin days, where the chancellor is my guru and he's all, notice, young devil, how anger focuses you. i didn't see this whole thing cuz i've seen it a million times. saw like the first two hours. i know the rest. i always try to catch some of the hotness of the end, the creation of darth scenes, true terrible beauty, can't look away.

hollywoodland - the last hour. i was doing other things while the part i saw earlier recapped for me. answered some e-mails, ate a late dinner, folded laundry, drank a little wine, smoked a little bud. i saw the middle to end part i always miss. bob hoskins got to be a surprise in the end. he was a movie mogul married to diane lane who keeps ben affleck as a boy toy. bob himself has some japanese hottie as his toy. they all go to dinner together, the married couple and their side things. when ben affleck is gone, bob is real sympathetic and stands by his lady, tells her he ain't going nowhere. he does it smoothly. i have decided i do like ben in this, he is this role and he knows it and works it. i also dig this one random aspect of the character. he has a mexican friend that he sings sad spanish love songs with, excuse me, with whom he sings sad spanish love songs. ben affleck, singing, in spanish, and well. glad he learned something from jennifer, i'm sure he licked her enough to get some spanish on that tongue. perhaps he was singing a farewell song to her. i thought it was funny that a failure has a spic friend. ben even gets called beaner at some point.

the year of the dog - got me. the last hour got me. molly shannon kept it together, never went too nuts with a character that clearly was. she became a crazy dog lady which is really worse than being a crazy cat lady cuz at least most cats fit in a house. not all dogs do. not 15 of em. it was disgusting and hilarious. the mellow pace leads up to this excellent epiphany that made me just burst outta nowhere. i totally cried. it was totally what i was talking about with my friend who was way harsh and that got me in so much trouble. about finding what you love. it requires sacrifice, a willingness to leave a lot behind and she talks some game but doesn't seem willing. i have to understand that. i was happy to see a lady, an imaginary lady who was willing. crazy and willing. brave. i am kinda getting sick of cowardice, especially my own. i have dealt with so much of it. especially my own. i do and don't know what that means for me. it means i have to face more shit with the writing certainly but besides that, i don't know. even just dealing with the writing, or putting it out there, has made this last month or two different, not so routine, surprising. i've tried to meet a lot of people who do this and the more i meet, the more i meet. the more i meet, the more i want to speak and write, the less i want to secretly hate and quietly complain. people do that openly and formally, on the page, among people who get it. no need to hide. i think though i am learning something about sympathy too, about not being so harsh.

i hope i love these words and writing as much as the crazy dog lady loves her animals. right now i think i do. bolaño reminds me to love again. tonight, the requester of this blog entry wondered what will happen when i am done with the book. i am about ten pages from the end now. i think he meant what it will do to my writing. i will have to give it time. but already i see that i am not afraid of fucking with time like bolaño does, like it does to me. i always thought i didn't understand complex structure but i live in it, we all do. this world is breaking us apart into so many pieces, everyone in so many pieces. i think of all the disembodied friends i have, who are just voices on a phone line, words in thin space, cyber air. i think of the way we receive information, all that stuff that seems so accessible but really can be just so many more new ways to misunderstand. a broken existence like this little day of thoughts broken by movies broken by errands broken by voices. i got thru it. there was a second i thought i wouldn't.

pleasure in what's lost (bolaño pt 1)

it's been three weeks. too long. my only excuse is the summer. now that the school year has started it's time to get on with work, even though i'm not in school and have been avoiding it, the teaching in it mostly. but i will keep up with my writing and reading. my summer reading has been such a companion and it is kinda wrong that i have only turned to it in this space now but here i am with it. the savage detectives, roberto bolaño.

i am at page 422 in the english which is pg 449 in the spanish version i was so generously given by inkaquatic. a real gift in the middle of the summer. this book took almost ten years to come out in this country. it was huge in spain and latin america in 1998. i don't think i would have been ready for this voice then. the latin voice that dominated in this world at that time was junot and i find it interesting that it took the same decade for him to put together his recent opus. i'll read that when all the hype dies down, perhaps when it goes paperback. i find it interesting because i think my tastes have changed in that time. i've been craving a contemporary latin american voice more than an american latino one. there i said it. i have a million reasons for that statement but mostly let's just say i don't always feel inspired or renewed by that american voice. i feel like it can often be the same old conversation, the same old sound over and over. i've been in the mood for a larger sound, bigger than this place, not just this country but this city i'm in that can so dominate with its voice, something that transports me outta here.

i heard some of that new sound, new voice in latin american movies, like y tu mama tambien and duck season, all the almodovar from the eighties to recent times, but i haven't gotten a chance to read it really until now. and i'm behind, a decade behind. and i still can't really read the spanish.

even here i didn't know about this dude till this year and americans told me about it. the new yorker had a big piece on him and i had just spent a month in spain when i read it. i ate it up. i knew from the review that i was ready for him. and then i got two copies at a book sale, cheap, two, cuz everyone was sleeping on it. i was awake for it.

so since the piece is so huge and i can barely begin to describe i'll attempt something and deal with where i'm at in it now. i am about to start the 21st chapter of the second part of the book. it has three parts. the first and the third are written as a journal, all entries dated, by one character, a minor poet in big-ass mexico in the '70s. the second part is made up of 26 chapters each containing first-person testimonies of a sort, all of them are dated and they list the name of the character and the place in the world they're speaking from, mexico city, tel aviv, barcelona, paris, san diego, madrid, london, and so on. the structure is smooth. i still wonder who they are speaking to though. in only one entry so far is there a direct address to one of the main characters. i have paid attention and that is the only time so far. they are all talking about their interaction with two lost poets who themselves started out wandering in search of another lost poet. that alone is enough for me to ride these almost 600 pages all the way through. i don't think i've been through anything that long in a long time. if ever. i am excellent wanderer though and this author was too. he can ruminate and a half.

he's writing about writers and writing mostly and i read some review talking about how he mocks all of it by making it some kind of detective novel, as if it were as important as real crime or something, this literature business. i have to say though, as much as i enjoy the cheeky voices in here, i take them kinda serious too. like some advice book about this writing thing. for instance, i felt this next passage sincerely: "Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but pretended I didn't. What? I said.That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it maybe, destroys your critical sense." i felt this, doesn't mean i'm wholly ready to agree, but i felt it, seriously, and somewhat absurdly. it's not groundbreaking but it's well-said. and with a million other well-said lines, i stay travelling with this.

right now, i was in a testimony as i call it, of this lawyer actually from barcelona but in rome. he is a literary mogul, rich enough to own his lit mag and be the main contributor to it as he says, a big fat blowhard constantly quoting shit in latin. i have decided to read a chapter in spanish and a chapter in english. i decided that about a week ago, more than halfway through the book. i have this beautiful paperback from barcelona where it was originally printed. and that has a table of contents which for some reason the english version does not. i don't know why that was decided upon that way. it makes the english more mysterious which, as a foreign novel, it doesn't need any more mystery. americans will barely pick this up as is, much less without a map. garcía márquez had the family tree in hundred years. bolaño had a table of contents filled with all the acquaintances and lovers and inner circle frienemies connected to the main characters. that is one of the many differences between that definitive universe of marquez that i so once loved and this fragmented planet of bolaño's that speaks so much to what i understand now.

back to the latin-quoting lawyer and the spanish version. when i read it at home i can have the two books at my side. i can't carry both when i'm on the train, it's too much. so i got to look up this passage in spanish: "Then I gave him a copy of my most recent book of poetry and let him know that he should limit himself to revewing verse, since the fiction reviews were penned by my colleague, Jaume Josep, a divorce expert and homosexual of long standing, known by the hordes of ass peddlers in the dives off the Ramblas as the Little Martyr, in reference to his shortness and his weakness for rough trade." in spanish it is: 'Después le regalé mi último libro de poesía y le advertí que sus reseñas debían circunscribirse a la disciplina poética, pues las de narrativa las pergeñaba mi colega Jaume Josep, experto en divorcios y pederasta de larga trayectoria, conocido en los tugurios anexos a las Ramblas por las hordas de chaperos como El Enano Sufridor, en alusión a su debilidad por las macarras de natural violento e irascible.' Instead of "homosexual" it says "pederast" in the spanish and "chapero" in an online spanish dictionary is "hombre que se prostituye con otros hombres," man that prostitutes himself with other men, but clearly ass peddler is the superior term. "tugurios" is "dives," learned a new one there. "El Enano Sufridor," "the Little Martyr" is literally "The Suffering Dwarf." and "macarras de natural violento e irascible" is handled much more deftly in english with "rough trade" cuz english has a term for it i guess where as spanish often has to explain something with many more words, as my american spanish translator friend in madrid pointed out to me. he was the one who challenged me to take on the spanish. i was given it but was letting it collect dust cuz i was afraid of it for a minute but his words and an article about the book in the washington post that mentioned how hard the translation was cuz there were spanishes from several different countries to deal with (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/07/AR2007040701186.html.) made me face it.

it's interesting to me that it took americans to make me face the spanish. and in the book itself there is of course discussion about translation as it is in voices from america and europe. as i was wading knee deep in the book with all its trancontinental voices, my translator friend from madrid was staying with me here in new york and inkaquatic was in barcelona blogging. i have spent much of this last summer month tweaking poems and ordering them and wondering where they fit, how they might be published and this book has addressed a lot of the gray areas that i feel i'm wandering into, the shady characters i feel i have to deal with and might have become myself, as i put the writing together in some public way. i looked up more about bolaño on spanish google, google.es, and found something he said about writing, just that it takes patience, a lot of it. i think publishing takes it as well, moreso even. the website i think i read it on was pretty hot. spanish though for those of you who don't speak. maybe there's a translator on it: http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura/clubescritores/robertobolano/index.htm. manifestos and his computer portraits are on the site if you poke around. he was wandering for years. left college early i think and had a million odd jobs like night watchman in a park, an occupation that shows up in the book. i would like to see his poetry. that is another mission as it's not published in english at all, at least not in the us. it might not be much published at all, lost poems from a lost poet.

i will write more as it strikes me. i still have much left on the book. so many more things i'm sure i haven't said. for now, i'm gone, a lost poet happy to accompany this wandering book.