PRAISE THE NAMELESS

Postcard From the Womb

2009-11-07T22:21:00.002+02:00

Is this a good or bad sign?

PongoSpeaks! Launch

2009-10-21T05:54:00.002+03:00

PongoSpeaks! is a collaborative project born of two veteran youth literary non-profits which have a combined total of 25 years experience serving Seattle’s young people: Pongo Publishing and Youth Speaks Seattle. By facilitating the writing of poetry inside of Juvenile Detention and in other sites, The Pongo Publishing Teen Writing Project supports self-expression of Seattle teens that are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives. Youth Speaks is a youth led, anti-racist, social justice organization that uses a peer-to-peer educational model to provide high-quality, socially relevant literary arts education for the young people of the Greater Seattle area.

Over the course of the coming six months, PongoSpeaks! will carry out our twofold project: performances of Pongo authors’ work by talented Youth Speaks artists at various venues and, secondly, a series of writing workshops/community discussions focused on the impact of youth violence in Seattle.

Please spread the word and get updates on scheduling at www.pongopublishing.com

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Sunday, October 25th at 3 p.m. at Seattle Book Fest!

PS: I read at 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 24th, same bat channel!

The Glory of the Palmetto State

2009-10-02T06:24:00.001+03:00

1. Late summer: Governor Mark Sanford gets nailed in an absurd coverup for having an affair with an Argentine woman (his "soul mate")--he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail," creating a fabulous new euphemism for muckrakers and lovers of snark everywhere. Sanford was a premiere family values demagogue before this, of course.

2. August: Rep Joe Wilson loses his short stack and hollers, "you lie!" at President Obama during his health care address, a first in something like 100 years. Side note: Obama was speaking factually, as was later ascertained by even mainstream media and Joe Wilson was, well, just a little excited about the whole thing.

3. Today: Rep Jim DeMint of South Carolina decides to travel to Honduras to express his firm support for the military coup government that the President's Administration is trying to diplomatically undermine and urges them to "resist" the United States.

Wow. What a month or so for our patria, ma.

The Healing Power of Prison Poetry

2009-10-01T05:59:00.000+03:00

In YES! Magazine by me.

Rocking the Regional!

2009-09-23T04:42:00.001+03:00

Hey all you who may know writers in Seattle--tell them to check out my course that will hopefully start next month....

Setting: not just a convention—and the less conventional it is, the sexier a story or an essay. Tennessee Jones’ badlands; James Lee Burke’s Louisiana; Benjamin Percy’s Oregon; Junot Diaz’s New York; Donald Ray Pollock‘s bruised hometown of Knockemstiff, Ohio. Somehow, as we globalize by the nanosecond, haunting literature of place has found a great audience in the literary market. We’ll wash our tent poles in this stream of localism: through the “new masculine” of Percy or the ocean hopping eyes of Diaz. We’ll come out the other end with an essay or short story that spotlights where we come from.

Instructor: Eli Hastings
Meets: Thursday, October 08, 2009 - Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thursdays, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Min: 5 Max: 15

Link

Joe Wilson, Get a Helmet

2009-09-11T20:05:00.002+03:00

Maybe, like my friend Justin said, Olberman is just another talking head, but in this case he's at least approaching the meat of the issue. And, hey, he's very entertaining. And we need some kind of castigatory catharsis after watching those apoplectic maniacs behave like they wanted to lynch the President the other night.

Dan Savage on the Impeachment of Mark Sanford

2009-09-09T06:09:00.002+03:00

"And so it's gonna be hilarious, South Carolina is gonna impeach the heterosexual, soul mate seeking, Argentine ___ eating, governor Mark Sanford and they're gonna end up with a closet anti-gay fag governor Andre Bauer....Couldn't happen to a nicer state."

Hi fam!

Israeli Defense Forces Attack Al-Jazeera Journalist

2009-09-09T01:10:00.002+03:00

Just ask yourself, perhaps, what would happen if Glenn Beck got treated this way at an Obama rally? Or, more to the point, if he received a similar response inside the Palestinian Authority? We'd have Fox pundits lobbying for a nuclear strike.

The Road to Quintana Roo (Part III)

2009-09-07T04:27:00.004+03:00

Part I

Part II

I wish I could say that I went to a place drastically distinct from La Lata to put a decisive end to the day, but that would be a lie. There isn’t anywhere in La Velita that’s so distinct. Sometimes when they play stale American movies on television I fantasize about what it would be like to have a proper place to booze: leather and polished wood and bunny waitresses in little tuxes. A place where drinking made you feel good and powerful instead of just Gone. But El Camarón is what we’ve got.

Raul drools from one side of the mouth—a home invasion gone wrong—but his hands are faster than anyone’s laying drinks. Besides, I happened to catch the men that busted him and his house up and Raul was able to reconnect with those caballeros in an interrogation room. So, as usual, I had a tumbler of mescal and a beer lined up for me before I even bellied up to the bar. A few wrinkled ranchers nodded at me; a few younger men slapped down pesos and split. I didn’t care. I shot the mescal: fire. Chased it with a half a beer: ice.

Rosario’s smiles and shrugs dance behind my closed eyes. The damndest thing about the old man is that I don’t even know if he’s on the take. It almost doesn’t matter. At least I know he’d have a philosophical explanation if found to be what I’d call “corrupt.” If he were “corrupt” he’d be on the right side of it somehow. But then isn’t that the last word on what has become of my home? That corruption—moral as well as professional—is the rule. Someone as good as Rosario might have to compromise himself in order to stay safe. The carnival mirror of justice, left too long in the high desert.

I finish the bottle and don’t even have to point before Raul is pouring me another dose of mescal with one hand, capturing the drool with a bar towel in the other.

Sick ironies tossed about as casually and commonly as corpses. Another: the epidemic of missing girls used as justification for “cooperation” with the cartels. The logic goes that if the cartels are responsible, it’s likely an issue of prostitution, which would be a relief to many families who fear their daughters murdered. Or, maybe, the disappearances are punishment for a lack of “good will” on behalf of the people of the state. If the Relámpagos aren’t involved, then their “good will” will be imperative in finding out what kind of monsters are. Either way, for fat fucks like Maximilio, pocketing payouts and looking away from extortion and even murder, does not even have to present itself as self-interest; it can be public interest. And that’s what makes me sick—the slow, surreal evolution of demons like Emilio Herrera into folk heroes.

I find a fresh beer in front of me and drain half of it. In the back, a whore cackles, mimicking Raul’s lopsided gait as he moves past with a tray of empties. I think about disciplining the whore but discard the notion—half-cocked heroism won’t change anything about today fundamentally.

I have too much respect for Rosario to discuss the elephant in the room without a fully cooked strategy to set things right in La Velita. What the man’s cryptic philosophy really says is: Give me a solution—until then I will take the path of least resistance and keep myself, my men and the community safe as possible. And despite thousands of predawn hours, both in my old home with Angela and alone in the rancid apartment since she booted me out, thousands of fantasies I’ve auditioned, not a single one comes close to realistic. I know that Rosario intervened to keep me alive five years ago out of respect for me—the Relámpagos would have made me the next peeled-face corpse on the shoulder of Mex 2 as a matter of course—and probably taken Angela and my grandson to a horrible end just for kicks. Only Rosario had the stature to negotiate my salvation, to convince the bastards of the mere truth: that it had been a mistake. And to fashion my penance: exile my son and obey the cartel. So I will not go to Rosario and disturb the sorrow and shame that has settled over not only me but the idea of policing until I have a solution.

My mescal is full again; then it’s not. I briefly count beers, then give up and slug more. The room is getting to be a fishbowl, which I like. I exercise my right as police and slide my gaze slowly over the people, the nervous teens, the beaten down ranchers, the loud truckers and a few kids with high-carat crucifixes on chains as slim as their ties to the cartel—no real players. In the booth with the mean-spirited whore I suddenly notice Maria. Her blonde wig has swung over half her face and she is leaning into the other girl. She chuckles then watches her cigarette burn. She drags on it and sees me and a smile unsnaps on her like a bra.

“Como va, agente?” she asks, swaggering up and parking herself against my thigh. I get hard immediately and this angers me. I pull my leg back and drink.

“Just another day in paradise, cariño.” I haven’t seen her in three weeks and feel better for it. Her heat, her lips around that smoke and the booze are pushing the wrong way on me. I talk fast to forestall her moves.

“Being a cop—no, joder, fuck that, being me—in this country is a curse only conceivable by God. Or his nemesis. You would not understand this, Maria, because being a whore in this country is certainly not easy, but it’s a fit. I am a foreign agent in the body of my patria now. And I can’t live this way. Survival is a half-empty glass in Méjico.”

Maria switches her hips, her smoke to the other side of her lips. She glances back at her table, maybe regretting her trip across the floor.

“I have balances to set right, Maria. I am slowly coming into sight. Years of hiding my neck! I’m not a turtle; I’m a man and a cop. They exile my own son, who ends up in a gringo prison in el norte, mixed up in their poisonous business there, leave my grandson fatherless and destroy my home and marriage because I did my fucking duty and erased one of those cockroaches from the earth.”

Maria smiles like she’s tired, stabs out her smoke.

“You should be careful with that tongue, Agente. You’re better off putting it to other use when you are drunk. Trust me.”
She folds her arms and turns to go, but I hook her elbow and yank her to me.

“You are the first to hear the truth, Maria. Live up to it. I will decapitate the Relámpagos and I will find and free Javier and I will set this town right again no matter what the rest of Méjico does. You will see.”

Her big dark eyes have a tide in them, washing back and forth between thrill and fear. She can’t hold my gaze.

“And my tongue has plenty of vinegar left tonight, puta.”

Now she can. The room tilts. A hand flutters to my thigh and this time the smile uncurls rather than unsnapping on her. My cock rises. My phone rings.

“Federico it is Angela. Where are you?”

I whip away from Maria so fast that I nearly fall of the barstool. I tell my wife—my beautiful, graceful, God-fearing, dignified and wise wife—that I am finishing dinner, nowhere special, no plans. I do this in a deliberate voice to keep the slur off. But it doesn’t work.

“You are at a cantina and you are drunk, Federico. When I need you. Of course. But I swear to you by God if you come here tonight I will call Rosario and make a complaint. Be here early in the morning and try not to stink.”
The line goes dead and Maria places a palm on my back. Vomit announces itself in my chest, I shake her off and step through the hard, lurching angles and colors out of the cantina and into the future.

Four Days, Three Dogs, Me & The Cascades

2009-08-28T06:38:00.003+03:00

August 21st, 18:56, the mountains

I’m living amid stories. I mean, we all are. But I’m living amid fictional stories. On my Iphone is TC Boyle, churning out an epic about Kinsey’s inner circle in my ear (pause). On the table is Lehane’s The Given Day, a tome that hurls me into the 1910s with fictionalized version of Babe Ruth and WEB Dubois, sussing out who America will belong to. I’m reading—when I have occasion to pull it from my bag—How to Sell Your Script in 60 Seconds or some such title, which is very useful, bold and also full of a million anecdotes from a million stories, well-known and made up by the author, which buckshots mini-characters at me. In the Writer’s Chronicle that I dutifully plod through (ok, that’s a lie, but I try to read at least one article), the academic furors pour snippets of classic books to elucidate points that I don’t grasp, but the disparate figure and their needs and desires I do. This is all, of course, not to mention my own work where Jackson and Rosario and fucking Lafayette are still trying to learn their cues, where Rigoberto might just get the chopping block if a certain kind of editor likes it otherwise, and Ezekiel might get a promotion that he will be loathe to handle. Or the un-written tales of the vampire-summoning suburban teen and his schizophrenic best friend from Ethiopia, who I’ve never quite imagined but nonetheless suggests himself in fleeting moments of daydream. And much, much more—including the deluge of personas and their wild trajectories that one listen to the American news in any form will hit you with.

I keep waiting for Prock to walk out of the woods and approach the Rebellious House. I keep expecting—half, anyway—for Babe Ruth to become a vampire slayer on some sliding tangent of stoned daydream. I keep kind of wishing that Michael Hague (author of the marketing book) was suddenly fluid and familiar enough that I could plug him to a scene and have him give a down and out writer a talking-to about tenacity. Perhaps these things will happen in dreams or not at all, but there is some small, twisted part of me that wants overlap, meld. I think—absurdly, perhaps—of the psychics who work with police departments and cover their desktops with a hodgepodge of crime scene, victim, and suspect photos, scramble the glossy images to a rhythm no one can fathom, close their eyes, open them, and see the case laid out. The plot. The secret.

August 23rd, 2009, 18:07, the mtns

Another June 23rd for the books: Alfred E. Kinsey, sexologist.

The dogs have gone wild with the way the strong winds cross scents in their brains. And strange it is out there, really, with spanked-red headed carrion birds perching like people in costume up on Spirit Rock, no doubt scanning for the flash of a dead King Salmon in the sun, on the banks far below. The Aspens, also, are growing up through the slats between the tilted porch’s old boards. The banister is bowing in the general direction of the new house, which stands like a half-birthed space creature on the far slope. Soon I will hear a frantic flurry of yapping and the thunder of a dozen paws on the deck, a commotion that seems it could take it down. I have yet to see a single thing that they believe they do, though maybe it’s only a scent and they angle their dumb rage in the direction of the smell, which may have nothing to do with the direction of the source. But who am I to criticize them? They’d all last longer than me up here with nothing but wits and instinct to keep the lovely fatalities from falling.

Out with the Dogs, the Train, the Wind and the Trees

Whisper, howl, moan
Bark, yip, snarl
Chime
Chug and blow
Sigh, creak, and fall

August 24th, 2009, 18:32, the mtns

I’m feeling every bit as alive as I always have up here, alone or with reasonable people, in the dying summer. Right now I feel like I possess all the faculties I need to wade into the grit and sludge of the NW winter and father a child in the midst of it. Of course, twenty minutes ago, I got all ataxic from my cigarette and damn near fell on my ass on the rocks at the swimming hole. But a little marijuana and exercise in the middle of wilderness will do that to you. Give you a mainline snort of wildness and power. It’s absurd, of course, and illusory in a million easy ways, but I’m here to tell you that hiking with a pack of dogs and a pistol on your hip in the north Cascades in August is enough to also allow you to carry a murse with a novel in it.

Everyday the light gets luxurious a tiny bit earlier, but in four days you can watch its slide, the way that the season is trying to spend itself out, get rid of its budget before it’s wasted. And the autumn is measuring publicity-sized gusts out, too, inserting them in the warm sheet of a late afternoon breeze. I like these borders, but I gotta say I like summer more than anything else. And it can get frantic when I think about it going—the only consolation is the increasing RPMs that life’s record spins as the years get bigger.

The transcription is dulling me. I’m not going to be histrionic and say it’s “killing me,” but it is a bitch, without an iota of creativity going into it. God send me to an epoch in which I can hire someone—hire someone!—to do this part for me and focus on the very complex weave of a story like this. Not that there’s any story like this, and I really hope that someone else agrees. Someone with power. Been thinking a lot about power, especially how it relates to the arts and therefore the emotional wellbeing of myself and many people I are about. I just finished Micheal Hague’s book, Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds, and I appreciated it and I learned a lot and I was inspired by how he signed off: it’s all about the story. The quality of it and the fact that you’re willing to be beaten down and humiliated for it. He speaks of artists going into a cocoon of believing that it’s impossible that the world, stacked as it is, will ever “get their art.” But Hague points out that that’s easy and the hard path, as is customary, is the right one: wade back in, bleeding hard from your head. But how many people can do that? How many people have time and energy and blood to spare after a day in the streets of their lives? I like to pat myself on the back for, more or less, being the kind leather-headed marketer of my work that Hague praises, but how much of that is because I have the flexibility in my privilege to spend the time, the blood and the energy to keep on hammering at doors/walls? And here I am, flagging at times, even with the advantage I have of time. I know one thing for sure: I don’t have any excuse. Hague is right, as far as I go, but I won’t be casting any aspersions on anyone for their realism.

The Daily Kos

2009-08-13T21:29:00.001+03:00

This is the most well-reasoned, no-bullshit and downright terrifying article I've read on the link between the "birthers," the "deathers," and the "teabaggers."

Race, Taxes, Birth Certificates, and Eugenics

The Road to Quintana Roo (Part II)

2009-07-31T01:25:00.002+03:00

(If you haven't read Part I, you can dig it here)

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon by the time a wrecker tugs the sewage truck off the flatbed and out of the intersection.

The only nice thing that one might say about the station is that it’s cool inside—relatively speaking. It was once lime green but the damp walls are now roped with black bacteria and covered with something like soap scum. I’d say it was like a jail, but the jail’s downstairs, and there’s nothing like that. The lights are bare tubes—meant to be muted by something plastic—and produce headachy symphonies that still buzz in your head when it hits the pillow. Worst of all, the card tables and plastic chairs are always occupied by my so-called colleagues.

“Oye Companzo!” Maximilio crows as soon as I clear the door. “Did you wash your boots?”

Apparently this joke has been anticipated for so long it doesn’t even need to be clever. The half dozen detectives and patrolmen erupt with laughter. Maximilio sends his beady little eyes around the room, pulling in validation like a gambler snatches chips. Captain Rosario permits himself a little grin and shrug. He doesn’t laugh because he’s cut from sharper rock than these fools. He’s my only predecessor in this building.

The mescal bottle behind the coffeemaker is empty; someone has drawn a sad face in magic marker on it. I pour what is probably the same coffee as this morning into a plastic baby cup and reluctantly join the group.

“Seriously, Federico,” Maximilio says now, leaning forward like he’s concerned. “How’d it all shake out? I need to know where to buy my chickens!”

The reason I want to kill Maximilio is not because his sense of humor is that of a twelve year old. It’s not because he’s half my age and gets to dress for undercover work. It’s not because he’s cracking at my benefit. It’s because he can’t see that I’m toeing an edge and it has nothing to do with chickens or sewage.

“You need to know where to buy your suits,” I manage and the great democratic wave of laughter washes over to my side. Maximilio sneers and bats a paw at me, straightens a horrid purple tie over his yellow shirt. Rosario bellows.

“Get out. Go catch muggers. Rescue girls. Companzo’s the only one here who’s earned his day’s pay.”

As the knot of men untangles toward the doors, hefting Kevlar vests, shooting coffee, there are more jokes about shit and chickens, about a day’s pay, about “rescuing” girls. Rosario watches me with calm eyes and his hands laced on his stomach. Like a Buddha. He can see me toeing an edge—always has.

“I understand you had an encounter with Emilio Herrera today,” he says like a psychologist, steepling his fingers in front of his gray mustache. “You want to tell me about it?”

Fucking Rosario. I look into the greasy dregs of the coffee, can’t bring myself to drink it without any liquor. Look at the man’s rheumy old eyes instead. He wants to know about it? Fine.

“Sure, jefé. The little gangster drives down the sidewalk and almost kills an old man. Talks back to me, threatens my life, then threatens yours, my wife’s and Javier’s. And for his trouble I cleared him a path to drive over the rest of the sidewalk like a fucking doorman.”

Rosario nods; behind the dampness his eyes sparkle, just a little.

“Ah. The same small rooster, he is. That does not surprise me, Federico. It does surprise me to hear you say ‘Javier’ out loud, however. It has been some time.”

Rosario understates the case—it has been four years, eight months and six days since I last spoke my son’s name to him. I recall it vividly. The cordite burn in my nostrils. The crust of blood on the heel of my hand. The taste of metal in my jaw. Rosario’s hands on my clavicles, squeezing hard enough to pierce the tight world that morning had built around me.

I’d trained myself to remain horizontal until the light was blue enough to see my hand outstretched in front of me; Angela would not scold me for getting up if I could reasonably point out it was dawn. What this meant for me was an hour or two every morning of staring into blackness as my brain looped. The Relámpago Cartel was taking La Velita like a virus takes a body: setting up nodules of control and sending out spoors of destruction and extortion. By then they skimmed off every real estate deal, they carried weapons freely, they raped the high school daughters and sometimes the wives of hardworking men I’d known my whole life. They charged taxes on these families for parking a truck, for safe passage down the block, for anything they pleased. And all these men I knew? They looked to me, Federico, Policia Local to set things right. And when I told them that my hands were tied, some of them nodded, like I’d denied them my last smoke. Some of them wept bitterly. Some of them cursed me in ways that were not casual or passing. Rosario heard my laments and I know he empathized because I know his heart. But Rosario is political or perhaps philosophical in a way that is foreign to me. Rosario didn’t seem to want to tear these demons to pieces like me. He had other visions of justice.

The light that morning was barely blue; I could see my hand but not my fingers individually when I eased the quilt off my legs. Angela curled in on herself, not wanting to face what I was getting up to investigate: Javier had not come home. He was twenty years old, all of a man, and I agreed with my wife about treating him as such, but I knew things she did not—I had seen Javier not once but twice in conversation with low-level narcos. Of course, Javier had known most of these boys his entire life; Angela had fed them dinners, I had punished them with my own hands for terrorizing chickens in our yard. These boys had orbited our home like harmless meteors. But things had changed: for Javier, they were still peers. For me, when they chose the life of the cartel they became something else—if not enemies, then targets. I was a cop. I am a cop. Even if many of the men who wear my badge are no better than the cartels.

Papá, I cannot pretend I don’t know them! Javier had protested, the high note of exasperation that reminded me of the nearness of his boyhood slipping into his voice. It would be worse for me if I did, you know that. They go about their business and I go about mine. If we share a word or a chingado coca-cola, what of it? Do you think I’ll come home one day and cut your throat?

My son has a grin that permits him the crassest of jokes. But I also knew he was right. Still, that morning I could not even force myself to finish one taza de café before I strapped on my gun and went into the smoggy streets to find him.

The thick smog is a springtime event in La Velita, a wind-driven phenomenon from the Pacific that arrives only in the mornings and only in April. Smog, of course, is commonplace: we are south across flatlands from Juarez and El Paso, but this opacity is unnerving. Emaciated town dogs appeared out of nowhere like phantoms and even pickups were hard to see until they were nearly upon me. I kept to the edge of what passed for sidewalk as I drew near to the center of town.

There is only one cantina in La Velita where men prone to drinking through the night and into their own blackness can go. La Lata Letal is tacked onto the backside of a service station, a corrugated tin roof and neon beer lights, but there is something contrarily sturdy about it. I didn’t care for Javier spending time there, especially given that the narcos were probably running the place by then, but it was his youth, not mine and more to the point I had not found him a job that would keep him from washing away the hours with Tecate and bad mescal.

Approaching by way of the alley and the back door to La Lata, I heard nothing at first and almost walked on, but a strand of quiet conversation and the brief squeal of a chair on linoleum halted me. I forcibly calmed myself with a couple of breaths. I closed my eyes as I did so, smelling the diesel and dust and burro shit and morning tortillas of my hometown.

I suppose I’ll never know for sure why I yanked that door wide, popping the little hook lock in the process. It’s true that La Velita is a small town and it’s true that I knew the owner Ronaldo and it’s true that I expected to find Javier inside with old friends and nothing more. But none of that fully explains my incaution.

Javier was indeed inside, tipping back on a barstool, sipping a Corona. But closer to me, at a card table, sat Emilio Jose Gonzalez Herrera and two other young narcos, one of whom was Javier’s childhood friend Victor, packing cocaine into the false bottoms of cans of corn. A .38 lay on the table and a police-issue shotgun leaned in the corner and, therefore, my .40 came up and I shot Victor in the face and neck when he moved for the pistol.

Emilio and the other kid had their hands raised before the door even hit the wall. Javier’s hand still cocked the Corona to his lips but the world in his eyes had altered dramatically. I went into numb protocol, hooking my prisoners and securing the drugs, ignoring my son, imploring the gods to make him vanish but knowing that would be my duty. From his stomach on the floor, Emilio informed me I was a dead man and I didn’t have enough emotion in me to stomp the back of his head so he went on.

You, too, are fucked Javier, he spat. Fucking snitch!

I turned to my son. He closed his eyes hard against the verdict. I told him to go home. I did not have to tell him to pack.

It was not until Rosario arrived that I found that my face was completely covered with the dead man’s drying blood.

“I think maybe it’s a mixed blessing, compadre. Seeing Emilio today, I mean. On the one hand you’re all stirred up. On the other, you’re facing a piece of what happened before.”

The old man still has his fingers in a steeple and he peers over the peak of them at me. Rosario has these fucking philosophies about mental and emotional health, especially in the face of circumstances you can’t change. He wags his finger and repeats the serenity prayer whenever he has half a chance: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Only Rosario isn’t religious. Maximilio had once pointed out that it was the touchstone prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous, only Rosario doesn’t drink. I have to admit that if his habits make him a mighty odd Mexican police Captain, his philosophy is exactly what’s called for. Too bad I can never embrace it.

“I don’t need to face anything, jefé—I need to end it. I will never accept what has happened to this town or to this country and I will never adapt to it like these other fools—what is served in a trough is slop and I’m not bellying up to Maximilio there. I respect you, sir, but I cannot be you. I will find resurrection.”

Forgetting what’s in my cup, I stand and throw it back. Rosario looks up at me, his beatific smile a degree flatter. He deconstructs his steeple to turn the flat of his hands up and the smile regains its curvature. I rise, the wish for tequila and beer exploding in my head.

“Thanks for trying, though,” I tell him, from the door.

YES!

2009-07-30T20:00:00.000+03:00

(From Publisher's Marketplace)

NON-FICTION: MEMOIR

Dustin Diamond's BEHIND THE BELL, a tell-all account of his life as Samuel "Screech" Powers on the set of the TV show "Saved by the Bell," including sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying, resold to Transit Publishing, following "a mutual decision not to publish" with Gotham, for publication on September 29, 2009, by Jarred Weisfeld of Objective Entertainment (world).

Back When I Was Crazy

2009-07-13T04:47:00.002+03:00

(Writing exercise at EDVP Adult Creative Writing Group, inspired by Roberto Bolaño's "The Romantic Dogs")

Back when I was crazy it was normal to put beer in my gut before breakfast, perched on a carved up picnic table with a warm, empty can of Miller Lite in one hand and a stale, untouched raisin bagel in the other, beneath a Seattle drizzle as common as air, drawing slow, easy stupidity down like a curtain in my brain before the experiment of the morning classroom proved me right.

Back when I was crazy it was normal to fight for hours with a girl I was making ugly and being made ugly by, shirking our costumes of cool to become red-faced lunatics over something that scarcely mattered anyway, something that was merely an excuse to strike at each other for loving someone so far away.

Back when I was crazy it was normal to drive cars down the black throats of liquored nights, telling myself lies about my ability and fate, as if simply knowing which direction a back road curved would be enough to keep my blood inside my body instead of painting the asphalt and trees like countless fools before me.

Back when I was crazy it was normal to fling a dish, upend a table, even press a knife to my fingers in a dish-filled sink, to hate walls and the limitations of fists, to hammer my spirit and hers with blunt words or pierce our minds bloodlessly with the filed down tip of insult.

Back when I was crazy it was normal to imagine myself at 32, far beyond the dangers and excesses and torn affairs of youth, to imagine myself bald and good-naturedly grumbling through a career, as close to happy as I'd get having left behind the violent bafflement of youth.

After the Humans

2009-07-03T05:36:00.003+03:00

(A writing exercise from Youth Speaks writing circle, every Thursday from 5 - 7 at the Seattle Central Public Library, open to all youth 13-21 with word interest or passion!)

A few weeks after the planet shrugged—typhoons, tsunamis, a tectonic grind—and freed itself from the clammy grip of humans (and the planet felt bad about this, somewhat as a human might feel upon crushing a bumblebee that hadn’t yet stung, but whose presence seemed to be growing inexorably from nuisance to threat), the downtown Seattle library still stood—or, rather, leaned, tipped as it was by a filthy tidal wave that set it to rest against the neighboring skyscraper, one-third full of murky seawater, like an odd toy in the bottom of a drained aquarium. The Puget Sound itself had been spoiled by the spillage of countless metric tons of human civilization’s offal: diesel, sewage, chlorine, acids, gas and Freon and the half-solid waters that lapped at downtown’s waterfront hosted no marine life that any self-interested creature would consume. The gulls and hawks and the odd Peregrine falcon that used to feast amid the rain of tourist-tossed French fries and the bait fishes of the bay had grown weak with hunger and sick with the smoking wreckage of human life and believed themselves to be on the way to a similar end as the wingless fools who were now gone forever. Until one day an indefatigable gull named Simon caught sight of a flash of silver in one of the thousands of triangular windows in the a-kilter husk of the library. Simon veered in for a closer look and indeed, on what had once been reasonably called the third floor, he could make out not one but several winking bodies in the tepid sea that had poured into the library by way of the tsunami before poisonous ruin could occur in that celestial sized scoop of water.

Fish!

Elated but panicked to miss the chance, desperate to prove to himself it was real, Simon snatched a chunk of cement from the decay of 4th Avenue, soared to a strategic height, angled his wings for proper aerodynamics, and let loose his tool, which plummeted true and shattered the window nearest where he’d glimpsed his bounty. Simon banked tight circles as the green water fluted out of the side like a hole poked in a water balloon, till finally the arching bodice of a large steelhead was silhouetted against the blood red dying sun over what used to be the Puget Sound and he let loose a cry that humans would have thought desolate, but which actually articulated great joy and dove toward his prize, his survival.

Cowardice

2009-06-12T08:22:00.002+03:00

I don't actually hate this cop. I do, however, wonder how it is that our bureaucracies are structured so that this man's conduct was within reason. Is there no room for social work in policing? And if not how is it exactly that we are different from any other nation whose police force is solely and merely a means of subduing dissent? Nearly every single American grandchild knows how to deal with a cantankerous old woman better than this pathetic, insecure bastard.

La Push, WA

2009-05-20T00:53:00.004+03:00

A purple kite bedevils a gull. The ocean curls its lips like a dog dreaming.

The lips of foam! Like crashes that you want to hear. Crash has such a nasty connotation, but here the crashing makes me want to open another beer. I just did. Leonard Cohen sings about dancing to your beauty. Lili reads her farandula on a deck chair looking out on a tall rock island that is said to be the spiritual center of the Quileute people. They run this joint. Everything is possible: fishing for all kinds of big muscular white fish, whale watching, a Frisbee or bonfire permit. A developing country it’s not, but there are those parallels. Democracy is coming to the USA.

On this tall rock island in the foreground they are said to have buried their dead in canoes high in the trees. This is interesting beyond the obvious because of the Tibetan custom of chopping up their dead and leaving them on mountaintops. This possible descent of tradition is crazy intriguing because of the way that the indigenous people of this region originally came here: on the land bridge from Asia. I’m sure any freshman anthropology student would say “duh” but I maintain that it’s cool.

The Quileute people are also supposedly shape shifters. When my wife told me this we were roaring down the one lane highway to La Push and their land. First, wthe road vanished from the GPS screen. Then, immediately after, we spotted a brown owl sitting in the middle of our lane. The car ahead slowed and swerved and we did the same met his eyes as long as we could, but of course we couldn’t rotate our vertebrae like his ass.

Shape shifters that mainly shape shift to wolf form as I understand it. The enemies of vampires that now, thanks to Twilight, are rumored to exist just outside of the reservation in Forks, WA. Apparently—according to the easy to loathe Stephanie Meyer—these Indians have a deal with the vampires about territory and their integrity is respected, mostly. I wonder if anyone asked or told the Indians about their role in fictional folklore. I’m sure they don’t mind geeks coming through and buying fried clams.

Which is something that pisses me off. There are no fresh oysters or clams out here. The waitress acted like we were exceedingly boring people when we asked her. But they had a hell of a BLT. We did not, however, eat it. My wife is going to work wonders on the kitchenette. And life is good. Beyond good, really. Blessed to such an extent that I start to wonder when the shit is coming down.

They say it’s always twilight here (that’s where the name came from). It’s 8:09 and I could wear my sunglasses, reasonably. I kind of hope I’ll see a wolf or a vampire—or possibly one of each doing battle—silhouetted starkly on the top of that tall rock island of the dead when the moon finally comes out.

Two New Books to Devour

2009-05-13T02:55:00.002+03:00

I tend to think that entries about "what I'm reading" are kind of tedious--that's why I have the "what I'm reading" corner over on the right! But recently I have had two dear friends and masters of prose published: Miles Nolte and Kimi Faxon Hemingway.

Miles' book, The Alaska Chronicles, is a memoir of fly fishing and much, much more.

Kimi's essay, Personal Belongings, in the anthology Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, & Abortion will rip you asunder and piece you back together, as will several others in the collection--it's stupendous.

Plugged!

The Road to Quintana Roo (Part I)

2009-04-29T04:53:00.001+03:00

Everything started up again because this morning a sewer pump truck hit a flatbed full of chickens, pulling a good seven other cars into the resulting tangle. Can you imagine four-dozen shit-spackled, terrified birds hopping through traffic, their owners bleeding from the head and trying to gather them up? A Pemex couple in a Lexus vomiting as feces slides down their tinted windshield? Campesino pedestrians laughing and using handfuls of the dusty road to wipe the crap of themselves? Well, if you can, you can imagine the size and the tension of the traffic snarl I had building in the worst fucking possible spot at eight in the morning.

The intersection of Encendido and Mex 2 is not just the center of town, but Mex 2 is also the route the goes northeast to the US border outside of Ciudad Juarez and south to…well, south to Quintana Roo if you want it to, I suppose. So you can imagine that a weekday morning in what has now become a “suburb of a border city” is hectic on the roads. And here I had traumatized chickens covered in shit and dozens of held-up vehicles, which swelled to hundreds in the ten minutes it took me to get there from the station. God knows I could have used every cop on duty, but between the intestinal flu of the last weeks, the higher ups’ refusal to go anywhere near such a scene, and the task force working all the missing girls files, after twenty-seven years on the force I got the special assignment of trying to straighten out the intersection on my own. Only in Méjico.

So I hustle up the block, the station’s burnt coffee sloshing around in my gut, making me think that I might have to hit a toilet, especially when I first catch whiff of the sewer truck. The truck climbed up on the back of the flatbed and tipped off and was then torn open, as if by a can opener, on the fender of the flatbed. The sewer pump driver is calmly talking on his cell phone, watching the chicken ranchers like they’re a boring sitcom. The Pemex Lexus is trying to back away from the mayhem but can’t angle through the mass of common cars, which are honking at them, the drivers howling curses peppered with laughs. Poop on the rich! Populism is like weeds in my country.

“Oye, Agente!” the head chicken rancher bellows. “Are you going to make this cabrón pay for my chickens?” When I begin my gesture of futility, he throws his cap to the filthy earth and stomps on it. “ And who will eat shitty chickens, sir?”

I turn toward the sewer pump driver who gives me a “hold-on” palm, with a finger pointed toward the phone and the mouthed explanation “el jefé.”

With a few shouts, a couple of negotiations and one quick palm to my sidearm, one side of the intersection is pretty quickly straightened out: vehicles maneuvered into rough rows, those furthest north able to reverse away. I hook a clean, renegade chicken by the feet and deliver him to the solemn rancher.

I move to the west side of the pileup and am just approaching the closest driver, who’s motioning for me to examine the thumb-sized dent in his fender, when it catches my eye: a waxed, dark blue Impala driving straight down the sidewalk to circumvent the accident. It’s not coming slowly either: street kids do monkeyish hops over hoods and trunks; a viejo with a table full of lottery tickets loses his wares as he saves his ass by way of a panadería’s doorway.

If anything, a well-insulated midsection is probably an asset in this situation but it’s in situations like this that I become aware of my years, the sag of my flesh, the atrophy of muscle groups, the moonscape of my baldhead. But what I’ve got are my eyes and my voice (which once stopped a knife fight) and I use all of them to halt the Chevy before its grill kisses my kneecaps.

“ALTO!”

The Impala stops but the engine races. The cacophony of horns has all but ceased. Except for the growl of the V8, the intersection is relatively silent. I count four occupants through the tint, all with sunglasses, all narcos, all young. I do not draw the .40 but I have it in my grip, my finger already past the trigger guard. A long plume of marijuana smoke issues from the passenger side as the glass sighs down. I put my faith in things one should not in Méjico: witnesses, my own gun, reason, negotiation.

I’m alarmed to see Emilio Herrera in the passenger seat. Emilio and I are acquainted in an unfortunate way.

“Good morning, officer,” he says to me in sarcastic, cheerful English. His long black hair is placed rather than combed back. It stays with mysterious obedience. His goatee is thin and carefully trimmed. A gold cap winks when he smiles. One black flake of ash from his enormous spliff rests on his immaculate white tee shirt. “This is quite a mess you have here. “

He sweeps his hand at the shit-spotted scene.

“You cannot drive on the sidewalk. You almost killed an old man back there.”

Emilio drops the shades to the end of his strangely thin nose, rotates his stocky torso, peers through the back window. He turns back around, takes a deep drag, aims his one blue and one brown eye up at me.

“Seems that we can. We did. And as for that viejo, he looks fine. Now: how can we help you Agente Companzo?”

Shoot him. Shoot all four of them if you can. It’s a ten round clip; fully auto. It’s practically drawn already. They’re stoned. Sure, you’ll die but you’ll be a hero—all these citizens will remember you. Thank you. Celebrate you.

“You can help yourself by obeying my orders, joven.”

The smirk dies on Emilio’s pockmarked cheeks. His free right arm dives out of sight. I draw the .40 and place it at the edge of his window, aiming at his sternum. I hear racks sliding in the backseat. My martyrdom suddenly looks duller.

“You can help yourself by stepping away from my car and clearing a path for us, cerdo.” Emilio hisses. “I do not know what has gotten into you but I will be insulted if I have to remind you of your place.”

I hesitate.

“I don’t even want to have to remind your boss of his place, old man. But I might not mind showing your wife hers—she is impressive for an abuela. And with an afternoon of phone calls I could find your cobarde son in el norte and finish that old thing.” Emilio’s voice has carried from vicious growl to singsong mockery in the course of these words. He pulls hard on his joint. “Now move.”

Before I can move, however, a hand with slender fingers, nails painted onyx back, slips through the window from behind Emilio. It deposits a gram of cocaine and a five-peso bill into my uniform pocket, pats my breast. The engine revs. Emilio pushes his shades up. The window disappears them all, along with their laughter. A Narco Ballad starts up. I stand squarely before the Impala, drop the coke and money and grind it into the sewage-covered ground with my boot. Then I lead them down the sidewalk, shooing pedestrians and bicycles and carts out of the way. I feel my teeth creak and shift in the back of my jaw.

Mea Culpa

2009-04-10T01:03:00.002+03:00

Ok, so a sufficient enough time has passed, a sufficient amount of wine drunk, a sufficient obsession with Kris Kristofferson and his newfound humility and philosophy has developed. I realize that my entry of a couple months ago ("What the F(*#?: No to Blogger Hari Kari) was ill-advised, insensitive and all around assholish. My motivation was good, believe it or not--a twisty kind of way to express how much I love and miss those carriers of the heavy words with which I've shared so much over the years. But my methodology was flawed and, moreover, my dogged lack of realism got stuck in my mouth again. I know that everyone at whom I directed my loving guilt trip is a hardworking person with ever-increasingly responsibilities. I also realize that blogging itself is a half-assed way to "stay in touch." It was, however, half an ass that I enjoyed viewing. But the bottom line is that I withdraw fully and heartily apologize for my chastisement of all you wonderful, toiling souls that I could (and just might) pick up the phone and fucking call.

Añoranza

2009-03-29T02:07:00.002+02:00

The best word in the world for "longing" in any language. Not a bad wine either.
(You all see what happens when my wife goes away? I become one of those bloggers).

She's Off Again

2009-03-24T04:49:00.003+02:00

Again the dirty bastards from Medicins Sans Frontiers have contracted my wife away; again I must fill the empty spaces of this apartment with smoke, music, television and rough housing with the animals (they have no idea what's gotten into me); again I have to cuddle with a pillow instead of a hell of a Spanish body; again the world conspires to slide oceans in between; again we will have to groan and then sigh and grow stronger and better.

Nigeria. Somewhere nasty. More news as I get it. I'm very proud and very worried.

But she'll be ok (we've been training).

Shameless Self-Promotion ReRedux

2009-03-18T04:56:00.003+02:00

So this didn't work so well before, but my head was made for walls--if it wasn't, I wouldn't be a literary writer. I should clarify, too: the last round at Hugo House was a rousing success for all, I think, I'm just not sure I got any students off my blog-a-mercial. Anyway, banking for re-approach........

Pillaging Genre: Putting the Hip and Sensational Into Literature

Ever felt dusty and hopeless in the face of the colorful burgeoning of genre fiction?

I’ve gotten more than a few “passes” from literary agents who have deemed my work simply too, well, literary. In a marketplace where crime thrillers, sexy vampire dramas, and young adult adventures seem to be the only hot fictional items, we’ve got a choice: crossover entirely or adapt some elements of these genres to our own purposes.

We’ll dig into a few models of thriller and YA works that successfully preserve literary tradition while keeping the masses turning the page. We’ll write and workshop pieces of our own novels with the aim of making them more hotcake and less Cornish game hen. We’ll try to figure out how to sell without selling out, together.

Here's the link if you know anyone who might be interested: Pillaging Genre
One Zillion Thanks.

Miracles on 3rd Avenue

2009-03-10T04:50:00.001+02:00

As an infrequent throwback to youth, some high school homies (I can’t seem to write “buddies” after “high school,” and “friends” just doesn’t capture it) decided to meet up at the Seattle Poetry Slam and take in a few rounds of the homegrown talent. After a lackluster and wince-producing performance by a couple of rookies and rocksteady ones from a couple of local artists during the open mic, we were treated to a spotlighted rendition of Matt Gano’s brilliance, then quit while we were ahead, and bailed before the Slam proper to find somewhere quieter to catch up.

The Spitfire Grill where the slam is held sits on Fourth Avenue, right about in the heart of the “West Edge” or “Belltown” or “North Downtown” or whatever you might called it based on your demographic. It’s a frantic mishmash of gentrification and crack corners, hipsters and thugs, Vespas and Harleys, tourists and cats that at one point wore flannel 24-7, etc. You get the point. Public policy Bermuda Triangle, land of inalterable contrast, and not a place to wander alone after dark.

We skipped down toward 3rd, veering toward our vehicles and walked through the door of the first bar that presented itself without even giving it the once-over. Once inside, however, we realized we’d scored beyond our wildest hopes: one wall covered in those mirrored domestic beer plaques, rubber flags advertising, yes, more domestic beer, lawn furniture, plexi-glassed TVs with graffiti scrawled scratched across them, pool tables that appeared to have rodent problems, and a cast of characters that would have rendered Jack Kerouac silent: obese Indians with no teeth; youngsters who looked like they’d been scribbled on the chalkboard of the world nodding off on smack; middle aged black single men rocking amazing styles; over the hill hookers flirting like mad but with a playful attitude.

The do-rag sporting bartender loped over and wanted to know what we were drinking. Someone asked what there was beer-wise.

“Man,” he said, sticking out his fingers to tick off the options, “we got Pabst on tap. We got Miller tall boys. And,” here he retired his hand from midair, “we also got Pabst tall boys.”

Two of my homies declined beverages, being purists of some sort, but Isaac and I went for the Pabst cans that ended up costing two dollars—I tipped do-rag fifty percent, we swilled our hops, waved goodbye, sidestepped the Indians who wanted deep philosophical conversation, and went on our way, joking about coming back to make a night of it.

When I realized my wallet was gone the next morning, it was with considerable blue that I realized, also, that it had to have taken its leave of me in that classy Belltown joint. I almost didn’t bother, but I had a full tank of gas and time on my hands and I drove south with my wife lecturing me about the precariousness of back pockets.

There were no lights on and I almost drove on, but scoped a flutter of movement and parked illegally. The door was open and it was not a supreme surprise to see that 65% of the clientele had not changed—nor even altered posture—since one a.m. that prior night. One gent was dozing with his beanie pulled over his eyes and his left hand in his Pabst, as if for warmth. It was dead silent till the ruddy faced, handlebar mustached new bartender removed a black toothpick from his mouth and asked how I was doin’.

“Not so hot,” I admitted. “Lost my wallet in here last night.”

He looked at me deadpan and snorted, put the toothpick back. I raised a hand to wave goodbye but he told me to hang on, as
if it were a very big favor indeed to hoist a wilted cardboard box and rifle through it.

“What it look like?”

Brown leather.

“When you in here?”

About 12:30.

“What your name?”

Eli—no, Nathaniel Hastings.

“Well I’ll be a motherfucker,” he says, “here it is.”

By now everyone within earshot is wrapped deep in the narrative and one exultant lazy eyed man claps for my success. My good fortune sings in my chest and my warmth for humanity swells. I grab the wallet with a grin and crack it to offer my savior a twenty—after all, I had some $270 in the billfold.

“Course, there ain’t no cash in it,” he says around the toothpick, eyes on the TV. “You oughta just be glad Sid saved it for ya.”

I tell the man to thank Sid for me, I guess, and walk out as he comments about the miracle of a lost wallet found in that joint to anyone who will listen.

Regression

2009-03-01T23:29:00.005+02:00

Most of the time these days I embrace a slowly growing maturity, wisdom, evenhandedness, thoughtfulness, lovingkindness and fair minded worldview. This vision of life is a severe departure from my infantile leftism and tunnel vision of years past. But then there are things that hurl me back down the rabbit hole of youthful rage, fling me down through levels of consciousness, things that make me just want to shriek, "Cowards and Pigs!"