Hell Week

An example: my car has broken down every day for four days. And that, friends, is one of the better things that has happened to me this week.

I too had photos to share, but needless to say, the powers that be wouldn't let them upload, no. While thwarting my attempt, the powers that be also erased them and the hundred or so other pictures stored on my camera and noplace else. To me, they are now the powers that be-otch.

I've been thinking about my very-recent writing under the term Living Expenses. I will now spew some barely-formed poetry into the blogabyss.

What kind of karma do you think that will warrant?

Shelter

If we are always in danger
Of being No one, No where,
Then why are our Selves so
Inescapable, like waves spiking the lifeboat,
Towered and internal as nausea,
While we cling to the closest huddled body:
A pink face in a yellow slicker, a finger curling for ours,
Our finger providing the placehold in space
For a Some one who might be Any one, but is
Beside us, for now.



Service

This is what I am talking around.
The pile of speckled ice and the plastic cup
Around it. Another example: the stewardess’
Hand on the lip of aluminum, and yours
On the other end. How her eyes don’t
See yours, how you notice.
Though you keep the window shade
Pulled open, its oval slot of light
Her eyes stay wide
Buttons unbuttoned down her front jacket panel,
While you have always found it hard
Not to blink in others’ faces.
Look again, look harder
When she sweeps the aisle soundless
In recycled air, and just so,
Just so, reproach yourself
With remembering how she harkened
To every ding of every blue vinyl-back seat. For two hours
She is your mother overhead
And don’t you think she gave you all
She could? After all
Ginger ale
is fine, please,
Thank you.



Misplaced Rib

I handle the baby like I’ve caught him
mid-fall. Fingers spread like
a glove, careful with his right
half-shoulder, the tiny red patch
where they told the mother
she’d broken his collarbone.
Careful not to touch, to protect
without touch, to circle the memory of
Your deep-creviced shoulder
blades, fingerholds
in the wooden fence.
He’s lived through four days now.

My palm cradles his skull,
soft as old peaches you’d
toss for impromptu batting practice:
a branch, your gathered hands,
juice streaming over the backfence.
I held your head this way
and tried to feel us growing,
that first April, in borrowed beds.
Fingers mapped the pitch of bone,
walked the chalk lines inch by inch,
traced curves through your dusting
of hair, tried to feel where I’d fit.
I was new. And then

I was new again.

The baby’s not mine
until I hold him, then
I’m ready to steal
anything he cries for
over the wall, through the stand
of pine to the opened-up ground
where I hear they play ball now,
and his little up-down chest
cleaves into mine. There between us
is your breath falling and your breath
rising, your pleated canyon,
your misplaced rib
(did you give it to me? did I lose it for us?)
and baby, the sun is shining
on all the scars we were born with.

My writing Desk. Bother.

Greetings, Attic Office.

I've tried countless times to upload a video tour of my writing desk. Those attempts being fruitless, I thought to myself, "Hey dummy--this blog exists primarily for writing, does it not? And this desk is also, potentially, designed to be written on, yes? So, why not write a poem, or some such thing, about my writing desk?" I bet you all wish you'd thought of it. But you didn't. Or maybe you did, and were too lazy; or maybe you actually wrote a piece, but determined that it was mediocre and, in defiance of Kim's impetus to share everything, kept it yourself; or maybe you simply decided that such self-indulgent behavior was frivolous and not worth anyone's time. Well, the first describes my delay; the second, a road (evidently) not taken; and the third--well, that one never occurred to me in the slightest. So, here it is.

The Desk: An Arrangement of Wood and Metal, or the Crux of All Man's Creative Endeavors? (Probably Somewhere in the Middle.)

This room--this one, right here--

Used to be wallpapered

In typical juvenile fashion

Germane to a time of fluff

And the deeply unsettling knowledge

That there is something wrong

First with pink and blue toy soldiers

Expressions: vacant

Mouths: nonexistent

Then with athletes and non-sequiturs

(RUN! STRIKE! HIT!)

Outlines: Indistinct

Logos: Unfamiliar

But how rude of me

The desk is what concerns us

I guess the afore(was)mentioned

Because that's how things used to be

But not how they are

No NOW

The walls are khaki

The comforter: also

And the desk: black as two coats

of semigloss can get

Except where daylight comes through

On chipped corners, worn edges

The things that call it home

(Now this is where it gets mundane 

But also enlightening

That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

Are as follows

An unpredicated list

Of objects collected and acquired

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

A cork board

(Well it isn't made of cork

But you get my meaning)

Supporting a framed facsimile

The good ol' family crest, Ryan

The silvery disembodied heads

Of three griffins

Malo mori quam foedari

A motto suited

For my pelt-clad ancestors

Though more of a novelty to me

A calendar, free

In some anonymous issue

Of a not-quite-girlie mag

Some hardworking latina miss

Or maybe just pretty

In elaborate stilettos

I'm not sure how she's helping here

(But hey, want is want, m'I right?)

And, obeying gravity

The device on which I "write"

A tool of versatility

Both in use and in cause

Of headache

An IKEA lamp

Adjustable angle and brightness

A necessary evil

Or perhaps just inescapable

And, ah, the cup of pens

With a souvenir letter opener

From Toledo, where Spaniards once went

For all their decapitating needs

And pencils, let's not forget them

After all, there was a time

When we were encouraged

To say what we felt

Until we said what we meant

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all

[Hey, it works here too])

To our right, a stack of yearbooks

Taking care of nostalgia and regret

Seventh grade timid and pencil-necked

Eighth grade bolder

Though with even less fashion sense

Ninth's an odd one

Snapped hastily in front of a white wall

And apparently none too excited

(But I won't bore you

Suffice it to say

I grow handsomer and handsomer)

There are other books, too:

Man's Search For Meaning

Outdated travel guides

Novels by Vonnegut and some guy

Who went to Princeton

And here's one I don't recognize

101 Best Cover Letters

A pinch, a prod

From my mother

Who wants the best for me

But is still lousy at subtlety

There's stuff in the drawers, too--

But that's another poem, people

Did I mention my desk talks?

If not I should have

He says and I quote

In an acidic baritone

(Perhaps unbefitting its appearance

But what do I know about that)

"My name is Colin's workspace, desk of desks!

Look on my hard, flat surface, and despair!"

He's not very original, you see

With any luck

I can help him with that

Though you'll forgive me

For being skeptical

-Colin Ryan

Going to Bed and Writing: No Longer Mutually Exclusive

My desk is actually a bed, with a deceptively desk-looking table next to it. That sentence, much like spinning quickly in a circle, makes me dizzy. My bed is red, unmade and has lots of stripes. This is key to the writing process. As is my backpack, which somehow found its way beneath a pillow, since my notebook lives inside.

My deceptively desk-looking table holds my computer, where I type things I have written in my notebook. Having two monitors is the opposite of stripes with regards to their usefulness to the writing process. They allow me to do many things at once to distract myself from my Word document. Though, I could make a fortune in monitor real estate. Anyone looking for a few extra square inches? Or perhaps a monitor timeshare?

Having spent so much time in previous apartments writing in closets, bathtubs, behind couches, etc., I also have an actual writing desk. It lives behind the camera and is not included here because it is entirely barren and I've not written at it once. It feels too conventional. And not the good kind of convention where they give you yogurt parfaits and keychains/letter openers/polo shirts sporting various corporate logos. There is no swag provided for being normal.

I know this is all mind-blowing information. But, please, don't take notes. You can come back and read this post whenever you want. Over and over and over again, I expect.

Where do you write?

Arabesque Rejection Fish (aka My Desk)

Looks like I'm the first one to try this. So here goes ... my desk. I'll start at the top. You probably all recognize the work of Jackson Pollock (it's called "Number 13A: Arabesque"). Below that, framed in black, is a series of photographs taken by a close friend centering around books. The hodgepodge below the photos is comprised of rejection letters I've acquired over the years. I used to keep these hidden away in a folder, but Stephen King has a rather interesting take on how to handle rejection letters in his memoir, On Writing. When he was just getting started, he nailed a large metal spike into his wall and impaled every notice he received on it. Not having quite the same violent urge, and not wanting to hammer a metal spike into the wall of my apartment, I decided to turn my rejections into a collage of sorts. Airing them out has several benefits: it helps keep me grounded, balancing the successes (there's a much smaller collage featuring those outside the left edge of the frame); it deflates the significance of the rejections (when you see them every day, you tend to forget what they are; they just become pieces of paper again); and it means that even failures are productive because they contribute to my decor. The majority of things on the actual desktop are fairly common: speakers, lamp, letter holder, etc. I keep some reading materials handy; in this case, it's Pablo Neruda and Poets & Writers to the left and the last two issues of Poetry to the right. On the far right side, there's a clock that produces a very soothing ticking and a photograph taken after a fishing trip with my father and grandfather when I was five years old. These remind me that 1) time passes whether I'm ready or not, and 2) I'm not a blank page even when I sit in front of one.

Responding to Katie Moulton Responding (This will get old quick)

There were no silences. Only pauses shaped like dinosaur pancakes.

Things of import (not in chronological order):
-We must focus more heavily on posting crap/bad writing
-Everyone responds to Katie Moulton
-Katie Moulton is the homecoming queen
-Have you heard of sporcle.com?
-Why aren't you eating more ham?
-Frank wants you to eat more ham.
-Did you know TAO had a kitchen? Shocking
-Andy Goldsworthy is everywhere (personal observation)
-Shana wants to be Katie Moulton's Facebook friend
-A brontosaurus had two brains, one in its butt
-Manila envelopes don't go bad or breed to make more
-Get insurance, pay your taxes, and then write until your eyes fall out
-Japan has internet in the bathroom
-Sometimes old men running lit journals from shacks get grumpy, but it's acceptable
-Shana laughs a lot
-Polish writers were powerful because they stuck together
-It's not Tom's fault when Shana laughs a lot

And you know what comes next: everyone posts pictures of their desks. And then their notebooks. And then they are hooked.

Katie Moulton responds to everyone

Yesterday afternoon, my mother was playing Eight Miles High by the Byrds on vintage vinyl. Delirious from no-sleep and the folk-psychadelia reverberating through my house, I drifted up to my laptop and found this surreal blog entry addressed to me eight times over.

I thought, if I were on acid, this would all make sense. TAO, you freaked me out, man.

Tom, Shana, Alex, Colin, Luke, Alex, Heather, Sean:
I can't believe Kim made you write notes to me, but thank you. Like little virtual postcards. Now if someone could send along a transcript of the meeting, complete with silences, light falling on the kimono, and any other Zen that transpired...

Kim:
Thank you. I'll be knocking on your door May 22.

So, guys, what now?

Everyone responds to Katie Moulton

Hi Katie,

We are all sitting around the attic office (the real one) and talking about you. I bet you wonder what we're saying. Perhaps someone else will fill you in. Wish you were here!

-Tom

Hi Katie Moulton,

Let's be Facebook friends. I hope you are doing well in St. Louis. Kim says you're working at Wash U? Her husband made really delicious rolls and there are a lot of about to graduate BC students who are here just like you were last year! Full circle.

Wish you were here to keep us focused!

Shana

Hey Katie, 

Sorry you couldn't be here. Can't wait to graduate (maybe) and start on this blog.

Best, 

Alex 

Katie,

Ditto, except I could wait plenty of time to graduate. Probably something on the order of years or decades. I am, however, excited to contribute to the Attic Office, and to get to know you and your work a bit better. (I actually spoke to you via email a couple years ago regarding the creative writing concentration, I believe. Not sure if you remember.) Anyway, looking forward to it. Take care.

Cheers,

Colin

Katie,

I could just stay in college forever, but moving on is good too.  I think this blog will be a great way to mix the two, keeping some part of college and moving on as well.  Really excited.

Best,

Luke

Katie,

Hi.  You don't know me and I don't know you, but I've heard some great things about you already, and I'm looking forward to being part of this whole blog/community of writers thing.

Your New Pal,

Alex

Katie,

I remember listening to your stories in the CWC meetings, when you were a senior and seemed so far ahead of me and anything I could create.  Now I'm graduating and I can't believe this feeling.  I hope it gets easier.

Heather

Katie,

I hope you are writing and well in St. Louis.  I'll look forward to reading your work again in this virtual world.

Best,

Sean