Seolandbunes is swyðost cype monnum geseted . þær beoð weðeras acennede on oxna micelnesse . þabuað oðmeda burh þære burhge noma is archemedon. Seo is mæst tobabilonia byrug . þanon is to babilonia inþæs læssan milge tæles stadia . ccc . 7 þæs maran þe leuua hatte . cc . from archemedon . þær syndan þa mycclan mærða þæt syndan ðage weorc ðese miccla macedonisca Alexander het ge wyrcean. Ðaet lond is onlenge andonbræde ðæs læssan milge tæles ðe stadia hatte . cc . andþær micclan ðe leuua hatte . cxxxiii . 7an half mil
The colony is mostly occupied with merchants. There are sheep born there the great size of oxen that live up to the dwelling of Medes. The name of that dwelling is Archemedon. It is the greatest city after Babylon. Thence to Babylon from Archemedon is 300 of the lesser miles, stadia, and 200 of the greater miles, called leuua. There is great glory there, which are the works the great Alexander of Macedonia had made. The land is in length and breadth 200 of the lesser miles, called stadia, and 133 and a half of the greater miles, called leuua.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
place, religion, tea party
I think my worldview is being shifted by living in Lubbock, on micro and macro levels, but it’s happening slowly enough that it feels not like an epiphany, but more like getting more and more lost at night when you were sure you knew where you were just a minute ago, the hotel had to be around here somewhere, but then again it’s getting darker and you don’t recognize anything and you aren’t even sure if you’re walking in the right direction.
First of all, Lubbock is the most isolated place I’ve ever lived, and since I’ve spent the majority of my life in the western United States, that is significant. It’s “in the middle” of a lot of cities I’d like to visit (Albuquerque, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City)—but six hours away from all of them. Anything it’s “on the way” to is far enough away that nobody drives.
Secondly, I can’t remember if I’ve noted it before, but my neighborhood is divided into a grid, like any other neighborhood, except each block is cut through the middle by a dirt alley road thing. Mostly the alleys just go through people’s backyards, but there are some houses on them, and though I live just off a standard paved road, I’m technically on that dirt road, in a “back house.”
This means if I look in one direction, I’m part of a yuppie-ish university neighborhood, but if I look in the other direction, I live in a weird shack in the woods. If I walk through the dirt alley to school, I walk through a valley of dogs. I step over things that have been abandoned in the alley, like several different kinds of squash one day, once a chair, once a shopping cart, and of course beer bottles.
If I take the streets, I pass expensive vehicles, including one hummer that’s there everyday, and its partner which is there sporadically. The partner features a sticker that says “SECEDE” with the lone star logo. This is all one street above campus.
Also along the way, there is a sign on someone’s lawn that says “PRAYER: America’s Only Hope”
They’re big, important privileges, being able to afford living alone, and being able to walk to school/work, but even after living here for over two months, I still haven’t really developed a pleasant rhythm. I weigh the pros and cons of each direction every day.
When I choose the street path, I think about that prayer sign every time, even though I’ve exhausted new ways to think about it. It reflects how politically conservative this area is, and how religious. I also think it’s a very passive interpretation of religion—it’s one thing to humble one’s self before God, but that sign suggests that the “only” hope is to pray, and any kind of action beyond that is pointless. It reduces life to being trapped in a boat during a storm.
I have not stood on solid ground religiously since I was 12 or 13 years old. I have no faith or belief, but when it comes time for a typical bar session to rail on the religious, I get bristly and defensive.
Part of the reason I’ve always been sympathetic to religion, and especially Mormonism, is because of my mother. She pauses and looks up at the mountains. She hikes through them. She believes they’re a divine gift. She believes her people were led to that area, so they could appreciate that landscape. Of course, she doesn’t extend that line of thinking to acknowledge what a completely shitty job they’ve done of that.
In retrospect, Utah County is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. But one forgets that when living there because it’s a billboard, state street culture, and the most all of the landmarks are hideous—UVU, for example, looks no more attractive than the prison at point of the mountain—and they put giant hideous letters on the mountain for no reason. Utah Lake, in particular, was relentlessly polluted, the details to which I’m just now reading about in On Zion’s Mount, and it is a horrible thing to read.
But still, everywhere else. My parents’ house is at the base of Mt. Timpanogos, and the mountains in Utah County are more stark and outstanding than the ones in Salt Lake, or in Denver or any other city I’ve visited. The willow tree in my mom’s backyard. Even the lake, from a blue distance, or when it freezes and it’s quiet and you can walk out onto it, or when it’s night and empty and you’re 20 and still a virgin with a beautiful girl on the docks.
Anyway, I can see why my mom thinks that place was made with her in mind, and I can see why she thinks it’s holy. She backs it up too. And she’s my mom, for fuck’s sake, so I cannot indulge anti-Mormon rants.
---
The Laundromat I use is stocked with Christian tracts, and even though I always bring work to do, I inevitably end up reading them while my clothes spin. I love them. They are creative and relatively well-designed. Although they’re all ultimately about eternal salvation, they know how to limit their immediate focus to one particular pamphlet. So, they’ll have one Bible story summarized. Or a poem about the dangers of drinking. A list of different verses indicating that swearing is a bigger deal than you think. I find this adaptation to be very sweet:
“As she looked upon the tree with it’s beautiful fruit, she thought it must be good for food, and eating of it would bring wisdom. So she took some fruit and gave also to Adam, they both did eat of it. Immediately they felt very strange in their hearts. They had never felt this way before. They knew now that they had done something very wrong. They were both ashamed of themselves as they thought of their disobedience. Fear came into their hearts as they thought of meeting God. So they hid themselves among the trees of the garden.”
In another, called “The Room,” a believer recounts a dream of his, which he believes was transmitted to him by the Lord for a reason. In the dream he is in a room full of old-school library filing systems. Each cabinet of files is labeled.
“The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird. ‘Books I have Read,’ ‘Lies I have Told,’ ‘Comfort I Have Given,’ ‘Jokes I have Laughed At.’ Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: ‘Things I’ve Yelled at My Brothers.’”
When he opens the cabinets up, each card lists some event from his life. He has to account for them, and then Jesus shows up and signs his name to each of them as well. “’No!’ I shouted, rushing to Him. All I could find to say was ‘No, no,’ as I pulled the card from Him. His name shouldn’t be on these cards. But here it was, written in red so rich, so dark, so alive. The name of Jesus covered mine. It was written with His blood.”
That one is a little much, the image of Jesus making his way through the dusty library, signing endless cards, reminds me of Kafka, and one of the few stories of his I like in which Poseidon is crunching numbers and feeling especially bitter that people depict him as riding around with his trident all day.
---
I admit that didn’t really care when the midterm election results came in, which was a little unusual. Part of it is the fact that they weren’t surprising. Part of it is that I’ve been very busy and self-involved lately. And part of it, admittedly, is that I’m interested in the narratives of politics, and sometimes am able to distance a story from its inevitable repercussions. I find it interesting that Sarah Palin, who doesn’t disguise having basically no qualifications, and in fact seems to disdain the notion that someone should be “qualified” for major public office, has a following, for example.
Likewise, the tea party, which sometimes seems like the Dada “movement” to me, because it doesn’t seem to be founded on the desire to enact concrete policies. The infamous “keep your government hands off my medicare” sign is an example of this, but I see that sign as indicating less the ignorance and hypocrisy of tea-party people, and more that the tea party movement is one founded on emotion. The signs at the rallies make no sense, and it doesn’t matter; they are meant less to provide rational protest, and more as an outlet for contradictory feelings. I’m not saying those feelings aren’t harmful, or founded in myth and delusion.
In a comparison my friends when I was a teenager would love, tea partiers kind of remind me of senseless, late 70s British punk rock, which was clearly enraged by the lack of future for young people in England, but didn’t exactly articulate ways the course could be reversed. My friends used to critique this kind of music, and preferred punk that was “positive” and had a message, not just brainless screaming. I didn’t and don’t agree with that, and greatly prefer the latter. And I would have voted for Iggy Pop or whoever back then, regardless of qualification; I still probably would, actually.
That said, I brought this theory up with B the other day and she pointed out that the tea party is not just aimless expression, but is actually well organized, and they do have candidates, and intensely homophobic, fuckwad candidates at that. Touche.
First of all, Lubbock is the most isolated place I’ve ever lived, and since I’ve spent the majority of my life in the western United States, that is significant. It’s “in the middle” of a lot of cities I’d like to visit (Albuquerque, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City)—but six hours away from all of them. Anything it’s “on the way” to is far enough away that nobody drives.
Secondly, I can’t remember if I’ve noted it before, but my neighborhood is divided into a grid, like any other neighborhood, except each block is cut through the middle by a dirt alley road thing. Mostly the alleys just go through people’s backyards, but there are some houses on them, and though I live just off a standard paved road, I’m technically on that dirt road, in a “back house.”
This means if I look in one direction, I’m part of a yuppie-ish university neighborhood, but if I look in the other direction, I live in a weird shack in the woods. If I walk through the dirt alley to school, I walk through a valley of dogs. I step over things that have been abandoned in the alley, like several different kinds of squash one day, once a chair, once a shopping cart, and of course beer bottles.
If I take the streets, I pass expensive vehicles, including one hummer that’s there everyday, and its partner which is there sporadically. The partner features a sticker that says “SECEDE” with the lone star logo. This is all one street above campus.
Also along the way, there is a sign on someone’s lawn that says “PRAYER: America’s Only Hope”
They’re big, important privileges, being able to afford living alone, and being able to walk to school/work, but even after living here for over two months, I still haven’t really developed a pleasant rhythm. I weigh the pros and cons of each direction every day.
When I choose the street path, I think about that prayer sign every time, even though I’ve exhausted new ways to think about it. It reflects how politically conservative this area is, and how religious. I also think it’s a very passive interpretation of religion—it’s one thing to humble one’s self before God, but that sign suggests that the “only” hope is to pray, and any kind of action beyond that is pointless. It reduces life to being trapped in a boat during a storm.
I have not stood on solid ground religiously since I was 12 or 13 years old. I have no faith or belief, but when it comes time for a typical bar session to rail on the religious, I get bristly and defensive.
Part of the reason I’ve always been sympathetic to religion, and especially Mormonism, is because of my mother. She pauses and looks up at the mountains. She hikes through them. She believes they’re a divine gift. She believes her people were led to that area, so they could appreciate that landscape. Of course, she doesn’t extend that line of thinking to acknowledge what a completely shitty job they’ve done of that.
In retrospect, Utah County is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. But one forgets that when living there because it’s a billboard, state street culture, and the most all of the landmarks are hideous—UVU, for example, looks no more attractive than the prison at point of the mountain—and they put giant hideous letters on the mountain for no reason. Utah Lake, in particular, was relentlessly polluted, the details to which I’m just now reading about in On Zion’s Mount, and it is a horrible thing to read.
But still, everywhere else. My parents’ house is at the base of Mt. Timpanogos, and the mountains in Utah County are more stark and outstanding than the ones in Salt Lake, or in Denver or any other city I’ve visited. The willow tree in my mom’s backyard. Even the lake, from a blue distance, or when it freezes and it’s quiet and you can walk out onto it, or when it’s night and empty and you’re 20 and still a virgin with a beautiful girl on the docks.
Anyway, I can see why my mom thinks that place was made with her in mind, and I can see why she thinks it’s holy. She backs it up too. And she’s my mom, for fuck’s sake, so I cannot indulge anti-Mormon rants.
---
The Laundromat I use is stocked with Christian tracts, and even though I always bring work to do, I inevitably end up reading them while my clothes spin. I love them. They are creative and relatively well-designed. Although they’re all ultimately about eternal salvation, they know how to limit their immediate focus to one particular pamphlet. So, they’ll have one Bible story summarized. Or a poem about the dangers of drinking. A list of different verses indicating that swearing is a bigger deal than you think. I find this adaptation to be very sweet:
“As she looked upon the tree with it’s beautiful fruit, she thought it must be good for food, and eating of it would bring wisdom. So she took some fruit and gave also to Adam, they both did eat of it. Immediately they felt very strange in their hearts. They had never felt this way before. They knew now that they had done something very wrong. They were both ashamed of themselves as they thought of their disobedience. Fear came into their hearts as they thought of meeting God. So they hid themselves among the trees of the garden.”
In another, called “The Room,” a believer recounts a dream of his, which he believes was transmitted to him by the Lord for a reason. In the dream he is in a room full of old-school library filing systems. Each cabinet of files is labeled.
“The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird. ‘Books I have Read,’ ‘Lies I have Told,’ ‘Comfort I Have Given,’ ‘Jokes I have Laughed At.’ Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: ‘Things I’ve Yelled at My Brothers.’”
When he opens the cabinets up, each card lists some event from his life. He has to account for them, and then Jesus shows up and signs his name to each of them as well. “’No!’ I shouted, rushing to Him. All I could find to say was ‘No, no,’ as I pulled the card from Him. His name shouldn’t be on these cards. But here it was, written in red so rich, so dark, so alive. The name of Jesus covered mine. It was written with His blood.”
That one is a little much, the image of Jesus making his way through the dusty library, signing endless cards, reminds me of Kafka, and one of the few stories of his I like in which Poseidon is crunching numbers and feeling especially bitter that people depict him as riding around with his trident all day.
---
I admit that didn’t really care when the midterm election results came in, which was a little unusual. Part of it is the fact that they weren’t surprising. Part of it is that I’ve been very busy and self-involved lately. And part of it, admittedly, is that I’m interested in the narratives of politics, and sometimes am able to distance a story from its inevitable repercussions. I find it interesting that Sarah Palin, who doesn’t disguise having basically no qualifications, and in fact seems to disdain the notion that someone should be “qualified” for major public office, has a following, for example.
Likewise, the tea party, which sometimes seems like the Dada “movement” to me, because it doesn’t seem to be founded on the desire to enact concrete policies. The infamous “keep your government hands off my medicare” sign is an example of this, but I see that sign as indicating less the ignorance and hypocrisy of tea-party people, and more that the tea party movement is one founded on emotion. The signs at the rallies make no sense, and it doesn’t matter; they are meant less to provide rational protest, and more as an outlet for contradictory feelings. I’m not saying those feelings aren’t harmful, or founded in myth and delusion.
In a comparison my friends when I was a teenager would love, tea partiers kind of remind me of senseless, late 70s British punk rock, which was clearly enraged by the lack of future for young people in England, but didn’t exactly articulate ways the course could be reversed. My friends used to critique this kind of music, and preferred punk that was “positive” and had a message, not just brainless screaming. I didn’t and don’t agree with that, and greatly prefer the latter. And I would have voted for Iggy Pop or whoever back then, regardless of qualification; I still probably would, actually.
That said, I brought this theory up with B the other day and she pointed out that the tea party is not just aimless expression, but is actually well organized, and they do have candidates, and intensely homophobic, fuckwad candidates at that. Touche.
salt flats
When I lived in Salt Lake City, sometimes after work I would take my car west on I-80 toward the salt flats. I-80 changes from semi-urban Salt Lake City to wide open nothing pretty fast, and ten minutes from the freeway entrance there is only space, divided every so often by Wendover billboards that read, The Streamline of fun is minutes away! The bright Gotham City lights of the nuclear storage facility in Tooele fire up once the sky starts to dim. After Tooele, the road keeps moving alongside Great Salt Lake, not far from the shore. The water levels vary, and sometimes the water is high enough that it swamps the telephone poles on the side of the road, but usually several feet below the shoulder. After the lake are the salt flats—quiet white plains of salt that stretch nearly to the Nevada border. Despite being from Utah I never really thought about them until the last few years I was there, yet I think that I-80 drive is the landscape that cuts me up worst of all when I think about my home state, which I spent pretty much the whole month of October doing. Some of the worst times out of my life out there, but still, if the sun is in the sky, the salt flats light up. It’s similar visually to when the sun shines on feet of snow, except the salt doesn’t melt but just continues to heat up and glimmer all day. If the moon is up, the ground glows. If you head back between the two, when the sun’s heading down but its top layer is still visible, you can fly back over Great Salt Lake, part of the orange-pink light in the sky.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The box of D-con poison had a picture of a mouse on its back, with electric swirls moving away from its body, presumably indicating death. The product’s slogan was, “Kills Mice Dead.” I placed small cartons of the pellets it in the corners of the kitchen.
In the morning, pellets were missing, but I did not see a dead mouse to match the one on the cover.
The poison pellets stopped depleting, but I never found the body. Like Frankenstein’s monster or Michael Myers, it could return at any time. I started to feel bad about dooming my one-time cohabitant to a poisonous death, even as I realized that if that mouse ever did return, I would escalate the situation to cartoon-levels of violence, until the house was filled with spring-loaded axes or the entire house was one giant mousetrap.
In the morning, pellets were missing, but I did not see a dead mouse to match the one on the cover.
The poison pellets stopped depleting, but I never found the body. Like Frankenstein’s monster or Michael Myers, it could return at any time. I started to feel bad about dooming my one-time cohabitant to a poisonous death, even as I realized that if that mouse ever did return, I would escalate the situation to cartoon-levels of violence, until the house was filled with spring-loaded axes or the entire house was one giant mousetrap.
cockroaches, mice
One night I woke up hot. I was a little drunk when I went to bed, and still was. I didn’t have a bed yet and was sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. I heard a scratching sound that sounded as though something was trying to dig into the house from the other side. At first I just thought it was the alley cat I’d seen on the dumpsters, but the noise was too deliberate for a cat.
Earlier in the day someone had told me a story about their house being taken over by cockroaches. This nightmarish kind of narrative seemed to be more common than I would have expected, and I'd now heard a version of it a few times. Where I've lived in New York City and Utah, there are cockroaches, but they are very adept at hiding when the light comes on. Sometimes you don't even know they exist until you look for them. Always something sinister about that, but brazen cockroaches that take over an entire house are worse.
After a while it occurred to me that the sound I was hearing was too close to be outside. I thought immediately of cockroaches, and this jolted me to my feet, but I was afraid to turn on the light because of what I might see.
The sound had stopped while I contemplated my move. That gave me the courage to turn on the light. I did not see my carpet swarming with cockroaches, as I had feared. I went for a closer look. As I veered in, something dark skittered toward the kitchen. It was fast and I didn’t get a good look at it. It was heavy enough to make an audible sound as it moved and I assumed it was a giant, queen cockroach, about to call for a million reinforcements. When it turned the corner, though, I saw that it had a tail, and was not a cockroach but a small mouse.
I have lived in apartment buildings all of my adult life and never dealt with mice. They were around my parents’ house when I was a kid, but I rarely saw them directly. Once, though, when I was helping some neighbors load firewood from their garage into their trailer and I saw a mouse in the open sunlight. It was stuck on one of those traps that make their feet stick so they can’t get away, until someone sees it and kills it, or they eventually just die. This mouse was still alive, and it was all nerves and instinct as it tried to jerk itself free, but it couldn’t. After a while Mr. Childs saw it and smashed it with a shovel. That had always made me sympathetic for mice, but that sympathy was easier when I didn’t have to encounter them.
I couldn’t find where the mouse went and eventually tried to go back to sleep in the bedroom with the door closed. I kept seeing this image of the mouse sneaking into my room and biting me on my toe or my earlobe. If I heard a click, I assumed it was the mouse; but I never caught it in the act when I went out there, even though I tried to surprise it. I eventually had to open up the window and listen to the crickets to get back to sleep.
Earlier in the day someone had told me a story about their house being taken over by cockroaches. This nightmarish kind of narrative seemed to be more common than I would have expected, and I'd now heard a version of it a few times. Where I've lived in New York City and Utah, there are cockroaches, but they are very adept at hiding when the light comes on. Sometimes you don't even know they exist until you look for them. Always something sinister about that, but brazen cockroaches that take over an entire house are worse.
After a while it occurred to me that the sound I was hearing was too close to be outside. I thought immediately of cockroaches, and this jolted me to my feet, but I was afraid to turn on the light because of what I might see.
The sound had stopped while I contemplated my move. That gave me the courage to turn on the light. I did not see my carpet swarming with cockroaches, as I had feared. I went for a closer look. As I veered in, something dark skittered toward the kitchen. It was fast and I didn’t get a good look at it. It was heavy enough to make an audible sound as it moved and I assumed it was a giant, queen cockroach, about to call for a million reinforcements. When it turned the corner, though, I saw that it had a tail, and was not a cockroach but a small mouse.
I have lived in apartment buildings all of my adult life and never dealt with mice. They were around my parents’ house when I was a kid, but I rarely saw them directly. Once, though, when I was helping some neighbors load firewood from their garage into their trailer and I saw a mouse in the open sunlight. It was stuck on one of those traps that make their feet stick so they can’t get away, until someone sees it and kills it, or they eventually just die. This mouse was still alive, and it was all nerves and instinct as it tried to jerk itself free, but it couldn’t. After a while Mr. Childs saw it and smashed it with a shovel. That had always made me sympathetic for mice, but that sympathy was easier when I didn’t have to encounter them.
I couldn’t find where the mouse went and eventually tried to go back to sleep in the bedroom with the door closed. I kept seeing this image of the mouse sneaking into my room and biting me on my toe or my earlobe. If I heard a click, I assumed it was the mouse; but I never caught it in the act when I went out there, even though I tried to surprise it. I eventually had to open up the window and listen to the crickets to get back to sleep.
stadium motel
I initially thought this wait would be a couple days, but after those couple days had past it was revealed to me that it would be longer. For financial reasons I checked out of the Days Inn and downgraded to the Stadium Motel next door, which had weekly rates.
You don’t usually have time to look at every feather, so try to focus on patterns. If you know what you’re looking for, even a glimpse can give you a lot to go on. Once you see a bird, take in the overall pattern of light and dark. If it is light enough outside, you can see some of the color as well. If you have that, you have plenty to work with in your quest for identification.
My new room at the Stadium Motel had wood paneling and two frames containing the same photo of white spectral trees leading down a road. Pasted on top of one of these photos was a large sticker of Jesus Christ leading a sheep up a mountain.
The advertised kitchenette was a miniature refrigerator with a microwave on top. There were dark stains on the bathroom wall. The overhead fluorescent lights were too dim to read by, and the light bulb that was supposed to be hanging in the kitchenette area was missing. I asked the front desk attendant about this, and he came with me and took a look. I had to go because I had an appointment, and assumed he would take care of it. When I got back, the light bulb was still missing, and the overhead light was as dim as before. I didn’t ask about it again. When there are suicide stains on your walls, there is no reason act as though you are staying at the Days Inn.
I didn’t really have much to do until I could move into my house, so I bought a newspaper and “groceries” every day from the 7/11 next door. The front-page headlines from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal the first day: “Potts wins Tech QB starting job,” “Space is no issue for city graveyards,” “An Inspiration: English teacher at Frenship Middle School begins her 40th year today,” “Football team of 1976 succeeded without boasting.”
I wondered if I would have to re-develop an interest in sports to fit in here. Or religion, for that matter. I understand both, to some extent. The deal I made with God when I was 14 to go back to church if the Jazz won a championship is still good, and even though the religious chamber of my heart has been quiet and inactive many years, it used to function with flourish and passion. Maybe I could revive it. But it seemed hard to imagine doing that, starting as an adult.
After reading the paper I walked up University Avenue, a busy street that smelled like car exhaust and Chili’s. I wanted to explore more but my car was still full of my stuff which made me anxious. There really wasn’t that much in there of value, but thieves might not know that, and my relationship with my car was the deepest one I had in Lubbock, so I couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for getting its window smashed.
My time at the Stadium Motel lasted about ten days. On the last day, a man in the parking lot tried to sell me cologne from his car. Hey! You like cologne, right? Well, not really… Oh, not really huh? Well come on over here, let me show you what I’ve got. I politely declined and shook his sun-chafed hand. Later that evening I got the call that I was good to move in later that night.
You don’t usually have time to look at every feather, so try to focus on patterns. If you know what you’re looking for, even a glimpse can give you a lot to go on. Once you see a bird, take in the overall pattern of light and dark. If it is light enough outside, you can see some of the color as well. If you have that, you have plenty to work with in your quest for identification.
My new room at the Stadium Motel had wood paneling and two frames containing the same photo of white spectral trees leading down a road. Pasted on top of one of these photos was a large sticker of Jesus Christ leading a sheep up a mountain.
The advertised kitchenette was a miniature refrigerator with a microwave on top. There were dark stains on the bathroom wall. The overhead fluorescent lights were too dim to read by, and the light bulb that was supposed to be hanging in the kitchenette area was missing. I asked the front desk attendant about this, and he came with me and took a look. I had to go because I had an appointment, and assumed he would take care of it. When I got back, the light bulb was still missing, and the overhead light was as dim as before. I didn’t ask about it again. When there are suicide stains on your walls, there is no reason act as though you are staying at the Days Inn.
I didn’t really have much to do until I could move into my house, so I bought a newspaper and “groceries” every day from the 7/11 next door. The front-page headlines from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal the first day: “Potts wins Tech QB starting job,” “Space is no issue for city graveyards,” “An Inspiration: English teacher at Frenship Middle School begins her 40th year today,” “Football team of 1976 succeeded without boasting.”
I wondered if I would have to re-develop an interest in sports to fit in here. Or religion, for that matter. I understand both, to some extent. The deal I made with God when I was 14 to go back to church if the Jazz won a championship is still good, and even though the religious chamber of my heart has been quiet and inactive many years, it used to function with flourish and passion. Maybe I could revive it. But it seemed hard to imagine doing that, starting as an adult.
After reading the paper I walked up University Avenue, a busy street that smelled like car exhaust and Chili’s. I wanted to explore more but my car was still full of my stuff which made me anxious. There really wasn’t that much in there of value, but thieves might not know that, and my relationship with my car was the deepest one I had in Lubbock, so I couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for getting its window smashed.
My time at the Stadium Motel lasted about ten days. On the last day, a man in the parking lot tried to sell me cologne from his car. Hey! You like cologne, right? Well, not really… Oh, not really huh? Well come on over here, let me show you what I’ve got. I politely declined and shook his sun-chafed hand. Later that evening I got the call that I was good to move in later that night.
arrival
The drive to Lubbock was beautiful and windy and full of cliffs and trains. I didn't stop much, but everywhere I did stop was strange and interesting enough that I wanted to explore. I did pause for more than gasoline and junk food to see Billy the Kid's grave, just because a sign in a town I happened to pull off in said it was close. It's actually almost right next to a Mormon church in some town in New Mexico.
I had done no planning and didn’t have a place set up when I arrived. I checked into the Days Inn by the football stadium and started to search. I wanted a place close enough to walk to campus and I didn’t want a roommate. Those were my only requirements. When I found a place I could afford a few streets above campus, a one bedroom back house in a neighborhood called Tech Terrace, I went to check it out. As I walked around the neighborhood, I saw two people holding hands while riding their bikes. There were fire ants and brown pieces of glass on the sidewalk. Most people had their address number painted on the curb, with either the double-T Texas Tech symbol or a cross next to it.
Tech Terrace was divided into a block grid, like many neighborhoods, except it was unique as far as I knew in that dirt roads ran through the middle of each block. Dumpsters and water meters were placed along the dirt roads; so was the house I wanted. It had a red door. It was a strange dynamic to be located there; if I looked in one direction, it was in the woods. If I looked in the other, it was as though I was in a yuppie neighborhood. My perspective of the place changed depending on the direction I was facing.
On the phone the landlord said he was looking for someone “studious” and “quiet;” “not a major partier.” So when I went to meet him I wore my glasses, and that seemed to convince him. By the end he said I was “just the kind of tenant” he was looking for. He checked my references and said he’d be glad to rent to me, but it was going to take a little bit to repair the roof first. It had rained more than usual in the summer, and wet debris from large trees nearby had fallen on the roof. No one noticed right away, and the tree limbs and leaves just stayed there and slowly eroded the roof and ceiling.
I had done no planning and didn’t have a place set up when I arrived. I checked into the Days Inn by the football stadium and started to search. I wanted a place close enough to walk to campus and I didn’t want a roommate. Those were my only requirements. When I found a place I could afford a few streets above campus, a one bedroom back house in a neighborhood called Tech Terrace, I went to check it out. As I walked around the neighborhood, I saw two people holding hands while riding their bikes. There were fire ants and brown pieces of glass on the sidewalk. Most people had their address number painted on the curb, with either the double-T Texas Tech symbol or a cross next to it.
Tech Terrace was divided into a block grid, like many neighborhoods, except it was unique as far as I knew in that dirt roads ran through the middle of each block. Dumpsters and water meters were placed along the dirt roads; so was the house I wanted. It had a red door. It was a strange dynamic to be located there; if I looked in one direction, it was in the woods. If I looked in the other, it was as though I was in a yuppie neighborhood. My perspective of the place changed depending on the direction I was facing.
On the phone the landlord said he was looking for someone “studious” and “quiet;” “not a major partier.” So when I went to meet him I wore my glasses, and that seemed to convince him. By the end he said I was “just the kind of tenant” he was looking for. He checked my references and said he’d be glad to rent to me, but it was going to take a little bit to repair the roof first. It had rained more than usual in the summer, and wet debris from large trees nearby had fallen on the roof. No one noticed right away, and the tree limbs and leaves just stayed there and slowly eroded the roof and ceiling.
Frankenstein quotes
From M. Shelly's introduction:
“Before, I looked upon the concepts of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days of imaginary evils…but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood…” (xv)
“I shall thus give a general answer to the question so very frequently asked me—how I, then a young girl, came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea”
From the editor's introduction: "They eloped which, according to the principles of free love they all except Harriet believed in, was sanctified by a higher law"
From the book:
August 5th, 17—
About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveler with our telescopes until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice” (9).
“when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel?” (29).
“the sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true” (38)
“if the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind” (41)
“for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (43)
“I saw the grave worms crawling in the folds of the flannel” (44)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
early lubbock texts
A few things I read in my first week in Lubbock:
On the back of a Keystone Light can, lifted from the 18-pack I purchased at 7/11 and tried to spread out during my ten days at the Stadium Motel, which featured one light, and advertised a "kitchenette," which was a mini-refrigerator with a microwave on top in the corner. This went with the wood paneling and two photos of a faded white path, identical except one of them had a card about Jesus stuck in the top left-corner:
"SMOOTH MOMENTS
SMOOTH: A HOT TUB
SMOOTHER: A HOT TUB IN THE BACK OF YOUR LIMO"
From The front page headlines from the first Lubbock Avalanche-Journal I purchased from that same 7/11, organized in order of prominence on the page: "Potts wins Tech QB starting job," "Space no issue for city graveyards," "An Inspiration: English teacher at Frenship Middle School begins her 40th year today," "Football team of 1976 succeeded without boasting"
An article titled "Masked Raider One of the Coolest Mascots in College Football" was published in the student paper the same day. It was actually an AP story. On the page, the image of the rider looked as though it was charging into a Fuddrucker's advertisement.
"9) The Masked Rider, Texas Tech. Maybe the only mascot in the country that can be described as swashbuckling. And since 1974, many of the Masked Riders have been women, so points for being progressive. From the panel: 'Overshadowed in the Big 12 by Ralphie the Buffalo and Bevo, the Masked Rider makes a far more dramatic appearance atop the thundering black gelding than either massive animal does.'"
On the back of a Keystone Light can, lifted from the 18-pack I purchased at 7/11 and tried to spread out during my ten days at the Stadium Motel, which featured one light, and advertised a "kitchenette," which was a mini-refrigerator with a microwave on top in the corner. This went with the wood paneling and two photos of a faded white path, identical except one of them had a card about Jesus stuck in the top left-corner:
"SMOOTH MOMENTS
SMOOTH: A HOT TUB
SMOOTHER: A HOT TUB IN THE BACK OF YOUR LIMO"
From The front page headlines from the first Lubbock Avalanche-Journal I purchased from that same 7/11, organized in order of prominence on the page: "Potts wins Tech QB starting job," "Space no issue for city graveyards," "An Inspiration: English teacher at Frenship Middle School begins her 40th year today," "Football team of 1976 succeeded without boasting"
An article titled "Masked Raider One of the Coolest Mascots in College Football" was published in the student paper the same day. It was actually an AP story. On the page, the image of the rider looked as though it was charging into a Fuddrucker's advertisement.
"9) The Masked Rider, Texas Tech. Maybe the only mascot in the country that can be described as swashbuckling. And since 1974, many of the Masked Riders have been women, so points for being progressive. From the panel: 'Overshadowed in the Big 12 by Ralphie the Buffalo and Bevo, the Masked Rider makes a far more dramatic appearance atop the thundering black gelding than either massive animal does.'"
Sunday, September 12, 2010
first blog entry
I have decided to keep a blog about moving to and living in Lubbock, Texas.
Mainly, I want to keep some record of what Lubbock felt like when it was new, and freaking me out in one way or another every day, in case I start getting used to it, as I've started to do. So, if I keep this up for more than a day, it will probably consist of various found texts, such as the title of this blog, which I saw on a T-shirt yesterday. Also quick images and vignettes probably. Then again I am not always good at restraint and I imagine if I keep it up it will also become a slate for my small-minded rants that I’ll later regret, just like having livejournal when I was 16, except now there’s a chance I’ll be drunk while ranting.
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