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CarrollBlog 6.30
The Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road
by Muriel Spark

One sad shoe that someone has probably flung
out of a car or truck. Why only one?

This happens on an average one year
in four. But always throughout my
life, my travels, I see it like
a memorandum. Something I have
forgotten to remember,

that there are always
mysteries in life. That shoes
do not always go in pairs, any more
than we do. That one fits;
the other, not. That children can
thoughtlessly and in a merry fashion
chuck out someone's shoe, split up
someone's life.

But usually that shoe that I
see is a man's, old, worn, the sole
parted from the upper.
Then why did the owner keep the other,
keep it to himself? Was he
afraid (as I so often am with
inanimate objects) to hurt it's feelings?
That one shoe in the road invokes
my awe and my sad pity.

CarrollBlog 6.29
The Effort
by Billy Collins

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

CarrollBlog 6.28
I was listening to a lecture by Ken Wilbur about consciousness. He mentioned something I had never thought about. Yet as soon as I heard it, my mind jumped on its horse and rode off in all sorts of interesting directions. Wilbur said one of the profound differences between mankind centuries ago and today was that in the past because a person was born, raised and usually died in one community and rarely left, their exposure to religious/spiritual ideas was limited to what was taught or believed only in that community. In modern times, particularly now with the ubiquity, width and breadth of the internet, a child in a remote community in, say, Mali, can learn in an instant about Buddhism, Christian Science, or Zoroastrianism. Sure, in the past missionaries from the various religions were sent out to the four corners of the earth to try and convert the heathen. But they were only individuals here and there. Now all that's needed is a computer and a modem and huge numbers of people can have their most fundamental beliefs challenged or changed-- in an instant. I have always been fascinated by the idea of what we might be or have been if we were simply exposed to it. We would have been firm Catholics if we'd learned about that belief when we were most receptive to religious teaching. Or a great chess player if someone had only taught us how to play as children. How about a world class baker if we hadn't had a Mom who hated to cook and anything to do with the kitchen. Wilbur extends that idea way way out--- to God. Never in a million years would I (says the person in Mali, for example) have thought God or religion could be conceived in ways that contrast so hugely with my own. But now that I have learned about some of them, my world view and life could change profoundly.

CarrollBlog 6.26
On my Twitter account (jscarroll) I get lots of feedback from people who either do or don't like my comments and the links I post there. Most of their remarks are either nice or entirely reasonable, but there's one guy in particular who has begun to fascinate me. For no apparent reason he sends almost daily YouTube clips of stuff that is absolutely irrelevant to me, my work, what I have posted, whatever. Things like clips from old Russian movies of the 1950's, a performance by a Hungarian violinist, a grainy documentary about the Cinecitta movie studio in Italy.etc. At first I thought the guy was just nuts and quickly erased whatever he sent after a cursory look and a mental "Uh oh, here he goes again" when I saw what he decided to send today. But then his selections became so odd, like a 1970's Swedish advertisement for chewing gum (and a boring one to boot), that I started looking more closely at them, trying to figure out why he might have thought this was something he should send me.

In Egyptian times, high priests used something called haruspication, which was the reading of the guts of dead animals to predict the future. Sort of like today's teacup readers, but back then the priests believed there was a cosmic order to *everything* and if we were just smart enough to figure out that order, we'd have no trouble seeing what was coming next in life. I'm no high priest but I thought about haruspication today when yet another weird link came in from my special "fan." I thought if I can just figure out why he sent this, maybe, just maybe, the answer to it all would be just a breath-- or another strange YouTube clip-- away.
----------------------------
"If I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know."
Haruki Murakami

CarrollBlog 6.25
The art gallery up the street that you thought would fail as soon as you saw the kind of things they were displaying. It lasted a year but now there are signs in the window saying it's closing and everything is half price. The objects on display are awful and garish. Even at half price, who would pay 100 euro for an inflated balloon wrapped in different colored string, or 500 euro for a giant magenta plastic phallus that doubles as a stool? The gallery is full of such things and as the rain begins to fall again, the owner is looking forlornly out onto the street, the place behind her empty as always.

CarrollBlog 6.24
There's a terrific short story entitled "Impulse" by Conrad Aiken. The gist of the tale is there's a ho-hum guy who lives a truly uninteresting, dull life. One day on impulse, he steals something silly from a store like a plastic comb or a cheap ballpoint pen. He is caught immediately, brought to the police for shoplifting... everything avalanches downhill from there into absolute disaster. The End. One little tickle of nutty impulse-- I've never done anything like this in my entire life-- and the guy is crushed. This morning while walking on a subway platform, I saw a distinguished looking gent reading a newspaper. He was nicely dressed and had on one of those snap brim hats you see men wearing on the TV show "Mad Men" or in John Cheever short stories. Approaching him, I thought I'm going to snatch that hat and run away down the platform. The impulse was so strong for two seconds that I actually had to make a wide "U" around the guy just in case my devil-side got the better of me. When far enough away to know it wasn't going to happen, I smiled and then remembered the Aiken story. The subway came and I spent the rest of the ride home wondering what might have happened if...
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PS Speaking of Conrad Aiken, before dying he asked that his gravestone be a bench (in a Savannah, Georgia cemetery), so that visitors could sit on it and enjoy a glass of madeira with his spirit. The inscription on the stone bench is "Give my love to the world."

CarrollBlog 6.23
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

CarrollBlog 6.22
Meditation on the Word Need
by Linda Rodriguez

The problem with words of emotion
is how easily meaning drains
from their fiddle-sweet sounds
and they become empty instruments.
I can say love
and mean desire to give—
open-handed, open-hearted—
or I am drawn to the light
shining from your soul—
or my life is empty without you—
or I want to run my hands
and mouth down the length of you—
or all of these at once.

Need, now, is a plain word.
I need a nail to hang this picture.
I need money to pay my bills.
I need air and light,
water and food,
shelter from storm and sun and cold.
To be healthy,
to be sane,
to survive,
I need you.

CarrollBlog 6.19
For those of you who use TWITTER, I just received this. If you're game, cut and paste it on:

" If anyone is on Twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on."

CarrollBlog 6.18
You see them now and then in bookstores that have chairs. They often wear huge unkempt beards that appear to have been growing untended for years. Their clothes are often inappropriate for the season-- for example they're wearing winter getups on 80 degree days.That's how I noticed him today-- a big beard and a thick wool jacket. He was sitting in a puffy lounge chair off in a corner of the store. Several books were lying next to him and one was open in his lap. He also had a notepad out and was writing furiously in it. I guessed it was in response to whatever he was reading because he'd read a while, impatiently turning the pages. Then he'd write fast and hard in his notebook-- like he had important or relevant ideas that had to be recorded right that second. Those singular loners in bookstores, prophet beards, a stack of chosen books nearby, their faces very serious, so intent on what they are doing. Whenever I see them I want to ask what it is they're writing-- their own stories, or arguments to whatever it is they're reading? Madness or brilliance being scribbled page after page. For whom?

CarrollBlog 6.14
Beautiful Creature
by Hafiz

There is a beautiful creature living
in a hole you have
dug.

so at night I set fruit and grains and little pots of wine and milk
beside your soft earthen
mounds.

and I often sing to you,
but still, my dear, you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with someone
who is hiding inside
of you.

We should talk about this problem,
otherwise I will never
leave you
alone!

CarrollBlog 6.13
A friend just had a baby. Watching her look at the infant, I realized something I knew but had never registered before-- there is a very special expression that women with infants (in particular) get on their faces when looking at their babies. I have never seen it on anyone else, but on new mothers I've seen it frequently. Even when a woman is with her partner, the father of the child, that singular look is only for her baby and has nothing to do with him, no matter how close they are. It says at the heart of the matter it's just you and me, child. Everyone else in the world, including your father, is over *there*. There's them and there's us. Forevermore an invisible line divides the rest of the world from the two of us.
--------------------------
"Tattoos are reverse time machines: with time travel you can send a warning back to your younger self, with tattoos you send a mistake forward to your older self."

CarrollBlog 6.11
Annual
by Robyn Sarah

The yearbooks are out today, with the ink
barely dry on their gleaming pages,
the faint puke-smell of the new bindings.

On the bus, shagged and curly heads converge over
the disappointing spread of candid shots
on center facing pages - random snaps
where everyone who matters is blurred or too tiny
or was looking the wrong way when the shutter clicked,

and after they've each checked out their own
and each other's mug shots, and those of an acknowledged
hunk or two ('Too bad guys, doesn't he look
retarded in that picture?') you can almost
feel the thought rise: Is that it then?
four years reduced to this thin, already-
thumbed album of postage-stamp grins
and badly cropped halftones in a grey collage
of moments no one remembers?

Tomorrow they'll tote it back to school though,
to whip from their graffitied bags
in the mandatory feeding frenzy
for autographs — everyone's, please.
Now and only for a second
is let-down palpable in the air,
like a half-formed bubble wobbling
on the wand, then sucked back.
In a moment they'll swarm to their feet
and pull the bell (each at least once)
as they stream for the door, flashing shoulder-
freckles, wrist-bangles, navels like thumbprints in
June-white midriffs, damp wisps at the nape
wafting back a fine vapor
of girl sweat and spray cologne.

CarrollBlog 6.10
Walking towards me is a spectacular looking young woman on crutches. It's plain she's in a great deal of pain. Her face twitches, tightens, then relaxes with every step she takes. I find myself staring at her more because I never think of beautiful people in great pain. Only mortals feel pain-- or embarrassment, confusion or sadness. Although of course beauties do-- just not out here in plain view. However people this gorgeous aren't really mortal for the few seconds we usually see them breeze by us, floating an inch or two off the ground on their small clouds of wonderfulness. Not today though. No matter how stunning, this woman with her grimaces and tiny pained steps is very much one of us.
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the astonishing work of the artist Ron Mueck:
http://bit.ly/AN29N

CarrollBlog 6.8
The new issue of CONJUNCTIONS magazine is an interesting one. They asked me to write a story for it and the wonderful Powell's Book Store in Portland ran a week long blog about the issue. Here's my bit:

Although it may sound like oxymoron, the term “Impossible Realism” makes a great deal of sense when we permit ourselves to look beyond the quotidian and once again open up fully to wonder, like we did as children. This is why cheesy horror films and great works of the imagination ‘outside the box’ have one important thing in common-- when they succeed, both leave audiences wide-eyed, hand slapped over the mouth, and awestruck. They make us whimper, laugh or cheer like we never do on normal Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays in the middle of our lives. But because at their best they fully engage the imagination, we willingly give up our normal ho-hum to live in worlds where Orcs exist, Freddy Kruger sticks his claws through the wall, or Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and sees a bug’s body rather than his own. Living in these extraordinary realities we are fully alive and engaged, thinking with our hearts instead of our heads, willing to go anywhere the stories go because we are in their thrall.
For many adults however, wonder is a guilty pleasure like reading comic books, singing karaoke, or eating Hostess Snowballs. It’s something for kids—childish and beyond a certain age vaguely embarrassing. Not something you admit doing if you want to keep your good standing in the Adult Community.
On the other hand, mention names like Murakami (giant talking frogs), Gogol (detached noses found in loaves of bread), Ionesco and his rhinoceroses, Jonathan Lethem (animal private investigators), the wilder short stories of Hawthorne, Julio Cortazar and his human axolotl, Goethe and Christopher Marlowe (Dr. Faustus, I presume?) and the literati quickly bow their heads in deference.
What is more realistic than a bed? Where do we let our guards down more than when we slide beneath the sheets at night and say okay, I’m done. Then we switch off the light, expecting both us and this hour to fade to black.
But do they? What about that little engine called the unconscious that never stops working and never stops surprising us with its remix tape of our day? How many times do we wake up in the morning and the first thing out of our mouth is where did THAT dream come from?
My story for this issue of CONJUNCTIONS came from staring too long at a beautiful black and white photograph by Walker Evans. The picture is of an unmade bed. It looks like someone just got up from either a night full of dreams or messy passion. You’ve seen that bed a hundred times because it is your bed. But what if you were to wake up one morning and something about that bed was different? What if this thing so normally normal had transformed overnight into something… Impossible?

CarrollBlog 6.4
Carefully watch the look on peoples' faces one moment after they say goodbye to each other. That first look "alone" tells you a lot about the dynamic of their relationship. That hand holding couple kissing and then walking off in different directions: the man's expression is all happily in love and he misses her already. But the woman's look is pure relief-- you can plainly see she's glad to be by herself once more. The boy and his mother saying goodbye. She takes two steps away, then looks over her shoulder to see if he's still there or all right.. pure Mom stuff. The boy on the other hand shoots away, a free single man again, Mom-less. The two workers in paint-spattered clothes who shake hands and then go their separate ways-- you can see how happy they are to have been with each other just now. Both of them are wearing almost identical happy grins.

CarrollBlog 6.3
There was a haunting detail on TV last night about that Air France plane crash off the coast of Brazil. They were interviewing the wife of one of the victims, an English woman. She couldn't keep her hands still as she spoke and kept repeating this one detail-- "I keep calling his cell phone and it rings! That means something don't you think? I mean if he's at the bottom of the sea, his cell phone wouldn't ring, would it? He never has his cellphone on, but now it is and keeps ringing!"

CarrollBlog 6.2
In the subway station the old nun is sitting by herself on a bench. She's smiling like a sunbeam and it's hard not to smile too once you see her. When she sees me looking, she gestures me over with a quick urgent wave of her hand. I walk nearer and she points to what she's holding on her lap. At first I can't make out what's there other than a large wicker basket-- the kind you take to market-- covered with a cloth. But what's beneath the cloth is what she wants me to see. She pulls it back and I see a metal cage. Inside are two bright yellow birds hopping around. I look at them and then again at her. She's smiling and nodding--aren't they wonderful?
_________________________
Read it today because it will in all likelihood, be gone tomorrow:
http://www.powells.com/blog/?header=Sub:%20The%20Powells%20Blog

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