COASTING

With everything spread out on Donal and Mike's vast rosewood dining table, our team of four collated, trimmed, stapled, re-trimmed, banded, and photo-inserted right up until 7:19 before racing over to Tiga with our story cargo. The books came out beautifully and the crowd turnout made my heart grow a size. Thank you all my dear friends who showed up to hear us read and who bought 7" stories and hung out.

June will hopefully bring the next edition, and then July another set. I have some fantastic authors lined up. Maybe I can keep doing them remotely from Oberlin next year as well--as if I needed another excuse to visit Portland as often as possible. I am doing my best to avoid pre-missing. I am already all too susceptible to pre-nostalgia.

The next day T & I went to the coast to stay with friends who are renting a sweet little sea-shack at Cape Meares.

Emmett originally came from Tillamook County, perhaps the coast, who knows? He was the happiest I've ever seen him. Galloping down the beach, nose perpetually atwitch, investigating beach mortuary (is this particular cove where all sea birds go to die?), sunbathing flat-out on the deck.

We wandered the beach and the wetlands, read, lounged, ate, drank wine and coffee, lay in a hammock, drew, made silly video clips, etc.

Time went more slowly, in the best possible way. Probably at least partly due to freedom from internet. I think there is no wi-fi in paradise. I need to get there.

SEVEN INCHES OF LOVE

Tonight is the launch of the brand-new series of Seven-Inch Story Singles.

You know how in music, before you put out a record, you can put out a single? Or how if you like a band or are curious, you can get the single and try it out?

That's the idea, but with STORIES. One story, a little book the size of a 7" record single. This is something I have been hatching for some time, and finally the egg has cracked. I am pausing from the printing, scoring, folding, and assembling process right now to write this. Which I should have done sooner, like everything in my life.

So for this first edition, the stories are by Donal Mosher and me, Chelsey J. My story involves homoerotic high school wrestling and worksheets; Donal's has drag queens and funny sordid tales and, for this special first-night printing only, inserts of real photo triptychs that are totally beautiful, wall-worthy.

Master book crafter Iris Porter made letterpress covers and I designed the pages with the Golden Ratio, a.ka. the Divine Proportion. (Donal's is perfectly golden; my story, I'll confess, is so long I had to tarnish it some.)

Because readings are always better in good lighting with a cocktail in hand, we are holding it at TIGA at NE 14th and Prescott. (Cozy, clear-aired, with delicious food and drinks, and the awesome proprietress bartender Maryam.)

It's tonight Saturday, May 10 at 7:30 pm.

Followed by Tiny Vinyl, a DJ pair who plays only 45s!

A night of seven-inch glory!

If you are in Portland, come hear us read and if you want you can even procure your own limited edition story to take home and read in bed. We're only making a couple score of each.

We promise to read with gusto. We abhor the monotone.

I had better finish making these things now.

PLATYPUSARY

Exciting news on the platypus, one of my favorite creatures on earth! That is not an ironic exclamation point. ("Henry James said you get eight to use in your lifetime," growled my late great teacher Frank Conroy, and yes, I'm using one of them now.) Scientists have unraveled the platypus's genetic code, and it is an evolutionary treasure, bearing avian, reptilian, and mammalian features.

The platypus is intensely private and secretive. From their first discovery by British scientists in the late 1700s, they have proven maddeningly elusive. Few people ever see them in the wild, they are difficult to catch, and they seldom give birth in captivity (only twice since 1944.) They have poisonous spurs on their feet. They are much more intelligent than their fellow monotreme the echidna (i.e. the only other egg-laying mammal.) And they have voracious appetites--a platypus can catch and eat half its own weight in one feeding--and a sixth sense, an electrosensory ability to detect even minute changes in the electrical field generated by their prey.

In her delightful book Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World, Ann Moyal describes how in 1943, Winston Churchill himself initiated the plans for the first platypus to be brought alive to Europe. After months of covert planning--for some reason, it was treated as a top-secret operation--Winston set sail in his platypusary-equipped ship. Alas:

Almost through the Atlantic, a thriving and healthy Winston was feeding ravenously. Wihtin four days' sail of England, disaster struck. The ship's sonar detected the presence of a submarine. The rapid discharge of depth charges into the surrounding waters saved the ship and its men. But the jarring detonations instantly killed the platypus. His highly sensitive, nerve-pocked bill, designed as a complex sense organ to detect the smallest insect at the bottom of the river and to respond to the slightest vibrations of the natural world, was unable to deal with the violent explosions of men.

In same book, you can read all about how the platypus (once it was determined to be a real creature, not a jackalope-type hoax) was caught up in a 90-year debate about taxonomy, creation, and evolution, with massive infighting involving Sir Richard Owen and Charles Darwin himself. Plus it contains beautiful color plates of old platypus drawings.

On that note, here is an assortment of pictures from the folder called PLATYPUS on my computer. I don't know where they all came from, apologies to the original photographers and posters of them, whomever you may be. Behold, enjoy, marvel.

P.S. Also, platypuses do not have nipples--they secrete milk through their skin!

A BITTER MINT JULEP

Eight Belles running, Eight Belles down. From the NY Times.

I didn't actually mean to watch the Kentucky Derby. I was making chocolate cupcakes, and I happened to step into the living room with sticky spatula in hand about a minute into the race. So I saw Big Brown surge way ahead, and Eight Belles gamely holding on behind him, the only one who could even close to keep up, and the victory, and the absurdly privileged son being obscured by his mother's giant flapping Derby hat as she hugged him. I felt both revolted and intrigued by the commentators' reiterations of how amazing it was that this was li'l Jacob's first Derby he'd ever attended and his braggart dad's horse won the race. In my head this instantly became the genesis of a novel that would inevitably tangle into a patrilineal mess of resentment, inadequacy, and failed entitlement.

Then the camera cut to a distant shot of Eight Belles, an ominous silhouette, lying on her side. A dog or cat sprawled on his side looks the like the ultimate relaxed. But a horse on her side looks terribly wrong, a mountain tipped, a ship blown over.

“She went out in glory,” [her trainer] said, his voice breaking. “She went out a champion to us.”

Broken-legged, lying in the dirt, with no comprehension of what had happened to her, no understanding of sacrifice, and no cause to have died for, by a needle injection at that, in front of an audience of drunk people in foolish hats--that's glory? And for some reason it only makes it sadder, to me at least, that it was the filly who broke her legs. The only girl in the game. Only 38 have entered the Derby before her, and only three have ever won.

Her story's like that of Ruffian, an all-time great. Ruffian also died at age three of a broken leg, following a match race (which they no longer do, as a result) with a colt called Foolish Pleasure. Her injury was particularly horrific; by the time they managed to halt her, her leg was so broken her foot was flopping like a half-on shoe. They did splint her and attempt to save her, but when she awoke from the anesthesia she thrashed so violently in her padded stall that she smashed her elbow, dislodged her cast, and sabotaged all the efforts of the surgery meant to save her. Down she went.

I used to be a total horse girl, one of those, with like sixty Breyer model horses that I bought with my babysitting money, each with its own name, kept in immaculate condition. I built makeshift stables out of scrap wood in the garage using a bandsaw, hammer, and nails, and I sewed little horse blankets that snapped around their chests. I had a pair of red cowboy boots I wore everywhere. My mom unearthed a list of life goals I made when I was eleven; one of them, a hybrid of my peaking horse-fanaticism and nascent feminism, was to raise the first Triple Crown-winning filly. (With many underlines and exclamation points.)

But then on a family trip to Winnipeg I actually saw my first real horse race at Assiniboine Downs. It was not at all what I thought. This was no Black Stallion or Seabiscuit romance. This was not down in the barn with the sweet smell of hay and horse sweat, the grooms currying hides to a sheen and prying dirt clods out of hooves, holding out a carrot to feel the huff of warm breath and velvet lips searching my open palm. It was concrete bleachers and betting windows and feverish-eyed, leisurewear-ed people milling around studying the fine print in booklets and chugging alcohol. It dawned on me that this business was not about the horses.

No matter how marvelous the animals or how seductive the faux aristocracy around it, there's ultimately no love, majesty, gallantry, or heroism in horse racing. Inbred, shot up with painkillers, anti-inflammatories, and steroids that keep them going at any cost, they're just bred and flogged toward the money.

INCIDENT REPORT #7

Park Rapids recently got two feet of snow in two days. Even the snowplows got stuck.

Needless to say, the Incident Report is saturated with rollovers and stuck-ness. Here is a selection of recent shenanigans:

A Park Rapids service counter representative reported an intoxicated customer; A pregnant woman reported being pushed and harassed by a male in Park Rapids; "Mudding" was reported on a closed forest road in Lakeport Township; A male was reported running southbound without a shirt, yelling for help with a bunch of guys chasing him in Farden Township (call cancelled, kids were making a video for YouTube); A caller reported he had a vehicle stolen and tracked it to a salvage yard, where it had been crushed; A water fountain was stolen from the Flower Boutique while in the process of moving; A stolen - and recovered- van was stuck in Straight River Township; Loud music and loud exhaust were reported in Park Rapids; A hitchhiker was reported flipping people off and "flashing" just west of Park Rapids; Passing on the right was reported in Straight River Township [note: this is reported on two separate days]; A male was reported to be possibly buying liquor for minors in Park Rapids; A verbal altercation was reported by Nevis School; A Park Rapids caller reported finding a locked safe under the Red Bridge; A male was reported trying to break down a door in Lake Hart Township, caller was hit in the face and cell phone taken; A field was on fire in Helga Township, imperiling buildings; Tires were taken from a vehicle parked at the county garage; Wood was reported stolen from property in Crow Wing Lake Township; A boat came off a trailer in Park Rapids; A young male reported his parents are in the ditch; A Hubbard Township caller reported his mother stuck in the ditch, twice.

The heifers, however, retain their typical pragmatism and foresight (as per caption.)

"LAZY WRITING"

The Labi Siffre records arrived and here's the full version of what I mentioned earlier, as it appears in the liner notes of Remember My Song, re: Eminem's sampling of "I Got The..." in his hit "My Name Is."

I've read several inaccurate reports about that song so I will clarify.
1) I wrote it (including the bass riff)
2) When asked to give permission for the sample to be used, I requested changes because I thought some of the lyric was lazy writing. Attacking two of the usual scapegoats, women and gays, is lazy writing.

If you want to be radical, if you want to do battle, attack the aggressors, not the victims. Attack the abusers of power. Attack theism (the new fascism). Attack Christian religious leaders who don't live in poverty, preferring not to emulate JC. Attack child abuse where most happens: in the home. Attack believers who incite the murder of wielders of free expression. Attack corrupt politicians and systems.

"Woman is the nigger of the world." Bravo Yoko. They do about 70% of the work, control about 1% of the resources. They bear most of the effects of war, famine and poverty. Around 80,000,000 of them have to put with the pain and medical problems of female genital mutilation purely to please the fragile egos of gutless men. How would Eminem 'n' Dre and their record company executives feel about having to piss through a straw for the rest of their bladder-infected lives. You wanna be radical? Attack sexism. Attack racism and heterosexism self-servingly euphemised as homophobia. It ain't a phobia. It's bigotry plain and simple, like racism--and no, just like heterosexuality, it ain't a preference, bro. Rant over.

Had it been original work, I would have noted it as the common currency of badly written rap (bitches, hoes 'n' fags) and got on with my stuff. But I don't want my work to be used that way. They made the changes. I gave my permission. It was a success. Smiles all around. End of story.

Plus how great is this album cover.

LESSON IN THE DARK

A Taiwanese student whose writing I adore wrote in her essay about manga:

The "Black Jack" series is not popular here because America doesn't like a lesson in the dark; they like to say anything on the surface.

SOUNDS AND NOISE

Last weekend I loaded into the rock camp van with a couple of comrades and we went up to Seattle to check out the Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project. All conferences are essentially the same, I think: this structure of panels with three or four people saying different things about the same thing, or saying different things about different things, as it often turns out, followed by some windy and/or wonky audience questions, followed by everyone shuffling out for a ten-minute break and then shuffling into another room. The rooms are windowless, the chairs in rows, the panelists seated with their elbows resting on a beclothed folding table. This was all true at EMP, but the rooms were pretty cool--the one in the Sci-Fi museum part looked like it molten red lava or Mars or something. (Exhibit A: Douglas Wolk giving his funny and smart and well-technologically-endowed presentation on "The Battle of the Green Berets." Always such a pro.)

What's cool about the EMP Pop Conference is that the idea is to give writers and critics a forum to present their work like art--more like a festival than professional development. I won't go on at length about all I saw, I just want to hit on a couple pieces that really stuck with me, the ones where I left hungry to know more.

Charles Aaron, the music editor at Spin, delivered a really beautiful, heartfelt talk about Labi Siffre, whom I'd never heard of before. It was a simple talk, read straightforwardly from a paper, and at times it almost sounded like he had a lump in his throat. You could tell he really felt it, this love and respect for Labi Siffre, not just an analytical or academic interest.

Notes on Labi Siffre: He had a few hits in the 70s and 80s, notably "Something Inside So Strong," and Eminem and Kanye West have sampled his songs for some of their hits. Born to a Nigerian father and a Barbadian/Belgian mother. Gay. Met his partner when he was 19 and the partner 38, and they're still together. "Something Inside So Strong" is ostensibly an anti-apartheid anthem but the lyrics are straight-up liberation that could just as well be gay.

When Eminem came to him to clear the sampling rights for his first hit single, "My Name Is," Siffre said he'd do it only on the condition that he rewrite some sneery lyrics about a gay teacher. Eminem complied. In his own subsequent liner notes, Siffre wrote that we should go after aggressors, not victims--he said degrading women and gays is "lazy writing." In two words, that's the most succinct and apt critique I think I've read on that.

Siffre has a blog which is apparently his primary artistic output right now.


This guy spoke too. This is pretty much all I remember. A lot of stuff about Mudhoney.

The last talk I saw--because after it I couldn't imagine sitting through anything else--was Daphne Carr's paper correlating musicality with sexuality--namely, extreme loudness and masochism. This too was an intensely felt presentation, obvious in the occasional quaver and long pause as well as in the gradually more personal revelations, though it followed a more deliberate structure. First, the science of noise, and I loved all this, the way the sound is created from feedback, the physics and physiology of it. Our bodies are full of liquids that vibrate with sound; the proximity of other bodies alters and sets the co-vibration; even when you plug your ears, sound enters through your nose and mouth.

Then the social dynamics of live shows, etc., and finally she worked up to the heart of the piece, where musicality and sexuality meet. The punishment avenue to pleasure of masochistic sexuality=the painful intensity of experiencing noise. The noisemaker is not a sadist, she said, but a sadomasochist sympathetically offering pleasure to his fellow pain-seekers. Finally, a silent slideshow of rapidly shifting words and phrases, simple white text on black, then 3, 2, 1, period, and an immense noise blasted from the giant speakers, filling the room, heavy and all-encompassing. It went for about a minute. Shivers ran up and down my body again and again. It was visceral and awesome in the classic sense of the word.

End result: I ordered two Labi Siffre albums. I went to see Thurston Moore the other night and I thought about the sound traveling into me and the liquids in my body vibrating and co-vibrating. I even, I'll admit, opened my mouth for maximal admittance (Trees Outside the Academy is one of my favorites of late). I had gotten a little jaded about shows, like oh big deal, stand in a room for three hours, shifting from hip to hip, stretching up on tiptoes trying to peer around the huge dude inevitably planted in front of me. But now I got to thinking differently about it, the science and the sound of it, and I felt the way that live music is more than just sound and sight, that it's in your whole body, that it's a non-replicable feeling and experience. It revived my interest in going to shows and being in the singular moment. No camera. No saving it for later. Just being there and feeling it.

This I could stand to do more of in the rest of my life as well.

OH-HIO

The library at Oberlin is a looming concrete box with tall dark windows, heavy and gray; its name, Mudd, is all too apt. But inside--and I did not adequately appreciate* this until a few years later, when I was working at a design magazine--it is decked out in full technicolor '70s drag.

A row of Eero Aarnio ball chairs--which everyone there calls womb chairs--lines the east-facing windows on every floor.

(Top floor: orange.)

The centerpiece of the library is this sprawling rainbow configuration of soft blocks. Best nap zone in the world!


And color-coded study zones are planted everywhere--in the sprawling obvious places along windows and bookshelves, but also tucked in tiny pockets and dim out-of-the-way corners, some as still and untouched as empty movie sets.







What I later figured out were Aarnio "Pastil" chairs used to sit out on the roof all winter, pooling rain or humped with snow, like lawn furniture. (They're gone now--rescued, I hope, and not discarded.)

Dear Oberlin, please never renovate.

*"Adequately appreciate." I thought about this later when I was walking the dog. Why is it that to know the name of something--to be able to identify the designer, the market value, the vintage--qualifies as "proper" appreciation? In fact, as a student I demonstrated my great appreciation for the furnishings of Mudd Library by delightedly slinging my whole body onto them every day, even though I didn't know who Aarnio was or that a womb-chair is worth a zillion dollars. Really, it's a far more tactile and real enjoyment than skulking around the library taking snapshots of them. Fortunately, next year I can do both of these things.

THE IMPOSTOR PHENOMENON

The impostor phenomenon is the feeling that despite your achievements, secretly you're a fraud, and you're going to be discovered--that feeling that you've somehow made it to where you are not on the basis of your personal merits and work, but a fluke.

You know what I mean? A good thing happens, and you think, Uh-oh, this can't really be for me. Wrong name, wrong info, someone mixed up the orders and I was supposed to get the plate of Sorry, not Congrats.

I think most people I know have felt it in some way or another. When I arrived at grad school, certain that my admission was some kind of accounting error that would now be corrected ("oops, that was supposed to be for Chelsea Johnson,") several of my classmates confessed the same lingering dread that the acceptance letter had been a mistake and that they too would be imminently, apologetically sent home.

Impostor syndrome can be totally debilitating and destructive, of course, but it can also be understandably common in certain contexts (see above). And in its milder form, says the New York Times, it can function as a social strategy, a way of self-deprecating to set low expectations that you can easily meet and exceed. ("Feel Like A Fraud? At Times, Maybe You Should.") Also, it affects women more, particularly high-achieving women.

The feeling tends to manifest itself in one of three ways, as per this older but more detailed Times article:

Workaholics, who attribute their achievements to their compulsive efforts. They are so fearful of failing that they approach every task as though it were crucial.Because they never slack off, they never learn whether or not their own innate ability would carry them through, and so perpetuate the sense that without efforts greater than everyone else, they would be exposed as failures.

Magical thinkers, who prepare for tasks under the burden of intensive visions of failure. Because their preparation typically ends in success, they see their worrying as always paired with success and an essential ingredient. Thus thoughts about failure become superstituously liked with efforts toward achievement.

Charmers, who flatter or flirt with their superiors, while doubting their basic ablity to succeed without these wiles. When success does come, they attribute it to their looks or social skills, rather than to their own competence.

Anyone else out there know what I'm talking about? For me, it dissipates once I get into the thing and get my footing, but anytime I'm offered a new good thing it rears up again--I will be unmasked--and here come the anxiety dreams every night.

Another useful thing I learned from this is that both "impostor" and "imposter" are acceptable spellings.