death – Andrew Leland

FB: Do you wanna read this post?

JJK: I’m busy with family

FB [lilting]: Tell me about the last 40 days of your life!

JJK: My aunt has dementia. I’m a human salad

FB: James Salter is verrrrrry important to me, professionally

JJK: If a professional copyeditor were to ask you out, and you weren’t married, would you?

FB: Would I what?

JJK: Would you consider?

FB: Consider what?

JJK [lilting]: would you consider taking her by the hand… leading her down the aisle… remembering all her most personal details…passwords, leggings sizes, ratios of incline…

FB: Like in literary theory?

JJK: A little!

FB: Wakefield. I’m worried about not being an activist?

JJK: Let’s talk it through. What’s wrong?

FB: Injustice. Social justice. Social injustice. Environmental catastrophe.

JJK: OK, and?

FB: We should be involved.

JJK: Join a synagogue?

FB: There aren’t any good ones nearby.

JJK: Get a PhD in sociology?

FB: Same.

JJK: Why don’t you and your wife make a list of 95 things that are important to you and post in Lutheran style on your door (fridge door) to remind you of what you think is very important

FB: That’s an adorable idea. What’s on the list?

JJK: You tell me?

FB: The ride in the wedding bus with other 30somethings, only 1/5 of whom you know, but everyone is wasted and mutually connected to Alixia and John.

JJK: A flame-retardant bunnysuit

FB: Climate change

JJK: Income inequality

FB: snarky book review culture

JJK: Attention deficit caused by pinterest, primarily by pinterest but also SEO

FB: Webinar fatigue

JJK: Student Debt Crisis

FB: various bubbles

JJK: Greece

FB: Ham; microwaving plastics and chemicals leaching into your food; leaching as a process more generally

JJK: I could continue alternating between actually serious issues and funny impressionistic worrying ideas but why would I?

FB: “You’re doing important cultural work”

JJK: Selfishness is a pretty gradient… I feel like I’m closer to the UV spectrum of selfishness, I will donate more money soon

FB: So the real list would be let’s say 10 things — income inequality, social justice (too broad?), campaign finance reform, climate change, poverty, hunger, some of these could be collapsed. Then once a week the two of you sit down and go through the list and resolve to do one thing for one of the things.

JJK: What would I do for “Social justice”?

FB: I don’t know.

JJK: Climate change?

FB: Solar panels?

JJK: campaign finance reform?

FB: I’d write a letter.

JJK: To whom?

[The anthropocene or whatever comes]

Here I weep
Baby Streep.
My Meryl. O peep

Nat’s poems
Took a while
To write.

I rigged a giant foam finger to the top of my SUV, so my Explorer is referring to itself, bouncing down Pico

Fucking farmer

My dad’s subscription
to Wired
in 1995—[womanly regard??]

Leaving verbs out of a poem
To make it sound Poemy

Do you think foam is funny, you fuck?
Wish you were a washed-up professional mtn biker?
Wish you raced with a plastic water-bottle full of espresso?
Berms? Where’s Jon? I thought I saw him the other day.

Question-litanies are poemy.
In MFA programs they teach you to cut out the more self-reflexive stanzas?

—I quit.
—[Histrionic and relieved protests] No! You’re “invaluable”! What else will you do? You’ll be hanging by your neck from the rafters of the graduate student lounge by 2014. You know hanging yourself makes you involuntarily void your bowels, right?
—I thought that was a Wild West Tale. That won’t happen to me in the Midwest. The Midwest has a protective psychic mojo for me. The Age of Wire and String is nonfiction, as far as I’m concerned. This blog, read by your coworkers, makes it difficult for you to make the argument that you’re “too busy” to take on new responsibilities.
The periodical I work for had a typo in it. I am going blind. Typos are like tiny optical illusions. Is that microskull really a wee, skull-shaped loaf? It’s hard to tell. It’s easy to miss.
—That’s not a reason to quit. You’re like the—
— …drummer from Def Leppard. I know you, Barry.
[Slowly zoom in on the fan. Then, using a Video Toaster, the fan blades chop/dissolve into the next scene. The next scene is identical.]

—When the band sings the song with the lyrics that refer to the name of the town they’re playing in–
—I know. You love that.
—I do. The people who shout their nonverbal appreciations —
—You love them. I do too.

Franc Brasscombe

Richard John Cyril “Rick” Allen