Letters From Little Rock

I have had my sleep study and it is confirmed; I have sleep apnea. it is also confirmed that I was not overreacting. Apparently the percentage of red blood cells carrying oxygen should be between 90 and 99. Mine fell below sixty percent during the night of the sleep study. In and of itself the sleep study went a little better than I expected. I am by nature a fairly private person and almost nothing is more private than sleep, so I was not at all comfortable with the idea of being monitored all night while I slept. It really wasn’t as bad as I had feared. My one uncomfortable moment actually came when I woke up. I had to go in earlier than what my normal sleeping hours so after an hour of staring at the ceiling they gave me a sleeping pill to get me conked out. I guess I just imagined it, but it seemed like that was the best night’s sleep i’d had in months and when I woke up I felt a little foolish. I figured I had wasted everybody’s time since I’d slept so good. So I actually felt pretty relieved when we started going over the data and it turned out to be pretty severe. That’s kind of a perverse reaction I guess, but better than being embarrassed, eh?

Of course the only really embarrassing thing was seeing myself in the mirror after I had all of the wires and sensors attached to me. In order to do the study they attach wires to: both legs to check for restless leg syndrome, two sensors to your chest to measure expansion and contraction so they know how much effort your breath takes, three sensors to your chest to monitor your heart beat, five or six sensors to your scalp to monitor your brain activity, two to the area of your eyes to know when you are in rem sleep, two to your jaws to let them know if you grind your teeth at night, one to your throat to know when you are snoring, and just to top things off they shove two tiny little sensors in your nose to monitor airflow. These items are all taped or pasted to you so they don’t come off in the night. You can imagine how you look with all of this draped on you as you fumble around in the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I hope sometime soon I’ll be able to pick up my CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine. I put off going to the doctor for far too long and now that I’ve made up my mind to take care of it I’m more than just a little impatient. It’s really frustrating that I’ve let it get to the point where it interferes with my work, but I live alone so I’ve been a little slow to realize how bad I snore. On the other hand I really haven’t had a good night’s sleep in what seems like years, so It’s really just my own damn fault.

The older I get the more often it seems like I have to say that.

It’s a little early yet, but I’ve decided to call it; the year is officially lousy. I’ve had about the most aggravating start to a year that I can recall. I have an ongoing sleep issue that I think is sleep apnea (but I won’t know for sure until after the sleep study), I have a couple of new side projects at work that have required me to go in to work early several times (which exacerbates the sleep apnea issue), my shower began leaking around the door and made a sodden mess of my bedroom carpet, and just this weekend I had to work a Sunday to try to get caught up on work I missed because the plant took a snow day Friday and my hot water heater began leaking gas. I only caught the gas leak because I opened my gas bill and found to my shock and horror that I owed $244. Last month my bill was a little high at $95 but I chalked that up to the cold weather we were having and the fact that the rates always go up a bit during the winter. $244 on the other hand is about half of my normal gas bill for the entire year.

Just a lousy damn year.

Well, the last time I decided to get back in the swing of things here I promptly caused technical difficulties galore and, owing to hellish amounts of overtime at my day job, never got around to correcting those problems for quite some time. I am not working quite so much overtime now so it should not be too darned tough to keep up with this a bit more regularly. Mind you, I’m not a fanatic.

I am still a relatively unpublished and unpublishable poet, although I am going through one of my periods of actively submitting to every magazine under the sun. I am also shopping around a couple of book manuscripts that are also likely to wind up self-published before long if they continue to draw the same level of interest they have found so far (which is to say none). People who spend a lot of their time submitting articles and poems and what not to little magazines are accustomed to rejection letters that come in two flavor, form rejections and personal rejections. Most folks prefer to have a personal rejection even if it is just a hastily scribbled “thanks, but no thanks” rather than a form letter. I’m almost to the point of deciding I’d rather receive a form letter. I’ve gotten a few rejections in the last year or so that are of the “really enjoyed your work. We can’t use it, best of luck elsewhere” variety. I don’t know why it bugs me, but it bugs me. I think I’d feel better if they just came out and abused the work. I mean if they don’t want to publish it, doesn’t that mean they don’t like it? Why not tell me so? Maybe I should introduce them to some of the women I’ve asked out in the last year. none of them had any problem with finding fault.

On the other hand, if women had a form letter for that, the world would be a better place.

As always I’m of two minds about how best to deal with the division between work and life. We all know the day job is not nearly as important as the real work, whether the real work is writing poetry or planting turnips or restoring antique sewing machines. It’s just awfully hard to get paid for the real work. I think sometimes that I’m tied to the day job a little too strongly and would be better served if I quit and went to work for taco bell or something. Of course I’ve been poor and there really is no way to compare the free time I had then to the free time I have now. For one thing working at the lower end even when you do have time off you frequently don’t have time to enjoy it. In the middle class pay range I find myself in now, I can hire someone to fix the car or replace the motor on my washing machine. When you’re poor you get to do those things yourself or they don’t get done. In some ways money really does equal time for me at this point.

On the other hand, I’m finding myself sort of stuck at the day job. Unless I’m willing to go get a business degree, it looks like I won’t ever get promoted again. On the other hand I’m already making way above what a fellow with a high school diploma can reasonably expect to make. The way I see it, four years with no spare time to write poetry and drink wine would be a pretty arid four years. I’m going to turn forty this year and the years between forty and fifty are typically pretty productive years for writers. That’s not to say that writers inevitably decline once they hit fifty, but their aren’t a lot of folks who produced their major works past the half-century mark either. Basically the way I see it is that surrendering that much time out of what I’ve always figured would be my best decade would be giving up way too much.

I’m starting to understand the traditional Chinese idea of retiring from life, someday if I can just lay my hands on a couple of quiet acres in the woods I might try it.

Kirby: King of Comics was clearly a labor of love to Mark Evanier. Most people who read this blog probably have a pretty good idea of who Jack Kirby was, they probably know of a half dozen comic characters he created from Captain America to the Incredible Hulk to Darkseid. I would wager most of the people reading this blog probably don’t know much about Mark Evanier despite the fact that he is something of a celebrity in the world of comics having been a prominent presence at he San Diego Comic Convention pretty much forever (not to mention being the co-creator of Groo, one of the longest running creator owned comics of all time). Mark Evanier broke into comics as Jack Kirby’s assistant right about the time that Kirby left Marvel Comics for DC Comics and was present for the creation of some of Jack Kirby’s most innovative and beautifully designed comics ever. Kirby: King of Comics is not an in-depth biography of Jack Kirby, it is not a tell all expose, it is not even a thorough critical analysis of Kirby’s work. Of course it wasn’t intended to be either; it was intended to be a gorgeous art book that celebrates what was best about Jack Kirby and provides a certain amount of context for the pages (the many, many pages) of Kirby art that appear here. In that it succeeds wonderfully. It does, however, leave me wanting desperately to read the full biography that Evanier has been working on for years now. I’m not the sort of person that is eager to read all about a celebrity’s dirty laundry, but I would like to read a somewhat more candid account of Kirby’s side of several major conflicts that had an impact on the entire comics industry. I would also like to know a little more about Kirby’s response to the absolute abuse to which he and his work were subjected in the late seventies and early eighties. To me those are the interesting things that were either glossed over or not mentioned at all. The discontent Kirby felt during the end of his partnership with Stan Lee is well documented elsewhere and probably does not warrant much more mention in a book of this type and the dispute over the ownership of his original art is the stuff of industry legend so I can also understand that it didn’t receive full treatment here. But his response to the scorn and abuse that were heaped upon him at Marvel Comics after his return to the company in ’75 is something that has never really been put before the public. To be sure it is a small period of his career, but to return to a company that was making monstrous profits off of characters and concepts that were his (at least 85% of the entire output of the company at the time was the continuation of series and characters he had originated in the sixties) and to have Xeroxes of his current work defaced and posted on bulletin boards in the editorial offices must have been bitter indeed. Mind you this isn’t really a criticism. I’m certain that the full biography that Evanier is working on will give full treatment to these items; he has just piqued my curiosity to an unbearable degree, that’s all.

I feel I should reiterate that this is a gorgeous art book. My only real complaint is the complaint that can’t be helped; I wish there were more art in the book. When you stop to think about how many pages of Kirby art there are (he reportedly drew around 25 pages of comic art per week for over 25 years) you could easily fill ten books this size with rare and wonderful art. And I’ve seen a lot of this art before, but never reproduced this well or this large. It looks as though even some of the black and white art has been reproduced in full color. There are several pages that have paste ups and printers notes on them that show how carelessly comic book art was treated at times. I was especially glad to see so much of his pencil art reproduced here. As well regarded as his work is now it may need to be pointed out that in the seventies, even his best work was often dismissed as crude and ugly. Almost all of the positive criticism dealt with it as a progenitor of the psychedelic art of the sixties. It was certainly that, but that was a tiny part of what it was. For all of the talk about Kirby not being much of an anatomist, his characters all had movement and in many cases possessed more anatomical correctness than the static flayed figures of his peers. The flesh of a body is fluid in motion and Kirby captured that perhaps more fully than any other artist in any medium. It is also easy to tell from these full page reproductions of his pencil art that there are many types of shading that would have been impossible to ink for reproduction with the state of technology in comics printing in the sixties. To see those pages so lovingly reproduced here makes you stop to think what his work would have looked like if his peak had only come a decade or so later.

I’m not normally a fan of derivative works, but this particular use of the Garfield comic strip sends evil laughter roaring up and down my street, much to the chagrin of my neighbors. Actually I’ve always despised the strip. To be fair that is at least in part just my normal snobbish response to anything that is too popular for its own good. That and the soulless evil of the entire enterprise. Oddly enough I actually preferred U.S. Acres.

An odd little thing happened in my head about a week ago. Not to make too much of it, but it struck me rather forcefully. I was sitting in my chair listening to a little jazz and drinking a little coffee, basically following my after work routine as per my usual. I had picked up a book of Chinese poetry over the previous weekend and I was thumbing through it and enjoying the matter-of-fact expressions and descriptions of nature. I was drifting in the Zen zone when I was briefly interrupted by my dogs. Dogs have to go outside occasionally. When I got back to my chair, I picked the book up and realized with a start that I was in fact browsing through a copy of Raymond Carver’s collected poems. I had also picked it up over the previous weekend. Now, I know there isn’t much excuse for not being able to tell the difference between Raymond Carver and a comprehensive anthology of 3000 years of Chinese poetry, but in my defense the random opening of the book had put me in the middle of some poems that were not filled with telephones and automobiles or other obvious artifacts of modernity. Besides that the books are of similar heft and, though it’s hard to tell from the images in the links below, the dominant background color (especially on the back covers of the books) is a nearly identical light tan. Easy mistake to make.

I don’t know why this was such a total discombobulation to me, but it was. I guess the thing that bothered me so much was to know just how differently a person’s expectations could affect his reading of a poem. As a poet it would kind of bother me to know that someone who expects a poem noir experience might open one of my books and discover precisely what he expected despite the total absence of any intent or content of that type in my work. I understand how important context is, but without overstating it Raymond Carver’s poems really were ancient Chinese poetry there for a little while in my mind at least and I have a suspicion I might have performed the exact opposite feat of mental gymnastics if I had opened the Chinese anthology to Han Shan while expecting Carver. I’d like to think that the choices I make in diction and meter make a difference in the meaning of my poems, that the entire meaning of the poems I write is not dictated solely by a reader’s false impression and preconceived expectations. The very idea that I could be read as anything other than what I am distresses me. I don’t very much wish to be thought of as a beat poet or as a surrealist or as a post-modernist. I’m not sure why it would bother me to be misread so badly, but it would. So please don’t make the mistakes I have made, read the name on the cover twice before you crack the book open, and if you like a little splash of something-something in your coffee, at least splash it in after you’ve certified your reading expectations and reading material are cohabitating the same mental landscape.

On the other hand experience is real whether you understand it or not. In fact, I’m willing to state that Raymond carver is currently one of my favorite Chinese poets and probably always will be.

The job is starting to be a major source of stress again. It seems like we go through this every couple of years. Reorganization that is. Or disorganization. What ever you want to call it, it has made me stop and think, “five years ago when I thought this place was @#&@*! up like a football bat, those really were the good old days.” I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that every time we think there is a light at the end of the tunnel it turns out to be just another train on a collision course with ours. I have sneaking suspicion that every job feels that way a lot of the time if you are the kind of person who has a modicum of dedication and feels obligated to earn your pay, but lately I think we’re even stressing out the slackers.

On the other hand my next book is coming along nicely. I had planned to have it out in the spring of this year, but I may hold off until fall. There are a couple of things that I have already grown to question about it and I think it is really a kind of transitional work in a way. It’s hard to think of it like that when it isn’t even complete, but I see a lot of subtle changes in it that are probably not going to be obvious to the casual observer. Mostly it’s that I have a broader view in this than in my other two books, but at the same time a sharper focus.

I think.

I haven’t written anything new in a couple of months and that is usually a pretty good sign that I have gotten something out of my system so I can move forward to a new mode of expression so I’m a little nervous and expectant about what the new phase may turn out to be. Maybe that is what is exacerbating the work stress. I have coworkers who are more directly and negatively affected by what is going on because they have had to work seven days a week except for a handful of holidays for almost a year and a half now. When you do that your body becomes almost immune to the elevated background level of adrenaline. I know because 2005 was a similar sort of year and it took me almost all of 2006 to actually relax and enjoy a weekend off from work. Working 60 and 70 hour weeks is not just counterproductive, it’s a waking death. I hope we have found another light at the end of the tunnel, and I hope this one will not turn out to be the midnight ghost. Even first class freight trains are a bummer of a ride when they’re on the wrong track.

After my last WordPress upgrade I had technical problems that resulted in the loss of a number of posts. Since work was rather busy at the time and I was working on a book as well, I didn’t take time to figure exactly what was wrong. Basically I just put the blog on hold until I had time and energy to devote to some fairly serious trouble shooting. When I began fiddling around with my files prior to upgrading to WordPress 2.3.3 I figured out what was wrong and corrected it. Somehow I had created two admin folders with appalling results. At any rate, work has slowed down (sort of), my book is completed and released for sale, and I’m blogging here again as though it were of consequence to anybody but me. I plan to steer clear of sports blogging in the future since it’s addicting and ephemeral. With the exception of course of my fantasy football league; I’ve just joined a league for next season and they seem rather fanatic about it. I’m sure I won’t be able to resist occasionally praising (or lamenting) my acumen as an evaluator of talent.

I’ve been seeing more of an old friend lately, hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years even though I’d heard he was back in town. We have a few things in common, similar taste in music (we both have an affection for roots music of various sorts, folk ballads, bluegrass(he actually plays in a fairly successful bluegrass band called Runaway Planet), dead hillbillies of all sorts, that kind of thing), similar taste in pop culture, similar taste in literature apparently. The thing we have most in common though is that we’ve never met anybody’s expectations. I didn’t go to college despite the decent ACT score and scholarship offers, he went to college but unlike most folks of our generation didn’t fall prey to the mercenary approach to a degree and a profession and instead went to Germany to study philosophy. Most of my friends from high school are highly successful and would have been successful in almost any field they chose. There are a disproportionate number of engineers in our little circle of friends, but most of them could just as easily have gotten medical or business degrees and their lives wouldn’t have been much different. Me and old Steve took a different path and that kind of ties us together in some way.

I spent the fourth hanging out with him, mostly just conversing about balancing the creative and commercial aspects of grown up life, but also exchanging opinions about a lot of music and books that nobody else I know even cares about. With Steve it doesn’t take much to go from Segovia to Bobby Thompson to Seldom Scene to the Violent Femmes and from there it’s just a short hop to Knut Hamsen by way of Bukowski. It’s funny how much of that comes from having watched the same reruns and read the same comics in high school. He’s still one of the handful of folks who actually laugh at my jokes. I normally don’t talk too much, most of my conversation is expended on phrases like “is that so?” and “really? I did not know that”. I actually talked myself hoarse that night. To the point that I willingly drank water. Most of the people I can talk about music with are not into the same kind of things that I am, mostly they are younger and get excited about things like Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins that just seem so tame and by the numbers to me that I kind of glaze over and find myself thinking about people like Lou Reed and The Stooges and actually that’s the only point of intersection I seem to share with the twenty-something’s out there. Now if they will only do their homework and pick up some Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan we’ll really have something to talk about. Well, Audie of course knows all when it comes to music (Back when he worked at Barnes and Noble he shocked me one night by not only knowing who the Skillet Lickers were but by knowing that they might be shelved under Gid Tanner instead.) but he’s so much younger than me that we don’t share a lot of common experience as a frame of reference. With Steve it’s not just the fact that we grew up on the same reruns when reruns were actually reruns and not the sole content of a hundred cable channels, I think it’s also that we both knew what it was like to live outside of the main current of American culture from a fairly young age. Maybe it’s just that we’re both a little weird. After all the first thing he noticed the first time he was in my house was that I had ear plugs on the kitchen counter and this struck him as perfectly normal and didn’t require any comment other than, “you too?”

Yeah, me too.