Book review: The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm glad Mccarthy got his money's worth on the thesaurus he bought before setting out to write this monstrous piece of horse shit; here's a stellar example of his verbosity: the boy "was lean, wiry, rachitic". Really? "was" lean? Not "appeared" or the multitude of better words? I guess he used up all his energy looking up different way to say "skinny" that he had to phone it in with the easiest helping verb of all time. Oh, is it a testament to the sparse language of the book, you say? The writing is meant to parallel the bleak journey on the Road, Mr. McCarthy? Priceless metaphor, dickworm.

Another tiring-as-fuck metaphor from "The Road": hope. The hope coursing through the pilgrims upon arriving at a potentially lucrative spot (a house with food, boat...) paralleled my brief flickers of excitement that "oh, this is an interesting part....wait no. This book still sucks". I, like the boy and the man, trudged down The Road, waiting for something better. It's over now and I'm kind of wishing for the apocalypse.

Oh, and I wonder if it was cold? That wasn't beat into me hard enough.

Ironically, the only line which really resonated perfectly encapsulates this book: "He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it...". I can't remember anything valuable in this book, only the feeling of misery and self-loathing after having read it.


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Hunting Season

Stir not my dear, 
Please!
Sleep soundly while I plan,
Because you don’t have to be awake to be my man;
Nobody needs to know—not even you—that it’s all in my head,

Madly drawing, drawing 

on the perfect words we could have said.

Check my notes, 
because I've made sure our story ends 
with "happily ever after,"

Our fairy tale is oozing 
with mountains of fucking
love and laughter.

Because, you see sir, 

When forced to fill in those glaring empty slots and blank spaces,
Etched by unringing telephones and unkissed faces,
I must do my best to create a story that deters my tears,
One I can tell in my twilight years--
That you and I talked of love and read great poetry,
Sitting together, at that summer’s end, reciting Yeats, maybe?

Ah, yes! In our world I’m always smooth-skinned and tan;

Nobody can see the cut on my leg—at least I hope they can’t.

My hair is the perfect curly and smile so white;
Don’t worry, I don’t need you for this part--
You've been drawn in the perfect light.

What took me so long anyway? Oh, yes…
I hoped we’d do it together,
No bother at all though; I’ve created a better story in my letters.

So love me, or leave me, 
Just dim the lights when you go;
I crafted more lines for us to play out in our epic one-man show.

A Master of Her Craft

The hands of a poet

are being used to hide her face.

She finds safe nests 

in lava covered plateaus

(convincing herself that it’s for the best).

She’ll use the

intense heat and distorting burn marks,

to her advantage.

She thinks that it’ll make

a great prose piece someday.

Her stick is pen,

and her paper

superseded

with fiery floors.

Her words

never made less sense—

but she can’t stop now.

The lava is beginning to cool,

and her words may be set earthbound…forever.

While attempting to engrave her masterpiece,

she chisels the shape

of her hard round face

into the ground.

The edges aren’t too jagged,

but neither are hers.

And when the earth hardens

her face softens into its core.

This poet,

this glimmering creator

of passion and rhyme, claims

that she can’t see you,

so you can’t see her.

Hearts of Hoarfrost

Sir if you please,
I’ll get down on my knees—
My efforts to win your love are plenty.
I’ll bet to hold your attention
And get you to mention
my beauty, well...the possibilities are many;

Even cock-loving Wilde’s leer I could capture,
and suck into my rapture--
My abilities I can’t help but defend.
Yes, you may find it alarming,
But to most men I’m charming;
With these charms most would never contend;

Yet, I picture your ideal:
Her eyes bluer than steel,
Trilling her melodic and heavenly voice;
A buxom seaside girl
With flaxen springing curls;
An angel created by Joyce.

Well, I’m sure if I wear this,
Or continue to say this,
You’d scramble to lie by my side.
And your consistent denial
Of having me around for a while,
Will, God-willing, eventually subside.

After all, in regular fashion—

Even with Gonne-obsessed Yeats I’d imagine—

Men are sucked into my beam.-

This image of perfection I’ve painted,

Has been so highly rated,

Most boys get obsessed with my gleam.

So, if you’re not so sure

That I should be your whore,

I'll simply set all my clocks to your time.

How clearly you deny me

In an effort to try me!

To resist this is simply a crime.  

I've made myself easy,

Some might call me breezy,

It will be no struggle to get between my knees--

So when you come to your senses,

And stop putting up fences

I’ll open up for you, my love…rest at ease. 

The Witching Hours

My bookcase shelves a copy of the Holy Qu’ran with pages water damaged from the four times I drowned the book in a bowl of water and said a prayer to the Prophet. This is traditionally one of the many ways to break the curse of a Muslim witch. At first, my mother’s advice couldn’t have sounded more insolent; yet, I did it out of desperation to make all of it go away. Written in Arabic, full of shariah codes of conduct and misinterpreted veiling rites, this holy book sends a message of my past. Acting as a provocation to a thought, it marries cultural and personal disappointments while situating me in an unfortunate zone where outer and inner realities meet.

It started at age 13, as a frizzy-haired girl in Iran desperately trying to get through the annual family summer vacation when I saw him: my mother’s second cousin, related through marriage. He was handsome and tall, and upon my return to Iran on a snowy winter night at age 23 he was handsome and tall. And when I walked into the room he noticed, and I noticed that he noticed.

That chilly night his mother gave me a gold bracelet accompanied by a smile and a tray of lemonade. I smiled back and accepted both. The offer of a trip along the Caspian crept its way into our conversation and I readily accepted. We left a week later and I thought it was love. He really got me, and I so badly wanted to be gotten.  After 3 hours of windy roads and Persian carpet picnics along rivers and waterfalls, we arrived at our rented villa in the North. And after the perfunctory post-dinner game of gin rummy, we waited for everyone to go to bed, and snuck out to the seaside. We drank vodka smuggled in from Russia, and smoked cigarettes from Afghanistan and let our obsessions run along former soviet waters.

But, that night was the end of it all. The one room beach house does not make for comfortable mornings when a very Muslim mother sees a woman spooning her very Muslim son. I awoke to screams and curses pregnant with references to Allah and Muhammad and the departed. And then I knew I was fucked.

The next few days were difficult, as the shackles of Iranian propriety were fixed tight. Knowing that I was a guest and wouldn’t eat at her table unless offered, she didn’t offer me food for two days. Enduring these days of starvation, attempting to sneak food while she slept, getting caught, getting hit, yelled at and called a whore in more ways than I thought possible in Farsi, I ran away to a bus station. This was only to find that a woman cannot buy a bus ticket without a marriage certificate or the company of a man, same with a hotel room, and I had neither. All those emergency notes with Benjamin Franklin’s name and picture in my purse were worthless to me—just like his autobiography in high school.

I literally had nowhere to go. Hours later, and quite cinematically, he appeared at the bus station and bought us each a ticket to Isfahan. I spent a majority of the 10 hour bus ride to my grandmother's house mustering up the courage to ask about us...about this which we created on the beach. Together. Once he bid his farewell, I finally had the nerve to ask: “What happens now?”.  His reply was honest, and for that I will always be grateful; “I could never marry a whore. My mother sees you that way and that's what you'll always be in my eyes." A whore. A kiss whore. Because the reality was that we had only kissed that night on the beach…or ever. That was the last time I ever saw him. 

But the story doesn't end there. While at my grandmother’s house I got very sick. I started throwing up blood and dizziness ensued unless bedridden. This lasted for three weeks.  After various diagnoses, endless pills and tonics, I gave up. Soon after, my mom rushed into my room with a strange question: had I recently accepted gold jewelry from anyone? I realized the bracelet still encircling my wrist that his mother gave me. My mom ordered me to take it off immediately and pee on it. It was a way to break the curse. After three weeks I was willing to try anything. I was also curious as to why I was still wearing that bracelet. I peed on it and was better the next day. 

Now, years later, even though the physical part of the curse has been lifted—the greater and more profound cosmological effect still lingers. I have made this sequence of emotional events into a one-dimensional and quite simplistic vision: a witch put a curse on me that eliminated any chance of romantic happiness. I know this because I’m not married, and although I have had many offers, it never works out. This was the other part of her curse. I never thought I would fall in love with a distant relative, believe in witchcraft, pee on jewelry, or immerse holy scripture in water in order to ward off spirits. But, then I look at my bookshelf and cringe. I obviously believe in the curse, as I have tried to break it four times. Some objects exert a holding power because of the particular moment and circumstance they came into a person’s life. This Qur’an links the winter of 2000 to my historical narrative: a time machine to that week in the Caspian, lost love, a broken heart, and a witch’s curse fulfilled.

The days are getting longer

I’m sad today because…

My work crush is engaged  Conclusion: he doesn't want me

You would not want him. You want him to want you. It’s been a long time since a boy caught your attention, and you are out of practice with navigating through the complexities of a crush. While tricky to maneuver, it’s not impossible. Perspective is key: he is a repeat of that other boy with the fiancée. And the other one, too. Just be a fucking friend. That’s some beautiful shit, right there, if you can get it right.

I feel worthless at my job

Conclusion: I’m not perfect

Yeah, guess what. There are whole degrees for this shit and you came in cold. Let’s be honest—whatever you learned in the last job didn’t prepare you for this. Be nice to yourself. You’re a beginning Italian language student and tested into advanced. Navigate from there.

My sister is in constant pain

Conclusion: I can’t fix her
God isn’t even God sometimes. Those with all the power in the universe can’t control the universe, and I can’t blame myself for being one of the powerless ones. She doesn’t expect me to fix her, so why do I feel so suffocated by the pressure to do so?

I want to exercise but don’t 

Conclusion: I am neglectful

And the fixation of being thin and beautiful slips through another of these ten chubby fingers and courses through another of these endless and infinite fucking days. 

Fragmented

I could gauge my self-worth on how well I abide by my own ethics…or perhaps I can measure it on my attitude through this exhausting journey of achieving inner-harmony. 

Just as easily, I can shape my sense of self on fashion: the assemblage of calicos/solids, floods and Diesels, or the omniscient excess of mascara contrasting the naked eyelid--The absence of eye shadow set against spider leg lashes may very well be valuable enough to equate scripture. 

I mean, a girl can’t live on ethics alone. She gets a little thirsty for something called a glamorous new haircut. 

And on the inside? Positive and magical self-esteem, the real stuff, excretes daily—for the body needs to make room for the massively growing ego. 

Kiss Me with Your Mouth Open

He’s like the sad silence
immediately following masturbation:
That moment when the warmth and intensity
quickly escape [where do they go?],
And you’re suddenly aware—on your back, vulnerable—of
Just how alone and pathetic you are.

I’m also raw to the touch, saturated
in thoughts of him,
Mentally fighting the same face
the one that delivered so much pleasure seconds prior...
in my cobwebbed imagination.

He is no longer welcome in my thoughts. I’ve gotten what I needed.
I mentally punch him in the mouth while

Trying to escape his tortuous gaze.

His cruel smile
His light eyes…the blinding sparkle causing unrest.
Now he rests uneasily upon me—
that barren silence only interrupted
by the space heater on the nightstand—
still perfectly aligned to my breasts,
but failing to serve its masturbatory purposes of 
sound and sensation...
It’s just a space heater
On my naked chest;
That’s the thing after masturbation:
When you’re done,
Things go back
to what they are. 

Poolside Reflections

Reflecting on the empty poetry book And the empty poems  Hugging its solitude; The solid figure rectangle  Created to carry exaggerated sensations Within its roomy, suitcase-like compartments— It is, sort of, like an empty womb

CREATE GODDAMNIT

Can’t sleep or eat until I fill its pages

Can’t laugh until I muster “something”.

Not until I put all this life and menstruation

virginity, stressed father

lunatic mother, 

detached sister,

faded sweatshirt,

and the anti-climactic overture 

to receiving a doctorate down on paper

and impress the pants off everyone I know,

I will not rest.

I must create and revise and edit and obsess.

List of things that will happen if I don’t:

Rejection from jobs

Disinterest from companies

Overdramatized plunge into the realm of self-abasement, wherein I gratuitously refer to my life as a “mire of shit”

List of things that will happen if I do:

Boyfriend’s praise

Parents’ glorification

False sense of self-importance

So you see, it must happen because everyone is expecting it.

Does the Poet Laureate feel this way, or does he write because he wants to?  Does he even enjoy it anymore?  

Can a woman be Poet Laureate?  

Maybe I should try. 

That is all I need, a professor told me:

A project.  

My new project: To be the best poet in America.

Finally
Something to tone down my expectations.

Book Review: Sexus

Sexus by Henry Miller
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

So, in the 1920s Henry Miller documented all the sex he was having through graphic and detailed play-by-plays. Sometimes he meets up with people in NYC, usually a house or an apartment--irrelevant since he is incapable of creating even a modicum of a setting--while drinks and judgment spew in and out of him. Dear Mr. Miller: When you write in stream-of-consciousness, I read in stream-of-consciousness. I ripped through this 600 page nightmare in a week. Tighten it up. You're not Joyce. Hell, Joyce wasn't even Joyce.

Miller has managed to write a whole loose, baggy monster articulating my pet peeve: people you don't care about telling you boring stories about other people you don't know. That's what this felt like: a long-winded anecdote saturated in New Yorkaphilia rubbish.

Here is a crap excerpt suggesting the crappiness of this piece of crap: "she would smile that melancholy, wistful smile of the hypochondriac". I am not familiar with this smile. In fact, this seems like a technique which desperately attaches a descriptor to an otherwise innocuous object in an effort to create an edgy perspective. I've never known a hypochondriac to have any wistfulness cloaked in a smile. Failed metaphor.

Despite this, but without evoking enough pleasure to give more than a two-star rating, I enjoyed some sentences. These barely shining gems cannot save this stagnant quagmire of pedantic and inorganic shock-for-shock's sake 'literature':

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty."

"In ten years of sporadic efforts I had managed to write a million words or so. You might as well say--a million blades of grass. To call attention to this ragged lawn was humiliating."

On the Tao Te Ching: "If I had read it I wouldn't need to ask him any questions--nor in all probability would be sitting in his garden waiting for a woman named Mara. Had I been intelligent enough to have read that most illustrious and most elliptical piece of ancient wisdom I would have been spared a great many woes that befell me and which I am now about to relate"

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