Months

May: I drove with B to Oregon and read and partied for the release of The Wolves at Publication Studio. It's impossible for me to read without first drinking alcohol - usually wine - because I get so nervous I feel like I might die of embarrassment. I had never been the center of a reading like this, of a 'release'. Patricia and Antonia of Publication Studio were wonderfully kind and gave me that feeling of truly being celebrated. It helped that before I read Patricia read an email she had received from Kevin Killian introducing my manuscript to them. I had that feeling, after listening to Kevin's promotion of my manuscript, of finally getting my father or mother to express or admit their love for me. My mom and dad express themselves freely so it wasn't like I was starved in real life, but it was like that feeling. Finally, Kevin told me how much he loved the book! I had a similar feeling after reading Dodie Bellamy's blurb. Writing The Wolves was both a process of learning to write a novel and a process of constantly trying to impress my supporters - Dodie, Miranda Mellis, and B, mainly. If I could first impress them with the story and the writing there wouldn't need to be any additional accomplishments. Now that I am working on another novel I don't feel the same need to impress or rather I am not trying to impress anyone but myself - though myself has accumulated the critical eye of Dodie, Miranda, and B. I can hear Dodie telling me to 'kink it up' and then I read or re-read Cunt Ups or Cunt Norton and I am reminded of how to do this. Miranda's influence is much more disperse. Rigorous and searching. B's influence is practical. Why are you writing a 1000 page novel? Who do you think is going to read something like this? I can only laugh at my own ambition.

October: Jason File, Jason Scheinheit, and I read at Needles & Pens in San Francisco. Three Jasons. First, I will mention that at this reading I read 'The Vibes Manifesto' - which is what it sounds like. Over the past year or so I have read 'vibes' essays whenever I have been asked to read somewhere. It's a philosophy I am in the process of developing. The vibes philosophy. It's a way for me to read something not related to The Wolves. It allows me to play with the audience. When I am at poetry readings I envy the play. I sit there thinking, 'Damn, I want to do that!' I am thinking of Evan Kennedy's readings generally and David Buuck's reading at Woolsey Heights in particular where his poem ended in a dance party. Or even Cassandra Troyan's reading - the one I saw at 851 - where she drank cough syrup and either she pretended it was blood or I just imagined it was.

June: I worked for my dad's construction company for a week or two. I returned to the same crew of men who I had worked with about 6 months earlier. Since I am an academic type and they are 'workers' I always arrive fearing they will think I am weak and an elitist. I am weak when compared to their years of strength. I watched them lift walls onto their shoulders. Drag metal hammers like they were toothpicks. They are friendly and admire my education. I am a part-time employee, not making very much money in academia, and they are full time laborers, making what sounds like a glorious sum to me. I wish I could wake up at 4am every day and do what they do just so that I would be paid well and could let my mind have a reprieve from the vaulted crises of 'being a writer'. But then I find out they don't want to wake up so early and while they're cutting concrete they are constructing elaborate novels of their own but have no way of ever writing them. The strain of the physical labor gives me endless headaches, bruises my hands and legs, makes me glad I didn't commit to working for more than two weeks. It's true you would get used to it, but ultimately I am glad I am able to return to desk. I want to say something like, 'I don't want to forget those workers or how hard their work is' but it's hard to say that without appearing as some typical 'liberal' romanticizing the life of the worker. Maybe it isn't. I just can't help but think of the privilege I was granted by the work of people like those workers. My dad and my mom. My grandfather who was a plumber. I don't know, whether it is right or wrong, I feel guilty, and I'd rather feel guilty than forget what waking up at 4am feels like. 

The Wolves in the Hands of Friends

A Reading I Gave Months Ago

Here's video which Evan Karp took of the reading I gave in January at the Emerald Tablet for the Under the Influence series (which Evan hosts). I was invited to read by Evan after Miranda Mellis suggested me. Each reader then suggests/nominates another writer for a subsequent reading. The person I suggested doesn't know I was the one who put their name out there. So this is sort of an unveiling. I asked Evan to keep me anonymous. But, now, I'm happy to say I suggested Evan Kennedy for this reading - which he then gave in March. I've seen Evan Kennedy read a few times now, I think, and it always blows me away. I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend his Under the Influence reading. Oh well. I wanted to stay anonymous just because I thought it would be fun bit of mystery. Maybe Evan Kennedy didn't even think about it.

So for my reading, I responded/was influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I'm not 100% engaged with either of their work. I've only recently started reading Wittgenstein and have only read two small books by Hanh. So my response is slightly superficial. I don't feel bad about this. I'm just mentioning it in case someone watches the video and feels like I did a poor job of representing their work. But whatever.

The essay I read from doesn't have a title but if I were to title it now I would call it "Essay on Human Suffering". It's written in my 'vibes' style. People might be familiar with this if they have seen other readings I've done. It's my preferred style to use when I read. It's more poetic. Recently, I also read at CCA and for that I read from my just published novel The Wolves from Publication Studio. Yes, it is fun to read certain parts of The Wolves but usually I feel uncomfortable reading from it because I worry people would rather hear something else. I'm probably being neurotic about it. Honestly, it's just more fun to read from my vibes essays. At some point I should put them together into something more cohesive and make it a book. 

The Wolves official book trailer

I'm excited to post this beautiful promotional video made by Jessica Yatrofsky. My novel The Wolves will be available March 2014 from Publication Studio as part of their Fellow Travelers Series.

The Wolves is split between two parts. The first is the story of two ill-starred lovers, overcome by their devotion to each other and their destructive appetites. The second is a re-telling of the life of the 14th-century catholic Saint Catherine of Siena and her relationship to her biographer Raymond of Capua. The two parts mirror each other and question the limits of identity, bodies, and faith.

Here is a short excerpt from the first part of The Wolves:

I thought you had really left, now you're bleeding, you're going to die. I see, feel, or imagine the dick going inside her. The trapped blood rushes from my feet to my abdomen, fills up my scrotum, my cock is fat. I wish there was a way to fuck without blood, to love without the body. I thought you were gone. Hairless stomach, brown pussy. Did you consider leaving? No, I knew to wait for you. Once our bodies meld together, her hair will become mine and a fine layer of fur will shroud our pussy and cock. We will encircle our abdomen, spin into a tiny clump of flesh, we float through the air invisible.

I've been thinking about our diamond rings. I didn't know we still had those. I saw her swallow it. No, you weren't there because that was your fantasy, this is real, the rings aren't real. But, this could be a dream. I'm telling you that it's not, I'm sorry for telling you I didn't want to talk to you, I shouldn't have said that. Her lips are dry, I bite them, careful not to bite the side that Raymond tore. When we kiss, I feel like I'm kissing you and everyone you've ever been. That's wrong, I'm the only person here. We can swallow our rings. I think we should bury them. We can do it your way if you want.

We were always together, and I made you my husband, you were mine and I was yours, didn't we link ourselves enough? I want you to go deeper, right there. The inside of my asshole is pink, my dad told me, oh never mind. Yes, I understand. What about your parents? They don't matter. None of this seems real, you're talking too much. I want you inside me, I am already. The inside of her pussy is pink, I feel its color now. Head near her heart, where everything takes place. We combine lungs, throats and ligaments.

Feeling is expansive. Even our small skeletal bodies are infinite in feeling, minds surpass canvased skin. Feeling is not infinite, it begins and ends. Fucking you doesn't feel any different than before. I was upset when I thought you had really left, I felt I had lost you. The bodies melt, summer finally ends with no music. I am unable to think, thought sits just outside my grasp. I wish you had four dicks, I would put them all inside me. Where would the fourth one go? She laughs, I want you to fuck my brain. A dick isn't a body. I tighten the muscle, it's a story-teller, glyphs, and smoke signals. To me it's only your cock. I have dreams of being inside you. I want you inside me. I dream we are fucking and I am someone else, you are someone else, but it is still us.

Your skin tastes like my skin. You want to believe. Our skin flaps, sweats, and slides on top of each other. I let go of her nipple, kiss my way to her lips. Our tongues slip out of mouths, we are still hungry. Her nose and cheeks are cold. The center of her heart is white and I feel its color with the tip of the dick. The rest of my body is shutting off, toes knees shoulders off. Are they finally disappearing? I open my eyes to see her staring back at me, pupils black and dead. The cock hemorrhages and fills her with come, our body shuts off. Stillness. Wolf stares into me, oh fuck, don't move. Do you feel that? Shhh. Her breath is hot, I want to crush in my hand the empty space that sustains her. I might be wrong. Look at me longer, don't stop looking at me. Could this have happened without knowing the colors of the inside of our bodies, without losing or exorcising limbs? //

I'll be reading new work at Under the Influence in San Francisco on Friday January 24th 2014. Please come and watch me channel Wittgenstein and Thich Nhat Hanh. I will be performing a part of my on-going "vibes" lectures.

More on Publication Studio's Fellow Travelers Series: The Fellow Travelers Series is modeled deliberately on Olympia Press's outstanding Traveller's Companion series of the 1950s and 1960s. Where the Traveller's Companion series published work that had been banned or censored through moralistic prohibitions, the Fellow Travelers series presents great new work that has been effectively "censored" by the market. (From Publisher's Forward to Spreadeagle by Kevin Killian, another in the Fellow Travelers Series)

Book trailer #2 THE WOLVES

A second, shorter trailer for The Wolves.

Here's a very short excerpt from the first part of the novel:
Wolf returns without the books and stands by the open window smoking a cigarette, red stained lips. Black leggings and a sheer white tank top, afternoon sunlight confuses white skin and cotton, contoured bone, dry, freckled hips, the black outline of her cross. Dust particles float around her small breasts, she jumps up onto the windowsill, brings her knees to her chest, small feet, dirty soles, taps her foot, takes a drag from the cigarette. She blows the smoke out the window, takes three vicodin, she's about to speak, is this summer ever going to end? //

Book trailer #3 THE WOLVES

A third, shorter trailer for The Wolves.

Here's an excerpt from the second part of the novel:
"What was the voice calling to you, Catherine?"

"It was not a voice," she says. "I felt a light in my body. It was this light which told me without words, without speaking, to look into the sky. From that hill I could see the valley drenched by sunlight. Something appeared closer to the spires and bells of the buildings in the city."

"And what was it?"

"It was a royal court. Jesus sat on a golden throne. He wore a diamond tiara and carried a gilded staff in His hand. The light in my body came from Him. I cannot adequately explain this feeling to you, Father. His blue eyes stared back at me and He reached out His white hand and over me made the Sign of the Cross. From the center of His chest I felt a beam of light enter my body. I had the sense of unending love and for the first time I truly felt my soul. His light entered me and made me one with His body. There was no separation between me and what I saw." //