while you were away . . .

Music: Not Drowning, Waving: Another Pond (1984) . . . I did some laundry and finally washed the bedclothes for the guest bedroom. Everything is clean now (or that's what they say, sings Gillian). I didn't put up the tree as I thought I might, because I worried that shifting the potted plant will make it drop its leaves. I'll figure something out. I didn't manage to organize the office as I had hoped, nor did I get my impending talk drafted for the commencement of the Midwestern tour. I don't feel too guilty about that; I grazed some articles. One I liked quite a bit, "Defining Phonography" by Eric Rothenbuhler and John Peters. They have a nice line in there (many, actually): "Death, for Hegel, is the price of intelligibility." I read more of Sterne's The Audible Past, too. I thought a lot about my book in progress and how it's not going to get done unless I have another semester off, and I don't know how to get another semester off. We don't have sabbaticals here, either.

While you were away I thought about where I might go if I left Austin. You needn't worry about me leaving, however. I have no plans to leave unless it's with you, and I really do like living in Austin. Even so, you ask me this question frequently. I'm not quite sure how to answer. Probably closer to my parents, since I'm an only child, and I will have to take care of them one of these days, somehow. I do know this: if I go (with you) they better have sabbatical leaves. And a good local record shop like Waterloo (another Vortex of Money Disappearance).

While you were away I let the dog visit Sandra and Oliva, which helped quiet the house for a blessed hour. Jesús spied the Calico on the roof at eight in the morning and that started him barking, and his piercing barking has persisted throughout the day: after the kitty violated our territory, Oliva showed up babbling something in German, eliciting more yawps. Then the ambulance came because, apparently, Ms. K felt dizzy and all the white-gloved men got Jesús whipped into a cacophonous frenzy.

While you were away I saw your videos on YouTube and felt prideful. I watched Casino Royale on DVD on Saturday and immediately saw Quantum of Solace with Sal and Jer at the Alamo. I liked Daniel Craig as the new James Bond, he is a beautiful man. I wondered, however, if his eyes are really that blue or if they were enhanced somehow. I also liked how the new Bond films critique the economy of women (yet at the same time reinscribe it, and how Bond struggles with this reinscription). Casino is much, much better than Quantum, however, the latter relying much too much on jerky camera stylistics.

While you were away I read more of Derrida's Archive Fever, and was struck with the comparison I made between prisons and archives. I got to thinking the asylum is a special kind of archive, and the "fever" contained within it (the repetition compulsion of psychosis) is interestingly expressed in films that depict asylums. I thought immediately of Exorcist III, because I recalled a scene in which a man is furiously masturbating. I think there is also a scene like that Silence of the Lambs. I tried to find the scenes, but a cursory scan of each DVD didn't reveal them. I don't know quite yet why such a scene is important or what I would do with it in a given writing project; I just have a hunch such scenes help to demonstrate what Derrida means by "archive sickness" better than what other commentators have tried to use as explanatory devices. If the archive is a topography of narcissism and the death-drive, some crazy guy masturbating in a padded room seems to get at the idiom in a way that represents "textual embodiment."

While you were away I worked on a letter of recommendation for a friend seeking employment in the Midwest. The Midwest seems to be thematic for me this academic year (last year, of course, it was the Northeast). I remembered Christopher and I talked about a writing retreat for the summer in Montana. We would rent a cabin. Hike some days. Sit on a porch overlooking some green-treed valley. Bourbon. The sort of sustained intimacy of friendship that becomes possible in your thirties with anyone, regardless of gender or meat-eating. It's a comforting thought, a cabin the mountains. A semester would be better. A semester off for time in Montana to finish my book. The damned, cursed book.

While you were away Margaret and Jennifer talked about Spalding Grey (that damned, cursed monster in a box) and suicide. I assured them if I did it I wouldn't leave anyone hanging (at the very least certainly not my body), which means I need to be out of debt, and that means I will probably live forever. Highlander and Queen's question: who wants to live forever, anyway? Hunter S. Thompson was right.

While you were away I read some poems. Some by my friend Dale. Some by Sandra Cisneros in the book you gave me as a special gesture. I liked this one, in particular:

I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen

Bring me a drink.
I need to think a little.
Paper. Pen.
And I could use the stink
of a good cigar---even
though the sun's out.
The grackles in the trees.
The grackles inside my heart.
Broken feathers and stiff wings.

I could jump.
But don't.
You could kill me.
But you won't.

The grackles
calling to each other.
The long hours.
The long hours.
The long hours.

We have a lot of grackles here. There is a creek behind my house. No one that I know of would want to kill me, but I do like the title of the poem the best. No, I'm not depressed but thanks for your labor of worry.

While you were away I met Dale for drinks at the Longbranch. I like that bar, very down-to-earth and heavy pours. Dale is a good listener and a damn fine poet. He is one of my closet friends here, but he is on the job market this year and will leave me the next. I asked Dale what he thought of Cisneros. He said he was always suspicious of poets who use "mangoes" as a metaphor for anything.

While you were away I made myself some fish and listened to a lot of music: Stars of the Lid; Not Drowning, Waving; Rosie Thomas (I don't like the last album except for one song); and Chris Pureka. Pureka is a new find, a beautiful androgynous voice that is hard to describe. She covers "Everything is Free Now" on her newest album. I want to have her children now, just so I could overhear her sing lullabies in the night time.

While you were away I drank a little, but not too much because of the medication. My foot is healing. My neighbor, whose husband has gout, she said that I was too light and too young for disease. I said that I agree, but that it is my genetic legacy. My mother told me my father got it a lot in his early twenties, and my grandfather throughout his life. I said all the switches of my paternal codes of pain are starting to switch on, which means kidney stones, ingrown nastiness, and God knows what else are just around the corner. Working out and maintaining a decent diet has only slowed them by a decade. After this past week's pain, I am starting to question my threshold for it: maybe I can get the tattoo sleeves after all?

While you were away I made a mix CD, perhaps the closest link to the materiality of phonography and magnetic tape. Rothenbuhler and Peters have me thinking a lot about the album.

While you were away I checked Facebook a million times.

While you were away I blogged a lot because you didn't email. I reflected about you a lot. I felt the nothing of your absence. Thanks for phoning to tell me you missed me. God knows I missed you.