Front Porch Coffee

Best Faulkner I’ve read yet. But I’m new at this Faulkner thing. Did I mention I’m on a high falooting literature kick? So anyways I’m new at this Faulkner thing, and everybody tells me that I won’t really get it before two or three re-reads, and for every great huge brilliantly crafted idea and relationship I saw, I could feel two or three sail by me entirely uncaught. So then likely I liked this one most because I caught a bit more. And now throw all that out the window, here’s the moral of the story for now: this book was GOOD.

Excerpts:

——

“Then let him go!” the boy cried. “Let him go!”
His cousin laughed shortly. Then he stopped laughing. “His cage ain’t McCaslins,” he said. “He was a wild man. When he was born, all his blood on both sides, except the little white part, knew things that had been tamed out of our blood so long ago that we have not only forgotten them, we have to live together in herds to protect ourselves from our own sources. He was the direct son not of only a warrior but of a chief. Then he grew up and began to learn things, and all of a sudden one day he found out that he had been betrayed, the blood of the warriors and chiefs had been betrayed. Not by his father,” he added quickly. “He probably never held it against old Doom for selling him and his mother into slavery, because he probably believed the damage had already been done before then and it was the same warriors’ and chiefs’ blood in him and Doom both that was betrayed through the black blood which his mother gave him. Not betrayed by the black blood and not wilfully betrayed by his mother, but betrayed by her all the same, who had bequeathed him not only the blood of slaves but even a little of the very blood which had enslaved it; himself his own battleground, the scene of his own vanquishment and the mausoleum of his defeat. His cage ain’t us,” McCaslin said. “Did you ever know anybody yet, even your father and Uncle Buddy, that ever told him to do or not do anything that he ever paid any attention to?”

——

“Why not?” McCaslin said. “Think of all that has happened here, on this earth. All the blood hot and strong for living, pleasuring, that has soaked back into it. For grieving and suffering too, of course, but still getting something out of it for all that, getting a lot out of it, because after all you dont have to continue to bear what you believe is suffering; you can always choose to stop that, put an end to that. And even suffering and grieving is better than nothing; there is only one thing worse than not being alive, and that’s shame. But you cant be alive forever, and you always wear out life long before you have exhausted the possibilities of living. And all that must be somewhere; all that could not have been invented and created just to be thrown away. And the earth is shallow; there is not a great deal of it before you come to rock. And the earth dont want to just keep things, hoard them; it wants to use them again. Look at the seed, the acorns, at what happens even to carrion when you try to bury it: it refuses too, seethes and struggles too until it reaches light and air again, hunting the sun still. And they–” the boy saw his hand in silhouette for a moment against the window beyond which, accustomed to the darkness now, he could see sky where the scoured and icy stars glittered “–they don’t want it, need it. Besides, what would it want, itself, knocking around out there, when it never had enough time about the earth as it was, when there is plenty of room about the earth, plenty of places still unchanged from what they were when the blood used and pleasured in them while it was still blood?”

——

Until three years ago there had been two of them, the other a full-blood Chickasaw, in a sense even more incredibly lost than Sam Fathers. He called himself Jobaker, as if it were one word. Nobody knew his history at all. He was a hermit, living in a foul little shack at the forks of the creek five miles from the plantation and about that far from any other habitation. He was a market hunter and fisherman and he consorted with nobody, black or white; no negro would even cross his path and no man dared approach his hut except Sam. And perhaps once a month the boy would find them in Sam’s shop–two old men squatting on their heels on the dirt floor, talking in a mixture of negroid English and flat hill dialect and now and then a phrase of that old tongue which as time went on and the boy squatted there too listening, he began to learn. Then Jobaker died. That is, nobody had seen him in some time. Then one morning Sam was missing, nobody, not even the boy, knew when nor where, until that night when some negroes hunting in the creek bottom saw the sudden burst of flame and approached. It was Jobaker’s hut, but before they got anywhere near it, someone shot at them from the shadows beyond it. It was Sam who fired, but nobody ever found Jobaker’s grave.

——

Look here for part 1: http://www.porchcoffee.org/2012/02/16/place/

One week plus some change later, I get a call. From the teacher. Here’s how the call went down:

Teacher: Hey Dave…I don’t know you want to come back [he was only a little bit joking], but I’m going to need a sub for a day in two weeks.
Inside Dave’s head: Oh no. I was really hoping no calls from this guy for a while. Those kids owned me, trounced me, played me like a fiddle and hung me out to dry. Is it even physically possible for mayhem and pure chaos to NOT fly into destruction mode at the moment I walk into that room if I walk into that room again?
Dave [with the bravado of an angry mother grizzly bear]: Absolutely, bring it on!
Inside Dave’s head: you idiot.
Teacher: Great! You know the drill, and I’ll leave the day’s plan on my desk.
Dave: Perfect. How have the freshman been, have they recovered yet from that horrible day with that wackjob sub?
Teacher [laughing]: Well, they went into a pretty hard spiral, the room turned into hell on wheels for the rest of the week. But they know they’re on a short leash, things have calmed down a little bit.
Inside Dave’s head: YOU IDIOT.
Dave: ok, sounds good!
Inside Dave’s head: really. Really?

Two weeks go by, the morning comes, I wake up, have my cup of coffee and breakfast and make the long drive to the school, deep breath and in I go. The bell rings and the kids come in, easy now Dave easy, deep breath you are nothing but pure calm and tranquility and teacher, you are the champion and you are ok these kids are great, easy now Dave, easy. Little stuff let it bounce off you like tiny hail, big stuff keep your cool and do what you know how to do. Easy now Dave, easy.

And here’s what happened: it was a great day. Everything went smooth. The kids were great.

Inside Dave’s head: Right. Go figure.

Little Diomede Island. The village is named Diomede and I have the privilege, the million dollar job: I am Diomede’s next 7-12 math and science teacher.

‘Excited?’ No. That word doesn’t really work; here, this works  better: I’m kinda excited like the horsehead nebula is kinda big.

Reference: here’s the horsehead nebula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula

Yeah. Like that.

:D

Little Diomede from the side

snowy Little Diomede

Little Diomede, Alaska - The native village of Little Diomede sits on the border of Russia and the United States. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer Richard Brahm)

Place. What is it? Where’s mine and where’s yours, right? Cities, towns, pueblos and glens and farms, where’s who’s place? There are books and theories and studies about this idea, this thing: place. And I don’t need any of them. And did I really commit homonymage there? Yes, because it looked better that way.

Because today work put me in my place. Hands of stone and no gloves and no 3 minute rounds with the 30 second breaks inbetween. Me, living breathing sweating bleeding heavy bag, while work did well the role of Ali, of Fraser, of Ward.

But you know, for the unpleasantness of it, maybe one twentieth the magnitude of that unpleasantness, there is a refreshing feeling about a good ass whuppin’. Very small, probably even smaller than a twentieth of the unpleasantness. But it’s there. Bleeding heart’s a beating heart. Breathe in. out. in. out. Breathe out deep. And breathe in deep. Breathe deep. Shake it off.

Time to go home and eat and sleep. We step into the ring again tomorrow.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker’s trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cockheels in the pinchbeck dust. The steel leaks back the day’s heat, you can feel it through the floors of yours shoes. Past these corrugated warehouse walls down little sandy streets where blownout autos sulk on pedestals of cinderblock.
—
Hey Suttree, they called.
Goddamn, said J-Bone, surging from the bowels of the couch. He threw an arm around Suttree’s shoulders. Here’s my old buddy, he said. Where’s the whiskey? Give him a drink of that old crazy shit.
How you doing, Jim?
I’m doing all around, where you been? Where’s the whiskey? Here ye go. Get ye a drink, Bud.
What is it?
Early Times. Best little old drink in the world. Get ye a drink, Sut.
Suttree held it to the light. Small twigs, debris, matter, coiled in the oily liquid. He shook it. Smoke rose from the yellow floor of the bottle.
Shit almighty, he said.
Best little old drink in the world, sang out J-Bone. Have a drink, Bud.
He unthreaded the cap, sniffed, shivered, drank.
J-Bone hugged the drinking figure. Watch old Suttree take a drink, he called out.
Suttree’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was holding the bottle out to whoever would take it. Goddamn. What is that shit?
Early Times, called J-Bone. Best little old drink they is. Drink that and you wont feel a thing the next mornin.
Or any morning.
Whoo lord, give it here. Hello Early, come to your old daddy.

Yeah, right? Lyrical isn’t close to being the right word. How do you do that?

There’s an odd, not too interesting and short story of Suttree and me. I bought the book nearly two years ago, read all up to the last 80 pages, then shelved it, for a reason I didn’t understand, not worth a rat turd; really, I had no idea why. Bad book? Oh no, amazing book. It is a bit slow to read, absolutely, but that’s because it’s not hardly even a ‘book.’ The words of the first page tie together and together stop and kick and knock around and in one page there’s some myth and some lost and some found and it is the slowest reading page I’ve read. It feels like he’s more a painter than a writer, pencil his brush. And so now I crack the cover and remember how brilliantly this man uses words.

Edit:
I posted this halfway through the book, then finished it. Whewee. Not sure I like the last quarter. It’s weird, it’s definitely kinda weird; I could only reccomend this book if you’re real good and ready for a weird few final chapters.

–that’s his name. Well, it’s not his name actually. But, as a substitute teacher, I have to use good memory hooks; I find out this student is from Louisiana, the name stuck fast. Also, a relevant fact for later: I have this thing I do sometimes: I bring in half a dozen doughnuts and I tell my students they win a doughnut by putting me on my heels–do something to impress me. Mind you,if you’re going to ask students for excellence, you do not use supermarket doughnuts, no that would be idiotic; thankfully there’s a little doughnut shop in town that is as wildly amazing as it is pricey.

I subbed yesterday for a photo/computers teacher. When I saw “photo/computer” in the job description, what happened wasn’t so much that I ignored the computer half, more that I never even got that far. Photo. Photo. Wait…I can spend time in a classroom doing stuff with…photography? Really?

I stopped, did a quick pinch-test, nope, not dreaming, this is real. Great!

The lesson plan took all of 5 minutes to cobble together: can’t go wrong with good photojournalism. Aaron Huey.

Louisiana picked a war photo (this one: aaronhuey.com/afghanistan), and he did not address even one of the three assigned questions. In this failure, he wrote this, perfectly succeeding:

I don’t know what to think I saw this man walking not knowing if he had a bomb on his chest or if he was on our side we kept on driving he stared at us until we disappeared I still think about that man he stared at us with a grin on his face as if he was saying “we got you we got you once you think your ok we got you.”

“Um, so, I didn’t know how to answer any of the assignment questions, so I just sorta put myself in his shoes and wrote something” Louisiana told me, handing in what he’d done, what he’d done instead of completing the assignment. Louisiana was smirking, because he wanted a doughnut.

He got one.

Sometimes a few facts tell a story better than telling the story:

-I spent some time with my family in Seattle over the holidays, and as I was leaving a dear brother of mine gifted me a nice Churchill size cigar
-Cigars go bad after a few days of not being kept in a humidor, especially in dry weather
-We’re in the middle of a dry cold spell here (something like 10 or 20 below at the moment)
-I don’t have a humidor
-There sits on my back porch the stubly remains of an enjoyed cigar
-My nose is still regaining feeling. C’mon little nose, just a bit more, you can do it! Get that feeling back already!
-I am currently wearing a hoodie, synthetic down jacket, my Great Uncle Nick’s wool hunting jacket, a stocking cap, neck gator, wool gloves, long johns, heavy carhartt pants, and two pairs of socks
-I’m still shivering a little bit, even though I came back inside half an hour ago
-I smell like smoke
-I like a good cigar