modern animal
ernest hemingway, aimee mann, and a tip for dealing with the devil
the five of pentacles and a sentence from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea:
I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad.
the aleatory
I take my pain everywhere. I buy my pain everything. My pain is a very modern animal. My pain hates every novel by the third page, either because it is good or because it is bad. My pain hates yogurt and is constantly insisting I buy yogurt. My pain only likes one T-shirt. My pain rifles through the pantry of nutritious food and is like what the fuck is this shit who bought these almonds. My pain is circumspect at the colleague brunch. My pain deeply wishes no one to know it. It loves rust, abandoned buildings, and dumb jokes. My pain despises ugliness, pity, and sentimentality. Yet it howls for all the world. It keens at the cynical turnings of art made for impure motives. My pain is an expert detector of impure motives, vicious pursuer of my own. I think it is honest for a long time before I remember there are other rooms that have not been marked with its scat. My pain loved high school. My pain loves the mall. I open all the windows begging it to escape. But give me a green stage, a curtain of vines, and a little stage makeup—it comes out like a song.
the forecast
Apparently the devil can do anything but make a rope out of sand. Keep this in mind for your next negotiations.
writing prompt
Write in the margins of a book as if you are a bored teenager whose mind is not being adequately engaged by their tiny rural high school.
a chune
“How Am I Different” by Aimee Mann
There’s a dirt road near the house where I grew up. I would walk there in the summers when I was trying (inevitably) to lose weight. It was all uphill. Down one side there were all kinds of old washing machines and refrigerators that people would throw down into the ravine. You had to pass an old red trailer that I had never, even once, seen a person inhabit, but which was always eerily freshly painted. At the top of the hill lived people who I was afraid of, although I don’t remember why. I stopped at the bend of the road where I could first see their house and turned around to walk back. Once I saw a car on fire, right in the middle of the road. I went home and never told anybody about it. This car on fire is inside every piece of fiction I’ve ever written and I doubt you’ll be able to find it. Anyway I would sing Aimee Mann songs at the top of my voice the whole time.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Bachelor No. 2 or: the last remains of the dodo by Aimee Mann
When we were driving around Glendale, my friend C pointed out a mini-mall marquee which, thanks to its standardized design, made it seem like the sign was saying CHASE BANK: MODERN ANIMAL. The part of me that loves things like that isn’t pain, but it’s as honest as my pain. XS