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Category Archives: Creative Nonfiction

Fragments

The sun, an abstract circle shining light onto the 2nd most prolific — the moon — both gazing down onto our humble blue-green oblate spheroid (sort-of circles)…. 1-800-Spiralz Classical Music Through this confluence of sounds we gaze into worlds gone by a saccharine pop ballad for a lady with corset-fractured ribs, and impotent, hunting husband.

Posted 14 March 2008 † Yuletide § Exercises § Fiction § Snippets ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

How to Hire a Translator in Mongolia — 3 Times (incomplete)

You push from your mind the ever-surfacing thought that her english is just a little too good to be working for some college student for $20 a day, let alone working as a Mongolian language teacher at SIT.

…After your week in the countryside—during which you simultaneously try to conduct interviews through confused translation, and try to win over your stand-offish translator, say that you hope she had some fun, that you enjoyed working with her .

Posted 07 March 2008 † Yuletide § Shorts ‡ Comments (8) ° Tagged: , ,

Mongolia Piece 2 in Pieces

The first time I heard heavy metal— the kind I listen to, from Scandinavia — in Mongolia was also the first time I heard this music broadcast on mainstream TV, while staying with a herding family in East-Central Mongolia.

…Usually, I get up every ten minutes or so to clear my side of the ger, if only to lessen the number in my immediate vicinity, for a few moments of relative peace.

Posted 06 March 2008 † Yuletide § Snippets § Work in Progress ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Exercises/Ideas

As if the fruit hadn’t been fully separated from its skin, and took bits of skin-adhesive with it, leaving traces for the eater to ponder.

…And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”

Posted 06 March 2008 † Yuletide § Exercises ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Notes towards a second essay

One would think, given the number of livestock (35 million) and their centrality to Mongolian culture and lifestyle, and that all the main livestock varieties produce milk fit for the purpose (sheep, goats and cows) that Mongolia would have developed a robust cheese-making tradition.

…So on that fateful day when I drank a glass of Mongolian Coca-Cola with breakfast (my host father later told me my illness must have been due to that) the contents of my GI tract decided to riot and collectively exited my body.

Posted 01 March 2008 † Yuletide § Snippets ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Crap

It was my girlfriend’s 21st birthday; I dreamed up a romantic weekend in the little town we used to visit in my summers as a kid 0 – to a bed and breakfast on the water, a massage, dinner whatever I got directions, and we were on our way…. I was going to a land of alien culture, custom, cuisine, climate color For years I’ve justified my ignorance of Boston with the fact I went to boarding school for 4 years Being lost in a place you should know is mortifying especially if people find out When weekend guests know from which way you came on the street after shopping at a store.

Posted 29 February 2008 † Yuletide § Snippets ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Random Incoherences

And I forgave him despite his lossinlgy end of days — it was too much for us to move on in synchrony, pulsing in the wake of each other’s acquiescence.

…Slot induced hypomanic imbalance reached pubnlic eyes and ears from a leaked Gnomegon memo, detailing the disturbingly high incidence of gambling and vending behaviors among veterans of the FEG (Forces Especial du Gnome).

Posted 24 February 2008 † Yuletide § Exercises § Incoherence § Shorts § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

100 Words towards a definition of Metal

Attributes: Molten, Brutal, Intense, Epic, Uncompromising, Fucking awesome, Distorted, Pummeling, Eternal, Loud, Grating, Polyrhythmic, Not lame, Absurd, Hilarious, Fun, Resonant, Primal, Destructive, Cathartic, Therapeutic, Wrathful, Emotional, HEAVY. Components: Guitar, Strings, Pickup, Amplifier, Electricity (lots), Bass Drum x2, Snare Drum, Hi-Hat, Crash, Drum Sticks, Metronome, Bass Guitar, Strings, Pickup, Amplifier, Ear, Brain.

Posted 14 February 2008 † Yuletide § Shorts ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

100 Words: Hair

These states also elicit divergent reactions from the very hosts that spend hundreds of thousands of hours diligently growing filaments. Upon encountering a hair in one’s food, it is considered acceptable to raise hell But hair has bacteria Doesn’t it?!

Posted 13 February 2008 † Yuletide § Shorts ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Inner Peace Through METAL (early draft)

While it is not clear to me if the motivating power of death metal is generating a vanguard of energetic youth or drawing artistic and creative youngpeople into a trap of naive individualism, I believe that the political significance of musical sound is rooted in the meanings that the participantsconstitute and the consequences of those meanings for the participants’ lives and the larger society.[^motpower] [^motpower]:Harris M Berger, “Death Metal Tonality and the Act of Listening,” Popular Music 18, no.

…>It’s not the music, but the feelings of the people we hear playing that are important to us… it is not the music as a physical stimulus that manipulates our moods, but it is using the music as a communicative offering to influence our feelings in a re-creative process.[^recreat] [^recreat]:Oliver Grewe et al., “Listening to Music as a Re-Creative Process: Physiological, Psychological, and Psychoacoustical Correlates of Chills and Strong Emotions,” Music Perception 24, no.

Posted 30 January 2008 † Yuletide § Finished § Music ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , , , , ,