Jan 1 2012 5:16 pm
2011
It can fortify and destroy, pucker and purge, win an argument about the nature of abstract objects, probably beat you in a footrace to the end of the block. From memories incorporeal come identities performed, like raising a pile of metal shavings with a magnet. And for my next trick!
I make them up or hear them somewhere and then shove them down deep into the bowels of my personal story, slowly or rapidly assimilating them with my other beliefs in an uneasy shuffling of the pieces. For example: here is the knife, here is the throat, here is the countable set of all natural resources. Is there an unmapped object in the model between those mapped to knife and throat? It’s difficult to imagine Ty Cobb being alive right now.
You know what rye whiskey goes great with? Ice. You know what mint leaves go great with? Me neither. Mint leaves are for those with an incontinence of mind, an impotence of will, or a spirit so dry and boring that it leaves a trail of knee prints in its powdered tears as it scurries awkwardly away from challenge and cold weather. It’s got no punch, no edge. I’m like a bulldog in a Chinese restaurant: fuckin’ up some egg rolls, breaking all the tea cups.
It smelled the sharp and sour smell of freshly rotting garbage, the bacteria that evolves exotic gases and makes liquids bubble subtly. Just a kind of dry, leafy flavor with intense lingering bitterness. So I’m rowing hard and I probably metabolize some fat and probably one bit of that fat has some errant LSD or psilocybin molecules in it because that’s where I heard it’s stored and my arms are burning and some of those molecules are released and they travel to my brain and make me briefly hallucinate the sound of a ruffed grouse drumming.
He’s got mammal asthma. The best treatment is a mouse inhaler, a good face hooking, a log jam wrassle and someone that never says no unless
it really matters. No you can’t leave right now. No you can’t drive to Denver. No you can’t get high huffin’ a bronchodilator. You can even “like” the “like” button at the top of the page. Because sometimes you forget how good it is to fish on foot, how good it is to not net a steelhead. Then you go home and drink five High Lifes because you’re tax refund hasn’t arrived yet.
I celebrate your high cholesterol. I’m going to get going about 70mph heading west and close my eyes so that I can drive with my mind. I’m going to determine if you’re wearing panties with my mind. I was sitting on the couch, fat, watching TV after overeating and over drinking and over chewing. Yes I did see you walking down the highway with a stringer full of rotten salmon. Yes I saw that you saw me and yes I kept driving.
He busted straight through the bedroom wall and onto the sidewalk where he stood for a moment covered in dust with bits of splintered wood falling from his shoulders and boxer shorts. Frank thought these Powerpoints were much less satisfying than the click-click-ca-thunk of an actual slide show. Surely it has been treated by its practitioners in some cursory way, but the actual practitioners of a craft have no monopoly on its analysis.
Blah blah fishing fishing beer beer fishing steelhead sour cream fishing psychology self image free will coho. Anyway, I've been practicing not breathing air and I'm almost there. I keep passing out, but that won't stop me in the end. I'm going to succeed in never breathing air again one of these days and show all those hipster douchebags what's what.
Dec 21 2011 11:12 pm
mechanical advantage
Here I do not mean that a two handed rod provides a mechanical advantage while fighting a steelhead. Of course it obviously provides said advantage, but this is beside the point.
We are here concerned with the metaphysical mechanical advantages. The concept of the rod itself and its action “on” the water and “on” the fish and “on” the angler are still as yet unpacked. It is still a concept unanalyzed. Surely it has been treated by its practitioners in some cursory way, but the actual practitioners of a craft have no monopoly on its analysis. In fact, it is widely known that said practitioners do not possess the sufficient critical distance from the craft to involve themselves in its analysis.
TO WIT: I SWEAR TO YOU NOW THAT I HAVE ONLY EVER USED A TWO HANDED ROD WHEN I WAS ABSOLUTELY FORCED TO DO SO AND EVEN THEN REGRETTED IT. ALSO, I DO NOT OWN A STICH OF PATAGONIA. AND I'VE NEVER FISHED AN INTRUDER. I DON'T EVEN LIKE BEER!
But what is it that we take conceptual analysis to be and how should we proceed in the analysis of our particular concept?
We shall take each concept and break it down with the knife of our mind into its component concepts and break those down into their component concepts until we arrive at a set of concepts atomic: a collection of indissoluble ideas over which we can gaze and proclaim something profound about their properties and perhaps about their relation to one another from which we can hopefully garner some insight and thus further expand our knowledge of the complex concept from which they were originally cleaved.
We shall lay the river bare and expose its fishes.
But from whence the atomic concepts? An anchor placed is an anchor placed and a swing is a swing is a swing. How do I justify my belief in a mend? How do I justify my belief in swimming big flies across the slow currents of the lower river?
Nov 15 2011 12:43 pm
deconstructing steelhead
Frank sat inside one of those awkward chairs that have a little desk attached to them and aren’t designed for people that are of above average height or girth. It was made of some remarkably hard plastic type material that resisted even the most stubborn graffiti carving attempts. The overhead fluorescent lights were dimmed beneath their cloudy stippled plastic covers. The cooling fan of the digital projector whirred continuously and was the only sound aside from the speaker’s voice and the occasional cough. Frank thought these Powerpoints were much less satisfying than the click-click-ca-thunk of an actual slide show.
Frank squirmed every minute or so, shifting his weight from one side to the other, bumping his knee into the little desk. He daydreamed about milk. Why does skim milk smell spicy to me? Do the cows eat something spicy? What if a cow ate peppers? I should buy a cow and keep it in the back yard and feed it peppers. Lisa would hate that. We’d have to move her table and chairs. There would be a lot of shit. I hate that table and chairs anyway. We need that back yard to work FOR US. To make us milk and delicious beef. Where would I slaughter said cow? Wasn’t there a Seargent Slaughter at some point?
Just then the audience began to clap, slowly, a few people at first, then one or two more, then people like Frank who were paying absolutely no attention. The applause lingered awkwardly and faded away gradually until it ended with one explosive single clap from a person who didn’t realize it was time to stop clapping until it was too late. The talk was something about deconstructing the imagery of Tohono O’odham tiswin earthenware vessels from the early 1800s. There were a couple interesting pictures during the talk but Frank thought it was odd that something like this could be deconstructed at all. In fact, Frank thought it was odd that anything could be deconstructed except an erector set or a house, for example.
Frank turned in his chair-desk so his feet were in the aisle and he was facing perpendicularly across the audience and he looked bored and vaguely smug with raised eyebrows and a perfectly flat mouth. His tall, columnar head was angled slightly forward and his eyes surveyed the room from front to back. The department chair stood up and said there would now be a break and that they would reconvene in five minutes time for the discussion. Several people stood up slowly and began making their way towards the speaker while others turned and started chatting with their neighbors, presumably about the talk, but more likely about how Prof. Allen had fallen asleep and let out one of those awkward sleep moans which everybody, including the speaker, had noticed.
Frank unfolded his tall frame from the chair-desk, raised his arms far above his head and arched his back and clenched his teeth and let out a long groan himself which culminated in the maximum stretch of his back and arms. He regained his posture with a heavy exhalation and walked toward the speaker, pushed a few students aside, got his face very close to the speaker’s face and said very loudly and slowly and deliberately pronouncing each word by opening his mouth as far as it could go: “I’m going to go and deconstruct a bottle of whiskey now.”
Oct 7 2011 7:21 pm
technically salmon
Technically, I’m lying to myself. But it’s even worse than that. I’m lying to myself about things that matter. Though technically the things that matter aren’t exactly true themselves. They’re not lies, technically, but not true either. They’re further entrenched beliefs. They’re just closer to the core of my web of beliefs because they’re more indispensible to me getting on with life. I make them up or hear them somewhere and then shove them down deep into the bowels of my personal story, slowly or rapidly assimilating them with my other beliefs in an uneasy shuffling of the pieces.
Though technically, I never much bought into that confirmation holism bullshit.
Can you imagine what it must feel like to be a big male salmon, to swim one hundred miles, to grow big teeth longer every minute, to find oneself in shallow water surrounded by other males all around a female ripe with eggs? Can you imagine if male humans ejaculated every time a woman near them ovulated? Have you ever rowed over a hole so stuffed with salmon that they don’t all fit inside? When you row over them they enter into this uneasy shuffling and bleed out onto the sand bars and slowly seep back together into the darkness?
Sep 21 2011 12:00 pm
everybody relax
Allow me to narrate the in-between spaces. Please let me fill in the blanks. I’ll tell you how it works, the parts you can’t see, so that we can feel OK about it happening. Because it will happen fast and it will happen hard and it will happen all the time and we’ll need some way to make sense of it and I’m willing to do that for you. I’m willing to make sense of it for you.
Did you set the hook into or out of his mouth? They like to sit on the inside bends on the current break because they can get to calm water there, they can get to food there, to cover. Fish won't move very far to take a nymph because they don't have to. He's got it together because his dad took him fishing when he was a kid. She had trouble with anybody telling her what to do. She was just born plain dumb stubborn. This is why she hitchhiked home alone last winter and got in the wrong car with the wrong dude.
Don’t worry. I’ll spin it right. I’ll make you look good and me look good and we’ll all come out looking good in the end.
And no one can tell me that’s not the way it happens.
