December 20, 1995

5:42:02 PM once last year it was cold outside like it is right now. i mean i've seen much worse weather, but it's pretty nasty out right now. anyway, i got up one morning to go to work, and walked from this apartment building to the busstop. it was bitching cold out, and to make it worse i was wearing a thin coat and my usual office-garb of gossamer-thin pants and shirt, all of it very officious looking but not at all suited to the wind and cold. didn't even have a hat. anyway, it was so cold that my eyes started to water, and what looked like teardrops were oh man, i'm like typing this and the radio's on and it's a wine commercial and in the middle of this commercial someone starts pouring wine, and they highlight this sound effect and i FUCKING HATE IT, the sound of pouring liquid, it's fuckin' gross, it's as bad as the way those dumb moviemakers think sex is so boring to watch that they better enhance the sounds of people kissing and fucking and all those filthy noises of tongues and spit and viscosity just over-fucking-whelm you when you're at a surround-sound movie or watching a move with headphones, and why in the world do they have to do that? all right, the wine commercial is over. now they're doing a plug for "Nixon." gotta stop listening to this station, man, that commercial makes me wanna throw up, the sound of flowing liquid and clanking ice cubes causes instant nausea in my guts. Oh, and the same goes for movies that show people eating. Like dinnertime scenes where a family is having a conversation, and the stupid director has this great idea that what this conversation needs is a gastrointestinal motif, with enhanced chewing noises and more swallowing, and more emphasis on the sound of forks stabbing into pork and spoons clattering against glasses and soupbowls - these aural punctuations are important because without them you don't know for sure when someone got the pork onto their fork, and without that piece of information how can you possibly be made aware of the significance of the pork's path from the plate to the actor's mouth, and how else can you possibly get into the rhythm of the meal and the symbolism of each player's snorts and eructations. i tell ya', i played piano at enough dinner parties to know that the only reason anyone hires musicians to play at those things is to drown out the sounds of people eating. anyway, it was so cold outside that my eyes started to water, and teardrops started coming down both sides of my face. (i wonder if there's a word to describe tears shed not out of sadness but out of climatic conditions such as this. i mean they weren't "tears," and i wasn't "crying" in the normal sense. things to ponder during my busy day...) i walked to the bus stop, and as i was getting there the bus started pulling away, and he had moved several yards from the busstop before seeing me wave my hands to indicate that he should stop and let me on. he hesitated (the bastard), but there was traffic, and he wasn't moving anyway, so he gave in and opened the door to let me on. i stepped onto the bus and he was shaking his head, sternly saying to me "Next time, you get on at the right stop!" i nodded my head, not really listening, and deposited 5 quarters. as i turned toward the seats to find a place to sit i saw several passengers observing this little altercation, and as tears flowed down my face two women looked at me with expressions of genuine pity, apparently thinking that i was crying because the busdriver had just yelled at me. well, that's not why i was crying. and i wasn't "crying" at all. maybe salinating, but not crying. salinating sounds disgusting. like a word you'd find footnoted in a veneral disease pamphlet. i did learn that "coprophiliologist" is not an accurate word to describe the type of person i imagined in this story. "scatologist" is the term, and the funny thing is that the subject of studying human stool came up in a completely unrelated conversation several days later while i was talking to someone about anthropology and archaeology, and i found myself telling them about how the Leaky brothers used to talk about finding "turds" with strata from which they could summarize the fall of some epoch. or was it a dynasty? you could tell all about the ruling class from its peoples' "turds," which i take to be a british expression for what i would call "little pieces of shit." so it's december 20th. it's my mother's birthday. i hope she got my card in time. and if you're reading this, then "HAPPY BOITHDAY, MOM!!" someone is coming over here in about an hour. i'm honored when someone comes to see me in this kind of weather. i don't know if we have plans for anything, but we may go over to Pintaile's Pizza. i'd rather not, because of a weird altercation the other night. went in there and asked for two pieces of semolina (i always wanna say "salmonella") and the guy gave me only one. i said "i asked for two," and the guy takes the one piece back and makes me wait until he heats up the other one before letting me have anything. kind of an asshole thing to do, especially since he just took it right out of my hand, but you learn to expect shit like that around here. anyway, i eventually got the two pieces, and a little later i asked for a third. when i was ready to leave i went to the counter to pay. the guy at the counter was not the same guy who took the pizza back from me, and he didn't seem to know exactly what i'd ordered, so i explained to him "i had 2 semolinas, one slice of cajun, and a country time lemonade." he added it up, i paid whatever it was, and started putting on my coat to leave. this is when the first guy (the asshole) comes out of the kitchen. he didn't see me pay, and as i'm reaching for the doorknob he yells "sir! did you pay for your slices?" i said "huh?" he said "did you pay for your slices?" i said "yeah." he said "did you pay for your third slice?" at this point the other guy (to whom i'd explained what i'd ordered) is poking the guy's shoulder saying "he's OK, he's OK." right as he was saying that i was OK i kind of yelled "i paid for three!" and raised my right hand. i'd meant to hold up three fingers (to indicate three pieces), but somehow only my middle finger was raised. between me appearing to be giving him the finger and the other guy madly telling him that i'd paid, the guy confronting me realized he was wrong and raised his arms in surrender saying "i'm sorry, sir. i'm very, very sorry." i was already holding the door open with my left hand, and as i left i let it stay open, blowing snow and freezing air into the place. petty nonsense, i guess, but what an asshole. I think this is a nice poem by Edward Dorn, a poet about whom I know very little.

5:42:02 PM once last year it was cold outside like it is right now. i mean i've seen much worse weather, but it's pretty nasty out right now. anyway, i got up one morning to go to work, and walked from this apartment building to the busstop. it was bitching cold out, and to make it worse i was wearing a thin coat and my usual office-garb of gossamer-thin pants and shirt, all of it very officious looking but not at all suited to the wind and cold. didn't even have a hat. anyway, it was so cold that my eyes started to water, and what looked like teardrops were
	oh man, i'm like typing this and the radio's on and it's a wine commercial and in the middle of this commercial someone starts pouring wine, and they highlight this sound effect and i FUCKING HATE IT, the sound of pouring liquid, it's fuckin' gross, it's as bad as the way those dumb moviemakers think sex is so boring to watch that they better enhance the sounds of people kissing and fucking and all those filthy noises of tongues and spit and viscosity just over-fucking-whelm you when you're at a surround-sound movie or watching a move with headphones, and why in the world do they have to do that? all right, the wine commercial is over. now they're doing a plug for "Nixon." gotta stop listening to this station, man, that commercial makes me wanna throw up, the sound of flowing liquid and clanking ice cubes causes instant nausea in my guts. Oh, and the same goes for movies that show people eating. Like dinnertime scenes where a family is having a conversation, and the stupid director has this great idea that what this conversation needs is a gastrointestinal motif, with enhanced chewing noises and more swallowing, and more emphasis on the sound of forks stabbing into pork and spoons clattering against glasses and soupbowls - these aural punctuations are important because without them you don't know for sure when someone got the pork onto their fork, and without that piece of information how can you possibly be made aware of the significance of the pork's path from the plate to the actor's mouth, and how else can you possibly get into the rhythm of the meal and the symbolism of each player's snorts and eructations. i tell ya', i played piano at enough dinner parties to know that the only reason anyone hires musicians to play at those things is to drown out the sounds of people eating.
anyway, it was so cold outside that my eyes started to water, and teardrops started coming down both sides of my face. (i wonder if there's a word to describe tears shed not out of sadness but out of climatic conditions such as this. i mean they weren't "tears," and i wasn't "crying" in the normal sense. things to ponder during my busy day...) i walked to the bus stop, and as i was getting there the bus started pulling away, and he had moved several yards from the busstop before seeing me wave my hands to indicate that he should stop and let me on. he hesitated (the bastard), but there was traffic, and he wasn't moving anyway, so he gave in and opened the door to let me on. i stepped onto the bus and he was shaking his head, sternly saying to me "Next time, you get on at the right stop!" i nodded my head, not really listening, and deposited 5 quarters. as i turned toward the seats to find a place to sit i saw several passengers observing this little altercation, and as tears flowed down my face two women looked at me with expressions of genuine pity, apparently thinking that i was crying because the busdriver had just yelled at me. well, that's not why i was crying. and i wasn't "crying" at all. maybe salinating, but not crying. salinating sounds disgusting. like a word you'd find footnoted in a veneral disease pamphlet. i did learn that "coprophiliologist" is not an accurate word to describe the type of person i imagined in this story. "scatologist" is the term, and the funny thing is that the subject of studying human stool came up in a completely unrelated conversation several days later while i was talking to someone about anthropology and archaeology, and i found myself telling them about how the Leaky brothers used to talk about finding "turds" with strata from which they could summarize the fall of some epoch. or was it a dynasty? you could tell all about the ruling class from its peoples' "turds," which i take to be a british expression for what i would call "little pieces of shit." so it's december 20th. it's my mother's birthday. i hope she got my card in time. and if you're reading this, then "HAPPY BOITHDAY, MOM!!" someone is coming over here in about an hour. i'm honored when someone comes to see me in this kind of weather. i don't know if we have plans for anything, but we may go over to Pintaile's Pizza. i'd rather not, because of a weird altercation the other night. went in there and asked for two pieces of semolina (i always wanna say "salmonella") and the guy gave me only one. i said "i asked for two," and the guy takes the one piece back and makes me wait until he heats up the other one before letting me have anything. kind of an asshole thing to do, especially since he just took it right out of my hand, but you learn to expect shit like that around here. anyway, i eventually got the two pieces, and a little later i asked for a third. when i was ready to leave i went to the counter to pay. the guy at the counter was not the same guy who took the pizza back from me, and he didn't seem to know exactly what i'd ordered, so i explained to him "i had 2 semolinas, one slice of cajun, and a country time lemonade." he added it up, i paid whatever it was, and started putting on my coat to leave. this is when the first guy (the asshole) comes out of the kitchen. he didn't see me pay, and as i'm reaching for the doorknob he yells "sir! did you pay for your slices?" i said "huh?" he said "did you pay for your slices?" i said "yeah." he said "did you pay for your third slice?" at this point the other guy (to whom i'd explained what i'd ordered) is poking the guy's shoulder saying "he's OK, he's OK." right as he was saying that i was OK i kind of yelled "i paid for three!" and raised my right hand. i'd meant to hold up three fingers (to indicate three pieces), but somehow only my middle finger was raised. between me appearing to be giving him the finger and the other guy madly telling him that i'd paid, the guy confronting me realized he was wrong and raised his arms in surrender saying "i'm sorry, sir. i'm very, very sorry." i was already holding the door open with my left hand, and as i left i let it stay open, blowing snow and freezing air into the place. petty nonsense, i guess, but what an asshole. `I think this is a nice poem by Edward Dorn, a poet about whom I know very little.`