Z

In Praise of Z . . .
Z words & names = Dada!

I. Names: People & Places

Zapata
Zapatista
Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
Zorastrian
Zachary
Zagreb
Zhukov
Zaire
Zorro
Zorba
Zeppo
Zdanek
Zimbabwe
Zambezi
Zambia
Zapotec
Zimbra
Zanzibar
Zulus
Zuni
Zealand
Zsa-Zsa
Zappa
Zucconi
Ziegler
Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Zelig (Woody Allen)
Zimmerman (Bob Dylan)
Zhou En-lai

II. And the Best of the Rest.

Zero
Zed
Zealot
Zen
Zebra
Zephyr
Zany
Zip
Zap
Zipper
Zapper
ZIP Code
Zone
Zippity Doo Dah
Zenith
Zest
Ziploc®
Zoloft
Zaftig
Zeppelin
Zippo
Zinc
Zirconium
Zine
Zoom
Zombie
Ziegfeld Follies
Zygote
Zimermann Telegram
Zinger
Zoo
Zoot Suit
Zeppole
Zucchini
Ziti
Zymurgy
Zonked
Z
Bazooka
Kazoo



Today's Rune: Joy.  "Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble!" (Anthony Quinn, Zorba the Greek, 1964).  

X

In praise of X words: this one's a little more challenging than the post on V words and names. Please feel free to add!

Xenophobia
Xenophile
Malcolm X
Xavier
Xerxes
Xenophon
Xerox
Xanax
Xanadu
Xenia
Xinjiang
Xylograph
Xylophone
X-ray
X (the band)*
Xmas - Christmas
XOXO = hugs and kisses
XLNT = excellent!
X = 10
X = multiplier
X = independent variable
X = Partnership (Nordic Rune)
Generation X
X marks the spot
X fills in for a signature
Abraxas or Abrasax
Saxophone
Oxygen



Today's Rune: Initiation.   *More Fun in the New World, 1983/2002 pictured above; video clip from Urgh! A Music War, 1982.

James R. Tomlinson: Adopted Behaviors

Adopted Behaviors: Flash Memoir, Short Stories & Flash Fiction by James R. Tomlinson. [Detroit]: Motor City Burning Press, 2010.

FLASH MEMOIR
“The Trigger Man & His Accomplice”
“A Creative Nonfiction Escape”
“This One’s for the Birds”

SHORT STORIES
“Adopted Behaviors”
“Bread & Water Revival”
“Thumbprints, Deadlines”
“Jail Bait”
“Floss”

FLASH FICTION
“The Sober Truth about Tyler & Zachary on Bickerstaff Street”
“Animus”
“Pitch”
“Still Life in Detroit”
“If You’d Only Pay Attention”

Jim Tomlinson intones many of the selections included here with a wry -- and sly -- voice, reminding me of William S. Burroughs (especially Junky). There’s almost always an intentionally displaced sense of time and space as in Costa-Gavras films like Z and Missing.*

“Jail Bait” reminds me in part of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Commit a Crime,” but inverting Coumadin for Red Devil Lye -- and reversing the intent of the woman from loathing to affection.

Tomlinson’s choices for names are interesting. Is it synchronicity or coding? I don’t know. But take the first line in this story:

“Joshua Liddy swallows rat poison and rushes out the door to beat the high school bus to the corner of Samsa and Conner” – to peep at a young musician he calls Greta (like Hansel and Gretel?) 

Liddy makes me think of G. Gordon Liddy; Samsa, of Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis. So far as I can tell looking at a Detroit street map, there’s a Connor but not a Samsa; I have no idea where "Jolene and Lareby“ might be, either. Then there’s the character named Rizzo – bringing to mind Rizzo the Ratso from Midnight Cowboy. Rizzo likes vermiculite:

"Vermiculite," he repeats, "helps the plants to grow. I told you that. . ."  

It’s fun to get caught in the mesh, looking for new clues, absorbing the tales entirely and also deconstructing them.

From "Thumbprints, Deadlines,“ here’s a deftly detailed  working class scene – it would seem as truthful an observation of neighbors in my Pennsylvania hometown during the 1960s as for the narrator in Hazel Park, Michigan: 

My childhood home two blocks away, a bluish-grey bungalow with a fatigued yellow porch and rusted-metal awning. From that porch, I last saw my father standing in the front yard, sporting a hunter’s orange cap and matching rain slicker; a sot with a balled-up fist clutching mother by her frizzy blond hair while she swung her cast-iron frying pan, not in defense, but as a tool of her emotion. You turned down overtime, didn’t you?

To quote JR: "Adopted Behaviors is . . . related in some way to the human condition and/or prison experience." Also note: "He teaches convicted felons for the Michigan Department of Corrections." 

Though the examples given above are from the longer pieces, I like JR's flash memoirs and flash fiction even more. They are pithy, too.

It’s good to see Motor City Burning Press revving up. Before you can say John Lee Hooker, more productions, I suspect, will be wooshing down the road.

http://motorcityburningpress.blogspot.com/2010/07/mcbp-debut-adopted-behaviors.html

*Free associating, these things surface after re-reading Adopted Behaviors: Deadpan agency. Culpability. Accomplices – complicities – implications -- accomplishments. Everything is part of the dynamic. PoV remains actually involved while seemingly detached. Shared ownership of what happens, part of the mix. Complexity.

 
Today's Rune: Harvest.

Victoria France Stavish Interview

Here's a written interview with Victoria France Stavish, who happens to be my sister. Vickie's stories about Detroit and Gale have always inspired me existentially -- I even ended up moving to Detroit and doing some freelance work for the Gale Group (now Gale, part of Cengage Learning). Also, I utilized her detailed article on Camus mentioned below to organize an approach for reading all of Camus' work in the 80s. Thanks, Vickie!

Erik: What do you best remember about your time in Detroit working for Gale Research?

Vickie: I remember the interview for my editing job at Gale, when the company was in the Book Tower in downtown Detroit. I was 23, and it was my first foray into the city by myself, having recently moved there from Charlottesville, Virginia. I knew nothing, parked in a city parking lot, and emanated fear as I walked to the building. The kindly British Human Resources Director at Gale had me take a general test to confirm a knowledge of English and editing, then gave me a typing test on a regular typewriter (not even an IBM Selectric II). She also gave me a cup of tea.

As I typed away diligently (not near as fast as nowadays, but aiming to pass the test), I noticed that my tea cup was moving to the tapping. I didn't want to miss a stroke, so I kept on typing. As I was finishing, the cup had made it to the end of the typing table and flew off! Tea splattered the floor and wall.

Luckily, the Director liked me despite my faux pas, I passed all the tests, and was offered a job in the Contemporary Authors Department.

While working at Gale for two years, I did have some amusing experiences. I thought that I would meet many famous people, but as it turned out, I simply corresponded with some (including Maria von Trapp and some international poet laureates) or talked with them on the phone. One author, however, called about me. It was Harlan Ellison. He called the head of my department to ask, "Who the f... is Vickie .......?!" When I wrote about him for the series, I had called him a science fiction writer, and he had taken umbrage to that description. Hey, I liked getting some attention from a well-known writer, even though I didn't intend to insult him.

The sketch I enjoyed writing the most was one on French (born in Algeria) philosopher and writer Albert Camus.I also got into writing about the family of ground-breaking (pun!) archaeologists, the Leakeys.

I would probably laugh at my style of the time, but it's nice to know this series is available in English speaking libraries all around the world! It was fun when in the New York Library one time with my sister in law who had worked as a librarian there, I picked out one of the Contemporary Author volumes to see if it was one I had worked on with a byline (which was looooong ago!). It was! She and my youngest brother hadn't known I had done that.

Erik: How did you become interested in the arts?

Vickie: It's a natural bent. I have loved books since I was a toddler and that has never waned. I love telling stories and sharing them with others, especially children (of all ages). Besides that, I love language -- the look and sound of words; their meanings and their beauty. And not just English (French, Swedish, Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Spanish....)!

Then the visual arts convey information and feeling, too! Color, form, movement, beauty, and more. It's a spiritual thing with me, like a prayer. I feel an energy that is working through me when I create art. People like it, so that makes me very happy. It's all experimental to me. My approach is, "let's see what happens."

Today's Rune: Protection.

Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird / 좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈 / Joheun-nom, Nabbeun-nom, Isanghan-nom (2008-2010) is great fun! Literally, "the good fellow and the bad fellow, the fellow who is strange," this action flick pays homage to a range of Sergio Leone films while maintaining its own (Korean) spirit.

The inspired setting: lawless and violently contested Manchuria during the late 1930s -- a place even crazier than the American Wild West or Mexico during the Revolution. Exotic touches include the Tri-Nation gang, the Ghost Market and an apparent opium den at a border crossing. One massive chase section has five different elements: Manchurians; Japanese horse cavalry, trucks and artillery; the Bad and his mounted gang; the Good on horseback; and, being pursued by all because of a map in his possession, the Weird. There is a lot of violence and wreckage, but it's stylized and reminds me, in addition to Sergio Leone, of Clint Eastwood, James Bond, Mad Max and Conan the Barbarian all blended together.

The Good is more like Mr. Self-interest with a sure shot; the Bad is sensitive to insult and quick to kill; the Weird (Song Kang-ho) seems the most human and has attributes of Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood character(s), as well as a touch of Tuco Benedicto Pacífico Juan María Ramírez (Eli Wallach).

Finally, one picks up a little of the historical backdrop involving Korea, China, Japan and Russia.  The film was shot on location in the Gobi Desert.

Today's Rune: Movement.

Surfin' Bird

What's the last time you looked up a word while reading a book? Watching TV or a movie?

For me, while reading a book it was Marilyn French's The Love Children (2009) -- about a dozen words, mostly specifics to do with food and cooking. Movies and TVs -- it's been many a blue moon. Years. Except for names and places, maybe decades.

When you're not quite sure about a word's meaning, how do you handle it? If access is easy, I'll look it up in a dictonary online or in a book; if not, I'll scribble a note on a card, a scrap of paper or in a notebook while trying to figure it out through contextualizing the way it's used (sort of like twenty questions). I will also ask somebody. How about you? Last time I used a word without knowing what it meant was for an English (or Language Arts or whatever it was called then) class in grade school -- "He stenched the book." I have never "stenched the book" since. I have for a long time greatly enjoyed malapropisms and so-called eggcorns. To test your response, this is sort of along the lines of acyrologia.* Evil! As for dialects and pronunciations and international language usage, that's a whole different set of beasts to be tackled in other "posts." 

*If you already know what acyrologia means, you win a cookie from Don Rickles! Seriously.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Son House: Lament for JFK

Because there doesn't seem to be a transcription of Son House's "President Kennedy" (1965) on the internet, here's mine. It's a sad song, almost like "You Are My Sunshine" but in lamentation mode. Hard to believe that even John-John has been dead for eleven years now. Kind of scary given he was only a little older than me. Note: I also posted a transcription of Son House's "Levee Camp Moan" (long version) not too far back.

"President Kennedy" by Son House (1965)

Mr. Kennedy was born
But now he is gone
To never returning a-more
Made me feel sad
He's the best friend we had
He's from the rich and the poor
Now I can't muchin' tell
It'll last me for years
His memory still rings in my head.

Now this sorry grief
Had a great family
They all seemed so happy and gay
From adults to a child
They all seemed to a-have a smile
They must a-have been born that way
Now I can't much-a tell
It'll last me for years
His memory still rings in my head.

Mmh God bless little John
That little Caroline responds
And also their mother dear
His father and mother
Sister and brother
They must-a been born that way
Now I can't muchin' tell
It'll last me for years
His memory still rings in my head.

Mmh this sorry grief
Had a great family
All seemed so happy and gay
Father and his mother
Sister and brother
They must a-have been born that way
Now I can't much-a tell
It'll last me for years
His memory still rings in my head.



Today's Rune: Wholeness.