5¢ense Sensory Lit/Art Musings and Peregrinating Responses

¢ Dertu Revisited 1: Following the Nomadic Pastorals and Ditch Diggers from Nairobi to Dertu, Kenya

¢ Guest-blogging on urwhatueat: Matoke with Njahi beans, Sauteed Pumpkin Leaves and Tandoori Chicken

Telling someone to “eat dirt” elsewhere in the world is usually what you say (in the heat of competition) when you willfully want them to crash or wipe out. Well, in Kenya, and other parts of Africa, they do literally eat dirt. I think “geophagy” is the term [ ... ]

¢ More Songs About Buildings & Food: Stuffed & Starved, NYC Revisited, SSES, Bookfeast ... All in a Day's Work

Went back to New York last week. Didn't really know I was going until a few days before. I got an assignment to do a one day live blogging gig in exchange for the airfare. Not that I felt a need to surface for air or anything, especially in the States, but Jess was going and we've decided to make the Paul and Linda McCartney pact of never spending a night away from each other [ ... ]

¢ The Next Shell of the Hermit Crab Couple, Goiter, the Persistence of Indentured Servitude & Inhumanity, and the Importance of Telling People's Stories

But mostly that scene makes you realize how the dynamics of a situation, of a plan, or of an institutionalized system of subversion, change when you get to know the individual people. Both the hostages and the hostage-takers become individual humans. Then things become far more complex and harder to swallow. Like frogs and scorpions. [ ... ]

¢ Permanent Vacation: Musings on Mombasa, Redux, Jarmusch, Sampsell, Sex, Tides, Unferth, Fish, Hermit Cowries, Monkeys, Kenani, "Home" and Finding Beauty in Being Pretty, Pretty Vacant

I guess you could say I've been on "vacation" for one month now. Though saying you are in vacation in Nairobi is like saying you are on Holiday in Cambodia. Vacation is defined as: 1. an extended period of recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling. 2. the action of leaving something one previously occupied. [ ... ]

¢ Obama, We're Not In Kansas Anymore

People have been asking us to see pictures of Nairobi and whatnot. Jess is better at such things, taking pictures and providing a more conventional narrative. She posted some pics and talks about our day to day lives here.  Here's a few pictures I have to add, from in and around our neighborhood, Runda. I still feel somewhat like a fish out of water here. Not that that is a bad thing. [ ... ]

¢ Kwani? 04 and "How to Write About Africa" (a la Binyavanga Wainaina)

It has been a full week now since we've been in Nairobi. In my first days here, I got a hold of some Kwani? publications, figuring they would be a good introduction to what's going on in the Kenyan writing scene. I've read Kwani? 03 before and stuff on their site, but Kwani? publications are not easy (or cheap) to come by in America. There was actually a literary festival that Kwani? [ ... ]

¢ Hot-wiring the Etymological Customs of Packs and Nodes whilst Trying to Eat Blackberries with Blue Teeth (Still Sans Baggage) as a Newbie to Nairobi, Isn't it?

Words fascinate me. Dissecting their elemental and duplistic meanings. Especially semantic puns whose dual-meanings are disparate but strangely connected. For example, the word I used at the beginning of the last sentence, "especially," whose root lies in special... actually it might not be a good example for you, but for me, whenever I use the word "special" I think of the [ ... ]

¢ Leaving America Whilst Reading Don DeLillo's Americana

I started reading Don DeLillo's Americana the last day we were in Albuquerque. Our final day in America. Five pages into it I was experiencing an oddly familiar déjà vu. Ten pages into I realized I had already read it, or at least started to read it. Or maybe I read an excerpt somewhere, but I had definitely read it. My memory sucks. I can't imagine all the books I've read or worse yet, experiences I've had that I can't remember. Memory is a strange thing. You only remember the things you remember   [ ... ]

¢ X-Country Limbo: NYC to Nairobi by way of New Mexico

New York City already seems so far away. Now we're 350 miles and three states away near Cleveland, Ohio in some dingy hotel that smells like mildew. I awoke at dawn in NYC after our last night. The subways weren't running so I walked all the way from 74th street to 34th street to pick up our rental mini-van. [ ... ]

¢ NYC: The Final Countdown!

After over 8 years in New York City, we have 10 full days left here. To honor that, I plan on counting down and documenting our final days here. To honor this final countdown I think it's important that you first watch this video to put you in the mindset. Watch it loud. Just replace "Europe" or "Venus" with Africa. [ ... ]

¢ Rick Moody, Kate Hill Cantrill and David Hollander reading at the Sleepingfish Launch Party

To honor the launch of the new Sleepingfish issue zzz, we had a reading. For those that didn't get a chance to go, here's what went down under the Hotel D'Orsay sign in the Barbès backroom. [ ... ]

¢ From New England (Redux) to Africa by Way of Ancient Greece: Gathering Bookish Momentum & Sleeping in the 3rd bed (in the spirit of Carver's "Neighbors")

Last weekend was a weekend of shifting. Shifting weight. Shifting focus. Shifting cities. Shifting states. Switching places, figuratively. Shifting priorities in anticipation of our big move. Saturday morning, B and C came by in a U-haul and picked up [ ... ]

¢ Cover and opening excerpt from Marsupial: Our Mother for the Time Being

Back in 1994 I had the opportunity to work on a film in Nice, France called Mr. Stitch. The film ended up being a complete fiasco, but for me it was all the more interesting in that respect. It was written and directed by my cousin Roger Avary. Not that I'm particularly proud to admit that... for me it was a good opportunity to spend time with my brother Kevin who was the art   [ ... ]

¢ As Sure as the Sun: Northern California Roadtrip

Last week Jess and I went to California. We went for a wedding in Yosemite, but here's some other stuff we saw along the way. Jess put some pictures on her site as well.   [ ... ]

¢ Interview with Venus Bogardus: On Ohle, Punk, Smart Resilience, Kaspar Hauser, Art Rock, Repoman, P. Gabriel circa 1975, Blade Runner, Repatriation and Utopia, Texas

Venus Bogardus is this band out of the UK that has taken it upon themselves to put David Ohle's words to music. Their latest album Motorman is in fact a collaboration with David Ohle. [ ... ]

¢ Seeds, Fertilizer & Credit: The Economy of Words II, Revenge of the Bookeaters and a Proposition for a Slow Book Movement

As a writer and publisher (nocturnally), I couldn't help but to think of the parallels between agriculture and book-publishing, despite one being driven by necessity and the other, you could argue, being a decadent privilege unnecessary for survival. In particular, he kept stressing the importance of three things: seeds, fertilizer and credit. These three things were the key ingredients   [ ... ]

¢ Skyping to Tokyo & Minor Robberies: A Peregrinating Response to Deb Olin Unferth

I started reading Deb Olin Unferth's Minor Robberies a few months ago, then my wife got robbed and I started a new job and got distracted by a string of other things. I hadn't been able to finish it until the other night at 1 a.m. when I was stuck waiting for the subway. There's a few stories about robbery and travel inconveniences in her book. It's a pretty little green book. [ ... ]

¢ The Stigma of Googling 'Birthday Suicide'

What sticks out most was this guy trying to sell me stolen watches that he had all up his arm and in his briefcase. He really made an impression on me. I said I didn’t need one and that I was trying to sleep, but he saw that I couldn’t take my eyes off his glinting watches and kept insisting and getting all chummy with me, asking where I was going and I said back to Portland  [ ... ]

¢ Commutation #23 : Traversing Central Park & Underground to the Flatirons (in the Snow)

We've lived in 6 different apartments in Manhattan, and I've worked (for an extensive period of time) in 8 different locations. That makes for a lot of permutations of commutes, each route with it's own permutations. I typically bike or walk, though in winter months like now I'm wimpy and resort to the subway. Right now we live on 74th street on the west side and I work on 28 [ ... ]

¢ an excerpt from Tortoise by James Leweling

It was about this time last year that James Lewelling sent me his novel Tortoise. I had the faintest idea who he was. I printed out the manuscript one insomniac night, hoping it might lull me to sleep. But I ended up reading it all the way through, finishing it as the sun was rising. It was better than sleep. It will be out soon from Calamari Press, but here's an excerpt to tie you over [ ... ]

¢ The Making of J'Lyn Chapman's Bear Stories Chapbook

It's been a while since I've made a chapbook or homemade book. I thought I wouldn't miss all the stapling and printing hassles, but in a sick way I do. The driving force of publishing for me is replication, in the sense of meme propagation. By taking a backseat to the replication process you take the human element out of it—the fingerprint smudges and frayed trimmings that remind [ ... ]

¢ X Marks the Spot :: Read on Location < 2008 (cumulative recap)

I'm not big on 'best of' lists at the year's end for books. It's hard to quantify books and I rarely read books when they come out, nor do I feel a need to be current. I ususally wait for the right opportunity to arise. In the spirit of Field-Tested Books, here's all the books I've read where location and time was significant to the reading of it, with links to the blog entry where I "review" it [ ... ]