James McGirk

Author: Jamie

  • Introducing The Flopp-V

    Introducing the Flop-V

    Not sure if this is insult or flattery. From Cute Boys With Cats; photo by Pink Eye.

    The evolution of a pet name.

    Small black cat introduced to main pride. Floppy (a fawnish, foppish, not quite grown into his paws) appearance noted. The name Floppy is coined. As other aspects of his personality become apparent, a ferocious energy, the ability to hold his own in a pride of three other cats, despite his sweet exterior manner invokes comparisons to the reptilian ‘V.’ Floppy becomes Flop-V. An extra “p” is later added for propriety’s sake.

  • Reading with emptiness/Entering the protocols

    Joshua Ferris (of And We Came to the End fame) spoke in class yesterday. He described his reading and writing process and it seemed diametrically opposed to my own. Ferris takes an enormous pad and writes little chunks all over, assembling a narrative from the fragments. Just thinking about writing that way made me uncomfortable (which likely means I should try it). The traditional method of writing, according to Ferris, is to build an idea (he called it a platonic ideal) in your head and then try to get it down on paper. I see writing as more of a thread, and as I write I’m trying to build something up from a spool of text. Ferris isn’t much of a world-builder, and admitted as much, saying there was no way he could get away with such an exotic narrator (a plural “I”) without setting his novel in such a familiar setting (i.e. an office). Another takeaway: Ferris talked about his MFA, saying that the only lesson he really took from Irvine was figuring out how to read without imputing his own aesthetic onto other people’s work. I have been struggling with how to read critically but correctly and that seems to be the key. Our professor suggested John Updike’s Rules for Reviewing (which seem to have vanished in its original form, leaving only bloggy traces):

    Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

    Submission to the spell… if only it were easy

  • Listening Post / Rhodesia Independence

    Upgrade

    Decisions must be made regarding Port Lightning listening posts.

    Meanwhile, Independence preparations continue…

  • WHITNEY’S TEPID BIENNIAL

    Jennifer Jackson Hutchins
    Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Couch For a Long Time, 2009
    Sleet spattered over VIPs queuing outside for the opening of the Whitney Biennial on February 23rd. We suffered in silence, in darkness, our conversations drowned by the monastic groaning of an outdoor installation that cast an eerie blue hue. Dumpling trucks prowled and rogue cameramen interviewed some on a scrap of red carpet. We inched along as the storm intensified, sentries sifting us into various purgatories….[link]

  • Interior, with cats x 2

    Interior, with cats x2 — these are my cats.

  • Three Minute Fiction: JOYOUS TRANSACTION

    NPR Contest Image

    We’re supposed to do this with yarrow stalks, but “coins,” he says, “are more indicative of global currency flow.”

    I stand to leave. Scraping my chair back. He shakes his head and swirls his coffee: “more modern,” he says.

    I sit down again. Take a sip of mine.

    Given the swirling streams of capital – well, I get it; as a modern soothsayer coins aren’t a bad idea.

    But I’m not asking about money.

    He pushes aside his Straits Times, revealing an I-Ching and three U.S. quarters. He slides his coins to me. I shake and fling. Coins flash, fall across the table six times in succession. He tabulates my score: Heads-heads-tails. (Twice) Heads-tails-tails. (Once) Heads-heads-tails. (Twice again) Heads-tails-tails….

    He points at the coins and beckons. I slide them over. He shakes his head. “First: my fee.” I slide that over too. He nods and turns the book around for me to see:

    58. Tui, The Joyous

    Lakes resting one on the other:
    The image of the Joyous.
    Thus the superior man joins with his friends
    For discussion and practice.

    The moment of discovery! My muscles flinch involuntarily: “That’s all?” I say, my voice a squeak.

    “You understand why you do this now?”

    He’s so wise, that crumpled grey suit, those yellowing plastic frames. Enlightenment is bearing down on us: I feel it. I squish my palms together, and choose my reply very, very carefully. “For fun?”

    “You don’t fully understand.”

    “I don’t,” I say, pressing my palms harder. “Tell me! Please!”

    He picks my coffee cup up and dumps it into his; brown liquid floods, soaking the paper: “that mindless moment of exchange,” he says, as it drips on my pants, and he gets up and leaves.

  • Still Goddamn Cold Out

    Maine Coon the Hunter by Maunz

    Snarfing pizza bones, nursing my sick Maine Coon who is less wooly and of more pleasant disposition than the above specimen. Even when he has a thermometer crammed inside one of his most sensitive spots. And he had to have his nailed trimmed which means he can’t hold his own against the other two. I’ll add a couple of short prose forms exercises when I have a moment.

  • The Q&A: Sasha Grey, Performer

    As an X-certificate actress, Sasha Grey perfected a thrashing sensuality far more cathartic and psychologically fraught than her moaning, grunting contemporaries. Her smouldering looks and unapologetic public appearances snared millions of mostly male fans and turned the teen porn performer into a cult figure.

  • Prose Poem

    From Wikipedia

    BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT – Myrtle Ave.

    Not every nexus needs glamour but where Myrtle and Wycoff Avenues meet there is – of a seedy sort. Where the M- and L-lines cross, where Ridgewood, Queens slopes down to meet Bushwick, Brooklyn, lies the densest concentration of beauty supply stores in New York City. Here, for the discerning consumer of polyvinyl wigs or discount hair dyes, is a bonanza of buying opportunity; but for the rank amateur choking on fragrant ketone contrails, these are a rare opportunity to spot postmodern potions shorn of marketing magic. Row after row, they reduce to bare bottles stacked on stamped steel.

    Reasonable prices diluted through volume. Cash accepted gladly. Cards keyed reluctantly in on a gooey pad, the line behind chitters and taps booted toes.

    North. Transverse. Traverse, bags of swag rustle and crinkle. What had been predominantly white semaphore extends bluing, vanishing in a blurred dot of cars, people and buying opportunity. Primary colors appear. Discount department stores become big box banks; taco stands become Taco Bell; bodegas become 7-11s; Food Dimensions, A&P; arm-linked families of Puerto Ricans give way to jostling Italian teens who seem threatening until they clamber into cars, leased, but luxury marquees all the same.

    A triangle square; benches for resting, inset, a World War I memorial hemmed in by fluttering flags (billings, not battle colors). Christmas lights coil around railings, cycles streak by, Teutonic surnames carved on columnar base, symbolic squad teeters on top, its perimeter observed by crenulated balconies; the gothic script stamped but fading on the apartment awnings below.

    Then up, past Pizza Hut, and the porn store, to another transverse, Freshpond Road, marking the end of the BID, the beginning of Maspeth and a hypotenuse back to the beginning of Myrtle.

    ~JAMES MCGIRK (Group II)

  • WRITING PROGRAMME UPDATE

    I didn’t write this, but it pertains to my article… [SETH ABRAMSON RESPONDS]