Here's the beginning of my latest story. For some reason, the italics don't show.


CLUCK CLUCK
(4,030 words)

Being my mini-memoir for readings at which everyone
but my two friends is younger than 32.
(& incidentally for the famous Raymond Federman with thanks
for unintentionally inspiring me)




On the road

Neither a spring chook nor dog neither, as in "gawds, she's a dawg," she's pushing 50 plus don't ask. No more Southern Comfort orgies, identity crises, Kundalini embraces in grottos, poetry benders, bad acid trips and slightly protected sex, she's busy trying to be the heroine of the story, a third person.

But I wasn't sold on third person, so I asked you, Mickey, should I speak in the first person, tell the story as if I had lived it? You'd just finished an MFA program in creative writing. You knew everything. The glass over your displayed stamped degree was fresh. Already, you were teaching Oates and Boyle wannabes about arcs and resolutions. I asked you, novel or something vaguely biographical? You said: Write a memoir. Put your life in the first person. Make it up if you can't remember it make it shocking or pathetic but don't tell anyone and above all, make people laugh hard and weep easily. Look in the display windows at Barnes and Nobles. It's all about memoir, displays of courage amidst adversity. It's about people overcoming, surviving all sorts of shit. I know you can do it, you said, I know an agent. You were licking your lips when you said that. You and your 20 and 30 something MFA friends were drinking Michelob. You're still drinking. I see you in the audience, little bro. I should learn from you, selling your first novel to Random House.

She was pulling more than 50 years after her. Distillization, even on a modest scale, seemed daunting. Heaps of shit to recount and re-invent. Yes it's overwhelming, I said to you, but one must try, I understand, I am told. Your wan, bulimic girlfriend with the belly button ring was in the kitchen fixing something like Vegan tofutti with soy cheese; her skin was blinking like strobe lights. Must've been glitter. My skin is dry with furrows like clay from the Paleolithic Age. I was trying a new skin cream from Aveda at the time, I think. Now it's "facial sculpting" cream by some company owned by a dermatologist in New York. Your girlfriend Zappa drinks bottled water, 12 Evians per day. She'll never run dry until the mother of all tsunamis comes along to get all of us who are still alive. The Greenland icebergs are sagging, falling flat into the ocean up there, like dead breasts. Time to leave coastal areas.

So as I was saying to all of you dear young things, she the older woman was somewhere I forget. Already I've misplaced her, losing my memory and hers in tandem. At least, I should give her a name. I was considerate enough to give you and your girlfriend names. How about Melanoma? Okay okay, I'm kidding, nothing to joke about, stop jumping up and down and screaming. You've been trying to make me see this or that ever since you could formulate sentences. You with the cherub cheeks, Kirk Douglas dent in your chin, from the maternal grandfather, always wearing your hair so short nobody like me would ever want to run her fingers through it. Good idea. Keep me at a distance.

This is getting complicated psychologically and I only have so much time, she thought. I can't possibly go everywhere in one story. I'll look for somewhere to start. Which reminds me of a chicken.

Why did the chicken refuse to cross the road? Take those i-pods off, please please, birdbrains. Focus your eyes and take something to clear your sinuses. The traffic is belching like a behemoth with botulism, choking on fumes from a caravan of SUV's, slouching toward Orlando and Miami, palm trees and parking lots under a navel orange smiley face. Would you cross a road under these circumstances? Look at the drivers with their cellular pacifiers. They are everywhere but here, you know. The solipsists would run you down and scamper off with their lawyers. Mommy, mommy ---- I want to see Poopoo the Penguin! Didn't you cry when Mickey Mouse died? Oh, you didn't know?

So Melanoma okay Melody sat on the curb of a road that winds like a tapeworm from west to east or east to west, depending on who's telling the story. So maybe she's in Missouri, where I've never been. I need to consult my friend Alla in St. Louis. Hang on. Okay, I can dance the Google too! Seems the road starts down there somewhere, but it's hard to follow and I can't get in touch with Alla who's in Orlando with the boys I just recalled.

Melody was bereft, tuneless. Bereft of what? And what's her song? you ask. Too many facocta questions for nothing, no reason. Why questions? Knock it off, I say, I've always been bereft of my senses, according to many. Stop being hyperbolic, you said dramatically. I think it's a love song by that Hebrew hater Wagner…. Liebe strom-unt-drung something whatever. Au secours! Courage, mes enfants! Awesome! Wunderbar! Chocolat! She also likes that Nancy Sinatra song about walking boots.

So where was I? On the curb, the stingy, gritty curb of existence, hard on the ass, as usual on the rim of it all, the ledge of success, well to tell the truth far from the ledge but about to fall off, floating on the circumference of meaning, riding a cycle around my self, skirting it in my pink pantaloons with white satin ribbons. Huh? pantaloons? Where did you get them? You asked. You said: too many images confuse me and when you add abstractions, you totally lose it, you know you lose us. You're like a planet in another solar system called Chaos. You don't follow the rules and you're much too self-indulgent to get anywhere, you said. You were emulating the minimalists, as you'd been taught to do. You accused me of swimming unconsciously in streams of consciousness, told me I'm passé with an accent. May a tsunami weep over you, I didn't say, being somewhat mature. I realized you were upset with me. You usually never simile! But I digress of necessity, as necessity invents digression and digression is the mother of invention.

There were very essential pantaloons in my past, in Melanoma's history, they suddenly bloom large enough to see hanging on a clothesline in the backyard of a vine-choked stone house in Funafuti, the capitol of the isles of Tuvalu, in which I'll dwell circa 2019, pantaloons hanging as symbols of the teenage girl's coming of age in the early 60's, past the hoola hoop stage, at one of those times (during the last century) when girls who'd teetered over the edge of puberty twittered about wedding nights, wondering what they'd wear to bed and oh wow, what would he feel like, Before i-pods and all that techno stuff kids think they can't live without. Do girls still do that? Melody wondered, particularly girls with pins in their tongues and tattoos of stars on their breasts?

So pantaloons are important in my mini-memoir I think, Melanoma insisted. The heat was loud that Sunday. Flat, hopeful voices singing dour hymns wafted futilely across the landscape of corn and wheat. No, not both, you boob. Choose. And don't use all of those adjectives and adverbs! Okay, corn, though this wasn't Iowa. It was (as understood) uncomfortable on the curb and the donkey was panting. Yes, the donkey, she always shows up (footnote: e.g., see Novack's "Interview with Self"), the ass drops by. She had an ass, always did, came by it naturally, naturally. It was drooping from the burdens of years of sitting on itself. Asses don't last. You will learn. Okay, you and Federman mistrust metaphors. I can't help it they drop by without even ringing bells. Should I call the cops?

Melody lusted suddenly for King Kong the supermarket of all supermarkets. Henry had insisted she acquire a cell phone so she could consult him while she shopped. Okay, Henry, she would say into the phone. I'm by the carrots. Do you want any? No? Oh please, not okra. You know I loathe okra! . . . . So now I'm by the fish and there are some elegant yet tragic baby octopuses, fresh from Santorini, glistening with Greek salt shine, even. And Henry would reply with incredulity: What the fuck, are you kidding? Yuck!

I was nearing a coma from the heat. I'd left the Bombay gin behind, of necessity, having fled with startling alacrity. The cops. They would find all of us under the beds with our leaflets. I'd had it with Henry anyway. Had IT, if you know what I mean or even if you don't, this is gritty realism. This memoir is authentic and exciting, full of tragedies. But talking about failed relationships is boring, at my age, at least. Being 20 something, maybe you think I can teach you something. Forget it. You couldn't take my life, take it and make something of it, like a lesson in perseverance. You wouldn't know what to do with it. It's much too messy, you'd say. Knowing you, you'd reduce it drastically, deleting the most succulent bits, like those references to crème brulee, fatty pastrami, pistachio nuts, and long boned loin lamb chops. Now Melody forgets even what Henry looked like though he was everything to her, the sun, the moon, the stars, the big screen television and especially the waterbed, particularly when it leaked, threatening instant death by electric shock. Once they flowed together, bounced in harmony to the beat of some band or other. He was meaningful.

Sitting on the curb with my fat ass. We were both thirsty and there was no grass left. So you want I should suddenly have a realization that will change my life or something dramatic should happen. Well it did. A big white SUV with LALA plates rear-ends my ass and takes off, tires squealing, gas fuming. Dang dang, no fuckin transportation now. That's silly, you say. But where was Melody going?

Melody was seeking her next song, the one after Henry, who was always the same chords, the same beat outside the bedrooms. She was delirious from the sun, a mass of discordant notes and hair, aimless. Nobody ever listened to her. She would often say: You're not LISTENING. And she would frequently get no response, frequently because she'd forgotten to open her mouth to utter her questions. I want to make a difference, I would often say. And you would ask suspiciously, a difference in what? To what? How different? Jeez, you gave me headaches, always did, as if you were listening, which you weren't. You were always too busy. Always. Hang on. That's someone else's American father I'm remembering.

But that's no matter. I see this guy up the road, let's say a latish 40'ish dish full of sinews, trying to hitch a ride. Nobody picks up hikers you should know, no longer, after Ted Bundy. Nobody refers to a guy as a dish. This guy is waving four signs at the passing vehicles. One of them says: IS ANYONE GOING TO TENNESSEE? Another states: FORMER LINGUISTICS PROFESSOR NEEDS RIDE TO TALLAHASSEE. The third sign reads: ANYWHERE WILL DO. And the fourth sign asks: HOW ABOUT SASKATEWAN?

On this road, everyone's going east. The former professor imagines that he has a choice. Melody finds that endearing.

You will go anywhere, anywhere but here. Understood. I know that. In that, we are alike. Melody will go anywhere. She wants to overcome everything by walking away, riding donkeys, getting ON with her life, getting unstuck from the same rhythms and notes.

**********
copyright Carol Novack 2006

Great news. I will be dining in French (of course) with the illustrious Federman on April 26th, when he is in NYC for the Pen International Festival. Moreover, he'll be quoting the entry below when he takes the podium at La Maison Francaise, so (as F says) we'll both be famous.

Other great news items:

1. 5_Trope will be publishing my prose poem narrative "Civil War."

2. I met some wonderful writers last week when my friend Michael Rothenberg (editor of Big Bridge) was here to read at St Mark's with his friend David Meltzer. The amazing poet and warm/kind person David and I clicked immediately and we're corresponding. It was great to meet Michael in person and see/hear both of them read. Now it turns out that David and Raymond F. knew and liked one another back in the 60's.

3. I have completed the draft of a metafiction ("Cluck Cluck") inspired by Monsieur Federman & a reading in which I was featured (see next item) & will post parts of it in another blog entry. It's nearly 4000 words long which is pratically a novel for me. Or maybe it's more than 4000 words since I made some revisions this morning.

4. I read 3 pieces in the Frequency Series reading in my hood last week: "3 Poems to Flowers," "Blah Blah," and "Civil War." Everyone there, including the two other featured readers, Justin Marks & Chris Tonnelli, was 20 or 30 something, except for yours truly & my 2 friends Bob Heman & Janet Restino. Anyway, "Blah Blah" was very enthusiastically received, garnering lots of laughs, and Marks asked me if it was available for publishing in LIT (the New School mag), which he edits. I've since submitted it to him. My new young friend Justin Taylor (in the MFA program at the New School) was also interested in publishing it for a mag he'll be starting sometime or other. I'll send him something/s else.

5. The deadline for the anthology "Butterflies of Vertigo," which I'm co-editing with Karthyn Ratala, is fast approaching and it looks incredibly promising. We've managed to attract some top notch well-known innovative/unconventional prose writers, mostly lyrical, as well as a bunch of very talented lesser knowns. We hope that our agent will begin to shop the collection sometime in April.

6. The hysterical satirist Andy Borowitz has expressed an interest in performing in the Mad Hatters' Rev. reading series. I'm hoping for a September date. After our inaugural reading on April 7th, the following reading will be held on June 1st. Edwin Torres and C. O. Moed will read. I haven't yet decided on the third reader.

Raymond Federman on Writing is the title of today's entry.
I am reading Federman's novel "Aunt Rachel's Fur," reading very slowly, as usual, but there are so many delicious morsels to bite at, lick, roll around on one's tongues, and swallow that slowly is really the only way to read Federman. But I will ask him for his opinion. Whether or not he gives it is, of course, up to Federman, who's probably still very busy completing another book about Samuel Beckett.

I am very comfortable reading Federman. I love hearing him seemingly digress from narrative; as I understand him, he both realizes and delights in the fact that there can be no true narrative (fiction) without digressions, past, present and future. I think that narrative without digressions is phony, sham, a joke on literature, anti-narrative, an abandoned rabbit hole, and those who insist on "Story" proceeding from point A to B (with perfect arcs and epiphanies) lack imagination, wit, and the freedom/self-knowledge to allow words themselves to play and shape both fiction and the characters that move through fiction as we move through our lives, which we constantly fictionalize as we ourselves cannot be static actualities, and that's the truth. ha. Maybe I go to far, maybe not & Federman agrees or perhaps he would state this in very different words and possibly he would call me a cacademic which I'm not, or maybe just a caca. No matter.

Whether our thoughts and experiences move the words or our words move our thoughts and experiences and our experience of our thoughts is something I wonder and I wonder if it makes any difference at all as long as we are moving with our words and our words are moving us & others to want to understand us. Now as Chuang Tzu might say: have I said anything or have I said nothing?

So now, I will insert my so far favorite "what is writing fiction all about" and what is Federman's intentionally improvisational and acutely intelligent writing process quotations by Federman. Federman told me he's addictive and he's right. I wish he would drop by with a nice bottle of Beaujolais. But he's playing golf.

Yo, Federman!!! Je t'embrace!

________________________________
Some quotes from Raymond Federman's "Aunt Rachel's Fur"
________________________________
Alright, quickly, more or less the story of my life up to ... up to now, well, a version of my life, you know what I mean, it's hard to stick to the facts when the fever of recitation grabs you, one version among many possible others, somewhat distorted, exaggerated, accelerated, embellished, and greatly romanticized, what the hell, what's the point of writing your life if you can't improve it a bit, one can only tell the truth, I mean the real truth, with detours and lies, it's an old dictum, and besides, the only way a life can pass for literature is through exaggerations ...

You see what really bugged me over there was the reality of America, reality, my ass, you want me to tell you something, nobody gives a damn about reality, and you know why, because reality is always a disenchantment, la réalité c’est du bluff, I think it’s Rimbaud who said that, reality is fake, or maybe it’s somebody else, another mad poet, doesn’t matter ... what makes reality fascinating at times, it’s the imaginary catastrophe that hides behind it, especially behind the American reality, I could tell you a few things about the catastrophe of American reality, I know what I’m talking about ...

********
Oh my apartment in the Bronx, the one I told you about yesterday, that stinking furnished room . . . it doesn't exist, I just invented it so that the story I'm telling you could go on, and also to give the story a touch of naturalism, do you really think I'm telling the truth here, how dumb can you be, it's fiction what I’m talking here, just a story I’m making up as I go, I’m improvising, so if I tell you that I had an apartment in the Bronx you don't have to believe it, just accept the fact that maybe there was such a flat in the Bronx where I once lived and that's that, don't start bugging me with the question of credibility, I don't believe in credibility, it handicaps me, you see for me the simple fact of saying that I was living with Susan in her apartment becomes instantly the truth ...

You make a face, I know what I’m talking about, truth, you want to know what truth is, it's only what one says and not necessarily what one does, in real life words are always true and actions false ...

*******
Yes, I know that some people, especially the anti-logo-cen-tristes, will tell you it’s the contrary, that actions are true and words false, but they’re full of shit, I know what I’m talking about, and don't ask how I know, or where I got it, probably from Namredef, me I always steal things from him ...

Alright, I’ll admit that from time to time I borrow from my life, but that's normal when you create fiction, or what my neurasthenic buddy Serge Doubrovsky calls auto-fiction, all novelists do that, they all plagiarize their own life, it’s a well known fact, look let me put it this way, there’s not a novelist who doesn’t plagiarize his life or somebody else’s life, so stop being such a pain in the ass with your objections and interjections and let me go on with Susan, but first I have to ask you a question, a simple question, and I want you to give me an honest answer, your answer will determine whether or not I will continue ...

*******
What do you think of what I'm telling you right now, I mean the way I am telling you this story ...

What ... what kind of crap is that, me doing célino-beatnik stuff, you must be kidding, if you think I sound like Céline that really shows you don't understand a fucking thing of what I'm telling you, nothing, especially not my technique ...

Céline it's something else, Céline it's ... it's like underground spoken writing, yeah like le métro, Céline he writes subway-style, he said it himself . . . he pretended to speak but in fact he was writing, he wrote writing that pretended to be like speaking, only writing, whereas me, if you prefer, I fabricate speech, only speech, my writing is all spoken, pop-surface-speech that remembers nothing because it invents itself on the spot, word by word, and let me tell you, it's not vicious speech like his, not at all racist, and certainly not anti-Semitic like his stuff, no way, Céline was full of meanness, anger, full of hatred, full of scorn, Céline, he was a nervous sonofabitch, a hater to the backbone, compared to him, me, I'm calm, relaxed, gentle even, there you have the real difference ...

I stroll gingerly in words, from one word to the next, word-word, and if sometimes my blood is boiling and I start screaming because of all the stupid zombies I encountered in my life that doesn't mean I've lost hope for humanity, even if humanity is in a terrible shape these days ...

I discovered literature haphazardly, and that’s how it should be, because you see, I believe that reading and writing have to be done au petit bonheur, chaotically if you prefer ...

I didn't invent that either, it's Namredef, the noodleater, who said that, Namredef always comes up with stuff like that, things that seem profound but that are completely farfelu, of course you have to understand that I'm the one writing this novel, therefore I'm the one who is putting words in the noodler’s mouth, so to speak, in a way one could say that the noodles are symbolic of language, understand, instead of putting them in his pen, like the cliché says, I put them in his mouth, but that’s part of the creative process, the process that lets you transmit your thoughts and words to someone else, I call that process playgiarism, in French it would be called plajeu ...

By the way, I assume you understand everything I’m telling you here, I mean when I speak English, otherwise ...

Oh you studied English in school for ten years, hey that’s great, and you even visited England several times, that’s very good, but careful, me I don’t speak British, I speak American ...

Oh no, it’s not the same, especially the kind of English I speak which I invent as I go along, but it’s normal, since English is not my mother tongue I don’t have to stick to the rules, I’m free to do anything I want with the English language,
*******
Anyway, I was saying, playgiarism, that’s my technique ...

Mais non, how dumb can you be, playgiarizing doesn't mean faire du plat, it has nothing to do with trying to make out with a broad, it means to play the game of substitution of the self into the other, a game of substitution and appropriation ...

You see, literature is always a form of playgiarism, everything in it is a game, it must be a game, otherwise life would be deadly, I mean the life of the writer, if a writer cannot borrow, or even steal words, he has no business being a writer ...

Here let me explain, I pretend that the noodler is the one who is inventing the novel he's writing, but in fact I'm the one who puts words in his mouth, it's part of the game, and that's what playgiarism is, moving what’s over here over there, it’s that simple ...

That’s right, a kind of displacement, but in the process of displacing whatever you are displacing you make little changes, you give it your own personal touch, you make it yours, you give it your style ...
All this may seem complicated, even stupid at first glance, it's not, but in order to understand what I’m talking about you need a good sense of humor, and also the willingness to abandon rational thought, otherwise you'll never understand la littérature-plajeu-en-fourire, you know, the kind of literature that makes you piss in your pants, my noodler he calls that laughterature, not bad eh, laughterature, impossible to translate that into French though, littérarire doesn't work ...

Where was I, wait, don't start imagining that because I jump all over the place like that in my story I don’t know where I’m going, even if I seem lost, you’ll see, my goal will eventually become clear, even if everything seems mixed up, and it looks like I’m even more confused now than before, that doesn't mean I won't get out of this muddle, or what you French guys call embrouillamini ...

Sure go ahead pour me another glass of wine, it’s really good, c'est du Beaujolais, what year, ‘59, great year for Beaujolais ...

Do you know that Voltaire loved Beaujolais, no I’m serious, it's le cacadémicien Michel Serres who told me that ...

Of course I know Michel Serres, I know a lot of important people, just because I’m still an unknown and unpublished novelist it doesn’t mean I don’t know famous people ...

Where did I meet him ...

Somewhere in the past, or perhaps it was in the future, me I make no distinction between past present and future, it’s all the same to me, so when I tell you I know someone like Michel Serres, I may not have met him yet, but I will eventually, for sure, so don’t be surprised if I mention people I haven’t met yet, that’s how I function ...

By the way, if I'm sharing that important fact with you about Voltaire and his love of Beaujolais it’s because, who knows, that information might be useful to you some day, especially to impress those little nobodies wallowing in the delusions of grandeur who think they're somebody, who think they're upperclass simply because they have un quart d'idée dans le crâne, and a few pennies in their pocket, and pretend to be connoisseurs de vins, these nobodies who were born in Trifouillis-la-tirelire plutôt qu'à Sans-sous ...

*******
Shit, I’m doing it again, digressing all over the place, wait, wait, what was I saying, I always get lost in my saute-grenouillements, dammit, what was I talking about, remind me ...

Oh, yesterday I told you I picked her up two weeks ago, it’s possible, I made a mistake, do you think I pay attention to chronology in this story, I told you, chronology and credibility handicap me ...

Oh, excuse me, it bugs you that I make such mistakes, you’re saying that these temporal displacements don’t stand up and that eventually it’s going to mess up the whole story, you’re such an old-fashioned listener, don’t you know that the beauty of a story has nothing to do with the question of time, with the order in which you tell things, not at all, it’s all about rhythm, tone, it’s all about the way you tell the story, it’s the telling that counts, not what you tell, anyway you‘re getting on my nerves with your obsession with time, fuck time ...

So I don’t respect the chronological order of things, big deal, yesterday I said two weeks ago, and now I’m saying last week, and who knows tomorrow I might say a month ago, and the day after tomorrow I’ll say something else about what I did or didn’t do in the past, or even about the stuff I’ll do or won’t do in the future, what the hell do you think time is, a straight line that goes in one direction only, something stiff always standing at the same fucking place, how stupid can you be, the past and the future are not frozen like a scenery on a postcard, that’s what most people don’t understand, yesterday, today, tomorrow, next year, people imagine time as if it were some kind of place from which we come and go, have you any idea how boring it would be to live your life as if it was a little trip by train, knowing in advance where each stop would be, where the final destination would be, and what time you would arrive, how boring, there wouldn’t be any surprises, and you know as well as I that surprises are essential and necessary in one’s life, even if they’re not very funny sometimes, otherwise life wouldn’t be worth living, even life itself is a surprise, don’t you sometimes wonder how the hell you came to be alive, I am sure even your old man must have been surprised when your mother told him, Darling I think this time we did it, I think I’m pregnant, too bad you couldn’t see the look on your father’s face, the look of surprise, and probably fear too ...

For instance, take the surprise of Susan’s telegram, I didn’t expect her fucking telegram, but the fact that I got it makes my story more interesting, it gives it suspense, and it makes it progress, even if it stumbles along, but that Susan might arrive in three or four days or next month or even à la saint-glinglin doesn’t solve my problems, it’s not when she’s going to come that bugs the shit out of me, it’s the fact that she’s actually coming, so that’s why I give an approximation of time, maybe in the final version I will have to reorganize the whole thing a little better, otherwise nobody will want to publish my stuff, but for now, if I say that I met that British broad with the nice firm boobs two weeks ago, and then I say it was last week, that doesn’t change anything, except that my lousy situation is getting more and more complicated, especially now that Susan is jumping into the mess, what a bummer ...

Hey, wait a minute, I have an idea, maybe if I don’t talk about my British girl, I mean if I don’t say another word about her, nothing, maybe she’ll disappear from the story ...

What do you think, not a bad idea, see what I mean, if you don’t talk about something it’s like it doesn’t exist, right, in fact according to certain contemporary thinkers who claim they know what they’re talking about, everything in life exists only in language, in the logos, therefore it’s simple, I won’t say another word about my cute sexy British girlfriend, and you don’t mention her either, agreed, and certainly not when Susan will be here in three days, or four, or next week, don’t forget, mum’s the word ...

Okay, see you tomorrow ...

Namredef, that's the name of the guy who locks himself in a room with the noodles, you know, in the novel I’m writing, the noodler, Namredef that’s his name ...

Anyway, to go back to the question of truth in fiction, just accept the fact that when I say I was living with Susan in her apartment, I’m just settling, or rather sinking into the truth of my story, that's all ...