anoritheark

[anoritheark]

Werner Herzog's Reflections on the Natural World

I had an encounter with a big boa constrictor, which poked its head through the chicken wire surrounding its wooden cage and looked at me fearlessly in the eye for a long time. Stubbornly confronting each other. we were pondering the relatedness of the species. Both of us, since the relatedness was slight, felt sad and turned away from each other. A drunk spat at a beautiful monkey, black, with…

[anoritheark]

Pink Soda Dance

Hands came over my face, a sharp young woman in sunglasses and nothing of a dress. She pretended it was an accident but demanded that I get out of the way so that she and her friends could post a video. She feigned shock when I told her that she was being rude. They passed out the drinks, mostly pink soda, and danced, the last one in a blue head band, a feather tied to that, her face pressed…

[anoritheark]

Bequeathed Baby

Winds came hard from the east, carrying a former wife to the sands she loved and an urn, a bequeathment from his father, now chipped, his old apartment full of former students. The water flooded up into a pool, the students playing and spitting, little to say, the phone – the phone again! – half burned in the muddy sand, unable to grip, to move back, even with the kids trying to throw rocks,…

[anoritheark]

Needing to Wake

Turning a card over and over, the same thing on both sides. Unable to open your phone, the wrong password, wrong fingers too. Opening the door, seeing your partner half dressed with a stranger, knowing it would be like that, feeling sick and afraid. The climactic end to a film oozing down from the floors above, the passage getting narrower and narrower until you can’t find the right door and…

[anoritheark]

$20,000 is Not My Number

I’ve been offered $20,000 buyouts twice in my life, once from a job, the other from a relationship. I didn’t accept either. I was asked to make a counter offer for one and I suggested a million. There was only silence after that.

[anoritheark]

Sisyphus: The Hour of Consciousness

Sisyphus watches the stone rush down toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again. It is during his return, that pause, that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. Greenlandic trail The evidence is in the absurd divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, a nostalgia for unity, those…

[anoritheark]

Where to Go Next

You go to a place and, from there, you go to another. And then another. And so on. And then you go back or on to another place and get to where you started or to a new place that is the same as any other and think about where to go next. Or as Albert Camus phrases it in his Myth of Sisyphus: Living under that stifling sky forces one to get away or to stay.

[anoritheark]

Parlaying on Something Super Good

I try to make send of the absurdity of what I see on my social media trough, a progression or regression of something only machines care about now. There is nothing really bad, nothing super terrible going on. It’s just the sounds in my head. It’s stupid to even think about. Reason will prevail. Once you climb the mount and see what’s out there, everything’s good, super good. I’m fine. I have…

[anoritheark]

The Pithy Wisdom of Evelyn Waugh

Having just read Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, I’m reminded of what excellent writing can be – not only vivid and humorous, but more importantly, deeply cutting. My wife knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there were both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome; later we parted and lay in twin beds a yard or two distant, smoking. Brideshead Revisited, BBC…

[anoritheark]

Crime in Mind

The music was muted, not the way he remembered it. It had been loud not so long ago. He wanted to get off the plane and go nowhere, stay where he was and face whatever he had to face. The consequences, that’s what they were called. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It was in him as much as it was in anyone. Crime was an interesting word. He had never really thought about it. He had just thought…

[anoritheark]

Social Media: Et in Arcadia Ego

I am averse to most contemporary literature as I find it boring. Or trite. Or predictable. Or ridiculous. Or…what’s that word when people put on airs and pretend to be someone they’re not? Affected. No, pretentious. That’s it. I find contemporary work pretentious. And boring. I had read some of Evelyn Waugh in the past – Scoop, Handful of Dust and The Sword of Honor Trilogy – but skipped his…

[anoritheark]

Words Now More Than Ever

[anoritheark]

Negative Capability

At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and what Shakespeare possessed enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact or reason. (John Keats, 1817) Only recently did I learn of the term “negative capability” in Mathew Zapruder’s…

[anoritheark]

The Sacred Whore, Version 3,5

Shockingly, I met my goal of completing a draft of The Sacred Whore. I had two major problems in completing this latest draft. First and foremost, I had to move the primary point of view away from a male perspective, which meant not only minimizing the pimp Jefferson’s role and switching the king-pin to a queen-pin, but also expanding the voice of a number of the sex workers. The other challenge…

[anoritheark]

Scared of Writing

I waited outside of Mr. Carver’s class, thinking of how I could get an extension. The assignment – a 2,000-word creative self-reflection – was due that afternoon, and I hadn’t even started. I didn’t understand why I had to do it, because I had graduated long ago and was in fact now teaching at this school. I gave up waiting and beetled off to my classroom. The Dean of Students behind me, a row…

[anoritheark]

No One Cares How You Scroll

No one cares who you like. No one cares who you follow. No one cares what you post or what you share. No one cares about your story. No one cares about your memes. No one cares what you comment or what you click. No one cares because they don’t know how to care. No one cares because you don’t know how to care. Thanks for reading! Be sure to like and share.

[anoritheark]

Not Enough Is The Right Amount