The General Situation

It Does Have a Blue Collar...

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City to write about it for the Tribeca Citizen. I was wearing jeans and a blue shirt—it kind of looks like denim, but it's not—that I bought years ago at A.P.C. in Paris. On the chest is a black splotch that upon closer inspection is an image of a woman lying seductively on her back, with "7460 2352" above her and "Totally Hot Definitely Sweet With Promises To Keep" underneath. I only mention it because, as I was walking down one of the museum's hallways, a man approached carrying one of those trays you use with a paint roller. "Was it you who wanted this?" he asked, holding out the tray. I looked like a maintenance worker.

"The Deepest Coming"

OK, here's the last Craig Arnold poem from the October issue of Poetry that I'm going to post. It ran on an inside cover, which is where the magazine pays homage to poets who have recently died. The magazine doesn't print the title of the poem—a half-assed homage, seems to me—so I searched for the opening line on the Internet. According to Dan Hunt on The Rumpus—who met Arnold once—this is an excerpt from "Made Flesh." He quotes parts of the poem that I like even more than this chunk. I may have to buy the book after all.

FALL creeps like a slow flame
over a maple    limb by limb
leaves that once fanned their hands
open    wanting to put themselves
all over everything    begin to g low
brave vermillion and lively yellow
let at last their fingers curl
into the palm    and let go

The same fire is touching us
around the edges    licking wrinkles
into the corners of our eyes
making the skin inside our elbows
silky as old coins

                          And when we lie
together    and I feel your bones
blaze    and the rose of your face unfolds
and the incandescence of your skin
crackles    like the paper at the tip
of a drawn-on cigarette   and dies
in a final fluttering of ash

Then    then we feel death
as the deepest coming    then we ease unhurried
into the bud of body    then we learn
little by little    to relinquish
gracefully    and less afraid
each time    to let each other slip
slowly out of our clasp    made
fire    made flower    made flesh

Of God and Country

A few weeks ago I sent my passport to the National Passport Processing Center, because I needed one of those extra-visa-pages inserts. The NPPC warned it would take four to six weeks, so of course it came back in one, not that I'm complaining. But I was surprised to find that the pages aren't like the ones in a normal passport: The backgrounds are all quintessential American landscapes—the Statue of Liberty, the Great Plains, the Mississippi River—with quotes from famous men and Jessamyn West. All of that is fine and Yankee Doodle Dandy, except two of the quotes invoke religion ("...That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom" from Abraham Lincoln, and "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time" from Thomas Jefferson). Clever move by the NPPC, who had to know that if the Ronald Reagan quote had been religious, people would have been much more likely to protest. I complained to Adam, who said, "It says 'In God We Trust' on our money," to which I replied, "No shit, darling, but one wrong doesn't make another right," and that was that.

Last night, Adam brought home a page of Details, which he had been reading at the gym, because he wanted to show me part of a Q&A with Ian McKellen. 

Q: Is it true that when you stay at hotels you tear out the Bible page that condemns homosexuality?

A: I do, absolutely. I'm not proudly defacing the book, but it's a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible. And I'm not really the first: I got delivered a package of 40 of those pages—Leviticus 18:22—that had been torn out by a married couple I know. They put them on a bit of string so that I could hang it up in the bathroom.

I thought it was funny how McKellen says he's "not proudly defacing the book"—sure about that?—and then goes on to mention the specific page, in case any Details readers felt inspired to follow along (or maybe the editor inserted it...). It also amused me that Adam tore out a page in honor of a quote about tearing out a page in protest—the same act for the opposite reason. I wondered if I should remove the God-related pages of my passport, but then I wouldn't be traveling abroad for far longer than four to six weeks.

Adam thought I would have posed the issue of whether it's right to deface the Bible in the same way: The only real question is whether the page goes or the book. While it's true that I don't want any religious materials in my hotel room, I'm actually a live-and-let-live kind of guy. Besides, I don't want a TV either, and where do you draw the line? At the end of the day it's all worship to a false idol.

"Sexy Emily Dickinson" Would Sell Better

The Academy of American Poets newsletter cracks me up. Hey, here's another idea! You could go as Sylvia Plath! All you need is a frown and an Easy-Bake Oven!

Grace Is a State of Mind

My Hard Spot

Over the years, I've been told I should be a weatherman, a game-show host, a panelist on "The View," CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos's replacement (if she left), and a lawyer. But clearly, if these collected selections from the I'm Just Saying sidebar are any indication, I should be writing for Larry King, if he even does that column anymore, or Andy Rooney, if he's still alive.

• I just heard a woman say to her child, who was probably around six, "No, it was the new museum designed by Jean Nouvel. Remember?"

• I've always been fond of the letter Q, but is it really necessary?

• I just dropped a ceramic bowl of blueberries, but the damage wasn't nearly as bad as the two times our full-length mirror fell and shattered. How's that for looking at the goddamn bright side?

• "So what's this Vivian got that you don't have? Three tits?" —Paulette (Jennifer Coolidge) in Legally Blonde.

• July is Fresca time!

• I understand that doctors may not want to communicate with patients via email, but why not doctors' offices? Maybe they're perfecting their phone skills before branching out?

• Hey, cookbook editors: Please include number of servings.

• Ignorance is forgivable; pride in one's ignorance is not.

• If elegance is refusal, per Coco Chanel, glamour is removal. Intimacy kills glamour.

• You never see rabbits as roadkill.

• The use of "thisclose" makes me want to yurp.

• You know the phrase "soft spot," as in "I have a soft spot for smushed-nose dogs"? I wish there was a corresponding "hard spot" coinage, because I have a hard spot for the Black Eyed Peas.

Hello, Stranger

I was just walking down Broadway, Howard trailing behind me the way he normally does, when the guy walking next to me spoke. He sort of resembled a less-attractive, non-Hispanic, stoned Gael García Bernal.

Him: Do you ever worry about walking your dog like that?
Me: [Pause.] What do you mean?
Him: I mean, do you worry people might step on him?
Me: [Longer pause.] No, that's never been a concern. [Thinking, "Until now."]
Him: Cool.
Me: He's pretty good at getting out of the way. It must be a survival instinct.
Him: That's evolution, I guess.

And She Would Know

"The High These Peppers Give Me"

I've bought a few books of poetry over the years, more than most people, I suppose, if we're not counting the works of Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein, and yet I'm not sure why I bother, because I never open them. Discovery, maybe even happenstance, seems to have become crucial to the poetry experience for me; a searched-out poem doesn't have the same kick. Still, when I find a poet whose work I like, I'm tempted. Sure enough, I looked on Amazon for Craig Arnold—but the books, all out of print and sold by third parties, were kind of expensive. Which is a shame, because Poetry's October issue had an excerpt of a poem, "Hot," that I'd like to read more of.

"Hot" (excerpt)
by Craig Arnold

                                           I called in sick
            next morning, said I'd like to take

       time off. She thinks I've hit the bottle.
The high these peppers give me is more subtle—

       I'm lucid, I remember my full name,
my parents' birthdays, how to win a game

of chess in seven moves, why which and that
       mean different things. But what we eat,

why, what it means, it's all been explained
       —Take this curry, this fine-tuned 

balance of humors, coconut liquor thinned
       by broth, sour pulp of tamarind

       cut through by salt, set off by fragrant
galangal, ginger, basil, cilantro, mint,

the warp and woof of texture, aubergines
       that barely hold their shape, snap beans

       heaped on jasmine, basmati rice
—it's a lie, all of it—pretext—artifice

       —ornament—sugar-coating—for...

That's My Dog