mobile

Review: Wolf Totem - Jiang Rong

Wolf Totem: A Novel
Title: Wolf Totem: A Novel
Author: Jiang Rong
LC Rating: Rating: 4

Every once in awhile I find myself reading a book that is just so impossibly true that it depresses the hell out me and compels me to continue reading non-stop thru the day until my eyes are strained, my nerves frayed, and my sense of indignation has been brought back to the forefront to the point that I feel like screaming at people. I imagine you’re currently scratching your heads and asking how it is that someone can actually enjoy this process. I loved this book, because it’s not just a book; it’s a weapon.

the little lessons in life

So I’m out and about, hanging out with plant last night; standing in his backyard talking about the strange sort of stuff the cognoscenti tend to talk about, watching kids run about, assembling bicycles . . . you know, the usual.

Anyway, I’m standing there looking at a radio-flyer tricycle, we all know the one, classic design, I had one when I was a kid; but I’m standing there looking at this ubiquitous piece of childhood paraphernalia and it strikes me that this particular example has, very much like my own as a child, a marked difference between the aim of the handle-bars and the alignment of the front wheel.

alone in the woods

i’ll be leaving soon
i’ll have gone to find myself

at least this time i know what i am looking for
before it was only knowing that i needed…

…something

it is only after we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything

so i am going to go into the woods with one intention

i am going to kill myself

I am going to die.
i’ve know this for a while

forward through backward time

I love this stuff.


pennies for dead people

how do you help the dead?
do the dead need our help?
more to the point, do the dead need our loose change?

Last night my friend and I went out on a beer run to the local market, and as we’re standing in line, I notice this container on the counter. It was a plastic tub that originally held a nationally known brand of margarine, but now the top had a hole cut in the center and there was a hand-written note on lined paper taped to the side. I will make no claims to be able to reproduce the message word for word, but the main thrust was quite simple, and the note read something like this . . .

all too poignant


what makes a person think of haiku?

{maybe i just need to prove that i’m still crazy}

i wish i could’ve
work was fun tho’ hahaha
man we should hang soon,
and if yer gonna have a myspace
thingy to look at all the band shit
you have to click the little button
that says you want to be my friend,
or else i’ll spread vicious rumors of you
all about the internet

the plants talk to us


This is good…


things just got a little more uncomfortable

So, I’ve been spending too much time on the six word story experiment. As a writer I’ve always strived for the great art of impassioned brevity. In coming up with story after story about myself I came to see that they all tend towards the tragic.

That frightens me more than a little.

You really have to be honest when you try to reduce your life to six words.

fuzzy wuzzy’s epiphany

who are you
in those moments
when
you’re
only
trying to be
yourself

ain’t english great?

So you drive on the parkway
and park on the driveway
and fly on (well from) the runway
and run on the sidewalk

no wonder i’m always confused

so how’s your day so far?

well it started out with a robbery
that was followed by a death investigation
of a baby who was found in a trash can
then later it moved on to an upcoming meeting
about how to budget
and stay out of foreclosure
bush had some important things to say last night
i couldn’t bring myself to care
now i just keep thinking about the jury selection
for the mother who microwaved her baby

’ok, so i might never be famous . . . ‘

. . . he said, taking the guitar off his shoulders and casting a wary eye over the assembled crowd. He was looking for reaffirmation through negation, but after a momentary pause had yielded naught, he continued speaking with a false air of disregard. ‘I might never be famous, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this doesn’t matter.’

The wisest are leaving

It’s good to see somebody isn’t just rolling over to our government.

AFP: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

Remembering how to forget

[the start of something…]

He was seated in a café’, telling the waiter that the cappuccino needed more milk when the bomb went off.

The explosion rent a concussive bubble into the air, which quickly sped outward. Things behind the front of force were knocked sideways at it sped past. It was gone almost before it happened, leaving him to doubt that it truly had taken place.

dreaming

the human brain is still my favorite toy . . .

So i’m going to see Modest Mouse at The State Theater tonight, yee-mother@#$#@-haw!!, and last night i had this dream that i was at the concert. Of course, the dream had very little contact with ‘reality’ as it is generally agreed to exist; it certainly wasn’t The State Theater as i know it, the crowd was gathered about the band on folding chairs, i was in the second row, and for their first song they began playing trombones that they ‘played’ by flinging the slides (you know, that which you move to change the note of a trombone) off of their instruments onto the floor, and proceeded to make this unearthly low rumbling warble . . .

obvious

Time is just going to keep passing.

it really doesn’t matter how many moments you spend
getting caught up in exercises of reconceptualization
those moments too, are gone . . .

but that’s alright, it’s often fun to see if you can
bend the cosmos
even if only a bit

so it’s maybe like a looping “so ’sticky-sweet’ that it transcends the ironic” comic?

[first frame]
“How can it be so hard to tell the truth when it always feels so damn good?”
This in a speech bubble from the jester; who . . .

[second frame]
realizing he’s caught up (once again?) in pointing out a most glaringly-obvious-truth, looks abashed and exits the frame . . .

[third frame]
a car passes, life goes on
this not in a speech bubble from the jester who leans back into frame to provide commentary on the great not much of everything that keeps occurring as he tries to define it

so i’m trying to write for an hour a day

certainly not fixing on sharing it all here,
but in keeping with the spirit of
‘must actually do this’
voila

fiction!

- -

{partial transcript of voluntary intake statement}
K - County Psychiatric Institute
11/13/07
Patient : [perhaps inevitably the name is blacked out]
Complained that he’d met god and was no longer to be
trusted mingling with ordinary people.

. . . people called him crazy, and he was, almost without regard for how you might choose to define crazy, he’d find a way to fit it . . .