K2

Because pigs.  That’s Will, the runt of the litter born as we arrived.  He died the next day, alas.  In the middle is cubed bacon for the beans.  On the right, still life with pork roasts and banana.

As legend has it, whether true or Perhaps a tallish tale, John Back Was dry and needed more hard liquor Than what he’d hid beneath his sack. He barged aboard a tied-up steamer And found a case of gin, some creamer, A loaf of cheese — that was enough: John grabbed the gin and other stuff — As much as his poor arms could mule — And would have left the ship, but that Was not his fate; instead a rat Appeared and challenged him to duel, Produced a tiny pistol, fired: John Back lay dead, wiped out, expired.

The fire had crossed Second Avenue, and was heading up to Third. Smoke could be seen in Tacoma, and the roar of the fire heard for miles. Help had been called in from Tacoma, Portland, and even Victoria, B.C. … Realizing their geoduck was cooked, Moran raced into the offices of the Sunset Telephone-Telegraph Co. and unhooked the contraption himself. “Get me Tacoma!” And Portland and Victoria, B.C., and then, remembering a noria he’d seen on the faraway Kickapoo River, put out a call for someone he knew, had heard legend of, anyway—a Wisconsin firefighter by name of Paddy or Mick O’Somethingerother, who with a single lick and a little spit could put out the fire in Hades itself. “The name? People are dyin’ here! Wait; I got it … Get me O’Brien!”

By four o’clock, most residents knew downtown Seattle was finished. After crossing First and Second Avenue, billowing and bellowing, undiminished, the towering inferno climbed to Third. The roar of the fire could be heard for miles around, and smoke was seen from as far away as Tacoma. Between the heckling crowds and their abecedarian abilities, some of the volunteers dropped their buckets on the spot, stopped by their own worthlessness. Marion, Madison, and then Spring were consumed in a matter of minutes. All doomed.

If you’re going to wrestle with despair, do it in style… “Light and shade, pleasant and discordant noises, the singing of the cleaning woman and the thumping of the washing machine are dealt like a series of blows. I cannot think of the stories I have to write without a sharpening of this visceral pain.  I cannot invent terms or images of repose. I grant myself all the privileges of a liar, but there is no heart in my lies and inventions.  There is nothing. There is neither ecstasy nor repose, there is only the forced illusions of these things. The span between living and dying is brief and anguished, and the soul of man is reflected not in snug farmhouses and great monuments but in fourth-string hotel rooms, malodorous and obscure. This is all there is.  There is nothing. Tired but sleepless, lewd but alone, hopeless, drunk, sitting at the window on the airshaft in some other country: this is the image of man. I remember those midtown hotels, the Carlton in Frankfurt,...

Reading the Journals again.  How can I not, when the first line of the first entry is, “In middle age there is mystery, there is mystification”? (I did not remember this, but merely felt impelled to pull the book from the shelf last night.)  When the seventh page yields this:  “As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish – without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward for all this time – I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand.  I think of Leander and the others.  It is not that these are stories of failure; that is not what is frightening.  It is that they are dull annals; that they are of no import; that Leander, walking in the garden at dusk in the throes of a violent passion, is o...

You guys, I pass hundreds of these things by each day – documenting the seepage of porn into mainstream culture is a little bit like documenting global warming:  a fair portion of the world thinks it doesn’t exist no matter what evidence you bring to bear, and a fair portion of those who do admit it exists disagree about what it means.  And I’m not getting any research grant money out of the whole thing, so.  But this, this combines academia and the British press , so I’m pretty much obliged.

Last weekend, The Onion ‘s AV Club took a trip to San Diego for a little gathering of 125,000 pop-culture devotees.  Todd VanDerWerff has been keeping a journal, and his final entry contains this little gem: “For an instant, it becomes ever more clear why those evangelists have set up camp outside the convention center all weekend long. We’ve taken the language and reverence of religion and turned it into something else. Whether that’s entirely healthy is a question I’m not qualified to answer. But there is no doubt when you’re sitting in Hall H. Everything is carefully made to stimulate you in a certain fashion, and when the moment comes, it’s easy to give in to rapture. The media coverage of the event strikes me as ever sillier, simply because everything is so strenuously created to provoke the desired reaction. And when you’re sitting in a crowd of nearly 7,000, all of whom are raising their voices in joy at what they’ve just seen, it’s hard not to be affected by that. It...

Walker Percy, cover your eyebones:

…them Sirens loved me up and turned me into a heady toad!

Because someday, if we’re very good and we’re very lucky and we work very hard and we somehow manage to reach the very top and do something new, something so new that people notice, and not just notice, remember , why then, we might see our work immortalized by Barbie.

The city quickly rebuilds from the ashes, thanks in part to credit arranged by banker and entrepreneur Jacob Furth, as well as brothel owner Lou Graham.- Alex DeVeiteo, “This Month in Cascadian History” From waterlines to forward fo’c’sles From lumbered wood to dry-dock slips, From mast and rudder’s groaning axles, Moran, mighty maker of ships! Securing lucre, bread and lolly, From dynamo and lengthened trolley, From credit lines to bottom lines, Furth, fantastic fixer of loans! From silks and stays unleashed and peeling Lou Graham the gracious madam, pimp! Her kneeling, laying products tempt With plunging neckline, mirrored ceiling… From lines thus counted proud, erect, Seattle’s fortunes resurrect.

Then Moran ordered the Colman block to be blown up as a sacrifice to Disaster. All along Cherry Street, citizens gawk at the destruction as the fires churn faster and faster. By four o’clock in the afternoon, smoke chokes the streets. Cinders strewn by the wind flew through the air like devils after catastrophe; emerging from their hovels on Yesler Way, whores took a quick look, shrugged, and went back to the daily grind. By this time, most Seattleites were resigned to destruction, some thinking, like Chinook and the Yesler gals, it’d be better to spawn and die. Not Moran, muttering, “Game on!”

Firey giants inhaled salty air Around the wharves and docks, Then raged towards Pioneer Square, Circling several city blocks. They ate buildings in a single gulp: The Commercial Mill, its pulp, Two Saloons, and the Opera house. Operating hoses, mortals douse Buildings now, hoping the giant Fires themselves will die later, Sparks not growing any greater, No longer defied, or defiant. Then a hot wind rose. Water slowed. Once again, flames explode.

One never knows when disaster Will strike, and acting Fire Chief James Murphy, unable to master His nerves, often sighed in grief At the ticking clock. Every moment … Now? So when Chief Collins went To the convention in San Francisco, Murphy sat and waited for a blow To be struck by malicious Fate. Waiting, but hardly ready— Fear was becoming one long, steady Drag off an opium pipe. Great Men find their destiny in a split Second; Murphy quailed and quit.