The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Month: December 2021 (Page 3 of 14)

Ericka Beckman Day

 

‘LIKE A BOOMERANG hurled across three-plus decades and carrying today’s viewer back with it to that fervent, hard-edged but oddly innocent downtown moment when the free-for-all 1970s (free because no one had or was willing to admit to having money) gave way to the more practical and materialist ’80s, Ericka Beckman’s Super 8 “Piaget Trilogy” (1978–81) arrives on the Anthology Film Archives screen. Its restoration in 16 mm was made possible by Anthology’s experimental film preservation project, which has recently focused on work from this period.  I can’t remember seeing an actual boomerang in any of Beckman’s works, but so many of the trajectories of camera and object movement in her films evoke that kind of kinetic and aggressive back-and-forth that to include the thing itself would be redundant.

‘Beckman’s place in the pantheon of daredevil experimental moviemakers should have been secured in 1983, when You the Better, the thirty-five-minute, 16-mm film that followed the “Piaget Trilogy,” caused a riot at the New York Film Festival, where it preceded Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion. I recall that at the time, Godard, perhaps as a defensive maneuver, anointed Beckman as the most talented young American experimentalist. Two years earlier, Beckman’s Super 8 work was lauded by J. Hoberman in his catalogue for “Home Made Movies,” the 1981 marathon survey of 8-mm and Super 8 films he organized at Anthology. Hoberman described the films in what would only later be dubbed the “Piaget Trilogy”—they were partly inspired by the learning theories of the psychologist Jean Piaget—as follows: “Filled with images of disembodied limbs, toy-like models, and anthropomorphized furniture, scored to doo-wop mantras and abstract cheerleader chants, Beckman’s films suggest the amalgam of Max Fleischer’s oneiric Bimbo’s Initiation and Oskar Fischinger’s geometric Composition in Blue.” Of Out of Hand (1981), the last film in the trilogy, he memorably blurbed: “like an Allstate Insurance commercial as it might appear to an autistic child.”

‘Of all the artist-filmmakers who debuted in the ’70s, none have shown more consistency than Beckman. That is to say that each of her films is distinct from the others while also being part of a uniquely envisioned oeuvre. (You have to see her films to understand how derivative, clumsy, and vacuous Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster” cycle is.) What I wrote in 1979 in the Soho News about two of her early films—about their fragmentation, dreamlike displacements, and associative connections; about how clear, diagrammatic, often primary-colored iconography is placed within a shadowy, shifting, ambiguous space; about the incantatory power of her sound tracks with their repeated percussion riffs and nursery rhyme–like chants—applies to her more recent, technically formidable work as well. In the stunning 2006 Tension Building—an unfortunate omission from the Anthology program, though it can be found in its entirety on her website—she uses stop-motion, camera movement, and variations of focal length and exposure to transform the Harvard University coliseum into a giant thrashing machine. A mere three minutes, it seems to go on for hours, sucking you in like a black hole. It’s the only film that’s ever given me motion sickness.

‘Milking the Surrealist roots of Pop, Beckman creates brightly colored, psychologically threatening, sexually charged worlds in which her avatars are hurled to and fro, trapped inside a game plan whose rules they desperately try to discern. In what is probably still her most narrative-like film, Cinderella (1986), her heroine, decked out alternately in baggy overalls and a green bouffant prom dress topped with a blonde flip wig, is shunted between an industrial furnace that she’s forced to tend and the ballroom where she dances with the prince until she loses her chance to marry him because she doesn’t make it home by midnight. It’s not until she realizes that she can come home whenever she likes that she breaks out of the confines of the game. “And that night, I didn’t get home until two!” she exclaims, in one of the most thrilling moments of liberation in a Beckman movie. It wasn’t until looking at Cinderella again, twenty-five years after its debut, that I realized how deeply Beckman’s films were lodged in my brain in their entirety, as deeply as the childhood nursery rhymes and picture books that are undoubtedly their sources. They touch down where the wet dreams of girlhood arise.’ — Amy Taubin

 

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Stills




























































 

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Further

Ericka Beckman @ Philip Martin Gallery
Ericka Beckman @ Vimeo
Ericka Beckman Offers an Anti-Capitalist Musical Adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk
Piper Marshall on Ericka Beckman
Book: ‘Ericka Beckman’
Video pioneer Ericka Beckman gives patriarchal canon a bashing
Cinema Gamer: Ericka Beckman
Film Show 009: Ericka Beckman
Book: ‘Ericka Beckman – Game Mechanics’
ERICKA BECKMAN – DIGITAL ANALOGUE PIONEER
IMAGE GAMES: ERICKA BECKMAN
Ericka Beckman @ MUBI
At Home with Mike Kelley: BLIND COUNTRY
Playing by the Rules: Ericka Beckman in Conversation with Mary L. Coyne
Ericka Beckman Focuses Her Lens On The Game
Ericka Beckman’s Cinderella Is Not Your Disney Princess

 

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Extras


Ericka Beckman: Double Reverse


Artist talk | Ericka Beckman: ‘Fair Game’


Master Class: Ericka Beckman

 

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Interview
by J. Hoberman

 

J. HOBERMAN: Ericka, you arrived as a filmmaker with a distinctive style and strong interests. Your films seemed to interrogate the nature of “play,” as well as games, contests, and competition.
ERICKA BECKMAN: My work has consistently centered on games, sports and play, as symbols for the private versus public self, and how this play impulse is challenged by narrative storytelling, with its sense of duty and need for closure.

JH: But don’t games imply a structure with winners and losers? The title of You the Better is a kind of a pun, isn’t it?
EB: My own concerns with the subject of play vary from work to work. There is room for many ideas and modes of address to interpenetrate and bounce off each other, much in the same way a group of people with divergent opinions can converse on a mutual topic.

JH: Your most recent piece shows a football game, not as a contest but as part of the stadium space.
EB: Tension Building is an ongoing project that is a composite of linked architectural spaces, some real and some models. It combines stop motion and live action filmmaking shot at the Harvard University Coliseum. It will be followed by two stadium locations in Italy built in the 1930s by Pier Luigi Nervi: the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome and the Municipal Stadium in Florence.

JH: What interests you about these locations?
EB: I am fascinated by stadium architecture because it is designed to provide two opposite viewing experiences, the visceral direct experience of watching a physical action close up and the passive experience mediated through filters of distance and delay. The Tension Building model features telescoping seating that expands and contracts like a folding cup, corresponding to the audience’s reactions to the wins and losses in the game being played below.

JH: The action literally bounces off the walls.
EB: I dragged my tripod and Bolex over the stadium seating. My camera became like a surveyor’s transit, following the repetitive lines of the design and transforming something still into a motion machine.

JH: This use of location is relatively new.
EB: Up until 2000 all my work was produced in my black box studio. I controlled the frame by building everything in the frame. I worked with props, animations, and miniature sets, as well as lyrics, graphics and visual text. For You the Better, I made game board drawings as a planning tool. With Switch Center I took the opportunity to shoot in a location. I was invited by the Béla Balázs Studio in Budapest in 2001 to produce a short film. Our collaboration culminated this experimental documentary, shot in the defunct Danube Water Works—an intact, yet nonfunctioning water purification plant.

JH: Did the location dictate a new sort of filmmaking?
EB: I did not arrive with a script or storyboard. The film evolved over a two-week stay, through my shooting and my drawing. I got permission take my Bolex for a regular workday at the plant. They provided me with one steady assistant, a janitor, who helped me move my camera around the perimeters of the concrete drums. I fell in love with the color that reflected off the grey drums as the sunlight passed through skylights.

JH: The water works struck me as a sort of 20th Century ruin.
EB: Yes, Switch Center is a tribute to the end of the romance with industrialization, and at the same time a reaction to seeing the Soviet architecture of the future transformed into a shopping mall or global corporate office.

JH: I love the way those Japanese videogame creatures materialize—it’s as though they’re beaming in from the universe of your earlier movies, specifically Hiatus, which is based on videogames.
EB: The Pokémon toys came into my storyboards on the day that I could not get back to work on my film because a Pokémon commercial was being shot there.

JH: That’s making good use of chance! Your work is truly idiosyncratic. Can you tell me which artists were important to your development? With whom did you study?
EB: I went to Cal Art for the contact with conceptual art and to mingle with the music school students. I wanted to study at a college that had a strong percussion department, and I was a fan of the percussionist John Bergamo, who taught while I was there. I also saw a lot of performance, notably the work of Guy de Cointet.

JH: Were you interested in films?
EB: I started making short abstract films based on action/image repetitive relationships. John Baldessari was making films with his students, but my favorite teacher was Vito Acconci. I liked the way he created screen space, as defined by the camera, for his body. The monitor was an extension of the space of the viewer, with Acconci somehow contained therein. He was a performance artist who used only spoken text, his body and a minimal architecture. His work is really about the space between himself and the audience. I liked the improvisational aspect. He had a set of concepts and he knew what concept he wanted to end on and the piece was his way of getting there.

JH: You appeared in his epic video piece The Red Tapes.
EB: I worked with him for a bit on The Red Tapes. He seldom did a second take.

JH: That’s interesting. Were there any filmmakers who impressed you?
EB: Jack Goldstein’s work reinforced my use of performance, the use of black space, saturated color and very formal compositions. Prior to seeing Jack’s films, I was only working with processes, formal structures to create an abstract image on film in time. I was not interested in Pop Art or painters like Warhol who used images from culture to make their work dialogue with culture. I was interested in meaning and I was drawn to conceptual art. Jack’s iconic images made me see that an artist can work with an image as a sign and can empty that image of its meaning and ascribe it with a new meaning.

JH: You are included in the upcoming Whitney Museum show “Rituals of Rented Island” along with performance artists like Julia Heyward and Michael Smith. Do you feel any affinity with their work?
EB: My thirst for performance work lead me to New York City, where I discovered experimental theater and many artists who I credit as influences—Julia Heyward, Laurie Anderson, Mabou Mines’s Shaggy Dog Animations, Robert Wilson, Steve Reich, Mike Smith, Jack Smith, and so many dancers. I liked the way Julia Heyward used her voice, not to sing or sound dreamy, but to speak out and yell, to speak like many different females, from young to old. She spoke her text in a monotone, like a percussive punk vocal track.

JH: I can see the affinities between her performances and your use of singsong chanting your Super 8 films.
EB: I liked her phrasing and her use of repetition. She would morph her words, or a phrase into another phrase. So the meaning of what she said just morphed into something else. I was impressed by the inner strength it took to use herself as subject and object of a social or sexual conflict. She spoke and made pieces about how her experience was in conflict with accepted social norms. However politicized, it always started with and returned to her own body.

JH: A lot of ‘70s performance artists made use of video. Why did you decide to work with Super 8 sound?
EB: Because you could project a film life-size in a room, and I wanted to stress the presence of the performance in my image. Video was attached to a box on a pedestal and I found that apparatus distracting. Plus you had to wear headphones. Only Julia and Laurie figured out how to use video. They built both performance and video segments that used their bodies, spoken word and sound. I wanted to make films that were documents of a type of performance that could only exist on film. I was invested in making an active art form, an art that moved, and that movement was the telling. Plus, I like the color of film. What I took away from all the performance work I saw in the late ‘70s early ‘80s was that repetition is a good thing and long works are a good thing. I discovered a new form of speech that only works in media, where speech, image and repetition over time replace old habits with new thoughts and behaviors. It’s a formula I found to be at work in all the artists (and advertising) that I saw from this period.

JH: Your early films were first shown at Artists Space and the Kitchen rather than at avant-garde film venues or the clubs that were favored by the punk Super 8 filmmakers. Was that context by choice?
EB: I hung out with artists who hung out at Artists Space. Paul McMahon (who appears in Out of Hand) was its co-director, with Helene Weiner. Paul was an artist and an organizer of art events in Boston before he came to New York. He created the Nancy Party Club at his loft, where many artists gathered to play music in a Sunday night “battle of the bands” atmosphere. I worked closely with Brooke Halpin, a composer from Cal Arts, who helped untangle my conceptual lyrics. He would help set them to music. He understood my need for simple, repetitive phrases, and that the lyrics were part of the rhythm of the image. Sound was not there to enhance the image but to integrate with it, to make a new meaning. I used voice as a narration track, a song that came from either inside the head of the main performer or from the game. It was a bit like the instruction narration in Owen Land’s films. He used voiceover from a person who instructs, and the film tries to follow the instructions.

JH: Can you say something about the difficulties in working with the Super 8 format and the specific techniques you had to master?
EB: I developed a technique where I would rewind my Super 8 camera and make super-impositions on top of the performance elements. The black space allowed me to superimpose images in the unexposed area of the frame and move anywhere in the world I constructed. I could move laterally or enter the image; constructing a fluid space that was logical became very important for my work.

JH: In virtually every one of your films through Cinderella and Hiatus and maybe even Switch Center, some usually young, usually female individual learns, through trial and error, how to act in (or upon) the world. It’s as though the films were about their own coming into existence. Did you feel that your early work in particular had an allegorical or even autobiographical content?
EB: Looking back, I see your point. The themes I explore can be slippery to depict in film. They concern memory and the preservation of identity. My Cinderella plays the “Cinderella game” up to the point of recognition that she has a choice to either accept or reject the commodification of her image. In the digital game world of Hiatus, my heroine is firmly planted. Her memories are the power she stores in her garden. Her struggle is to retain her identity when she finds herself the midst of a takeover by a start-up pharmacological venture. There have been a lot of “damsels in distress” in my work. I use this hook because a woman is constantly comparing herself to, or is being compared against, an idealized image of womanhood. When I go out on a limb I want my audience to know where the ground is.

JH: One last question. I understand you have a distinguished artistic lineage. Could you elaborate?
EB: My great-uncle, twice removed, is Max Beckmann. One of two brothers dropped the second N when he settled in the New York area in the 1840s. I never met Max Beckmann, though he taught in the early 1960s at my first college, and the local museum has a fine collection of his paintings.
JH: Thanks Ericka. Didn’t he say “we are all tightrope walkers”? I imagine he would be very impressed with his great-niece’s balance and skill.

 

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Works

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Hit and Run, 1977
‘The film Hit and Run (1977) basically opened the door for me to work as a filmmaker. Here, I created juxtapositions through the superimposition of different activities: an equivalence between a word, a graphic and a performance. I can say now that it was based on performance; but more importantly it is based on gesture, and communicating physical and graphic directions, as well as temporal ones: rhythm.’ — E.B.

 

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Super 8-Trilogy (We Imitate: We Break Up, The Broken Rule, Out of Hand), 1977-80
‘Between 1978 and 1981, Ericka Beckman created a landmark suite of experimental films. Known as “The Super-8 Trilogy,” these films are among the most iconic and original works of the “Pictures Generation.” Featuring herself, and a cast of artist-friends (including James Welling, Matt Mullican, and Mike Kelley), her work is informed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theories on the cognitive development of children, the culture of televised sports, as well as the heyday of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s musicals. The films: “We Imitate; We Break Up” (1978), “The Broken Rule” (1979), and “Out of Hand” (1981) are not based on dialogues or a classical narrative structure, but on dream-like choreographed movements, songs, keyed-up colors, and special effects. As the artist states: “Film is creating a reality through the makeshift. My films move backward, using narrative structures as does the mind of anyone trying to grasp the meaning of images in their memory.”’ — jrp/editions


Excerpt

 

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Out of Hand, 1980
Out of Hand is a search film, where a small boy returns to a house that is being evacuated, to search for something that he left behind. His method is to follow hidden clues in this house and to respond to the hidden aids in his memory. Back and forth, between inquisition and logic, he constructs a search with two unknowns – ‘What it is’ and ‘Where it is.’ Each object he chooses has multiple functions, which extend both into the physical space of his search, and into the imaginary world of his perception and memory.’ — EB

 

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You The Better, 1983
You The Better was my first 16 mm film. I was trying at this time to build a larger audience for my work than just the few venues that were in downtown New York for screening, so I moved to 16 mm hoping that I would be able to engage a larger distribution structure.

‘This particular film was created after a long, introverted period in my life when I was beginning to investigate what is behind performance. What is the language of action? How do we learn as children to do things? How is our identity formed through action? I wanted to make something work without using narration or dialogue, and because I was using this theatrical, industrial medium of 16 mm film, I knew that I had to have some kind of hook. When I was making the Super-8 Trilogy that was based on Piaget’s work (my sort of incubation period), I made a film that involved Mike Kelley doing a series of team sports outdoors. I said, “This is it: gaming structure is going to replace narrative for me.”

‘When the film came out it was so off the path of what you expect to see in a theatrical film because of its non-narrative gaming structure. Though it circulated quite a bit, I wasn’t able to show it the way I wanted to show it; I showed it on screens in museums in conjunction with a lot of art shows, but there was a really strong divide—a barrier in fact—between film and visual art in the late ’80s.’ — E.B.


Excerpt


the entirety

 

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Cinderella, 1986
‘CINDERELLA is a musical treatment of the fairy tale. I have broken apart the story and set it as a mechanical game with a series of repetitions where CINDERELLA is projected back and forth like a ping-pong ball between the hearth and the castle. She never succeeds in satisfying the requirements of the ‘Cinderella Game’. The film was shot MOS, the dialogue is lip-synched, and along with the out-front score and effects track magnifies the film’s sense of alienation.’ — E.B.

Excerpt: watch it here


Ericka Beckman on Cinderella

 

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w/ Mike Kelley Blind Country, 1989
‘This collaborative video project is based on a short story by H.G. Wells called “The Country of the Blind”—about a man who travels to a country of blind people and attempts to dominate their sensual, feminine culture with his male, sight-derived power. Following this theme, Blind Country begins with animated fruit dancing over Mike Kelley’s body and the admonition of “Northerners” to “refill the quickly emptying sack.” In the male-dominated land of the North, candy-spurting pinatas stand as phallic symbols. Presumably castrated, and stripped of his authority, Kelley acts the buffoon as he is led through the murky land of the South, a “female,” earthy, “realm of the senses” opposing the phallocentric world of the North.’ — vdb

Excerpt: watch it here

the entirety: watch it here

 

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Hiatus, 1999
‘Madi plays an interactive on-line computer game in the privacy of her apartment. Wearing a computer corset that stores her programs in a “Garden Interface”, she propels her go-go cowgirl construct WANDA through the game world, encountering an assortment of logged-on players and game identities who trick and confuse her. An aggressive male character WANG logs on, and inserts his cold architecture into her coordinates, draining the power in her corset. His expanding architecture threatens to overtake her Garden Reservoir. To confront this powerful take-over artist, she must rely on her organic memory and is forced to establish some psychological boundaries to protect her identity and preserve her freedom.’ — vdb


Excerpt

 

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Switch Center, 2002
‘SWITCH CENTER is a tribute to the futuristic architecture of the Soviet post war period, and a reaction to seeing it transitioned to shopping malls or global corporate office structures. I was invited by Balazs Bela Studio in Budapest to produce a short experimental film in Hungary. I was the first American artist to be invited by this famous film collective after the fall of Soviet power. The collaboration took place in August 2000, culminating in SWITCH CENTER, a ten minute experimental documentary shot in many defunct Danube Water Works locations on the outskirts of Budapest. The architecture of a 1960’s water purification plant, left intact for 25 years, inspired me to recreate the factory in sight and sound, and to juxtapose that with the present. While I was meditating on the animation of 3-story water tank, a Pokemon commercial was being filmed down the corridor.’ — The Film-makers Cooperative

 

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Frame Up, 2005
‘The sound for the work came from actual recording on the location, plus many found sounds from department store recordings, where I recorded toys and games and of course an actual pinball machine. Editing is where the chance or “play” aspect was featured. Since I had multiple cameras covering the same day’s labor, I assigned cameras and shots to each screen. Then I linked game sounds to all the shots I chose to work with. At this point there was no linear structure just a “bin” of shots and their sounds. Then I turned “off” the video monitor and cut a soundtrack from the found sounds. I gave myself one rule: I would start in unison and then build a separate soundscape for each screen. This allowed me to let go of building a competitive relationship between the two screens. Then I opened the video monitor and took a look at my action cuts. This first edit governed everything that came after – the graphics, the length of the shots. My second rule was to heavily rework the first edit. It was a joy for me to take a very important architectural site and turn it into a simple pinball game, and to make the workers of a remarkable structure turn into handlers for the game. And why not? Isn’t that a joy itself to turn work into play?’ — E.B.

 

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Tension Building, 2018
‘Since 2002 I have been making films that re-visualizing architecture as a machine. I turn various architectural sites into motion machines, by animating the space with adjustments in lens framing, exposure variations and camera movement. The design of the space dictates the animation design. My current film ‘Tension Building’ is composed of 1930’s concrete stadiums built in the US and in Europe and a model replica of them.’ — E.B.

Excerpt: watch it here

 

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Reach Capacity, 2020
‘The origin of ‘Reach Capacity’ is The Landlord’s Game, a board game conceived in the early 20th century by Lizzie Magie. The aim of this game was to demonstrate how different economic systems operate, including their effects. First you would play according to capitalist rules. This version we all know, as the Monopoly board game was directly derived from it. As soon as one of the players acquired a monopoly the game would be over, but in in Magie’s version the the board was reversed and you would play on based on new, socialist rules. This would end the monopoly, causing wealth to be distributed fairly. ‘Reach Capacity’ borrows this structure, including a frantic first part in which project developers make one towering building after another go up – the towers being symbolized by simple surfaces in neon colours. But in the second part the rules of the game change and thus the action changes. The film turns more poetic and Beckman directly addresses the viewer though sung texts. ’Reach Capacity’ offers food for thought on the value of labour, as well as on what value actually is.’ — mleuven


Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Merry, merry after Xmas! I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary on Xmas. Really, not a thing. But I didn’t mind. However, if your generous love had been real, it could have been the best — or, well, the weirdest maybe — Xmas ever! Thank you! Love as a very wealthy man who collects burned Smarties who happened to be walking by your friend’s place when the oven disaster occurred, smelled smoke, recognised the precious smell that emanates from burning Smarties, opened his bank’s wire transfer app on his phone, and knocked on your friend’s door, ready to make a very generous offer, G. ** Billy, And Merry Xmas just a little late to you, Billy! ** h now j, I hope your Xmas was a joyful thing. I’m fine enough, all in all. And you? Well, if the address you have for me has the postal code 75008, it’s my current address. Mysterious. Hugs to you! ** David Ehrenstein, What an excellent favorite Xmas song! ** Tosh Berman, Thank you, sir and pal! ** David, Hi, My day was no sweeter than usual, but my days are generally sweet-ish at the very least, so no problem. Nice dinner there, and vegetarian me could even have eaten it unless you left something out. That’s really sweet and tender and sad about the woman and you. A real Xmas. I’ve never known whether Boxing Day was about boxing, the sport, or about putting things inside boxes. ** politekid, Hi! They did. Unfortunately for everyone here, the post they will probably inspire will likely be an Emo Machinima thing, which I feel safe in imagining will please exactly an audience of two aka you and me, but hey. Poetry has this odd intimidation problem, and I get it while not completely understanding why, given how skinny and svelte poems tend to be/look. No arguments! Congrats! Dutch Skype! I’m a fan of the Dutch, so that sounds great too. I know the name Hilary Mantel, but I’ve never read her. Let me know if you think I should. My day was nothing to remember. Nice walk, empty streets, Belgian waffle at the fete foraine, semi-dreamy, a few texted greetings with far flung friends. And now … the future! ** _Black_Acrylic, Cool. So it’s Boxing Day, as in the sport, and not Boxing Day, as in the opposite of unboxing? I always hoped it was the latter. I’m sorry to hear that about the Leeds team. I don’t know how PSG is doing. I suppose if they weren’t doing well, I would hear about it. ** T, Hi. Oh, thanks, I always aim to spoil y’all. That’s funny: the only Xmas present that I know I’m getting is some organic socks — I have to wear organic clothes, long story — from a friend of mine in LA. What were the odds? My Xmas was nothing. The walk was nice, but, no, no revelations occurred therefrom. Mm, pre-NY, I need to sort things out with the film producer, ugh. I need to write something. I’d like to go sit in a movie theater and watch something, maybe the ‘Matrix’ film. Nothing too exciting. Hope you get back here as soon as hoped. I think new restrictions are coming down today, but I think it’ll mostly be vis-vis the vax pass. Wow, very nice wish for my today. I’ll keep my eyes peeled. I hope yours involves you happily discovering the unexpectedly luxurious effect of your new socks. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. My Xmas was so uneventful that I have all but forgotten what happened. Yum, vegan Mexican. Your Xmas so wins. I like the idea that ’70s muzak could become more grating than it inherently is. ** Kage, Kage! Nice moniker there. My Xmas was only sublime if nothingness constitutes the sublime, which certain philosophers would probably posit. So it possibly was. Aw, thank you, you’re so kind. I suspect I’m blushing, but there’s no mirror handy so I can’t say for sure. And I wish you an ultra-extremely poetic 2022! ** Okay. I have this feeling that very few of you readers are familiar with Ericka Beckman’s work, and that is why I reasoned a post starring her and her things would be in order. See you tomorrow.

dc’s 4th non-annual xmas poetry scroll: ashbery, green, tate, denby, britton, christie, berrigan, armantrout, crawford, berkson, padgett, mirov, boyle, creeley, gluck, killian, partrik, salier, schuyler, lin, myles, o’hara, madsen, koertge, young, berkson, brainard, gerstler

vintagexmas03-gifc200

 

 

 

Redeemed Area
by John Ashbery

Do you know where you live? Probably.

Abner is getting too old to drive but won’t admit it.

The other day he got in his car to go buy some cough drops

of a kind they don’t make anymore. And the drugstore

has been incorporated into a mall about seven miles away

with only about half the stores rented. There are three

other malls within a four-mile area. All the houses

are owned by the same guy, who’s been renting

them out to college students for years, so they are virtually uninhabitable.

A smell of vitriol and socks pervades the area

like an open sewer in a souk. Anyway the cough drops

(a new brand) tasted pretty good-like catnip

or an orange slice that has lain on a girl’s behind.

That’s the electrician calling now

nobody else would call before 7 A.M. Now we’ll have some

electricity in the place. I’ll start by plugging in

the Christmas tree lights. They were what made the whole thing

go up in sparks the last time. Next, the light

by the dictionary stand, so I can look some words up.

Then probably the toaster. A nice slice

of toast would really hit the spot now. I’m afraid it’s all over

between us, though. Make nice, like you really cared,

I’ll change my chemise, and we can dance around the room

like demented dogs, eager for a handout or they don’t

know what. Gradually, everything will return to normal, I

promise you that. There’ll be things for you to write about

in your diary, a fur coat for me, a lavish shoe tree for that other.

Make that two slices. I can see you only through a vegetal murk

not unlike coral, if it were semi-liquid, or a transparent milkshake.

I have adjusted the lamp;

morning’s at seven,

the tarnish has fallen from the metallic embroidery, the walls have fallen,

the country’s pulse is racing. Parents are weeping,

the schools have closed.

All the fuss has put me in a good mood,

O great sun.

 

Ranting
by Megan Green

ranting, pathetic insecurities, overwhelm the Christmas tree, and you promise
me a utopia, a sort of subsequential America,
where we’ll fuck & eat & play the craps, Las
Vegas is the only place it’ll happen, &
yet the nameless, intrude like a swarm of fucking locusts
feasting upon the Satin drape of my finest
face, I believe your chest most of all, that’s where
the dragon begins, & the sigh
spills from my eyes. Dead petals favour the corners. Gathering
like they have plans.

 

Making the Best of the Holidays
by James Tate

Justine called on Christmas day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, “We’re
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re
still alive.” She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone rang again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
“Sleep it off, Hugh,” I said, “I can barely under-
stand you, you’re slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas.” The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. “I hate you,” she said. “You’re the most
disgusting human being on the planet.” “You’re
absolutely right,” I said, “and I’ve always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie.”
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. “Who was it?” I
asked. “It was my mother,” she said. “And what
did she say?” I asked. “She said she wasn’t my
mother,” she said.

 

Sonnet 8
by Edwin Denby

Three old sheepherders so filthy in their ways
Whores wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole
Saw once the Christmas star which in a blaze
Pierced like delight into the secret soul.

They later also stood with their same faces
Around a baby male and there were shown
The heart caressing with millennial graces
A beauty which in love is all its own.

These three were the first according to the story
But unbaptized they never will reach heaven
In an eternal hell tortured and gory
They can recall the joy that they were given,

This savage torture by the law of love
Of Christmas shepherds I like thinking of.

 

Santa
by Donald Britton

Santa is the incomplete
Embodiment of our charity. Poor Santa,
His many bodies minted
Of human waste, his voice the choir
Of his own need. I feel so empty,
By myself, whispering my lists
In Santa’s spiral ear, while he lists
Slightly to one side like skeet
Propelled into the air by a device
No human hand has touched, so obsolete
Is effort when a dime skims ice.
Emit a cry for every useless thing:
Abundant padding so contrived
No one of us shall feel deprived.

 

vintage santa claus merry christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys photo: Vintage Santa Claus Merry Christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys VintageXmas02.gif

 

I’ll Be Me and You Be Goethe
by Heather Christie

I want it to be winter and I want to change
the color of this room This room should be
a blue room and it should be freezing
but ventilated and I in my medium snowsuit
irresistible I know because everything I do
I do to get more beautiful so you will want
to love me in the cold and indoor morning

 

What I’d Like For Christmas, 1970
by Ted Berrigan

Black brothers to get happy
The Puerto Ricans to say hello
The old folks to take it easy &
as it comes
The United States to get straight
Power to butt out
Money to fuck off
Business with honor
Religion
& Art
Love
A home
A typewriter
A GUN.

 

Advent
by Rae Armantrout

In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.

*

Sky
god
girl.

Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.

*

Some thing

close to nothing
flat
from which,

fatherless,
everything has come.

 

Look at My Head, It’s a Pumpkin with a Candle in It
by Keegan Crawford

What is on your bed right now?
I laid there for fifteen minutes with my face down into the pillow.
I imagined how I looked from another person’s point of view
and I looked dead, in a humorous way.
What is your favorite holiday?
The tree was fake and everyone was acting like the tree.
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
The drop was five stories, so I didn’t look down. I just looked forward.
Have you ever been camping?
I don’t know why people are scared of wolves. ‘Blood thirsty killing machine’ is a false phrase. They are not robots and they drink water.
What was the last thing you ate?
I am not a blood thirsty killing machine. I just wanted to clarify that.
Do you have any regrets?
Flowers die 100% percent of the time. I still like flowers, though.

 

Christmas Eve
by Bill Berkson

Behind the black water tower

under the grey

of the sky that feeds it

smoke speeds to where a pigeon

spreads its wings

This is no great feat

Cold pushes out its lust

We walk we drink we cast

our giggling insults

Would you please

leave the $2.50 you owe me

I would rather not talk about it

just now——- Money bores me I would like

to visit someone who will stay

in bed all day——– A forest is rising

imperceptibly in my head

not a civilized park

I think it would be nice this “new

moral odor” no it would not mean

“everything marching to its tomb”

The water tower

watches over us——- Is there someone

you would like to invite——– no one.

 

vintage santa claus merry christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys photo: Vintage Santa Claus Merry Christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys VintageXmas05.gif

 

Season’s Greetings
by Ron Padgett

The holidays are said
to give one a chance
to get in touch with others
but what held back that chance
the rest of the year?
What it means is
that the holidays are a time
when we should behave
like other people, as if
in junior high school,
jury duty, or the Army,
whereas what Philip Whalen
wanted was to take a holiday
from holidays, and then
he wavered, beautifully.

 

Kage’s First Xmas
by Ben Mirov

I am thinking of him and her having sex. I am thinking of them having really great sex, probably in front of a mirror. I am alone in the house. The TV is on, but everyone is asleep. I am about to turn twenty-one. When I turn twenty-one I am going to put on snowshoes. I am going to put on snowshoes and walk as far as I can into the snow. Once I am out in the snow I am going to sit down. I will probably sit in the snow for a long time. I’ll bring a sandwich and some juice. When I return to the house it will be Xmas morning. I will take off my snowshoes and I will tell my family my new name. I will say, On advent of my twenty-first birthday I have taken a new name. Henceforth I shall be called Kage. Kage with a K and not a C. From now on I will only answer to the name Kage. Thank you very much, and then I will walk out of the room. Then I will probably take a shower because I will be cold from sitting in the snow. I will walk into the bathroom and take off all my clothes and look at my body in the mirror. I will probably flex a little. Kage likes his new body. Then I will take a long shower. I will wash every part of my body, including my asshole and my ears and toes. Every part of my body will be clean. Then I will get out of the shower and go have Xmas. I will open my presents and say, Kage does not want this. Kage has no use for a Playstation. Kage does wear sweaters.

 

untitled
by Megan Boyle

everything i touch is going to be a fossil some day my dad still hasn’t taken down his christmas decorations

i walked to his refrigerator and immediately unwrapped and ate a square of american cheese

if i drop a toothpick i’m pretty sure it will remain where it fell for three days

not sure what happens after that.

 

Xmas Poem: Bolinas
by Robert Creeley

All around
the snow
don’t fall.

Come Christmas
we’ll get high
and go find it.

 

Love Poem
by Louise Glück

There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.

 

vintage santa claus merry christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys photo: Vintage Santa Claus Merry Christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys VintageXmas01.gif

 

All the Lovers
by Kevin Killian

Outside the Disney Concert Hall,
Kylie has summoned a clutch of cold models in white underwear,

They clamber on white boxes pitching for the sky

Somehow she appears in a dream sequence,

Boys and girls kiss and poke and struggle for love

In California, where the major candidates for governor and senator
live the lavish lives of Roman emperors,

Carly Fiorina, like Nero, bought a violin
for everyone on her Christmas list, from Cremona,

her wood golden and thin as hair,

81 per cent of voters don’t care how wealthy a
candidate is

You have to be rich to flourish

What came first, the wifebeater or the social system
that allowed ever and ever more flourish

In the face of a liverish social despair
all the lovers who have gone before

they don’t compare to you

 

i am a big dumbass bear on christmas morning
by partrik

holy shit a house

im gonna look inside the fucking window

who the fuck is this dumbass family in this house

if i wanted to i could bust in there and eat every one of these fuckers

look at this little fucker opening a present

oh look its a fire truck big deal ass monkey

when are these shit hats gonna fucking notice the bear at their window

hey bitch you forgot to look in your stocking

there you go

lol bubba wubba and chocolate give her a fucking toothbrush mom and dad

when are they gonna see me and chase me away

damn thats a lot of wrapping paper

lol that kitten is playing in it what a retard

oh shit they see me

“im not gonna hurt you or eat you”

but it sounds like “roar roar roar” to them cause im a big dumbass fucking bear

dad thats a big ass gun

dont shoot me think of all the fun times

like when watched your lovely family open presents on christmas

oh shit he took a warning shot im gonna run away

there is no presents under any of the trees of the woods of the world for me

why arent i hibernating

 

in a string of christmas lights that is blinking all year long
by Diana Salier

for christmas i get a new magic set and a big plastic stealth bomber that opens up and holds fifty little metal stealth bombers. i wear footie pajamas that zip all the way to my neck. the big plastic stealth bomber has a runway to practice takeoffs and landings. i sit on the carpet in my onesie and make the grey and green stealth bombers crash into each other so that all the pilots inside will die. i can’t finish card tricks or make the red balls disappear so i wear my black felt magician’s hat and walk around pulling rabbits out of things. i drive to my first girlfriend’s house. we drink wine and leave the bottles in the door of her parents’ car. on the way back to my house i text her all i want for christmas is you. at home a string of christmas lights blinks erratically. i fall asleep clearing the rubble off the runway.

 

December
by James Schuyler

The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
“You didn’t visit the Alps?”
“No, but I saw from the train they were black
and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.

 

vintage santa claus merry christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys photo: Vintage Santa Claus Merry Christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys VintageXmas06.gif

 

That night with the green sky
by Tao Lin

It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me

I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me
But you kept walking at this strange speed
You kept going in angles and it was confusing me

I think maybe you were thinking that you’d make me disappear
By walking at strange speeds and in a strange, curvy way
But how would that cause me to vanish from the planet Earth?

And that hurts
Why did you want me gone?
That hurts
Why?
Why?
I don’t know
Some things can’t be explained, I guess
The sky, for example, was green that night

 

“Shhh”
by Eileen Myles

I don’t think
I can’t afford the time to not sit right down &
write a poem about the heavy lidded
white rose I hold in my hand
I think of snow
a winter night in Boston, drunken waitress
stumble on a bus that careens through
Somerville the end of the line
where I was born, an old man
shaking me. He could’ve been my dad
You need a ride? Wait, he said.
This flower is so heavy in my hand.
He drove me home in his old blue
Dodge, a thermos next to me
cigarette packs on the dash
so quiet like Boston is quiet
Boston in the snow. It’s New York
plates are clattering on St. Mark’s
Place. Should I call you?
Can I go home now
& work with this undelivered
message in my fingertips
It’s Summer.
I love you.
I’m surrounded by snow.

 

Music
by Frank O’Hara

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf’s
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35¢, it’s so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
I must tighten my belt.
It’s like a locomotive on the march, the season
of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter’s
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they’re putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
But no more fountains and no more rain,
and the stores stay open terribly late.

 

on sunday we took the train to the city and we each went home for one night and i saw my parents and my bedroom and my cat and you saw your ex boyfriend and his parents and his bedroom and his dog and when i called you i heard you ask me to go back to sleep and i said is everything okay and you told me to please go back to sleep
by Spencer Madsen

not sure if you
ever told me how
you felt about
christmas lights

i said i’d wrap them around our room
and put popcorn in your mouth

a few weeks ago i
walked onto a street
and sat prepared

lets
sleep like two hands
caught
in each other’s fingers

lets be demonstrative
of that image
in an earnest way
lets forget i wrote it down
or else it won’t feel genuine

yesterday i googled:
homemade fleshlight

 

vintage santa claus merry christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys photo: Vintage Santa Claus Merry Christmas animation animations animated gif gifs smilie smiley smilies smileys VintageXmas04.gif

 

Molly Is Asked
by Ron Koertge

to be in the Christmas pageant. She tells
me this standing in the door of what we
laughingly call my study.

“But I don’t want to be Mary,” she says.
“I want to be the guy.”

That makes me look up from my bills.
“Joseph?”

“The innkeeper. I want to slam the door
in Joseph’s face.”

She’s eight. I wonder if we’ll look back
on this next year and laugh. Or will she
want to be Herod and we’ll have to take
her little brother and flee.

 

Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?
by Mike Young

Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B;
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.

 

Christmas Eve
by Bill Berkson

for Vincent Warren

Behind the black water tower

under the grey
of the sky that feeds it
smoke speeds to where a pigeon
spreads its wings

This is no great feat
Cold pushes out its lust
We walk we drink we cast
our giggling insults

Would you please
leave the $2.50 you owe me
I would rather not talk about it
just now           Money bores me I would like
to visit someone who will stay
in bed all day           A forest is rising
imperceptibly in my head
not a civilized park

I think it would be nice this “new
moral odor” no it would not mean
“everything marching to its tomb”
The water tower
watches over us           Is there someone
you would like to invite           no one.

 

from I Remember
by Joe Brainard

I remember Christmas tree lights reflected on the ceiling.

I remember Christmas cards arriving from people my parents forgot to send cards to.

I remember mistletoe.

I remember Christmas carols. And car lots.

I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.

 

A Severe Lack of Holiday Spirit
by Amy Gerstler

I dread the icy white concussion
of winter. Each snowfall demands
panic, like a kidnapper’s hand
clapped over my chapped mouth.
Ice noms everywhere, a plague
of glass. Christmas ornaments’
sickly tinkle makes my molars ache.
One pities the anemic sun
come January. Trees go skeletal.
Children born in the chilly months
are apt to stammer. People hit
the sauce in a big way all winter.
Amidst blizzards they wrestle
unsuccessfully with the dark comedy
of their lives, laughter trapped
in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile,
the mercury just plummets,
like a migrating duck blasted
out of the sky by some hunter
in a cap with fur earflaps.

 

giphy

 

 

*

p.s. Xmas-y hey. ** David, Hi. My throat is silky. I hope you got some — or at least one — jaw dropping Xmas gift(s). Xmas brilliance right back at ya. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, Hi! Are you five people or one promiscuously named solo act? In any case, thank you, and I hope your day and then week, months year, years ahead are historically great. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, and MX! Everyone, It won’t really be Xmas until you have been wished a Merry Xmas by Mr. E’s FaBlog, i.e. until you click this right here. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Gosh, to think my little, well, little but lengthy post could have had such a desired effect. I’m so sorry you’re going through all that dark, my friend. As you yourself have said, at least you have your art. And I will add, your great art no less! Love, me.** Jeff J, Oh, what a swell idea: you resurrecting that column. I heard vague things, maybe even via you, about Wurlitzer working on a new novel, but, no, I haven’t heard a peep about that since. Oh, man, that would be so great. Just the idea of a father, step- or not, who not only reads but adventurously is such a mind blow. I know such parents exist. Some friends of mine have or had such fathers, but I still stare off in wonder at the premise. I did like ‘Notice’ very much, yeah. I haven’t thought about that book in ages. I remember thinking it was much better than ‘House Rules’, the novel of hers that got her a lot of attention. I think generally speaking that if Jeremy recommends a book, it’s going to be ultra-worthy of reading. And now I want reread it. Thoroughly enjoy being unplugged, man, and I look forward to catching up with you when cyber starts to seem delicious. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. Happy Xmas! Thanks, and, yeah, we’re getting worse fast here in France like everywhere. I fear the new measures that’ll undoubtedly be implemented as soon as the French are allowed this one last Xmas-occasioned whirl. Thank you so much about ‘I Wished’. I so appreciate knowing that. Have a really great XDay itself. ** _Black_Acrylic, Me too re: finding any of those things in my sock. ‘The Matrix’ seems like a fairly safe bet, am I wrong? Happy happy! ** Sypha, Very Merry Xmas, pal! I hope you’re lying prone under veritable avalanche of presents. ** Bill, Moi aussi. We’re spiking too, but things still feel okay when you’re out and about, but not for much longer, I fear, for sure. I didn’t ‘feast’ last night, but I’ve got nothing to do today, so … ** NIT, Hey, S! Ultra-merry Xmas! Yeah, I might share a text with my sister today but that’s it, family-wise. I’m not hugely great, but I will endeavour to attain greatness before nightfall somehow. I hope you’re great without even trying. ** politekid, Merry Xmas to you!!!! Oh, my God, those are amazing gifts! Holy shit! Now it is Xmas! Until I found your comment it was just a day when everything was closed like the ultimate Sunday. Thank you so much for knowing me so well. You shouldn’t have, etc. I feel at least one consequent blog post coming on. Yay! I’ve been fairly okay. Yeah, I’m all right, all in all. Me today? Opening your presents to me. Otherwise, … gosh, zip. A long walk solo through the nearby portion of my city. What about you? Are you doing this designated ‘huge day’ up in any fashion that you deem notable? Hope so. So great to see you, pal! ** Steve Erickson, I thought so too. Everyone, Steve’s Top Ten Music of the Year has gone public, and that includes all of you. Partake. I think I’ll save ‘Squid Game’ for some future delve into the buzzy relics of the past. Happy Xmas! ** Misanthrope, Well, true, but the real fuckiness is that I didn’t provide links so anyone could buy them even if they were still gift hunting yesterday. I suck. Dude, I would happily gorge on Chinese today, and maybe I even will. Xmas Day is still young over here. Enjoy Xmas’s every molecule, man! ** Brendan, Hi, B! Shave the Baby, seriously, and it was actually a real product unlike — spoiler alert — Baby’s First Minibar. You doing Xmas in any way, shape or form that would cause today to resemble the dictionary definition of Xmas? Take care, bud! ** Okay. I’m giving you poems for Xmas. And not only poems, but actually good poems. What better gift, I ask you? See you after all of this is over meaning on Monday.

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