Primitive Information

01.26.99

M. came into the office this morning, worked quietly for an hour, and then suddenly announced to G. (who sat in the cubicle next to her) that she got married yesterday. The news spread like a virus, until people stood up from their desks beaming at her from across the room, congratulating her and asking questions. She was then given the rest of the day off

01.29.99

For a long time we didn’t realize we were living under water; now that we know, no effort is being spared to rectify the situation

03.04.99

There was a moment of absolute weightlessness before the bus moved—I hung there, frozen in the act of bending forward to remove my backpack before sitting down. Then the bus moved, and I was poured into the lap of a young woman, who smiled faintly at my apology

03.09.99

The couple, seated together at a small table with an astonishing array of food between them—sodas, carrots, salad, bagels—both eating and looking down into books, not speaking. But when something amusing came up from one of the books, it passed through both of them simultaneously, in identical expressions, small smiles that pointed not at each other but down

03.23.99

She notices her from across the aisle on the bus.

“Sarah?”

The other one, who’s been eating an apple, acknowledges this address grudgingly, as though roused from sleep. They begin to talk, leaning to see each other through a forest of arms and legs. Both girls are frumpy, hippie types, hair greasy, voices full of “like” and “yeah.” The first croaks yeah, the second responds with a bloated, weary yeahh; gradually they’re drawn into a rhythm, searching for something to talk about: a friend’s new band which had played at the Tip Top, another friend who’s driving out from Ohio for the summer—“So we’ll have some wheels…” Immediately this friend takes on a life of her own, I picture her driving the interstate in the colorless light of dawn, cruising the plains into Iowa, then pointing her car into the sun’s long shadows through Nebraska and Colorado. She seems infinitely more sensible to me than these two, more down to earth, better groomed, simply because she’s from somewhere else and “has never been to California.” Yet with chagrin I see her arrive, and let her jeans grow threadbare, and her hair go unwashed, a greasy nest of barrettes and blackened roots

03.25.99

The waiter prepared the two salads on little plates, shredded greens and carrots smeared with dressing, and then, somehow holding them in one hand, with the other he slipped a spoon carefully into a full glass of wine, skimming something off the surface

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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This book doesn’t want you
to put it down.

Honestly,
the book says.
It’s not of glue, paper ink
it’s not succinct.

This book wants you
to work on your slapshot.
This book has a title:
It’s Not You, It’s Me
OR
The Man Who Wrote on His Own Back.

This book looks at you.
Says,
Would you like me to
put out your left eye?

Would you?
the book says.

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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Below are two of the six different cards I created for my print media class this semester. Needless to say, the theme was hockey, and each card (fold-out, 5×7) also has a two-word hockey term printed on the front. Some of you can expect to get these as Xmas cards!

You have to look closely, because the lettering is printed in transparent white-grey; it says “Body Check.” This was done with letterpress. The image was printed from a photo-litho plate. There are three different cards printed by this method.

The lettering on this card was also done on letterpress. The image was printed on an etch press using centra for the negative impression. There are three different cards printed by this method as well. By and large, I was happier with these. I like the line and the fact that I was able to do a different color for each card without too much trouble.

I’m thinking about taking the class again in the spring to continue learning about press techniques and working some more on this project.

Tags: School, Workbook by dhadbawnik
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In the dream, the ball is bouncing towards me. Only every time it touches the grass, it splits in two. One ball, two balls, four balls, eight. I can see each of them clearly and I spread my arms out wide as if I’m going to try to gather them all up at once. But there keeps getting to be more of them and my arms won’t spread wide enough and by now the runner’s past me.

Baseball is a game of angles. Or, you could say, it’s a game where a couple different things are always happening at once. Or more than a couple things.

Think about this: think about what happens when a ball’s put in play. If there’s no one on base then the moment a ball is hit there’s a player reacting to it, trying to catch it and throw it back, and another player, the batter, running to first base. But what if there’s more players on base? Each one of them has to make a split-second decision about whether to run once a ball’s been hit; and unless there are already two outs, then depending where each runner is and where the ball gets hit, each runner’s decision is going to be a little bit different. And even if there’s only a runner on first base, then that gives the pitcher something to think about already, before he pitches the ball.

Another dream I have is one where I keep throwing over to first. The runner is there, and I know he’s going to steal, everyone knows it. We look at each other, we lock eyes, and just from his eyes I know he’s only waiting for me to glance away and begin my motion and he’s gone. So I make the throw.

The first baseman snags the ball and sweeps his glove across the runner’s butt and the ump motions “safe.” He gets up, dusts himself off, glares at me, takes an exaggerated step or two. We lock eyes again. Something won’t let me turn away, won’t let me twirl and make the throw home. I toss over again.

A murmur goes through the crowd. It makes me anxious, but as I settle on the mound I already know I’ll do it again. I throw over a third time, fourth, fifth, six, I lose count—I’m just stuck doing it. It’s the yelling of the crowd that wakes me up.

Baseball is beautiful, but it’s terrible, too. There’ve been times when I’m out there just doing it, soaking it up and enjoying every moment, because I’m not thinking too much. I’m noticing little things like the way the light makes everything glow, and the smell of the dirt and the grass, the bats and the mitts and the powder, and the contentedness of the crowd as they arrive at their seats and look around at each other and see us warming up, and the rising excitement right before the game starts.

But other times, I suddenly think about the idea of winning, and I get frightened. Not of winning, but of something happening that makes us lose. And that I’ll be involved and everyone will see it. So my heart starts racing, and I hunker down and hope like hell that whatever happens, the ball won’t roll towards me.

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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The first time I disappeared it was an accident. We were in the department store. One minute we were walking in the aisle, there were bodies around, racks full of coats, shirts, slacks, pegged pants hanging stiff and straight as flayed meat. I can’t remember if I wandered off the path to touch one of them, or my mother did, or both of us stopped to look at something and just lost each other.

I was embarrassed, first. When I knew. Understanding that you’ve disappeared is a gradual process. It’s a negative information. You have to realize that nobody sees you, and that takes a while.

Later I began to do it a bit more intentionally, though still it was a half-conscious thing, at best. There was a series of funerals. They were all at the same place. Both my grandfathers died within, I don’t know, six months or a year of each other. Then one grandmother. I barely knew the grandfathers—I mean it was sad, in both cases there were late-night phone calls and suddenly being up with the kitchen lights on and mom and dad pacing and talking in the proverbial “hushed tones” I guess you could say.

But then the funeral home: it was actually a pretty cool place. Down in the basement there was a room with a ship in a giant bottle and lots of neat nautical stuff. There was another room with a great big table and deep, comfortable leather chairs. And the key thing: an actual Coca Cola fountain. There were tall glasses and straws and you could drink as much as you wanted to, and the Coke tasted sweeter and more sophisticated somehow coming out of that fountain.

There I guess were my first formal experiments in disappearing. I would do it while the visitors filed through. Being the child of the son of the deceased, we had to be there all day. I didn’t mind; I had books, and the basement, and the Coke fountain. What I minded were the people filing through, with their sad looks and condolences. And the faint mothball smell of their funeral clothes as they bent down and gaped at me, saying things like reading off titles: “Your Grandfather Was a Very Good Man,” and “At Least He Didn’t Suffer.”

So I disappeared.

It took time. Concentration. I was frustrated at first. Uncle Ned and Aunt Sally came downstairs and sat with me for a very long time, not saying much of anything—God, it was awkward! Sitting between them on this couch, just seeing their big fat legs sticking out, with Uncle Ned sort of resting his hand near my thigh, both of them breathing… I couldn’t read and I couldn’t disappear.

But gradually it happened. I remember how excited I was when some random relative came bouncing down the stairs to look for me, only she couldn’t find me. And I was sitting right there! With a Coke in my hand and a book in my lap. I had to sit very still, of course. She walked right up to me, looked right through me, shouting over her shoulder the whole time to my mom that I wasn’t down here.

For a minute, I thought my mom would raise a general alarm and they’d turn the whole place over trying to find me. But there were more people coming all the time. This woman stood there in the center of the room for a minute. Jesus, who was she? I’ll never forget the way she got quiet, looking around, slowly. And then this sort of creepy look came over her face. That’s the weirdest part about disappearing. You finally see what people look like when there’s no one else around. It isn’t pretty. I think the whole history of the world could change if everyone could see that. And I can’t even describe it. Something dropped away, and something else came onto her face that I didn’t recognize even as human.

Let me put it this way: I was very glad at that moment she couldn’t see me.

I’ve been able to disappear whenever I want to, pretty much ever since.

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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There are people walking around with no souls. I don’t know. They just don’t have them. You just know. Like… they were born without them, or whether they’ve lost them, who can say. You can lose your soul. Fear. Laziness. Lack of love. Over-eating. Bad luck. Any of these things can make it break apart and gradually… I can even tell you where it goes.

Do you know where the perineum is? It’s this little spot between your asshole and your balls. If you’re a guy. If you’re a girl, it’s between your asshole and your pussy. You can feel it—it’s a little bulge, a little pocket of muscles.

At any rate, the soul, you know, is not this ghostly thing rattling around inside you. It’s actually outside you. And inside. That’s the one bible verse I read that I found myself nodding along to: “The kingdom of heaven is inside you, and it is outside you.” I can’t remember where it’s from.

The part of the soul I’m talking about rests on top of you like an extra layer above your skin. It’s very thin and very large. If it was spread out flat it would cover—I don’t know. A lot. You can see it if you want to, if you know what to look for.

On some people it’s very thin, very faint. On some people it’s begun breaking up, like piebald, you know? Patches of it are missing. If you lie down at night you can feel it seeping away, through the perineum. It happens in the middle of the night, very early, like between three and four a.m.

In fact, if you find yourself waking up a lot at that time, that’s probably what’s happening. You can feel it right there. It might itch a little. It’s a terrible feeling, for sure. You’ve just woken up from a nightmare, probably. That’s your body trying to warn you about your soul.

Okay, but the good news is there’s these people going around who can help you. I’m not talking about evangelists or preachers per se, but they could be that—they could be anybody. Really they are angels; they are people, really, but for a moment or two they are angels, they have the power of angels if you open yourself to them and listen.

I mean, it could be the person in line behind you at the grocery store. Most often, probably, it’s a bum or a street person like us, because we’re the most open and available for the angels to use. I can see that you’re not really following me.

Think of it like this: You must have had an encounter with someone where you thought, ‘There’s something weird going on here. This person seems to know me, without having to say a word.’ Maybe you start talking. Maybe you just look at each other and laugh. Maybe all you do is look—even for just a second or two—if you’re open to it, that’s all it takes.

You might even have been an angel for somebody else, sometime. You wouldn’t know. Only they’d know. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s the type of thing that can keep you going. That’s how you can get your soul back, if you’ve lost it. Little by little, by degrees. Maybe it will never be as big as it once was, enough to cover your whole body. But it’ll be something.

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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I took a long drink of water and, like, started crying. I was sitting in the bathtub. It was late afternoon, evening really, and I thought I’d take a quick bath before dinner. But when I raised the sports jug to my mouth and started drinking it was like, I don’t know, everything hit full stop and it all came flooding out.

It was a lovely bath. Maybe a bit too hot. But I needed it because it’d been a long week and I had three hours till Doug got home from work and I figured I’d make dinner and eat and take the dog for a walk and maybe just drink wine and watch stupid TV. A perfect evening, right?

But you know how that happens sometimes? Like, you just walk out of a building and the sun hits you and suddenly it’s like you’re a whole different person. Or you’re waking up from a dream, only the dream lasted five years, or ten, or longer. That’s what it felt like. Suddenly I’d woken up from a dream, a blur of the past however-many years, and only 20 minutes ago I’d been … what? See, that’s the thing. It was this detached sort of regret, or something.

I remembered a line from my Latin that always haunted me. The line goes, Si animus infirmus est, non poterit bonam fortunam tolerare. I can’t remember who wrote it. In English, it’s like, “If the spirit is weak, it will not be able to tolerate good fortune.” I remember having translated that at my kitchen table and just sitting there hearing my heart beat and freaking out. Outside the window I heard birds chirping, the sound of a lawnmower, some kids laughing.

The other day a name popped up on my Facebook friends’ requests. I thought, no, it couldn’t be. That’s too weird. How did he find me? Because I’ve changed my name from having gotten married, and moved, like, a million times. But it was him. There he was, grinning in his profile picture, and the message said, “Well well, look at you…” I didn’t know what to do. He’s just sitting there in my Facebook, vibrating.

I’m sorry if this is kind of all over the place. I just felt like I needed to do something. And the thread of what I needed to do was back there, just on the other side of the dream I’d woken up from when I sat there in the bath, drinking that water. But obviously I couldn’t just sit there forever, crying and drinking water. I saw that there was mold on the base of the toilet, and somehow that brought me back.

I pulled the drain on the tub even though the water was still nice and hot, and stood up in the tub. The water came up to my ankles. I stepped out and reached for the towel. And I thought about how I was going to move forward from here on out.

Tags: Workbook by dhadbawnik
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