Toil Is Meaningless (Ecclesiastes 2:17-2:24)

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.

Now, is it just me, or does that passage sound a little like it was written by the love child of Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus?

I'm just saying.

Kurt Vonnegut dies

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84. (from the Chicago Tribune)

He was also one of my idols and I cannot count the nights I stayed up reading his books.

I'm actually very sad.

If you're in Champaign-Urbana, there's a Kurt Vonnegut Tribute reading on Thursday the 19th at Caffe Paradiso. Bring your favorite Vonnegut works and mourn into a microphone.

On "On W. Touhy, Chicago, IL." (by me)

"On W. Touhy, Chicago, IL" is a beautifully written prose poem structured in three parts. Each takes as its subtitle a number which, presumably, refers to an address on W. Touhy. The poem explores the relationship of the narrator to his Jewishness. In vivid descriptive language, the poem starts with the speaker on W. Touhy on a slushy day: "the hem of my coat was stained the same gray color as the cuffs of my pants and the winter sky." The narrator observes that "the little boys were out for recess at the yeshiva across the street" playing ball. At this address in the poem, # 2620, the narrator sees the "little hands pushing through the bars" of the playground fence reaching for a lost ball, "their soft payos curling at their temples." An instant later, the speaker is imagining "the faces of six million of my people behind another even higher fence." Turning away from that vision, the narrator walks on and enters #2625 Touhy, to visit one "of my own flesh and blood," whom the poet describes in vivid terms as very ill or dying. From there, the narrator also departs to visit #2919, a bakery where he sees "dark weighty ryes and golden challah, braided and glazed in bright egg." This part of the poem describes rather gorgeously the appeal of the bakery (in stark contrast to the horror of the sick room in the previous section). Here the speaker is connecting with a culture that seems sustaining, even beautiful. The traveler eats, but leaves this place too. In going out into the "salt and dirt and filth of winter while shrewd little birds picked at the heavy crumbs that I left behind as I left it all behind me," the narrator echoes Hansel and Gretel, who leave a trail of bread crumbs to help them find their way home. Like those children, it's likely that the narrator in this poem will return to W. Touhy and to his people in spite of an equally strong urge to turn away. I was moved by this poem and impressed by the poet's formal imagination. I admire the poet's invention: how he structures the poem as a brief journey from one address to another on a particular street--one which reminds the speaker of his complicated relationship to a history and culture.
-Allison Funk

Everyone loves me, except you.

In my creative writing workshop, we're required to give our classmates written feedback on their work. One of my classmates is not, I guess, especially fond of me. He wrote, among other things,

"This thing festered. And how can you actually use the phrase "fairly pretentious dilettante" without bleeding out of your eyes and exploding from the irony? If I had one story left I'd write in a Jeff. And he'd be a tiresome self-indulgent masturbator.... I just don't feel like saying any more about this story. Get your hands out of your pants the next time you write something."

OK, so, uh, I guess he doesn't love my work. I guess he doesn't even much like it or, in all probability, me. He's not wrong about some of it. I am a self-indulgent masturbator, though the tiresome thing is way out in left field. I like to think of myself as a fresh and charming self-indulgent masturbator. And he seems to think I'm a "pansy pussyfoot assface" (his words, not mine), which is way off-base. But he also seems to think that I'm not self-indulgent enough that I'm not going to find his excessive of spite incredibly funny and he probably didn't realize that I would read his evaluation as an especially funny introduction to my story at an open-mic. In fact, I may always read it as an introfucktion. It's that charming to me. Equally charming, is this email I got the same day:

"Okay.. you don't know me, and this might be a little odd, but what the hell. Months ago, I got a free little book of writing and stuff called "Montage", and I absolutely loved the one called "December 21st." Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, more than likely it's just that I find something particularly satisfying about smoking in December. Regardless, I loved it, and saved the book with the intention of sending whoever the hell Jeff W was a message telling him that. But I forgot.... for about three months, actually. So I was JUST cleaning out my room, found the book again, and decided to finally fucking send you this message. So kudos. Consider your work officially stuck on my bulletin board."

Which is really sweet. It's a lot more difficult to send someone a message that isn't offensive. I mean, for me. Maybe y'all love writing nice notes to strangers, but there's always so much more to dislike than like that getting fan mail from this apparently slovenly, procrastinating, smoker is just really goddamn nice. I'm touched. In the head. And in the heart.

And yesterday, I got a package in the mail. Two print copies of the national undergrad journal that contains my single published story. Which is nice. I was less than overjoyed, however, to find work in that journal that was simultaneously published in Montage. I mean, I guess it doesn't matter, but he was one of the most talented writers we published last issue and I would have liked to have a monopoly on more than one of his poems.

So, screw you Dave Landsberger.

In case anyone asks you...

Blind Bluesmen (in order of how blind they were)
1. Blind Arthur Blake
2. Blind Boy Fuller
3. Blind Lemon Jefferson
4. Blind Willie Johnson
5. Blind Willie McTell
6. Blind Mississippi Morris

Best Blues Nicknames
(in order of how much I like their music)
1. "Mississippi" Fred McDowell
2. Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter
3. "Lightnin'" Hopkins
4. McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield
5. Chester "Howlin' Wolf" Burnett
6. Edward "Duke" Ellington
7. "Sleepy" John Estes
8. "Cripple" Clarence Lofton
9. Walter "Furry" Lewis

You may be wondering what's so awesome about "Mississippi" Fred McDowell. His nickname is awesome because he's from Tennessee. And he "do not play no rock and roll, y'all, just the straight natural blues...The only way to rock old Fred, you got to put him in a rocking chair."

I often fantasize about albums featuring one or more of these artists. The Blind Blues Sextet would be awesome. So would an album called Sleepy Wolf Waters or one called Sleepy Lightnin'. But they're all dead and this can only happen in my head, I guess. If I'm ever in a band, I'd call it Mississippi Furry Cripple. My nickname would be Alabama Monkey Cheese and I'd play just the straight and natural blues.