In the heaven of my today
I would walk into a dueling piano bar
with Regina Spektor facing Fiona Apple
and Tori Amos makes funny comments while we drink in the corner.

Publish This Book

I just finished reading Stephen Makley's Publish This Book. He writes a charming tale of how he conceived, wrote, and published the very book the reader holds. I liked it. The thing is in high school, he was everything I wanted to be. We graduated together in '02, and he fulfilled that niche in our class that I wanted to occupy but lacked the temerity or the confidence to claim. He was current, handsome, incisively sardonic. We didn't really hang out, and at times he grated on me. I was a strange, lonely teenager. I generally kept my head down, never went to parties. It's funny, because Stephen relates an anecdote about telling his parents he was going to a party and telling his friends he was staying home and just driving around Knox County, Ohio instead. I also made the same lie to escape to our verdant farmland. I viewed him very much as my foil. We're of similar heights and builds and coloring. His eyes blue, mine hazel. Similar talents and aspirations, though he was active and industrious and prolific while I slacked, sulking in my sense that my talents entitled me. Sometimes I resented his good "luck", blind to his drive to succeed and the sweat of his brow. We've hung out a few times in the years since graduation, more than we ever had in High School and I've grown to like him very much. As my view of him sharpened and he coalesced into a real person, I saw a fun-loving, opinionated guy, faithful to his friends, funny, smart, irreverent. He's great to drink with is what I'm saying. I'd probably never call him to chat, but I look forwad to the future Thanksgivings and Christmases and reunions for his infectious humor.

Stephen's book is very writerly. Large sections discuss subjects like the definition and veracity of the memoir form, playful uses of running text (a poetic recollection of one of those magical nights that never end) and footnotes (which I hate, unless I am reading an anthology and I just want all writers to stop using footnotes. Damn you House of Leaves!). It was amazing to read in print references to people and places who populate my own memory, and when Stephen opened up and crafted something touching between the shit jokes and the boozy, sweaty haze, I felt like I was getting to know someone who had eluded me all those years ago. While sometimes overblown, the face Markley presents in Publish This Book, is as authentic as they come. Most of all, the very concept of the book to me is genius, and Stephen's exploration of the boundaries between life and work are riveting. He seems possessed by the book, at times. Towards the end, the concept dissolves as the writer eclipses the work and the book is sort of passed off to the publisher. Stephen emerges as the star of the show. He does it well, and his book will forever be one of my favorites.

Maybe its time i introduce myself. My name is Andrew Steinmetz, and I am an urban shaman. I say that because it acts as my primary function in life. As a shaman I was raised in the village tradition. I grew up in an extraordinary small town in central Ohio. I have so many roots in that ground. Family is very important to me. My tribe is large and proud and respected. We tilled soil there for nearly 200 years and we fought to free this nation from a colonial over-reaching super-power. We built up a sustainable town (i know under some dubious near genocidal pretenses*what happened happened theres nothing I can do about it now*). The primary tradition I was taught was the Catholic. When I was small, I wanted to grow up to be a saint. When I was ten though, I wondered about the apocalypse, and thought that if God were going to destroy the world, then he had a moral obligation to render the world's women sterile for a period of time so as not to destroy the innocent. When I was twelve, I marveled at the idea that if God were both omnicient and omnipotent then free will is impossible. At fourteen, I desired boys, and felt that I had no choice in the matter, and that no God would reject a lovingly crafted creation. I rejected the Catholic tradition, and was adrift. I sampled other traditions while paying nominal respect to the one that raised me out of loyalty, but I took this loss hard, and felt that I had to figure it out. I still believed in God, an engaging, active deity to take solace in. Eventually though, I had to enter the city. Being a village shaman I was eager to explore this new world as fully as I could. I lived on the International Floor of the Ohio State University. Instead of going out to see the world, I brought it to me. I made friends with a wide range of characters whom I cherish and adore from all over this world. (Side note, one time we were talking about how different people from different continents smell different and they agreed that Americans smell like chemicals.) I was at the Ohio State University at the time, and I struggled. In the nihilism of my adolescence, I went on strike and never developed discipline. I was lost and the city tradition is difficullt. I had been cared for by my family my whole life and had grown dependent on the magic there contained. The city tradition requires different addictions to be effective.

I keep refering to myself as a shaman. You see I am not a great or important man. I have no degrees nor public accomplishments on my resume. A boyfriend once broke up with me over that. I know still that my life has value. I work at a bookstore coffee shop at one of the busiiest malls in America, a hidden gem called Easton in central Ohio. It was designed as a "town center". It is outdoor and primarily pedestrian. It acts as a separate downtown, a sort of union for the suburbs and a busy hub of tourist business. In the past month alone I have had guests from as far as Montreal and the Carolinas, California, New York. Many fashion executives from the nearby Abercrombie & Fitch, Limited Brands, Retail Ventures, and Express home offices frequent our mall. I make their coffee. I chat them up, flirt a little maybe, and handcraft their beverages so that they may sit and peruse ideas. Sometimes the solitary thinker, sometimes the boisterous exchange of groups, I cater to the world of Ideas. I always check out what the Somali immigrants are reading. One of my favorites spoke in Mandarin to a Chinese guest and they are forever reading The Economist and The New African, so I know them to be educated men who have faced great hardship and I see them too easily derided sometimes. I am lucky to serve them tea. What I am getting at is that while my $9 an hour wage impresses no one, the work I am doing has meaning. I am learning to cultivate a community, both as the primary operation of my work and also within the firm for which I work. As a shaman, my most potent tools are my powers of observation. I am always watching, listening, analyzing, stringing idea to idea like a necklace made of wisdom. I used to be like a snake, patiently waiting to strike and hoarding my venom. Perhaps I am more the spider at this point, just beginning my web. I use these symbols, because I feel that it is time to come out of my cave, to engage with the world that bore me. I wish to use the meager arts I occasionally practice to create a fierce instrument with which to traverse the Arc of My Circumference. I wish to be a shaman for the world, a guide through the murky swamp of existence. Too often the shaman of this world are confused with flashing wisps, so I wish to hone my craft in darkness, to utilize my obscurity so that I have time to craft the brightest light possible so that it can burst through the swampland at once. None will mistake me. Until then, I work behind the scenes, honing the skills of a city master shaman. I need to present my case in the lingua franca of the future era in which we live. Until then I shout into this darkness, and thank you if your're listening.

Consumption

whose bias is best?
or whose best presented
remains the question upon viewing
the story of stuff

...

i share in her vision
of the giant boycott.
this american man
seems corporate livestock.

with flat plastic udder,
he's bound to dispense
his magnetic milk
with swipes of his strip.

at the mall where he works
he's the shepherd of flocks.
he herds them through line
with selling points for a crook,

and upon leaving the pasture
willfully he submits
to other shepherd's ministrations.
they'll stroke at his teat

'til he's wetting his weight
in milk magnetic,
all he can give and
it's making him sick.

this tubercolosis is cloying
as it fills the air
like smoke from a fire
that burns every dollar

to power the engine
of mechanized bliss.
we walk in a dreamland
made real with a price.

I love "The View".

A super tuesday...

I was walking down the street one day. I had to go to the bank. I think it was in November or December. I slowed, my gaze distant. Then, I busted up laughing. Could it work? Probably not, but its a pretty funny idea.

I am not a fan of how this world works right now. My nation was hijacked when I was a freshman in college. I watched it invade a sovereign nation. I heard a President say that the terrorists mustn't make us change our way of life. He then proceeded to do it himself. What frightened me the most was the ease with which he stripped us of our rights and invaded nations illegally. Where was Congressional oversight? And then, he was re-elected. The oversight of the American people failed the world.

Even beyond that, the disparity between rich and poor nations has always bothered me. I loathe the systems of leverage we have created. The resources and man-hours of the world's poorest and most oppressed go to the manufacture of goods exported to America so our consumers can buy it on credit. Our businesses bought the planet, and our government enabled them by supporting authoritarian regimes whose economic interests aligned with their military-industrial-congressional cartel. Their last bid for control was the free credit of this decade past. Credit and debt are just another means of enslavement. The ignorance of Americans astounds me. It would be easy to rant about "stupid Americans", but the problem is more insidious than that. We are inundated with so much propaganda, biased journalism, and shaky science that wading through all the shit to find some reliable information requires a Herculean effort. If only I could divert a river to muck out the stable that is contemporary American discourse perhaps solutions to some pressing global problems would emerge.

I remember when I was very young, I was disappointed to be American. I found it so manufactured and unreal. As I grew up, I became enamored of the American ideal. I fell in love with American myth and the story of the founding. And, I absolutely adored the process of cultural revision this nation employed in the course of its short history to swing us ever closer to the vision where everyone is free to pursue their happiness while respecting the life and liberty of their fellows. It starts as a discussion by the people.

I wish to contribute to a discussion comprised of action. I challenge you to boycott the unnecessary and the ineffective. Our purchasing power literally has the power to move mountains. Where do you think the metallic innards of all our consumer electronics comes from? But a reduction in material consumption is only a start. The best place to cut dead weight is with those officials whose only workable skill is the ability to get elected, in short almost all of them. I think we should star boycotting elections. Every first Tuesday in November from here on out, we should write in "None of the Above" on our ballots.

So I wanna shake things up.

This blog is too heavy and self-indulgent.

I wanna learn how to do this right. I wanna utilize this page as a means to engage with the world around me. I wanna post frequently, and to give more of myself.
I wanna outline a goal and achieve it with this blog. I wanna bring something fresh or insightful or meaningful to the blogosphere. I wanna live my dreams and communicate my lessons.

I wanna, I wanna I wanna...