Wow, this happened a little faster than I thought it would. I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t have a job and never leave the house.
I’m retiring the tumblr. No mas.
The new site is elmartinez.org. It’s a brand new day!
See you there.
In the process of migrating to other blog software. This address may be going away in a few days. Updates to come.
It’s 5:47 am. I just woke up from a dream that disgusted me so badly—I had to get up and take notes.
This dream was centered around an act of kindness: killing my friend Matt.
Eddie Vedder singing U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” at karaoke night at the Best Western Dobson Ranch Inn, Mesa, AZ. via Stereogum
Me, age 17, circa 1993. In Marija Potkonjak’s yellow VW Bug, passenger seat.
My storage space contained piles of books. Most of them from college, some given to me as gifts and a few head-scratchers I bought from used book stores. (The results of youthful indiscretion.)
They were all covered in dust, so I spent about three hours wiping the covers and sorting them. I donated a large portion of them to a local public library in hopes they could use them or sell at a book fair. Here are the ones I kept, in no particular order:
The Associated Press Stylebook (Two Copies: 1996, 1999. Spiral Bound.)
The Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkergaard
The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis
Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 3rd Edition
The Last Days of Socrates, Plato
Symposium, Plato
The American Political Tradition, Richard Hofstadter
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 4th Edition
Holy Bible, King James Version, 1970.
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Jerry Mander
The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Understanding English Grammar, Martha Kolln
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Emmanuel Kant
Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, Thomas R. Arp
The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition.
Speaking (La Parole), Georges Gusdorf
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume
Ulysses, James Joyce
American Government: Readings and Cases, Peter Woll. 11th Edition.
I flew to Phoenix last week to surprise my mother for her birthday. It worked, she had no idea I was coming. There were tears and then a party and much drinking. A delightful time, indeed. The remainder of my trip was devoted to cleaning out a storage space I kept for 10 years. I hadn’t opened it since I snapped the lock in 1999. NPR wanted me to start temping with them quickly, and I had little time to figure out a living situation so everything I owned went into the space. I remember telling myself that I would return in a few months and take what I needed to Washington D.C., and then give the rest to charity. Instead, a hectic life and thousands of miles between me and the space rendered it a time capsule. Upon opening it I found old bills, college papers, my Mac Performa, cassette tapes, the bike I used in college, a lamp and Ikea furniture galore. There were also bags and bags of books, the little library I assembled in my early twenties. Everything was coated with dust, a result of a decade’s worth of Arizona dust storms and general neglect — all of it just sitting there, alone and waiting for someone to pass judgement on it. The space wasn’t huge, the size of a large walk-in closet. I hauled everything out and to my parents’ backyard to sift through the layers. Everything I wanted to keep ended up fitting in a 14” sq. box with room to spare.
Over the next few posts I’ll catalogue the things in that box, survivors of 10 years of dark and dust.
