evolution

A quick post to say that we at dick fancy have updated our address, mainstreaming it to the significantly less esoteric "dickfancy.blogspot.com." See, there are other-work issues at hand which demand my actual name be slightly less en-titled in such a way. So, hereafter, call my name out in the streets and in the supermarkets! Make it synonymous with dick fancy! Make them mean the same thing.  (No, I mean, don't really do this. That would be jarring, at best. Not that I really thought you would or anything. I'd have to be some kind of narcissist to believe this even the thinnest of possibilities.)
Anyway, onward, into the future, where we must hide ourselves behind our most obvious disguises.

Yours, always,

D. Fancy

Morlocks, deep bathtubs, big faces, black holes.

(INTERVIEWER

Is there a particular picture of the world which you wish to develop? The past is very present for you, even in a novel of the “future,” such as Bend Sinister. Are you a “nostalgist”? In what time would you prefer to live?

NABOKOV

In the coming days of silent planes and graceful aircycles, and cloudless silvery skies, and a universal system of padded underground roads to which trucks shall be relegated like Morlocks. As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space-time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.)



In case you haven't read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, as I, unfortunately, have not:
Morlocks are a fictional species created by H. G. Wells for his 1895 novel, The Time Machine. They dwell underground in the English countryside of 802,701 CE in a troglodyte civilization, maintaining ancient machines that they may or may not remember how to build. Their only access to the surface world is through a series of well structures that dot the countryside of future England.
Morlocks are humanoid creatures, said to have descended from humans, but by the 8,028th century have evolved into a completely different species, said to be better suited to their subterranean habitat. They are described as "ape-like", with no clothing, large eyes and gray fur covering their bodies. As a result of living underground, they have little or no melanin to protect their skin, and so have become extremely sensitive to light.
The Morlocks' main source of food is the Eloi, another race descended from humans that lives above ground. The Morlocks treat the Eloi as cattle, and the Eloi do not resist being captured.
Since their creation by Wells, the Morlocks have appeared in many other works such as sequels, movies, television shows, and works by other authors, many of which have deviated from the original description. (courtesy of The Free Dictionary)

Hmm. Ancient machines they may or may not remember how to build? I'm already distrustful of these melanin-starved Morlocks. Yes; keep them below ground, I say!

And, onto other matters, in case you've never chanced to experience the pleasures of a long, deep bathtub:

"Long(?), deep bathtub"

Hard to say whether or not Nabakov would have approved; I worry not necessarily for the style, but perhaps for the length.

"Dick, Fancy"

Would this man have enjoyed that tub? His face makes him seem short. I'm not saying short men are incapable of enjoying bathtubs. I'm thinking: if he's short enough, there'd be no reason for him not to enjoy this bathtub. Then again, I've no true notion of the dimensions of this tub. It could be huge. It could be twenty feet long. It could be full of gold, or tiny, pecking hens, or fresh-picked dill. It could be full with all the sweaty t-shirts that you've never gotten around to washing and so now they're stiff and stale and smell of mildew and rot. It could be full with Morlocks.

Back to the question at hand, though: would you agree? Tiny man, big face? Though, it's perhaps unfair to describe his face as "big." Yes, it fills up most of the borders of the photograph, but, then again, that's typically the point of portraiture. Or, not the point, per say, but an aim: to occlude other potential distraction in favor of one's giant head.

That's what the head-shot, taken my final brutish year of theatre conservatory, seems to be. My own face in this photograph has been described as "looking like it's poking through a black hole," by a woman who once, in the company of another friend, brought me to such a muscle-weakening fit of giggling--while climbing up the sets of stairs leading to her Chicago apartment (outfitted with Turkish rugs, cans of spent peanuts, and a ceiling that had half-crumbled to the floor in giant white flakes of drywall)--that the two were able to hold me down, strip me entirely of my clothing, rush inside the apartment and lock me out, naked, to roam the hallways until they got tired enough to relinquish hold of the doorknob.

"Perpetrator # 2"

"Perpetrator # 1"

I wonder why Nabakov spoke of baggy trousers as a part of the nostalgic past. I don't wonder why he wished to relegate trucks to the subterranean. I do wonder if maybe I'm wrong for questioning the whole "baggy-trousers-as-thing-of-the-past" situation. Maybe I'm the bonehead here for assuming they aren't a thing of the past. Who wears baggy trousers anymore, anyway? (Aside from maybe all of the people I've met in Colorado, who wear them regularly, because they are always about to go skiing, or at least it looks that way to me.)

Back soon with: more questions, more interpretations of nostalgia on which I have no claim, less words, more fun, fewer pictures, more revelations, greater effort, less weakness, reduction of pettiness, enlargement of purpose, thinning out of blame, thickening of spirit, better snow shoes, increased tolerance for cats who refuse to let me cradle them like newborns, less money, fewer syntactical difficulties, cleaner hair.

"Poking through black hole; still enjoys bathtubbing"

Passionately, primitively,

DF

 

Back for More

I guess what I'm realizing is that I'm bad at consistency.
Dick Fancy wanted only this, wanted a place in which to put forth effort with minimal pressure and maximal joy, and yet the pressure seemed to override the joy at some point last week, making Dick Fancy a postless blog. Dick Fancy begs you not to pass judgement quite yet regarding its consistency. It is trying. All it can do is try. It wishes you only the best though, and hopes you wish for it the same. Dick Fancy aims for the best, wishes to ride the waves of bestitude into a brighter future of work and postings and love and pleasure and contentment and friendship and good-tidings and cheer and general benevolence. But, sometimes, good people of the universe, of that crudest of words, 'the blogosphere,' we are beset by our own perceived limits. See, Dick Fancy grew tired of itself. Grew tired of the smallness of itself, and took steps backward, further into the dim light its own resistance.
Dick Fancy, continuing to speak of itself in third person, also wishes to inform you it is on some strong homeopathic cough medicine right now.
Because Dick Fancy has a cough, not because it wants to get high. Just to be clear about it.
There are just these everyday struggles that come from being human and sometimes catching cold/coughs, and so many other things. It is frustrating being laid up in bed, for the third time in a relatively short number of weeks. It is frustrating feeling creatively stagnant.
But we shall all push through. We shall continue to abide our original promise of putting forth work without necessarily worrying on its perceived 'goodness,' or 'rightness,' or inherent value. It is work for the sake of work. For making work, and for delivering it, in whatever state it may find itself, to the good people who are kind enough to look upon it.
That being said, I have for you a mostly un-edited, likely still-to-be-completed poem. I will make no apologies for it other than those implicit in what I just said. No title as of yet.

And if she offered you her body

lord would you take it, though she is not

one of your terrible sons? Though she be

bereft of forehead marking

describing all the ways

she was built to disappoint?

Though she be clear-eyed

careful, too careful

perhaps, and though old men with crushed faces

do not call out her name as they pass through

the gates where she stands, waiting to be led, waiting

for the wood box before her bed to open

of its own volition, beaming

answers through its rice-paper

scroll. How many hours has she chanted

blind to the night, ceramic string of Christmas

lights tonguing the white walls

rainbow for a thing that cannot spring

full-formed out of nothing, hands

outstretched to pull her back to herself or to the self

still learning its parts, summing them

slowly to unsolid answer. Answer

enough, at least, to blurb herself

to strangers at parties. To make them wonder

who made her, at the songs she was sung

as she fell to sleep in her father's

arms, mother, too, singing

close by, off-key.

CAT PIC CAT PIC CAT PIC

Dick Fancy re-enters your life with a short post bearing excellent news: We've received our first cat-pic, courtesy of an exemplary viewer. Below, our humble reward, the fruits of our seemingly fruitless attempts to connect the individual to the world, to make sense of the cosmic trusses pinioned to the sky above our heads, cutting up the sunlight into strange triangles. Yes. You've got it. You've made sense of that tangle of thorns, gentle reader. And now, to reap the benefits of all our hard work:

Thank you, Woody Forrest (sp?) Leslie. You have served your country, and now you may continue resting with that nice-looking cat sprawled across your torso.

The rest of you: take heed. You are still falling dangerously below your potential, far as I can tell. The universe might be finite, and then you'll run out of time, and there will have been no recorded evidence of you interacting with cats. This will be a shame, perhaps a greater shame than any of us actually have the capacity to stomach. Think about it.

Take heed your brother in rightful cat-action. Take heed.

Love,
Dick Fancy

PET-A-CAT MONDAY

That's right. Here at Dick Fancy, we're proud to sponsor PET-A-CAT MONDAY. All you have to do is get out there and make sure you pet at least one cat today. It's much harder to pet a cat than it is a dog, because dogs have parks and leashes and demand walks, whereas cats generally keep indoors unless they're feral. SO, if you don't already possess a cat in your own home, you'll have to do a little groundwork in order to find one you might pet. Don't be creepy about it. Just call up a friend who you know has a cat, and ask if you can come pet it. Or, maybe a way to be less creepy about it is to call up this same friend and not mention the cat at all. Just ask if this friend wants to hang out at their place, and then while you're there you can get in a little cat-petting. Don't make it obvious that this is the only real reason you went over there. Your friend will be offended if you do. If they already read Dick Fancy (and WHO DOESN'T?!!!), they'll probably be on to you. So, proceed with caution. But definitely make sure you pet a cat.  Oh, and if you don't have friends who own cats, you'll probably have to go to the nearest feral-cat hangout with an open can of tuna fish. (If you're in the Brooklyn area, I definitely know of an outdoor lot on Manhattan ave between Driggs and Nassau that seems to be a very hip spot for feral cats to grounge (lounge and grunge.)) Good luck. 

I'd love to see some pics of you petting a cat, so if you're out there and you've got a camera, take a shot and send it to me.

If you don't, I'll be super embarrassed. I understand this is a distinct possibility. However, I enter into this request understanding there exist some inherent risks one must be willing to take for the sake of PET-A-CAT Monday.

Included below is a small passage from a story I'm working on. I don't know yet what will become of this story. There is much to be figured out. Thanks for reading.



And onward....
From "Unpronounceable Towns:"

Sofia crawled in her dreams. She was an adult who could not stand, no matter how hard she tried. Her husband floated in a fish-tank just beyond her reach, but he was alive, and looked remarkably happy there in the water.

WHY DON'T YOU LEAP OUT AND HELP ME, she would sometimes shout to him. She wasn't sure how long it had been like this: she, sprawled and helpless, her husband floating, flippered. WHY DO YOU DO NOTHING? She saw his teeth sparkling against the small waves he made as he flipped and twisted. It was very frustrating to her, to be without full access to her height. She wondered why, wondered what had happened, why everything around her was weirdly blindingly gold-white, why there was no furniture. No one else seemed bothered by it, but, then, there was no one else. There was her husband, the fish, en-tanked. There was her body, mysterious and uncooperative.

She crawled her way to the edge of the tank. It would be too high to climb inside, but, still, she clawed at it, desperate. Her love was inside, her love. He was so, so close. And he was alive—this was the important part. He had not been alive, she'd thought, not that long ago, though time, she knew, had been somehow bent. In what direction, she couldn't say, but he was here. That was what was important, some impressive meddling the universe had taken upon itself. A hand extended through impossible circumstances to save them, to return them to each other, despite the ropes of death. So, he was a fish. So her legs were lead and dragged beneath her, useless, without explanation. This could be overcome—all of it—as long as she could see him, as long as he existed. This was what was important: existing.

He pressed his cheek against the glass, near the bottom, where their bodies could have met if not for the thickness between them. MY LOVE, she cried out. She pressed her lips to the glass, and he in kind. MY LOVE MY LOVE. Her heart was full-up; her legs melted into the whiteness beneath her. He could not speak, or she could not hear him, but his lips moved. His fish-y lips. They'd always been big, the way she preferred lips to be. Womanly lips that bloomed upon his face, announcing his handsomeness. The lips of a fancy model on the face of a fisherman.

Before he was a fish and the world was entirely white, when her legs still worked and when most things made more sense than they did now, they'd wake together, pressed to the sun, the dirt-scent, the smell of horse shit rising almost sweet through the windows and he would run his big model-fish-y lips over her arm, shoulder, the tendons in her neck. Her mother was downstairs, clomping around on the cracked tile floor, stirring things in pots. Fernando and Ignacio were still sleeping, else frantically stunning themselves awake with internet porno or, more than possible, Fernando was at the university library, which he said was properly quiet in order he might study in peace. She'd heard him muttering the name Fermina again and again for the past several months, in the passing dark, when she'd creep downstairs for water or swigs of homemade wine from cloudy glass jugs in the middle of the night. As far as she knew, he had not slept in that long. Fermina, Fermina, like some demented, feverish man upon his deathbed, barely audible, pained.

She understood this now. Her husband, the fisherman, had become what once he hunted. This almost made sense, too, if she thought about it long enough. The hunter becoming its own prey. She prayed some larger thing would not swoop down and attempt to hook him at the mouth, gut him, make him flip wild in its big death-y hands, while she watched. The world was white. What color would his blood be?

His cheek against the glass against her cheek against the glass. This was what was important. He was here. She could be happy this way. She could learn.

POEM THURSDAY! love, DICK FANCY.

First, first, I just need to say that I realize if you happen to stumble upon this blog, or even if you've come here on purpose, it probably seems as though you've stumbled upon a relic of the past. Maybe, like, circa 1990. Blogs have since become pretty complex and spectacular. Lots of bells and whistles. At least a nice-looking banner. I'm not really up on the whole scene, because I'm both lazy and un-savvy when it comes to most forms of technology, but I have visited some blogs myself, and I know what potential they hold.

DICK FANCY wants you to know that it's fine just where it is. Stuck in 1990, which was probably a great year. I was four for most of it, until October, when I turned five, so I don't have too many clear memories of that time, but I'll bet it was probably decent. I guess H.W. Bush was still president, so maybe things weren't as good as they got starting in 1992, when Bill scooted his fine ass in there and dazzled the world with illegal blowjobs and a thriving economy and whatnot, but, anyway. Let's just put DICK FANCY somewhere in the '90-'95 region and stop worrying so much about chasing today's modern (and frankly OBSCENE) technology craze, spiraling out of control even as I type this. It is simply impossible to keep up. Some of us pick a year in our past and choose to remain there, content with what that year offered in certain arenas, like this one. I know it seems like I'm stressing out about about all this, but I'm not. I'm just worried that YOU are stressing out, and I'm trying to eliminate YOUR stress so that my own stress remains at a comfortable level. I had acupuncture today, goddammit, and it was goddamned relaxing and if you do ANYTHING to mess this up for me, I swear. I swear.

Let's get on with it then, shall we? Let's set the scene: it's 1993, Bill Clinton is exceedingly presidential, mainly because he's the president, it's summertime, the air smells of fresh-mowed lawn, the gardener's just put in some new mulch around the plants because they were starting to droop, what with all the heat, your stocks and bonds are all performing beyond expectation (can bonds perform?), and a woman (of your choosing) in an old-fashioned apron has just brought you some home-brewed iced-tea (Moroccan mint? I don't know?)

And now, for you, a newly-writ poem, about pubes:  -->

Pube-rty

Prayed I'd never bleed

because I couldn't figure how

I'd tell my mother—She—

quick to blush. She—

who once hid from me the spider-

tangle of her bush when, by accident,

I wondered into the bathroom, She—

mid-piss. She—squatting

nude upon the toilet. Her pale

skin my pale skin both of us

ashamed for being what we were,

for knowing

too much.

This was when the bible

made sense—mythology providing

context, at least, for the little things

bound to happen when you open doors

without knocking first—not that I ever

combed that doctrine of fables to explain

away gatherings of insect-y

womanhood, the plain awkward sight

of my mother's pubic hair, clotted

beneath her spread palm. Of what it meant

to be plucked from smooth ignorance

sudden, still unripe. Handed an apple

without Newton's law and made to parse out

what happens when it falls.

A POEM, brought to you by DICK FANCY

 Letter to the Future

Peaked and dipped, the crusty

earth—just a punched-in

punk—stumbled into itself in drunk

heaviness. Ribbons of salt

like a letter left to the future:

Dear Someone,

Once, I was thirsty.

Dear You,

Once I had not one drop of water to suck

and then I had too much. Guzzled it

up, fell languid into a bed of myself

because when you are everything, there is nowhere

else to go. My shoulders—bone

spurs, struck rocks, hunched and

painful, lopped by the wicked

sun who, himself, was cast out

of cool dark (the ideal

circumstances for celestial

hunkering) by the moon, soul-

sick of that quick-lash

tongue, passion's stove-

hot fingertips.

The Moon grew sullen, elusive

while the sun roared his complaints:

“I need my feet out while we sleep, the blinds drawn so I might wake with myself in my eyes.”

Talk of narcissism, selfishness. Love

for Love's sake. The Sun

slunk off, door-slamming. Rocks trembled,

mountains erupting in fire, burning

flesh to ash. All the wing-ed

things that might have risen

then burned too.

Dear Someone,

It is impossible

not to be thirsty in the desert. The word alone

recalls fable: mirage: drought.

Men in robes, staffs, Talmudic tablets of rough-hewn

stone. Dry heels skidding endless along open, empty

mouths of streams. Impossible

not to witness your own simple un-cloying aloneness

when staring out the small round window of a plane

into that vast hilly grave, 

girded by water, but without

privilege ever to gulp it.

Dear Someone,

Should ever I put mouth

to clear unsalted stream, I would 

suck the spout dry. In this mirage,

there is no space for self-control. In this mirage,

we are birds and I spit

half of what I've drunk into your leaned-back throat.

Were we to un-change, re-turn—

non-birds—to the drudge of human skin,

I would beg Dear Sweet Mirage

on dusty kneecap

to turn us so again.

And were we to emerge clipped

of wing—some punishment

dolled to the perpetually

dissatisfied—we might

huddle together in some furrow,

shivering ourselves asleep, releasing

unspent anguish with chirp-moans, blood

freezing solid while the moon grew

fat.

(At night, the Moon

tucks the covers

tight beneath the mattress.

(It was this transgression

destroyed all those trees.))