Caveat: Model A Ford

Hiking & Travel / My Photos / Retroblogging

I don't remember the exact date, but around Christmas of 1994, right after having my having returned from 6 months in Chile, Michelle, Jeffrey and I traveled to Los Angeles from Minneapolis, to visit my father and family. This was one day when I think we got into my dad's 1928 Model A Ford and drove to the beach. Here is a picture of me and Jeffrey with the car in the driveway of where my dad was living at that time, which happened to be right next door to the house he grew up in.

Photo 012

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-05-06.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?]

Caveat: Michelle Leaning

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

I drew this while living in Minneapolis in 1994, shortly before I went to Chile for 6 months.

This is a picture of Michelle, actually. It's somewhat "imagined" (which is to say, she wasn't posing for it) – but it's her.

Art-michelle1994

[The "retroblogging" project: I'm not sure what the date was that I made this drawing, but it was around this time.]

Caveat: 1993

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I did some graduate-level coursework in Spanish Literature and Literary and Cultural Criticism (Lit-Crit) at the University of Minnesota – tuition was cheap because I’m an alum. I also studied the Dakota Language (Native American Great Plains). I worked in a bookstore. I had a bicycle accident in which I shattered my 2nd metatarsil into 23 pieces. Two surgeries and six weeks on crutches later, at some point, an initially platonic relationship with Michelle became ‘dating.’ Michelle and I took several camping trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is why the UP is symbolically important to me.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1993 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1992

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I lived in Pasadena in the house my great grandfather built around 1910. I took art classes and tried to learn Arabic. I was a bit aimless on the job front – I remember working as a temp at a Robinsons-May department store warehouse in West Covina. Then that summer, after a huge, confrontational fight with my dad and stepmother, I moved back to Minnesota. My bestfriend Bob and I become housemates again in South Minneapolis, near Powderhorn Park, and I met our downstairs neighbors Michelle and Jeffrey (her son, who is 5 at the time). I started working in a bookstore, and one time the front wheel came off my car while I was driving it (a 1965 VW Bug).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1992 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: lo q me pasó una vez por donde metro Tacuba en 1986

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / My Poetry & Fiction / Retroblogging

Cuando vivía en México una vez conocía a un muchacho de nombre de Epifanio.  Éste fue uno de estos llamados panchos banda.  Pero él me explicó en su voz ronca y sibilante q su banda era mas una "anti-banda", a causa de q en lugar de ser drogueros y marijuaneros, y de andar medio desmayados por oler cemento, andaban todos todavía en escuela – unos de los cologios UNAM, a veinte cuadras de la casa por ahí donde el metro Tacubaya y la colima de la Sta Cruz.  Se habían juntado para protegerse a si mismos, "pus, poqui,… sabes… nos sempri fregando y haciendo la mera madre, pus, cuando nos ibamos pal colegio."  Era un joven muy listo, y pasaba sus tardes en alguna estación del metro, leyendo a Platón.  Pero se vestía de puro pancho, con un largo abrigo roto de color negro, de estilo punk y tenis dibujados, y aretes y saftys y q había escrito sobre el abrigo "pink floyd" y "anarquismo," pues.  Su padre era un albañil se llamaba Gonzalo, creo, y q le conocí una vez, muy orgulloso de su hijo por haber sobrevivido en el barrio y seguido con la escuela a pesar de las presiones sociales y de la droga y de la banda.  Salimos Epi y yo y un grandote se llamaba Joaquín una vez, pasabamos "la Quinta" en la esquina, donde nos compramos unos "quesadillotes" de hongos y requesón, y después nos metimos en el metro por donde Revolución, iyendo para la casa de Tony, q era un "gelatinero" destos q venden las gelatinitas en copitas de plástico de los carritos en la calle ahí donde Tacuba.  Salimos entre la bulla de allí y caminamos de ahí por donde la calle Ontario, y salieron una bola de tres-cuatro muchachos, panchos, a vernos ahí.  Y Epi estaba fuera de su "rincón," o sea su territorio, y siendonos solo tres, y uno de estos imagínate, un gringo (q soy yo) tuvimos q correr, dando vueltas por ahí hasta q nos podimos meter de nuevo en el metro Tacuba, donde habían unos azules (policías) así q nada pudiera pasar, aunque me explicó Epi, "hubiera pus importado por nada q nos metieran hasta la misma madre con chingazos mero enfrente destos puercos."  Hasta me explicó q en su barrio por ejemplo muchos de los policías pertenecen también a banda, solo q andan con uniforme y arma, "pa mejor joder a todos y sacar a los pobres la lana."

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from paper on 2010-11-28.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right? The above entry is about events that happened when I lived in Mexico City in 1986.  It's not fiction, and it is not perfect Spanish, but it captures the tone and dialect of the street gangs there.]

Caveat: Azul

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

This remains my favorite of my own work in visual arts. I drew it in pastels from a photograph which I then "abstracted" (not sure what else you would call my distortions…). I guess 1992 was a rather productive period for me.

Art-azul1992

[The "retroblogging" project: I'm not sure what the date was that I made this drawing, but it was around this time.]

Caveat: San Marino House

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

This is a picture I drew of the old Way family house in San Marino, California (the back property line was the Pasadena city limit). It was built in the 1890's (I think – I'm not actually sure). The house was torn down a few years later and the property subdivided.

Art-wayhouse1992

[The "retroblogging" project: I'm not sure what the date was that I made this drawing, but it was around this time.]

Caveat: A Minimalist Book Journal

Banalities & Journaling / Retroblogging

The Idiot, F. Dostoyevskii, May 91
The Mosquito Coast, P. Theroux, Sep 91
The Siberians, F. Mowat, Nov 91
Travels With Charley, J. Steinbeck, Nov 91
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand, Jan 12, 92

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-06-09  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I found a single loose scrap of paper among my voluminous collection of papers, with the words "Book Journal" at the top and then these 5 titles with dates, but no other information. I'll blog it here with the last date, which is more specific than the others. All but the last title were read while I was in the Army, stationed at Camp Edwards in Paju, South Korea. I remember very vividly reading the first book on the list while sitting on a Korean hillside in the woods, avoiding my sergeant.]

Caveat: 1991

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I was stationed at Camp Edwards, Geumcheon (about 7 km from Ilsan of later residence). I was attached to the Bravo Company of the 296th Support Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. I drove a giant camo green tow truck (named Rocinante) around northwest Gyeonggi province, mostly dragging Humvees out of rice paddies. I found Korea to be a beautiful and interesting country. I was a competent mechanic, but an indifferent soldier. When the Army announced that it was downsizing in the wake of the end of the cold war, I grabbed an honorable “early out”discharge when it was offered, and by December I had become a civilian in San Francisco.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1991 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1990

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I ended up in Eureka, somehow. I was broke and directionless. I was depressed. I dealt with this directionlessness by enlisting in the U.S. Army, as a truck mechanic. I completed my training in South Carolina, and narrowly missed getting sent to Kuwait for the first Gulf War. Instead, I ended up in South Korea on December 28th.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1990 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1989

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

In August, I graduated cum laude (and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), despite the  ‘lost semester’ from the Spring of 85 at Macalaster marring my transcript. My final major was Llinguistics, with a minor in Computer Science. I’d managed enough coursework to have ‘undeclared’ minors in Spanish and Botany. I returned to Mexico, and spent two months in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Then, later, after two weeks in Cuba, I ended up becoming very sick in Merida. So I returned to Humboldt County, where my father was at this time.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1989 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1988

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

Having forfeited my scholarship at Macalester by dropping out in 85, by January I fromally enrolled at the University of Minnesota. My declared major was computer science, but I soon changed it to linguistics. I dabbled a lot in languages: Portuguese, Medieval Welsh, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Sumerian, Georgian (Kartuli). I worked hard at a book bindery (book-making factory). I studied very hard, too. I rented a room in a house in St. Paul, and Bob and Mark are my housemates, among others.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1988 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Fireman

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / Retroblogging

Fireman

I don't remember the exact date, but we took a number of fall camping trips to Northern Minnesota during the period 1987-89. I chose this date as plausible but it's at best a guess.

I was standing in a campfire (notably, a failed campfire), probably making a goofy speech. I really enjoyed those camping trips.

Fireman2

 

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-05-05.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?]

Caveat: Lines. Motion.

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

I took several drawing classes during my time as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, in 1988. I happen to have scanned a few images from a sketch book. Here are two of them.

Art-lines1988

Art-motion1988

[The "retroblogging" project: I'm not sure what the date was that I made these drawings, but it was around this time.]

Caveat: Character Development

My Poetry & Fiction / Retroblogging

His circumstances led him to make that choice and that alone – but that does not mean that he had no choice.

I remember Beth Renolds, the girl who was killed by her family because of the TV. You probably saw about it once, on TV. It was years ago when the Renolds family lived next door to us and me and Beth were in the same grade at school – the old Park Elementary, the one with the weird Flash-Gordon spires and stuff that looked like King Kong had stepped on the Empire State Building and made it just two stories tall – but it was a nice school except for the heat was not too good in Winter and the solidified September sunlight shining into Mr. Logan’s third grade classroom where I would sit staring at Beth’s shoulder-short auburn hair moving as she laughed still makes me wake up sometimes right before my alarm goes off, all tingly inside, sort of shivering with regret or nostalgia.

Anyway, I was telling about the Renolds and the TV. One afternoon me and beth are lounging around languidly in their backyard, kind of both wishing we were a little older or braver so we could declare our undying pure burning yearning love for each other – or at least me for her, I didn’t really know how she felt, and afterwards, well, I never found out. That’s maybe because she was a year younger than me – an accelerated student – but likely I just figured something was wrong with me because I was so young but I loved her so much; it was a kind of sexless fiery passion like some gnostic Christian visionary escaping his body – me just looking at her – you know – God!

So we were sitting – not really playing – maybe talking, I don’t remember, I just kept looking at her hair and her lips because  they were very beautiful, and we heard Mr. Renolds call for Beth to come inside and see what he had bought. Mr. Renolds had got one of those new Korean sets – with computerized tuners and the hi-res screens. Beth’s older brothers were impressed, especially Bobby, who was about 14 I think – anyway, that very night the Renolds were watching the new TV and I was watching Beth because they had invited me and my brother Silas over, Silas who was Terry’s friend because he was always better at everything than me and could be friends with Terry.

[The “retroblogging” project:  this is a “back-post” transcribed from paper on 2013-02-18. I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back.  It’s a big
project.  But there’s no time limit, right?  The above germ of a short story was written in a journal I was keeping while at the University of Minnesota in 1988. There are themes in this story that I found genuinely surprising, given when I wrote it – I guarantee I didn’t not add in or alter the references to Korean technology or the pop culture of crimes of passion, etc. – they were present in the original!]
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Caveat: Okey, ya vamos

Banalities & Journaling / My Poetry & Fiction / Retroblogging

The day dawned raining grey beauty, and is fading with oppressive luminosity. Zoom-bunny skidded still tight against retro-contextuality – the MTC was of course slightly responsible for it all – ¿did I care, even? Нет. Okey, ya vamos, cansados del vivir de lo todo que hay, ¡güey!

[The "retroblogging"
project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from paper on 2013-02-18. 
I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big
project.  But there's no time limit, right?  The above was written in a
journal I was keeping while at the University of Minnesota in 1988.]

Caveat: Buy now, at discount

Banalities & Journaling / My Poetry & Fiction / Retroblogging 
Mikkerbauk fantasie Joe - 
Ah, blue hills of quiet paradise.

The captain-people will take it all away
in fancy flying rocket-planes of self-individual, 
hallucinatory love of masses - 
squalid suffering folk with homes of cardboard, 
you see, don't you,
the danger?!
(Buy now, at discount).

[The “retroblogging” project: this is a “back-post” transcribed from paper on 2013-02-18. I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back. It’s a big project. But there’s no time limit, right? The above was written in a journal I was keeping while at the University of Minnesota in 1988. UPDATE 2023-11-27: I republished this little snippet as poem #2672 in my series of daily poems.]

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 1987

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

After a year working in Mexico City, I travelled (somewhat aimlessly) with a friend by horseback in the mountains of Michoacan (southwestern Mexico). I met lots of interesting people, including many indians, hippies, a draft dodger or two, and a dangerous, drunk, angry man with  a gun. The gun shot bullets.  I got a bullet hole in my shoe, but somehow survived this incident mostly unscathed. Eventually, I return to Minnesota. I rent a room in a crappy house in Southeast Minneapolis and take extension classes at the University of Minnesota, with the intention of returning to school.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1987 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1986

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

In January, right after the Superbowl, I flew on a one-way ticket from Chicago to Mexico City (and why do I remember the Superbowl as the salient fact? – because it was the Chicago Bears in the Superbowl, and the city was crazy with it). I took an intensive course in Spanish at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and ended up with typhoid. During my convalescence, I ended up with a job at Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker meetinghouse and rather leftist hostel in Mexico City. I worked as a volunteer English teacher, too, teaching English to Central American refugees. I made lots of friends. I got to travel to El Salvador for a few weeks in the fall, and get to see a civil war up close and personal.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1986 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Puerto La Libertad, El Salvador

My Photos / Retroblogging

Picture taken at the pier in La Libertad.

Jared1986

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2014-05-14.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right? This is a rare picture of me – I scanned the degraded photo in 2007 and finally go around to posting it.]

Caveat: 1985

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I decided to study art history in Paris for the January term. That was fun. By May, however, alcohol and drug issues caused me to drop out of college. I lived in my car, first passing through Duluth and Ottawa, and then up and down the East Coast (mostly Boston, New York City, with a week in New Orleans). By the Fall, I was living a few blocks from Barack Obama (not that I, like, know him or anything – I just figured this out in retrospect) on Chicago’s South Side, and working in a hardware store. My unabiding love for instant ramen was formed during this period.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1985 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Chartres &c.

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / Retroblogging

14 janvier 1985 lundi

The weekend was busy. Saturday, recall: the soft chilly gloom of Chartres, an amazing cathedral, so dedicate to god, as were the generations of men who created it. Each window, her own story, framing the illiterate world wherein the medievals lived placidly, sheep of god. The cathedral seemed the sort of thing that I though only appeared in myth, or in the daydreams of young children (like I once was) who went to be architects someday (as I once did). But I watched too the midwesternesque french countryside roll by outside the frosted bus windows, and watched the little farms and towns swing past, and the vast wires which swooped by only to be caught up just before they fell, under their heavy electric loads, by another prententious tower of gaudy, post-industrial steel. So much for Poetry. I spent that night – the whole night – at La Piscine – a strictly across-the-channel sort of scene (i.e. Londoneque). But I stayed six hours till 5:30 am. Not drinking, not dancing, but just watching several hundred disaffected french, british, american, german, etc. youth party all one Saturday night. It left me content but exhausted. You can feel all the shields of a thousand static individual clash, and smell the hot, empty ozone of their lonely intermingling. Some were happier than others.

Yesterday, having slept 3 hours after taking the 1st metro homee (yes, I got that wonderful, almost ecstatic sense!), I staggled off to the Louvre, looking for something meditative. I hit the whole thing, spending 7 hours there, and despite my exhaustion, I felt somehow compelled to see it all, and meditate a little on each thing I saw. I spent a lot of time especially with the early rennaissance schools of painting in Italy. I could spend hours watching the renditions of so many vivid imaginations.

Well, I did miss the Ancient Near-Eastern part, basically. But I meditated too a great deal on the displays of tapistries and works of Coptic Egypt. I recalled several books I'd read last spring on gnosticism, and how one of the centers of that alternate, powerful christian spirituality was coptic Egypt. I tried to squint my eyes and visualize the vibrant, christian faith in its hydra-headed, flowering, youth among the dead stone and starched styles – but all I felt were the overwhelming waves of heat, that desert, where those same artifacts waited 1200+ years after Islam had ousted the coptic vibrancy. Etc.

So I spent today pretty much recuperating.

1985_ParisFranceViewFromND01

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from a paper journal on 2013-04-26.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I will concede: frankly, this is very pretentious, embarrassing, unpleasant writing to look back on – especially considering it was my own journal? In 1985, who was I thinking was going to read it – some futuristic world-wide computer network?

The picture is from a scan of one of the rather extensive set of photos that I took in 1983-1985. It shows a view looking toward Sacre Coeur from one of the bell towers on Notre Dame.]

Caveat: Paris &c

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Retroblogging

7 janvier 1985; Monday
I arrived in Paris Saturday the 5th at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and took the bus into Paris with the group. I was impressed by the “Americanness” of so much of what I saw, yet at the same time permuted in its own peculiar french way. When one anticipates traveling in Europe, I imagine that it is easy to forget that for all the history, most of Western Europe is very modern, XXth century. Freeways slip past XVIIth, XVIIIth, XIXth century houses without pause, and the littel cars with yellow headlights climb over cobblestones laid many years ago.
After establishing myself at the hotel <- St Sulpice, I went out with some people to try the Metro, &c. We went to l’Arc de Triomphe & the Champs-Elysees and looked around a lot. I wasn’t too impressed – the Champs-Elysees was so “touristy” and the Arc just sort of brooded over it all, monument to another unnecessary, painful human folly. The flame burned insomnolently, but its focus seemed other than the present moment.
Yesterday, I went to see this Magritte exhibition across from Beaubourg, for I have always liked Magritte and surrealism in general. It was no disappointment, & after dwelling several hours peering at Magritte’s dark, dusky symbols, I checked out the Centre G. Pompidou, and moved on to see the Musee Rodin across town. Rodin is gorgeous, I love his statues – I expect to return here better prepared for what I will see. I was plunged into an extremely pensive mood by all this art, and unfortunately became depressed – the snow fell, and it was cold, & I could not sleep last night (perhaps that’s jetlag too). Somehow al that art got me thinking of the John Barth book I read over vacation amongst the redwoods of the isolated California coast – my home. The book was called Chimera, and all the mythological references made there were evoked by the Rodin statuary. Coming out of Rodin, I went past “Invalides” & l’Eglise de la Dome. Anyway, I finally returned to the hotel.
[The “retroblogging” project:  this is a “back-post” transcribed from a paper journal on 2013-04-28.  I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back.  It’s a big project.  But there’s no time limit, right?
I will concede: frankly, this is very pretentious, embarrassing, unpleasant writing to look back on – especially considering it was my own journal? In 1985, who was I thinking was going to read it -some futuristic world-wide computer network?]

Caveat: 1984

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I changed my declared major from math to religious studies. It wasn’t that I was feeling some sense of religiosity, but rather because I was looking for answers. Also, a certain math professor left my self-confidence in ruins. I worked for the Mondale Campaign that summer. I remember commuting to work on the #16 bus along University Avenue in St. Paul. I wrote more poetry this year, probably, than all the other years of my life combined.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1984 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Arcata Christmas

Retroblogging

During my second year in college I went to study in Paris for the "January term." Before going to Paris, I went home to Arcata from St Paul. This picture is in the dining room at the Arcata house, with some friends (coworkers? co-grad-students?) of my mother, by the names of Diana (who I don't remember at all) and Colleen (whom I remember but not very well). They and I and my uncle Arthur are playing some game… Trivial Pursuit? I look so skinny.

1984_ArcataCAXmasDianaArtJaredColleen

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2012-12-25.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?]

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