Telegrams of the Soul
When someone says, “Flash fiction is popular because of the internet, kid’s attention span these days…” why don’t you kick them right in the balls? Why don’t you sweep the leg for me?
Peter Altenberg lived from 1859-1919. Adolf Loos, the famed modernist architect, made the cross for his grave.
You like blurbs? Check these fucking blurbs. You wish. This isn’t your mom’s pal or former teacher or little Internet buddy in an indie/alt scene circle-jerk let’s get drunk at AWP and wear skinny, colored eyeglasses type of blurb, you fuckers. This is Kafka going, “In his small stories his whole life is confirmed” and oh, Thomas Mann going, “If it be permitted to speak of ‘love at first sound,’ then that’s what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose.”
Kafka just blurbed your ass. Get it?
Altenberg quit everything. Law school, medical school, book-selling. His own name. He got a doctor’s note, he did, a doctor’s note excusing him from life. A golden ticket. He spent the rest of his days in bars, coffee bars and good old regular bars. He liked drinking and whores, just like anyone with time on their hands.
He wrote about it, this life, in fits of brevity.
You should probably start here and then just learn to read German afterwards.
Delonte West on Writing
I’m into all kinds of art. I enjoy beautiful things and I like to create.
I guess he had some emotions he wanted to get off his chest. He was just skipping down the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz.
If we are going to play with a sock, I’ll play with a sock.
I got out of house arrest this morning.
Bugs Bunny is the smoothest dude I ever met. You know he be chillin’ like it just be a normal day and he- it be cold just like how it is in Boston and he just want to dive in the ground, pop up, he be like oh man this ain’t Albuquerque. That’s got to be the tightest life you just hop underneath the ground and go! No traffic, no Mass pike, no tolls, no taking Yankee hats off- just underneath the ground…BAM…carrots…
I did a study in college, and my study show, in the African American community, the Yankee hat, the navy blue and white, it just, I don’t know, do something for your swagger.
I like to paint murals of the ocean that I see beyond the horizon, because I feel if — in order for us to grow, we gotta know.
You kinda almost have to be the voice of reason out there.
My timing’s a little off. I felt a little foolish.
Soon, maybe this summer, I may get an art gallery going.
Twenty years from now, you’re going to see me riding in a drop top hummer buck naked with some ankle socks on and a headband on.
Well, there is two halves to everything.
One fish, two fish. Red fish, blue fish. Knick knack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone. Ding.
You can’t kill a G. Bugs Bunny is a G.
They took my uniform out of my locker today.
I think it’s kind of freaky.