Min Tull. Monday. September 24. 2018

I told a friend in Thailand about the requests I get from reporters at the New York Times for poems to give to their friends for consolation during illness and to celebrate weddings. This is his email response:

This is great Tim!

I'm sorry for the slow reply. I try to read every email you send and often wait until I have an uninterrupted space of time to read them, which is why this response is coming 10 days later.

If this kind of thing makes you feel good, that's all that matters. No baggage attached. There's no need to feel you're a fraud. If doing what you do gives you pleasure and fulfillment, what other purpose is there in doing it?

I've heard about the fires. We are enjoying the wet wet weather here. Rain almost every day... I love the nighttime sound of the rain.

I responded to him thus:

I'm just glad you read my stuff at all. Sometimes I think my writing is tedious beyond words. Right now I have embarked on an ambitious and foolhardy new literary project, called Min Tull. A monumental waste of time that will make my name synonymous with vapidity. 

Am I fishing for further compliments? A bit. But I really do struggle with deep feelings of inferiority, incompetence, and a foreboding that I will be found out as nothing but a hollow hoax. Perhaps if I persevere with this obsessive writing long enough those feelings will dissolve. That's one of the themes I'll play with. So I guess I am both the protagonist and antagonist of My Nonsense.

The night sound of rain

metallic on the gutters --

the old Fall quibble

I just got an email reminder from Amazon about an item I thought to order:

Hello Tim Torkildson, 
Thank you for visiting Amazon.com. You recently added items to your Shopping Cart. If you haven't already purchased or removed them, simply visit your Shopping Cart to complete your order.

Limburger Cheese - Creamy, 8 oz.

by For The Gourmet I'm still tempted to get it -- just for the shock value when I serve it to my next dinner guests. Limburger cheese is a slapstick food item, like Tabasco Sauce -- these items feature in many an old silent two-reeler, where their use elicits fearsome double-takes and ribbons of steam unfurling from comedian's ears. I could have severely injured my baby sister Linda in her playpen years ago when a Three Stooges film on TV gave me the idea to blow a heavy pile of black pepper from the palm of my hand into her wide-eyed innocent face. Luckily my aim was off and most of the pepper blew past her. But enough got in her eyes to set her squalling -- and my mother's gilt hairbrush soon made definite and vigorous contact with my rear end.

8:48 a.m.

I made rice for breakfast, adding turmeric, butter, and dehydrated onion for a flavor boost. It sat steaming in a porcelain Ikea bowl on the counter top, with a tablespoon stuck in it -- doused with fish sauce and red pepper flakes, ready to eat. Then I grabbed a towel to wipe up some stray drops of fish sauce. The towel caught the tip of the tablespoon in the bowl of rice and sent the yellow buttery rice catapulting all over my kitchen walls. With the kitchen speckled in risotto, I cried out in vexation: "Oh, sugar buns!" That was my mother's favorite oath. When we kids were around. When she thought we were out of earshot she reverted to her French Canadian heritage by muttering "la pisse du diable!" 

I intend to buy a gecko at the pet store on Center Street to eat all that dratted yellow rice as it climbs up the walls in search of bugs. The geckos in Thailand keep the indoor walls spotless. 

(McAfee just threw up a cookie telling me my pc is safe. Safe from everything, I guess, except McAfee cookies.)

I ended my first installment of this rigmarole with the promise, or threat, of revealing the time table of my bowel movements. That was a facetious jest, of course, and in poor taste. But it elicited very strong reactions from several people -- along the lines of 'please don't!' Wondering if there are any books wholly devoted to dung, I googled 'List of books about defecation' and this is what I got:

• Clearing the Air: Art of the Bowel Movement
• What's Your Poo Telling You?
• The Origin of Feces
• What Shat That? A Guide to Poop Identity
• Poop: A Natural History
• How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
• Poop Culture
• Bodily Functions
• History of Shit
• Everybody Poops 410 Pounds a Year
• Kama Pootra
• The Scoop on Poop: Lifting the Lid on the Science of Poo and Pee

And there are more. I think there is a Stephen King story about a carnivorous outhouse, and I've always wondered if Jeeves ever helped Bertie Wooster out with a spot of constipation, dontcha know?

(9:30 a.m. First robocall of the day on my Tracfone. An automated voice telling me that the factory warranty on my vehicle may have expired. I don't own a car or truck or Sherman tank. I believe I'll power down my little black phone until I want to place a call myself.)

Going back to my quest for personal revelation, I'm reviewing some of the replies I got from the 'timericks' I wrote last week, as I was praying for inspiration on what stories to rhyme about:

Kelly Crow, from Dow Jones; I wrote about her article on Nigerian artist Nijideka Akunyili Crosby.

Thanks so much for reading my story and sending this awesome note!

Sounds like an automated note to me. Phooey. 

Vidhi Doshi, of the Washington Post, replied to my poem about his story on the Dow Jones going through the roof with his own set of verses:

has everyone forgotten the crash?

of '08 when we all lost our cash

maybe im grim

keepin it trim

maybe its time for a big splash

I like inspiring bad verse in other writers. I have a taste for literary maliciousness that does me no credit.

When I did a verse on the aging Japanese military, from a story by WSJ reporter Alastair Gale, he emailed back:

That was quick! And funny!

So apparently speed of composition is just as impressive to a reporter as the content itself. Quick Draw Tork; that's me.

I got an odd and puzzling response from Jon Talton, the Economics columnist for the Seattle Times, when I sent him some verses on a tweet from Donald Trump about John Kerry being a traitor:

Bone spurs

My stubborn pride keeps me from emailing him back "Huh?" 

But just a minute ago Talton responded to my Lectric Shave poem with this:

Good one. Hadn't thought of LectricShave in decades.

So now I'm becoming the poet of the retro? Uff-da. 

After a swim and a soak in the hot tub at the Provo Recreation Center this afternoon I am now ready to peruse the online news. Bob Davis, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, has given me a lifetime online subscription to the paper. He's a fan of my doggerel. (Well, how many people do you know who get lifetime subscriptions from reporters? They don't hand 'em out like Pulitzers, ya know. I hinted at a free online subscription for the NYT with some of their reporters, but they didn't pick up on it. So I canceled my online subscription in a pique of fit -- or is it a pit of fique?)

This story immediately grabs my attention:

AIRLINES TRY TO WHIP UP BETTER MEALS FOR COACH FLIERS.   by Alison Sider & Patrick McGroarty. 

Airlines are trying to persuade economy-class passengers that they can buy meals on the plane as good as they would find in a restaurant.  WSJ

A passenger meal on a plane

is usually something profane.

It's mush or cement;

a food nonevent.

Gourmets ought to get on a train. 

I'll send the above to both Sider and McGroarty, to see if they respond, but I'm not holding my breath. Experience has shown me that when a story is by two or more reporters none of them ever respond to my poems. (Well, I'll have to eat my words; Sider just emailed me back:  "Good one!" I wonder if I should ask her to buy my poetry book, A Clump of Trump? Nah, that's too commercial for an artsy-fartsy guy like me. Besides, I think her reply was just a Google Response.)

The last flight I took was from Washington DC to Salt Lake City back in 2014. Gove Allen, an old friend from Minneapolis who is a professor at BYU, had heard I was homeless and ill -- so he offered to fly me out to live with him until I recuperated and could find work again. God bless him for that. The stewardess served me something called a 'dinner salad' that consisted of flagging lettuce, rubbery radishes, a pale yellow lump that might have been a piece of cheese or a superannuated egg yolk, shredded carrots turning bronze, and several strips of something that tasted like wall paper. I never got the dressing onto this concoction -- the packet was so hard to open that when I finally managed to rip it apart it sprayed all over the in-flight magazine.

I was talking to Margaret Young today at the pool, telling her all about Min Tull cuz she taught creative writing at BYU for 30 years. She kept calling it a memoir but I kept insisting it's an autobiographical novel like Knaugard's stuff. To me a novel is classier than a memoir. Any apple knocker can write a memoir, but it takes a bona fide artiste, a nascent genius, to write a novel. But she got me thinking -- how can this be a novel if there's no story line or anticipation of any action, good or bad, happening to or with the protagonist? 

So I'll start chasing my dream of companionship again. And detailing the results, if any, here. That'll keep readers on the edge of their Kindles. When Amy left me over 20 years ago it was such a terrible blow that I nearly died from self abuse and several suicide attempts. Then when I moved to Thailand as a TEFL teacher I hooked up with Joom, a Thai woman my age. I asked her to marry me, but she insisted I'd have to build her mother a house first. Since I didn't have that kind of money we fell into a common-law marriage that was not recognized by my Church but had some legal status in Thailand (and nowhere else.) When I had to leave Thailand suddenly, due to my passport being revoked for back child support, Joom shed abundant crocodile tears over our tragic lover's fate while she quickly looked up an old Chinese lover in Chiang Rai to go live with. After several years back here in the good ol' USA I decided to ask Amy if she would be interested in getting married again. She initially balked, then agreed, and then scared the pants off me by insisting I invest my entire Social Security pension ($789 a month) in a doTerra Essential Oils dealership. I broke things off with her, and have remained footloose and fancy free ever since. But sometimes my bachelor's paradise palls on me. 

I believe in the efficacy of sincere prayer to our loving Heavenly Father, and so I will be making this a matter of honest faithful prayer. I will certainly need to, since I am fat, homely, short-tempered, broke, and exceedingly lazy. Plus, I am really only interested in an Oriental woman about 20 years younger than me (but past childbearing.) I refuse to use an online dating service. Period. Instead I will rely on my own native wit and the goodwill and guidance of my friends and family. And whatever inspiration the Lord may grant me.

I realize that I'm going to have to work on my faults -- lose some weight; curb my sharp tongue; find a way to make money and discipline myself to work at things harder. The homeliness I can't do anything about, except maybe with a face lift. 

Does my plan, my goal, go against the grain of the #MeToo movement? I suspect it does, and I suspect that if these installments that I'm posting on my blog site ever go viral I will become a hiss and a byword amongst women everywhere. But why should a lonely old man who daydreams of a loving loyal companion be a villain to anyone? Pah! The die is cast. I hereby resolve to be in a loving and fulfilling relationship with an Oriental woman about 20 years younger than me by the time my next birthday rolls around on September 11th, 2019. I swear it on a stack of pancakes. 

I wonder if I should try to get Joom back? We had some good times together. But no . . . she would be a Jezebel to me. Her highest ambition in life, she often told me, was to become a 'Mama-san' -- a procuress. That's almost as bad as being constantly chivvied about doTerra Essential Oils. 

Well, now that that's settled I'm going to go back to my online perusing . . . 

4:14 p.m. Here's another story that tickles my fancy, from the WSJ. By Nour Malas:

Labor unions representing Disneyland employees are campaigning in favor of a ballot measure facing voters that would require large hospitality businesses receiving tax rebates to raise their hourly minimum wage to $15 next year, with annual increases reaching $18 in 2022.

Old Walt wouldn't take it too kind

that Mickey is gouging him blind.

The Kingdom of Magic

is growing quite tragic

with axes that need a quick grind.

Not very good, is it? My lyric voice is growing hoarse as the afternoon shadows lengthen. What I need is wine, women, and song. But what I'll settle for is Alka Seltzer, Netflix, and flossing my teeth. 

There's chicken thighs in the slow cooker and a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese on the stove. Ohen, Lance, and Brooke are coming for dinner with their dad Jonny, while daughter Sarah works at her new massage job. She makes about 200 dollars a day at it. She's saving the money for a Disney family cruise this winter. I feel like writing a biting comment on the fact that they never invite me along on those types of things, but since I'm working on sweetening my disposition so I can find my new helpmeet I'll forbear. See what a peacemaker I am, gals?  

**********************************************************************************************************************

An email response from an English professor:

Honestly, I quite enjoy your writing. I like the fascinating quirky details, the distinctive voice, the zingers (such as about McAfee), the best of which get their zing from joining a burst of illumination with paradox or irony.

I don’t care for the bathroom material—and you can classify that as a matter of personal preference on my part. But the presence of that material will have an effect (mostly limiting or off-putting) on your potential audience.

Your desire for companionship does add an extra bit of interest—and suspense—to your narrative.

One interesting pattern: You tend to second-guess the meaning of the responses you get to your poetry and other contributions, questioning the motives of the responders and sometimes engaging in self-doubt. In observing that pattern, I’m not suggesting you change anything—this second-guessing is part of the personality that comes through. And in novels, we are told, characters need to be consistent or at least need to surprise convincingly. But in reality, personalities are a fluid thing, and it wouldn’t hurt if you learned to accept responses to your work with a bit more child-like delight.

Note the irony—and the potential danger—in my responding to your writing by critiquing how you respond to people responding to your writing.

So, don’t you dare, now, analyze anything I said. I’m pretty thin-skinned about . . . just about everything. But seriously, I’ll gird up my loins and prepare to hear whatever you have to say.

Oh . . . and about your looks: I love your face mainly because it’s the only one I know that belongs to you. And I really, truly like you.

And my response to him (or her):

You are absolutely right in bringing up my response to praise (and criticism, when it comes -- and it will) as a point to examine more closely and work on improving. This hasn't appeared in Min Tull yet, but both my parents were very judgmental and critical of just about every aspect of my life from joining the circus to joining the Church to marrying Amy and having so many kids, etc. It's hard to escape their shadow, even after I've made my peace with their attitude towards me. And that will need to appear as a motif in my work, sooner rather than later.  tt

Here is what a retired editor from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press thinks of my story so far: 

WTH is this? Are you playing Boswell to your own Dr Johnson?

A friend in the Pacific reacted to the above installment like this:

My wife's Communist/Marxist neice (Oh, I'm not supposed to talk about her that way, I forgot) will probably be joining us in November for a year or so.  She'll be doing some traveling during the year.  Most of the time she'll be doing "research", because her university requires it.  She's a PhD in modern Chinese history or something.  If you were here for part of that time you could practice up on being nice to a woman (more than) 20 years your junior, and you could teach her to speak better English (for a fee, probably), and help her with her writing (for a fee, probably).  I think she might have money from her university for stuff like that, though I'm not sure.  There's one problem: she's a nudist I'm told.  She'd be downstairs and so we'd have a protocol to ring a bell if she wanted to come up, or we'd go down.  You'd be downstairs too.  She's married, by the way.  

She could really learn a lot from you in several areas, but I don't think it's worth your effort and your expense.

My deal with you is that if you promise to open your your mouth and speak out loud every time in church you feel like you've got something to say, I'll consider paying your way over and back.

Her English is pretty good for someone who lives in China.  About the same as Liping's when I first met her, and Liping was an English major in college.

After letting this one sink in a while, while I grind through updating boring lists of patient information for my computer program here at work, I realize I like it more.  I quite like stream of consciousness, especially when it reminds me of Calvin (of Hobbes), or when it's very sincere and humble and real.  I will say that upon first glance I didn't have time to read it all, but I went back and did, just to check that my name wasn't used in your piece.  In other words, I don't have the luxury of long pieces when I'm such a slow reader, here at work.

You're gunna let your friends and "fate" find you a woman?  I always thought that was so lame when people said they were going to let fate take care of their future love.  But maybe that's more of an Asian thing.  Liping yesterday said that it's against her culture to make any kind of advances toward a man.  If she did, then she'd be considered a low status woman.  (I think she said "bitch" -- a word that our Chinese friend uses a lot when she talks of any other women who her boyfriend might be attracted to.)

You know the conflicts better than anyone with regard to your swearing to find a -20 year old woman in the next 350 days (and counting -- just ask Google.  You can say "Hey Google how many days old am I?"  It knows.  You can say "Hey Google remind me in 350 days at 8am that I'm supposed to have a woman in my life by now."  It will.)  But the obvious is you might be away from your kids and grandkids, and that would be a very big sacrifice, I think.  

I forgot how much Ron had to pay to get his expedited retirement visa in Thailand.  And by "expedited", I mean no health checks, no financial checks, no background checks, no nothin'.  You do have to open a bank account, but you don't have to keep much money in it, contrary to what some people think.  My brother is a happy camper with two women -- one a lover and massage person, and the other is a driver.  He can walk to the beach in 10 minutes.