Born, raised,
traumatized, indoctrinated, oppressed, and arrested
while scurrying like a beetle through the dust,
streetgrime, alleyways, lavender dawns, and
mercury-vapor hazes of Albuquerque's Old Town,
Downtown, and Uptown; educated, bewildered, beat-up,
picked on, lied to, suspended, led astray, and
introduced to the rigors of impotent rage via the
Archdiocese of Santa Fe's parochial schools; entered
the University of New Mexico as an art major, asked to
leave while a psych major; found myself at age 21
broke, alienated, ostracized, psychotic, neurotic --
deep in the throes of the post-pubescent blues -- and
sweeping up cigarette butts in a posh Colorado resort
to earn my keep.
A fit of despair. No television. My sister's portable
8-track player finally unfixable. Signed up for five
free books from the Literary Guild. Chose the
Hemingway set -- three books count as one selection.
Missed the stuff about the missing equipment at the
core of The Sun Also Rises. Fell in love, anyway, with
the sparse and textural brilliance of Hemingway's
prose.
Spent the next three years as a virtual placenti
spongiosi (those soulless medieval beings produced by
unimpregnated but extra-fertile women) wandering the
catacombs of inner Albuquerque; experimenting with
artforms of various sorts, dimensions,
respectabilities: painting, drawing, poetry,
playwriting, acting, beatniking, stand-up comedy,
hallucinatory fits, performance art, guitaring.
Figured I had little in the way of manual dexterity or
instant charisma, so I best become a college
professor.