Fieled's Brief Notes and Anecdotes

The first book in my oeuvre to directly address Plymouth-Whitemarsh: autumn 2019's The Great Recession. As of late 2024, another missive directly from Ply-Mar begins its journey; the Beams sequel Dance Monkey, from Funtime Press. Will I get to a trilogy? Who knows.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Ungovernable Press: Rubber Soul

In 2008, a year before Ungovernable Press released The White Album, they also released a brief Adam Fieled e-chap: Rubber Soul.

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Equations: Tobi Simon

#28

I get lost in the social nexus oriented around Trish’s house. It’s all painters and musicians. Trish has a friend called Tobi who’s around a lot. Tobi is tiny and elfin (barely five feet), with an exquisitely sculpted face— cheekbones, blue eyes, full lips. Tobi is another painter and Trish and Tob tend to share things— drugs, guys, ideas. Tob is funnier than Trish and her laughter is contagious. But there’s a paranoid strain in her that hates being excluded from things and gets snappish when she feels it happening. Of course, Tob and I desire each other. One night, the three of us happen to be at my apartment. Trish is taking a bath; we’re all high. For some reason, Tob and I get in a wrestling match. I pin her to the floor (wall-to-wall beige carpeted), and for a few seconds I hold her down. What is consummated in these moments is the sense we both have that we will eventually sleep together. The three of us live up to Trish’s romantic ideal— young, gorgeous, promiscuous artists in an intoxicated ménage. But Tob, unlike Trish, cannot do monogamous relationships (or most other kinds). The extreme regularity of my antics with Trish, once a schedule has been established, cannot be replicated with Tob. I feel it is more intelligent, at this point, to stick to (and with) Trish. We do gain an added sheen of glamour from Tob’s presence, and we’re all too young to inquire into the nature of glamour: its essential evanescence.

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#29

Tob hovers between straightness and gayness. It is years later; I’ve broken things off with Trish. We’re upstairs at the Khyber, me with my friends, Tob with hers. We’re dancing and I start to do touchy-feely moves. This is it; this is the preordained time at which Tob and I consummate things (she put me in my place a year ago because we were both still too close to Trish). I show up at her apartment the next day; she spends the night at my apartment. But there’s some fakery involved and our equation involves contingencies: I’m putting together shows for her band, she needs to keep me (for them) in place. We take a bath, and Tob begins giving me a very thorough (and loving) blowjob. The problem is, this won’t count for me unless we actually have penetrative sex. So I stop myself from finishing in her mouth, take her to bed, put on the condom and do the deed, without finishing. I let my piggish principles interfere with Mother Nature’s chosen course. By disobeying Nature, I have already given Tob a reason to mistrust me. The truth is, she will never forgive me for seducing her. She doesn’t like guys that much anyway. The kind of impulse that chooses willfulness over acceptance can never have consonance with satisfaction, and pleasure.

Monday, May 13, 2024

191 Arden Road, Gulph Mills

Another circumstance attendant on Season in Hell: White Candle on P.F.S. Post. Prior to my Liverpool visitation, and Arts Fest/Atherton Hilton, Jennifer had spent several days visiting me here, on Arden Road in Gulph Mills (191), where I was stationed for my PSU semester breaks, '94-'96. By late '96, this tribe was back in Glenside, on Lindley Road. From here, I liked to hang out on Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore, where there was a Borders (books/music), when Borders was still around. And Tower Records in KOP.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Philly's Elite Main Drags

Philly and its environs are laid out and built with a sense of graciousness and sumptuousness that is difficult not to notice over a long period of time. It's been my pleasure to admire the sense of absolute architectural elitism which makes so many vistas here Heaven-on-Earth ones. These vistas are most apparent on a seemingly endless string of exquisite main drags, which take the region and sprinkle it with star-dust. Some of the main drags I'm about to mention are more about earthiness and serviceability, others are more about the aforementioned architectural razzle-dazzle effect. All take this area and, for me, radically transcendentalize it. The list I've assembled cannot be, nor is meant to be comprehensive; but these are the main drags I know best, and which I've spent a big chunk of my life imbibing:

Conshohocken- Fayette Street

Plymouth Meeting- Germantown Pike

Chestnut Hill (Philly)- Germantown Avenue

Glenside- Easton Road

Bryn Mawr- Lancaster Avenue

Ardmore- Lancaster Avenue

King of Prussia- Dekalb Pike

Center City (Philly)- Walnut Street

West Philadelphia- Baltimore Avenue

North Philadelphia- Broad Street

South Philadelphia- South Street

Manayunk (Philly)- Main Street

Old City (Philly)- 2nd/3rd Streets

Ambler- Butler Pike

Jenkintown- Old York Road

Abington- Limekiln Pike

North-East Philadelphia- Five Corners

Penn's Landing (Philly)- Delaware Avenue

If you can make it to these, you will not be disappointed. Peace!

Monday, May 17, 2021

Preface

With the new Monday Journal out with a vengeance (online & print), worth noting that Vlad has something else coming out of note: a second print edition of his late Nineties chapbook Derelict. When Derelict was released, Vlad still lived in Philly, and much of the action in the chap takes place in Philly. Vlad asked me to write a preface for this second edition, and I did.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Bio Time

My bio in the new Monday Journal is about the quandary which arises for publishing authors over long periods of time. To make a long story short, the quandary is what to leave in and what to leave out. You can emphasize or deemphasize academic or publishing creds, prizes, grants, fellowships, or what have you. Sometimes I get bored these days & just say I'm from Philadelphia.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Personal Mythologies II: September 20, 2003: KWH

This mp3 offers the second installment of the Personal Mythologies series at KWH in 2003.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

This Charming Lab: March 27, 2004: KWH

This mp3 offers the entire This Charming Lab reading, held at Kelly Writers House in 2004.

Sunday, February 21, 2021

English 271: How Does This Sound?

I've put in a good amount of work, consolidating the events that transpired at Loyola U. in Chicago in 2008. All the particulars of the course (English 271, How Does This Sound, Ultramodern Metaphor, 25 East Pearson Street, room 306, Prof. Laura Goldstein) and my involvement in it (Opera Bufa 2.5 days, my lecture on the third day) are now well documented. There are some details as to how the lecture day (June 19) went that are worth relating. The funniest is a quirk of Loyola classrooms, as a ricochet against Opera Bufa. Loyola, of course, is a religious institution. It follows from this that all the classrooms come equipped with a rather large, plasticine Christ-figure, hanging in a lofty position at the back of the room. Room 306 happened to be a downwards-slope model academic room, so that when I lectured, I was gazing upwards at the class of about twenty students. The plasticine Christ appeared to be gazing down at me from a great height. I remember feeling a wry sense of amusement at this circumstance; Opera Bufa is an intermittently racy book, and some of the passages the students wanted me to explicate were racy ones. If Jesus were there, would he have approved?

Sunday, December 29, 2024

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Monday, December 16, 2024

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Friday, December 13, 2024

Monday, November 25, 2024

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Friday, October 25, 2024