Paul was explication of May writing.

Paul was a month of writing about constraints, as in each episode, daily diary update, new serialized session, or entry was a potential new constraint for Paul to follow. &, the whole month and its writings in itself become a containered constraint. Form within form; boxes in boxes.

Paul was cutup text from another author’s master work. Maybe, _ _ ring & Al_ .

Paul was written only at lunchtime, be that 11-12, 12-1, 12:30-1:30, et cetera.

Paul was only typed on a manual typewriter, maintaining all crossouts and misspellings.

Paul was only ideas written in the bathroom.

Paul was a tiny zine written on the blank back pages of collected street advertisements. The photocopied flyers pasted together to make a spine, the sized shape of the zine based on these free billets; form before content.

Paul was a project that would build off itself in the continuation of commentary daily. A building process. Rather, the stacking of words as a record of the passage of time. Not necessarily the importance of observations, but, completion of a cycle of a post a day, for an entire year.

Paul was for the month of February, a serialized story, each episode having a cliffhanger ending. This idea was mostly inspired by POW BAM BOOM vintage Adam West Batman episodes.

Paul was return to the scene of the crime.

Paul was each week they choose a theme & invite producers, writers, documentarians, poets, musicians, et cetera to take a wack at that theme. While not formally invited, Paul took a wack at that theme as well.

This week’s theme: Return to the Scene of the Crime

 

Act 1: Hyperlink

 

Last week This American Life Live! was beamed to theaters. Paul was a review.

 

Act 2: I remember

 

Paul was unstuck in time. While riding the train home he blinked and was back in Bethlehem at Christmas. Not bible Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Pa. He was visiting his sister and together they were looking for a gift for their mother. The small shops were filled with tree ornaments, statues, and candlesticks. Lori fancied a teapot with a hand painted chicken on it. Paul inhaled some fake snow and sneezed.

 

He was in Holcomb Kansas. A place even Kansans call ‘out there.’ He walked into Hartman’s Café and was suddenly on the moon. Not the moon moon, but the firebombed ruins of Dresden which resembled a moonscape. Kurt Vonnegut almost always mentioned this city in the books he wrote. Even in an offhanded manner. Such as in Slapstick, the former President of the United States, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, living on the Island of Green Death, or Manhattan, is given a Dresden candlestick. He dies the next day. So it goes.

 

As a blog, Paul was subscribing to Vonnegut’s ideas of time not being a continuous line, but always was and always is being. The past is still happening in the present. You can try this by scrolling down or reading any archived post. And so on.

 

Paul blinked in time with gunshots. Lori said “I remember when on my birthdays you had to do whatever I said. Like get me a yogurt.”

 

Paul remembered repeating himself often. He found truth in that repetition. As in the gravity of one event that sets off a chain reaction. A firebomb for Vonnegut. Kansas for Capote. Playing “I remember” with Lori to fill in an absent father.