Recommendations for January 2004:

1. New House : Always grand to start a new year at a new house.

2. CD: Spain - 'The Blue Moods of Spain' Slow, languid tunes, perfect for an evening alone or with pets.

3. CD: Stan Getz - Lost Sessions One of the only sessions Stan recorded while sober, these
luxurious tones were recorded in 1989, with their hearts in 1965.

4. Film: Melvin Goes to Dinner Directed by Mister Show star Bob Odinkirk, this small independent
features young professionals discussing pertinent issues over dinner in an L.A. area restaurant. Odinkirk masterfully weaves heavy conepts and suspense into 82 minutes.

Two Poems Whose Meaning Can Only Be Obtained By Turning One's Chair Away From The Computer And Opening A FUCKING BOOK!


Night terrors, night tremors
begin with ghastly mare
towards light we run
from dried beggars blood
salvation lays threadbare

I make my own verse time
scampering around fires eternal
in my breast
a small tooth is found

Hello Everyone,

It has been some time since, as editor for this not so highly esteemed site, I stepped out from behind the various masks and characters I frequently reside in to make a public statement regarding the state of mind I currently find myself in. A mood of staggering guffaws and littered with comma splices, sentence fragments and pointless self editorializing

It’s not always easy, shedding aside the appealing character that I dive into , ignoring the teachings of my fiction teacher to keep my prose at a lean and mean level of clarity. (I do tend to obscure what could have been a keen insight into mankind into a gauzy haze of word soup.) But still I plug away against the behest of others, creating paragraph after paragraph, stuffing grist into my mill to prepare for a winter of non-creative explosions that may not ever come. But once again I’m missing the point, further obscuring and losing my potential readership.

So what is the point of this particular entry, why is it not in the blog section of the website? Why does it stand out enough to warrant the spotlight of the main page? The reason lies behind my identity as an ever-expanding adult who chooses to chronicle my growth in a rambling, distant diatribe such as this one. It may or may not come together at the end. You’ll have to wait until the end.

Or maybe not, instead you can peruse the news if you get bored. See who is leading the polls or has already won the Iowa Caucuses. (depending how quick on the draw you are to reading this fresh posting.) So without any further blabbing, no matter how timely or apropos is yet another idea for a story, short or novel-length, by which one day I may make a name for myself. Here goes, and keep in mind the usual disclaimer.

On the first day of most writing classes, the teacher wishes to gauge each student’s current level of writing by assigning each students one of two topics. In this case, choosing between the subjects of a dead child or of newlyweds. Being a child of radiant positivism, I chose the newleywed category. So without further ado, I present to you, loyal readers of Kronski.com with my free write on the subject of newlyweds:

An exploration of boundaries: the sexual, emotional and psychological journey two people experience as a result of a recent marriage. Explained and explored will be financial matters, jealousy, sexual experimentation, and dependence on substances vs. each other.

I looked at that opening statement for a long time, and it almost seemed too classroom description like, almost a mission statement for a corporation, a marketing group at the start of a new school term. I didn’t like the last line in particular. People can read too much into that, it’s a crutch, it’s the dissonant noise that one day I will exorcise in my writing. Undaunted by the fallacies present in the opening treatment, and wired to the gills on lukewarm Seattle’s Best coffee, I fired away, regardless of missed targets or too much ammunition.

And I am a little proud of this opening line. Anyone who has done any firing of rifles, or pretended to be a bow hunter may or may not appreciate this opening line.

It was the beginning of the spinning wheel of seasons, Spring and the start of new horizons, grand expectations, coming aboard the new journey, with such tremendous expectations, the instant result that comes from breaking the seal of a new relationship, the revelation of the wine, instant consummation of matrimonial vows, imbibed through two people as the seasons progress, shot out across the hemisphere into uncharted territory, taking for granted all of the problems that are bound to come up, the intoxication of togetherness, the disappointment in the “IS THIS ALL THERE IS?” to their lives, the exploration of boundaries, how and why to push them, the construction of emotional domiciles, the incandescent glow that will one day fade, exploring and disappointment years before substance abuse and sexual experimentation. They will find all of these things and more, realize it is not like it is on TV, not preprogrammed, not the world they inhabited upon first meeting each other, it’s the birth and death of the new relationship, a stinging sword that will periodically deal out blows that come from out of nowhere, but from somewhere, (egads, did I actually write that, what sort of pulp romance trash did I pull that line out of?) the back of the mind, the repression, the gradual repression of emotion.

Stopping for a paragraph not because I suddenly realized the need for order in these ideas, but because my hands were completely raw and worn out from the frantic pace I could no longer compete with. Readers, you too may take a break here, stretch, sharpen your number two pencils, breathe.

The inability to articulate the burden of terror and paranoia.(And the green line that popped up on the screen in Word when I realized how much of a sentence fragment I had written.) They will shop to represent themselves; they will struggle to maintain identity; they will walk blindfolded eye towards their own undoing. They will create dependencies on each other and replace them with substances; they will destroy their own identities, but this is years away, now it is all greeting cards and thank you notes, button down sweaters on down comforters. In order to present a living, loving matrimony, a testament to residual decay of emotional affluence.

And that’s when he told us to stop. And that’s where this will stop. Class dismissed.

Dr. Kronski

The new Kronski DVD (with commentary you cannot remove)

It's me again. Another day, another dollar. Or maybe I should say: another day, another miraculous showing of self restraint on my part for not killing some poor bastard.

It's cold when I arrive, and black as a death's head moth. The layers of ice around the road have sharpened since nightfall, and the bleary eyed fog of my vision only enables me to view dusty entrails of falling snow, undulating throughout the dark night, trapped in a whirligig of artic air and mist.

It's like the dream I have, where I am too enticed by visions of snow maidens, and I veer off the road, towards the direction of the cow pastures. Within minutes I am embedded in a Wisconsin shit farm, the last thing I see before I black out is the scarecrow etched in the snow in the shape of my father's face.

I am determined not to repeat the sonorous pursuit of my dreams, and I instead pull off at a nearby truck stop, where a man with no eyes in his sockets tells me he's out of gas for the night.

I pull up a chair inside the barely-lit office. He pours hours-old coffee into a Styrofoam cup that still contains cfc's after all these years. He tells me about the night and how it lulled him into working for free, during the red-eye shift. He tells me of the consistent infiltration of the black ice, and how it overtook control of his bodily functions. He points right at his black pearl of an eye and tries to explain how it got there, but it doesn’t make any sense. None of this adds up.

Why am I here in the middle of the night, when there was so much on television? How could I have ignored the Carolina St. Louis football match on TV and instead chose to talk to this hollowed-out eye possessing, bad coffee drinking cast away. I made a wrong turn somewhere and I don’t like the way he looks at me, with no pupil visible. I attempt to stand, but become engulfed in something I cannot see, touch or smell. It's dawn before they find my body in the shit patch in Wisconsin, staring blindly at the scarecrow face of my father.

It’s 10 or 11 PM here in Carbondale. I told you last time that I work in a steel mill, I guess. Yeah sure, great fucking job. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Gunny. I’m not a writer, so forgive me if this sucks.

My friend Aggro P up in Oregon said I should post some stories here from time to time on his friend’s web site. I asked him what to write, and he said just whatever I want. Crap. That’s all it is. Maybe talking about it will help my life improve, but unless it comes with free whiskey, I doubt it.

What to write, I asked: “You mean like when Jesus got scalped by a drill press?”
I was just kidding, but his laughter on the phone suggested that might be appropriate.

P said “Yeah, actually that sounds perfect.”

So thank you, Dr. Kronski, for allowing me to express some feelings on your site. Sorry if I am not as intellectual as you and your kind readers. All I give a shit about is reading and making enough money for Jack Daniel’s. If it weren’t for the liquor, I’d be a bum. That’s the only reason I even work. Fuck, the JD is the only reason I’m not dead right now.

I worked today, same as every day, at Union Steel. Jesus Christ, it’s monotonous, take the piece, slide it through the machine, watch the steel spurs and slivers fly out onto the floor, and send it on down to the polisher’s bin. Same goddamn thing every day. Thirty pieces an hour. No more, no less. You do any better, and they’ll expect that every time. It takes me 2400 pieces a day. Four Winstons, one sandwich, two Cokes, three pisses and a cup of coffee to get through it. The thought of that Jack Daniel’s under the front seat of my pick up is what gets me though it.

Before you judge me- let me ask you- ever met Ray Skrup? Well if you know Ray, you know how he gets through his shift each day. Thaaaaaat’s right, shooting meth every day in the parking lot. Now that ol’ JD doesn’t seem so bad does it?


Courtesy of Ralph "Gunny" Gunderson, Union Steel Works, Carbondale, CA.

Portlander Forms Anti-Terror, Anti-Almanac Group, To Turn in Books to FBI




(Willamette Week)

(Buzzflash)

You don't work here without the proper attire.

It's right there in the Employee Handbook, page Three. No neckties (thank God), no loose clothing, you know, stuff that could get caught in the various cogs and wheels; steel toed boots for anyone operating hoists or lifts, all that.

Last year a guy named Jesus worked over in the back section by the drills. He did kind of look like Jesus, long hair and everything... we used to always yell "JESUS!" at him. He ignored us until one day he yelled that it was pronounced in the Spanish way, like "hay-soos".

When his hair got loose and caught in a drill press he was scalped.

Didn't look like no prophet after that.

Courtesy of Ralph "Gunny" Gunderson, Union Steel Works, Carbondale, CA.

Its school
time again.

Not like
before.

It sometimes
feels like it's 10
years ago
but it's not.

I'm older.
Not wiser
necessarily,
older,
and I'm
in between
the ages
of the school-
age children
and the adults
who have
already molted
3-4 times
already.

It's been
snowing for the
past few days
Portland
wasn't supposed
to be like this.

Rainy,
glum, maybe
but not snowy.

I often ponder
whether or
not this form
of communi-
cation is effective
or if people would
prefer a longer sentence like this hidden one
a bolder statement
of intentions.

I wonder If
we'll still
be alive
this time next
year.

The beginning
is the perfect
place to
die.

To new
beginnings!

A Life Remembered

The reflection troubled him like he had never known before. He felt the solitude speak to him through the burgundy shadows of the portrait. The way the rotund face gleamed back at him with the wisdom of a thousand years, granulated throughout the years, aged in layers of delicate oils, resting comfortably amongst the delicate and ancient canvas reminded him of his dearly departed wife who had died only months before.

This was his first social engagement outside the lifespan of their marriage. The death of his beloved Sarah happened in June, and was the end to a 15-year relationship, the only significant relationship he had ever known. Yet here she was, present in this painting, at the unveiling of the Mirador collection at the Museum of Modern Inconveniences, rising coherently out of a nameless opera that swung madly from the aerial speakers above him, twisting his pinot noir buzz, hitting somewhere right in the middle of peaceful solitude and tangible melancholy.

When the music slowed to a dreary pace, the anticipation of another swell of power present in the tenors lungs that very day brought Nancy back for just a moment, a three dimensional level to the painting, a hologram of her, standing in the still shadows visible, tangible, acting as the stopgap for dimensions. He could look across to her, the archipelago of sound crept up to him, offering bountiful harvests of sound for which his ears could languish over, take time to digest the crescendos and recount the memories: the dishes broken in jest, the disappointment in her eyes after the miscarriage, until it raced into his heart, when he could feel it, could count the palpitations in his heart, hear it skip a beat down there, sink when the oboe did.

The full-bellied intoxicant of the wine had subsided, and the reed came in, delicately chortling its way into the bathroom, down to the bathtub, the soaring string section inviting his pores to scalding water, clearing out the oily pores and pent up aggression he felt for Nancy at the time of her demise. The stillness of air and smothering hot steam glided across his bathroom later on in the evening, after he polished off the bottle and it lay facing him on the floor, the bottle having bequeathed to him the gift of memory, lucid visions, and virtuous intentions. The coat of false security was so vivid, so touchable it could have come from the very month before she died, when he'd visit her in the mental hospital, after classes finished for the day.

How and why he watched her delicately fall from grace, become tattered by circumstance, left lonely to sing and slog out the heavy months, months where she could feel the delicate balance of freedom and incarceration. Months of deliberate medication, would follow, stretching out the afternoon through the agonizing passage of time called therapy, group explanations of psychosis, feeling the demons pulling people apart inside from their own charred perspectives. Long lost connections to reality were revealed to everyone. No luxuries of distraction, only pain intensified pain personified, long stares into white stucco paint. Instead of showing signs of recovery, she instead left her mind at a point in the center of the lake of her own madness. As if she had surpassed a point where she could no longer return. Once the window to that world was opened, she could never again return to lazy Sundays reading newspapers, or the giving of workshops in her home, demonstrations of floral arrangements. Never again could love her husband as she did before. She died paralyzed in a stoic pose, remembered for her struggles, her ability to fight when appropriate, and when to have the dignity to give up and let go of the string that held her sanity in check enough to permit visitors, enough to give her husband hope until he no longer believed there was any left.

It was all there, her life splayed out in rich luxurious colors, laid out on the canvas in the oval room, the entrance to the foyer from which she used to begin her evenings with a light cordial and later sleeping in as daffodils elegantly lined the driveway for the service. Where the stark light and darks resembled the outer shadows of the painting he still gazed at, still teary eyed, as the final swell of the opera gasped it's last breath.