The American Dream

You've got your Hispanic mother driving 85 miles per hour in her Ford Mustang, headed nowhere else but Disney World. But guess what, the son of a bitch Ford Mustang was a 2001 and everyone knows that the 2001 Mustang was recalled due to a faulty piston or some crazy shit. Not to mention, the only reason you are going to Disney world in the first place is because your father passed away from a long bout with prostate cancer or your parents got divorced and your mother wants you to meet Jim, the 65 year old "buggy guy at Walmart". You see, the American Dream is bullshit. That is exactly what it is, The...American...Dream. It is a slot machine Jack pot and Oklahoma water in 1932. It is an old white man with a beard, pointing his finger at you saying, "hey dude, eat these Freedom Fries, get your nuts shot off at Normandy, and then...well...you will be a good American." I will tell you where the American Dream is, it lies somewhere on some interstate in Florida, beside your mother, the creepy buggy guy from walmart, and a busted up Ford Mustang. You might be saying to yourself, "Jay, you are an idiot. The American Dream does exist. The fact that there are Ford Mustangs, a Disney World, and your mother can screw the buggy guy at walmart is plenty proof." Well, no, the Church said that everyone shouldn't be able to get into Disney world in the mid 90's, Ford Mustangs get recalled, and buggy guys at walmart...well..yeah...buggy guys at Walmart are underpaid and they definitely need to get off your mama.

Jackie Gleason and an old Ford

They found my bones in an old Ford

a car

not a truck

in the trunk

I wasn't dead

I wasn't alive

I was dancing,

They found a hammer in that ol' trunk

a masons hammer

not a ball peen

rubber mallet

but a brick hammer

They put me on the show CSI

Alabama

not New York

Las Vegas

or Miami

Doug Heffernan played me

His southern accent was pretty shitty

not good

not bad

just shitty

They should have used Morgan Freeman,

or a fat Jackie Gleason.

What is good writing?

My question is elementary at best, but the reason I ask it is because subjectivity thrills me. People give that word hell, but I must admit that I have taken to its ring and underlying definition. It shows that we are human. It shows that we as humans all have our own opinions and certain ideas such as art, love, and good/bad writing cannot be given one pure definition.

Some of us like what I like to call Joycean writing. Joycean writing is very difficult to interpret a lot of the time and is filled with a stream of consciousness like prose style that makes me personally want to kill a tiny puppy. Some of us like simplicity accompanied with tears, while others like simplicity accompanied with sex. I like Vonnegut, Richard likes Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Jan likes Jeffry Eugenides. I like post-modernism, Dan likes modernism , and Donna likes romanticism.

I guess if I expect you to tell me what you like, I need to tell you what I like. I like Vonnegut :). I like Southern writing such as Fitzgerald, Rick Bragg, and Truman Capote. I also enjoy a few short story writers that also dwell below the Mason Dixon (Check out The Bear Bryant Funeral Train...its pretty good stuff). Tom Robbins is pretty cool also, along with Julian Barnes, Ferrol Sams, Raymond Chandler, Chuck P, and Charles Bukowski.

Now...my definition of good writing would definitely include tears, laughter, smiles, dead farm animals, and a glance into the past, present, and future.

What is your definition? Who do you like and why do you like them?

Website of the Week

http://southernlitreview.com/

This website gives a great overview of some of the South's greatest writers. Take a peek!

You will all be better off when you realize this. All of us are the same. We have our goals, our ideas, our opinions, and our destinations. Everyone wants to be recognized. Everyone wants for their art to be liked, their opinion to become everybody else's, and their destination to be the home of their future. Everyone has a blog with 3 followers and a painting sitting in a taped up box under their bed. We have our gardens in the summer and rotting vegetables in the winter. We all have our own recipe. We all want to be wanted, loved, and liked. We have a steel exterior that tells the world that what I'me saying isn't true, yet our pillows and the dark say different. No one wants to die alone with a smiling dog. They say an average person is remembered 50 years after their death. We all want at least 100. No one knows anyone in a Potter's Field. If you did, the person wouldn't be their. Everyone wants to be known and understood. We all want kids on our porch on Halloween, yet we want our kids to have the cutest costume. We all want our homes to be placed in Southern Living or for someone to tell us it could be. We all want the longest funeral processions, but we don't wanna die to get it. We also want everyone to pull over and take off their hats. When the funeral is long over, the cars are all in the garage, and another person is lying in the same hearse; we want the grass cut, the weeds pulled, and another person wanting to do it.

Southern Folk Artist- MoseT

Mose Tolliver- Watermelon

Montgomery, Al

Mose Tolliver-Montgomery, AL

Self Portrait

Rick Bragg in Retrospect

I remember my mother wiping her eyes as she turned page after page of Rick Bragg's novel, "Ava's Man".

"This is writing", she would say.

She would laugh at times, cry at times, and punch the wall at times. Words that can sit you on the porch of your childhood or bring back memories of your legs without a razor are in my opinion, writing. Reading it, she told me stories of teeth and Pale City, Alabama and her father catching fish the size of small cars. His writing did just that for her. It sat her in places she didn't want to be, it sat her in the arms of her Grandmother, Grandfather, and in the arms of her Daddy without the smell of whiskey on his breath. It moved her. I love Rick Bragg for that. I want my writing to make a woman cry, laugh, and sing. I want my writing to move someone.

I read "Somebody Told Me" my freshman year of college. It still sits in my senior dorm room today, ragged and torn. It is covered with notes about Kelly Clem and the tornado that destroyed Piedmont, Alabama. I love it. I have quoted from it and I have read it at least 4 times. But I must say, I didn't read it that many times because I am some crazed fan of Rick Bragg's, but I read it over and over again because that is the way I strive to write. I want to bring back the smells of your childhood, the hardness of the church pews, and the sourness of the hard candy that the elderly woman gave you for being quiet in church.