Nothing makes television more fascinating than watching it through someone else’s window. Normal, boring stuff – folding laundry, watching people watch a TV program you don’t even like, eating dinner — it’s all hypnotic when you watch other people do it, when they have no idea that you’re there watching them.

When I was a kid I’d take forever to walk the dog, walking as slowly as I could so I could safely gaze into open windows while still moving down the street. Stopping to really take it in or moving closer into the bushes, that’s creep territory. Usually my dog would smell a squirrel or something and yank me away before things got TOO weird.

There are several high-rise apartment buildings across from my office building. Sometimes when I’m on the phone I look out there and see blinds opening and shutting, people walking in front of the windows, sometimes leaning out. It blows my mind, to think of all that eating, sleeping, cleaning and living that goes on right over there while I have my face up against this electronic lotus flower.

Somebody else must have found my tossing and turning the other night to be pretty mind-blowing, too. When I woke up yesterday morning, I could see two perfect handprints in the dust outside my bedroom window:
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Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Originally uploaded by life serial

I want to eat this book the way headhunters eat their beloved elders. I want to eat this thing the way that dumb worms eat their smart brethren and can suddenly navigate a maze they’ve never seen before.

I’d say I was jealous of Wells Tower’s powers except that’s like a toad being jealous of the sky — there’s something vast and expansive here, something I’m not ever going to be but I can’t stop staring and dreaming all the same.

My friend David Rogers gave me this book last week over some drinks. Almost as an afterthought. He didn’t know what he was doing, probably had no idea how inspiring I’d find this. It’d be like having a few down the pub and then sort of saying “Hey Arthur, have you tried that sword down in the town square? See if you can’t catch a hold of it, just for kicks.”

I’ve been cussing and wrestling to try and turn my own stories that I’ve done at the Moth and right here in this here blog into something more something better than “check out me and my wacky life.”

Now I know where I’m aiming. I feel like Columbus aiming at India, where I’m not gonna hit it but that screwed up sextant may get me somewhere good yet.

This book is a finely chopped blend of Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, and a keen ear for the high musical rhythm of speech in the Northern parts of the South. I started reading it Thursday night, finished it Saturday afternoon, then turned right around and started reading it again.

“Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” is a spectacular collection of short fiction, but it’s also the title of the last story in the book — a first-person account from a world-weary Viking about the soul-crushing work he’s got to perform marauding and pillaging to feed his wife. He’s got a vain boss and a workaholic buddy, and he’s getting pretty sick of it. It’s hilarious and beautiful.

You can hear Wells Tower himself reading the story here. His voice is weary, soft, and gentle, incongruous against the story’s graphic bloodshed. It’s astounding, is all.

Download it and put it on your little iPods or whatever and listen to it on the way to work. It’s the best thing you’ll hear all week.

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My self-promotion-averse co-blogger D.Billy has been colossally busy as of late. He was responsible for having to help prep Cooper Union for Obama’s visit this week, a task that I’m sure glad I didn’t have to perform. I can barely remember to put out a fresh roll of toilet paper when people come over to my place.

D.Billy’s also been slogging it up and down 95 on various buses to see his lady, a process that I am abundantly familiar with. That really, really sucks, because you can’t even complain about it properly. I mean, shit, you still got a girlfriend at the end of the bus ride, right, so who are you to fuss?

There is ALWAYS somebody who is either 1) freestyle rapping to their headphones 2) eating something deep-fried or 3) wearing huge sunglasses and an empire-waist dress and talking in a nasal whine about some guy they’re “just hanging out with, whatever,” on the four-hour slog out of New York on the bus on a Friday night, though. And lady at the end or not, that gets mighty old.

None of this is a valid excuse for not blogging much, though. The real reason this blog’s been fallow lately: we both just tired as hell.

I’m pleased to report that D.Billy has not been too busy or tired to throw up a new Site Intervention, though. Check this bad thing out:

You can see the rest of his Site Interventions here.

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