POETS Day! Raymond Carver and a Clarifying Rain

Libasstref, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome once again to POETS Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. I first read about such a wonderful elevating of a simple Friday to an underground high holiday in the Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin. Around three in the afternoon an inverse relationship developed between the population of the floor with all the detective’s desks and the back room at The Oxford Bar.

Those books are all set in Scotland, almost exclusively in Edinburgh, so without definitively knowing the origin let’s thank the Scots anyway as the likely progenitors of a wonderful time.

Now, let’s get you out of work.

If you are at all a fan of Leverage or any other show that features a group of talented people united as a team, or crew as it were, to pull off a con, you’ll love this one. It’s got misdirection, room for improvisation, and good old-fashioned dishonesty. There’s likely to be a little sneaking around too, because while so much of this is meant to catch the boss’s eye, the stage management cannot be seen.

First, pick your crew. People are going to be making excuses for why you’re missing so you need more than one co-conspirator to make this believable. Bosses are quick to notice if all the answers as to your whereabouts are coming from the same person. They are less likely to spot shenanigans when several employees say they just saw you in the hall or in the bathroom or getting coffee, because that’s the plan. Plausibly assure the boss that the POETS Day escapee is still on the premises while in fact he or she is three quarters into a cold one before the three o’clock airing gets to Double Jeopardy.

Keeping the boss’s head on a swivel is only part of the plan. A suspicious boss might want tangible evidence that you still haunt the halls. That’s why after lunch at the deli you got an extra sandwich and a bottle of water to go. It’s also why you printed a few spreadsheets or inventories and made sure your under-desk trash can was three-quarters full before you left. You are now ready to leave the building.

I’ve read that if you find yourself in a situation you should never yell “Someone call 911!” because no one will. The idea is that they all assume that “Someone” is not them and things are being taken care of. You need to point at a person and directly tell them to make the call.

Assume the same dynamic in your escape. Make Bill the point man on the boss. His job is to delay the boss with needless questions to give Frank time to occasionally sneak into your office, move some files around, take a bite of the sandwich, a glug from the water bottle, and crumple up a spreadsheet or two for the trash can. Linda’s on emergency distraction duty. Should Bill’s stupid act not slow the boss down, she does a pratfall yelling, “Ow, my foot!” Everybody looks away and Frank is free to leave your office undetected.

Linda and Frank will change roles depending on whether or not the escapee is a man or a woman. You either want lipstick on the water bottle or you don’t.

Reciprocity is expected. Next week you’ll be sipping water and eating an hours-old sandwich or yelling “Ow, my foot!” to the benefit of others. It’s a rotation, so don’t let your crew get bigger than four including yourself. You should at least be able to see your turn on the horizon.

Another note on crew selection, and this should go without saying, never team up with someone you are in competition with for a promotion or even a parking space. Recipe for disaster.

By quitting time, a glance into your office should reveal a few opened files, an overflowing trash can, an empty water bottle, and maybe a crust of bread on deli paper. It’s time for your compatriots to join your semi-inebriated self at the bar. It’s your pull by the way. (Pull means a round of drinks for your friends in Scottish – I learned that from the Ian Rankin books too.) Enjoy starting off the weekend with your merry band of nine to five grifters.

This week’s poem comes from Raymond Carver, arguably America’s greatest short story writer and frankly, if Andre Dubus never wrote I’d remove that “arguably” in a second. His poetry is of interest to me, because he’s one of the few “without a net” poets that I enjoy. There’s rarely rhyme and when there is meter, he breaks with it all the time.

When my wife and I were dating, we took a creative writing course at UAB. The teacher was a narcissistic ass, but he was a tremendous writer who prided himself on “clarity and honesty.” One of his books was nominated for The National Book Award.

He’d hold parties at his house for students and friends. He was worth knowing because he gave excellent criticism and it was fun to listen to him petulantly complain about consequences that were the obvious result of his actions. He railed for a few weeks about being forced out as an Elder at his church just because he and his wife wrote a clear and honest account of their years of alcohol and drug abuse, multiple affairs, and more abortions than they could remember. They were sober when they wrote the book but readily admitted that the affairs were ongoing. Unfair!

One day my wife, then my girlfriend, said that she didn’t want to go to the parties anymore. No problem by me. It was twenty years later that I found out that narcissist hit on her every time I was out of earshot. I wish I had known at the time. The world missed out on a clear and honest account of what it’s like to have your nose broken by a pissed-off boyfriend.

One time he told us about his time with The Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His brief time and Carver’s brief time with the group overlapped and they ran in the same social circles. When you had people from the workshop over, you set up a bar for everyone to pour their own and then you set aside a bottle of vodka. That was Ray’s.

Carver stopped drinking in 1977 and stayed sober until his death in 1988. He said that had he kept drinking, he wouldn’t have made it past forty. At fifty his other vice got him. A heavy smoker, he fell to lung cancer, but he left behind short story collections like Cathedral and Will You Please Be Quiet, Please. What a talent.

“Rain,” the poem below, was published in 1984. I can’t be certain when exactly he wrote it’ but it seems to be a reflection on his days of drinking. I’m reminded of FitzGerald’s line from This Side of Paradise: “I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” But that doesn’t quite fit. I think Carver is saying that while he made mistakes, those mistakes are part of what made him the man he became.

“Rain” is from the collection Where Water Comes Together with Other Water:

Rain

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And Gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.