Amerika

Vex’d Pig Hymn Waltz Fuck Bjorsq Mark Amerika Vex’d Losing Ron is like losing a part of your body, not necessarily an arm or a leg, but some kind of phantom limb that you could always turn to as a kind of secret weapon against the Powers That Be, something that originated in the imagination but that eventually grew both on you and in you, literally; it was always there, a daring presence, a prehensile creature clawing away at the commercial captains of consciousness. Pig With Ron it was always kosher. He lived his life the way he wanted to and he died the way he wanted to, too. When it came to giving advice to an emerging fictioneer, he would always help you manage expectations while at the same time champion your best efforts so that you felt like you had a shot—a shot at anything: getting a story published, getting accepted into grad school, getting a novel published, getting an offer for a tenure-track position at the university in the college town you already lived in, getting early tenure at that same university so that you could continue dreaming about the alternative publishing empire striking back. Ron was a kosher New Realist. His lifestyle practice encompassed an entrepreneurial poetics that sold you on the idea that there was always some hope left in this world for underground artistic voices to have their say in Consumerville USA. The operative mantra for this lifestyle practice was to turn your life into an ongoing pseudo-autobiographical dérive of spontaneous invention. Form was something that you left behind as a kind of trace, like your footprints in the sand. The important thing was to annihilate the important thing. Although some things were clearly more important than others. Like this: …“creative” writing is always improvisation—that’s what makes it creative. The difference between this kind of writing and so-called non-creative writing is that in the former thinking is simultaneous with the moment of composition while the latter is largely a report of thinking that’s already been done. Thinking in the moment of composition calls up faculties distinct from those that dominate more logical thought.

Hymn In his pocket paperback edition of The Selected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ron marks up many of the essays, especially the one called “Experience.” One hatch mark means this could be interesting. Two hatch marks means we’ll have to look at this again, and again. Three hatch marks means we’re getting burning hot. Four hatch marks means the text is on fire and one has to live it to believe it. A four-hatch-mark excerpt from Emerson: “Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association.” Ron the Networker. Ron the Network. Ron the Mover Shaker. Sui generis. Waltz Ron short for Run On as in run-on sentence like in Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues where he was a runon sentence applying his sense of measure to things we never even thought of a Ron-on sentence a running sentence this reminds me of a time in the early 90s when I with three other emerging fictioneers were walking with Ron who was late for dinner with Julia and friends and out of nowhere he said “I’ve gotta run” and run he did in the middle of the street across Broadway challenging the traffic that was speedily coming at him but he beat the traffic in what I can only call an improvisational scamper a sukenick shuffle (always with a loaded deck) and it was the only time I ever saw Ron running and if you were lucky enough to have ever seen that you would always remember it the sukenick shuffle Ron Sukenick aka Roland Sycamore a running sentience mobilizing himself in the networked space of flows Fuck }———————————————————> }=====================================> }##################:::::::::::::::———————> this way this way this way this way this way this way this way out this

Amerika continued way out

O Bjorsq That’s code for: use your imagination or else someone else will use it for you. Thanks, Ron. For you, cher collaborator, I always will.