The Hoffman Box: Trying to Get Boston to Download Upload

I won't lie that I had high hopes for the day. Who wouldn't? I was driving into Boston, setting my sights on over a dozen bookshops, all within a two mile radius, and ten pounds of my first novel in my backpack. I had print outs of a local article I had been featured in, print outs of my Amazon reviews, and business cards. I was ready.


I hop in the car, and--oops. No gas. I'm dimly sensitive to early, bad luck omens for my day ahead. But this is no problem. I pull into a station and fill-up my tank, and a receive a bonus ego stroke. A fellow pumper crossed over the island. "Hey man, that must be fun to drive." He pointed at my Challenger. I laughed. "Oh, you don't even know." But in truth, a snow storm was due that same night, and muscle cars perform like Bambi on ice in the snow.

On my drive into town, I worked through my pitch, imagining myself pulling out, with a flourish "Upload" and its vibrant green and yellow cover, smooth as a snake oil salesman. I reassured myself. Even if I botched my first encounter, no big deal. I could recalibrate, if necessary, and improve my sales craft as the day progressed. I'd simply march on to the next store and perform that much better. Unbeknownst to me, my new hiking boots had entirely different plans for me.

Whistling, I pulled into a parking garage in the center of Boston's Financial district ($10 for a full day, not bad), set my Google navigator to pedestrian mode, and set off. Here I go!








By the way, not only is Boston chock full of bookstores, but also churches. With each church I passed, I wondered if I might take a knee inside and beg for divine providence.

My first stop was a very well known bookshop in Boston, a block away from Boston Common (OKAY, this was NOT my first stop--this is an outright lie, which I'll cop to later).

As I opened the door, I tried to turn a blind eye to the words that seemed to drift toward me from the painted window panes: "antique", "rare", "oldest". Damn it. Maybe not the best fit for a just published techno-thriller. I was out the door again in three short minutes, the awkward exchange akin to asking for a Big Mac at Burger King. Okay, strike one, but several to go.


I considered more seriously looping back to the nearest church, but I marched on. I consulted again my mapped out route, ignoring a disconcerting rawness in my heels, and a vague suspicion I shouldn't have worn new, untested shoes on my walking tour of Boston. Although--maybe this wasn't a bad thing. There was a certain religiosity there... A physical penance for my poor planning.

Already limping a bit now, I wasn't able to find the second bookshop. The bookstore was on my map, but in reality, it just wasn't there at all. I was reminded of a Twilight Zone episode I had seen where a couple accidentally wakes up minutes earlier than fate had planned. They go outside and literally witness reality being assembled before their eyes by little gnomes. No gnomes came for me.

The next shop was closed--on a Saturday?! As I worked my way between locations, I am barraged by a strategically placed cast of professional vagrants and college students, each begging for money, but for altogether different causes.

I quite liked the next bookstore, set below street level, an old world set of steps ushering me into the quiet shop. And score one for me, the owner of the shop was actually on site. He patiently listened to my pitch from his folding chair, mountains of books and magazines surrounding him. With the same patience, he explained that I had just walked into a bookstore solely devoted to lesbian, gay, and bisexual literature. I looked around. Yes. This seemed to be true. That would explain the ten foot tall rainbow colored store sign out front.

"But..." he said, "There seems enough of a mystery in this book that people would like it."

My first consignment.

I was now two hours in, and having minimal success. I began to feel like an outsider, marching in and bothering an otherwise sleepy, contented, antiquated Boston with my shrill and bright new book. I was hungry too. And what the hell was going on in my shoes? I dropped my bags and sat on a stoop to re-lace my boots that continued to bite into my heels with needle sharp teeth.

After a quick bite (a magically delicious and restorative slice of buffalo chicken pizza), I was back outside looking for my next challenge. My pronounced limp seemed to work in my favor now. The vagrants stutter stepped as they approached me now, studying my grimace, seeming to think twice about my capacity for charity. That, or they recognized some kind of beggarly kinship with me at this point. Hell, my hand was out just as much as theirs was. Wow, this was hard. I marveled at how difficult it was to get the word out, to broadcast myself. So it was at this point that I remembered a software testing apparatus named the "Hoffman Box", which is an enclosure used to test how software behaves when deprived of its ability to connect to the outside world. Hmmm. Yes. Sounds distinctly familiar.



I then made my way to South Station (a coliseum-like transportation center) and limped around it twice looking for the next bookstore I could see on my map, but again, not in reality. I had a revelation. I should start CALLING these stores first. I called, and it turned out the store I was looking for was located INSIDE South Station. Neither the bookstore manager nor the owner was present, but the employees I spoke to were very encouraging and I left them with all the information I could. Thousands of people passed the bookshop daily. Of all the shops, I hope hear back from this one.


The next two shops were outliers to my neat little 2 mile radius, so I decided to call them instead. And I'm glad I did. Both said their book purchasers weren't in, but shared with me their contact information. I had a sinking feeling I could have done 90% what I would accomplish today from home.

Time to remove the Hoffman Box, I thought. I stopped marching along my own delirious Freedom Trail, got out my cell phone, and called the next five stops in rapid succession. No solid deals from any of them, but I received all the information I need on each store's book purchaser.

For the entire day, I had been slogging around my laptop bag, along with the backpack, hopeful to find a place to write at the end of the day, when I finally tired of my trip. I found a spot in a local cafe, and scored the writer's trifecta: a seat next to a power outlet, an end table, and a twenty ounce latte. I took my mind off hocking my first book and spent three hours editing and updating the draft of my next novel, "dirt", and was heartened and encouraged all the more for it. Finally, real progress.

With my day complete, I headed home. I had tried. I certainly tried. Back in town, I stopped in at a local pub. Superstitiously, I wanted to close the loop, and make the circle complete. Because, you see, here's my confession: my first stop wasn't actually to a bookstore, but to a pub, for a beer, an on-deck circle of sorts where I could steel my nerves, surrounded by memorabilia of the city I was about to invade. So to a pub did I return, closer to home, and as luck would have it, I met who I had been looking for all day: a bookstore owner, with a store one town over. Seems I didn't have to venture so far after all.


As I turned in to bed, I decided to take a look at what had been bothering me all day.

Luckily, most of my follow-up bookstore legwork with eight other stores will be virtual.

On a Pale Pegasus

Our priest urged the rhythm method

My wife and I opted for something

more like jazz, strong but flexible

And for that produced with

the embarrassing terror of

accidental combustion,

a daughter

And so my love for our daughter

was a confused wall of marble,

heated and pressured

and densely streaked with lack of intention

I pictured her

held up against this calcium carbonate love

The near ivory reflected her well

Her cheeks as dual suns

Her nose a shier, pug star

But somewhere across the eyes

and near the gentle collapse of her throat

there streaked ashy stratum fissures

obscure and fatal

As with all of her birthdays

(precious stones collecting in our hearts)

She shared her last

with a despised and diseased twin

A child also of accident

This twin who pulled her down

making our daughter move

and breathe in ocean wet sand

fighting a shadow with ambition,

twice the weight of her body

that worked its malicious hands with thousands

of mucus shiny serpents as fingers

into her chest and lungs

In the first minutes of morning, every morning,

the coughing would seize her

Those hissing hands would squeeze her passages

writhing with renewed jealousy

and it was then

my daughter began

In between short, muffled kitten hacks,

the scrape of movement upon our ceiling, her floor,

jolted through the lightning rod of me

(my love became that way, maniacally receptive

to all energies she could display, I drank them in)

and released into the basement and foundation below

Beside me, my wife slept vigorously withdrawn

her snore a steady trot

while our daughter moved mountains of her white,

golden-knobbed furniture in the dark

After I first heard her nocturnal movements,

ragged hoof beats and snorts

I ripped up her uncooperative carpet

the very next day

and laid bare her hardwood floor

So then, when she thought I was asleep, she impossibly pushed, with an adrenaline panic for life, LARGE, FILLED BUREAUS, HOPE CHESTS, A HUTCH DISPLAYING HER RIGID RHYMES, A TWIN BED, HER STICKER-COVERED DESK, RE-HUNG HER HECTIC, TENSE CRAYON DRAWINGS, REARRANGED COUNTLESS PORCELAIN PEGASI (never still for long, a silent stampede of noble, rearing equines, front legs staggered in the effort of ascent, hoofs she painted red for prettiness, a silenced message curled in the frozen haste of their sprung wings), RAINBOW LAMPS, END TABLES, ALL HER SLUMBERING GALLERY OF STUFFED ANIMALS

around into new order

as if her life were the board games we played

her furniture the game pieces

Either we had started without her

or the deck wasn't shuffled right

and she insisted, with each grunt and push

of her enervated limbs,

we needed to start over

I didn't tell my wife

that the scrape-shock descending

through my shameful heart

became less

My wife didn't notice

the furniture was no longer drastically changed

Nothing large and encouraging

mistakenly blocked our daughter's door

Her room was frighteningly negotiable

There was perhaps the empty wicker hamper moved

or that green bean bag chair that wheezed tiny balls of Styrofoam

as I struck it with my fists

was in another, nearby corner

My wife didn't know,

when I started making our daughter's bed,

how I would hold up her bedclothes

to the morning light of the window

and measure our daughter's life and disease

slain into a salty aura of sour sweat

that described her outer form,

like a fully eclipsed sun,

upon her sheets.

Next novel progress...

I'm so excited to be done with the my first draft of "dirt". It's around 80 k or so, will do one more pass of touch-ups, and take in some beta reader feedback, and then be ready to submit!

Oasis

As if only upon the remembrance of fuel

my car rolls into the gas station

like the first beast of burden

to finally think for itself

and stops

I pump high-octane as a plea

and beg it, stroking its rusted quarter panel

for at least three more zeroes

or four more bald tires

coaxing it with premium liquid chocolates

and some little verse

when suddenly I see, pasted upon the pump

a statement refusing third-party checks

and scribbled to the side, I read

that Crystal loves Bobby (signified by a plus and needing no equal)

in faded blue ink

But Bobby is now crossed out

Crystal’s made the effort to come back

not for the penny less a gallon

but to tell Bobby

her tank is full

and she pumps her own gas

Ayudeme!

(from a small plastic box at the check-out aisle)

Even the size nine feet at the end of the day come out

of the size six shoes

The large square peg stops attempting

the small round hole

After mere hours, our heads emerge from

the straining birth canal

Diamonds are finally mined from eons

as claustrophobic coal

Luckily, the pressed butterfly falls out

while looking up the word "hegira" from Webster's

And always, mercifully, there will be another

infinitesimal pause between tick and tock

The pea has days off between nights

beneath the princess

But without mercy, more pained than a New Yorker

pinned under the Statue of Liberty's stiletto heel,

is the lonely, trapped,

Mexican Jumping

Bean

SLIGHTLY INCOMPLETE MESSAGE...

SLIGHTLY INCOMPLETE MESSAGE TRANSMITTED FROM FBI HEADQUARTERS  IN QUANTICO, VIRGINIA TO PRESIDENT REGARDING A GOVERNMENTAL THEORY OF POETICS, INTERCEPTED AND  DESCRAMBLED COMPLIMENTS OF SALVATORE NOCERA - OBSESSIVE, DANGEROUSLY INTELLIGENT, INSOMNIAC HAM RADIO OPERATOR:


"... so we are fairly certain, thus far, according to numerous corroborating reports from a cross section of known poets (under much 2BABBLE-NXS serum) that, verbatim, 'there's this cosmic band that passes through me with extreme rapidity, a braided ray of pinkish thrust, finely veined and arteried with threads of the most brilliant f***ing gold,' and this flexible beam (dimensions unknown), purportedly coursing throughout the universe in quick, successive revolutions, occasionally touches poets, nipping a toe, catching a midsection, and may reasonably sever a head (undocumented thus far), but it is in this contact with this circling band, we refer to as the Poet Band, in touching more and more of a poet, rids him or her of more and more mortal flesh, in some mystic transformation, leaving behind (pure conjecture, solely in the poet's conception) slightly tingling lungs and occasional numbness in extremities (see similarity to asleep limbs in Document 12, sect. 4 of POETICS), and eventually, we induce, may free the poet of all carnality, as (to use a poet's verbiage) a dart-board becomes less and less itself as it is used more and more, leading the affected poet to unprecedented inspiration and proliferation of quality work, but, unfortunately in the exact moment that this band touches non-poets, adverse temporary and permanent effects ensue, whereas grace is imbued within the poet, the opposite occurs with the non-poet, such as slight memory loss (see deposition of subject #61473:  'It was on the tip of my tongue'), and major memory loss (often confused with Alzheimer's, see Reagan's autobiography), knees buckling, getting 'the giggles' in church, the unnerved subjects who attempt to climb one step more than is there, and finally, those unfortunate citizens who endlessly pick up one thing as something else falls, but our program, V.R.O.O.M., (funded from our successful, secretly executed 'miscellaneous tax' strategy) has been implemented for such afflicted, non-poets, in the interest of national security and individual safety (Vehicle Ready Operation Of Museless:  a clever program in which non-poet subjects are unwillingly conscripted, for their own good, and set into constant motion throughout the continental United States), to avoid further contact from the Poet Band, subjects are ingeniously hidden in government manufactured cars, often colored a sickly neon, glittery hue, with windows, for anonymity, tinted to illegal opaqueness, and further fitted with two experimental devices to prevent future contact with the Poet Band (utilizing both sound and light defenses):  a set of Richter Scale-like sub-woofers, which will vibrate a neighborhood for a radius of 2.2 kilometers, and also a black-light glow which radiates from the undercarriage, and with these automobiles (appropriately dubbed 'Nausea Machines') we hope such measures will prevent the non-poet population from further contact, as they frequent, town to town, noted 'neutral ground' areas, suspiciously public yet somehow immune to the Poet Band:  malls, movie theaters, main streets, some universities and colleges, large collections of giddy adolescents, and usually in close proximity to 'mosh pits' (where blood, hair, and mucus samples are being  gathered without protest by entrenched and properly 'grunged' agents this very minute) and finally, regretfully, our last immune area, Arkansas, yet as our interrogation of currently 'touched' poets continues, New Mexico based satellite dishes have picked up a possibly relevant message (studied through our finest sound equipment, specialists have identified the voice as most similar to a grown man in gay, girlish timbre), though the code to crack said message continues to elude our 'best boys', and the undecoded message remains:  'fudge, fudge, call the judge, mama's got a new-born baby, not a boy, not a girl, just an ordinary baby, wrap it up in tissue paper, send it up the elevator, first floor miss -', note:  'first floor miss -' repeats itself in simple fashion, as 'first' represents variable 'n' in the progressive equation 'n + 1', thus the 'n' variable increases one whole number in sequence, leading to 'second, third, fourth', et cetera, and always followed by 'floor miss',  which then continues on, according to our 'Big Al' super-computers, ad infinitum, and to supplement that bad news, our initial project, commenced at your request, involving the capturing and confinement of one hundred poets who were under the impression they had earned an all expense paid, one month stay at an unknown writer's commune in Washington, D.C., has failed also, as the poets would not remain seated in assigned cubicles and work on their theory of poetics, despite liberal cattle prod use, and also General Electric's Inspiration Evacuator Machine was perhaps set at unwise levels, causing the poets to utilize their pens in combat fashion, dueling over what little inspiration remained in the observation room, as the poets, consequently, separated into two initial factions (a revealing spectacle), the Masochists and the Sadists, where a grueling fourteen day stand-off persisted, as the Masochists demanded to be stabbed and the Sadists happily refused, but on the fifteenth day, everyone, well, we are down to four territorial poets, each commanding one corner of the observation room, brandishing their pens with what our chief psychotherapist perceives as malicious intent, but without losing hope, our present and most hopeful effort, in a parallel project, is focused upon a youngish poet's latest, most intriguing response (his matter of factness widely unappreciated by our agents, despite the largest dose of serum ever administered) to our repeated queries regarding the nature of the Poet Band:

'It's God's jump rope, man.'"

"Upload" published!

Very happy to announce my debut novel published on 12/17!

http://redadeptpublishing.com/special-release-upload-by-collin-tobin/