first thing first. i eat the kiwi like a peach. or a large strawberry. in my earlier years i did like my mom, and cut it in half, putting one half in an egg cup and ate it with a spoon. too much work. i am eating one a day.
order of operations. peel off the little sticker. roll it between your fingers so it doesn’t stick to the inside of your bin bag, but falls down onto the rest of the plastic waste. it’s nothing wrong with making it be a sticker on the inside of the bag, but it feels more like it is thrown when it is balled up.
wash it and shake it over the wash for a couple of seconds, then dry it with a kitchen towel. depending on how gross the kitchen towel is, perhaps change it if it reeks of your roommates stir fry.
i pluck off the dark brown hairs on top. the long husky stuff. it ruins the texture for me if it is still intact. the hard stem part at the bottom i like to hang on to. it becomes the end point for your consumption.
some people, like my mom, and probably you, are probably asking yourself, isn’t the fuzzy exterior of a kiwi really gross to put in your mouth? i don’t think so. i feel slightly hardcore, but also slightly self-conscious about it. the self-consciousness comes from me thinking you judge me for eating it with the rind still on, and that you think i am only doing this to be special and unique.
i think it takes some sort of willingness to be “unique” to try to eat it with the rind on. people probably have never tried it because they are so set in their way of eating it the traditional way. my mother will never eat kiwi like me.
this year i learnt that you can buy yellow kiwis. i have only ever eaten the green ones. they look exactly the same on the outside. after years of thinking about kiwi as the ultimate exotic fruit, the yellow one becomes even more exotic, just because it is new to me. also, after eating it every day, i don’t really find kiwis to be that exotic anymore.
the kiwi fuzz scrapes slightly against the tongue and the roof of the mouth. i can only eat one. i have tried eating two, but it really makes my mouth go all numb. not entirely unpleasant, but not something i seek out either.
i have been eating one kiwi every day for a week now and i have yet to experience something. it’s not like there has to happen something. but something will happen sooner or later, and until then, i will eat a kiwi every day.
one day i got curious about what it would look like if i shaved a kiwi. several humorists on the internet have beaten me to it. the results were not as spectacular as you’d think.
i saw a picture on reddit about someone having slices of kiwi on their pizza. as you might expect 50% of the comments are “ewww gross” or “yes officer, that picture” but some people are saying “i mean, i like pineapple on pizza, so i might try this lol”. one of my roommates told me she thought kiwis on pizza would be gross. “they are too sweet” she said. i have never thought about kiwis being sweet before. i guess they are, but i have always just thought about kiwis being kiwi flavoured. and it has more of an acidic kick to it than a sweet one, i think.
i don’t think i am going to try it on pizza. i like it as a dessert. i wonder how long it will be until i dread the daily kiwi. right now, a week in, i am looking forward to treating myself to it. only by making dumb routines like this can i feel i have done something of importance that day.
i am going to eat a kiwi every day until something happens.
This will be a sporadic and ongoing series of interviews with people i ask, and who are kind enough to not reject me. This is the first one.
I bought Bram’s book on a whim. I like to browse through small indie press book lists and just window shop. The title grabbed me first, then the subtitle. An attempt. This intrigued me, and I had no choice but to purchase this attempted poetry, that ties in with midwestern travails, bike rallies and, outdoor idleness.
On first glance it might look tempting to just read all your poems in “Western Erotica Ho” in one go, but for me, I had to take it slow, almost like I was waiting between the poems, waiting for you to travel to one place before I could follow. To me this book does what Americana does to me. It wraps a safe blanket around me, and gives me this old timey, life under the stars, sitting at a campfire next to some redwoods, coffee and beans on the embers type feel. A dash of Abbey, a hint of Brautigan, but with the freshness of alt-lit to top it off.
Two questions to start us off:
Who is Bram Riddlebarger?
I’m a product of Southeastern Ohio, perhaps an old McManigal Company brick. My family has lived in this area for a long time. The foothills of Appalachia. It’s an economically depressed but beautiful place. I moved to a few other states in my twenties, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon and have traveled to all 48 contiguous states, but this area draws me back. I’ve lived mainly in Athens County most of my adult life but I grew up in Hocking County. It’s a very unique place geologically due to the last glacial melt that flattened most of Ohio. The run-off from that carved the Black Hand Sandstone in the hills into some amazing land features. So the land has always been fascinating to me. I like place as a theme and more often than not focus on that in my writing.
You write on the cover that this is a poetic attempt on vacation. What made you put this safety measure onto the collection? Are you uncertain that they stand on their own merit, or are you downplaying your authority? Or perhaps neither?
Well I always take a journal with me when I travel. I don’t necessarily think the journaling will become a book or even anything useful, but sometimes it works out. On this particular vacation, I was using this little pocket notebook and it just came about very quickly as a narrative by the day. The title and the subtitle as well. I’m fairly certain, with the exception of some editing, that the notebook and what became the book are almost identical. I think I added one or two as afterthoughts a day or so later. I guess the attempt is that if you don’t try nothing is going to write itself. It also of course ties in a bit with the title in a sensual way. There’s a push and pull with intimacy of people and the land. It’s also hard to make love to your wife when you’re stuck in a tent and a car with three small children for a few weeks. A lot of tension and pent up feelings sometimes. So the land and poems become outlets or attempts.
So, this must mean that you didn’t really know what would become a thematic whole, before* after the vacation, or did it appear gradually as you wrote?
It mainly appeared gradually as I wrote it each day. It was really just a travelogue of poems. It became a bit more cohesive as the days went by because I felt like it was developing. It became something between me and the little notebook too. We covered a lot of miles between camping spots until we got out to Wyoming especially so there was plenty of time to reflect on the land and the pressure that builds up with three kids and two adults in a small space surrounded by a large land and no real plan but finding a camping spot for the next night whenever we ended up. I don’t know. I’ve done this on several other vacations as well and have a few of those collected together into small unpublished books, but this one always seemed to have a completeness to it more so I think than the others perhaps. I certainly didn’t think at the time that it would ever become a published book.
You purposely use words and names that are associated with ancient history. Words like “Pleiades”, “Titan”, “Olympics”. Did you set out to “mythologize” your travel? Is it farfetched to read this and get some Odyssey-vibes from it?
I didn’t set out to do that but as we made this trip during the time of the Summer Olympics, it quickly became a common theme. Wherever we went the Olympics were on the news or in the paper or on the radio or the tv. It was as pervasive as the motorcycles we encountered throughout the trip that were coming and going to the Sturgis Bike Rally, which we hadn’t really taken into account until we were on the road. I would say that I love quest stories and myths and they are always either conscious or subconsciously there for me. Both of the novels I’ve written are quest stories. So no I don’t think it’s farfetched. That’s a good observation. I hadn’t even thought of the Titan connection until you just mentioned it. Ha.
– You said that land becomes outlets for you. How important are places to your storytelling? Are they actors in your scenes or directions?
Place and places are definitely very important, perhaps the most important thing to me. I like the idea of them being occupied by all the small gods as Jim Harrison might put it. The idea that the land holds the world and our reflections of it. That it always changes and yet remains. A touchstone greater than our humanity. So in a sense I guess place is the actor and we are the directions. I think the Luxury Diner poem is a good example of that in this book.
How much of your vacation revolved around eating? Your poems are chock full of food. Are they a product of the primal human out journeying, or are they memory triggers, or something else?
Ha. Yeah, I like to include food. I’d say it’s more of the primal human thing. That and finding a place to sleep or go to the bathroom. When you’re car camping and not planning ahead too far beyond that day or the next these things become the focal points to revolve around. There’s only so much ice in the cooler or room in the car. I love grocery stores too. So for me it’s always interesting to visit the local grocery or convenience store wherever you travel. It’s a nice way to see local foodways rather than just eating the same fast food burger that’s the same everywhere. That can be convenient of course but I think it’s more interesting to see the small or large changes of food and beverages and snacks and local restaurants in different towns and regions. And sometimes of course you just have to make due when you’re camping and cooking over a fire or if you can’t have a fire and you pull into a campground that you finally found available at 9pm after driving all day you use up whatever you have left in the car.
What/Who inspires you and your poetry? Do you have any cool plugs, recommendations or stuff you think we should know?
Well certainly the land again and place are often the inspiration. I like a lot of ideas concerning animism so that too. The world as a living force. I like to think we just need to listen sometimes or pay attention. Rocks and animals and plants and objects are just as and probably more intelligent than us. Or maybe aware is a better word. As far as plugs go, I really like Devin Sams poetry. And Bart Schaneman is a writer that focuses on place in a wonderful way. I recently read Neil Clark’s book TIme. Wow. from Back Patio Press and it just blew me away. Really great work. Definitely recommend that book.
Is there something you would like to add about the book, or a project you are working on, or a place we can go and buy your book without giving Jeff Bezos our money?
Thanks for the interview, Christian. I’d also like to say thank you to Taylor Sumner and Nate Perkins at Trident Press @presstrident who were kind enough to work with me and publish this book. You can find this book and their other titles, including the new Noah Cicero book due out soon, at https://www.tridentcafe.com/trident-press.
You can also find Bram on Twitter under the handle @b_riddlebarger
*A better word would be “until” here, as to avoid unnecessary confusion, but I have chosen to stand by my terrible syntax for the sake of the internet historians of the future.
milkpeanuts 