Our Agora

The Way I Remember The Wind

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:04:08 -0600

The way I remember the wind
solace drooled
over ponds
while the meat remained in our teeth
and the vulture flew a straight line
and even thereafter, when the robotic
constellations removed the myths from the stars,
and our fathers killed their fathers
and now, do you think me condemned
when I say (and to no one but myself)
when I was a child: I spoke, I thought, and
I walked like a child

even older now, my speech, my thought, my
trembling is deserving of a man.
and the silence in between,
that’s the way I remember the wind.

The Artwork Of Alexander Revier

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:09:17 -0600

Note: Click the images to view the full size.

Bishop

Red City 300

Alexander

Kingsley Riis 300

Monster

Psychedelphia

Alex's whimsical terror is active in all niches and nooks of the Dallas and Fort Worth mainframe. If you wish to work with Alex, or need help with flyers or jacket art or want mermen painted on your wall, contact Mr. Revier at:

severerevier@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/alexanderkairevier

Tiebreaker

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:35:51 -0600

"Tiebreaker was prolific. We were in the belly of the whale then and quite comfortable. Cigarettes. The love-chase. A splay of shots on the rhodes, one spilled, when the song ended Jones swallowed all five, then another, a whiskey sour splash on Roe's appalachian mountain shaker, and they still somehow carried us through two a.m. beautifully. On those nights, most of us questioned the sanity of leaving that whale's protective carriage. Some of you may remember those Sunday nights at 7th Haven – shuffleboard, music, fellowship. A guarantee of LaMonica's silver voiced poetics backed by keys and kicks that palpated to the pulse of our generation. As with most good things, Tiebreaker's minor movement ended with the stroke that started it, but continues in the memory and the music of those who were inspired by it.

"A Minor Miracle" offers us more than a great record that celebrates the enigmatic charisma and skill of singer songwriter John LaMonica. His lyrics still drip with that sentiment that plucks heartstrings, the songs are riddled with samples and programming that remain innovative and diverse amidst the current digitized trend ('Sons and Daughters'), and you will find yourself alone quietly humming his melodies, again ('Sweet Memory'). But this record also offers us a living memory of the spontaneous collective that formed Tiebreaker. Like a Faulkner novel or Tortoise record, the collection of each part of the record is greater than the sum of the whole. The record possesses a raw, fragmented quality, made of songs that don't always seem to agree with one another, as if a number of ideas from different periods of life were pulled together and bound around one spine. Each fragment, each unique musician, each 7th Haven Sunday, each vocal layer, beat and melody, compose the value of Tiebreaker's minor miracle. Thank you! to Doll House Records for gathering these fragments into an album that will be remembered and enjoyed."

Robert E. Longacre Humbles His Company

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:07:00 -0600

Robert E. Longacre is a linguist, translator, consultant, professor, husband and father.

Robert E. Longacre humbles his company. His reputation, embodied simply by an austere but gracious demeanor, conveys a heightened understanding of the world and its people before he speaks a word of his story. Dr. Longacre found a noble craft, dedicated his life to it, and in turn his craft shaped this remarkable oral history. This is his story, in his voice: a compelling, wholly unconventional linguist, translator, and academic, a father, husband and servant of Christ and the Word¹.

Bob and Gwen met at Houghton College in New York in the forties. Planning to become a preacher, Bob attended and graduated from Faith Seminary in Pennsylvania. A speech impediment (successfully treated many years later), and acute interest in language, directed Bob to the written word and eventually the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Newlywed and “the greenest pair ever let loose across the border,” the Longacres settled with the Trique people² in remote, southern Mexico. They were true pioneers: the village was accessible only by foot or animal, living was rough, and the people were not particularly interested³ in a foreign presence or message. While he documented their language, Bob learned the Trique mythology and a bit of their worldview⁴, witnessed the community change as Western and Trique cultures overlapped, and he discusses the difficulties involved in living between two different worldviews⁵. While working on the Trique New Testament translation, Bob worked all over the world. He taught summer courses at the University of Oklahoma, held workshops and conferences for linguists stationed across the globe, and published volumes on research both thriving and dying languages. In the sixties, after nearly twenty years of work, Bob completed and dedicated the Trique translation.

Dr. Longacre explored and documented unknown territory for the world’s linguistic community, starting with the Trique tonal language⁶. He documented their five emic levels of tone, the first language for which that number of levels was demonstrated. In the fifties Bob received a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under Zellig Harris. He did the first serious historical study of the vast Otomanguean language phylum, of which Trique is a part. He adopted the Tagmemics model of language, and modified Kenneth Pike’s approach to syntax, grammar, and discourse. Although this was in the hey day of the transformational generative model developed by Noam Chomsky, Bob contributed significantly to the field of applied linguistics by enabling literally thousands of linguists to discover the structure, and deal with the mysteries, of many languages. Bob and Gwen moved to the International Linguistics Center, where Bob received an appointment to the University of Texas at Arlington, and is now Professor Emeritus. Gwen, Bob, and a U.T.A. colleague, recently returned⁷ to the Trique people to observe the tonal language using today’s computer software; the computer data confirmed that Longacre’s observations and orthography, developed with pen and pencil nearly fifty years ago, are correct. While they were initially received with distrust and suspicion, today’s Trique welcome them as family: “I never thought I’d see the day when a Trique woman would bid me goodbye with tears in her eyes,” said Gwen of their final visit.

The Longacres are six strong: Bob and Gwen reared four “citizens of the world:” Roberta, Bill, Stephan, and David. Each child was affected in different ways by their various cultural immersions and had to make the difficult adjustment to life in their all but foreign homeland, America⁸; but their family and purpose remained steadfast through a life of change and remote travel. While Dr. Longacre labored, Gwen⁹ was (and remains) a bedrock, both in the field and at home, for her children and husband. Her patience, compassion, kind humor, and absolute devotion to her family serve as glue and binding for this story’s pages.

This story is a testament to Dr. Longacre’s only words of guidance¹⁰ to us: “Find something worth doing and do it with your whole heart… as you give yourself to it, it will shape you and make you a better person – give yourself to it.” Such words carry farther when the speaker understands the burden s/he is passing on: it is our time to do those good acts to which greater people, with broader shoulders, devoted themselves and now set down before us.

Note: Selections of this biography are adapted from Colin R. Murphy's "Notes on Longacre."

Dangling In My Mouth

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:06:02 -0600

When I was a young man, Dominic carried us all on his back, and we lived the free life of a rover. From Murray’s old pub, to the dusty benches out back of our dormitory, that Fool Dominic waltzed us into a concatenation of wit and reason that always culminated in a feast of soul and flow of camaraderie. The ebb of this tide would peak when the drunkards would all stumble off to their homes, leaving the four of us to pick up the pieces and move on. We’d sit for hours until dawn, just talking. Whenever the night had ended, the three of us would carry it on until morning, waiting to break out the bottle of Jameson and cigars until everyone else had left. Usually, it would be Luke and Dominic carrying our conversation, leading us through mazes of ridiculous ideas and insight that would be priceless, I couldn’t help but think, if recorded. If we got too serious, Dominic, like a good Fool, would bring us back to earth, opening or closing or pushing his wide lips and mouth around, laughing at any and all of us, while Luke would invariably, in exasperation, clench his teeth, and, probably realizing that his 5’6 could not even touch any of us without retribution, rip off another article of clothing, before beginning to join in the general laughter. We probably couldn’t match the intellect of Luke; luckily, he was intelligent enough to know that. And we had David on our side.

While having Luke ensured we endured the school part of our college experience, David was our muscle who could control us all. He had a red mustache and red hands. Once a huge kid, a drunken freshman, threw up on our special flower couch. Screaming at him to sober up, David picked him up by the collar and helped him outside into the nearby pond. Must have thrown him ten feet. Then, twirling his mustache with the chunk of meat that was his index finger, he proceeded to muscle the couch as well out the door and into the pond—“It was de-flowered,” he explained. David was our Goliath. I remember every night that we would sit up; but David would often not see it to the sun’s rising, having drank too much to keep his eyes open. As we would slowly drown in alcohol fellowship, David would blissfully sink into slumber, until our conversation with the night would harmonize with the ponderous and rasping wheezing peculiar to the smoker-athlete. If Luke got too high in the clouds, David could send him crashing back to earth.

Dominic? This is how it was in the beginning with Dominic. We were all scattered and derelict college students, boozing it up, wasting our lives, and drunk on life. Dominic entered our lives and within days had bested us, me at least, in the picture we painted of our world. We were drunkards? Sure! But Dominic could finish his power hour and still have the stomach for another beer run. Athletes, all of us? Indeed, but Dominic could out-smoke us all, on the field or in the bar! Packs of smokes, of whatever Michael at the corner drug store would sell as two-for-ones, littered the Fool’s impossible apartment room seemingly supported with books, books, and cigarette ash. We could dangle our meats with the best of them, but only Dominic gave us the courage to scream lustily “balls-wet!” as we pass that spot with great acoustics near the computer room. Of course, being mature college students, we allowed our minds to run with that image, and we soon could apply it to just about anything we wanted. Of course it was perverse, but for us it was always like the point of the red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, on which so much of everything depended. Our lives seemed like that, often: everything important to our group depended that one small point, hung down from that one perverse and pervasive exclamation.

Generally, for our late apartment nights spent talking, I preferred myself to sit back, gazing in growing wonder, that two heads small as Luke’s and the Fool’s could carry all they knew.

The coffin was inside, in the living room. We were all assembled at the wake of the fool, Dominic. He was, no doubt, a great man—the very mourners, which included three Ph. D’s and two priests, gave testimony to that. I came; I had to see what was left of the memories and prophecies; I had to prove to myself that the fool was indeed a great man. Lots of alcohol at the wake—good, I thought; lots of drunkenness—how appropriate, I laughed; lots of women—necessary, in my opinion, to Dominic and his movement.

Dominic’s friends gathered at the wake, which began at noon and continued throughout the night. We drank around the open coffin, we fumigated every room, we littered the floor with shiny glass bottles, every light bulb was shattered eventually. We hung golden and silver streamers from the smoke-greyed ceiling tiles, making a glorious sepulcher to encase the fool before he departed down into the ground, where the dead men go. The scarred tables were jammed up against the west wall, covered with half-full glasses of beer, wine, and mixed drinks. There was, at the apex of the evening, at least fifty people scattered around the house and small surrounding lawn.

Of course we were the last ones to leave: Dominic, now trapped in a coffin, could not leave the darkened and trashed living room; David had passed out drunk, and could not leave; Luke had tried to leave, but had tripped on the one stair leading to the outdoor covered patio, and now lay on the ground, refusing to get up. Being too drunk to help him, I stumbled over his body and flung myself into the tattered, flowery pink armchair of the patio. The night!

One last night together, I thought hazily, to sit on the porch, and watch those old dead memories march before us.

Luke was mumbling something, propping his head against the stair, head barely grazing the wooden paneling of the doorjamb.

“We depended on that guy for everything. —Give me a cigarette.”

I couldn’t help, being drunk, but appreciate the irony of his assertion and imperative—I was out of cigarettes, but knew where to find some. Making my way inside, I went silently up to the coffin. I approached from behind Dominic’s head, the yellow roses on his chest appearing first through the deep-night gloom. He had wanted to be buried with his beloved Marlboro Reds, so the coroner tucked a carton in under his head. Gently, lifting the head of the corpse, I slid out the carton and removed a pack. The head was feather-light, and the dark hair was sticky—Brendan had donated a mixed-drink libation to Dominic earlier that night. The Fool almost smiled at me, lips curled up, only I was looking from behind so his half-smile looked upside down; he was laughing then, head leaning back in my arms. I shook my head: for one last night only, we would depend on Dominic to supply our nicotine and vices.

There was a crash. Then another, and I was beside Luke and stopping him from beating the doorposts, and Luke’s body went slack, and he began sucking abstractedly the dark blood welling from his hand. “Have one of these,” I said and Luke got up, shuddered, and sat down ponderously in another flowered armchair.

His voice was quiet and even and surprisingly clear as he lit Dominic’s cigarette.

“Once we walked all the way to the woods in a hard and driving rain. Remember the first conversation we had, all four of us, in our first apartment on Trively Street. Surrounded by block brick house and shit apartments all around, he showed us the woods only a mile or two away. The woods became our haven from the madness the city was making us see; it was destroying us, James, and we knew it, and Dominic led us out.”

He did indeed. Rejecting the machinations of the present society, we set about creating our vision of hope for the future. Our quartet tonight showed our hopeless case of Romanticism; we all still were languishing in our respective grad-schools, accomplishing the same old nothings, doing nothing with our lives, only reliving past dreams of past glory, and accomplishing nothing if not drunk or hung over six days a week: and the fourth one was dead.

“Jerry got married only a year ago, and the Fool gave the best man’s toast. ‘You all,’ he shouted, drunk as usual, ‘know this man. You cannot know about him; you cannot sing of him; you cannot help but sing the man himself.’” He smiled dreamily. “And then, Dominic sang Jerry’s arms.”

Taking a quivering drag, he dropped the spent butt in between his feet—still wearing the same rugged-ragged rubber old boots, I noticed.

“We did ourselves good tonight James, didn’t we? The music, the women, the booze; Anthony didn’t even ruin the evening.”

He fell silent as we stared out into the deepening gloom of the early morning, last night’s revels as far and distant from me now, as the night we all first met. “Dominic taught us how to do this,” he broke the silence (Luke would not stand long for silence). “We were—at least I was—stuck in the green and muddy sewers of the academic world, shooting downward along with the shit we were taught towards the great big cesspool of knowledge underground, while Dominic brought us out. He didn’t ever so much teach us what was great, no! he just allowed us to see the world for what it is. And we are all escaped now. Damn it James! Now it’s up to us, huh? We are all mucking around with this school stuff: no more! He showed us in throughout his life and told us by his will that college was bringing us down, and that we needed to get up and live!”

I gave silent acquiescence.

“You know when I found out? It was when he and David did that smoker’s marathon—two hours straight of running and smoking at the same time. The two of them, sitting in the apartment right afterwards? They had just finished, after two packs each of cigarettes, and they had just stopped smoking and begun drinking when Dominic seemed to hack out his lung and walked out back and spat bloody gunk all over the porch.”

I remembered that; it had been all very impressive. Dominic looked spent, his inner thighs raw and red and bloody, with sweat streaking his face and slicking down his greasy and stringy hair. That thin grey T-shirt clung to his heaving chest; he and David looked at each other, kind-of smiled, and sucked down another cigarette. “He looked at the blood, at us, gave us his half smile, and lit up another cigarette. ‘Post game,’ he croaked.

“Too often, James, a merry going forth brings a sorrowful leave-taking: like tonight’s. It was never so with Dominic. When morning came, we were all tired and drunk, after yet another all-nighter of talking and drinking, but Dominic would just pour a couple pots of coffee, with Bailey’s, into thermoses, wake up David, and we’d all stagger across the street together towards our 8:00 Seminar of History class, still laughing and drinking and smoking away, arms around each other, holding us up, and that professor never understood how we were so alive!”

That class was ridiculous—a three-hour morning class, at eight—and there were only a couple dozen people in it, half of whom didn’t show up, while we four, not a one of us a historian, had perfect attendance. Being often drunk, and, even better, drinking during that class, we learned very little, but often even the normally silent me was lubed up enough to enter into legitimate conversation with the professor and my roommates.

“It’s what happened after those crazy nights that showed me, James—the post game, as Dominic put it, how something affects us, is what makes us alive.”

Our Fool is gone now, I thought, glancing lazily inside, and right now it is, without doubt, the aftershock.

“The music was the thing that separated us from everything, wasn’t it? So we’d go into the woods, away from everything, and that’s great, nature and all, but we would do shit there! Dominic learned every instrument, we learned all the songs, and for hours, wherever, whenever, and every Friday night, we would sing and smoke and drink the night away.” Songs mean nothing if they are not real to someone, Dominic had told us some night.

“The songs were the thing, James; they worked perfectly. The people wouldn’t really show up at the beginning of Friday night, so we’d just mess around at first: the not-as-popular or more obscure traditional ballads to get the music started, then everyone would show up: the rugby tight five, the Phi Kappa Theta guys, the girls from Park Ridge and then Dominic entered his element; he would happily tear through at least five guitar strings in his effort to make the songs real to everyone and then we’d run low on beer, and I would go up and stand in front of the fire, always in kind of a shaky voice, asking everyone to donate some money for more alcohol, singing ‘Why spend your leisure bereft of pleasure, amassing treasure? Why scrape and save? Why look so canny at every penny? Ye’ll take no money within the grave.’”

For some reason the Fool had taught Luke that song—I guess Dominic thought that Luke, with a double business economy major needed to be reminded of the important things in life—and Luke took the Fool to heart, and profited I’m sure, even though Luke now, though a genius, was drifting around from university to university, trying to prove that his GREs were not a fluke. Indeed, his money and leisure was spent in giving others pleasure, but he now was suffering the results of doing just that.

“Then when everyone was liquored up enough, David would do his thing: a colossal scowling guy, back to the fire and facing us, with flaming red facial hair lit up from behind with the flickering flames of the hungry fire, and he would do that absolutely ridiculous song about how he ‘had a horse and his name was Bill; when he ran, he couldn’t stand still’ perfect for that moment, just a nonsense children’s song, this mammoth man would be singing it.”

David, after meeting Dominic, had become an uncontrollable smoker; always broke, he would hang around with Dominic for hours, bumming smokes from the profligate yet pecuniary fool. He even ended up going to the same graduate school as Dominic, eager for more of the physical and mental insanity that the Fool always inspired. Like a faithful dog, David always depended on Dominic to drag him down into greatness; after tonight, I thought, glancing into the inner room at David’s drunken bulk in front of the coffin, his master would be gone.

“and we would go on for hours, reciting poetry, telling our sad stories, and letting Dominic amaze us with his musical talent. Michael would always do his Kipling cigar poem, and even Joey would get into it, reading Saint Patrick’s prayer about three-ness and one-ness, and through it all David would kind of drift in the background, talking with everybody, especially the overly drunk or loud, and generally keeping the chaos that was Friday night in some kind of order.

“But what was your song again?” Luke turned to me. His eyes were glazed over, and the pupils looked round and blood-rimmed in the garish light of what was formerly Dominic’s apartment.

“It was ‘Good-bye Booze.’” I smiled, lips pressed tightly together.

“‘So it’s good-bye booze, forever more: my boozin’ days, will soon be o’er’”

I don’t know why that was my song.

“‘We had a good time, but we couldn’t agree: so you see what booze has done for me.’” Next he looked at me again. “That was always an ending song, when the booze had almost done, and David was asleep, and the fire low

“We walked back to the apartment from the woods in the rain, I think it was our senior year. It must’ve been one of the last Friday nights in the woods all of us together. Everyone had left the woods and gotten into cars as usual early Saturday morning for the short drive back to college, except Dominic walked back and I was with him.”

They killed me, those early morning Saturdays, when my job was to open the food court at seven that day after returning from the woods around five. My bed was never made, and I just sat in the bedroom doorway, staring at the clump of my purple bed sheets, sipping a weak bloody Mary with aspirin, trying to keep the pounding out of my head until work; and Dominic and Luke struggled in through the doorway, covered in black and red clay. Luke’s long Jew-curls were plastered to his face, the once dark and fluffy ringlets now thick and heavy with rainwater. Dominic had lost his shirt, and blood stained the sand and the water that streamed slowly down, in yellow drops down his mostly naked body. I had to get ready for work about then, so I left them on our porch, their wet and steaming bodies barely visible the in the orange glow of the rising sun reflecting off of the clearing grey clouds.

“That night we talked all the way back about this, this moment, James, and he was right. We got to the doorway and dropped in, and there you were, and Dominic tells me later that your mouth was drawn in a grimace and you looked like hell. He tells me, ‘James is right’ and I said, ‘OK’ and he, ‘he’s stretched. Let’s loosen him.’”

Dominic always knew that I was secretly weak, and he knew that I was beginning to worry about things such as tuition, employment, and the future that our present life of debauchery would inevitably lead to. When I returned from work at three in the afternoon, the sky had cleared and everyone was still asleep in the apartment, so I wearily came through the doorway and entered my tousled and disordered bed for a long and justly deserved slumber.

“When you woke at about eight, we had everything prepared for you. First a cooked meal—none of that Ramen shit you always would eat and we had all the usuals out and ready for you—pre-meal wine, beer and brauts, brandy and cigars after, then hours of our usual talking, over hock and Danish cheese.”

I had woken up beaten to hell; I took a shower, and allowed them to tend to me.

“So when we grabbed you and David strung you up upside-down by the ankle from the doorway, you were pretty surprised!”

They knocked me arse over tit, and I was hung from the doorway with the rope and pulley Dominic and his antics had set up, blood pounding down into my ears and eyes; the door wide open and allowing a cooling breeze to wash my mind into a world of blood and the smoke from the cigar I had refused to drop.

“Then Dominic turned on ‘99 Red Balloons’ and David and he were dancing, me running in-between and around them, arms wide and suddenly our shirts were off”

They began swinging me in the doorway, slapping my arse and shoving against my back to send me soaring up, out the doorway, and looking over that oily patch of concrete we used as a front stoop, littered with soggy trash and cigarette butts and the Keystone beer tabs, and probably lots of shattered splinters of glass then swinging back into the room laughing, and trying to beat away the clutching and rapacious hands running over my body and sending me back out into the world.

“All the guys began pouring in from the back when they heard the Red Balloons, and of a sudden things were crowded, and beer appeared, and we all had a turn at you”

Twisting around in my half-hearted efforts to get free, my face had grazed the edge of the doorway, and I saw the edges sharp and defined—yet, the more refined view of that panel’s edge gave me thought, for what seemed to be smooth and even, the paneling, in close view made me see the little ragged edges—ragged perhaps from when David had dragged the flower couch through the opening or when Luke had tried to shove through his poker table or when I had thrown something in a fit of fury.

“When we let you down, you were laughing so hard you finally dropped the cigar you had been holding all that time, and embraced us all”

I had known then, in that one brief glance at the little bits and splinters sticking out from the doorway that I had to expose all of those fine things: those things at close view which extended deep across below the arch of the firmament—everything was all upside-down, backwards, distorted.

“That must have been the last true weekend we spent together—then followed finals, and then more raucous rousing times, and then. Now no more of that depending on Dominic.” His voice trailed off as he finally looked at me, drowsy and drooping, sagging down in my chair. “One more cigarette thanks dude.” The hesitant spark from an unsteady hand finally brightened his face, defining his sharp nose and cheekbones against his curve of jaw line and billow of his receding hair. We, too, I assured myself, are in sharp definition, and the splinters and jagged edges of our lives are clear to everyone; the fool is gone and we are smoke.

Luke’s cheeks depressed gently in then popped out as he inhaled the healing substance, and then he blew a cloud of white smoke into the cooling night air.

“Then one night, it was oh about two”

As he rambled on and I slowly dropped off to sleep, I could only hear ringing through my mind the deep and ominous tones from the old radio show:

“Itislaterthanyouthinnnnnk.”

It is later, far later than we think, I told the fool

“and once I looked into the window and Dominic was dancing, all alone in his room; I was probably drunk, so I didn’t realize that there was music going on in there; I just saw him dancing; his ass shaking, arms twisting in and out, feet sliding around on the scuffed green carpet”

The end is the same, Fool replied, as he again was before me, with one corner of his mouth turned up in that expression that always pissed me off, not knowing whether he approved or disapproved of my thoughts. Although his movements were somehow jerky, the bottle with the label half torn off dangling from his hand and the cigar drooping from his lips with an inch of ash hanging on proved that he was smooth and it was my perception that was off.

When and that we were but little tiny college boys, there was music that Friday night and I did dance, Dominic continued.

“I stood out there staring at himI couldn’t believe that anyone would do that, right in front of an open window, just the classic ‘I’m a drunk girl dancing to Fall Out Boy’ dance moves by himself”

What the Hell are you here for, Fool? I demanded. You see what this is! Look at David! At Michael! At your brother, for God’s sake! Passed out in his own stinking vomit; none of us have showered in days, we’re even out of booze, and I’m still stuck here listening to Luke ramble on about the “good days” when we’d do all crazy shit, skipping classes and screaming “Balls-wet!” and playing beer-pong on the art-building roof!

“Finally he saw me, but he only smiled in that turned upside-down way of his, you know, and then I turned away and tripped and fell on the oily grass only it wasn’t grass but hard pavement. I could never dance like that”

Was I wrong? the Fool wondered, only he already had told me the answer like he always had done.

Yes! I shouted, because this didn’t make sense, him here; Yes, look at us now!

Dominic continued sliding around in front of me, and I realized he was now drunk. He wove in and out of my vision, but it was he who was skewed this time.

The world is upside-down now, Fool said, only this time with what I would call a man’s smile, none of his halfway question-smirk any more.

Everything in the Old books pointed forward to one thing, the top of the portal, the death of a Man, he told me, this unlettered, unschooled, impractical old dead Fool!

“He was really something, huh? Hey, dude! Dude can I bum a cigarette?”

I turned to him. “Here you go.” Luke lit up and promptly fell asleep, and ash slowly gathered on the glowing cherry sagging from his mouth.

“Everything after the keystone hangs upon it, and points downward to judgment,” the soft breath of the Fool whispered into my ear, “after judgment is the opening of eternity,” it continued, louder, “but you are still alive.”

I bitterly shook my head. “Sounds great. Great life I got here, right?” I looked at the piles of bodies and bottles and ashes and woke up and turned around. There stood Luke, swaying a bit unsteadily between the smashed doorposts.

He held his key-chain dangling by the left thumb that still was bleeding from the wooden paneling he had broken hours before. “You are still alive, aren’t you? We’re out of booze. Gas station’s five minutes away. Should be open now.”

I laughed this time, no half-ass upside-down man mirth for me. “I’ll drive,” I stated. “I’m still drunk. But I’m still dancing.”

Luke kind of stared at me, wondering as he staggered down the steps. “You sure you can drive, James? You aren’t dancing.”

“Ask David to tell you who’s dancing,” I said, as the same suddenly tumbled down through the doorway and with us, hand to his mustachioed lips, “He’s the one who knows how to waltz.”

Four Lyric Poems

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:38:21 -0600

A House Whose Roof Is Taken

A house whose roof is taken, without
so much as an outward wall to lean against.
In thin and seen-through frame, lonely---the winds
of prairie plains go in between its hallowed stance. And yet,
it does not fall.

A remnant; vertical but no foundation to speak of---
a threading of lumber in breaking cement---clinging
to what ground it has. And these able bits hold. (How,
when so un-held? In this kind of wind.) – Just yarn
from a funny looking thing, abandoned knit-work;
only makings for a scarf to begin with. Oh House. Hold

...when comes a tornado, a house remembers.

What keeps this house that shakes forever;
incomplete, never founded, nor,
uprooted in the wind? What keeps it here?
What would its prayers sound like?
“Join me with the ground---found me in the earth.
Let my insides blow away from me, but let me stay,
Let me have a home in the ground.

I have no windows to be shut. Take anything, but give me roots.
What use are windows without roots? Let the wind travel through me.
Take all I have. But finish me. Bury my feet. I’m hanging by nails;
I was not meant to waver so. Sink me low in the soil, as the trees are.
I’ll grow leaves if asked. Finish me. Let me be a house.”

Un-Counting Autumns

Wonder how many more autumns
I’ll view from in here, see in your body.

The variance of your redness,
like sunset and dawn interspersed,

Perfectly encapsulated, framed
by our kitchen over the sink.

Half empty bottles of wine and brown
plastic medicine pill-jars wait on shelves.

Held up to the light in a transparent mug,
this Russian tea, red, and rich as coffee,
matches the autumn in your branches.

They’re tearing down adjacent houses,
“tear-downs” they’re called, cottage homes,
too quaint and too old for development
(get out the renters).

In the big room, on an old pine piano bench,
a lopsided pumpkin rests, next to two cacti
and a box-phonograph.

And,

as Eliot reads into a Caedmon microphone
in 1955---The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;
as workers doze a clear view of the next street,
I fall into a chair patterned with stars, guided
in dreamless sleep.

A Losing Hand

Perhaps they saw their chances clearly,
felt futility in breaking their backs
to be esteemed "Negro"; saw no real
promise, with dignity come in one color.

I can see my great-grandfather, sitting
down his family for a supper he'd earned
building roads throughout the state. "Now,
there's plenty good workin' men--black,

white and red. And then, you've got a nigger."
Grandpa paved a little at a time, his road,
and didn't understand how a man could
withdraw(withhold)himself, fold in effort.

Content, in his own fought-for progress,
that in America, with a combination
of fierce desire and hard work, there's
no such thing as a losing hand.

And Here I Find An Earthly Mold

And here I find an earthly mold,
however ancient--timeless, doubtless.
I pull it up, my cupped hands full,
its substance nurturing, original,
a part of always, uniting now with then
and henceforth. All prophecy relenting,
bent low, placing its forehead in this
earthen end, this hiding place of God
and what we thought was lost.

I bury my face in the dirt of folk
who've readied themselves to some content;
depleted mortal wanderlust enough to die,
become dirt, and begin a timely, sober undertaking--
all consciousness immediate and reliable,
without delusions of separation, the soil
their body, and flesh indistinct.

Hawaiian Sovereignty

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:14:49 -0600

The sovereign nation of Hawai’i, which existed for centuries under the rule of a monarchy which was, by all indications peaceful, under which its people did not suffer oppression or poverty, was overthrown by the United States on January 17, 1893, and later annexed by the United States in 1898. The vast majority of Native Hawaiians at the time, as well as in present time, view the annexation of their islands as an illegal overthrow, and as a result, the same percentage of Native Hawaiians, although less in number than a century ago, still support the return of sovereignty to Hawai’i. The movement continues today due to the commitment of the indigenous people of Hawai’i to preserve their culture, as well as their desire to return to the Ka Ea O Ka ‘Aina, which, when interpreted, means: Life of the Land. Roadblocks have littered the path to sovereignty for Native Hawaiians, but proponents of sovereignty may have the tools needed to clear them.

Over the last one hundred nine years since the annexation of Hawaii, the Kanaka Hawai’i, or Hawaiian Citizens have witnessed a significant loss of native culture, due in part to increased intermarriages between Native Hawaiians and other ethnicities, as well each generation taking on more of American culture. Native Hawaiians represent sixty percent of the homeless population in Hawai’i. They also have higher unemployment rates than other ethnicities. Many different factors have shaped the transition from a sovereign nation resisting imperialism, to an occupied nation, to statehood, and now to the struggle to regain sovereignty, involving different characters spearheading each individual movement, usually on different fronts. Queen Lili’uokalani, who became the last monarch to rule Hawai’i, led the resistance of imperialism. In January of 1893, Queen Lili’uokalani attempted to dissolve the Bayonet Constitution. The Bayonet Constitution, signed by King Kalakaua in 1887, had significantly diminished the power that Native Hawaiians held over their own country. It was this attempt to restore power to Native Hawaiians that the Committee of Safety, a group formed with the intention of forming a provisional government, decided to use in order to achieve their goal. The group deceived the United States Minister into believing that they were in danger. As a result, the United States Marines were sent ashore, and the next day, a provisional government was established, comprised of several of the members of the Committee of Safety. President Grover Cleveland rescinded the treaty for annexation when he realized the manner in which the provisional government was established, saying, “By an act of war committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress, the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people have been overthrown. ” After he acknowledged the illegitimacy of the invasion and overthrow of the Hawaiian government, Cleveland went even further, proclaiming, “A substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people required we should endeavor to repair. ” While President Cleveland did not re-submit the annexation treaty, he did not officially disassemble the provision government, or reinstate the Hawaiian Monarchy.

After the provisional government renamed itself the Republic of Hawai’i, they set up an oligarchic system of governance, which author Haunani-Kay Trask describes as one “With a franchise limited by property and language requirements and a loyalty oath that effectively excluded all natives. ” Due to the provisional government remaining in control of Hawai’i, and their inability to participate in their own governance, Queen Lili’uokalani and her supporters continued to resist the occupation of the government that they believed to be illegitimate. This continued until the American-backed Republic of Hawai’i had her arrested for supporting an attempt to reassert her rule in 1895 , forced her to officially abdicate her throne, and imprisoned her for five months. The imprisonment by Queen Lili’uokalani was a crushing blow to the Hawaiian people. After the loss of the Queen, who was the clear leader of the movement to regain their sovereignty, the provisional government moved even further to asseverate their rule over the Hawaiian people. In 1896, they declared English as the only official language, closing all schools that taught the Hawaiian language in a move to insure that future generations would have greater attachment to American ideals, and less to the native culture of their parents. The debate over the annexation of Hawai’i remained at a stalemate until William McKinley assumed the presidency in 1897. There had been no vote on the official annexation of Hawai’i during the Cleveland Administration due to a few different factors, both in Washington, DC, as well as in Hawai’i. The leaders of the provisional government knew that if they allowed the people of Hawai’i to vote on annexation, they would overwhelmingly reject it given the nature through which the Republic of Hawai’i came into existence. Thus, due to the bountiful level of ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ in the provisional government, The Hawaiian people were never granted a vote on the topic of annexation by the United States. In Washington, Congress never voted on the annexation of Hawai’i. This was mostly due to the lack of desire among members of Congress to admit a nation of dark-skinned people into a white nation.

When America found itself at war with Spain in 1898, Congress accepted the proposal of annexation at the urging of John Schofield , an army officer who argued that the Spanish might take over Hawai’i and use it as a base for military operations in the Pacific. Accepting this advice, Congress voted in favor of annexation, despite the fact that Queen Lili’uokalani presented a petition with the signatures of over twenty-nine thousand Native Hawaiians. On August 12, 1898, The United States formally declared Hawai’i as one of its territories, in a ceremony at `Iolani Palace in Honolulu. In the hearts and minds of many Hawaiians, they had lost their identity.

The period from annexation at the end of the Eighteenth Century as a territory until its statehood in 1949 was one of Americanization for Hawai’i. The movement for sovereignty was largely silent as the percentage of Native Hawaiians in relation to the population of Hawai’i significantly dropped after annexation, due to colonization. On July 9, 1921, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which set aside 200,000 acres of land in the Hawaiian Islands for homesteading by Native Hawaiians . This proved to be ineffective, as most of the Native Hawaiians eventually rented their homesteads to corporations, which was the opposite of the intended result of the bill. With the entrance of Hawai’i as the fiftieth state of America on August 21, 1959, a vote that did not include the option of sovereignty, it appeared that the movement for Hawaiian independence was all but over. A resurgence of the desire for sovereignty by Native Hawaiians, predominately by students in the 1970’s would demonstrate that this was not the case. Younger leaders like Hanale “Soli” Niheu emerged and led a new wave of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement, which centered on protection of Native Hawaiian rights. The Kalama Valley Struggle became the event that galvanized the movement in the 1970’s, when the Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate began to evict local Native Hawaiian Farmers to make room for a subdivision that local developer Stanford Carr, had been planning . It was with this struggle that the modern sovereignty movement was born. With its birth, it resurrected the struggle of Queen Lili’uokalani, started eighty years before.

The modern sovereignty movement has been effective, in part, due to the support of their Legislators, Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka, and Senator Daniel Inouye. On November 23, 1993, a Senate Joint Resolution that Senator Daniel Akaka introduced on February 6, 1991, was signed by President Bill Clinton and called United States Public Law 103-150 ; it issued an official apology on the one hundredth anniversary of the overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani, and the sovereign Hawaiian government.

The sovereignty movement has allies in the form of both of their Representatives in the United States Senate, Daniel Kahikina Akaka, and Daniel Inouye. Senator Akaka, who is a Native Hawaiian, has introduced several bills, repeatedly calling for the establishment of some form of sovereignty for Native Hawaiians, similar to the way that the United States recognizes Native American Tribes as sovereign nations. The attempts by Senator Akaka, which his colleague in the United States Senate, Senator Inouye, supports, are not met with overwhelming support. The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007, or the Akaka Bill, as the local residents in Hawai'i refer to it, has opposition from conservatives in Congress, as well as by some sovereignty supporters in Hawai’i. Conservatives who oppose the legislation do so because they believe it will set a precedent for other ethnic groups who may want to form their own race-based nation. This argument is a weak one, when you consider the fact that Hawai’i was already a sovereign nation. Sovereignty groups in Hawai’i oppose the bill because it makes them a nation within a nation, whereas they want their independence returned to them. Pu'uhonua "Bumpy" Kanahele, the current Head of State of the Independent and Sovereign National State of Hawai'i, when his thoughts on the bill, replied:”This is a second attempt at annexation, as good as it sounds. ” Despite the opposition, The United States House of Representatives passed Senator Akaka’s Bill on October 24, 2007, by a vote of 261 to 153 . While Senator Akaka enacts change through the legislative process, others, such as Pu'uhonua "Bumpy" Kanahele, shepherd the sovereignty movement by returning to Ka Ea O Ka ‘Aina, living life in the manner of their forefathers. Kanahele, who is a descendant of King Kamehameha the Great, was the figure that drove the movement that led to the establishment of Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo, a forty-five acre settlement where native Hawaiians are returning to the Kanaka Moali way of communal living.

With the passage of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007, the debate switches to whether or not the Native Hawaiians can transition into a functioning government with the ability to retain its sovereignty. One of the issues any new Hawaiian state will have to confront is resolving the return to the communal style of life that many Native Hawaiians desire with the realities of an Increasing Scale, explained by Samuel Beer in his article, Dynamics of Modernization . Hawai’i has been exposed to a much larger scale of influence than their sovereign government. Because of this, they will have to create a balance between their desire for communal style of living, which does not rely on currency and accumulation of wealth, and the relationships with other nation states that do. Even if a hypothetical new Hawaiian government could establish a method in which they can do business with other states, and still maintain their system that does not rely upon currency, it would still depend on the willingness of their citizens to accept it. In addition to this, any form of Hawaiian sovereignty will have to examine whether or not a full return to the way of life their forefathers knew is even possible. Many would view a return to the Ka Ea O Ka ‘Aina would be a step back on the path to governmental development, an idea proposed by Francis Fukuyama in his article, The End of History? In his article, Fukuyama suggests that nations without a Liberal Democracy form of government are less developed . While the accuracy of Fukuyama’s theory is widely debated, it brings to light an important observation as to the perception nation states around the world would have of a new Hawaiian state that will appear in the eyes of many to have taken a step backwards on the journey to modernization.

Since the rebirth of the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement a few decades ago, many of the unachieved goals of Queen Lili’uokalani and her supporters have been attained through legislative means, as well as grassroots organization. On the legislative front, President Clinton issued an official apology in 1993, acknowledging the illegal overthrow of the sovereign nation of Hawai’i. More recently, the United States House of Representatives passed the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007 on October 24, 2007. On the grassroots level, Pu'uhonua "Bumpy" Kanahele, an activist and leader of the sovereignty movement in Hawai’i, negotiated the settlement of Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo, which is sure to become the focal point of any new Hawaiian state that is established in the near future. With the roadblocks seemingly removed from the path to sovereignty, the outlook for proponents of a sovereign Hawai’i appears to be positive. Only the passage of time will tell whether the Native Hawaiians will be able to cast off the bitterness of a century of occupation and proceed with optimism towards the independent future they have sought after so dearly.

Works Cited

A complete works cited may be viewed here.

Three Poems

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:39:13 -0600

These three poems were written over a long span of time, with completely different purposes, backgrounds, and modes of thought: a kind of surreal world in "The Man Who Forgot Things," religious meditation in "Christophoros", and playful self-deprecation in "Victoria's Secret."

The Man Who Forgot Things

It started with his contacts. He drove to work squinting, unsure why
He hadn't inserted them after showering, since
His morning routine was regular,
But after that small things began to slip by him:
He'd forget his lunch and have to buy a hotdog at the stand,
Walk off without his briefcase, so his wife, kindly, patient,
Would have to drive it in to him. After his morning workout
He realized there were no dress socks in the Nike bag,
So he'd hidden behind his desk all day, embarrassed by the white nerdy strip
That showed above his wingtips when he walked or sat. Then larger things:
Entering the office, he was surprised to find he had no shoes on,
For it was January, and he parked six blocks from his building. He was
Conservative, and yet the next week, in the restroom, he discovered
He'd not worn underwear, been dangling uncomfortably all morning.
Another time he simply left six fingers, for no reason, on the kitchen counter
And had to type with four all day; his left leg, next
He draped over the bathroom hamper
And neglected to pick it up again before walking out the door. His co-workers
Tried not to notice him hopping, except for that smart-ass in personnel,
Who made unfunny jokes. His secretary covered for him.
Soon he forgot his privacy, telling colleagues over coffee
About his father's alcoholism, his uncle's fight with HIV,
His fourteen-year-old son's bedwetting, his wife's occasional infidelities,
His daughther's soft whimpering
After the family was in bed.

Each night he would stay awake, trembling, trying to discern
What he would forget the next day. But on his commute,
He'd find he hadn't forgotten the thing he'd tried to remind himself
To forget the night before. Each night he'd struggle,
Until one day he began remembering things, but never the right ones:
His daughter's lunch instead of his, a file that belonged at home, not work,
A present for the VP who'd never given him the time of day.
One day he swung by the park to pick up his son from soccer practice
With the team he'd never joined. People began to gather by the cooler
To see what new treasure he'd bring to work: four umbrellas, six pairs of shoes,
A garden spade. They covered their mouths when he strode in confidently
Trailed by the janitor with an avocado toilet on a dolly.

Years later, on break, they'd pull files he had worked on,
Their margins crowded with colored-pencil illuminations:
A three-headed toad in jester's garb, bishops farting at the Pope,
Spurious monkeys poking the king's arse with a pike.

Christophoros

—for my nephew and godson

He's all across the continent, a fresco here, mosaic there.
I saw him near Thomastown. Some Cistercian chiseled
Into solid stone the liquid lines across which he lifted
A babe, suddenly straining his sinews:
The weight of the world, the mightiest master.

They used to say
One who spied his visage would suffer
No harm that day. So let me look.
What can I fear, when today
You wade in the Jordan,
Carrying Him calmly?

Victoria's Secret

"That is no country for old men."
—Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

—Or for young men, either, to tell the truth.
Women wander in and out, fingering a silken robe,
Pulling at chemises, holding up slips
As we might inspect tires or compare wrenches,
Completely at home, chatting with one another
Of the traffic, the weather, or politics,
Holding this up and touching that, reading
The complex calculus of color, fabric, and shape,
Absorbed in their own beauties, unthinking of males.

But beyond that mahogany façade, a man enters
A world as foreign as Byzantium itself, as
Bejeweled with luxury as the basilica mosaics
Which greeted the hairy, unkempt crusaders. And caught
In the sensual music of silk, lace, and fantasy,
They stand hushed as in a church, uneasy,
Blessing Marco Polo's adventurous heart,
One fellow a careful four feet from the rack
Of lace teddies with little behind them
But a cool breeze, another casting sidelong glances
At a whole rack of panties in colors to shame
Gaugin and fabrics Alexander never saw,
The third, trying to look as if he were waiting for a bus,
In queue with dozens of people, sequined brassieres.

We walk three counted paces behind our wives
—close enough not to lose our guides
And seem thereby loners, strangers, perverts
—but far enough to fill the clothes
With the breasts, thighs, behinds we have known
Or dreamed of
like the time she wore this all day
—a honeymoon, say—and you found her
leaning against the windowsill, pink tap pants
and matching chemise blowing, just lifting
in the salt air, and she turned to you, saying
Isn't the sea wonderful tonight?

—The saleswoman wants to help us.
"No thank you, just looking,"
And as our wives disappear into dressing rooms
The size of Montana with disappointing opaque robes
We catch one another's eyes as we pass
Sharing mutual looks of pain and wonder.

Point, Shoot, Reload, Repeat: Rethinking The Act Of Photographing The Natural World

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:58:31 -0600

“Enjoy the land, but own it not.” – Henry David Thoreau

There is a great sense of accomplishment in photographing the earth’s horizon as the sun slowly closes out the day, a magnificent mountain range stretching into the clouds or an unsuspecting deer roaming the space of its natural habitat. A photograph offers a memento of places traveled and sights seen. Long after the trip has ended, “the picture will still exist, conferring on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed” (Sontag 11). The beauty of nature is captured, brought home, and enjoyed time and again. As the end result, most attention is often placed on the photograph’s aesthetic value, composition, color, etc. However, attention is rarely paid to the process of photographing the subject. The novice photographer, equipped with their digital camera measured in megapixels, may stumble across an object they find beautiful, lift their camera, shoot and move on. However, the professional takes his time, observes, studies, sits quietly by and waits for the perfect opportunity to shoot. Regardless of the process, the end result is the same, an impression of reality, a trace, is captured, becoming the property of the photographer. As property, it then becomes another element in the story; a story that may consist of endangered African gorillas, vicious grizzlies or even glorious crashing waves. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between film and the natural world, limiting the natural world to the animal species and the earth’s natural surface. By rethinking the act of photographing the natural world, it is my intention to demonstrate how the camera is often just another apparatus used in the objectification, and ultimately the appropriation of the natural world.

Photographing Wildlife: The Camera As A Weapon

The camera sees all and captures all. “There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera” (Sontag 7). This aggression takes shape in the camera’s ability to capture violence as well as instigate it. On January 4, 1903, inventor Thomas Edison captured, on film, the electrocution of Topsy, a domesticated elephant with the Forepaugh Circus at Coney Island’s Luna Park¹. This horrific event, as well as others caught on film (such as photographs from PETA depicting animal cruelty), demonstrates the camera’s ability to capture violence. Although the camera is incapable of committing any violent activities of its own device, it may in many regards be considered an apparatus of violence, and as such a weapon.

As early as thirty years after the first known photograph was taken, man envisioned the camera as a new apparatus with which to hunt in the natural world. In 1859, physician/poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in regards to photography: “Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful grand objects, as they hunt cattle in South America, for their skins, and leave the carcasses as of little worth” (81). As soon as the camera became accessible, the language of photography began to take shape. The process of photography became associated with the hunt, the camera with the rifle. Additionally, the November-December 1901 issue of The Condor, a Bi-Monthly Exponent of Californian Ornithology, featured an article praising a new method for studying birds: “Hunting with a camera affords not only a pleasing pastime but encourages the closest study and its results are likely to be of considerable scientific value” (Finley 137). The author goes on to say:

There is a fascination in obtaining a good photograph of the bird in its wild state that one misses entirely when he uses the gun. Natural history picture-making shows a much higher development in a man’s love for nature than the mere collecting of specimens to lie hidden away in some cabinet. (137-38)

Times have not changed much in the field of photography since Finley penned these words. The same is true today as it was then, the only difference between hunting with a gun and hunting with a camera is the end result. Man may have a deeper, more profound love for nature in photographing it as opposed to killing it, but the photographic process still fulfills man’s desire of hunting his prey. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag speaks of this desire for the hunt in the photographic process:

There is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. (14)

Although she speaks of the photograph turning people into objects, the same may be said of the natural world and its inhabitants. Much of the human species may have evolved past the stage of hunting and stuffing those members of the natural world it considers as “game.” However, those members are still stalked and shot, only this time they are framed instead of stuffed. A good photograph is the new vacation souvenir. The photograph becomes the reason for taking a vacation, the camera an essential piece of luggage. Traveling to the Grand Canyon is that much more spectacular if the clouds are just right, and the sky has that perfect shade of blue, or if the endangered Californian Condor is captured on film. African safaris have an entirely new meaning when set upon packing a camera instead of a gun. The photographer stalks his prey with the same tenacity and ferocity of the hunter. Footprints are followed. The photographer quietly waits, steadily lifts his weapon, takes aim by focusing and shoots, snapping the shutter. No heads are brought home and mounted from this safari. However, a framed photograph makes a satisfactory substitute. The story of the hunt is equally as enthralling and the payoff equally as satisfying. This is what Sontag refers to as the “Ecology Safari:”

The photographer is now charging real beasts, beleaguered and too rare to kill. Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature—tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures. (15)

In the ecology safari, animals may not be hurt, but they are still objectified and dominated by man. Man may no longer kill for sport on the Serengeti, but he continues to exercise his self-claimed superiority over the natural world. The objectification of the natural world has become so integrated in the nature of man that too often he does it without even realizing it. Such is the case with Timothy Treadwell as seen in Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man. Much of the footage shot by Treadwell suggests that single-shot photographic cameras are not the only cameras used as weapons. Although the motion picture camera is not as effective in capturing time since it is “a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor” (Sontag 18), it nonetheless still allows its owner the privilege of controlling the gaze.

Treadwell, a passionate, lover of all things grizzly, was said to have “shot over one hundred hours of footage” (Grizzly Man 00:03:42), most of which involves a stationary camera, observing Alaskan grizzlies in their natural environment. His reasons for doing so, apart from his sheer love for the animals, were “to protect the animals and to educate the public” (00:03:32). However, Treadwell’s relationship with the grizzlies rarely extended beyond observance. He, perhaps unintentionally, set himself apart from the bears, and although he acknowledged that at any given moment the bears could bring about his destruction, he placed himself in a position of power by constantly controlling the gaze. His camera became an extension of himself; the lens became his eyes. Treadwell intended for his footage to educate the public. Often, he would travel from school to school showing his grizzly films. The problem with this is that “the camera fixes [the grizzlies] in a domain which, although entirely visible to the camera, will never be entered by the spectator. [The grizzlies] appear like fish seen through the plate glass of an aquarium” (Berger 16). Fish in an aquarium serve no other purpose than to entertain the spectator and to be observed. The same may be said of Treadwell’s grizzly films. For many, the wilderness and wildlife of Alaska may never be seen with human eyes. Film and photographs become a substitute. However, since Alaska’s grandeur cannot be fully experienced through film the substitute offers a false sense of the reality. This false sense of reality is then observed as one observes fish in an aquarium. When the personal interaction with nature is removed all that is left is the gaze. In the case of Treadwell, what he mistook for a wilderness in need of his protection, I suggest, was in fact his own longings and desires. William Cronon in his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” speaks to this:

Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. (69-70)

Amidst Treadwell’s longing for that which seemed so organic to him, rest the fact that he was indeed not a part of the nature he longed for. However, this was not evident to him. Thus, he was capable of filming, and with such emphatic entitlement, a species of which he was not a part without any feeling of remorse for having disturbed their natural environment. Treadwell did not simply attempt to enjoy the land; he also wanted to posses it. This possession rests in the one hundred plus hours of film he shot objectifying the natural other.

This is not to say that all of Treadwell’s footage is entirely objectifying. There are a few scenes in which he demonstrates a relationship with his friend Spirit, the fox. I emphasize the word friend to suggest that his friendship transformed his footage of the fox from that of objectifying to more of a home movie. Chapter 7 of the film begins with Treadwell playing a game of chase with Spirit. This footage, when juxtaposed with his footage of the grizzlies, indeed suggests a different relationship. It may be argued that the difference lies in the contrasting natures of each animal. However, Treadwell does not observe Spirit with the eyes of a hunter. His lens does not gaze, placing him in a privileged position as it does with the grizzlies. On the contrary, his camera films Spirit as if he were filming his own child. Spirit is obviously not irritated with him as the grizzlies often are. Spirit is curious of his presence. Unfortunately, his interaction with the grizzlies is not as natural; his camera is not perceived as friendly. Furthermore, much of Treadwell’s footage of the grizzlies takes place at a distance, further emphasizing the camera’s natural ability to observe.

Although Treadwell’s gaze, through the eyes of the camera, is not exploitative in any way, it still creates a power structure. “To photograph,” or film in Treadwell’s case, “is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and therefore, like power” (Sontag 4). This place of power also grants the viewer of his film a privileged position by offering the viewer something the grizzlies will never have, the ability to control the gaze. This is arguably the most powerful element of the camera as a weapon. This is also exceedingly evident in Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong. In King Kong, we are implicated in the brutal objectification of Kong by simply observing what the camera forces us to see.

It is true; the eyes of Kong are artificial, hollow. They are man made, the product of computer animation. However, they represent more than meets the eye. They represent the otherness of nature, something man longs to posses. They represent strength unknown to man, an unconquered foe. These are all real. Kong is the embodiment of these things. Peter Jackson’s remake of the 1933 film spent a great deal of time perfecting the King. If it is true that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul, then perhaps Jackson desires us to question the nature of Kong, for a great deal of our focus is directed toward his eyes. Kong’s eyes stare, the eyes of the camera gaze. There is a difference. The difference rests in the exercising of power. True, Kong is superior is brute strength. However, in the end even the King is brought to his knees, no match for the one that controls the gaze.

We are introduced to Kong at the end of a sequence of cinema in which the camera observes a group of the human species portrayed as nothing more than spastic beasts. Their eyes are not fit for our gaze, and as such they appear rolled back in their heads, too inferior to make contact with the superior of their species. They dance around as if mere puppets for the King that is sought. They bend to his will. What does it say of them then if the King is conquered by civilization? Perhaps Jackson is suggesting that all of nature must be assimilated into a “civilized” environment. If freewheeling city folk are capable of surviving the challenges presented by the wilderness that is Kong’s Skull Mountain, a feat even its own inhabitants have difficulty in accomplishing, then nature becomes nothing more than a playland for the tourists, as Stacy Alaimo suggests in her essay “Discomforting Creatures: Monstrous Natures in Recent Films:” “nature is coextensive with the ‘third’ world, a playland for tourists. One may visit nature for scenery or even adventure, but every trip concludes with leaving it far behind” (286), and in the case of the film crew, the third world is susceptible to the whims and desires of civilization. Once man takes what he came for, he leaves the “third” world far behind.

Kong is found in his natural habitat, atop Skull Mountain. Similarly, Donna Haraway, in her essay “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936” says of the artificially, naturalistic mise-en-scene (of sorts) accompanying the Giant of Karisimbi in his final resting place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is in many regards similar to the mise-en-scene where we meet Kong for the first time: “It would have been inappropriate to meet the gorilla anywhere else but on the mountain” (157). The same is true of Kong. It is vital for us to have met him in this fashion, for it in many ways demonizes him all the more. Finding Kong atop Skull Mountain instills within the viewer a certain amount of fear, a fear evident in the person of Ann Darrow (Watts). The fear invoked by the foreboding mountain is transferred over to Kong, making him that much more horrific. After he claims his prize, his gaze meets the eyes of Carl Denham (Black)

and, through the camera, our eyes. In his gaze, Denham sees what Carl Ackley saw: “the ultimate quarry, a worthy opponent” (Haraway 159). Initially, Denham’s look suggests a feeling of vulnerability and peril, as Alaimo suggests: “being seen means vulnerability” (285). However, immediately after his initial encounter the feeling of vulnerability begins to change. Denham soon discovers that the opposite of Alaimo’s suggestion is also true: seeing means power. He who controls the gaze controls the power. The camera captures Kong’s initial gaze, his ever so brief moment of power and control. Yet, his pending doom overshadows the moment, suggesting that ultimately the power of the gaze belongs to man.

Ultimately, Kong’s gaze, like the gaze of the stuffed and mounted Giant of Kirisimbi, is an artificial gaze, hollow, lifeless. One is the product of glass eyes, as Haraway points out; the other is the product of a digital illusion, a computer program. Both serve as a testament to the idea that the gaze of the animal will forever be lifeless, artificial, and as such, something to be dominated and controlled. The camera’s capturing of the violent act of objectification implicates us, the viewer. The camera grants us a god’s eye view of the world, a view we should not be privy to. Nothing can escape the gaze of the camera. However, the camera alone is nothing but plastic and metal, the same elements that comprise a gun. Alone they are powerless. However, in the hands of a hunter or a photographer, they become the means with which to conquer, to control, to possess.

As an apparatus used for observation, it is easy to see how the camera may be used for objectifying wildlife. The irony is that photographing has become a rite of passage, a sort of conquest, as Sontag points out: “photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite … and a tool of power” (8). Often times, a photograph is deemed a perfect substitute for the real thing. Consider the postcard. Postcards are sent because the real thing cannot be. A photograph, whether on high gloss paper or a postcard, offers a reminder of where you were or souvenir of where you have not been.

Photographing Wilderness: The Camera as an Apparatus of Pretense

As a viewer of all things film, it is often difficult to discern between reality and a staged photograph. A photograph of a roaring lion, for example, offers no explanation as to whether or not what is viewed is an actual roaring lion or simply a yawning lion; or perhaps the roaring lion is merely a zoo-caged lion antagonized by a foolish zoo-goer looking for an action shot. The missing element at play here is context. Lack of visual context makes it virtually impossible to know with certainty what we are seeing. The camera’s inability to capture context allows the photographer (and the director) to use this to his advantage by using the camera as an apparatus of pretense.

French filmmakers Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats and Jacques Perrin created a beautiful documentary following the migration of birds from primarily the bird’s perspective. In Winged Migration, we are granted the sense of literally flying with the birds. With no context as to how we are seeing what we see, disbelief becomes suspended and we give ourselves up to flight. The camera guides us along the path of a greylag goose throughout the entirety of the film. His journey becomes our own. We are first introduced to this goose about three minutes and thirty seconds into the film. He is flailing about in an attempt to remove himself from a net that ensnares him. A small child eventually cuts him free, leaving a small piece of rope around the goose’s leg. This scene is vital to the film for the simple fact that we, as the viewer, have no idea how he became entangled in the net in the first place. Was he intentionally ensnared for the purpose of being a guide of sorts through the film, the rope around his leg being a marker? By not disclosing this information in the film, the answer to this question is ultimately left up to the viewer. Regardless, the camera intentionally focuses on the rope in mid flight through the length of the film. This crafty tool pales in comparison to the disappointment felt when we finally discover how we are able to fly with the birds. It is not until the bonus featurette “The Making of” that we are informed as to how the flying-with-the-birds technique was accomplished. The use of cameras attached to remote controlled airplanes and cameramen, equipped with cameras, aboard small, flying, go-cart contraptions answers the question to this mystery. During the featurette it becomes clear that the filmmakers must rely heavily on the camera’s inability to capture context, for “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses” (Sontag 23). The technique of hiding the actuality of how we are able to fly with the birds gives the filmmakers the power to challenge our perception of reality by creating a false reality we gradually accept as we watch the film. Thus, through the camera, we are led to believe things are a certain way when in fact they are not.

The camera’s ability to tinker with perceptions of reality is problematic in the photographing and filming of the natural world, for it gives inaccurate information. This is problematic since photographs in books and magazines, as well as television nature programs are the only source of contact many people have with the natural world. Instead of developing one’s own perception of the natural world through first hand contact, many are content to rely on the camera’s interpretation. However, the camera’s interpretation of reality is never an adequate substitute for the real thing. This is due to the fact that what the camera produces is incapable of adequately conveying what the human eye sees as Richard Latto and Bernard Harper point out in their essay “The Non-Realistic Nature of Photography: Further Reasons Why Turner Was Wrong”:

The representation differs in size from the original image but preserves exactly all its other attributes. This apparent exactness is misleading, however, because the representation of the image in the display system (photographic print, computer screen, etc.) differs from the representation in our brains in a number of different ways. As a result the perception of the photographic representation is distorted and is not an accurate depiction of the object or scene that generated the image in the first place. (243)

What we see when we view a landscape is a 3-dimensional space with our eyes creating the accurate depth of field so that objects in relation to each other’s space are adequately interpreted. This is due to our eyes’ ability to form a single perception from two slightly different images. A photograph cannot accomplish this. When our eyes view a photographic image what we see is a flat, 2-dimensional object. “There is no significant horizontal disparity. This synoptic view of the world (i.e. the same to both eyes) is quite unnatural” (Latto and Harper 245). This explains why a photograph does not look exactly the way it looked when it was framed in the photographer’s eye. Although this function of the camera is more an issue of mechanics than pretense, the resulting still or rapid moving photograph continues to offer a false sense of reality.

Looking again at Winged Migration, many of the shots are long, continuous takes giving the brief impression of a photographic image. These shots, such as the opening

frames of Chapter nine, are often the equivalent of nature pornography²; while they may briefly offer a sense of lustful satisfaction by temporarily curbing one’s desire to be outdoors, they are ultimately incapable of moving one to the extent that they cry out as Henry David Thoreau did as he summated Mt. Katahdin on August 31, 1846:

It was vast, Titanic, and such as man never inhabits. Some part of the beholder, even some vital part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends. He is more lone than you can imagine. […] Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at a disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly, why came ye here before your time? This ground is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys? I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me but a stepmother? Shouldst thou freeze or starve, or shudder thy life away, here is no shrine, nor alter, nor any access to my ear. (83-84)

Thoreau’s description of the awe he felt invokes the feeling that he was in the presence of deity. The accompanying view, air, and foreboding sense of loneliness were too much to bear. This surge of emotion is difficult to experience second hand. Even if one were to photograph the view from atop Mt. Katahdin, a mere 5,267 ft. elevation, one could not capture in the photograph: the strain on the muscles, the difficulty of breathing, the bitter chill, all of the physical chores associated with the summit. However, what is captured is a 2-dimensional image of something resembling the view from atop the mountain.

The plethora of nature photographs depicting everything from flora to fauna and all that is found in between help to clutter the spaces of our world “by furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images” (Sontag 24). In so doing, this gives us a sense that “the world is more available than it really is” (24). We see photographs of mountains in Alaska or giant redwood trees reaching toward the sky and recognize that these things are not in our backyards. Wilderness photography has the power to create within us a sense of longing, a desire for a home other than our own. William Cronon, in his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” speaks to this romanticizing of the natural world: “Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live, the landscape that for better or worse we call home” (85). Viewing photographs of redwoods, for example, tends to make us unhappy with the smaller, native trees in our backyards. The trees that decorate our lawns do not inspire us nor take our breath away as do the larger, fuller developed trees that occupy the spaces of wilderness. The supernaturalness of nature photographs by such photographers as Ansel Adams, while stunning in their

own right, serve to perpetuate the idealization of wilderness by portraying it as a sort of otherworldly getaway. This romanticizing of wilderness tends to “privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others” (Cronon 86). In so doing, the divide between the natural world and man is increased. Wilderness then becomes a place of escape, as well as a place of finding oneself or one’s god. Photographing wilderness perpetuates this ideology by enabling more aesthetic value to be placed on that which is considered wild, and as such unfamiliar. Cronon seeks to challenge this type of thinking by proposing we not celebrate the wilderness just because it is wild, but even more so because it “reminds us of the wildness in our own backyards, of the nature that is all around us if only we have eyes to see it” (86). The nature that exists in beautiful photographs is made of the same elements as the nature in our own backyards, and as such is equally deserving of our love and respect. Although much of the natural world may not be as stunning nor as awe-inspiring as many of the places photographed by artists such as Ansel Adams, this does not mean these places bring us any closer to nature than the natural spaces around us. The natural world captured in a photograph denies us the possibility of union, of relationship. The trees and greenery that exist in our own spaces offer us interaction; through our watering and cultivation we learn about the nature that exists in our own backyards and gain knowledge a photograph is incapable of offering. Interaction with the natural world provides us with the reality of nature, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the not so beautiful, not just that which is frameable, to the extent that we become more aware of the natural spaces around us.

Conclusion

Creating awareness is often difficult for the camera. As I’ve suggested above, the camera cannot capture context and context is essential in the creation of awareness. However, this is not to say that the camera is completely incapable of creating awareness. In fact, in some situations photographs have been essential in prompting change. The photographs of American zoologist Dian Fossey worked to raise awareness of the imminent extinction of African gorillas. Fossey developed a relationship with the gorillas as they began to assimilate her into their culture, and as a result she earned their trust. Her photographs are not of the hunter variety, but instead the result of relationship. What started out as simple photographs of primates eventually led to the establishment of the International Primate Protection League (IPPL), an organization dedicated to active conservation. Founded in 1973 by Shirley McGreal, a friend of Fossey’s, the IPPL is currently represented in 31 countries and continues to work toward the well being of non-human primates³. Dian Fossey’s legacy offers a look at how the camera may be used as an apparatus for the betterment of the non-human species.

Additionally, it was photographs, not Al Gore, that helped raise awareness of climate change. Photographs of melting ice caps offered visual evidence of the reality of global warming. Although, as I’ve suggested above, photographs are incapable of adequately conveying the world as the human eye sees it, they still offer a portion of that reality, and this portion is all that was required to begin the process of thinking about climate change.

I have pointed out a couple of examples where the camera has been used to promote awareness, however this is typically the exception and not the rule as man’s association with the natural world continues to be primarily one of aggression and exploitation. The camera typically serves to perpetuate this association. If we desire to expropriate the camera from this association, “we must find another relationship to nature besides reification, possession, appropriation and nostalgia” (Haraway 126). This must begin on an individual level. Rethinking our relationship with the natural world will ultimately lead us to rethink our reasons for photographing it. What is more, we must also rethink our methods of photographing and perhaps the language we use to describe the photographic process. Aphrodite Navab in her essay “Re-Picturing Photography: A Language in the Making” suggests we rethink our photographic language:

If people were to choose words that more accurately describe the particular photographic process they were talking about, then a greater variety of dimensions and layers of meaning would fill the language of photography, expanding the possible connotations of the medium and the ways of expressing the multiplicity of meanings, values, and uses of photography. (81)

Developing a new language for the photographic process may be a long-term solution to the violent mentality that often accompanies photography and might also force us to rethink our relationship with the subjects we photograph. However, things rarely change overnight, and something as engrained in culture as the language used to describe the photographic process might take some time to revisit.

There really isn’t a way to neatly wrap up this conclusion other than to say that as a photographer I have spent a good amount of time rethinking my reasons for photographing the people, places and objects I choose to photograph, and simply put, I do not take as many photographs as I used to. Photographing landscapes used to be of great interest to me. However, now I choose to put the camera away and simply enjoy the view for what it is, the natural world. Rethinking my reasons for photographing the natural world takes time and effort, but if I am to ever have a relationship other than possession and nostalgia with the natural world, the time and effort are a small price to pay.

Photos (in order of appearance)

Photograph capture of an extreme closeup of King Kong’s eyes (01:11:42) from the film King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson (2006).
Photograph capture of a bald eagle with a portion of the Grand Canyon in the background (00:20:20) from the film Winged Migration, directed by Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats (2001).
“The Tetons—Snake River,” Wyoming, by Ansel Adams (1942).

Notes

Information on Topsy obtained through Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant). The video of Topsy’s archaic electrocution may be viewed on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkBU3aYsf0Q.
Copyright Stacy Alaimo, although I do believe her phrase was “environmental porn.”

Works Cited

A complete works cited may be viewed here.

Three Poems by Carlos Germán Belli

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:29:52 -0600

Note: Audio in the following piece requires the Adobe Flash Player.

Hare-lip
This wolf-mouth of a world, that bristles even
with a hare-lip, whose gap the highest mountains
of earth cannot stop up, by luck has not,
like an unsalted alimentary bolus,
been shot to the remotest starry maw,
since in this strange world it is customary
for any foetus that has got this far
but grins from a hare-lip to be out-flung
in the fourth month or sixth, so that its corpse
will stop the crack at the end of that hare-lip.

The Extraterrestrials
I, grandson of Elvira de la Torre,
like her today besieging me descry
commensals everywhere,
now maned with drag-hooks, now with carving-knives,
and such long ladling spoons, that dangle arm-like,
and no tongue but a dagger
as for the toughest viands upon the board.

And yet not human are they, such rare beings,
all on the outside gleaming nickel-plated
(not of the orb they are)
and inside all of iron oh how armed,
as they reduce the antique chairs to sawdust,
when they have plundered fiercely
all the terrestrial sandwiches forever.

At dawn already me they bid assist
at the sublunar oaken rustic table,
the inconsiderate
commensals, Martian, or it could be lunar,
or what do I know from what foreign planet,
but with my portion make off
until, crumb after crumb, they plow up me.

And though not buoyant since I go securely
myself unto the tomb a hopeless glutton,
on me they set forthwith
and struggle godless to engear in me
their knives, their carving knives, their ladling spoons,
and though so mean the estate
how they despoil it, me how carve and plunder!

Original Spanish version available for PDF download here.

To My Brother
I
At last I have discovered inch by inch
how is the superficies of your days,
into which, daring all, I had to travel
over the mountains girdled by the clouds
or in the foaming and resounding oceans,
so as to reach the point
of which you nothing know
except that there your spiritual traces
I sight or palpate in these boundaries,
where you have never for one instant been.

II
Not even the light buzzing of the flies
whenever, suddenly, you are alone
since each has vanished rapidly outside
to do the little things of daily life,
glad that that way they move away from you;
and such absence of noise
in this place, too, is felt
and is an immense silence that appears
in the surroundings and there makes its nest,
as if instead of me it were you here.

III
Those walls, the apartment, and the emptiness
are like corporeal things of yours,
that have stretched into you, so as to form
from you and from the room a unique bundle
made out of salt and sand and flesh and soul;
and as if utterly
that has been reerected
in the remoteness where I am today,
in which I take the measurements at last
of your pure square, pure circle, purest world.

IV
Although thus there is entrance to this replica¹
of your apartment in a drab location
where now I like a nail am in the wood,
that motionless, alone, must be exactly
like unto you inside your so same space,
whose sill I cannot cross
but equally with others
find myself separate from you very early,
and you stay in it, cornered, in an angle
(except that you are reproduced in me).

V
For never again do I turn my back on you,
and even as in the past, so now both of us
are in the crib, the room, the dwelling-place
beneath the sweet eyes of our mother, tied
there tightly by a thread identical;
and the fate-heavy sphere
and the felicitous
(your own, and mine) unite, and is the house
of Papa and Mama, in whose company,
as yesterday, so now, and so forever.

Original Spanish version available for PDF download here.

Below is a small prose piece by Belli on the importance of belief in form.

Taking Hold of Form that Moves ("Asir la forma que se va")
Some believe in Divinity solely through fear in the face of a possible nothingness. In the same way some adore artistic form in the face of their fear of what will end by disintegrating forever. But in this case anguish is not the only cause, for there is also a tacit devotion of the senses as old as the aesthetic objects themselves. That is the faith in form, not from fear of the void, but from the pure pleasure of enjoying it. This happens in the same way in which Divinity is adored for itself, and even if it does not exist. In truth it is not spurious and does not come from baroque or Parnassian decadents. There must be no shame on account of it. It must not be made to abase itself. To work in that way is nothing but disowning our container. For the bodies in which we dwell possess a contour, also a structure, where the secret vital organs are found in perfect order and agreement. Let us hold fast to it, as we hold fast to our bodily form in the face of inevitable death.

Notes

¹Here to me the Spanish syntax seems ambiguous; for this verse ('Aunque así sea ingreso en esta réplica') could also be construed, "Though so it be, I enter into this replica" etc.)

"Taking Hold of Form that Moves" and portions of the audio lecture are taken from Maurer's “Notes on Carlos Germán Belli,” published by the Spanish department at Harvard University, Plaza: Revista de Literatura 12, Spring 1987, p. 39-46.

Buried

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:14:59 -0600

Rachel stretched out her arm and pulled the hanging switch on her bedside lamp. In the soft warm incandescence, she saw Sydney standing at the foot of the bed. He was naked.

A yell scraped through her throat with deep diaphragmatic force and in an instant, as if her cry were the inanimate whistle, which calls men out of their idleness and into the grind and halt of their industrious activity, the motion in the room appeared purely mechanical. The circular pivot of Sydney’s body corresponded in swiftness and direction to Lawrence’s sporadic and erect movement; he had woken up already leaving the bed. Thus, as Sydney left the room, Lawrence was at the foot of the bed, and their invisible tandem kept them equidistant as they raced through the unlit house.

And as Lawrence reached the foot of the bed, Rachel called out of the same depths from which her initial shock came, “Lawrence, the gun!” And as he left the room, he reached out his arm with indistinct momentum and grabbed the dusty shotgun off its rack just outside the door.

The sounds of stumbling and the banging of doors could be heard coming from the dark hall through the bedroom door. Rachel listened to this with rapacity of breath and repetitive shudders and then there were the shots.

The first report startled her and a short high-pitched cry escaped her lips. Momentarily another could be heard. There were no more after that, but this did not matter: Rachel stopped listening. She knew without much discourse that he could only be firing at the darkness; there was nothing outside could be seen. She sat up with her head bent forward, creating small spinal ridges, which found the headboard at tangential points and did not listen. Even the sounds of Lawrence’s return through the house, the slow righting of furniture and the squeak and bang of doors, windows and locks fell on her ears unheard and she only became aware of their moment as Lawrence emerged out of the dark hall and into the lamplit room.

He walked in and looked at her from where he stood just inside the doorway. Her eyes were turned to him blankly, with vacant inquisition and he breathed deeply as he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and walked over to her.

He sat down on the bed beside her and she gazed stolidly at the floor. Dark shadows fell on her face as she leaned away from the lamplight and laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. The soft rustle of bedsheets and a gentle breeze filled the room with noises and in this near-quiet, Rachel muttered her curses.

“Damn him,” she whispered in earnest exhaustion.

Lawrence moved to look at her face, which was turned toward some blank dimension outside the space of the room.

“Damn him,” she repeated in soft and steadier pronunciation. “Damn that goddam boy.” Her words seethed out of her teeth.

She wept thick, heavy moans with hard syllables, continuing to curse the young man, whom she did not recognize at first in that citrine lamplight revelation.

Lawrence’s shoulder grew damp with her tears. He held her close and said nothing. His face was marked with trepidation and amazement, lost.

Her sobs grew quieter and she no longer spat damnation. At last, Rachel was quiet and her breathing grew regular and finally slept.

Lawrence reached slowly down to the bed and took a fistful of the sheets into his grip. He pulled them up around his shoulders, slowly, deftly, with care not to disturb her.

He spread his arms around his wife and wrapped her and himself into the sheets, enveloping each and all in the soft shell of linen and thin corduroy. He breathed deeply and stared out through the window, out past the dim shadows of the garden fence and the young poplar, out past the thin rows of low-lying crops that stretched on and on in impressive acreage, out to the horizon where he set his gaze and waited for daybreak.

Before the sun came up, Lawrence quietly lay his wife down into her pillows and rose from the bed. He had not slept after the youth’s appearance. Quietly, he set about getting dressed and after a short time stepped out of the house into the cool summer morning.

In the grey predawn, Lawrence could make out the dim figures that surrounded his house. The barn stood out in the dark silhouette against the paling sky and in the west tall pines stood in indistinct clusters. The sun, rising over the curving earth, lighted their very tips. They stood like candles in small bunches and the light traveled slowly down their lengths like a flame consuming wax and wick.

Lawrence squinted against the dimness. He stood still and surveyed the illuminated land. It was mostly quiet; the whistling melodies of the birds were lost in distraction and disregard.

Inside the house, he heard the bathroom sink running and the irregular splash and shock of water in the basin and thought of the regularity in her waking motions. The sun was slowly emerging and more distinct shapes could be seen in the burgeoning daylight. Lawrence looked out at the south gate, which stood at the end of the long, rude pathway that led in semi-straight lines to the porch. A dark spot lay underneath the gate, oblong and irregular.

Lawrence slowly moved down the lane. The birds were livelier now and the air was filled with the persistent drone of cicadas and bees. The soft shuffle of Lawrence’s feet kicked up small clouds of dust, which clung to his scarred leather boots and the hem of his jeans.

He stopped a few yards from the gate and looked down at the dark misshapen spot, then kicked at it. The dust enveloped and dissolved into it, lightening its color; the spot thickened into something turbid: blood.

Lawrence lifted his hand to the latch and slowly drew it back. The cicada had not stopped their loud alarm, but the bees were not to be heard since he had moved away from the bushes.

Lawrence unhurriedly opened the wooden gate. As it arced along its path, creaking on its hinges, something scraping in concomitant motion was heard, increasing in volume and soon the gate opened wide enough for revelation. A foot leaning against the gate lost its support and fell to the ground with a soft thud, throwing up a small cloud of grey dust.

Sydney’s strong, naked body was lying on the ground before him. His limbs were splayed awkwardly, indicating a vain attempt to catch himself as he fell from the top of the tall gate. His face lay in the soft dirt and the blood was dark and muddy around him. On his back, the well-defined shotgun wound was contrasted to his pale skin, like the single blossom of a chrysanthemum, whose petals, compounded in the center forming a dark and solid mass, expand outward more and more distinctly in random and radial spray.

The front door opened behind him and Rachel stepped out onto the porch, calling his name. He turned and saw her coming toward him. He moved quickly toward her, vainly releasing the gate, for she had already seen. The gate swung slowly against its spring concealing the body. It banged against the jamb as Rachel’s limp frame fell into the strong arms of her husband.

Sydney’s final moments came hurriedly and not merely contradicting his expectations but occurring beyond any conjecture yet formed in his imaginings. Thus in rapid and grasping recollection he retraced the moments of the night.

He lay on his face in the coarse, talcy dust outside the gate and his blood thickened the earth beneath him. His right arm stretched out in a straight line with his body, pointing out past his head in the direction of his unsuccessful flight. His other arm lay at his side, bent at the elbow and his hand was spread out near his face. This positioning gave him the look of a sleeping child whose fingers escape the security and warmth of its small mouth in somnolent movement. His leg was propped up against the wooden gate for he had not been pushed down far from it.

The first recollection did not reach far back, but was merely a repetition of the shock of falling, a reconfirmation of his new condition. He remembered how the inversion of scope, where the horizon sat erected perpendicularly to his perspective, was incomprehensible and how he tried to pick himself up and run on. Then he had stretched out his fingers in tension and he clutched the ground for support, but his body denied him leverage.

Though he could feel his limbs in their various positions, he could only grasp their weight. Thus, it was the disparity of his strength in proportion to this new gravity which revealed the incapacitation of his body and pointed to its harrowing cause. And then he recalled the thunderous snarling, which in like time bonded to his movement off the fence, that sounding which simultaneously brought him to rest on the cool and receptive earth and this, too, he thought, must be the heaviness.

His mind turned back along that path of flight to its origin and he saw her face in the lamplight turn from inquiry and passive receptivity to anger and fear. And his backward-moving recall recrossed the dark spaces of the house, through which he fled, thinking, What? What?

His face now trembled with the grasping motion of his eyes in ponderous attempts to bring to light the events in his dark consciousness and his breath was violent and hungry.

And he remembered how he was not even yet over the gate, how he still straddled it almost, with one leg on top of the frame and his hands like an Olympic racer before the gun and how he was pushed by that compounded force of small bodies over the fence as if on a lateral axis, so that he fell and landed on his face, like the door of a cellar being blown shut by the wind. But he, now and muttering, out of breath, managed, “I guess…I guess it was luck, I guess.”

And, now in remembering, he had heard the second shot fly past him overhead and the staccatoed crack of stray shot on the wooden fence posts. Then his breathing was soft and untroubled and there were dark, dry lines on his face where the dust and tears commingled and rested.

He muttered inaudibly to himself and looked off across the dark line of the horizon. There, out in the distance, he saw headlights. He watched them move along their linear and invisible path but he did not have the strength to turn his head to follow their motion and soon they were out of sight.

Blood trickled from his mouth more slowly now and he licked it off his lips in slow, dry motion. The soft smack of his wet lips could be heard when softly, audibly, gurgling, he said, “Well…well, I never….” Shortly after this, he died.

Coming to, Rachel saw no more than the large blue swallowing expanse of sky and then her husband in the periphery looking down with care.

Then his hand was under her pressing upward and she, cooperating, gained equivalence with her surroundings. Lifted, she rose and the scenery gave her position, resurfacing the vague spectacle of Sydney’s corpse lying just beyond the gate. Then, she could see him, too, in the space beneath, though the image was incomplete; the rough-cut edges of the worn door guarded most of his body from sight. But she saw his pale bloodless uncoloring and shape as well as the dark staining outline amassed around him.

Her face had no shock or scandal but the hard yet passive consternation of paradoxical comprehension.

“You didn’t know it did you? Tell me you didn’t,” she asked, her voice dry and lacerated. And though she did not take her eyes from Sydney’s body, she caught the shake of her husband’s head, denying culpability, affirming remorse. “I know it. I had to know it,” she replied. “Baby, what happened?”

But this to nobody, though, Lawrence looked up at her; sharp lines of jaw and nose, which ran almost parallel off her face. He formed questioning words on his lips and began the out-rushing syllable of a breath but then she spoke again.

“How could he? This is our home.” She was not angry. Her brows bent up and outward, matching the deep sloping of her shoulders and frame in positive gesture of deepest sorrow. “Dammit, Lawrence, it was his.”

They sat and the dry breeze came in and their clothes already began sticking to their skin underneath, which responded to the moist and saturated wicking and collection of air.

Then slowly she moved forward, onto her knees and then her hands so she was then crawling. Lawrence moved, as well, upon one knee now and placed his hand on her back and the other ready to catch her in falling. But she moved out of his reach. His hand slid off the soft thin fabric of summer dressing she wore and he watched her crawling slowly toward the gate.

She reached it and looked under, lying low to the ground. She saw his face, stained by dark channels of tears and dust and she reached out her hand through the small space between wood and earth and held his foot in her small, dirty fist. She laid her face to the ground and looked at him and the oblong admixture of blood and dirt smeared her forearm where it lay under her reach.

Lawrence heard her.

“Stupid boy, I’m sorry. Child, forgive us. Oh you poor stupid boy, don’t anymore be angry.”

The tight vehement clutch left no mark on the young man’s foot when she let go. She drew back her hand and lay in the dust weeping.

Tears fell down Lawrence’s face in slow acceleration down the long rise and fall of his cheeks and he called his wife’s name several times in the cupping of his hands against his face. He heard the shift of silent earth and the short rattling conversation of the gate between its latch and hinges and looked to see her sitting now against it looking back at him.

“What do we do with him, Lawrence?”

He stood up slowly, laboriously, and looked around, squinting against the morning brightness. The trees in the west were fully lit and all around there was the buzzing activity of industrious insects. He looked out to the large magnolia tree that stood behind the barn and pointed.

“Let’s put him under the magnolia.” His voice was choked, unpracticed. He walked over to her and took her by the hand, lifting her up from the ground and he held her there.

She spoke into his shoulder, “He came back though, didn’t he? I knew he’d come back to us.” And together they opened the gate and stepped around his naked body. Squatting they took his arms over their shoulders each and held the other’s in Roman fashion behind his back and carried him such through the gate and down the path into the large field, which led to the barn. His feet dragged through the dirt and then also the trimmed grass without much noise and finally they lay him down awkwardly, lovingly against the thick dark trunk so that he sat up in dead rigidity. His front side was smeared with blood and dark streaks of soil.

Lawrence left to get a shovel and Rachel made off to the house for a hymnal or maybe a prayer book. They returned, not long gone. The sun was higher now and shone like a diamond in soft azure, cloudless and clear. But in the shade, they stood under the cool protection of the thick waxy leaves; the bright thick petals and blooms having long since blossomed.

Lawrence had a pickax too and took it up marking out a plot and then set to breaking the dry ground. Rachel walked about, flipping through her hymnal and found an old revival hymn and began to sing:

Just like a tree
That’s planted by the waters
I shall not be moved.

She repeated the chorus again and again, walking around the tree, into the sunlit periphery and back again into the shade, picking up sticks and small rocks for a marker of sorts and Lawrence dug into the ground and she walked and bent, singing still against the shuck and scatter of disturbed earth:

Like a tree by the waters
I shall not be moved.

Three Prints

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:09:32 -0600

Randell Morgan is 26 and lives alone in Dallas, TX in a 400 sq. ft. apartment. Randell is currently in tiny space training in preparation for a scale down in living quarters. Randell wants a Vanagon and Randell wants to live in said Vanagon. Vanagons do not have showers or toilets and this is a problem. Vanagons do have stoves, refrigerators and desks so Randell will still be able to draw in his Vanagon as well as consume hot and cold liquids. Randell will give periodic updates on his Vanagon adventures at his blog ScribbleShip.com after enough people buy his prints to fill up his tank and stomach.

Swan Fist

Corn Bird

Hand Okapi

Giclée prints of original illustrations on archival matte canvas printed with archival vivera inks.

Prints may be purchased at www.scribbleship.etsy.com You can view more of Randell’s work, and plans to live in a van, at www.scribbleship.com.

The Snowsuit Effort

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:55:40 -0600

Why I Do This

I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about image-making: what I liked, what I didn't like, why I felt drawn to some images and not others. I soon discovered that I was drawn to the stories behind images.

I started The Snowsuit Effort because I was struck with the desire to investigate the people behind the neighborhoods of metropolitan Detroit — to learn the stories of those who not only live in metro Detroit, but rely on metro Detroit: shopkeepers, the working poor, homeless, panhandlers, etc.

On a personal level, I wanted to force myself out of my comfort zone — to push myself in creative directions that I had purposely avoided. The whole "effort" of The Snowsuit Effort is to challenge myself, to fight the nervousness, trepidation and fear generally associated with photographing strangers.

On that same note, I wanted to create a project that would allow the viewer to make emotional decisions that were independent of things like equipment, technology and personal experience. This is why I don't have comments or offer up a lot of personal information on the site — the only available context is each photograph's relationship to the next (or previous) image. Many visitors to The Snowsuit Effort think I'm fufilling a college assignment, doing work for the state government or developing a religious program.

Kalifornia

"I'm the king of the winos."

"I have to piss in the alley before I get on the bus; that ride to Highland Park is awfully long."

I sometimes miss crucial bits of information because I'm constantly switching between my camera and my notebook when I interview people. It wasn't until days later that I remembered Kalifornia's perspective on his situation. As he removed his oversized sunglasses and knit-cap he impressed upon me, "I'm not homeless, I'm just key-less."

I desperatley wanted to add the quote back to his entry, but rules are rules. Outside of typos, I don't allow myself to edit content once it has been posted.

James

"I live in a neighborhood called 'Kill Whitey'."

"I have brain damage because the cops bashed my skull in."

James is an enigma. I talk to James about once a week and I have yet to take a decent photograph of him. Either my camera malfunctions, the lighting is bad or he slips out of focus. It's gotten to the point that I don't even bother to photograph him anymore.

When I see James it feels like I'm catching up with an old friend. We talk about his medical problems, his family and his pets. James recently gave me his email address and I rushed home to send him a message. I'm still waiting on a reply.

Anthony

"It's miserable out here on the streets."

"I play the lottery, but my luck isn't so good."

"I could move back in with my family, but I'm too old to live at home."

Anthony keeps all of his possessions in a large cafeteria cart. The cart is roughly four-and-a-half feet tall and is filled with duffle bags, suitcases, blankets and empty soda cans. I can only image how difficult manouvering the heavy cart around Detroit is, but I often notice Anthony covering several miles in a single day.

Carolyn

"I love you."

Carolyn felt ignored by society and was ashamed of her situation. She explained to me that most people are unaware of the goals and dreams of the homeless, "We're real people too," she said.

Following our conversation Carolyn reached out and hugged me with all her might. She smiled as she walked away and said, "I love you."

Clarence

"I was in the Military and I got hurt; I was shot in Afghanistan."

"The bullet wrecked my insides, I have to wear a colostomy bag."

Clarence pulled up his shirt to reveal fresh wounds in his abdomen and kidney — they were wrapped in a towel that was held snug with masking tape.

Clarence continued to show me a series of injuries. His body was like a topographic map of bullet-holes, knife-wounds, infections and scars. He ultimately presented a cumbersome leg-brace that gave him limited mobility at best.

It's interactions with people like Clarence that make our world seem unjust and unfair.

Carl

"I'm just trying to stay out of trouble, trying to stop getting drunk."

"I go through the dumpsters so that I can find food and soda cans."

Michigan winters can be miserably cold. The temperature, combined with the wind-chill factor, usually hovers around -10 degrees. As I steadied myself against the frozen wind — holding my camera to my face for protection and composition — I noticed Carl was unfazed by the sheets of icy air. His frozen tears and snow-covered beard were just a common annoyance on a typically unpleasant day.

Louis

"I'm not of this Earth, I'm from above, I come from the planet Krona."

Louis was the first person to make me question my personal safety while shooting.

During our conversation Louis noticed my camera and accused me of stealing his camera — a camera that looked exactly like mine. He became visibly angry with me, threatened to take my camera and mentioned that I was the person that stabbed him on the steps of his temple.

As I photographed Louis I promised that I would offer him a few dollars for his trouble. He decided that he would follow me to the lobby of the bank and wait while I withdrew funds from my checking account and made change at the convenience store.

I gave Louis a small sum of money and his personality quickly changed from threatening to friendly. He thanked me and said, "I'm going to use this money to buy food."

Do Not Go Gentle

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:05:37 -0600

Introduction
Joshua Neu

"183-W" by Christopher Brown

From the era of the ancient epic all the way to the modern novel, men and women have exhibited excellence in their ability to express themselves through the written word. Every culture with a written language seems to have writers who devote themselves to creating beautiful art in that language. In view of this, we notice a recurring human desire to communicate through the written word, and not just to communicate but to do so with excellence.

Recognizing this desire within ourselves, a group of students at this university found it beneficial for their development as creative writers to work together through constructive criticism. As a means of fostering our development, we formed a creative writing group, the Irving Renaissance, which met bimonthly to discuss, review, and critique each other’s original work. The authors were then able to use the criticism as suggestions for revision or for writing even better short stories, essays, or poems in the future.

Desiring not only to communicate with our colleagues in the Irving Renaissance but also with the wider audience of the college itself, we chose to publish some original works in this chapbook, “Do not go gentle.” Every issue, which will be released near the end of each semester, will contain selections of written work presented at the bimonthly meetings. This issue contains three poems followed by a short story; in the future we hope to include students’ essays as well.

I do hope you enjoy these works as they have given me immense delight. As the poet Billy Collins writes, “I want them to waterski / across the surface of a poem / waving at the author’s name on the shore” (Collins 2006, 59). That of course applies to Mr. Kane’s short story as well. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your fellow students’ work.

We extend an invitation to anyone interested in participating in the Irving Renaissance. All of us are interested in reading your work and working with you for each of us to become better writers. If you are interested in participating or have any questions at all, please contact Mr. Alexander Misko at amisko@udallas.edu. We hope to see you at our next meeting in January 2008.

Reference List: Collins, Billy. 2006. The Apple That Astonished Paris. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press.

Fear: An Occasion
by John Hogan

I don’t have it when I begin to write,
mindful the only one to read is me.
Some re will be mine always -
its nothing that could contribute -
Just a few and more short lines (a lot of time?),
then I frame it and give it to a friend.
By the way I have it and this moment something’s gone,
then three slick syllables slip from the lip of a person just like me:
“Bad poesy.”

The Window Washer
by John Hogan

Who washes the windows,
wide and large,
wetting, wiping,
the rhythm from the
swipe.

The windows now clear -
beautiful clarity -
sense of knowing -
and promise of a future
polish.

The dirt and dust return,
steadily and slowly,
make a vague pane,
while passersby can’t see the
tarnish.

Now the beauty is lost,
the clarity gone,
a sense obscured,
replaced by a notion that has
blemish.

But the washer makes purpose,
swipes and polishes,
saying with meaning,
“Nutin more pratical than window
cleanin’."

A Thought
by John Bloch

A face, passing through the doorway,
Slipping through the periphery of my life,
Strikes me like an unobtrusive drizzle
(perhaps running through the sprinkler);
It’s a lovely face, charming,
The kind you’d love to see
Framed at the Met or the Frick.

Where is she going? I’d rather not know;
A painting isn’t as enchanting
If it has a true personality;
If I knew anything at all of her
Destination I’d watch her go, not come.

So, I’m content with nothing
More coming of her than what I see
For an instant and then is
Gone.

The Reservoir
by Peter Kane

They let me go. I guess it was evidence of my truly being a se- nior. Dad didn’t even lift his head from his plate when he consented. Mom laughed and starting talking about how lenient they were to me compared to my older sisters. I performed my best that night, not too blunt, not too fake, laughing at all my Dad’s puns and enthusiastically praising the meal. It was a nice meal, as it was early enough in June where having dinner with the windows open, the sun still glowing, and eating summer-squash and fresh corn with steak tips still felt exciting and new. We sat at the table long after my dad finished his beer, talking until the sun grew red behind the scattered houses on our street. I recalled all this as I drove out that Friday morning. I had told them about our plans to skip school and go fishing, reminding them that seniors in high school do not have homework in their last two weeks, never mind its irrelevance at this point. Rolling through the curves of the neighborhood streets, I imitated the charming smile I had used the previous night, and could see my father’s knowing smirk and my mother’s chuckle: “We’re push-overs,” she had said. The turn came when I mentioned that Nathaniel Thornsbury and even Anthony already had permission; I have learned that to mention other parents’ leniency gives my parents--and especially my mother--a relaxed conscience. I did not mention Sebastian. For him, skipping class required sensitive care.

Amid thoughts of the summer meal, without realizing it I had crossed Forest Avenue. I swore softly, thinking how this happens at least once a day. I took the longer route through School Street to get to Nathaniel’s house, a one-floor yellow cottage right across a lumber-yard. The hum of the engine undulated with the turns in the roads; no roads in Massachusetts fly straight. That’s good, it gives them character, I thought; New York roads run straight and ugly. F-ing Yankees.

Nathaniel stood up from his front steps and submitted wholly to a yawn, letting his arms strain outwards and head tilt up. “Morning”, he said as he bent down to pick up his tackle box. He walked over to my green ‘95 Chevy sedan and dropped his gear into the open trunk next to the cooler, then returned to his garage and fetched his mini gas-grill. He held the trunk door open with one hand as he closely examined the contents already packed. I was leaning against the driver-side door with my hands in my pockets, grinning at the concentration in his eyes. My experience thus far of Nathaniel told me he had two looks--a focused furrowing of the eyes and a satisfied grin--and here was the former.

“You all set, Nathaniel? We got the meat, the grill, and the smokes already; I’d say we’re set.”

“Oh, that’s it, forgot the power-bait.” He brushed past me back towards his house. I turned on the car, and drummed my fingers on the clutch, watching the door. After five long minutes he came out with his new pack of fake-worms in hand and a piece of bread hanging from his mouth. He wore paint-spotted jeans with massive, thick-soled beige boots he could barely squeeze past the seat to the floor in my small car. His gray T-shirt had little rips along the seams at his neck.

“You didn’t get dressed-up for me, did you?” I said, putting the car in reverse. He looked down at his clothes and shrugged. As we pulled out onto the street I flipped open a pack of cigarettes and offered him one. “Let’s start this day right.” He picked out a cigarette and gave me a nod. “Nathaniel, it’s going to be a delightful day.”

“We’ll let the fish decide that.”

What a bum, I thought half-smiling, can’t even put in the effort. The fish decide? He should decide. But that’s not Nathaniel.

We had to ring the doorbell to get Anthony from his house on the far side of town. His mother let us into the kitchen, and her smirk and piercing eye reminded me of my mother’s look the night before. As Nathaniel searched the living room for embarrassing pictures of Anthony, I sat watching the stairs. Anthony came down packing a small bag with a book and a handful of odd items for the day. I met his eyes as he came to the bottom steps, and I gave a little nod and whispered to myself, “Antoine.” He grinned back and moved into the kitchen. As Anthony walked in and out of the kitchen fetching his things, Mrs. Benedict followed his movements with her head, telling him about some dinner guest he had to meet later that night. He finally was ready, and let his mother finish while he stood staring at the floor: his habit whenever friends caught him with family. Mrs. Benedict never missed a chance to tease her son on such occasions: “Am I embarrass- ing you in front of them or something? Too bad, you shouldn’t be afraid to be affectionate with your mother.” Nathaniel snickered and Anthony’s eyes darted towards me. I smiled and looked at him for a moment, telling him I know the feeling, then suggested we leave. Mrs. Benedict peered at me from across the kitchen and with a smirk said, “If anyone calls from the school saying you guys were seen skipping [she hissed out the “s”], I am absolutely ignorant.”

I grabbed Anthony’s shoulder and pulled him towards me. “No one will; we intend to keep Antoine far from Doverton High today.”

We pulled away from his house, a three storied colonial set on a little slope, obviously the richest of the already rich houses on the street. I looked at the dashboard clock. 7:45. “We gotta move, we’re late. He’s waiting for us now.”

Doverton High School’s red-orange brick glistened under the newly risen, bright, almost pure white sun. After a rainy May the grass burst with intense greens. Our car idled just beyond a small patch of planted pines between the road and the school lawn. I stared through the passenger side window at a dark, tinted glass door at the side of the building, while Nathaniel looked in the opposite direction across me, studying some form of clouds to the south. The bright brick looked almost inviting now that I was on the outside. I had begun to turn off the ignition when Sebastian popped out of the tinted door and stumbled onto the platform. He swung his head around and looked at the closing door with wild eyes. Nathaniel began cackling and Anthony sniggered. I was already thanking myself for inviting him, for Sebastian was an entertainer. He bounded towards us carrying his backpack in front of him like one would a football; he caught sight of the car, grinned at us, then turned and lifted his arm to make a taunting gesture to the school. Crumpled papers and a dozen used pencils escaped his unzipped bag. All three of us convulsed in laughter; Sebastian grinned more widely than ever as he chased the strewn papers across the lawn. He stuffed what he could into his bag, then gave the finger to some papers blowing too far away, and bolted towards to the car.

“Go, go, go, go! Why the hell are we still here!” he whooped as he jumped headlong into the backseat, crashing onto Anthony’s lap. His feet hung out the open door as I hit the gas. Nathaniel turned around, grabbed Sebastian’s pants at the rump, and heaved him in as Anthony shut the door behind him. Sebastian righted himself in his seat and in the rear-view mirror I could see him still grinning madly. He was only a sophomore, and despite his thick reddish stubble, he had a boyish look; his blue eyes constantly sparkled and his smile was peevish. He glanced back and forth at each one of us laughing, and seemed content with his performance. He began chuckling himself and grew red in the face, then in a frenzy yelled, “I’m ready to fish on, boys! Fish on! This was a sweet plan, Finnegan.” He looked back at the school, “We’re bad-ass.”

“Real bad-ass,” I said. “You barely made it out the school door.”

The school was close to the bait-shop. We stopped there and filled a large white bucket with live shiners. On our way to the pond Sebastian had them in his lap, and entertained Anthony by taking a fish and trying to tickle Nathaniel’s ears with it. The drive was pleasant and too short. Morning drives: the topmost leaves of the oak-trees shot through with sunlight, dense foliage keeping the winding roads shaded and damp. Nathaniel got into some argument with Sebastian, but I only heard murmuring; I thought about Liz, imagining where she was this day. The drive was too short. Days like this are too short.

We had to walk down a sandy slope to get to the pond. It was a reservoir dug out beside a one-acre cranberry bog. It is one of the great South Shore mysteries that though contaminated with pesticides, cranberry bog ponds hold some of the largest bass. Pale red leaves colored the neatly square bog, which remained dry behind a levy and a small wooden dam. A dirt path with tracks for a truck lined both the bog and the reservoir. As with most cranberry bogs, the sandy ground prevented much of June’s greenery around the bog, but forests sprouted around the pond where the soil was still fertile. The sun behind us played its light off of the pond, and the ripples on the water shot white light in all directions. We passed the owner’s house with our hands full of rods, tackle, and food. Nathaniel carried his rusty little green grill tightly under his left arm. He walked far ahead, and Sebastian swaggered and skipped in front of him, all but dancing to the rap-song coming off his lips. Anthony and I calmly strode twenty yards behind.

“Look, Antoine. That’s beautiful. No, captivating. No, I’d call it sublime.” He was already looking, and owing to the nod he gave in response, it seemed he had already thought something similar. “Glad you came. Perhaps the best thing we could have done today,” I continued, “hours and hours to just hang out and fish. Don’t worry about anything else, just relaxing; if you forget that, I’m throwing you in the pond, deal?”

“I can do that.” He didn’t say anything else. He smiled and looked back out over the landscape. The quiet man, I thought, doesn’t force anything. When I invited him I had hoped he enjoyed fishing, but the faraway look in his eyes when I asked suggested it wasn’t the fishing that interested him. He had the same fire in his look I imagined myself to have in planning the trip; it wasn’t just fishing for me either. After thinking for a bit he had muttered something about Walden and solitude, to which I reassured him this was the trip for him. The faraway look had returned as we strolled past towards the pond. Nathaniel rigged his line first, opening his new pack of fake worms. “Check out the master-fisherman,” Sebastian remarked as Nathaniel marched down the shore. He stopped at a patch of lilies and made a sideways cast. We all waited for his bait to hit water, but it never came. Nathaniel grunted loudly. An overhanging tree branch jerked back and forth as he pulled on his rod. Sebastian gave a mocking laugh. Without another word Nathaniel took off his boots, rolled up his pant legs, and waded in. When the rest of us hadready spread out and begun the hunt, he was still poised under the leaning tree, slowly working out the hook and bait. His hands worked methodically. He focused unflinchingly on the branch, and he stayed under that tree for some time.

We spread out on the south side of the pond, absolutely confident in each spot we chose and expecting bites at each cast. Sebastian flitted around the shore; several times he yanked so hard at a disturbance in the line, his lure shot out the water and landed on the dirt path. Anthony cautiously reeled in each cast, getting in one cast to every four of Sebastian’s. I used a jig at first, as it felt right in the hand. I passed over the shiners, quick lines of silver darting all around each other in their small world. They’re for later; they’re boring when you have energy to work a jig. The first fish wasn’t raised until Sebastian complained. In the middle of yelling to me his frustration from down the shore, his rod shuddered and bent. “Fish on! How ‘bout this, Nate!” A minute later and he was running up and down the shore holding the fish by the jaw above his head. After showing everyone his trophy, he held the sparkling small-mouthed bass up to his face, said a thank you, then spun himself around and lobbed the bass in the air, laughing to himself. The bass lay sideways on the water, recovering from its fight. I couldn’t watch the exhausted fish for long; I hate when people throw fish, rips the art away, and there’s definitely an art. Nathaniel has it, though he doesn’t enjoy it like I would.

Thus the fishing began. None of us sat down. We smoked while we fished, and had scoured almost all of the spots by late morning. I kept an eye on everyone, especially Anthony as he began to be less attentive to his casts. The sun hit us directly from above, and the air heated up. Nathaniel finally walked out from under the tree and worked the same spot for most of the morning, even when Anthony, Sebastian, and I had headed west.

By noon I switched to shiners. It’s easy to hook a dead shiner; the live ones require more experience, or nerve. It took a few minutes just to pin one of the minnows to the wall of the bucket and carefully slide him up out of the water. I pinched him with my fingers, and felt the beating of his organs. His scales were slick, and his skin and muscles firm, making the hook’s puncture sound particularly violent. But they are best still alive, as they still try to swim maimed, looking like easy prey. The shiners brought several catches for all of us, not only bass but strong, feisty pickerel and even an occasional eel.

Shiners let me sit. Relaxing let me think. I had looked forward to this thinking time. It was here--in my imagination--that the day could gather together into a panorama to be viewed and tasted. The heat pelted our backs, so I took off my long-sleeve white shirt and draped it over my neck, then crouched to the ground keeping the rod planted between my feet. My bobber floated ten yards from the shore. A painter basked on a half-submerged log, his wrinkled neck extended towards the blaring yellow sun, while below him murky water lapped his wooden perch. Painters: I recalled the elementary school days at recess of hunting them in the creek, getting a mud splattering on our legs and always losing our socks in the muck. A crunching sound came from the shore and the turtle slipped into the water. Anthony approached from the shore.

He did not carry a rod, but accompanied me on the grassy slope.

“Did you give up on the fish, Antoine? Can’t blame you, the magic of the morning hours is over; the lively stuff’ll come back later.”

“Looking forward to it.” He picked apart dandelions, using his fingernail to slit the stem and then scrape the watery layers. He saved the flower-part, making a pile in his lap. He wanted to say something. I was sure of it, and watched him smiling. “So, uh...when do you go? To New York?”

“Week after graduation. What’s that, three, four weeks from now? Yeah. Are you gonna miss me?” Anthony grinned shyly and continued slicing a stem. White juices wet his finger. “Yeah, I’m going away. The summer courses start June 24th.” A breeze pushed the bobber towards the shore; the hooked minnow had ceased to move about. “I stood near the main entrance yesterday, and thought about how young we all are. I guess everyone says the same, but they are. Some fatty skateboard freshman was sitting there with some punk-rock girlfriend on his lap. They both were just staring out at everybody who passed by like they were hot shit. They’ve got no reason to hang around. No reason, loving to be acknowledged, but what’s ironic is that they claim to reject the popularity game. Just kids, Antoine, just kids.” That was weird. What did I mean to say? It started so well, then, what the hell am I bringing them up for? Anthony narrowed his eyes, and tossed a broken stem into the water.

“I wish...” Anthony started, looking towards the ground, “...I don’t know, I wish teenage years weren’t so...forced. So many people change. Do you ever get the feeling that like, you’re the only one unchanged? I still want to shoot off fireworks on Friday nights, but everyone else just...forced out something. Like ah...I don’t know...you know.” His faraway look vanished briefly and he rubbed his nose a few times. He recovered and his large, glossy, almost black eyes fixed on the pond.

“I understand. I do.” We talked on, both of us knowing how to balance the conversation between spoken words and time to let the robins and chickadees chirp. This was the time I had wanted. Right now, this is it, just being, no worries, I’ll let my whole senior year rest on this day. I smoked a cigarette carefully, preparing for some thought, watching each wisp of smoke escape my lips.

“No more Doverton, Anthony. Strange. No more sketch locker room pranks or gym-class hero. No more homeroom, no more intellectualism from our dear friend Chaz. Mrs. Steinburner’s class is done. George Herzl: what a nihilist, no more of him. Remember...” I laughed a bit, “...remember when he dressed up as Voltaire for extra credit? AP kids are a weird group, man, and I don’t know how we’re part of it.”

I rested my back on the slope and let the sunlight bake my closed eyelids, trying to chase the splotches of color and light forming in place of the landscape. The grass tickled my neck and legs, and the singing birds nervously made their calls. Outdoors. Here’s your solitude, Anthony. You’re probably a step ahead of me. Breathe in the wind, inhale as it passes by the nostrils. What could be better? If only all of them--McCourt, Casey, Allie, Liz, all--could feel this and then...then they’d see. In New York, they’ll be more times like this to see clearly, beyond the silliness of these past few years. I won’t miss too many; except her, maybe Anthony here, and Nate. I imagined each of their faces on our last meeting, how I would look somewhere far off while they stared longingly at me, stumbling to say something meaningful. I’d let them stammer for words, then say something like: “I’ve enjoyed everything this year, the times together. Had we but met earlier and had time enough...you are an incredible person.” Well, at least I’d say that to her, maybe something similar to the rest. I will shake Nathaniel’s hand, he’ll give me a hard look, and I’ll pat his shoulder, and that’ll suffice. New York, on a bus, in four weeks. Four weeks. Not enough time, not enough time to say that thing that will make her dare to give a weak smile that reveals she wants me to stay. They’re all out of my life in four weeks. I’ll have a blank slate, only their faces to remember...only their faces. But that’s not enough. I can’t go to New York.

“Why d’you decide to do this summer program?” Anthony asked, still looking to the far shore. I shaded my eyes as I sat up. “Think you’ll come back during the summer at all?” Coming back home: I’d hide my return, letting a few people know and then slowly working my way to see everyone, and maybe even Liz, and savor their excited greetings and hopeful looks.

“I don’t think I can...” Now I looked down. “I was hoping to figure some of this stuff out today, you know...leaving high school and dealing with what’s beyond.”

He nodded his head. “I understand.” This was as close as we got to something worthwhile. As soon as I whispered out loud the ideal for the day, which I had kept vague before, it was blemished, and seemed naked and defenseless in front of Anthony, seemed...silly. But he understood, and so it stayed alive.

“Four years. Four weeks. Damn.” A couple of chickadees erupted from their perches right near the water and flapped away, darting around each other as they headed east, across us towards the bog. Following the birds’ flight down shore, I happened to gaze upon Sebastian. I let out a laugh. Anthony turned and did the same. Sebastian sat on the sandy shore with his bare feet lying in the water. His shirt was off, and his finger twirled in his belly button while the other hand limply held the rod. He murmured a Celine Dion number. He heard us laugh, turned his head, and passionately sung out loud the rest of the chorus, then picked himself up and trotted towards us.

He squatted between Anthony and me and put his hands around our shoulders. “Let’s fire up that grill, we need a break.”

Beneath the black encrusted rack, white coals littered the grill. These were not going to catch. And all that meat sitting there. Anthony opened up the ground beef and patted out the circles while I lit the little propane tank. My nose turned away at its gassy flame. The old coals, full of holes from overuse, were still cold and unlit after multiple tries. Nathaniel said, “Well,” and began to prepare hot-dogs, wagging his head at our efforts and snacking on potato chips. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“We are going to eat burgers.” I took a raw burger and placed it over the propane flame. Cooking one at a time, the burgers browned, then blackened. Satisfied, I fitted one into a bun and bit.

Slime. Wet and chewy, nigh slippery. Beyond the thin charred crust the burger showed bloody red. Anthony spit his out and went for Nathaniel’s hot dogs. Damn it, burgers are key; I planned on burgers. I ate slowly. The meat slid down the throat without needing chewing, and I ate two because of Nathaniel’s teasing grin. I called it victory, and spoke nothing of the queasiness when we started to fish again.

The post-lunch fishing proceeded like the morning’s. With new energy, Sebastian hailed his trophies and Anthony nursed his lure. My stomach wrenched for about an hour. Nathaniel spent the first 10 minutes after lunch tying on a neon jig, for him the only worthy choice in the early afternoon.

Lunch is over, so we’re halfway done, I thought. More than half. The best part of the day: is it past? Why didn’t those coals light? All I wanted was a damn burger. This Coke’s no help, either. Liz and Jess--and probably some of those guys--lie on a beach, and I screw around with ground beef. No, forget it, there’s more at this pond; that game I play, with her, sneaking smiles and conjuring nice comments, that’s not here. Why the hell didn’t those coals just light?

The fish didn’t bite as much after lunch. They lay in the cool depths. I smoked more cigarettes in the afternoon; the entering smoke cut the throat harder with the heat of the afternoon. Nathaniel had worked his way along to the south side, the farthest end of the pond where the trees came out close and the path morphed into a trail. A little cove and shaded, solace from the heat. I followed him.

“Hey, Nate, did your uncle give you that job?” I fished a spoon in the open part of the cove. Nathaniel stood to the left in the water, hitting with finesse casts where the pond receded into the woods.

“That’s Nathaniel, Michael. That’s what my mama named me.” He flicked a side cast into the shadows. I smiled and asked him again.

“Yeah, I got it.” He adjusted the drag on his rod.

“Hope you like fixing cars enough to do it all summer.” I cast and listened to the neat plop of the spoon. I let it sink a little before giving it action. He’s real hard to talk to sometimes. “Do you?”

“Uh, yeah.” He tugged his line carefully, dancing the jig with deli-cate pulls. “There you are!” His rod doubled over and the line straightened. “She’s coming up!” He leaned back with his rod and the fish cleared the surface while running away from shore. The mix of white spray and silver froze against the deep black of the cove. “Yee!” He brought it in. Holding the fish square with his eye, he then gave a kiss on the top of the struggling bass’ head. “You wanna kiss her, Finnegan?”

“Man, you’re a hick.” Taking it as a compliment, he grinned widely, revealing two large dimples and strong teeth. He lowered the bass into the water, giving it time to rest before releasing his hold. He looked over his lure, bent a hook to its correct place, narrowed his eyes again and continued his casting.

Five o’clock arrived sooner than I expected. Class never passes this fast. Skinny pines covered up the yellowy-orange and blurring sun behind us, leaving tall and thin shadows stretched across the little cove in which we had made our home. Beyond our little cove the pond widened as it came nearer the dam sheltering the dry cranberry bog. There, as well as across the owner’s house, and on the street beyond, the land still lay exposed to the sun, baking in a dusty afternoon hue. Large cumulus clouds--the puffy kind that June breezes bring--were on their way out, floating in the east, looking playful and light opposite the heavy yellows of the sun. But we found shade in our cove.

A squirrel crunched leaves in the woods behind us, stopping occasionally to raise his head to the winds. “Time for a smoky-treat, Antoine. This calls for a bobber.” I picked a large shiner floating belly-up, and his scales detached from his flesh onto my thumb when I hooked him. Half his body ripped off during the cast, but he would do. I dug the rod into the ground, then delicately sank my fingers into the water, watching the metallic scales slide off my fingers. That fish had been dead and softening for at least half the day.

“You sure you don’t want to try one, Antoine?” I held out my cigarettes, but he put up his hand and frowned, his way of saying no. I climbed the small bank where he sat with arms clasped around his bent knees. With a sigh, I plopped myself down in the same way next to him. Anthony continued to stare out into the water, and I gladly joined him.

Sliding a cigarette out of the almost empty pack, I let it hang limp from my lips for a while, surveying the waters. I lit it with a long, slow intake, and then let the thick smoke rise lazily from my mouth. “I’ll have to teach you the virtues of smoking some day, Antoine. Then you’ll get why Nathan and I do it. The problem is that in our school you have to hide it, because only Goths smoke.”

“True.”

“It’s unfortunate for those of us who see its higher aspects but don’t want to wear spikes in our ear-lobes. But there are ways to make it discreet. Me and McCourt were probably the only honors students in Doverton history to sneak off to the parking lot to smoke frenchies. In fact, you should feel quite honored sitting next to me, Anthony. And don’t do that shake your head and smirk thing, don’t deny it: you know I’m pretty cool.”

“Clearly,” he quietly answered. His slight chuckle made me happy.

I chuckled a bit and took another drag.

“Only eight days left. Damn. Eight days,” I murmured to the sky. Anthony’s head dropped down and he gave a smile, which he suppressed or forced, I couldn’t tell. I continued: “Cross-Country season seems like it was yesterday. Running until we escaped in the woods and then walking...” I glanced at him and grinned, “...Glen and the boxer incident.” Anthony lit up, showing his large white teeth: I finally had found the right spot. Anthony’s laugh always got me to smile, its particular mischievousness and the way it always started with a hard snort. My mind continued to filter through the year’s memories. We both agreed the year had flown by. The happier moments rose up in sequence to the memory’s surface...

I watched my bobber slip up and down over the ripples, the red top hard to miss among the black water. Anthony’s smile faded a bit and I worried he was getting bored. Maybe I am, too. Damn. I looked at my watch. Quarter after five. Damn. We don’t have enough of these days to just be, to get away from school and stop having to project ourselves to everyone else. Though my eyes stared at the calm ripples of the little cove, I looked at the crowded halls of Doverton High, and the flapping mouths of the cliquing freshmen girls forming at the bottoms of the stairwells, and their contrast with Lizzie walking past them, alone and smiling with the light on her hair, the bustle of the parking lot after the last bell sounded, McCourt bloodied and smiling after his fight with Timmy Ryan, the senior awards night when her green eyes shone clear against her white dress.

“She told me she waited as long as she could for me to ask her to prom, Antoine. I never realized.” Half of my lip curled in a smile as I shook my head, making sure he knew I wasn’t too much affected.

He turned to me, “Who, Liz?” I nodded slowly and he chuckled. “Smooth, Finnegan.”

“That’s gone now.” In my imagination I let her fade into a black backdrop, her round green eyes sad and fixed on mine. The glistening in her sad eyes against the darkening background made them even prettier. She’s looking at me. Incredible, I thought. Eyes like hers make you think twice; just sticks. They’re almost more beautiful in my imagination.

I closed my eyes and let her go from sight. I told Anthony enough. In reality, Liz had looked my way only a few times, and was known for being a flirt. She had some boyfriend up in some college in Boston. But when I thought of her, he didn’t exist, and she always looked at me with those sad green eyes.

I knew it was a lie, but, what a lie it was.

The squirrel now munched on a stray acorn beside the path, then stopped mid-chew to sniff the wind. What more to this day, what do we lack? I am here to enjoy a day of days, get away from the bustle and silliness of school, just be, simply be with my friends. A simple project: some rods, a pond, and a beautiful sky. Yes, this is great. Anthony’s brow had furrowed in thought. I hope he’s enjoying this. Of course he is; he understands. He knows this is important. And the other two?

Sebastian’s shirt wrapped around his head. He still fished where we had lunched, in the sun twenty yards from where I sat. Thigh-deep in the water, his hands mechanically reeled in and cast again. His lips fixed into a half-pucker and his head leaned slightly back. I laughed silently: every group needs a Sebastian. That phrase sounded pretty good; I lit another smoke, and after a slow exhale repeated it to Anthony.

“Truly. He adds a lot. Wonder who he’ll hang around next year.”

“Not Nick, he’s moving away from us, or, from you, I should say, to Ashenton.”

Nathaniel, jeans rolled up to his knees, with his little orange tackle-box held close next to his thigh and his Ugly-stick balanced in his hand, strolled down the shore eyeing the little nooks of the little cove. He puffed rhythmically from the cigarette hanging aslant from his lips. He mumbled to himself. I leaned over to Anthony. “And this guy,” I pointed to Nathaniel, “no one has ever figured out. He’s offended so many girls with his comments they’re all in love with him. Yesterday he told Alice that women shouldn’t be allowed to work outside the home.” I called out to him, “Isn’t that right, Nathaniel?”

“What?” He yelled without looking at me. He had stopped walking; his body leaned out over the water and he peered underneath an overhanging branch looking for lurking bass.

“What you said yesterday to Cindy about how women shouldn’t work?” Anthony and I waited for his reply with smiles on our faces.

“What? They shouldn’t,” he said without stopping his search. Moving away a bit from the water, he squatted down and rummaged through his tacklebox. “What the hell? Where’s my devil spoon? Where...where did I put it?”

He stood up, stared at the ground with a furrow on his forehead, and arms on his hips.

I took in the lake once more from left to right, eventually gazing again upon the white shiner bucket that was placed directly beside me. Leaning to the right over my shoulder, my nose was a foot from the pale bluish tank water. Most of the minnows floated on the top. They drifted in tangents, occasionally rubbing against their dead companions. Their eyes bulged, black and sickly. I hadn’t noticed how fragile they were until that day. The tails, which in the morning were so fast, curved off at odd angles, at times giving a tiny push: a feeble attempt to escape the beige orb staring at them from above the water. Those that still had energy to swim did so, but on their sides and at the surface, revolving continuously around the center of the bucket. Big eyes, all pupil and staring nowhere. They had a creamy film around them, and held my attention.

I thought I heard some words spoken: “Did you use my devil-spoon?” Without lifting my gaze off the shiners, I noticed two hairy legs in rolled-up jeans over the lip of the bucket. Just go away, Nate, I thought. The scales of one of the bigger shiners were raised as if they would soon fall off. His fins were rotted. I felt a jab in my side.

“Hey! Where’s my devil spoon?”

“Hold on.” The legs didn’t go away, but I was seeing something I had never seen before. I couldn’t miss it.

“Michael, they’re shiners. Come on.”

“Just a second, you wouldn’t understand.” I wanted to say it lightly but it came out flat. At least I have this; that damn minute-hand may be flying but I have this thing to look at. If only he’d leave me for a second to let this impress. If only Anthony would smile more, if only those damn burgers would cook, if only I had the guts to ever say more than a stupid-faced hello to Lizzie and all those other fair-haired girls that ever caught my imagination, or if I could just spend one more summer lying out in the front lawn with the white clouds passing over and Dad coming home when there’s still plenty of daylight to shoot the basketball until Mom calls dinner and we wash the grime off our hands and then after watch a ballgame until I fall asleep on the couch...

Mass death. Massachusetts’ death. Mass death, all in a few hours. I followed the biggest shiner with my eyes as he began to spiral down to the bottom as they sometimes do. He sailed downwards, back and forth in clockwise pattern. He was almost to the bottom.

A flash of white and a sprinkle of water. There was no bucket, no legs, no shiners, just grass. My head snapped up: Nathaniel took two large strides to the shore. There was a splash, and the shiners were in the black water, moving away from each other amidst pockets of bubbles. The bucket clanged to the ground beside Nathaniel. He observed his work. I tried to get up and realized I was already standing.

“Why the hell d’you do that?”

Sebastian was laughing from a distance. Anthony remained seated, and let out a quick confused chuckle.

Nathaniel pushed his blonde hair from his eyes and then put his hands in his jean pockets. “They’re dead.”

I walked up next to him. We stood shoulder to shoulder. I cocked my head slightly to the side, and bit my lip.

“Oh, come on, you weren’t fishing anyway.” He gave me a slow slap on the back and took out his pack of Reds.

“What? What are you talking about? What do you think I came here for?”

“I came here to fish.” He stuck one of the cigarettes between my lips and lit it; I complied, not changing my puzzled expression “Shit, Finnegan, you gotta get rid of ‘em anyhow.” I looked at him. His eyes locked on mine, and glistened, their green color dark and solid. His eyes weren’t narrowed, but looked straight at me; he wasn’t grinning, but instead had a pleasant smile which looked friendly. Not one of his old two looks. “I saw you two today. You didn’t come here to fish,” he muttered so that Anthony couldn’t hear, “I don’t know what you came here for. But don’t matter. Forget the minnows, let ‘em be.”

Let ‘em be, he says. Huh. In their new bigger world they seemed weak, insignificant. I instinctively picked up the bucket next to Nathaniel. It looked naked without its bluish water, just white plastic all marked with scratches, utterly empty. It felt light in my grasp, which made my grip feel strong and ready. I lifted it up and down a few times; incredibly light after its contents were spilled. Let ‘em be, he says. I wanted to smile, but a last trailing wisp of grasping vanity held my lips. But the wisp was passing.

The bucket flew for 10 yards, far past the dead shiners into the open. In the air it turned slowly, the white plastic dull in the shadows of the trees. I now watched the half-submerged bucket sway up and down. “Thanks, that was good,” I said. Nathaniel grinned his old silly grin, but now I noticed the deep green in his eyes, a green that was always there.

There was brief sucking sound and a minnow I’d been watching disappeared. A few moments later another dead shiner vanished. “That thing’s huge!” Nathaniel pointed down into the black water, and suddenly the shape appeared. A massive brown oval, four claws wiggling on the sides, and receding tail, and the gnarled head touching the surface: a snapper had found supper. “Now it was really worth it.” Nathaniel encouraged the snapper, giving a yelp every time another shiner was sucked down. I gave a grunted laugh; Nathaniel caught it and turned to the others. “Hah! He’s all right. The ‘olsnappah make Mikey all bettah?” I gave him a good punch in the arm, and he snickered as he rubbed his shoulder.

I looked back at the turtle: “I guess I can’t get that bucket right now.” I looked at my watch. “Well, this day is about done. Let’s go do something...what do you want to do, Nathaniel?” He concentrated for a moment, then said, “Wiffle-ball.” Anthony shot up from his spot. Nathaniel stopped me, “Where’s the damn devil spoon?”

“It’s in the other tackle box, I used it after lunch. Are you ready to go?”

“I’m ready if you got a smoke for me.”

We walked back in a line. Sebastian skipped on ahead, walking backwards at times so he could reenact the whole day. Behind him walked Anthony, who amused himself in watching Sebastian. I walked behind him. Nathaniel walked last.

“Hey, Nathaniel,” I said as we walked past the bog, “let’s forget about that, ok?”

“What? The Wiffle-ball?” At first I was a bit confused at his answer, but then understood.

“Uh, yeah...well...never mind, we should play.”

“Good.”

As we climbed up the hill just before the street, I held my rod low to the ground, watching it dig into the ground and then pop out again. Nathaniel asked, “You trying to do some summer planting there, hand on the plow?” I smiled and continued grazing the ground with the rod, but I didn’t turn around.

Mauled By A Cougar

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:17:00 -0600

Note: Audio in the following piece requires the Adobe Flash Player.

Listen to "Pirate" by Mauled by a Cougar. If you are having trouble listening to the song, download the song.

One year ago, Mauled by a Cougar began with Jason Roe and Cerena Collins' collaboration. Within the year, the band fashioned a fanciful experience of arts grounded in real-life-story-lyrics, brought the musical styling of Michael Bryant on-board, and created this e.p.

The e.p. is composed of four songs and framed in a glue-gummed, construction papered, tea steeped piece of art: one part of these musicians' wimisical, handcrafted experience, which is (in short) a map. The band's goal is to inspire friends and fellow artists to bring their creative ideas to life through motivation and friendship. It is the stuff that dreams are made of - be inspired.

See for yourself at Mauled by a Cougar's upcoming show:

19 Jan 2008, 09:00 PM
3716 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, Texas 76107
Cost : Free

myspace.com/mauledbyacougar

Photos by Joshua Davis. www.joshuadavisagency.com