Two men walked down a prison corridor, when another man in plain clothes approached and walked with them. They knew he was an undercover cop, so they ignored all his provocations. At the end of the hallway they still had not given in, so the cop turned and arrested one of them. A scuffle ensued, and in the chaos one of the men began calling the cop by the accused man's name, thus incriminating him. The crowd caught on, having no way to identify the cop, and having the two men's word against one. Correctional officers arrived and arrested the cop in the other man's name, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Five years later, "Any inconsistency in your story only serves to weaken your case and confuse the jury," said a voice that was clearly well-versed in court proceedings. The cop's cell door closed, and the speaker turned out to be the man who had originally caused the mix-up. He had become a police officer, and now was in a place of power over the unfortunate cop. Outside the cell in the hallway, he burst into tears.

Didn't anyone notice that one man was black and the other white? Should anyone who did, speak up, or risk spending their own life behind bars?

As I drove home from work after class I thought about how if I were to slide between dimensions, possibly by dying, presumably my senses would be the first thing to go. If that’s true, though, it seems odd that I think of art as transcendent, as in, able to reach other planes of reality. Maybe art is the senses’ approach to finding truth, not truth itself. If that’s true, and even the best art disappears when our senses dissolve, the truth that it was pointing toward might remain, because truth is not contingent on your perception.

The other thing I thought before I turned onto my street was that that means you can’t hang onto pieces of art as you transition, like you can’t hang onto coins you earn from level to the next in a video game. When you ‘graduate’ or shift or slide to another level or dimension, while it would be wonderful to be able to carry something with you, like your favorite book or melody, in all likelihood you can’t. Art is transient, and because it is dependent on the senses, it cannot survive the transition. So you better hope that your understanding of it is strong enough to, because that might be all you get.

I turned this in to my philosophy professor as a response to the reading we were supposed to do on David Hume. I didn’t read it, so I don’t know how relevant my input was, but I was banking on him being sufficiently moved to give me an A anyway.

‘The paper was supposed to be ten pages long,’ he said, staring at my measly one page on his desk during office hours the next day. He frowned at it through it his enormous glasses. ‘And on the fallacies in Hume’s critique of the argument from design.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, truly remorseful.

‘However, I’m willing to make an exception,’ he went on, ‘If you can parse out what you handed in to me into a valid argument, by Monday, I’ll accept it.’ He steepled his fingers under his chin.

As I closed the door behind me I heard him mutter ‘And please read the critique.’

This was excellent news. I now had the choice between two papers to write, which meant one must be worth doing. Having only till Friday, I sat down that night with every intention to complete at least one.

The Five Burroughs

You know how when you remember part of your childhood, or something that happened a long time ago, the parts of that memory all seem to bleed together, as if they weren't discrete sections that you experienced separately, but one big mix of stuff? (Do other people feel that way?)

I love that feeling, and I think I try to dive into it when I write something.

Last night Johnny told us a good name for a band he'd thought of: The Five Burroughs. (As in, spelled like William S. Burroughs.) I said it sounded like a punk band, and he said he'd probably never change his band name from Secret Cove, so it didn't matter anyway, and I said he could use it in the book he's writing. That is another thing I love about writing: if you think of something awesome that you won't do, but might have done in another life, then you can imagine the world you'd want it to happen in, and create it.

Someday, looking back, my whole life will be a big amorphous flowing memory of all the things I did - maybe, far enough away, I won't remember whether I lived in NYC before South Bend, or if I went to Ghana or only imagined going to Ghana. And I think that in that mix will be all the things I wrote about. Maybe they'll even be as real as things that really happened. So for that reason, I owe it to myself to right great things, and to write a lot of them, and to write them well.

Hey friends,

Check out my story 'Fever Dream,' now online at PANK Magazine -

http://www.pankmagazine.com/fever-dream/

Cheers!

[new music][secret cove]

I checked out, and caught a ride
Flew into an interesting time

('Alice,' by Secret Cove)
(Check them out here: http://secretcove.bandcamp.com/)

Didn’t they know there was a cemetery there before they started digging?

I wonder how they knew it was a slave cemetery. Was it a name on a headstone? Did they know it was there before they started digging, and no one said anything about it until they actually found it?

* * *

I suppose it was a rather idyllic scenario, a fancy restaurant next to the beach, rolling waves and attractive people walking around, but for us, there was something eerie going on. Part of it had to do with the way we were able to go from the restaurant to the beach without a problem, even if we were soaking wet and as salty as the rims of our margarita glasses. And the people who were walking around—that seemed to be all they were doing, walking around. Even the man with the gray beard, who didn’t look much older than us. He was really, really attractive, and Evan thought so too. He was walking around farther away from the restaurant and the beach; if it weren’t for him, I might not have known there was a town nearby. He seemed to be staying away from the waiters. He didn’t avoid us.

It was clear that he was selling weed. No one else seemed to know what he was doing. I think that’s why he was staying away from the others but he didn’t mind approaching us. At one point he told us that we could get one eighth for cheap but two for half that. Buying in bulk is always better, he said. I knew that. Before we bought any we went swimming. While we were crashing around in the waves, it occurred to me that at that logic, why didn’t we buy three for a third of the price? Or ten for a tenth? It was obvious: the more we bought, the less we spent, so why not buy everything? It should be free, I reasoned, or close to.

 * * *

I’m a little apprehensive about being alone with Bianca. She hasn’t brought up the living situation yet but she keeps hinting at something, and she acts like she wants to talk but won’t bring up the subject. For instance, she walked me to my car the other day and kept saying pointless things as I looked for my keys and opened the door. But then she let me go.

It’s her turn to bring it up, or it would be if we were playing tennis, seeing as I sent the email outlining my opinion and basically inveighing her for picking an apartment I hate (after I signed the lease, of course) and she hasn’t said anything about it yet. I would bring it up but I’m afraid she’s going to say she doesn’t care and isn’t going to look for someone to sublet. But I need to start looking for my own place, if she’ll let me. The good ones will be gone soon.

 * * *

         
What was even stranger about the disturbing headline was that it was completely out of context; it referenced “Manhattan” as casually as one would expect, so I knew that I was somewhere where New York was a standard measurement of place. I didn’t like how it said “they” the way someone who spices up their conversation with clichés does. Don’t they teach you not to use vague pronouns as authoritative figures?

I went back to the newspaper stand to read the rest, after I realized I was more curious than I cared to admit, but I couldn’t find my way back. It was near, I remembered, where we met the gray-bearded man. It was a red box that asked for a quarter in exchange for the daily newspaper. A square red box about waist-high, like a little pet. It was the only red thing around, except the restaurant’s carpet, which, now that I think about it, extended out to the patio.

Of course, being thwarted in my search for the rest of the newspaper article, in addition to being mildly annoying, only enflamed my curiosity.

 I don’t know where Bianca was during all this. Hopefully she was at her wretched new apartment, learning to love to be alone so she wouldn’t want me to move in.

I took my friend Avery to the art museum to look at paintings on his day off. I think he enjoyed himself, but it was hard to tell if we were looking at the same things.

'Look at this texture,' he said at one stop, admiring from behind the velvet rope the frame around a painting. 'It's exquisite.'

'No, it's plastic,' I said, and tried to explain where the real art was.

He tried to like the painting, I could tell, but his eyes kept sliding away, this time down to the velvet rope itself.

'It's beautiful!' he cried, stroking the velvet and watching it change colors as he went with and then against the grain. 'How does anyone make something like this?'

I had to admit, I had no more idea if how to make velvet than how to paint a painting.

In the gift shop, we both picked out a few postcards to send home. I think he only bought them to please me, because as we walked out, he gave them to me, then carefully smoothed the bag they came in, folded it, and placed it in his wallet for safekeeping.

One night I dreamt that trains were free to roam anywhere the wind took them, like people, no longer bound to their tracks. Some trains decided they want to live on the second story, in someone's attic. Some realized they had always wanted to be fireplaces, and came crashing down people's chimneys. Others learned to be cars, and some began going to church every Sunday, and then meeting afterward at a diner for coffee.

Needless to say, everything was ruined, because trains are large and very destructive. Everywhere there were fires and debris and stranded travellers and horrible accidents.

I woke up almost crying, so relieved that trains, indeed, stay on their tracks.

Five-year-old Thomas was terrified that at night, when his parents went to bed, a gigantic fox came out of hiding and sat next to the city, keeping watch.

In his mind the fox was as big as the city itself, and had no qualms about eating everyone and everything in it.

'Then why doesn't it?' asked Thomas's father. 'Eat the whole city, I mean.'

He doesn't want to, Thomas answered. He doesn't like the taste of people.

'So why are you scared?' asked his mother.

Because he still could, said Thomas.

'Where is the fox now?' they asked.

I don't know. I can't see him.

'You can't?'

No. He's invisible.

'So what makes you think he's there?'

Thomas could not answer this, but he also could not sleep. His parents soon learned that it is impossilbe to disprove the existence of a giant, invisible, harmless fox to a five-year-old.

Types of Phones

1. Some phones are asymmetrical, like old couches or broken things. To dial, you have to keep your hand to the far right, where the buttons are.

Use this phone to call people you don't know very well, or when you're calling someone you do know but aren't sure how long you'll talk to them.

2. Some phones are red. These are the most polarizing kinds of phones, because they are either bright and cheery or bloodlike and scary. Either way, they'll add a bit of red to the room.

Call your relatives on this phone. They'll thank you for it.

3. Some phones are off the hook. This is when they are being used, or on an uneven surface. If you are already using this phone, carry on. If not, stay away.

4. Some phones have both straight and curved lines. On this phone, feel free to call your spouse or lover, just to say hello.

5. Some phones are very strange. Take this one, for example: olive green, and longer than it is tall, with a cross-hatching pattern on the front. Use this phone for emergencies only: you never know who, or what, you will call.

The Feathered Man

Through the crowd I saw a flash of purple; it streaked toward the door, through a curtained threshold and over the stage before it disappeared. Around me the dancers danced in black and white; feathered masks covered their eyes, and I saw no one I recognized. Under a lamp the record player skipped.

I followed; as I broke out of the crowd the door swung shut. Down the hall I was directed to the roof, where the air was still. ‘Where is she?’ I called out; above, the sky was a black dome with a single pinprick instead of stars.

‘There’s been no one out here all night,’ said a man in a bird mask, standing next to two women by the edge. In their hands they held cigarettes and glasses of red liquid.

What kind of place is this? Is there is a world below the roof’s edge, or are these feathered few all that’s left?

Artist's Statement, by Jessi Muhr

(draft 1)
Twelve years I had my first piece accepted for showing at a quasi-local gallery, Studio 29, on the Lower East Side. It’s kind of a funny story, but I don’t feel like telling it right now. Suffice to say, it formed my rather bitter opinion of exhibits, and made me

(draft 2)

As a modern day woman I often feel the need to instill my identity into every piece of art I create, as if it is so fragile and wispy that if I don’t preserve it on canvas it will be whisked away in the next passing breeze.

(draft 3)

On second thought, this may make me sound ignorant and ungrateful to all the suffragettes and feminists who came before me, but being a woman doesn’t much affect my understanding of myself, because it’s not like I have anything to compare it to. Anything I feel or think or make could just as easily be attributed to my being white, or born in the eighties, or from New Jersey. It’s true that most of my work involves some variation on the female figure, and often is impressionistic enough to suggest some kind of identity crisis or reflection, but that’s for art history students or critics to find and exploit, not me, and definitely not in my artist’s statement.

 (draft 4)

Shit.

(draft 5)
When I was 15 I entered and won my first art contest, resulting in my painting “Untitled/Mirrors” being featured at Studio 29’s ‘Young Artists’ exhibit, which, logically, was my first step in a ‘career,’ if I may be so bold, as an artist. The painting was, according to someone’s review, an exploration of the concept of infinity mirrors—that is, two mirrors facing one another, thus reflecting back infinitely. Its description is a lot more elegant than the content. Frankly, it looks like a kindergartener painted it. I did it that way on purpose, with some silly sophomoric notion that its crudeness in technique would offset its lofty goal, which for some reason seemed necessary, or maybe just cerebral enough to make me want it to be necessary. Anyway I’ve always tried to paint things that no one can see, even before I had a really cohesive aesthetic. Those were the days when I still liked to paint with the intent of making fun of the artists we studied in class, like cubists. I thought that so much of their work looked like a joke and required so little talent that I could do it too, and I did, filled with the kind of self-righteous irony that made me feel superior. About this painting in particular I also had the idea that since no one can look straight into infinity mirrors without seeing themselves in them, then no one could know what they (infinity mirrors) look like (with no one in them), so any way I painted them I would maintain the illusion of some kind of authority. So, “Untitled/Mirrors” was born out of this adolescent self-important cynicism: ‘I can paint something good and not because I feel moved by the spirit to, but because I’m smart enough to.’

And you can take that to the bank. That’s something I’ve never told anyone that, let alone handed it in for publication. After I painted it, I half-expected my teacher to give me detention for so blatantly making fun of her lecture. Instead she entreated me to send it in to this competition in the city that offered $100, a spot at Studio 29, and a master class with some CUNY professor as a prize.

Like I said, that began my trajectory, by introducing me to the world of galleries and criticism and art degrees. Most importantly, it gave me the confidence to start showing people things that were way more personal to me, work that I spent years on, not just study hall. It felt good, to step out of my shell, to let myself feel something emotional about my art, to replace sarcasm with sincerity. And here I am now, guesting in a coffee table book, apparently successful enough to be considered one of Chicago’s emerging women artists. What have I learned from all this? Maybe that I’ve only won a couple contests since that one, but never for any piece that I cared about.

This is mostly irrelevant and self-indulgent and will probably be edited out anyway. Feel free to make me sound smarter/snappier/funnier/something-ier. I suppose I’m honored that someone values my opinion enough to ask for it in writing, but on the flip side of that coin, I’ve expressed myself as best I can through my painting, so my writing is superfluous. But alas, artist’s statements must be in writing.

I suppose the purpose of an artist’s statement is to give the reader a personal lens through which to view the artist’s work. People like having lenses through which to view things, especially abstract art. I can see why I might be expected to offer the lens of womanhood, given the theme of this book, but the truth is I don’t ever think about that. I do, however, think a lot about the anger and the resentment that fueled the start of my career, about the master class I earned with my vindictiveness, about how the paintings I care most about have never left my studio.

 insert something witty and profound and summational

Post-haste!

Well. I have begun to work on Chimneys, which for so long I have confidently called my novel, again. I hesitate to call it that now. Of course I want to, but I think that can be damaging on asubconscious level. Being intimidating and self-serving and all that. Or maybe, I just didn't have a clear idea of what it would look like, trajectory-wise, so I was intimidated. Anyway, either way, tonight I actually came up with an outline. Complete with cause and effect, and a climax, and everything! I think this is a good first step. I plan to use a lot of old Chimneys in it; I think of this new thing as a remodeled, reshaped, rethought version, that is new, yet made out of things that have been stewing in my head and in my recycle bin for years now.

To be honest, I wish I could say something like 'In spite of myself I'm quite excited to start,' but I can't, because I'm nervous, not excited, and I'm afraid I'll keep putting it off. I don't want to. Should I reread what I have so far and then start? Probably not. I should start from scratch. And what better time than now is there to start?

Tomorrow, of course.

Begin with an unfamiliar sound

In the other room I hear a noise, a sound like metal creaking, above the whir of the fan. I go out into the hallway to investigate. The light’s on in the kitchen. Someone is baking; they would have woken me up if I’d been asleep.

            I stand in the doorway and squint at Charlie, who is wiping down the counter. When he sees me he is not concerned that he might have woken me.

            I’m making oatmeal raisin cookies, he says, throwing the rag onto the microwave. He picks up a mug of something hot and stands in the crook of the counter. I need to know what they smell like.

            The coffee maker gargles. He wants me to ask why he needs to know what oatmeal raisin cookies smell like, but I don’t like being hinted at, so I open the fridge and start poking around instead.

            He is undeterred. I’m in a student film, he tells me. I mean, an indie film.

            Who’s film? I ask, selecting the mint Haagen Daz from the freezer.

            Jon’s. Our old roommate. I play a blind man who sustains a terrible head injury in a car crash, and the smell of oatmeal raisin cookies is supposed to remind me of my childhood. Like, wake me up out of a head funk. Because my dear old ma used to make them, or something.

            This is an absurd plot, and I tell him so.

            Here’s the twist, he says. It doesn’t. The smell, I mean. The smell doesn’t wake me out of being amnesiac. You’d think it would, plot-wise, but it doesn’t.

            Aren’t student films usually more subtle than that? I ask. Like, more cerebral?

            Well, he says, it’s complicated. It’s a story within a story. The blind man, me, is a figment of another character’s imagination. The real part of the film is about a professor who’s having marital trouble. He suspects that his wife is secretly in love with his sister, so he sets a trap to see who she really loves, that night at a cocktail party he’s hosting.

            What’s the trap?

            Well, it doesn’t get that far, because first he has a class to teach. So he’s all tense and worried when he gets on the bus with his students. They’re going on a field trip to a museum.

            I see. Then what? Is the wife there with the sister?        

            No, on the way into the museum one student accidentally falls and hits his head.

            And sustains…

            And sustains a terrible head injury, Charlie finishes for me. Although not as bad as you might think. Knowing about the blind man, that is. The student has to go to the hospital in an ambulance, and a couple classmates go with him, but he doesn’t lose his memory. I don’t think he even loses consciousness.

            So where does the blind man and his amnesia come in?

            In the waiting room. The classmates are bored, so they start telling each other stories to pass the time.

            Like the Canterbury Tales.

            I guess so. But there’s only one.

            So why the blind man, again?

            Well, you know how framework narratives are usually all preachy and moralistic? Like, the inner story is a metaphor for the outer one, and it’s all neat and tidy at the end, and you’re supposed to come away with a lesson, like it taught you something? Well, this is a commentary on that. Because I hate films that do that. And so does Jon.

            So you never find out if the wife is in love with the sister.

            Nope. It’s a whole different approach to literary theory.

            Now I would have weird dreams. I always have weird dreams when Charlie is the last person I talk to before I go to sleep.
            I put the ice cream away, deciding I won’t brush my teeth again because it was mint-flavored. That’s great, Charlie, I say, wishing I hadn’t gotten out of bed.

Dear readers,

The strange thing about writing a letter is that you can’t use filler phrases like ‘how are you’ and ‘swell weather we’re having tonight’ to take up air space. A letter has to be all content. That said, I find myself struggling to articulate why I sat down to write this in the first place—and so my mind turns to fluff, possibly in an effort to make me feel productive, and to trick me into thinking I’m using my time wisely, when really I’m just avoiding the real issue. Although, now I realize I’ve done exactly that without the benefit of pretending I didn’t realize I was doing it.

Let me start over. Another strange thing about letter-writing is I feel I have a lot to live up to. Some writers are more famous for their correspondence than their poetry or fiction. You read those letters in English class and dissect them like they were meant for English lessons, not someone’s brother or friend or lover. Those letters are all filled with profound thoughts on life—‘dear you,’ they say, ‘this is what I’ve learned since we last spoke. Thank goodness I have a friend like you who understands, even though so much of my writing is about loneliness.’ Personally, I’m not that close with anyone, nor have I ever felt compelled to write a letter and nor have I ever received a letter of that caliber. Maybe this is turning into one. If that’s true, then you readers are my close but distant friend who is tracking my personal progress from afar, to whom I turn when I have heavy things pressing down on me that can only be lifted by writing them down. That might not be too far off the mark.

It does help to write to an imagined audience—nothing personal, I know if you’re reading this you’re very real—who’s interested in my feelings, not my fiction. I do feel like you’re listening. Strange—this is the first time in years I’ve been able to write what I mean to say. My mind feels unified. Giving voice to confusion is calming. It’s like stepping back and letting the id take the pen, and doing so quiets it, while for years my ego has been struggling to take the reins, and only producing the most insufferable, vapid, tenuous storyline, with no relation to my world or my feelings, which begins the cycle of my feeling disconnected and fraudulent, which makes the subsequent writing worse. Anyway, thank you.

I suppose I should get to the point, even though by doing so I’m nearing the end of this meditative state I’ve found. My reason for writing at all is to tell you I’m going on a hiatus, both from writing fiction and editing the magazine.

Funny, as soon as I mention the magazine, my mind goes blank. I’d much rather stay here in this letter and continue talking to you as if you’re still reading, which may be presumptuous of me to imagine you still are. My mind is calmer when I’m not expected to do anything about the magazine. It is as if it stirs in me a whirlpool of confusion and stress, which blinds and impairs me. Which is why I’m leaving, temporarily, I hope. I do anticipate coming back, but who knows what will happen? Somehow I feel encouraged right now, knowing that I don’t have to choose between writing and sanity. I once thought all writing that mattered was fiction. Maybe this is why the Romantics were so in love with their letter-writing. For someone who is only good at writing, but no longer able to produce fiction, it’s not a bad option.

Gratefully,

Walter S.

appreciate not fear each other

It was hot out.

'You are gorgeous,' said the man playing banjo on his porch; I went over and talked to him about the role of fog in sunsets, and then later I went home and slept well.

25 Random Things about Me, by Jessi Muhr

(protagonist of my alleged novel)

1. If tapioca had no lumps, it would be my favorite food. But it does, so I never eat it
2. When I was 16 I made a pact with myself never to wear a light color without good and documented reason and, strangely, I've kept that pact
3. My favorite album is Hunky Dory  by David Bowie
4. I actually like the way I look, except my hips and nose
5. I like being pale
6. If I could go back in time, I would be nicer to my mom
7. My mom thinks I want nothing to do with her, but really I don't think I could survive what she went through
8. If I could do anything, I have no idea what I'd do
9. When I first met Harlow, I thought she was a little shallow
10. I think my baseline feeling is neutral with a tinge of sadness, and I'm most comfortable there
11. When I was little I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up, and I still do
12. If I could turn everything in and start over, I would

13. I still think Harlow is a little shallow
14. Sometimes I wish I were born in a third world country so my problems would be more substantial
15. My favorite scents are lilac and raspberry coffee
16. My dream house has a jacuzzi in every room and a jungle in the conservatory, with live monkeys
17. My favorite board game when I was a kid was Clue, and whenever anyone says mustard, plum or body it reminds me of it
18. When I was little I thought Stranger Danger was a supervillain, not a concept
19. I'm afraid of can openers...something about getting my fingers stuck
20. I like making lists, but I never do
21. I think I could be a good mom
22. I don't dream much, but when I do, it sometimes involves me trying to lock the car door before a strange man who is approaching gets in the passenger seat
23. I suppose that's symbolic
24. I almost always wake up before he gets to the car
25. I think there's something sexy about Stockholm's Syndrome, and Russian accents

Sometimes people ask me what my novel is about

and naturally I have no idea, because it isn't really about anything, except perhaps my own desire to write a novel. I hope that will change.

I've also been reading a lot of DFW's nonfiction, and learning that he is/was very informed and very up-to-date about trends in contemporary literature and pop culture, from realism onward. He talks a lot about postmodernism as a response to realism that in turn got subverted and involuted, partly by TV, so that it became not a means of expressing something but a subject, which really narrowed people's understanding of art and made them cynical and indifferent, etc. etc. This seems like a rather narrow-minded and cynical view itself - though I realize I am short-changing his argument a little bit. But anyway, I bring this up in order to respond. He argues that current fiction writers are screwed, basically, because of the all-encompassingness of TV, because 1) any attempt at irony to make a point will be sucked up and subsequently ironized and mocked by TV (questionable), 2) any attempt to fight back at TV's irony will be a doomed throwback to fundamentalism. This seems dubious to me, but as I was reading I came upon a third possbility, which is neither postmodern nor hyperrealist but perhaps a new style altogether - possibly called experientialism, if it must have an -ism. What if literature could blur the lines between reading and experiencing? What if reading/writing doesn't reflect or approximate or show what's happening - it gets uncomfortably close, atomically close, to what's actually going on?

It might be unpleasant, tedious, overwrought, impossible, cerebral, prolix, or just not interesting. But maybe it's worth a try.

Color/colour

Our philosophy professor, Jamie, challenged us to think of an instance of color without shape.

'There is no color without shape,' he said, 'just as there is no mass without matter.'

People called out various suggestions. The sky, someone said. Closing your eyes. The idea of color, or color as a Platonic form.

Most people in our philosophy class spoke before they thought, making it very noisy in there indeed.

'Can you have shape without color, though?' someone wondered, and again the room was abuzz with speculation.

The best part about that class was that it didn't matter what was at stake in the discussion. Any topic would do. The whole color-shape conundrum was introduced to illustrate something about contingency, I think, and here we were, scrounging for counterexamples. The whole class was bent on arguing about whatever we talked about, and nobody could say 'You're missing the point' or 'That's irrelevant.' Anything even tangentially related to the topic is fair game, because it might be the brick that holds up the whole argument. Being nit-picky is an advantage in - what was that class again? - epistemology.

Most of what I remember about epistemology (TR 3:30 - 4:45) is fragmented,  isolated incidents with little relation to the lesson; much of my memory revolves around the mannerisms of the erudite, scatterbrained professor. Jamie was the most endearing teacher we could possibly have had. He was so absent-minded that he continually had to be reminded what we were talking about, though he could jump back in with reasonable acuity. He even had the tendency to look off into the distance when he got distracted, which I thought was charming. Once he put his coffee mug on the shelf inside his podium, and forgot right away; he leaned forward pensively on the podium, tipping it forward, and dumped all his coffee on our term papers. Oddly, he was only in his late 20's, just a few years older than we were.

Anyway, the color-without-shape discussion stayed with me, even if most of the principles of epistemology didn't. Sometimes I look at something and it takes me a few minutes to account for its shape. Darkness doesn't really have a shape, and neither do the streaks in a sunset, so some people in that class weren't too far off.

I wonder what I was supposed to have learned from that class. It's odd how school makes you spend so many nitty-gritty seconds memorizing and ruminating and processing and internalizing, and what you're left with is random flotsam.

One day I found a box in my hall closet, on the floor beneath a tent, two sleeping bags, a vacuum cleaner, and other boxes. It was filled with textbooks, notes, and papers from college. Naturally, being incredibly vain, I had to read all of my old papers. There was one on Frank O'Hara and his ostensible relationship with Rachmaninoff, Protestant poetry from Northern Ireland during the Troubles, nature imagery in Hopkins, and one on Aristotle's approach to epistemology.

They were fascinating. Not because they were particularly groundbreaking, though they weren't bad, either. They were fascinating because there was something of myself in them that I had forgotten, or perhaps not known at all. I remembered writing the Hopkins one - I'd been sick, and heavily dosed with pseudoephedrine, which I'd augmented with energy drinks. The result was a manic, scattered, long-winded but quite passionate argument on behald of Hopkins' nondemoninational spirituality, despite his having been a Catholic priest, which I recall feeling very strongly about. The paper on the Troubles was more sober, but I don't remember writing it, so I have no idea whether that's because of the content or my state of mind.

The strange thing was, they didn't all sound familiar, although they were my words, and from just a few years ago. I don't remember reading that many Hopkins poems, and I certainly have no recollection of ever being that acquainted with Aristotle's syntax. And yet, here, staring me in the face, were the papers that had given me my final grades, and thus, my degree. And the most I remember about one of them is some spilled coffee, a really likable man named Jamie, and a debate about color.

'Turn it, and turn it again, for everything is in it.'

We started a dreambook. It would be a plain black unlined journal, which I brought home and put on our coffee table. Every night that one of us had a vivid dream, we decided, we would record it in the dreambook.

On the first page I wrote the word "delusion" in red marker and put a red box around it, because that's what I dreamt - that the word "delusion" was written in red on the first page of the dreambook.

I did not have a dream the next night, so I used the second page to write a letter to my friend Katya.

Dear Katya, I wrote, do you ever listen to Ani Difranco? She's one of my favorites, and you always reminded me of her.

But then Jamie came out of his room and needed the dreambook, and beneath my aborted letter to Katya there began to appear a crayon rendering of an ocean scene, with people swimming and diving and breathing underwater. Jamie has never liked drawing, but apparently this dream was so vivid that he had to try. He used six different shades of blue.

I started a new letter to Katya. I don't write letters much, because I never quite know what to say in them - it's like having a one-sided conversation, but I feel weird talking about myself for too long. And I never call people, so I am awful at staying in touch. But anyway, I needed to write to Katya, because this was the first I'd heard from her in six months. Her phone had been disconnected and I did not have the address for her current rehab, or the name, or anything. I had thought I would never hear from her again. And then I got an email from my old work, saying she had tried to contact me there, and she'd left her address.

So Jamie sat with the dreambook on the couch and I sat next to him watching him color. He picked up each version of blue and made a careful design with it involving curly Q's that interlocked with the ones that came before it. He had his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth like a kid in a cartoon.

I knew what I wanted to tell Katya, but I had no idea how to say it. If it wouldn't sound creepy I would say 'I think about you a lot, and wonder how you are or sometimes what you would say about a given thing, for some reason, maybe because I like the way you think.' I wanted her to understand that she is one of the people in my life I consider special, who I think about when they're not around, even if years pass in between. In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut talks about people being on your karass, or 'team,' people to whom you are divinely connected. I think there are some people in life with whom you just feel connected, for whatever reason, even if they're strangers, they feel closer than some friends, even if they don't know it. That, I am willing to bet, is one of the hardest things to convey to someone, because you can tell a friend anything, in theory, but there are different parameters for talking to strangers or acquaintances, and even some friends wouldn't really understand how serious you are about saying this.

Jamie is still coloring.

'Jamie,' I say, 'have you ever read Cat's Cradle?'

'Yeah,' he says, not looking up, 'a long time ago.' He is shirtless and skinny and wearing red flannel pants. He still has his glasses on, which means he probably hasn't brushed his teeth yet.

'I think we might be in the same karass,' I tell him. 'You and I.'

He nods. I can't see his face because his head is bent low and he has shaggy hair. A little orange fish is coming to life inside one of the curly Q's.

'Yeah,' he says. 'I could see that.'

He gets it. It is easier for me to talk to people who have read the same things I have, because so much of what I talk about comes from them. I don't think Katya likes Kurt Vonnegut. I have only ever seen her read Danielle Steele.

One of the reasons I like reading so much is that I almost always get the feeling that the author wants the same thing I want, to feel connected to someone. The strange part is, I am fairly certain that I would not get that impression from talking to the author, because talking so often gets in the way of connecting. I never know what to say to anybody and I usually say things I don't care to talk about, like 'How have you been' and 'I like your hat,' when really I mean something wordless, like 'Let's not pretend we have to talk about boring things, when really we just want to connect, and share how we feel about something.' But even that can come off as shallow or false, and thus the connection is lost.

If Jamie can spend so much time drawing his dream when he does not even like drawing, surely I can put some effort into writing Katya's letter.

'Dear Katya,' I begin again, 'Sometimes I listen to Ani Difranco, and feel both comforted and depressed, because I can totally relate, i.e., I know what she's talking about, but I also know that if I ever met her I would not be able to convey to her that I know, and I'm not sure she would care all that much anyway.'

This is far too cerebral for a casual note to an old acquaintance, but by now I am thinking way too much, so there's no going back.

Eliana and Charlie have both woken up and are rummaging through the kitchen. The smell of frying egg wafts out into the living room, and they follow.

'Morning,' says Eliana, and they sit down with steaming mugs. 'What are you guys up to?'

'I'm trying to write a letter, but I don't know what to say,' I tell her.

'I'm drawing my dream,' says Jamie.

'You could write a haiku instead,' Eliana suggests.

'No, I have to draw it,' Jamie says, which makes me rethink Eliana's intention.

'It's too early to think about that,' says Charlie, and in a small way I agree, but I don't know how to say that without sounding like I am agreeing for agreement's sake, and so I just nod my head, and then go get some tea.

Breathing it out, breath in and out

Last night I went through all my old saved documents from the past couple years. Most of them are fragments of or ideas for stories, which I must have abandoned at some point. For some, I remember getting excited about them at the start and then gradually getting disillusioned. But I didn't delete them, so something must have made me think they were worth keeping. That, or I just forgot about them.

The post below this one, "Miriam Finley Travel Writer," is one of those. I'll post more in the next few days. I don't know what to think of them. There are some that I really like and think are worth pursuing, but strangely they all have one thing in common, which is that I have no concept of whether they're finished pieces or total rubbish. Maybe that's why they were all relegated to the back burner in the first place.

What makes a story be "finished"? Anything other than the writer's decision, which I imagine comes from the writer's gut, can't be right.

I'm all for writing workshops, but one danger of them is the students who try change a person's story. What I mean by that is this: even if David Foster Wallace submitted a published story to one of the workshops I was in, the other students would rip it apart. It seems to be very easy for people to criticize someone else's writing, as long as it's unfinished. Almost whenever I show a story of mine to someone, they have more ideas for how it could be changed than what they think about it. Why do we treat published work differently than a draft? I read literary magazines and am constantly amazed at the garbage that gets published. A lot of it reads like someone's first outline. And yet, it's there, in prestigious and widely respected journals.

This has gotten off-topic, sort of; mostly I'm wondering what to do with all these unfinished (?) pieces. Honestly they don't seem that different from what I read in lit mags. But they don't feel finished to me. Thanks for indulging, if you've read this far.

Miriam Finley, Travel Writer

Todd was telling a story that involved some poorly executed roleplay and the properties of cats. Miriam had stopped listening almost an hour ago and was looking around for a polite exit.


‘So the doctor said to me—did you know that orange female cats are rare but almost always nice? But anyway, at that point I still thought we should look at a farm, not a breeder—’

Behind Todd’s buzzed gray head appeared a man, concave like a parenthese, with smooth clothes and wrinkled skin, leaning heavily on a cane. He didn’t see Miriam as he walked across the empty café and chose a seat a few tables from her. Sitting down he was still bent over. The points of his wool bow-tie stuck up around his cheeks. He sat still, waiting patiently, hands resting on the tip of his cane.

Miriam pulled out a pen and a coffee-ringed napkin and allowed Todd to think she was taking notes on his story. What she really wrote was this:

Mr. McDonald, celebrated high school English teacher who retired after forty seven years, has now returned home after a long and eventful stay in India. The trip was a gift to himself and to his wife, who so faithfully helped him inspire generations of students here in Freeville, NY. It was during his Regents literature class in the class of ‘74’s sophomore year that one most promising pupil, Ms. Miriam Finley, decided once and for all that if she would do anything in her life worth doing, it would be to be a travel writer.


Tragically, she didn’t. She spent a long time in Freeville after graduating, eventually settled down with a Mr. Todd Laringer, but couldn’t even commit enough to marry, so here she is, listening to another tedious tale of Todd’s, having just watched her octogenarian teacher from forever ago surpass her in adventurousness. Good doing, Miriam.


But enough about her. A look into Mr. McDonald’s exciting Indian excursion:

And there she stopped. She couldn’t even pretend to know what people did in India.

‘Todd,’ she said, her throat phlegm-y and rough from milky coffee and prolonged silence. ‘Todd. I don’t want to get a cat.’

Todd looked up, looking surprised to see her.

‘You don’t?’ he said. He had the innocent credulousness of a little boy.

Her original idea had been simply to inform him of her intent. Now she said, ‘Todd, I think I’d like to go away for the weekend. Maybe more. Will you come with me?’

He was staring at her with perfect transparence. ‘Why, of course. I’d go anywhere with you, Miriam.’

She felt like crying; she felt weak inside, and dismayed, and saddened and afraid at what she’d almost done.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

On the way to the bus station, Todd was silent. In a plaza the block before, she saw something too fitting to pass up: a pet store next to an Office Max. Miriam turned in. They bought a cat collar and a notebook, and then went the next block to buy the bus tickets.

The Time Keeper

The sky is big and dark, like an enormous cereal bowl turned upside down, with an entire world under it. It is black, but has some pinpricks, that don’t quite reach through the orange haze that reflects back the city lights.


In one building, not looking at the sky or thinking about it is a man, bent low over a table. He wears a musty brown sweater and his gray hair is wild. His glasses look like telescopes, lens piled over lenses, until his eyes are several times their size. He has a large round nose and his mouth is a down-turned, concentrating gash, pursed but forgotten toward the maze of cranks and latches and metal wheels that are so tiny and precise as to require the comical glasses.

*

I remember a toy I had as a little girl. It was a yellow plastic tray with pegs on it, and it came with a dozen colored gears. You could click the gears on the pegs and the teeth would interlock, so you could make them all spin, all across the yellow tray, by rotating any one of them.

*

The orange haze over the city starts to lighten. On the expressway, the red and white dots of cars whiz toward the horizon like lightning bugs. If you were to look down a residential street, say, on the south side of town, by the overpass, you’d see lights coming on in houses, a few at a time, curtained window squares turning from black to yellow.

The man in the basement, still hunched over his tools, notices a kink in his neck. He does not see first light because there are no windows where he is. The lights in his empty room are low; only those necessary for his project have been employed, and he works under the yellow glow of a desk lamp. His fingers are thick, the nails trimmed down to the quick, and they smell like stale tobacco. The gray stubble on his face was not there when he started. Around him are rows of tables, each equipped with the same flexible black desk lamp and an array of tweezers and widgets and hyper-lensed glasses, but each one is dark.

*

I don’t know what makes me think of the toy this morning. I am in bed, but no one knows I am awake yet. The soft gray light from the window above my sister’s bed prevents me from falling back to sleep. I can hear my mother moving around in the kitchen; the rattle of pots and dishes is muffled by the door, but in the silence they are audible.

I don’t know why I remember that toy at all. It had no special meaning for me. I almost never played with it, and never for more than a few minutes. Even as a toddler, before I could articulate this, the toy seemed to me completely devoid of possibility. So you rotate one gear, and around go the rest. There was no imagination in it.

I pull a sheet over my eyes and manage to fall asleep briefly, seeing not so much a dream as disconnected images of churning wheels and knitted cogs, colored circles rotating fruitlessly across my eyelids.

*

In the basement, in the desk lamp’s periphery, the old man’s kink begins to scream too loudly for him to ignore. He sits up straighter, keeping his magnified eyes trained on the end of his tweezers, trying to maintain his concentration. But he has shifted position, acknowledged his discomfort, and now the floodgates are open.

He removes his silly glasses and picks up the piece he has been working on all night. It is heavy, though small. Its metal is warm from spending so much time in his hands. He turns it over. It is a timepiece, a gold circle around a simple clock face, with a gold handle arched over the 12 for affixing it to a chain. Under the delicate dome of its glass, the Roman numerals read 6 o’clock.

If that’s the right time, he knows it is by coincidence, because despite the amount of work he has put into this he has not yet fixed it. Through the glass pane in the room’s door he sees a light from the hallway turn on. There are voices, and sounds of locker doors latching shut. He places the timepiece back at his workstation and leaves quietly, through the back door, whose window pane is still dark.

*

I wake up again when my sister steps out of bed onto the creaking floor. The light from the window is stronger now. The dream of the rotating cogs leaves me feeling ill at ease; the images fade, but leave behind their vague sadness. The yellow toy, I remember, was a gift from my father, and when I was old enough to think about these things, I only played with it on the rare nights he came home from work, to make him think I liked it. My sister never pretended such things.

Strategy versus Inspiration

It's come up a few times in recent conversation that there is debate over whether "true" art, whatever that is, must be made purely by inspiration, and not by cold strategy. But the latter might be more successful; if you can pinpoint a gap in the market, and create something catered to fill that gap, to meet a need, then you're already ahead of the game.


Unrelatedly, it has also come up in casual conversation how unfair it seems that some people seem to slide laterally into a success that you have spent years climbing up the ladder to reach. Like Jack Johnson. A world-class surfer who got injured and started pursuing his "second" hobby, songwriting. So unfair.

But I wonder if those two phenomena have something to do with one another? That is, maybe people who care less about a particular pursuit (not saying Jack Johnson isn't passionate about music) have the werewithal and the clarity of vision to a) use objectives in their creation, b) accept and utilize feedback, and c) recognize and follow patterns. Maybe there is such a thing as trying too hard.

If you have all of one (i.e., pure, unharnessed passion) and none of the other (business sense), you might turn into that disheveled hermit whose art nobody ever sees and few people who do see it understand. Bummer. If you have all of the second and none of the first, you just might be Nicholas Sparks.

Just kidding. (About the pseudo N.S.-jab, I mean. For all I know he is secretly very passionate about formulaic romance novels.) I'm sorry, I feel like this post is a landmine of judgments. I don't mean to judge anybody's art or presuppose their motives or anything like that. I'm just thinking how it might be useful for me to tap into that second thing - the idea that art can have method; it is not all free-writing and feelings.

So, what does that mean for me? Maybe the reason I've gotten so stuck with Chimneys for years now is that it's ALL the first thing, all inspiration and no strategy. I think I need to step back and look at it as if I were a cynical Notre Dame accounting major trying to make money by writing The Notebook. Ah! Stop it! I mean, I need to step back and look at my novel as if I didn't care about its content.

The Naming of Things

I remember one night at swim practice when I was in, I don't know, sixth grade, there was a girl in my lane who was usually quite reticent, but tonight she kept repeating the line "The naming of cats is a difficult matter; it's enough to make you go mad as a hatter!"

What a weird rhyme. But it would be hard to name cats, wouldn't it? (That's why Poster Nutbag is so great.) But not as hard as naming a story.

A perfect title sets the tone of something while also drawing attention to one or some of the themes in the piece; it sets itself apart by being outside the story, separate from, but still privy to the story's inner secrets. It is the reader's entranceway and can also have the final word, if it is summational enough. It should also sound interesting.

I am hopeless at coming up with good titles. All of my titles, for anything I make, are mundane and worthless and probably deter people from entering any further into my work. Apropos: the three stories I've had published are called "Joel & Heather," "Piano Lessons," and "The Experiment." Boring! Three of David Foster Wallace's stories are called "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," "Incarnations of Burned Children," and "Church Not Made By Men."

(That said, I know tend toward long, involved titles for many things, my favorite album titles being Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Creek Drank the Cradle, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Spirit They've Gone Spirit They've Vanished, So Much Crowding So Much Laughter...I could go on.)

Today I was trying to name a story I wrote a few months ago that no one else seems to think is anything special but I happen to love. I've called it, alternately, "If that's what it takes" and "Receiving Line," both of which are stupid and I hate.

Here is a list I made of possible titles for it:

'‘Someone Strummed a Banjo’
‘Aunt Harriet Rescinds her Threat’
‘Coxswain!’
‘And She Never Looked Back’
‘Miranda Somehow Benefited’
‘Looking for Inner Peace, Anny Makes a Break for It’
‘Weeping J.J.’
‘This Would Have Been a Huge Wedding'
‘Conflicted Anny’

I like that a list of potential titles can set the story's tone, and, if expanded and done right, could even be a story itself. But that is for another time.

I wouldn't call it writer's block, per se

I mean, that's just so darn cliche. And it's not that I can't think of anything to write, or whatever W/B technically is. It's that I can't think of a way to give form to the idea I have. I used to think, without really articulating it, that if you have an idea, you have a way to express it. Le sigh. I am learning.

Backstory: I have a story in mind, and also in a Word document, but I really hate how it's turning out, in part because I think it can be really good. In its unrealized, Platonic form, it already is really good, and I just need to find it, like the statue in the rock. But my tools are not sharp enough!

No, that's not true. "If you can see me, I am already there," says the Star to the Little Girl in the poem, the one from Chicken Soup for the Soul. A mixed metaphor but apropos: I do believe that if I have the idea, I have the capacity to actuate it; it just might not come as quickly as I'd like. I wish it was already done! I've put enough time in to the story by now. Maybe. And I'm avoiding it like the plague. I've cooked dinner TWICE this week.

I also believe, as I may have mentioned before, that I don't believe that success is only 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I don't think it helps to drudge over something you're not feeling. There may be 99% work, but there needs to be at least, I don't know, 20% inspiration, or else what you're creating isn't art, and it's not going to sound, ahem, inspired.

My point which I am reaching ever so circuitously is that maybe I need to give it a break and do something else for awhile, and then come back and put more work into this particular gem, this story, and then it will be great.

Unrelatedly, I LOVE Amnesiac; I'm even willing to opine that it's better than Kid A.

Unrelatedly #2, I miss Chimneys. I've taken a month-and-a-half break. When I get it back, will I be able to make it what I want it to be?

How I Feel Whenever I Read Anything by Anyone I Know

Usually crappy. This is because everything I read by anyone I know, I always believe is exceedingly, objectively better than anything I have written. I am a hypocrite when it comes to self-esteem, self-empowerment, &c.

Thank God for David Foster Wallace. Literally. Thank You, Universe. If there is anyone more talented, and yet more in touch with litost - that feeling of shame when faced with one's own silliness, facile-ness, worthlessness - I don't know who it is. (Except perhaps Milan Kundera, who provided that definition, and used it for a theme, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Then, proving that nothing is random and God exists, Wallace quoted Kundera in a story about feeling down on yourself. Geez, I might be tripping.)

What was I saying again? That I tend to believe that everyone around me knows what they're doing, has it all figured out, is supremely confident, at all time, while next to them I look cool and composed on the outside (ha!), but on the inside I am flailing and filandering and completely losing my shit.

A woman I know said that other day that she thinks all social tension and weirdness is a result of fear. I think that is so true. Fear of judgment, misunderstanding, rejection, vulnerability. When I experience awkwardness, I ALWAYS blame myself - because I believe that the other person or people is totally confident. But maybe they're just as afraid as I am.

Carry each other...

What I've Been Reading Lately

• Hemingway
• Salinger
• Wallace (David Foster)
• Miranda July

How did these writers develop such a distinct and interesting voice? What I love about all of them is that they are so damn recognizable; any paragraph, any sentence of theirs just reeks of them. How do they do it?

Where does one get their own narrative voice? Simply by practice? Or are some people born with one and don't have to work at it at all? That seems unlikely, as natural as it seems to come to some people. I want my narrative voice to be:

• associative
• quirky
• honest/transparent
• candid
• unorthodox

I realize those words are not really going out on a limb - that is, I suppose many writers with different ideas of what they want their voice to be might use those same adjectives. I will try to refine my list, and maybe by doing so I will find my voice.

(Incidentally, that list applies to July and Wallace, and they both have VERY different voices.)

Maybe when I find my voice, that is how I will know I have succeeded.

Heritage

(I wrote this story as an entry to Camera Obscura's Bridge the Gap contest - photos (and winner) depicted here:)

In my dream I was falling, peacefully, slowly, with none of the fear or the rush of a usual falling dream; this was slow, restful; I was surrounded on all sides by something that was helping me fall, something fit to my body like it was made for me, cradling me.

When I awoke it was dark, and I was afraid; the air felt too light to breathe, it felt substanceless; the mattress, too hard, like it was preventing me from drifting into the ground.

At work I was agitated, and I went home early.

Again I dreamt of the fall, the peaceful, bodiless fall, and it felt like I had finally surrendered to gravity, like I had given up a long and tiresome battle.

And again: wake, agitated, work, sleep.

A third night I dreamt; all around me the crystal blue, that strong yet gentle force that molded to my body; nothing had ever felt as accommodating, as supportive yet freeing, as the water.

And then I realized: I was not falling; I was drowning; the water surrounded me and suddenly I was overcome with that feeling that I had traveled too far from the surface; my lungs, my mouth, my insides all crying for air, but my body remained silent and still, acquiescent, amidst my inner screams.

It was then that I knew I was dying, and when I understood that, my insides quieted, and I lay at rest again, and I knew that drowning is peaceful, that water is gentle, that surrender is release.

I woke. It was light. Across the room my alarm beeped. Dazed I staggered over and silenced it, showered, ate, and arrived at work only a minute or two late, with nobody there to notice.

Work: Visitation Services Manager at the Historical Center, Marion, NY. I sat at the front desk alone. I was shaken; I felt vertigo, I felt sure the air was not strong enough to catch me if I fell.

This was disconcerting: as I sat alone at the front desk all morning, no visitors, no coworkers as it was a weekend, I returned to my dream in my mind, and it brought me peace; I felt as I did in the original dream, which was that I was no longer responsible; I could continue to lie in the water and dream.

It registered that I should be alarmed, but as the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock across from my desk, I began to question: why are we so afraid of death, of our own death, yet we never think twice about those that happened long ago? The death of everyone we know who’s passed, old celebrities, our ancestors: they’re dead, and they’re fine, somehow. Their lives are not besmirched by their deaths. When we talk about them we don’t fixate on the fact that they died. In a way, they still exist: death has not obliterated their identity.

I unearthed the master key from the desk drawer and made my way back into the archives, which were fodder for our next project. We were going to organize all the stories, documents, photographs, everything we had stored back here, into a narrative timeline of our town. It would start and end here at the Center but the timeline itself would take visitors on a walking path over the canal, through downtown, and back.

Ours is a small town, and my family had been here for generations; I had no trouble locating some documents with my family name on them. There were birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, estate sales, all the faded articles you’d expect in a place like this.

I’d never given much thought to my family’s history, save for knowing where we came from, which was here; I knew I was named for my maternal great-grandmother, Joanna, but this fact had always meant little to me, as neither my parents nor I had known her, and I hadn’t known my grandmother. Essentially, I realized, no one I knew had known my namesake.

Now, though, I wanted to know more. I needed proof that they were people, not just registered voters or property owners.

Six o’clock passed and I continued to dig through the archives. In some years’ files I found more municipal proof that my family existed before dying, some old slides and yearbook pages, but nothing to my satisfaction.

Around eight o’clock, I found a file in the corner marked, simply, ‘heritage.’ It appeared to be a catch-all for unfilable documents and other historical debris. At the back, bound together with a clip, was a scrapbook dated 1911-1931, completely intact, by Joanna L. Hoenigger, nee Salinger. My great-grandmother.

It was all there: the births of her five children; the death of one; four first Communions. Recipes, awards, someone’s poetry from the same school I went to. Two sons shipped out to Germany, one did not return. The father had dementia. Postcards and art projects. Lace clippings from baptismal garments and locks of hair and even a grocery list.

I read everything, feeling a sense of kinship with this family that had produced mine, and especially with Joanna. I had almost no connection with her; my grandparents had died when I was young, and my mother didn’t often talk about her past. Yet everything she did affected me, and here it all was, twenty years of memories carefully preserved in a book.

On the last page I found something that made me stop. In someone else’s handwriting at the top of a newspaper clipping was written September 1, 1943. The article read:

The body of a local seamstress was found drowned in Will’s Hallow Creek yesterday morning…Mrs. Dale Hoenigger, born Joanna Salinger of Marion, New York, aged 53. Authorities are investigating the possibility of foul play, although her body showed no sign of struggle.

There were no funeral papers.

The Fear of Not Saying Interesting Things

For some reason, this doesn't stop me from talking, but it often stops me from writing.

Lately, though, I've been thinking about the importance of just getting it down. If I have an idea for something, even if I'm not sure I can execute it, I need to just start, and just finish, a first draft. After all, it's a first draft - it's a lump of clay; it doesn't need to look like a, I don't know, Greek god. But I need to get the clay first.

Sorry for the extended metaphor. I find them extremely helpful. This particular one just illuminated the fact that I tend to get down on myself when my first draft isn't the final draft, or something close. How silly of me!

P.S. Just finished reading Miranda July's collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Glorious! Would that I had a voice as distinct as hers, and an imagination as detailed.

We have a record player.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!