On Rural

I came to the coast from my father’s death,

to heavy fog clinging to limbs and burls

with edges worn smooth like his aging form –

and the salted air’s clutch was his hand, stiff and cold.

Vainly I wished that the tides would stop,

that pebbles would nestle and never need leave,

that sea creatures who perished could rest in their graves

and the beach would grow hard, impermeable to change.

For how could I eat, or smile, or breathe?

while his dear brain burned hot and turned to ashes

like the sun sliding gently down toward the waves,

its inexorable fall a daily demise.

So I peeked through my hands as it narrowed and dove

bravely beneath the curve of the earth,

but as I watched – mourning – the fire below

lit the clouds in a madness of color and light.

And there was its glory in startling array –

though the sun itself had ceased to warm –

had gone, I saw suddenly, to light someone new,

and to rise at that moment on a distant shore.

Pride, Prejudice and the Mersey Beat

This is a short piece of fiction I wrote a while back and still enjoy re-reading. It's a re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice as set against 1960's Liverpool.

            Damn.

            His Bremont wristwatch never lied. It was after midnight, and Fitzwilliam Darcy was unavoidably, unacceptably late. Reynolds was doing his best, but it would take at least fifteen minutes to cross town to the Marquee. He’d be lucky if he caught the last number.

            A quarter of an hour later he dashed beneath the neon sign, past the queue and doorman, and through the double doors into the club. His table – their table – was in a dark corner, with a lipstick-marred wine glass upon it, next to her Rolleicord camera and a tumbler containing a thoroughly melted whiskey-rocks. Damn.

            By the stage, a wild crowd still surged to the beat. Which tune was this?

            Sweet Little Sixteen.

            Maybelline.           

Poor Little Fool.

He knew them all, of course.

“I know you can dance, since it i’nt hard,” he heard her say in his head. “The question is, do you?”

‘If I can find you, I will,’ he muttered beneath his breath.

He surveyed the twisting, seething mass of youth. A sea of bouffants and fringes, tossed like mad to the beat of the music, hair pushed out of Nefertiri-lined eyes by manicured fingers. Darcy narrowed his eyes.

            Then there she was – almost up against the stage, head thrown back in laughter as she tossed her hair back and forth. He took in her shockingly abbreviated dress – the color of a ripe tomato – which clung to her hips and breasts and bared her arms to the shoulder. Her dark hair was teased at the crown, falling thickly in perspiration-soaked strands to stick to her face and neck. Lord, she was incredible.

            Suddenly she opened her eyes and met his gaze from across the room. For a moment neither moved – then she broke into a wide grin reserved only for him, completely unaware of the disappointed look she earned from her dancing partner. Is that Rory Storm?

It didn’t matter. Darcy had come in time.

The Day We Bombed Utah

This is my father's side of a phone conversation. I asked him about the nuclear tests that occurred in the 1950's just a few miles from his home, specifically timed while the wind was blowing away from Las Vegas - and towards St. George, Utah.

"My boss, Art Crosby, was out looking for uranium [that day], he thought he’d get rich quick. Wave of the future.

"He left his Geiger counter sitting on his desk [at the gas station]. I set it to its lowest setting and the needle just slammed against the stop. I thought I’d broken it. And that was inside. The government came around and gave news conferences telling everyone not to worry...but they also offered to wash everybody’s car.

"I stayed inside. I didn’t go out much those days. The president of Dixie college in those days had been a biology teacher and an outdoors guy, best teacher I ever had, and he took his family out on some mountains like 40 miles closer to ground zero to watch the explosions, get up at 3 o’clock in the morning.

The Body Violate

Warning: the content of this post is graphic.

Last night I saw a woman’s leg snipped away after being ripped from her body in a terrible accident, her other limb flayed from hip to toe. As I watch her abdomen is slit wide and packed with handfuls of gauze, her ribs bisected with a saw to allow access to her floundering heart. Crimson blood pours into her veins, bag after bag squeezed through tubing to circle her body before soaking her sheets and dripping inevitably onto the floor. A roomful of humans hovers around her, each absorbed in his own small part of the desperate yet intricately choreographed task of preserving her personhood against the ebb of fate.

In that room the words sound again and again in my mind: Is nothing sacred? Is there no part of the body that remains untouched, inviolate?

A calm surgeon leading the trauma team reaches into the woman’s chest and urges the heart along, slippery and clasped between her two hands. The surgeon has a boldness within her that shines as light in her eyes – she is unafraid. And yet, this is the same woman whose fingers tremble when she gets too hungry, who wears worn sneakers to work and can’t resist the candy at the nurses’ station. This woman is fallible, and made of the same flesh she confidently cuts. I am awed by her hubris.

Despite the horror, despite the unspeakable violations of the body, there is a tacit agreement in that operating room. If her legs must go, they go. If her body is sliced from top to toe to expose her injuries, so be it. Tissue is moved, arteries cauterized, skin and muscle sacrificed. Everything is expendable except for this woman’s consciousness – she is why we are so bold, so seemingly cruel. She is what is untouchable, inviolate.

Hours later she opens her eyes, gaze as unfocused as a newborn's. I’m standing beside the bed and for a moment her eyes catch mine – I am struck with a deep sense of unworthiness, of my own experience being inadequate to understand hers. This woman has touched darkness, traversed a mysterious hell I hope I’ll never know. Her lips twitch around the breathing tube and she gives a hesitant thumbs up. Instantly I feel myself grin. She’s there.

For a moment I cast my eyes around the room at the spotless floors, the grimy white coats, the competent nurses, chemical concoctions and disposable tubing and think to myself: This is what humans can do.

Slaughterhouse Zero, or: Smashing Pumpkins go Vonnegut

A note from the year 2000: This story needs an explanation. So many people have asked just what is with this story...and I'm sure more have thought it. So I'll explain. This story is not really funny. 
Basically, this story is the story of the Smashing Pumpkins told in the style of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five. Hence the constant repetition of the phrase "so it goes." I had to read Slaughterhouse Five for school, and the main character's name is Billy Pilgrim. From that moment on I kept replacing "Pilgrim" with "Corgan," even once in an essay...my teacher was confused. And so this story was born... SLAUGHTERHOUSE ZERO or TIME IS NEVER TIME AT ALL THIS IS A STORY SOMEWHAT IN THE TELEGRAPHIC SCHIZOPHRENIC MANNER OF SONGS  BY THE SMASHING PUMPKINS  WHERE THE MUSIC COMES FROM.  LOVE.  welcome to nowhere fast  nothing here ever lasts  nothing but memories  of what never was  All this happened, more or less. The music parts, anyway, are pretty much true. Their keyboardist did die in 1996, and their drummer was scapegoated, are swore to kill Billy. And so on. 
When he decided to write this story Billy went back to Chicago, and met up with his old guitarist. They decided to catch up, relive the good old days. James invited him over. James still wasn’t married. He lived with Bugg after all these years. Bugg was pretty much his life, and when Billy came Bugg decided Billy was the one that had taken James away from him for ten years, and told him so. James knew that he and Bugg had been torn apart by fame during the nineties, but knew Bugg would understand. After all, Bugg was a very perceptive dog. 
Billy, however, felt terrible. He promised Bugg he wouldn’t let this book glamourize his days as a rock star. And he kept his promise. It’s all here; hair loss, drug overdoses, criticism and all. And Bugg forgives Billy. 
So this story is a failure. Billy looked back, at the glory days. He wanted D’Arcy and James beside him, but it would never be. It had to be a failure. Believe in me.  It begins like this: 

Searching for the most beautiful girl in the world

Once upon a time I couldn't pass a basket of photos in an antique or thrift store without at least sifting through for something to catch my eye. And over time I amassed a modest but carefully curated collection of vintage photos of strangers. Why would I do such a thing?

For me there's a bittersweet pleasure in saving bits and pieces of the past, whether my own, my family's, or that of some unknown human who left the bits behind. Everything that comes to us from that untouchable country has done so in its own unique way, and is a reflection of the spirit of those who handled or created it.

The objects I've gathered are inexpensive and common, but each carries meaning for me. In each there is a reason my hand paused over that face, that inscribed book, that hand-worked lace. And when I keep and treasure the pieces I feel close to someone I'll never know, and there's such beauty in that for me.

And then there's Ana. The most beautiful girl in the world - to me at least.

A century ago the light that reflected off of her body entered a lens and struck film. She wore a necklace and a bangle and clutched a small white handkerchief in her hand.

Someone close to her had the photograph printed as an AZO brand "Real Photo" Post Card, and wrote on the back:

As best I can tell, it reads: "Ana Fathrup, a Kodac [sic] picture taken since we came over here."

So Ana was an immigrant - to America, it would seem, since the postcard ended up in Oregon and was never sent through the mail.

To my eye her clothes and hair dated to between 1910 and 1918 or so. After checking into the AZO brand postcard I found that this particular type was made between 1907 and 1914, which narrows it down further.

Wanting to know more, I tried searching for her. There wasn't much to go on. I tried every variation of Fathrup, Fothrup, Lathrup, Lothrup, Gothrup and Gathrup that I could think of (any other suggestions, anyone?). There was no sign of her in a graveyard in Oregon or anywhere else, no record from Ellis Island, no census entry, no social security death record. Some of that isn't surprising - if she married after the picture was taken she'd be nearly impossible to track down.

So she remains largely a mystery. Ana can no longer be living, but it gives me comfort to know that even now she's gone, someone is thinking of her.