Friday Fun

Something short and quiet this time; trying to play a little with dramatic irony and narrative time. Too easy, or does it work?
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Still stuck with Casey. I know the first half is telegraphed, a few plot points strung together, and that’s what’s stopping me from doing the second half: I wanted to throw down the bones of the story, but it needs more than just the bones. (Semi-spoiler: Chekhov’s advice re hanging a rifle on the wall in the first act applies. You’ll see those nipples again. And, of course, it gets more grim.) John, in his joking suggestion for a title, points out that the bones without the flesh are dull. I’d tried to convince myself that the distanced, too-swift bullet-point style was somehow mythic, fairy-tale-ish, but, well, not quite, Mike. So the first half need revision and fleshing-out, and that means that — despite a couple abortive attempts — the second half ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, or at least not until we get some character details. Until we we find out that Casey asks Dad to take him to a Slayer show. Until we find out that Mom drinks mimosas when she thinks she’s catching a cold.

Longer perspective: in 1997, I made the mistake many English MFAs make, thinking that since, more than anything else, I loved to read fiction, I ought to write it. Not so. I see a lot of creative writing MFAs here at Big State U who think the same thing.

You’ve got to have a big ego to go after a graduate degree in creative writing. In my case, the talent certainly wasn’t of a corresponding magnitude. And the funny thing is this: lately, I’ve come to enjoy reading poetry far more than fiction.

I’ve been wanting to buy myself the Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but I checked out The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry from the library, and it only makes me want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on books by Elizabeth Lowell, Rita Dove, Richard Wilbur, Edward Hirsch, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gl

The temperatures here in New England are the coldest I’ve seen in my mostly mid-Atlantic life. Eleven below zero last night, and supposed to be as cold or colder tonight, with wind chill down to 25 below. I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what folks in Minnesota deal with, but I’m happy to be staying inside.

I had company for dinner last night, which is why I didn’t post, in addition to the fact that I’m stuck on Casey’s story, having written a couple more paragraphs and knowing where it’s going but not knowing quite how to get it there. We ate well: I stuffed puff pastry shells with the Crab Mornay I’d made — easy to make, rich, delicious; I use diced sweet red peppers and mushrooms in addition to the scallions, and dried chipotles instead of ground red pepper — and my companion contributed an excellent salad of mesclun greens, hot yellow peppers, thin-sliced radishes and carrots, black beans, and avocado. And we drank a lot of good wine and had a fine time.

But I’m still stuck with Casey, so I’ll offer here something in perhaps a similar spirit, as a day-late Friday non-dissertational. A small thing I’ve learned: as often and as closely as one reads a poem, there’s always something good — some further understanding and appreciation — to be gained by writing it out yourself.
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Something new here, to start the year off right. It needs a title, so I’d be grateful for suggestions.

(Part 1 of maybe 2 or 3)

Colleen and Casey are born identical twins, plump, blonde, blue-eyed.

Their parents discuss their shared, identical deformity with the doctors. Colleen and Casey each have not two nipples but eight, the lowest pairs in the place where most peoples’ are, but the other three pairs going inwards in twin lines up their chests, so that the topmost nipples lie just outside the sternum and below the collarbone on either side. The nipples are all inverted, the pink middle an indentation rather than a protrusion.

Their mother says she will not submit her children to the scalpel. Their mother says she’s grateful that God gave her two beautiful children, and she will not change them.

The children are, indeed, beautiful.
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1996:

My mother, my father and I drive up to York, Pennsylvania to visit my brother. My father had been up to the York County Jail once before, but it was dark. At ten thirty Christmas morning, we find ourselves lost on Main Street, snow starting to fall, everything closed.

We see a bar with the front door propped open, glimpse pool tables inside. Rolling Rock neon sign in the window. My family is one of those families that gets dressed up for Christmas day; our coats flap with the wind’s gusts. We walk in. Five or six men, all with mustaches, all in jeans and biker boots and gimme caps, one woman, in jeans and a leather jacket. All white. We ask about the jail. The tall guy in the sleeveless black Iron Maiden shirt gives us directions.

“Hey,” he says. “Take care. I been visiting up there on Christmas myself.”

Afterwards, my brother goes back to his cell.

1998:

My mother, my father and I drive up to Hagerstown, Maryland to visit my brother. We’ve all been to the State Prison before: my dad would drive up from DC, my mom from Maryland; I would drive down from Pittsburgh. The hills are beautiful once you get off the interstate.

We’ve learned to wear loafers or shoes that are easy to take off, to not wear belts or watches, for the metal detector. The first time my mom visited they made her take off her underwire bra and leave it in one of the storage lockers.

The little kids there make it OK. They’re happy no matter what: it’s Christmas, and they’re seeing Daddy. It’s all an adventure. It’s hard to not grin when you watch them.

Afterwards, my brother goes back to his cell.

1999:

My mother, my father and I drive up to Hagerstown, Maryland to visit my brother. It’s not snowing this year, but the day’s light is dim and gray.

One of the families we meet in the waiting room tells us about a nearby hotel that has a cash bar and buffet open on Christmas. After we visit my brother, we eat in a dark, smoky room, unable to turn in any direction where we’re not facing a TV. I have a warmed-over Reuben and a Budweiser.

My brother goes back to his cell.

2000:

My mother, my father and I drive up to Hagerstown, Maryland to visit my brother. Light gusts of snow; wind; a high, thin sun.

After the visit, we find a gas station that also sells deli sandwiches. We lay them out on the car’s white hood and eat. It’s the best chicken salad sub I’ve ever had. It’s almost warm for Christmas Day, almost 40 degrees.

My brother goes back to his cell.

2001:

I drive my mother up to the Jessup Correctional Training Center to visit my brother. My father’s been up the previous day. Mix of snow and rain.

I ask the guard at the front desk if we can bring in a pencil and paper so my mom can write to my brother, since she can no longer speak. The guard picks up the phone and calls the visiting room officer. They talk. She hangs up. “They’ll give you writing materials in there,” she says.

She waves at my mom and says hi. “I’m sorry she can’t talk,” she says to me. “She always used to be so nice when she would come in here.” My mom smiles back and nods, a little wide-eyed. “Merry Christmas,” the guard says.

In the visiting room with my brother, she cries, soundlessly, her mouth wide, her eyes shut. In the visiting room, you’re only allowed to embrace at the beginning and end of a visit.

After the visit, all the restaurants on the way home are closed. My mom has a hard time eating anyway, with the disease.

My brother goes back to his cell.

So serious. All doom and gloom. Come on, relax. Lighten up.
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So I’m back at 3rd & Pennsylvania in Southeast DC once again, with a seat by the window looking out the window at the soggy and dismal gray streets with their half-naked trees. They’ve already got the holiday music on full blast in here. Visited my brother (he says he hasn’t tried to bench press his goal of 315 yet, but he can do multiple sets of 265 with no problem: at least somebody’s in shape for the holidays) and later had a fine Thanksgiving dinner with my dad and his sister and her family. The drive down from New England was pretty bad, as I knew it would be even though I religiously avoid I-95, and I’m not much looking forward to the trip back up. And the girls are with me, and they’re a little freaked out. Lots of climbing up and begging to be held.

So — on the day after the number one dysfunctional family holiday — I’ll offer a dysfunctional piece of short fiction as my Friday non-dissertational; a story about needles and adultery. It’s one of my rougher stories, and I still wince when I see the tough-guy tone and the clich

The reason I didn’t post a Friday Non-Dissertational last night: I actually had one of those rare occasions that people refer to as an instance of “having a social life”. It’s been a banner week for that kind of stuff; earlier in the week a friend and I went and saw Susan Tedeschi play.

In any case, I’ve been feeling pretty uninspired as far as writing “creative” stuff goes (not that a dissertation isn’t creative, but you know what I mean), or perhaps not so much uninspired — I got plenty of ideas –as undirected. I don’t know where to go with these ideas about a Lovecraft-inspired pulp-horror office comedy about secretarial temp work or a surreal drama about a person who does volunteer work comforting animals at kill shelters.

So, instead, some delectable Richard Brautigan. (There’s a dissertation connection here, perhaps, in the way the first poem of the collection I quote from echoes the instrumental fantasies about machines of loving grace that I’m so invested in critiquing — but I won’t quote that poem.) If you’ve never encountered Richard Brautigan, I think you would be quite happy if you stopped reading this right now and ran out of the house and scoured your town until you found a copy of In Watermelon Sugar and brought it home and enjoyed it before reading this small poem of his. But I’m sure you know what’s best.
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I’ll acknowledge now that I’m dumbstruck by the generosity of recent comments I’ve received, especially Curtiss’s, and it’s gonna take me a little while to digest them. With such generous comments, along with others people have offered in the past, there’s no way I can ever call the ideas I’m working on in this dissertation entirely my own — which is perhaps a fine model for a writing classroom, as well. I know part of the project composition teachers undertake in assigning papers that require research and citations is to ask students to start to become familiar with the notion that one’s ideas always owe a debt to other people — Newton’s famous comment to Hooke about standing upon the shoulders of Giants seems an appropriate counter to the myth of the solitary and individually inspired Author here — but Curtiss and Charlie have helped me to think about ways in which that project might go even further; about ways in which perspectives on collaboration in the classroom might interrupt rationalizations of inequality based on artificial “I Me Mine” constructions of textual and intellectual scarcity.

With that in mind, I’ll offer tonight — as my Friday non-dissertational — my translation of one of the carminae of Catullus; the ever-popular Number 11. I did this a couple years ago in a 300-level Latin course that I took as a graduate student in order to help fulfill my language requirement (and also because I’m a classics geek wannabe, and really like studying the language and the people), and found that my translations tended to accentuate the bawdy side more than those of my classmates. And Catullus puts the glorious Charles Bukowski to shame with his gleeful potty-mouthedness. My translation ain’t much, but I think it goes with what I was saying about indebtedness and originality: creative work can (and almost always does) owe a lot to other people.

And I just love “ilia rumpens”. Enjoy.
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Long week, and I’m tired; tired enough that my Friday non-dissertational will probably be the only thing I post tonight. I don’t have it in me to think much right now or read anything, not after days of face-to-face conferencing and having to reply intelligently to draft after draft after draft and nights of grading and commenting, plus giving two presentations this week, and — well, let me stop before my whining gets worse.

So: on a tired night, here’s a small, quiet story for you.
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