Tuesday, December 31, 2013

To Be Transformed

It is morning and there has been a blizzard. The house is empty. I wander from room to room in boxers and socks. The power has gone out and the light from outside is clean and pure. The empty street has become a perfect gleaming version of itself. I stand very still and watch it through the front window.

Last night when we got stoned you showed me your poetry and I was overcome. It is so wonderful, I said tearfully, and as you touched the back of my neck softly I realized what I meant was, this is a part of your life that is so separate from myself. I will never captivate you fully.

I put on sweatpants and boots and walk outside with no shirt on. The snow is so deep I can climb up to the roof of the little beige shed in the side yard. I stand out there for some time, looking at my neighborhood from nine feet higher than usual. The cold is biting and fresh and feels just right, maybe. I'd like this moment to mean something. I'd like this to be beautiful. I'd like to be transformed.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

SAM AUSTIN IS UP LATE WORRYING ABOUT HIS NAGGING ANKLE INJURY

ANKLE
I am confused about feeling sore.

SAM
Yes I know.

ANKLE
Sometimes running hurts me.

SAM
Yes.

ANKLE
And other times it doesn’t.

SAM
I know.

ANKLE
Sometimes it hurts to lift weights but not always.

SAM
I know. Yes.

ANKLE
Sometimes sitting too long hurts but other times it makes me feel better. Other times a brace can help but then later it just makes things worse.

SAM
I know all of this.

ANKLE
I wish I were a master assassin’s ankle.

SAM
Yes I kno- what?

ANKLE
If I were the ankle of a master assassin I would never hurt. I would always be fine.

SAM
What? How is that- why?

ANKLE
Because we would always do sweet stuff together. Master assassin stuff. I would climb up sweet walls and help him steady his aim so he could shoot poison crossbow darts.

SAM
That would not help. You would just hurt more. That would be very strenuous.

ANKLE
I would help him run away from the police after he commits and artfully staged and flawlessly executed hit on an evil foreign diplomat.

SAM
You seem to be losing sight of the problem at hand. Or at foot.

An uncomfortable beat.

ANKLE
You are unfunny and rarely commit planned murders. At best your murders are uncreative and spur of the moment.

SAM
What do you mean. I’ve never committed murder.

ANKLE
Don’t remind me.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

The Unending Sadness of Intersecting Lines

The story that follows, "The Unending Sadness of Intersecting Lines," was written for a fiction workshop as a structural imitation of Yiyun Li's short story "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl", which, like my story, features a style of third-person narration that is alternatively close with one character and then with another.

The conceit of the story - that is, the idea of two people floating through the void after the end of the universe - is based on the third section of a poem I wrote in April 2013 called "THREE LOVE POEMS FOR ALYSSA". In that poem, a narrator is floating in post-universe space and sees in the distance a love interest heading towards him. "The Unending Sadness of Intersecting Lines" makes this conceit a bit more present: two people ARE meeting up in the void and have only a moment to decide whether to grab onto one another.

I guess the reason I make this point is that a lot of people have compared the story to the recent film Gravity. For what it's worth what follows was conceived before and is accordingly not inspired by or based on that movie.

****
Granted immortality due to a spiritual mishap at his nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, Tim floated aimlessly in the void after the heat death of the universe for a hundred trillion years and then encountered a beautiful woman.

The only thing he had crossed paths with before was a little chunk of quartz but it had fallen out of his pocket. It had been his prize possession, and when he awoke one morning to see it was just out of arm’s reach, he could only watch with some dismay as it floated away on a slightly different trajectory. He had lost sight of it maybe a billion years back.

“Hey there!” he said to the woman, and then cleared his throat. His voice sounded creaky with disuse. “I’m Tim! Hello!” He suddenly got nervous he was coming on too strong. “I’m Tim,” he said, more quietly.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Susan.” Susan could see that she was a bit older than Tim, who was maybe only in his early twenties. She regarded him with a kind of sad curiosity. She had not seen another human since she and Anders had broken up only few millennia after the universe ended. The two had met while she was in Sweden for a conference and he had promised her eternal life one night while they made love at his summer home. She did not think much of it until she fell off a cliff while skiing and climbed out unscathed. As it turned out he was a direct descendent of an ancient Norse deity.

Susan and Anders had spent the rest of the universe together – she was at the time convinced she loved him but lately was wondering if she had only stayed with him to avoid getting into anything committed with someone else who was just going to end up dying. Even after the universe ended they had lashed themselves together with rope so they would not ever drift apart, or at least not until after only a few million years of floating she woke up suddenly consumed by panicky feelings of being trapped in the relationship. That night she untied them while he slept.

He cried when he realized what had happened. “How could you do this?” he choked out in his heavy Scandinavian accent. “I loved you so truly. I only wanted to make you happy.”

“I’m sorry, Anders,” she said, watching him float a little further away. “It’s not you. I just- I need some space right now.”

After a few days she realized she should have pushed him harder after she undid the knots. They were still fairly close. Every now and then he would call things to her matter-of-factly like “You are a thoughtless bitch,” or “You deserve to be alone.” She had to see him every day for a year and a half before he was finally out of sight. It reminded her unpleasantly of when she had broken up with James, her sophomore year boyfriend at their small liberal arts college, for roughly the same reason.

“What were you so afraid of?” James had asked her once after at one of the thousand parties at which they kept running into each other. Susan, drunk and tearful, found she didn’t have an answer.

“Susan,” Tim interrupted her thinking. He was trying to calculate. “I think,” he began, and then coughed. “I think we might get close enough to grab one other. I think if you reach out, and I reach out, I think we could maybe grab hold of each other’s hands.” He knew he should really only be considering the prospect of having some company, but he was having trouble not thinking about how pretty she was and how he had never worked up the courage to kiss a girl, even during his billion years of life, even when Maia Heyworth had been making such lengthy eye contact with him at the senior prom.

What Susan said next was a glum and drawn-out, “Well,” and then suddenly they were too far apart. The moment had passed.

And then there they were, just specks floating in an endless empty universe, destined never to encounter anyone or anything more until the end of time. All that was left for the two of them were questions, then: questions like could it have worked out with him and how in that moment did she decide it was not even worth a shot, questions like could he have just reached out and grabbed her shoe, questions like had they both made a terrible mistake. These questions occurred to them as they gradually lost sight of each other. They came to realize quickly that at least they would have an eternity of solitude to consider the answers.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Short Presentation

SAM, nine, is lit center stage. SAM is quite short. He holds a piece of paper. He is quite nervous and his way of speaking makes it clear he is reading from the paper, pausing at awkward times or running together sentences.

SAM
This is my report on what I want to be when I grow up and the challenges I might face. When I grow up I want to be tall. I will be six-foot-five-inches, and when people meet me they will say things like, “wow you are tall, how is the weather up there.” Sometimes I will even hit my head on things because they are low to the ground, or else I will have to duck when I walk up stairs in people’s basements. Sometimes I will play pick-up basketball and I will be okay at it and no one will say, “Sam you are too short to ever be good at sports, just go home.” When I visit my parents for Thanksgiving my mom will ask me to get cans of cranberry sauce from the top shelf for her and I will not have to stand on a chair, and afterwards my mom will hug me and tell me she loves me and my sister the same amount even if my sister is pretty and good at sports and I have early onset backne.

SAM pauses then continues.

SAM
One challenge I might face when I grow up to be tall is that I will lose all my friends. It will be sad. I will be too tall for them, and it will make me sad to lose them as friends but I will be tall and they will be short so what can you do. I will make new taller friends, and we will all play pick-up basketball together, and they will say, “Sam, you are so tall and handsome and the way you only listen to soundtracks from anime is cool.” And I will say, “yes, we are all tall and we all love anime soundtracks.” And they will say, “That is true. Let’s go to Dave & Busters for dinner.” And after that we will go to Dave & Busters for dinner and Eva, the girl that I like from Ms. Valnetto’s class, will be there. She will be grown up too, and she will say, “it is okay that you spilled popcorn butter on me at Maia’s birthday party, I did not mean those things I yelled at you about how ugly and weird and short you were.” I will shrug it off and ask if she wants to watch me play skee-ball, and she will say, “okay,” and I will be tall enough to put the ball right into the hundred hole, and with all the points I win I will get two stuffed animals that are Mr. Resetti from the Wii game Animal Crossing, and I will give one to her, and she will kiss my cheek. That was my report on what I want to be when I grow up and the challenges I might face.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Investigation Reveals Fatal Error in 2006 Mission Quinoa Order

MISSION PARK - A recent investigation at Mission Dining Hall revealed an error in an old order for quinoa, the Mexican grain known for being rich in protein and fiber. Investigators report that the mistake in the order - placed in October 2006 -  resulted in a surplus quantity of quinoa in the magnitude of ten thousand. This slip-up proved fatal when the quinoa, delivered too quickly, ended up crushing a Mission chef.

"We were hearing a lot about quinoa," a dining hall source reports, "so we thought we'd try to order some for a dinner to see how people liked it. Well someone must have typed a bunch of extra zeroes because we ended up ordering like five truck fulls of the stuff. We were knee deep in quinoa for a week. One of the chefs drowned."

Investigation revealed that the surplus quinoa was eventually stored in empty singles in Dennett Basement and has been served ever since.

"Sometimes students come in joking and acting surprised about the quinoa," the source said. "For me, it's no joke. I still have nightmares."

Sunday, August 25, 2013

GHOST STORIES

0.
After there are rumors of ghosts in the canoe shed by the lake, my best friend and I sit on the dock on a night with no moon. I say to him, I do not believe in ghosts, and he says, neither do I, except for here.

1.
At the end, my best friend stumbles into the woods with his best friend (a young woman) and they have tearful sex. She loves him and he does not love her but he says anyway, I love you, because he has had too much to drink and because in that moment it seems easier and maybe even as exacting as what he really means. Except now she has ghosts of her own to deal with.

2.
I sit in the parking lot drinking with a different friend, one from high school. I say, man, what a summer, and he says, you have become a reminder of what I once was and so I'd like this to be the last time we see one another.

3.
In the morning I wake up on the shore with a monster headache and a gritty mouthful of sand, and Stephen, a maintenance guy who has been here forever, is pulling up lane lines at the end of the dock in the yellow morning sun. He has gray hair and a heavy Maine accent, and when I ask him if he believes in ghosts he just spits into the lake and says, I guess I do.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

The Collector

You find a Hawaii quarter in the parking lot
outside your job and decide to collect every state.
You start by only sorting through the change
you get each day, but before long
you’re at the bank trading in twenties
and hundreds, spending afternoons and weekends
pawing through grimy tupperwares full of coins
and wading around in fountains
at the mall. You call your friends and tell them
to be on the constant lookout out for Idaho and the Dakotas.
Your wife leaves you, your daughters
break off all contact, you quit your job
and sell your clothes and start holding up coffee shops
for their tip jars.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

THREE LOVE POEMS FOR ALYSSA

1.
LOVE POEM FOR ALYSSA
IN ENGLISH CLASS

I will write a love poem for you, Alyssa,
dark-haired girl
who sits across from me in Comparative Literature,
one that will appeal to your English major sensibilities,
one that explores your adorable quirks I notice during class
that endear you to me in a way you will find loveable
and not creepy.

I will write,
Alyssa, I like the way you nervously chew
on the drawstring of your favorite maroon hoodie,
I like the way you sit low in your chair
with your fingers on the front of your throat,
and I like the way you read passages of Jane Eyre
aloud in class, slow and soft –
“how strange it was that I could not unlove you
merely because you had ceased to be near me” –
as if the words are your own
and you are sharing them with me as we walk
through the snow back from our first date
during which we discussed such subjects as
women in 19th-century literature
and the fleeting beauty of weather and nectarines.

2.
LOVE POEM FOR ALYSSA
AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD

Last night in the cold
on the balcony in the lodge,
I considered how beautiful you looked
as you picked off the zombies
attempting to claw their way
through our makeshift barriers.

And as you efficiently dispatched the horde,
as our fingers occasionally brushed tips
when I handed you ammunition,
I thought about saying, “how wonderful and terrible
it is that we found each other here, after the world’s end,”
but for fear of distracting you I did not,
and instead admired briefly the moon
shining through the broken windows
and illuminating with pale and delicate light
the maroon hood pulled low
over your eyes,
and your singular way
of handling a firearm,
so darkly,
and with such precision.

3.
LOVE POEM FOR ALYSSA
IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE

Finally,
I float aimlessly in the void
after the heat death of the universe
and find that, after a hundred trillion years,
I cannot unlove you.
It is very dark.

Except today
I spot a speck on the edge of the infinite horizon –
one that might be getting closer
and that is the same color
as your favorite sweatshirt.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Unsolved Problems in Ancient Philosophy

And so two women came unto King Solomon with a baby, see. And the first said, last night in her sleep this other woman smothered her baby and then took mine to replace it, and when I woke up I was holding a dead child that was not my own. And the other, you know, the other said that's not true. This is my baby. The baby you are holding is mine.

And the king said unto them, fetch me a big sword, that I may cut this baby into two pieces, and that you may each have half. And the one woman spoke and said, okay that sounds good, and the other spoke and said, no, just give her the baby, she can keep it, just please don't cut the baby in half.

And so the king knew this second woman was truly the mother and of course he did not have to chop a baby in half.

But can I bring up something really quick, which is what is this first lady's deal? What would you have to be feeling to sneak into another woman's house and steal her baby because yours died? When does your sadness turn to that, like, sick determination? You're just crying in the night and you think, I need a baby, any baby. And then at the end of the story, when she realizes she's never going to get this baby, you know. What kind of horrible spite would you have to feel to want someone else's baby cut in half? What does this woman want with half a baby?