Faraway, Volume 2, Issue 1 by Daniel Sawyer

VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1

A R A

Y A W A JOURNAL OF

ART AND LITERATURE

A Journal of Art and Literature Volume 2: Issue 1 circa March 2008

Published in

MONTCLAIR CALIFORNIA www.FarawayJournal.com This manuscript was prepared by Daniel Sawyer and Scott Sawyer. Jeff Hendrickson of Oslo graciously maintains the website associated with this manuscript, Thanks to Michael Woodcock for kind assistance. All artwork, written material, digital matter and audio content belongs to the individuals who created it. Please be sure to visit www.cafepress.com/farawayjournal to

show your support for Faraway.

C O N T E N T S

SUMMER “ C i o C i o S a n” , Va l M u r a h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Thoughts on Smiles and Checkout Operations, Howard Catswell..................6 C r o w n , Va l M u r a h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 T h e G a m e W i n n e r, J a r e d H e r n a n d e z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

FALL e v a l u a t e e x e c u t e & W h e r e T h e r e’ s N o W i l l , K a t i e H e i n i g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 Pa r t O n e : A R e a c t i o n , E l i z a E b r o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 O p e n L e t t e r t o a M r. S a m u e l C o l e r i d g e , H o w a r d C a t s w e l l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 Mythic Places III: The Holy Lands, Daniel Sawyer................................18 Maximon, Farah Sosa......................................................................20 S a n Pe d r o Pr i v a t e D o c k , Fa r a h So s a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 f r o m e v e r y w i n d o w i n Pa r i s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 s t r a i g h t e n e d t o w e r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 I never ran like the wind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 symmetrical George.........................................................................25 M i c h a e l Wo o d c o c k

WINTER Wo r t h a D a m n , A l f r e d S c o l a r i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7 Craft (the rant revisited), Alfred Scolari.............................................28 The Hawker (a rebirth), Johnny Alderete............................................29 R u s s i a n W i n t e r, R u s s i a n S p r i n g , D a n i e l S a w y e r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0

SPRING I AM, Silvia Noyola.......................................................................35 Embrace of Such Unknowingness, Jeff Hendrickson................................36 The Stud, Josh Mitchell..................................................................38 Ever Constant, Jeff Hendrickson.......................................................46 T h e Cre t i n Ti m e s In t e r v i e w : Jo s h Mi t c h e l l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 8 Living in Eden, Chris Michno..............................................................51

UMMER Sunlight dapples flowers petals rain down in showers and lovers while away hours beholding Summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s powers

FARAWAY

CIO CIO SAN Val Murah

he used to laugh a lot Not sure why, but everything was funny Sometimes I’d say “Goddamn, the world is one big shit hole” The only thing is, I’d say it with a smile And of course, she’d be on the floor

And I’d ask her who he was And why he was hoggin’ on my girl Naturally, she never answered Just stared, and occasionally laughed Eventually, I stopped asking her Eventually, I stopped stopping there

Sometimes I wondered if English was her first language

One night on the interstate The roof down on the convertible And the moon like a sparklin’ diamond Our hair flappin’ all over the place The windshield our only defense She switched off the blues on the radio And rested her head on my shoulder Well, I nearly got in ten separate wrecks All because I didn’t want to move my body too much Afraid I might wake her up

And other times I wondered if she spoke it at all What the hell planet was she from? Not Venus She looked American We used to go for rides down the interstate I sometimes stopped at this particular corner shop Barney’s, I think it was And whenever I came back out There was some asshole giving her the time She never laughed at him though Each time I’d shoo him away

Around midnight I pulled into a Motel 8 She woke up momentarily But as soon as we got inside She was sprawled right across the bed

Katie Rutherford

FARAWAY

All drowsy-like I asked her what’s the matter And she said the weirdest thing “It’s time for the big sleep” I laughed as she dozed off and said “You don’t look like you’re gonna die to me” And she wasn’t, on my watch That night I stayed up Just watching her, thinking about what she said But eventually, I was too tired and too bored And dozed off involuntarily In my sleep I dreamed about her leaving the motel Hitching a ride with some lunatic Then finally arriving in some cornfield And what I saw was a cocoon A giant one, standing straight up Just sitting there, open, waiting And she just walked inside it and it closed I woke up in a cold sweat And turned over to see she’d gone

I got dressed and got in the car And spent the entire night and morning driving home I never actually figured she was some alien butterfly mess I’ve got a good working head on my shoulders But I figured she was into something just about as strange A couple of years later I met her on the streets She still looked the same It was a nice bit of small-worldliness When I tried to ask her how she was She just shoved me And then she said the few last words she’d ever say to me “I was getting some ice, idiot” I just laughed, said it was good to see her And walked away Good riddance, Madame Butterfly (fin)

Dimba

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ThoughtS on Smiles & Checkout Operation Howard Catswell

Amused on the nature of happiness for a while before dismissing it as fickle – must like my smile flitted across my face. It lingered for a while before proceeding to other business. I

own facial expressions. Then I wondered why and how an assortment of muscle movements could manifest and create happiness. And if a smile was so effective at this job, why could the same not be said for tautened elbow skin or a bent little finger? People don't make sense. My supervisor walks past my checkout and fires a cursory glance at me accompanied by a smile denoting recognition. She doesn't know what my name is. I flex my elbow in greeting. She cocks an eyebrow – confusion. People don't understand me. Sometimes I wonder if I do. What if all this time I've been getting myself all wrong. I imagine the situation – My conscience walks up to me. Things aren't working out, I just feel you don't know me. I think we should try a trial separation. Don't go! I beg. It goes. I go limp. Oh well. A customer takes a pin made of pure unwanted attention to my blissful bubble of dreams. My language becomes flowery and over dramatic. I warmly greet them like an old friend. Welcome! Come in, sit by the fire, would you like something to drink? Can I help with your packing. They are not my friend. I know it, they know it and they respond – their reply heavily laden with false warmth. A sense of dreary joviality lazily flops over the conversation. They joke about how they only came in for a pint of milk. I could scarcely care less. I laugh politely. My laugh is like a bicycle pump for their ego. Endorsed by my laugh they are suddenly the world's greatest stand up – the torpid, mundane shopping gags that I've heard a million times before rattle by like freight trains. A metaphor which only helps highlight how mass produced such jokes are. I profusely thank anonymous customer number 482 for his custom and take his money with a smile made of lies. I quietly thank my muscles.

FARAWAY

CROWN Val Murah I saw Genevieve last night She looked like always Big, black, plump Not letting the chance for a free meal go Even if it was with me "The biggest prick in Big Town" Pffft She loved every minute Every bite on my time and wallet Maybe it was her little way of getting back at me There's nothing "little" about that woman And that crack in her tooth A thick split at the bottom A thin line back up to behind the gum Sometimes I wonder if it goes all the way to her brain I slip my dentist's card in her pocket Every time I get the chance She hasn't gotten the hint yet She needs to get a flipper or something Maybe a crown Instead she wears one on her head Motherfuckin' princess Pffft

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Jared Hernandez

Katie Rutherford

he boy hadn’t slept for four days. He went through the motions of sleeping, laying in bed, wearing pajamas, being restless at night, being groggy in the morning; mainly to appease his mother who would worry if she knew about his insomnia. The boy wasn’t worried though. He knew the reason for his restlessness. He was going to see the New York Yankees. He had never been to Yankee Stadium before. He had experienced games on TV and radio, but nothing could live up to seeing the green grass of Yankee Stadium for the first time. He made a vow that he wouldn’t sleep until he saw them, and sure enough the Yankees had won every game since he made that pledge. He knew that he was the reason for their success. He couldn’t let down an entire city by sleeping. He was a responsible twelve year old. The boy got out of bed at around 9:30 that morning. He found his mother already awake. She was smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee out of a stained cup. “I thought you weren’t going to smoke anymore?” “It’s not easy to quit, honey.” “But you promised.” “I’m trying. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.” The boy sulked over the kitchen cabinet. He got out a bowl and poured himself a hearty bowl of cereal. He went into the small living room. He turned on the TV set and searched the dial. He found a news program that was talking about the Yankees recent winning streak. He turned up the volume. The boy could hear his mother shouting above the din of the TV. He chose to ignore her. The mother, tired of being ignored rushed into the room and shut off the TV. “What’re you doing?” “When I tell you to do something, you get up and do it. You don’t get to just ignore me. It doesn’t work that way around here.” “I wish I lived with Dad.” “What has your Dad ever done for you?” “He got me tickets to the Yankees.” “So that’s what he spends all his money on. He should be using that money to put food in our mouths.”

FARAWAY

“You just don’t understand him.” “I understand him plenty.” “That’s not what he says”, the boy muttered. “What’d you say?” “Nothing.” The mother turned the TV back on. She went back into the kitchen and lit another cigarette. The boy lowered his head into his cereal bowl. He finished quietly. The mother blew smoke from her cigarette in the direction of the boy. She was too angry to really enjoy it. Nick Parker pulled onto his old street in his old car. He still knew quite a few guys from the old neighborhood. He had grown up there. The stoops were all empty now. The day was particularly hot. He was hoping that a few of the old girls would be out and about today. The same girls who had always told him that they wished he wasn’t married. They had gotten their wish; he wasn’t married anymore. The old building still stood tall. The only person out on the stoop of that building was Nick’s son, Tommy. Tommy was the biggest Yankee fan that Nick had ever met. That was saying a lot considering the boy was only twelve years old. Tommy was busy with something when Nick first drove by. He didn’t see him. There were no parking spots on the first pass. Nick rounded the corner, still on the look out for a few girls. He found a spot about a block away. He pulled in and checked his hair in the rearview mirror. It was a little out of place. He pulled his comb out of the glove box and put the stray hairs in their place. He still looked good for his age. He still stood a chance of landing another wife. Nick wanted to get in a quick cigarette before he saw the boy. Tommy had recently begun to disapprove of smoking and also had become very verbal about his displeasure. He walked slowly toward his building, ducking behind an occasional stoop if he felt that the boy was looking down the street in anticipation. He stubbed the butt out on his boot. Nick was really hoping that he wouldn’t run into his ex-wife. He had been ducking her lately. She was on the rampage because he hadn’t paid her child support or alimony for two months now. She hadn’t gone to the cops and he knew that she wouldn’t. It wasn’t her style. He knew that if she went to the cops she would have a few questions to answer herself. He saw the oversized hat that the boy wore from about a hundred feet away. The hat had belonged to Nick in his younger days. He didn’t mean to leave it for the boy; it was just something that he forgot when he moved out. He didn’t feel right asking the boy for the hat back. He was just a boy after all. “Now batting number 44, right fielder, Reggie Jackson”, said Nick. “Hey, Dad.” “Hey, Big T. God, kid. I think you get bigger every time I see you.” “Ready to go?” “Yeah, what you got there?” “I was just making up the score card.” “Oh, yeah. I heard that Pinellas’s gonna start today.” “Yeah. I heard that too.” “Is your Mom home”, he asked sheepishly. “No, she’s at work.” “Oh, shit. I was hoping to catch her. I got a check for her.” “You could give it to me. I can give it to her later.” “Tommy, you lose everything. I can’t give you something this important; the check

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is for a lot of money. How would you feel if you lost it?” “I can handle it.” “No, I don’t think so. Just tell her I have it for her.” He figured this little conversation would buy him some time. “Are you ready to see Yankee Stadium?” The boy shook his head. They walked to the car. Tommy asked if he could see the tickets. Nick reached into the glove compartment and showed the boy the two tickets. The boy ran his finger along the ticket. He felt like he was going to cry. He wouldn’t cry in front of his father though. That would go against everything his father had been teaching him. He needed to learn to be a man. Nick started the car and they began the long trek to the Bronx. A few of the neighborhood kids were out on the corners watching the car go by. Tommy had been bragging to anyone who would listen that he was going to see the Yankees. All of the boys knew that today was the day. They envied him. They wished that their fathers could afford tickets to Yankee Stadium. Most of them wished that they could actually see their fathers on a regular basis. Today was Tommy’s day. Today he was the king of the neighborhood. He imagined a sort of ticker tape parade after the game when all the boys of the neighborhood would stand around and cheer for Tommy. They would tip their caps to him. They would celebrate his accomplishment. They knew that he was the real reason the Yankees were on such a winning streak. He was the answer to all their baseball prayers. The car was parked a few blocks away from the stadium. Nick told Tommy that anyone who would pay full price to park a car was a real sucker. The two men began the walk to the stadium. Tommy could see the familiar architecture that he had seen on TV so many times. He could feel his heart starting to pound. He saw the lines of people. He saw the men selling programs. He saw the uniformed Policemen on their horses. Some fan shouted that Reggie Jackson himself was outside. There was a rush over to that spot. It turned out not to be Reggie, but just a fan who somewhat resembled Reggie from faraway. Up close he looked nothing like the Yankee right fielder. He wasn’t even black. Tommy could feel the tickets burning a hole in his pocket. Nick took the tickets in his hand as they got in line. “Are you ready?” he asked the boy. He couldn’t even vocalize a response. He just looked up at his father with his eyes glowing. The time was near. The line was extremely long today. In the late summer months, it was hard to find a game that wasn’t a sell-out. Tommy surveyed the line. He could easily tell the die-hard fans from the businessmen who were trying to woo clients. He could see that there were a few people in the crowd that were wearing the hats of the hated Boston Red Sox. He loved all the fans giving them a hard time. He couldn’t believe that they were getting such a hard time when they hadn’t even entered the stadium yet. He could only imagine what would happen to them inside. They got near the ticket taker now. Tommy counted down the people in front of him. Four to go, a family all going in together. It was their turn now. They handed the valuable tickets to the ticket taker who gladly accepted them with a smile on his face. He muttered something about “Go Yankees” as he was about to tear the tickets, when suddenly he stopped. He motioned for his supervisor to come over. He politely asked to two men to wait while they quietly conversed. The supervisor motioned for Tommy and Nick to get out of line. They did. “Sir, where did you get these tickets?” the supervisor asked. “My friend Willie gave them to me.”

FARAWAY

“Sir, these tickets are counterfeit.” “No, he told me they were real.” “Sir, that may be, but these are not real tickets. We see this kind of thing all the time.” “No, Willie wouldn’t lie to me. Check them again.” “Sir, I see this kind of thing all the time. These are fakes.” “Just check them again, goddamn it. Just do it.” “Sir, you don’t have to use that kind of language with me. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.” “I’m not leaving. I brought my kid here and we’re not leaving until we see a little baseball.” The supervisor motioned for Nick to step away from Tommy. They conversed quietly as Tommy strained to listen. The boy could tell that they were arguing. Nick walked back toward Tommy angrily. He grabbed his hand. “Dad, what’s going on?” “We gotta make a little stop before we go in.” “Why? We’re already here. Let’s just go in.” “We gotta make a stop first.” “Are we coming back?” “Yeah. We’ll be right back.” The boy looked back over his shoulder as the stadium got smaller and smaller. He began to cry quietly. He was worried about hiding the tears from his father. His father wasn’t even looking at him now. They drove around to several bars that night. The boy was becoming more and more heartbroken the longer they were gone. The time was now 8:30; the game had already been going on for an hour. Nick kept assuring Tommy that they would be at the stadium in no time. He just needed to take care of something first. The boy stood in the entryway of several bars as his father would go in and speak to the bartender. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. Nick would always walk away from the bartender with an angry look on his face and grab the boy’s hand as they stormed out. This pattern continued for several hours. Soon they arrived at a bar called De Luca’s. Tommy watched as his father went inside. He spoke briefly to the bartender and shook his hand. The bartender made a brief phone call. When he hung up he nodded at Nick. There was a door near the back of the bar that Nick positioned himself next too. The boy watched his father with great concentration. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing standing next to the door. After about a minute or two of standing, the door opened. A tall skinny man came out. He had a cigarette pressed against his lip. He looked over at the bartender and shouted something at him with an angry look on his face. Just as he finished speaking the door crashed into him. Nick had slammed the door on the man’s frail body. The man jerked forward. He turned around and saw Nick in front of him now. Nick picked up a beer glass of the bar top. He smashed it on the man’s face. The man grabbed his face with both hands. He fell to the floor in a ball. Nick stood over him yelling something incomprehensible at him. Nick began to violently kick at the man’s face and hands. The bartender was yelling at both of them. He picked up the phone. One of the man’s friends tried to help him, but Nick sent him flying rather easily. The boy watched through the doorway. He couldn’t understand the feelings inside of him. He was disgusted. He hadn’t seen this type of violence before, only in the movies. He couldn’t believe that his father was the perpetrator. He couldn’t believe that

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his father would go to such lengths. He couldn’t hide the smile on his face. Wait until the kids in the neighborhood heard about this. Tommy sat outside the bar with a coke the bartender had given him. The bar was forced to close early by the police. Nick was arrested for assault. The two men he had beaten were taken to the hospital and treated for serious wounds. Tommy was waiting patiently for his mother to come and pick him up. The two police officers that were waiting with Tommy had called her. Tommy still had that excitement in him. He had even forgotten that he was supposed to be in Yankee Stadium that night. His mother showed up in a taxi. The policemen had Tommy identify the woman before they let him go with her. Tommy gulped down the last of his coke and got in the cab. His mother wouldn’t look at him. He looked at the lights of the city reflecting on her face. He could swear that he saw tears streaming down her face. He reached over to her. “What’s wrong, Mom?” “Your Dad is an asshole, that’s what’s wrong.” “He isn’t.” “You don’t understand the way the world works. Parents are supposed to protect their children. They can’t take them to a bar fight.” “He was protecting me.” “You just don’t understand.” She pulled out a cigarette and took a long drag. She cracked the window slightly to let the smoke out. The boy gave her a disgusted look. He looked out his window. There didn’t seem to be much going on tonight. Through every window an eerie glow was omitting. All of New York was inside watching the end of the Yankee game. The Yankees were down by two runs in the bottom of the ninth. They had the bases loaded as Bucky Dent came to the plate. He was unflinching in his appearance. He took a one and one pitch and drove it down the left field line, scoring three runs. Bucky stood at second base and looked up into the lights of Yankee Stadium. He took of his cap. “Thanks, Tommy. We couldn’t have done it without you,” he said. The boy stared into the darkness. All the windows seemed to get just a little brighter. The boy closed his eyes. That night he slept the sleep of the righteous. After all, he was personally responsible for the well being of an entire city.

FARAWAY

ALL

The forest is set ablaze as fall these trees doth raze and lays its somber gaze upon the shortening days.

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evaluate, execute katie heinig

louded judgment perceived reality perversion of self possessions possessing attaching and clinging and fighting and retracting bound and gagged the cycle is vicious malicious, devouring igniting and growing feeding and usurping lodged in space locked and loaded trapped and trampled hoarding and empty empty and overflowing trembling buckling under the weight of excuses

FARAWAY

Where Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s No Will

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PART ONE: A REACTION ELIZA EBRO

Na Empty rrating the vacu for the p i urpose o ty f being H full, Relief n opefully. ever rea ching h He is an Only discharg er cup e. inte She real ntional enigma Negativ izes she can’t h —art aside. a e and a negative ve Nothing But suc don’t ne h form ver stick this piec A ton o eo f feathe rs is stil f nothing has! l a ton o C f feathe The pill rs ows kno otton candy. w how q Smiles a uickly y re only ou f r o wns ups come and go His min ide dow d is h n His ego is best friend his secre t love Whi Physica le you his mist lly imm ress. aterial, un-mat ter‘eal I There b f you can. Where’s ut not: “Marco the chai Po r, I only know th lo?” We lie w e bed, s ith ou h Here H r fingers crosse e asked. d Hope is ere Now . . . a f alse con No hop fid e in wh at we ne ence All it co ver confide sts is Noth ing from you.

FARAWAY

Open Letter to a Mr. Samuel Coleridge Dear Mr Coleridge, I am writing this letter to express my distaste at the sentiments shown by you regarding the shooting of albatrosses in your poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". In my opinion, these unsightly beasts not only deserve to, but should be shot upon first sight if possible. I ask you Mr Coleridge have you ever taken the time to look one of these filthy animals in the eye? If you had, I feel sure you would experience the same sense of utter, unparalleled disgust as I do upon looking upon them as they waft their fetid stench of fish and miles and miles of sea upon me. These creatures taunt us, Mr Coleridge, and for this treachery deserve to be treated no better than a repugnant cancer upon the ocean. They must be expunged from our memories, their skeletons exhumed and cast into the fiery pits of hell. Also I wish to prove to you that the shooting of these grotesque harpies of the Pacific is not in fact bad luck. When I was but a small child my father shot such an animal, all that year I achieved good grades in Geography class. Admittedly I had a penchant for geography before the shooting of said bird, yet my point still stands. Furthermore my wife accepted my proposal of marriage after I displayed my brute strength by shooting an albatross from our cliff top house. In addition to a public retraction of your statements on albatross shooting I also wish you to make necessary revisions to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". However since you are hundreds of years dead I have made the required changes myself. The poem reads the same up until the shooting incident, which now reads thus: `God save thee, ancient Mariner ! From the fiends, that plague thee thus !-Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. The rest of the journey fared well. THE END I care not if these amendments please you. If you wished me to take your opinions into account you should not have published such frankly disgusting views on albatross preservation. Yours furiously Dr. Albert Fulmar

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Mythic Places

III: The Holy Lands

Daniel Sawyer

y feet read your cobbled streets like Braille, and like a pious knight searching for the Grail, or a crusading admiral with Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath in his sail, I wended through the Holy Lands along the prophetsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; trail. I was sent a winged steed from God, and this Burak was not so roughly shod as to let her feet touch any but air. So from this vantage point I stare upon the Levant, the sea, the Hijaz, not searching for truth so much as to see these places, this Holy Land, that I might their holiness understand. I see first a hill in Judaea rising, from olive groves on the desert floor upward driving. On the higher slopes its grades steepen the nearer one climbs to the empyrean. A temple has lain on this mountain peak since time beyond reckon and from its humble atlars have men always to God beckoned. Here at Jerusalem, much had its genesis. Here at Jerusalem, Earth turns on its axis. As they recite prayers against the Wailing Wall or look awed in the shadow of the Dome standing tall, it becomes like everything, and everything like it, overriding all by some holy writ. Then down, down in Mecca is a box where heretics fight orthodox, and hanging over the Kaaba is a shroud like over the sky hangs a cloud. The worshippers surround like a planetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rings, circles circling while the muezzin sings. Here is a place, a holiest holy place, where many roads began. Here is a place where God came down and dictated to man.

FARAWAY

It lies out in the desert, upon the baking sands. But to all who turn to face it between prostrated hands, it becomes like everything, and everything like it, overriding all by some holy writ. Ecce homo, behold now the man, born of a virgin to carry out God's plan. There stands Jesus, divinity incarnate. He holds the key to the Kingdom of Heaven's gate. Sinners flock to him as he the picture limns. He shows the power of love, and how one may mount above. A city round him coalesces, and he them lovingly blesses. And to them he becomes like everything, and everything like him, overriding all by some holy hymn. I gazed down on these places from my enchanted flight and I realized that those praying there are in some way right. These places are holy, but no holier than the rest. For all places are holy, when man holds them holy in his breast. The and and and

farmer the one the one he who

who drips sweat onto land that yields, who cries into his fallow fields, who slakes his thirst in a mountain stream, gazes down and sees his dream,

all enholy their respective lands. For the holiness is not in praying hands, it is not in boxes, hills, or a single being, nor in temples, mosques, or a papal ring. The holy places are like nothing else, and yet like everything are. For every place where man has looked and found his special star becomes like everything, and everything like it, overriding all by some earthly writ. I took the reins and descended down and my steed alit and where her hooves touched the ground they made a print in it. And this place became a holy one to me inside my heart. It marked where one journey ended and another one will start. I turned intrepidly to the darkening horizon in the east, to a land of elephants and tigers and other unknown beasts, where Genghis and his Mongol hordes held their bloody feasts, where Alexander, Buddha and Darius lie in the ground, deceased.

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MAXIMON

FARAH SOSA 20

FARAWAY

SAN PEDRO PRIVATE DOCK

FARAH SOSA www.farawayjournal.com

MICHAEL WOODCOCK 22

FARAWAY

“from every window in Paris” 2004-2007, graphite and lithograph on Arches 140 lb. w/c paper trimmed to 20 3/4” x 20 3/4”. edition of 15.

MICHAEL WOODCOCK

“straightened tower” 2005-2007, graphite, ink and lithograph on Arches 140 lb. w/c paper trimmed to 20 3/4” x 20 3/4”. edition of 19.

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MICHAEL WOODCOCK 24

FARAWAY

“I never ran like the win” 2003-2007, graphite and lithograph on Arches 140 lb. w/c paper trimmed to 20 3/4” x 20 3/4”. edition of 13.

MICHAEL WOODCOCK

“Symmetrical George” 2006-2007, graphite and 2 color lithograph on Arches 140 lb. w/c paper trimmed to 20 3/4” x 20 3/4”. edition of 16.

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INTER frigid witness to our woes when nary a bud through snowpack shows and a blustering wind howls and blows when this winter will end, only Winter himself knows

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WORTH A DAMN Alfred Scolari

here’s nothing worth selling Inside my head. But I lie and tell everyone That there’s a masterpiece Waiting to crawl out. There’s nothing worth selling Inside my head. So I’ll drink, And hope Something worth selling happens. A lost cause Is a lost cause No matter who finds it. That little creeping masterpiece I say is crawling around Inside my head Trying to get out Is drunk, high, and stupid; Bumping into walls, Knocking over end tables, Putting out windows

And picking fights. The only thing worth selling Inside my head Comes in a big glass bottle I bought from someone Who had something Worth selling. But that ain’t mine to sell now, Is it? People say “A lie can only last so long.” Well mine’s still sleeping in alleyways Cradling brown paper bags, Pissing in public, And blurting obscenities In front of women and children. No End In sight There’s nothing worth selling Inside my head

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CRAFT

THE RANT REVISED

ALFRED SCOLARI I want the walls to melt And mean nothing but puddles Opiatic visions of vibrant light Dancing the cha cha Shaking maracas. Depth is a punch bowl Filled with Jesus juice. The guests demand champagne While the host is sucking down absinthe. Why make water into wine If the scotch is on the rocks? Parlor tricks Parlor tricks Pages lined with perfect sense Take suicide plunges t o e Off diving boards I n m p t y p o o l s The last trick of the magician Is to expose his craft.

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The Hawker

(a rebirth)

Johnny Alderete Flight 424, Skagway to Juneau will now begin boarding” I find my seat, flip through the Skymall, and order myself a drink This job’s gunna kill me, all the traveling, rental cars and hotel rooms, Doors slammed in my face, “you hawker” they disgrace; I’m just tryin’ to sell vacuums I let out a hard sigh as we start to descend, another city more rehearsed lines “No clogging filters”, “lightweight construction”, “patented wind-tunnel design” No one wants to hear it, this door to door failure, the many ways they tell me to fuck off “Thank you but no thanks”, “you caught us at dinner”, “get lost”, “take a hike”, “fuck off” But back in my seat I think, “How can they know me When I don’t even know myself, who am I really? I just wish I had a use, a skill, something redeeming” And just then the plane touched down, all shaky and squealing Flight 815, here we go again, from Juneau to Edmonton I’m drinking Long Islands, but by the fifth one, they come tell me that I’m done So I joined the mile high club with some girl from Austin who bites her knuckles when she cums I return to my seat, still distant, still alone and pray for some ending to come And in that prayer I stopped to think, “How can he know me When I don’t even know myself, who am I really? I just wish I had a use, a skill, something redeeming?” And just then the engines failed, the plane started falling I awoke in a snow bank bathed by white and flame My senses filled with the scene of the carnage and pain My ringing ears, the shrillest screams, the smell of flesh burning Bodies lifeless in the snow, the dieing engine’s singing Could this be my answered prayer, freed from my despair Born of wilderness and ice, the Arctic’s chill on the air My path’s been laid at my feet, into the wild I will go In search of me, in search of life, filled with wonder and hope www.myspace.com/lionheartrock

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Russian Winter, Russian Spring

Daniel sawyer

old. Winter was cold that year. The frost was thick, the snowdrifts high. All was quiet in the forest. All was quiet in the icicle-decked cottages that hid amidst the trees. The pillars that seemed to support the sky, the immortal pines, held in their branches tons of snow, like hands upturned and questioning, holding something useless. Give us heat, Lord, they said, give us warmth, give us Spring to take away the cold. Dmitri sat on the fur rug in his family’s humble abode, feeling at peace in the worn spot that his grandfather had worked into the fur, and his father after that, as they sat and contemplated there for countless years in the blistering cold of Winter. His mother sat at the table silently, holding her head in her wrinkled hands. A small fire burned in the hearth, its size belying the heat that smoldered in the coals. They were peasants, the poorest of the poor. They were simple. They understood not politics or history or war, not on the grand scale. They knew the politics of the village, the history of the family, the never-ending war against the world that threatened constantly to cut off food, to overwhelm with snow. They didn’t know why great gun-bearing machines had rolled through the forest for years and years, belching black smoke and bleeding grease, nor why in 1945 they suddenly didn’t come anymore. It didn’t make sense to them that Dmitri’s father must take up a gun, to kill, to defend, to eventually be killed. The Motherland was nothing to them. The Motherland was the small piece of dirt that gave them only enough food to survive, the dirt from which their brothers and friends sprang forth. But enemies were meaningless to them; national borders, alliances, trade restrictions and total war were meaningless to them. They knew only that something had happened, something that smelled, something that was loud, something that hurt. And that it was now over and Winter, with his icy fingers and deadly frosty breath, had come home to roost and reclaimed all the ground over which the combatants had fought. Winter was the ruler here, not Stalin. It was Winter that

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New York City Graffiti

dictated who would do what and when. Winter owned this land. Dmitri picked up the small wooden bucket banded with iron, an artifact that his ancestors had built, and left the house. He followed the path that, though covered in snow, was imprinted in his mind like his mother’s face. This path was worked into the ground by his people centuries ago. It led from the cottage into the trees and down into a small clearing where it was intersected by a narrow stream that ran deep. He carried in his coat a wicked little knife that was actually only a sharpened steel rod with which he could break the surface ice and get at the freezing water below. They would boil the water later and drink it hot, and it would melt away the cold inside them. The snow crunched underfoot and echoed in the silence of the forest. Dmitri walked slowly; he was like a deer, or like a tree. He was part of the forest. He knew how to move through it, how to take his time, how to enjoy this brief respite from the dreariness of his home. Everything was white out, and pure, save the black trunks of the trees and their gnarled branches rising into the air. It was a dramatic contrast to the scenes they had grown accustomed to: roaring tank engines and flames and blood and screaming soldiers churning the frozen ground into mud. Snow in the tree branches melted and dropped to the ground, creating a constant trickle that pleased the ear. Occasionally Dmitri came to a standstill and closed his eyes and breathed in deep: fresh. The sun overhead shined brightly, but its beams came down cold, like a cauldron of boiling water spilled in the dead of a Winter night—it freezes before it touches the ground. Everything was crisp and the air felt like glass, like it might crack any moment. To his surprise the stream in the clearing gurgled. It was not frozen over. Maybe it was warmer outside than it felt. He dipped the bucket in and took a sip from the wooden lip. Its iciness was invigorating. He filled the bucket and turned back toward home, but as he did a dark spot in the snow startled him—in his surprise he moved to put his hand over his heart, only to slosh cold water down his front. He squinted and leaned toward the object. Twenty feet ahead, in the clearing, off of the path, a hand reached out of the snow, but it was still, all was still. Dmitri crunched over toward it slowly, casting cautious glances from side to side. The fingers were outspread, it was grasping toward the sky. The sleeve was gray. There was a crack in the forest nearby, a harmless branch breaking under its burden of snow, but concentrating as he was on the hand, the sound sent Dmitri panicking into full flight. He ran back along the path, his feet guiding him thoughtlessly along the route he knew so well. When he arrived at home he was out of breath and had spilled most of the water. His mother looked up at him angrily. He said it was an accident. He spent the rest of the day gathering firewood and helping his mother cook. He didn’t have time to spare thinking about the hand, but all day he felt a faint unease. The next morning his mother sent him back to the stream. He set out with a vague apprehension, early memories of scary folktales swimming through his head. He hoped somehow that the arm would be gone, but when he arrived in the clearing, it was there, almost waving at

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him. He walked around it carefully, examining it from every angle, edging closer. Finally he gathered his courage and stepped in, batting at it—but it was cold and stiff. And dead. As he stood looking at the reaching arm, he realized that under his feet at that very moment was a dead man. The thought gave him the chills and he stepped aside respectfully and superstitiously, imagining a soldier-ghost lurking nearby. He reached out and touched the hand again, more carefully this time. The fingers were hard like rock. There was a wedding ring. Dmitri placed his palm against the dead one, measured his small hand against this soldier’s. He closed his hand around the man’s thumb and a strange smile spread across his face. He remembered that he was still holding the bucket, so he ran and filled it up and brought it home, so his mother wouldn’t worry about him. The next morning Dmitri went to fetch more water without his mother’s prodding. When he got to the clearing, he sat in the snow next to the arm. He touched the fabric of the sleeve, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, and realized how thin it was. This man died cold, he thought sadly. This man died shivering and wet. The sleeve wasn’t frozen anymore, it was just damp from the melting ice. The thaw was starting to come on. In a month maybe the snow would be melted. The green would come back. Winter would leave for a few months and the poor peasants would think quaintly, Maybe he won’t come back this time. Dmitri was surprised to hear himself say, “I’m sorry that you died here.” The silence that followed seemed the greater, and the memory of the feeling of the words on his lips repeated itself, the way your legs may still feel like they’re running if you’ve ran for a long time. He looked around, but of course no one was near, no one but the trees could hear him. He took a deep breath and then continued, words coming from him in a flood, “I’m sure you came from a better place than this, some place far away that wasn’t so cold and wet. There is some place that you would rather have died, I know. Not here in the forest. But this is my home and I like it. Maybe if you had lived here you would like it, too. You know, you can’t just come to the forest and expect to like it, especially if you come from hot weather. You have to be born here, and then you know how good it can be.” The bucket was empty beside him. He decided to get water and go home, but found himself saying inexplicably, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” He held the hand tenderly for a moment, then returned home. He went back the next day and every day throughout the thaw. Each day a little more of the sleeve would be revealed by the melting snow, until almost the whole arm stuck out. And just beneath the frost the man’s dark form could be made out, like the rippled and distorted image of a fish underwater. Dmitri always sat beside the man, sometimes holding his hand, and found himself talking. “I miss my father,” he said one day. “My father died far from here, fighting against the tanks. But why? What for?” Another time he explained to the man, “It is very lonely in the forest. It’s so quiet out here, you might think you are the only person in the world. You know, we don’t see other people for months at a time. All through Winter we might not see another person. Sometimes a hunter will stop by and let us cook some meat. But other than that, nobody. We eat vegetables that we saved up during the Fall. Potatoes mainly. For us it’s almost a delicacy to drink hot water. Did you know there are people that eat snails? They call that a delicacy. That’s disgusting! I would rather starve than eat a slimy snail.” One day he went back and saw that the left side of the soldier’s chest was revealed. After some trepidation, he opened the coat pocket, feeling the thin and hollow chest beneath,

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thinking again how cold the man must have been when he died, and reached in. There was a soggy bundle of papers. Dmitri slowly pulled it out, and peeled the pages apart. They were letters that the soldier had written. There was a whole series of them, going from December, 1943 to June, 1944. Dmitri said sadly, “So you never had a chance to send these, my friend. Where were these going? To your mother? To your brother? To somebody you loved? Do they know where you are now?” He discovered then that they were written in German, a decipherment made not because he could read either German or Russian, but because the forms of the letters themselves looked so different. “So, you are one of the ‘enemy.’ Don’t worry: I won’t tell,” he said, imagining that he was keeping a deep secret. “I don’t care about that sort of thing anymore. Man has too many enemies already without having to look to other men.” And he patted the man’s shoulder. The salutation at the top of each letter read, “Liebchen,” but Dmitri could not read any German. His eyes fell to the signature at the bottom of the page: Grüße, Gerhard. He tucked the letter back into the pocket and went home. That night Dmitri laid awake thinking about his friend. It didn’t matter to him that Gerhard was German, or that he died invading Mother Russia. His own father, after all, died invading Gerhard’s Motherland. They were friends now. Dmitri didn’t want that friendship to end, but Spring was approaching, and soon it would become all too clear that this relationship was between him and a corpse. He decided that he didn’t want to go back anymore. He didn’t want to see Gerhard’s face, contorted in pain, to see where he had been wounded. No person wants to see the shattered remains of their friends. He wanted to remember only the strong arm, the hand reaching to the sky. He couldn’t stand to see the expression Gerhard wore to his grave, nor could he bear the thought of his friend decomposing there by the stream. He resolved that the relationship was over, though the friendship would live on. Gerhard would understand; anyone would. So the next day he abandoned the path that his grandparents had forged and went farther upstream, farther from home, and got water from there from then on. Over the next few days, the frost melted very quickly. It got hot in a hurry and soon there were swarms of flies. Dmitri’s mother remarked that it hadn’t been that hot in years. The earth seemed to empathize with the humans fighting their war and it had brought down snow and ice in a futile effort to break it up. Now the war was over, finished not by snow but by a bullet to the brain and a cyanide capsule, and the sun came out again and all the snow melted away. A few weeks after he had read Gerhard’s letters, there was no ice on the ground, just muddy slush seeping into the ground or trickling down into the nearest stream, and Dmitri imagined that his friend must be lying there very lonely. Sympathy for his friend, reposing in the forest far from home, won him over, and the next day he went along the old path and came out into the clearing. Only when he looked out over the muddy field, he saw not only Gerhard, not one lonely friend amongst the evergreens, but ten thousand German bodies, laying on their sides and backs and stomachs, bent over burnedout artillery pieces, clutching broken rifles or the rotted guts that spewed from their bellies, strewn over the ground in a trail that stretched for miles into the west, in the melting runoff of the dawning Spring. And the scrawny wolves came out from their dens where they had starved through the Winter and glutted themselves on the rotting corpses of an entire generation thrown to waste.

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PRING In Spring all is new the baby livestock mew as seedlings push through the dew Life beginning again, rebirth overdue

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I AM Silvia Noyola

am from the smallest country in the New World With big smile, courage and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;calorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; I am from the land of sun, beach, and love With spirit of freedom and 'valor' That transcends poverty and war I am from El Salvador. I am from the land of the Mayans From whom I inherited the philosopher genes I am from the moon, the stars, the earth, the sea, and the sky They saw me play, think, laugh, and cry Since I also have the blood of the conquistador I am not sure if I was made out of dust or out of corn But I know I was made of out love. I am bilingual, I am bicultural I speak the language of Cervantes, Neruda, and Mistral I learned the language of Shakespeare, Emerson, and Thoreau But I wish I could understand all the languages in the world I am from the east, the west, the north, and the south I am from there, here, yesterday, and now I am brown, black, yellow, red, and white I am them, I am you, and I am me I am from heaven; I am from the world

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c The Stud afbdh

Josh Mitchell

zmnoppot

ver since he was thirteen years old and saw his first porno movie, Corey Feltmen knew he wanted to be just like his all time favorite hero and porn star legend, Jimmy Long Shlong. Jimmy had a metal stud running through the shaft of his penis that drove the women wild. And now that Corey just turned sixteen he knew exactly what he wanted to get. He’d saved all his birthday money and it was now time to buy himself a present. Then and only then would he be able to drive all the girls at school crazy with sexual desire for his metal stud of love. Corey’s best friend Jeff thought otherwise.

“What the hell is wrong with you? The women like the tongue pierced. It’s better for oral sex, everyone knows that. Besides, I heard that if they hit a wrong vein in your dick then you can become paralyzed for life.” “That’s bullshit. Sure the tongue piercing is good for oral but once you start fucking then it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why you need the staff in the shaft. Chicks dig that way more. Trust me, I’ve done the research.” Corey had logged over twelve thousand hours downloading different porno films from the internet, most of them featuring his idol Jimmy Long Shlong. “I know without a doubt that the fact that Jimmy is able to have sex with more women per video than any other actor is because his dick is pierced.” “Well I’m pretty sure you can still go paralyzed from it if they hit a vein or something while they pierce you.” “Yeah well, Jimmy Long Shlong wasn’t afraid of becoming paralyzed and neither am I.” “Alright, numb nuts. How do you plan on getting it done anyway? I don’t think your parents will let you do it.” Jeff was starting to piss Corey off with all his stupid talk of paralyzation and parents. Why couldn’t he just accept the fact that Corey was right and that having this done will get him laid thousands of times, and it will probably make him famous one day. This, he was sure of. “Well, now that you mention it I was wondering if Chris was working today?” Chris was Jeff’s sister’s boyfriend. He was 28 and worked at a tattoo/body-piercing place down in Huntington Beach. He had moved in with Jeff’s family two months ago when his apartment burnt down. “No way, Corey. There’s no way Chris will do it. “Don’t be an asshole. Just take me down to his shop and let me ask him. That’s all I’m asking.” “Fine. If you’re so fucking determined then let’s go. But you’re giving me money for gas. My mom will be pissed if I give the car back and I used a quarter tank of gas.” “Sounds good to me. Let me just write my parents a note and we can go.”

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So Corey wrote a note that said that he went to go see a movie with a friend and that he’d be back no later than 9:00 pm. The two drove all the way out to Huntington Beach and were about to exit the freeway when Jeff received a frantic telephone call from his sister. She told him that Chris had just been arrested for suspected arson. Jeff needed to bring the car back immediately. Jeff broke the news to Corey who had been trying to listen to the conversation from the passenger seat. “Looks like you’re going to have to go to plan B. Chris just got arrested so he’s out.” “There is no plan B. What the hell am I going to do now?” “You didn’t really think this out too much, did you? What about Marvin? Doesn’t he make fake IDs for kids at school? If you get him to make you one saying you’re eighteen then you can just go get it done at any shop.” “He got caught last week. A couple of freshmen were caught using some of Marvin’s fake IDs at some strip joint. They immediately told the cops he sold them to them. I haven’t seen him around school since.” “Oh yeah, I forgot.” Corey felt utterly defeated. His hopes and dreams for a metal stud of love were vanishing right before his very eyes. Before he knew it, his rock hard, throbbing desire was shrinking away to nothing, as if it had been doused with ice-water. The drive home was long and silent and when Jeff finally dropped Corey off at his house he didn’t even bother asking for the gas money. He had sensed his friend’s low spirits and attempted to make him feel better before they said their final farewells. “It’s not like you’ll never get you dick pierced. You’ll be eighteen in just two more years and you’ll be able to pierce whatever the hell you want then.” Corey’s face became more sullen as he faked a smile and thanked Jeff for the car ride. Heading towards his front door he heard the car pull away and drive down the street. Jeff’s final words were of no comfort to Corey. They only daunted him further as he was painfully aware of the fact that he would have to wait two more long years before attaining his dream. That night Corey went to bed early but before laying down to sleep he tried to raise his spirits by viewing some clips from of his favorite Jimmy Long Shlong movies, such as “Star Whores”, “I Know Who You Did Last Summer”, and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” but none of these made him feel any better emotionally. He finally resigned himself to bed and closed his eyes on yet another disappointing day. During the night Corey had a dream that he would later tell Jeff was a sign from God. In his dream Corey was at school, sitting in the auditorium with the rest of his fellow students, watching and listening to a speaker at the podium. He didn’t recognize the woman speaker but for some reason he knew that she was the school’s principal. “We have a very special guest for you today. Someone whom we can all look up to as a role model.” Corey had no idea who this mystery person was and as the room darkened a spotlight fell on the stage and he found himself shifting his head from side to side in an attempt to get a better view. A dark figure came from behind the thick red curtains and walked slowly towards the center of the stage, and as it stepped into the light a blinding flash exploded across the room and everyone had to avert their eyes from the dazzling sparkle. As his eyes returned to the stage Corey saw to his absolute bliss that there stood Jimmy Long Shlong with arms akimbo and completely naked. The metal stud in his fully erect penis reflected the light from above and sent it dancing brilliantly across the room. The audience was entranced with this afternoon’s guest speaker and none more than Corey. As Jimmy took the podium he started his speech by saying that all his success was attributed to his pierced penis. “I was once like you,” Jimmy told the audience. “Just another ordinary guy with an

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ordinary penis. A nobody. A loser. But look at me now.” He stepped out from behind the podium and again the metal stud flashed out and sent bright rays of light in all directions. The crowd went crazy with cheers and applause. When Jimmy had finished his speech he proceeded to give everyone a demonstration of the incredible happiness he was able to achieve because of his enhanced appendage. He asked for female volunteers from the crowd and to Corey’s surprise every girl in the audience raised their hand. They were each brought to the side of the stage and formed into a line, which wrapped around the room, through the aisles, and out the front doors. Next they were brought on stage one, two, three, even twelve at a time and Jimmy had sex with every single one of them. After the first few girls Jimmy looked down into the audience and encouraged all the guys to be just like him and beckoned them up to join him. All they had to do was pierce their penis, which each of them were now more than eager to do. One by one they walked over to a little booth in the side corner of the auditorium that Corey had not noticed before. There, each guy was getting his penis pierced by a young man with short black hair, and whose left arm had several large tattooed letters that ran all the way from the shoulder to the wrist. Corey couldn’t make out what the letters said from his seat but looking again at the face of the young man, he saw something very familiar in his dark eyes that he instantly recognized, and at once he knew who he was and what the letters on his arm said. The young man’s name was Kyle Hernandez and his tattoo on his left arm said “KYLE HERNANDEZ WILL FUCKING KILL YOU.” As Corey sat there in disbelief he watched as Kyle pierced one guy and then another and another, and each one of these newly pierced classmates would join Jimmy Long Shlong on stage and take part in the school-wide orgy. All except Corey. For some cruel reason Corey was stuck to his chair. His whole bottom half seemed to be made of lead and as he twisted and turned in his seat he could not for the life of him get his legs to move. He sat there helplessly and looked again over at Kyle’s booth and saw that he had just finished his last piercing and was beginning to pack up his things. Corey yelled in futile desperation at Kyle to not go. He yelled over and over, “What about me? What about me? My penis isn’t pierced yet!” But Kyle didn’t hear him, or perhaps couldn’t hear him over the moans and groans that came from every corner of the auditorium. Cries of ecstasy bounced off the walls and echoed through the large room and amidst it all Corey sat there helpless, crying softly to himself while the world around him continued to erupt in a savage passion that knew no ending. Corey awoke the next morning relieved to find that he had been dreaming. He knew exactly what to do thanks to the sign he saw in his dream. He grabbed his phone and called Jeff and asked him to get his mom’s car again and to be at his house in an hour. He wanted to buy him breakfast for helping him out yesterday with the car ride, and to give him the money he promised he would for gas. What Corey didn’t tell Jeff was that after breakfast they were going to pay a visit to Kyle Hernandez. He thought that if he had mentioned it over the phone then Jeff would never agree to come. Kyle Hernandez was three years older than Corey and Jeff and had gone to the same high school as them until he was expelled and arrested his junior year. The expulsion was not the least bit shocking to anyone, except in the fact that Kyle had lasted this long without being expelled before. He had been the suspect in several different disturbances throughout his high school career such as the fire that burned down the gym and part of a small adjoining building during his sophomore year. Several students had witnessed Kyle smuggle a small gas can through the side gate of the school and start walking in the direction of the gym. Others had heard Kyle on more than one occasion in one of his famous angry rants, talk about wanting to “burn that mother fucker alive” when referring to Mr. Perkins, who was the football coach at the time and whose office was a small building connected to the gym.

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There were other things besides the fire, although none as destructive, that Kyle Hernandez was believed to be responsible for. But for some unknown reason no one was willing to come forward and testify against Kyle and so no charges could be made and nothing could be done about him at the time. All the authorities could do was watch and wait, and hope that Kyle would slip up and give them a reason to expel him. The next school year they got what they wanted. His junior year Kyle was assigned to be a teacher’s assistant for the history teacher, Mr. Sawyer. At first Mr. Sawyer protested and refused to have Kyle as his assistant but once he realized that his protests were useless he resigned himself to the situation and tried to make the best of it. Things seemed to be going along rather well until one day the police came to the classroom and arrested Mr. Sawyer. It turns out that on several of the graded homework assignments that Mr. Sawyer returned to his students there were very threatening letters. Very graphic and grotesque and in some instances there were little illustrations demonstrating the acts that were described in the context. When these students went home and showed their parents what their teacher had wrote on the back of their homework the school and local police were soon bombarded with calls from upset men and women who all demanded that something be done about this immediately. So the next day the police were dispatched and brought the high school history teacher in for questioning. Luckily for Mr. Sawyer the charges were dropped. When he was confronted with the evidence and shown the cruel pictures that were drawn on the back of the homework pages the poor little man denied every word and every picture. He insisted that he was innocent and what’s more he knew who the guilty party was. After comparing samples of cartoons and other writings that Kyle had done there was little doubt that he had written those letters. Kyle was expelled the next day. While Jeff and Corey were finishing their breakfasts Corey told Jeff about his dream. “It was a sign from God,” he said as he finished his story. “I don’t know. Sounds like you’ve been watching too many porno movies. And I don’t like this business about Kyle Hernandez.” “I’m telling you, the dream was very specific. It was definitely Kyle who was piercing everyone. That’s what God is trying to tell me. That I need to go see Kyle and he’ll do it for me.” “I don’t think that your dream is trying to tell you anything. I think you’re just crazy. You must be if you’re expecting me to take you to his house because I won’t, so just forget about it.” “Come on, Jeff. I wouldn’t ask you unless I had no other options. Look, you don’t have to get out of the car or anything. Just drive me there. He’ll probably say no anyway. I just feel that I need to go find out. What’s the worst that can happen? If he says no then I walk away and come back to the car. If he says yes then I go inside and come out a little later. Either way, all you have to do is just sit there. That’s all I ask.” Jeff reluctantly agreed and once again the two set off on what Corey hoped to be the final leg in his journey towards being a sexual god. They got in the car and drove. They came to a stop outside of an old run-down house that at one time must have been the envy of the block. There was a walkway that led from the street to a set of stone stairs that went up about ten steps and opened up on a large porch. The yard that had at one time been lush and green in a sales advertisement was now brown and dead. Dust upon weeds upon dirt. All dead. Corey climbed the rotted stairs that led to the porch, which wound all the way around the house. He opened the torn screen-door and knocked on the thick wooden one, then waited for a response. The house was quiet and seemed to be empty. Corey knocked again and this time he heard a male’s voice coming from the other side. “Wait a goddamn minute, will ya. I’m coming so just hold on.” Corey waited for several moments. He had the distinct feeling of being watched and examined through the tiny peep

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hole. Suddenly, there was the sound of several latches and locks being undone and then the front door swung open. The dark-haired individual who Corey recognized as Kyle stepped out and at first seemed not to notice him standing there. Instead, Kyle’s head turned left and then right, looking down the street in both directions. Seeming satisfied with his paranoid delusion, Kyle’s eyes scanned Corey and asked, “Who the hell are you?” “Corey Feltmen.” “Do I know you?” “You were friends with my older brother Ricky.” “Ricky-Tiki-Tavi?” “Yeah.” “No shit. How is he?” “Dead. He died a few years ago.” “No shit? How’d he die?” “Resisting arrest. The cops shot him to death.” “Fuck,” Kyle said, and then after a moment of silence he followed it up with what seemed to him to be a logical question, “Did he take any with him?” “What? Take any who? Cops?” Corey asked, a little confused by the question. “Yeah. Did he take any of those fucking pigs down with him?” “I don’t think so.” “That’s a shame. You’ve gotta take at least a couple of ’em down with you. I know I sure as hell ain’t goin’ out like that. No fucking way,” Kyle said, and he shook his head as he continued, “I’m taking as many of those fuckers down with me as I can when I go.” Corey didn’t know exactly how to respond to this and as he stood there trying to think of something to say, Kyle broke out of his cop-killing fantasy and asked, “What the hell do you want?” “Well, I have kind of an unusual question. I remember being a kid and you and my brother would tattoo and pierce each other.” “Yeah, so? Your brother’s the one who gave me this,” Kyle said as he showed Corey his left arm. Just as in his dream the tattoo was the same “KYLE HERNANDEZ WILL FUCKING KILL YOU” that ran all the way down his arm. Right below the last letter Corey noticed six chicken scratches scared in the wrist. These were supposed to represent Kyle’s victims, but he had never killed anyone before in his life. “Well, you see,” Corey continued, “I was hoping you’d do a piercing for me?” “Yeah, sure. I guess so. It’ll cost you though. What do you want pierced?” “That’s the thing. I want my dick pierced.” “One hundred and thirty dollars,” Kyle said without even thinking, as if he had some price already set for such a procedure. “Okay, no problem. I have the money right here.” Kyle reached and snatched it out of Corey‘s hand. After he counted it, twice, he added another condition to the deal. “Is that your car?” Pointing to the Buick that Jeff sat patiently in. “It’s not mine but that’s my ride. Why?” Corey responded, not liking where this was going. From Jeff’s seat in the car he couldn’t see up to the porch where Corey and Kyle were talking. Had he parked across the street then he would have been able to look up and watch everything that happened. He would have noticed Kyle disappear into the house and return moments later with a jacket, and start walking down the steps with Corey towards the car. But before Jeff knew what was going on he heard the car doors open and saw Corey step in the front passenger seat and to his absolute horror Kyle Hernandez stepping into the back seat and strapping the seatbelt across his lap.

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“Hey, Jeff,” Corey said. “You remember Kyle, right?” Jeff didn’t respond. He had been secretly terrified of Kyle Hernandez for years, since Kyle had threatened his life when Jeff was just twelve years old. Kyle on the other hand had threatened the lives of hundreds of kids while growing up and had no idea that one of those kids was Jeff. Corey noticed his friend’s discomfort at the situation so he just kept on talking. “Kyle said he’d pierce me after we took him on a little errand. Right, Kyle?” “Yeah, sure. But not ’till we get back.” “So where are we going?” Corey asked. “The apartments on Mills and San Jose.” Jeff didn’t say a word, he just drove. He was too angry and afraid to say much of anything. Instead, he turned the radio up so as to prevent any sort of conversation. After they had traveled about four blocks Kyle suddenly yelled above the music to stop the car. Jeff pulled over to the side of the road and Corey turned the radio down. “What is it?” Corey asked. But Kyle didn’t respond. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop he was out the door. He was now making his way quickly across the street while Corey and Jeff sat and watched. “What the hell is he doing?” Jeff asked. “Is he yelling at that guy?” Across the street from where the boys were parked was a 7-11. Using the payphone in the parking lot was the young man who Kyle was making his way towards. As he was closing the gap he started yelling at the man, continually asking “Where the fuck is my money, bitch?” The youth didn’t notice Kyle approaching or thought that maybe he was talking to someone else, but either way as soon as Kyle reached him he grabbed the telephone from out of his hand and hit him in the face with it, breaking his nose and sending blood down the poor boy’s face. Kyle continued to beat the young man until a police cruiser that just happened to pass by, noticed the assault and took immediate action. Kyle was too blinded by his rage to notice the police car that rounded the corner. Only when he heard the noise of the siren and saw the flash of the lights did he realize the seriousness of his situation. Without hesitation he stopped kicking the motionless body that lay at his feet, and quickly glanced to his right only to see Corey and Jeff speed away. He instantly pulled the gun out from under his coat and started shooting. He fired three shots off as he ran towards the 7-11 doors. Kyle made his stand from inside the convenience store. He sent everyone out of the building and set up his firing position behind a rack of Cheetos. The police called for backup and within ten minutes there were eight squad cars and twelve armed officers outside, all pointing their weapons towards the building. A man on a bullhorn kept asking Kyle to come out with his hands up but the only answer they got from him was gunfire. He was, of course, trying to hit and “take out” as many of them as possible. As soon as the police arrived on the scene Jeff wasted no time in leaving as quickly as possible. He didn’t know what was happening but he knew that it wouldn’t end well and he’d better get as far away as possible. “Where are you going?” Corey exclaimed. “What about Kyle?” “Screw Kyle. The guy’s fucking crazy. If he wants to get arrested then that’s fine but I don’t want anything to do with it.” Before Corey could say anything in response they both heard gun shots coming from behind them. “Holy shit. Do you think they shot him?” Corey asked in disbelief. “I don’t know but I’m not going back to find out.” Neither Jeff nor Corey would find out that Kyle died in that 7-11 that day. Shot to death resisting arrest. Kyle had managed to shoot and kill six people before he himself was taken down, four police officers and two pedestrians. He at least died exactly the way he wanted to, in a hail of gunfire during a police shootout.

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“Well, that’s just great,” Corey said, feeling again that same sense of defeat as he did from the other night. “What the hell am I going to do now?” “Are you still thinking about your dick? What the hell is wrong with you? We just escaped from what sounds like a police standoff and all you can think about is your stupid dick?” Jeff was clearly upset. He had been uneasy since Kyle’s name was mentioned that morning at breakfast. Now that there had been people hurt and some possibly dead he was finished. “I’m taking you home. I’ve had enough of this shit. You can do whatever the hell you want.” “Come on, Jeff. I’m sorry. How was I supposed to know that Kyle would start shooting people? You’ve got to help me out here.” “Forget about it. If you want your dick pierced so bad why don’t you just do it yourself?” With that Jeff once again turned the radio up to discourage Corey from talking and drove him home. This time Jeff didn’t have any words of comfort for Corey as he dropped him off. He didn’t even say good-bye when Corey got out of the car. Corey had sat and thought to himself on the car ride home. At first he didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t know how he was going to get his penis pierced. He was so sure that Kyle was the answer but his dream turned out to be meaningless, just as Jeff had said. Kyle didn’t turn out to be his savior, just some crazy guy who didn’t want to go down without a fight. But something Jeff had said echoed now through Corey’s head as he walked up the stairs of his porch towards his front door. Why couldn’t he do it himself? All he’d have to do was a quick search on the internet and he was sure that he would find something that would help him. After searching for almost two hours Corey came across a website that he thought might help him end his quest. At www.pierceyourparts.com Corey found many different examples of different types of piercings, all including directions and pictures but none of them dealt specifically with the penis. After reading through several other piercing examples such as how to pierce your own ear, nose, and naval, he examined the pictures and decided that everything was more or less the same, the only real difference being the location on the body where the piercing was going. After carefully deciding the steps he was going to take to pierce his own penis Corey quickly went to work. He tried to make things as easy as possible and cut out all the steps that he thought were unnecessary. First he went downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of frozen peas. While he was poking around in the freezer he poured a small amount of his father’s whiskey into a glass and snuck back upstairs to his bedroom where he put into action the next part of his plan. He shoved the frozen peas down his pants and had to grit his teeth to avoid yelling out at the sharp and sudden cold. He quickly began to sip the whiskey. The burning in this throat made its way down to Corey’s stomach and his entire body suddenly became warm and tingly. Every where except his genitals. They seemed frozen and detached. He continued to drink and the fire in his belly continued to grow. All the while his crotch and inner thighs burned cold and throughout the process Corey would reach down his pants to see if he could feel his hand grabbing his penis. After about forty-five minutes of numbing himself, Corey put the second phase of his three-step plan into action. He lit a candle and started to heat a small needle. With his other hand he fumbled a thin metal stud that was to be placed in the hole that the needle made as it skewered his frozen and shrunken manhood. Once he deemed the needle hot enough and his dick frozen numb enough he drew down his boxer shorts and lined up where he wanted the stud to go. It was hard to judge where it would end up being on his penis when it was fully erect since it was now sitting scared, helpless and shriveled before him. The whiskey had not only done its job in dulling Corey’s senses but it also inflated his confidence and gave him courage where more sober people might start to doubt. Once he became absolutely sure of his decision he pushed the hot needle through its destination and the last thing he remembered was a sharp pain and a crunching sound resonat-

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ing through his mind as the needle made its way through his painfully unprotected spongy flesh. Blackness overcame him and when he awoke next his eyes were looking upon the face of an unattractive nurse. At first Corey was horrified. He thought that he was having another dream, this time about his newly-pierced penis and he was in a porno movie. He saw the ugly nurse and hoped it didn’t mean that he was doomed to a future of only doing shitty web porn with nothing but ugly girls who were either missing teeth or were on too many drugs. “Where am I?” he managed to ask, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to better his vision. “San Bernardino County Hospital,” the dry voice of the nurse came back to him. In the corner Corey now saw his mother who was sitting in a chair. She was wiping tears away from her eyes as she stood and approached Corey’s bed. Suddenly realizing this wasn’t a dream foretelling the future Corey asked, “What’s the matter, mom? What’s going on?” But Corey’s mother couldn’t answer. She just started weeping anew and Corey’s eyes once again returned to the unattractive nurse in search of an answer to his question. “You want to know what happened?” she asked seeing the look of confusion in his eyes. “Seems like your little stunt not only gave you a nice shining metal stud in your little prick but you’ve managed to obtain a new wheelchair in the bargain. You’re paralyzed from the waist down.” The nurse’s sensitivity on the matter was at an absolute low. This was her fourth self-attempted penis piercing this week. She was worn out and tired. She was also angered and frustrated at these kids for attempting such a stupid stunt. It was all because of that Jimmy Long Shlong character. Countless teenage boys had been watching his videos and then going out to emulate him. There was actually a class action lawsuit going on in the United Stated to ban the selling and distribution of Jimmy Long Shlong movies due to the high occurrence of young males who have become paralyzed in the attempt to copy their sexual idol. “I’m paralyzed?” Corey asked, still kind of dazed and confused. “I’m afraid so. From the waist down,” the nurse responded. Corey’s mother sobbed loudly in the corner. Corey sat silently in thought for a moment, trying desperately to put the last moments of his memory together until he finally asked the question that burned most brightly in his mind. “But my penis is pierced, isn‘t it?”

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The Cretin Times Interview

Josh Mitchell

The following is an interview conducted on November 7th, 2007, by Joyce Myers for her school newspaper, The Cretin Times. Joyce is a student interested in creative writing at Cretin High School in Upland, California. She sat down with Josh Mitchell, a contributor to Faraway, to discuss publishing and creative writing. Joyce Myers: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. Josh Mitchell: No problem. JM: So let’s start at the beginning. How did the idea of Faraway start? JM: Well, the journal was Daniel [Sawyer]’s idea. There were about four or five of us who all worked together at Borders and had always been starting some sort of club or another or even competing in a couple of cases. Whatever it was that we started, though, it never lasted very long, whether it be the Shakespeare reading club, or the effort to read the longest novel ever wrote [sic]. We had also formed the Writers’ Bloc, which consisted of Jared [Hernandez], Daniel, Mike [Pitassi], and myself. So there was already a small group of us who were always writing and exchanging stories. I think we wanted that feeling that all writers one day hope to achieve, to have their work published and to have it read by others. We are constantly encouraging others to submit their work to Faraway because we want to share that experience with them. JM: I did a little snooping around and I found that you attended Cretin High also, and were expelled. Is this true and if so, why were you expelled? JM: Hold on a second. I thought we were here to discuss the journal? I didn’t agree to

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be harassed and made to explain my past. I thought this was going to be a simple interview with questions about my favorite book or movie, stuff like that. JM: Okay, I’m sorry. You’re right. So what’s your favorite movie? JM: Turner and Hooch. Hands down. I just have this crazy things [sic] for Tom Hanks and dogs together on the same screen. I think the only thing that stopped Cast Away from being the best movie of the past decade was he wasn’t stranded on the island with a dog. Could you imagine how funny that would be? JM: Yeah, sure... that'd be funny. JM: I didn’t think that volleyball was funny at all. JM: Was it supposed to be? JM: Regardless, I hate sports. JM: I did notice that you were a member of the Cretin basketball team from Freshman to Junior year. Did you hate sports then? JM: Let’s be perfectly clear. I got moves. But there was an unfortunate incident when I was pantsed mid-lay-up by a member of the opposing team. I haven’t played since. JM: Do you have a favorite sports player? JM: The closest thing would be Deep Blue. JM: The computer that plays chess? JM: He’s more than that. He’s a source of inspiration. He’s proof that you can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be. You don’t have to be confined in a box. JM: But Deep Blue is a box. And “he” does exactly what he’s programmed to do. [At this point, Mitchell turned his chair around and continued the interview without facing the interviewer.] Let’s move on. I noticed that each new issue of Faraway is shorter than the last. Are you afraid that if the current trends continue and each new issue is shorter than the last that eventually you won’t have anything to print at all, or perhaps will even have to retract material that was already printed? JM: No, not really. We have some things in the works for issues four and five that I think are pretty cool. We’re continuing to experiment and try new things. We don’t want any two issues to be alike. Also, we have found many new and interesting ways to avoid current copyright laws so if we really need to, we can simply rip off somebody else’s work and print that. JM: Shouldn't you not be telling me that? Especially in an interview? JM: You're probably right. Don't print that last statement. JM: As I was saying. I'm not too worried about not having anything to print if current trends continue. We have some very resourceful writers. For instance, did you know that Jared's story, Sing a New Song in issue two was based on actual events in Jared's life? JM: I thought the character tries to commit suicide at the end of that but fails and ends up blowing off several fingers instead? I recently met Jared and his fingers all seemed real to me. JM: Well I wasn’t exactly referring to the suicide attempt part but Jared did blow his fingers off in a different gun accident. Although the ones on his hand look real, they’re actually prosthetics. Very state of the art futuristic stuff. It’s all robotics and sci-fi technology. I think his fingernails might be digitally animated on the tips of his fingers.

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JM: Do you think that not having real fingernails would make it hard for him to scratch himself if he had an itch? JM: I suppose it would. JM: Let’s talk about some of the things that are in Faraway. I’ve had the opportunity to read some of the stories and poems inside and I think the piece you wrote in the first issue is my favorite so far. JM: Thank you. Which one was it? JM: Ape-literation. Some of those rhymes are so cleverly strung together. Whatever inspired you to write such a clever piece? JM: I didn’t write that one. JM: Oh. I’m sorry. For some reason I thought you had. Who did write that? JM: Dimba. JM: Dimba? That’s an interesting name. JM: Yeah, well, he’s an interesting guy. JM: How so? JM: First of all, he does this thing with his mouth, a handful of marbles, and a twelve ounce glass of milk that’s simply amazing. But it has to be non-fat milk for some reason. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know either. But that’s a matter for a whole nother [sic] interview entirely. We’re better off to just sticking to the journal. Since we were talking about inspirations, though, I can tell you that Ape-literation was based on a real-life encounter that Dimba had with two ring-tailed lemurs in a Nevada zoo after falling into the exhibit. JM: I’m not sure I believe that. Are you sure you’re not making any of this up? JM: Of course not! I’m almost insulted that you would suggest such a thing. You’re the one who can’t get the facts straight here, not me. You don’t even know which story I wrote. JM: I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right. Which story did you write? JM: I wrote the story about the guy who robs a McDonald’s. JM: Oh…right. My favorite was still Ape-Literation. But it was a good effort. I guess you’re all in this to learn, right? [Laughs] Well, I’m running out of time here, Josh, so I’ll ask you one more question. Who do you think the most influential writer of the last fifty years has been? Not only influential to the American public but to you as well? So I guess you can pick two different people if you’d like. JM: Wow, that’s a good one. I think that’s the first real question you’ve asked me all afternoon. Well, in my opinionDear Reader, At this point in the interview my tape recorder ran out of tape. By the time I got home and listened to the interview I had forgotten Josh’s response the last question so I was unable to include it at the end of the interview. In hindsight though, I don’t think it really would have mattered what he thought anyway. -Joyce Myers

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LIVING

EDENn

Chris Michno

his summer, the UCLA Hammer Museum showcased 15 Los Angeles Artists in Eden’s Edge. In a brashly conceived counterpoint, East in Eden at Cal Poly Pomona turns the metropole inside out. Eden is here. Patrick Merrill, the Gallery Director and Curator at Cal Poly Pomona, envisioned and organized this exhibit, inviting 29 artists who have lived and worked in the Pomona Valley for a significant portion of their careers to participate. Most of the work was created specifically for this show. Merrill’s ambition for the exhibit is to evince a sense of place through the work of these artists. Landscape crops up in a significant portion of the work, often with concerns of sustainability, suburban sprawl and environmental degradation. Several artists address the role of the railroad in bringing economic development and people to the region. Autos and freeways appear as the railroad’s contemporary counterpart in commerce and the movement of labor. Many of the works discuss the valley with immediacy and intimacy. The railroad figures prominently in the engaging paintings of Tom Skelly, whose work addresses current ideas of composition and craft. As a group, the paintings are alternately disquieting, melancholy and mysterious. The kinetic frenzy of Race at Kellogg Hill spills into the cerulean blue passages of Coming to Town. Skelly paints with an accomplished and confident hand; at the same time, his use of spray paint aligns the work with graffiti. Coming to Town incorporates Skelly’s own photos of graffiti, taken from trains in the Pomona Valley and Los Angeles and transferred to canvas. Graffiti becomes both the subject of his work and his mode of expression, and, in taking photos of graffiti that others have created, Skelly both appropriates their images and authors his own, creating a subtle tension in his work. The question of the urban center and its periphery comes up in the show repeatedly. Skelly’s work bears on this issue, but no one takes it on as extensively as Capparelli and Willey. Rail provides the bookends for Invisible trajectories, a collaborative series of 30 mixed media works on paper by Deena Capparelli and Claude Willey. Whimsical, yet dead serious, this modern parable of oil depletion and post-apocalyptic renewal offers a critique of the model economic growth for the Inland Empire and beyond. Impressive and compelling is the artist statement which approaches the scale of an environmental manifesto. Gary Keith has claimed a stretch of freeway at the 10/57 interchange as the Valley’s gateway. In Cathedral, Keith celebrates civil engineering and commerce, building his image with light brushwork, paint drips and semi-transparent scumbles. In contrast to Keith’s personalized version of the 10/57 interchange, the freeway homogenizes southern California, and his painting of this complex of layered ramps, merge lanes and exits spanning the valley floor east of Kellogg Hill could represent any number of similar superstructures in the region. If you drive to Claremont from Cal Poly on surface streets, you can see nearly half of the business signs Paul Knoll has meticulously executed as ceramic sculpture. Drive a bit further; you can see the rest. Simply fantastic, Knoll’s ceramic signage provides striking specificity, naming places as emblems of the past. Color intensity and miniaturization crystallize these signs into ideas. Paul Knoll’s signs are as iconic as the array of eight paintings and lithographs by Michael Woodcock. This work is invested with craft and intention; however, I often feel I am looking at a private narrative and missing a critical piece of information. The spare compositions, usually a single image, visually centered, and a line of text, have a strong presence; they act as personal shrines, as if Woodcock is preserving some idea or event in his memory. In a bit of strut and humor, Rolo Castillo appropriates the story of Remus and Romulus and the founding of Rome for the Pomona Valley in One Flew over the bitches nest. Feral children, wolves,

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and murder are in our bloodlines, he seems to say. His painting, which is executed on a door, includes the figure of a multi-breasted woman. It is possible that she is Artemis, who famously killed a number of Greek not-quite heroes. Perhaps this is why he prefers to remain unstated, as mentioned in his statement.

Race at Kellogg Hill

Tom Skelly

Cathedral Gary Keith A group of similarly themed paintings by Steve Comba and Jim Fuller, and a solvent transfer from Michael Woodcock amount to paradise lost. Suburban Claremont’s most visible symbols in the fight to preserve wilderness areas in the foothills – Johnson’s Pasture and Potato Hill – are the subject of these works. Fuller’s juxtaposed views of Potato Hill, Claremont Foothills, 1990, and Current Foothills, 2007, show the creeping advance of suburban sprawl. Fuller’s paintings create a sense of gravity in the earth tones and heft of his hills. To the right of Fuller is Woodcock’s Orange Potato Mountain. In the foreground, a swathe of grass gives a hint of wind driven motion, and the predominant orange hue sug-

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gests the glaze of memory. Steve Comba’s trio of paintings depicts Johnson’s Pasture a few miles west of Potato Hill in the Claremont foothills. The idealization of the landscape in Comba’s paintings gives a sense of having been expelled from the garden. This sense is heightened by Grand Prix, named after the 2003 wildfire which charred the hills and claimed numerous homes in Claremont. Tom Herberg’s two drawings, Se Fué and Se Fué (Ghost trees), provide an elegant memento mori. The staccato rhythm of the grease pencil marks on paper and the reversal of figure and ground from one drawing to the next reveal a fleeting paradise.

Se Fué Tom Herberg Eileen Senner steals the show. Her work is sensuous and beautiful, emotionally charged and subtle. She reveals a light touch leaving a sumptuous, velvety surface. The two paintings here, both untitled, feel intensely personal. The earthquake fault lines Senner uses as her point of departure are a metaphor for personal tumult. Her work requires time. There is a slumbering tension beneath the surface; it is the moment of weightlessness when you are perfectly poised before a catastrophe. Liz Fuller’s cotton organdy confections influenced by Bachelard’s Poetics of Space are an invitation to play. The cerulean blue City Scape has a light touch accompanied by a complex geometry. I’m really drawn to the idea of invented space. Liz Fuller’s constructions seem like places where fantasies are played out. This work reminds me of building models out of cardboard and drawing paper as a child and creating narratives in my head about the occupants. The dreamlike quality of Joyce Hesselgrave’s lovely drawings celebrates places that “don’t really exist anymore.” This work plays nicely off the fragility of Karen Sullivan’s porcelain Witness, some of which has cracked like sun baked mud; the photos baked into the surface of the porcelain seem like transitory memories. Gary Geraths’ large scale drawings – they put the viewer right in the middle of the scene – create a tension between stasis and motion. Each drawing ‘captures’ a landscape where certain elements are fixed while other small parts of the drawing seem to move. This effect is enhanced by the combination of drawing materials Gary employs in his work. His statement speaks of a “collision of elements [and] textures:” the landscape is completely alive to him, and the drawings reflect this. The spreading grounds in Claremont, occupying a swath of land in the low foothills beneath Potato Hill and the San Antonio Dam where water is channeled to feed underground aquifers, are the subject of Rebecca Hamm’s large scale watercolors. In her statement, Hamm suggests that her use of paper – a material that degrades over time –imbues her work with an ephemeral quality. There is some uncertainty about whether the spreading grounds will be developed for other use, which lends weight to Hamm’s metaphor. In her statement, Hamm also asserts the work as autobiographical

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metaphor. Yet there is no hint of this in the painting, and it is confusing that she provides no further explanation in her statement. This could lead to speculation, but this kind of symbolism should creep into the work at some level. There are some gracefully painted passages in the work of Chris Toovey. He takes great care with the bone forms in his canvasses; these passages seem to be invested with feeling. However, a number of things detract from his work. The geometric shapes which recede into an illusion of space – perhaps they represent walls, perhaps Astroturf; whatever he means them to be, they amount to visual dead ends. Nor is there any functional reason for cutting the canvas from its stretcher bars to hang like tapestry. The resulting stray canvas threads give the work a slipshod feel. Toovey’s installation of astroturf and sun-bleached deer bones arranged on a Webber kettle grille in the Call of the Wild Reduced to a Hobby, suggests the remains of a suburban barbeque in which a hunter’s kill has been eaten. The larger metaphor is that the careless lifestyle of consumption and unchecked development amounts to the squandering of natural resources for nothing more than our own amusement. This could be a powerful installation. The themes are compelling, but it feels a bit thin. Chick’s comics – doctrinaire tracts which proclaim a jingoistic imperial version of Christianity – appear tacked to the wall in the shape of a cross in John Cullen’s bombastic anti-religious installation, Jesus Saves at the 99 cent Store. It amounts to a straw-man. Cullen’s is not the only installation in this exhibit which fails to satisfy. Keith Crockett’s installation, Urban Cargo, dominated by a delicately balanced pile of scrapped concrete and wood pikes, offers few cues to decoding its content. Without the help of the statement, it is much too ambiguous. Dan Van Clapp’s assemblages of the detritus of the military and aerospace contractors located in the Pomona Valley are anchored in the region’s history. The assemblages have a certain poetry and internal logic. The torpedo shapes refer to sensuous organic forms like seed pods and sleek shark torsos as much as they do to bombs and fuselages. The 1950’s era chairs and other accoutrements create a sense of nostalgia. However as anti-war statements, they are tiresome and repetitive. Each of these artists has fertile ground to explore; what the installations lack is specificity and nuance. What they provide is archeology. Cash for Trash

Dan Van Clapp

East in Eden, curated by Patrick Merrill, was at Cal Poly’s W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery from November 15, 2007 to December 15, 2007. The artists in the show are Deena Capparelli & Claude Willey, Rolo Castillo, Steve Comba, Keith Crockett, John Cullen, Jim & Liz Fuller, Gary Geraths, Rebecca Hamm, Tom Herberg, Joyce Hesselgrave, Kim Kaufman, Gary Keith, Paul Knoll, Gilbert Lujan, Annie Marquis, Penny McElroy, Fr. Bill Moore, Eileen Senner, Tom Skelly, Jeanne Steffan, Karen Sullivan, Juan Thorp, Chris Toovey, Dan Van Clapp, Ahlene Welsh, Michael Woodcock, and Marco Zamora.

Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out http://www.csupomona.edu/~kellogg_gallery in about a month to see images of the artwork in this exhibition. Theatre

Marco Zamora

FARAWAY

ABOUT THE NEW CREATORS Eliza E b r o is young, but feels old often. Tries to live each day meaningfully.

Howard C a t s w e l l is a misunderstood renaissance man in the guise of a misanthropic 17 year old. He doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t claim to understand people, nor does he want to. Enough of painting him as some pretentious bastard masquerading as an enigmatic and engaging human being. He writes whatever rubbish comes into his head. It comes out here, mangled, twisted and shoehorned into words. http://hcatswell.blogspot.com

K a t i e

Heinig

is an animal trainer from Montana. When she is not working with New World monkeys, she enjoys painting, writing, and correcting grammar.

Christopher M i c h n o was a student of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and earned a degree in art and politics from Pitzer College. He lives in Claremont, California and can be contacted at CLAMichno@msn.com

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VA L

Mu r a h Alfred

Scolari Michael

Woodcock

is a 21 year old artsy fart that is currently going to college in Georgia. He likes to write music, stories, poetry, prose, etc. His dreams are to make a worthwhile body of work, or at least write a popular yet uninnovative novel (i.e., J.K. Rowling) so he can buy his parents a house and yet only live in an apartment himself. All the while, he is a typically jaded young adult and apathetic perfectionist. Poetry site: www.poetrypoem.com/valmurah. Music site: www.myspace.com/valmurah.

is absolutely, positively right when he says, ‘There’s nothing worth selling inside my head.’ He is boring, uninspired and mundane at best. The only interesting fact about him is he was raised in the wild by bears, and upon his reentry to society he fought his way up the Mexican Luchador (wrestling) circuit. You can find him on YouTube as El Macho Boracho (The Mighty Drunk). Alfred as he appeared in 2000, shortly before his disappearance.

was born in Connecticut in 1951, and grew up on and near the beaches of Southern California. In 1984 he graduated from Claremont Graduate School with an MFA in Drawing and Painting. Woodcock’s work was most recently seen in the “Los Angeles Printmaking Society 19th National Juried Exhibition” at the Riverside Art Museum and “Locus 1” at the Claremont Museum of Art. He was an Adjunct Professor in Art for nearly twenty years at Claremont Graduate University and is the Emeritus Professor of Art and Creative Studies at Pitzer College. Woodcock has received two California Arts Council grants, and a Carl Hertzog Award. His art is held in the permanent collections of Yale University, University of Texas, El Paso, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, the Miyazaki International College in Japan, the Phoenix Art Museum, the TOSCHI Art Institute in Parma, Italy, and the Getty Museum.

To read about authors and artists featured in previous issues of Faraway, please visit www.FarawayJournal.com/links.html. Please visit www.FarawayJournal.com for more content, updates and to chat with the authors and artists behind Faraway. All writers, artists,

musicians and designers are encouraged to submit their work today for inclusion in the next issue.

FARAWAY

This car is smashed. The whole front end is crump led like a soda can and all the windows are blown out. There are three people inside, but they're not moving, and there's no one in the driver's seat. I look around and I don't know what I'm doing here, a rusted and corroded airplane hangar that's filled with still-s teaming car crashes and the moans of the twisted and torn people inside. I run to the passenger door of the nearest car and try to pull it open, but the door is crushed into the body and won't budge. The man in the seat has a little blood on his face, and while I stand there, he looks at me. "Hold on," I tell him, and run around to the other side. I climb in, take off his seat belt, and I'm dragg ing him out when I see that the bottom half of his leg is danglin g like it's unattached. I lay him out on the oil-stained and dusty cement floor and go back for the others. Later there are more people like me, who just appear and start helping with the survivors. I come around the front of one wreck and see my great aunt writin g a check to someone so they'll give her CPR. I say, "If you can talk, you don't need CPR." I look out the front door of the hangar , across a vast expanse of concrete that's littered with old planes and broken down buses and wrecks of every sort. But in the distance, in a mirage, I can see a few dozen sickly white wraiths approaching the building. I suddenly fill with panic. I remember a bunch of old bicycles lying around the hangar. I start yelling at everyone that we have to leave, and to get on a bike and go. I pull an old bike out from entangling wires and crates and hop on, and the few healthy people have formed a defensive perimeter around the bloody bodies of the crash victims, and the wraiths have resolved into filthy dopplegangers of themselves, dirty, digusting people that all look the same, and they've surrounded the building. I know somehow that they are going to kill us, and I decide to try and escape. I pedal the bike, but in the short distance and in my fear I can't get up much speed, and the bike just brushes the neares t enemy aside. In a second there's violence everywhere I turn, as the dopplegangers pour into the hangar and the other people try to escape. I turn my head to my left and two enormous black bears cross my vision, going right, so I turn my head again to follow them, and between them is a human body being torn to pieces. I pedal around the side of the building, looking for an exit. There are people fighting to all sides of me, and animals gorging on the crash victim s laying defenseless on the floor. I see the arc of a Molotov cockt ail thrown at a derelict bus, and everything goes up in flames.