Death: a magazine for the enthusiast and non-enthusiast alike #4 by DEATHMAG

WILLIAM HUNDLEY...................................................................02 ALEX BLAGG..........................................................................04 EVAN GRUZIS...................................................................06,

........................ ANIMALS

(illustrations:

RENAUD VIGOURT)

................08-31 27

WINSTON CHMIELINSKI........................................................08,

CANDLE

TOPHER SINKINSON.....................................................09

BRIAN KENNY......................................................10, BIRDS OF A FEATHER

13, 17, (36)

/ PEYTON MARSHALL......................................12

THE EXECUTIONER’S PSALM/ JIM CAREY.........................................14 BIRD WATCHING

/ BOWEN

AMES...................................................15

AFTERNOON LAY HEAVY / GAY BRADSHAW.........................................18 KEN TANAKA..........................................................................20 LOSTALGIA

KERI THOMAS........................................................22

FROM THE ANIMAL DESK HE

JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND

PEARL.....................24

SARAH SHAPIRO...............................................................25

GRANT CORNETT.....................................................................28 REVIEWS..........................32-34

.................................. FUNERAL

STEPHEN SCOTT SMITH.............................................................33 VARSITY ADLER.......................................................................34

front cover sculpture and photo: back cover photo: inside front & back cover background photo: ·

Daniel Arsham William Hundley Grant Cornett ·

publisher/editor: Forrest Martin copy editors: Catie Bull, John Wilmot thanks to Nathan Cearley, NORTH, SSS, and Luciano Foglia

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“No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.” - Socrates issue #4, November, 2011 ©

Grant Cornett William Hundley

WILLIAM HUNDLEY

this page: t: dead television b: sleeper

this page: t: anonymous b: hearse

When announcing the death, Blagg suggests: “Send out a tastefullyworded Tweetblast or Foursquare Shout with the bad news. Make sure to establish what will become the definitive Official Twitter Hashtag for the deceased in order to ensure maximum virality during the post-death news cycle.” More at bajillionhits.biz.

Forrest Martin

Check out Alex’s article “HOW TO: Integrate Social Media Into A Funeral, But In A Classy Way” for tips on making the process more agreeable and integrated, and even leveraging sponsorship opportunities.

Hi, Alex. As an expert on online experiences and the digital ether, Death magazine wanted to spend a little time with you to gather your perspective on where we are and where we’re going. There’s been a lot of buzz about the internet lately, and since about 1995 there seems to be a general consensus that it’s the next big thing. Do you think the internet will ever go the way of the telegraph or, more recently, the magazine industry? What are the chances that some unforeseen, better, more connected and user-friendly technology will usurp the internet and kill it forever? Look, I hate to break it to you, but I kill the internet every day. Each morning when I jack into the Net, I suck all the relevant info and content and hits and ad dollars out of it like marrow from a delicious bone that’s worth billions of dollars. But that’s what makes the internet such a beautiful thing: as much as we pick it clean day in and day out, it always regenerates itself with even more content, more things to monetize, click on and scroll through endlessly. It’s like the world’s greatest Giving Tree in that way. But don’t worry; I’m hard at work trying to figure out how to suck it completely dry once and for all. In the meantime, would you say it’s possible to kill a person online in an entirely virtual way? Say, for instance, a cyber-terrorist were to completely erase all traces of somebody on the internet: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, eHarmony, Flickr, Blogger...would that person, then, be more dead than alive, or

is physical, biological life still the accepted gauge for “aliveness?” The internet allows us to live forever via our legacy of Facebook likes, Foursquare check-ins, Tumblr reblogs, etcetera. The only real death I recognize is not being noticed or getting attention; so I suppose in a way, the nightmare scenario you are suggesting (having one’s entire digital footprint erased by cyber-terrorists) is the number one threat to our way of life in this country. Luckily, I keep all my social media profiles and data backed up on highly secured servers buried miles beneath the Earth’s surface in secret fortified nuclear fallout bunkers. That way, no matter what Al Qaeda’s elite unit of hackers tries to pull, I know that I’m going to keep getting my LinkedIn requests for years and years to come, and my carefully-curated Yelp reviews aren’t going anywhere. Granted, not everyone has the means to take those kinds of precautions (I’m rich), but I think it’s in the interest of our national security to at least take a few basic measures in making sure our valuable social media data gets backed up from time to time. Otherwise, how will the Earth’s future generations ever know what we thought about that video where the cat hugs a bulldog. Those reactions are vulnerable to being lost forever if we’re not careful. Along these lines, generally when people talk about losing information due to a permanent server or a hard drive failure, they say the technology “died.” This is a very human or organic attribute. In response, conversely, they tend to feel angry rather than sad and are quick to dispose of these things. Do you see a shift in this perception as digital devices become increasingly embedded in our lifestyles, and is a funeral industry for dead technology and/or websites a viable possibility? You know, that’s not a bad idea. I kind of like the idea of charging people to conduct an entirely virtual memorial service for their beloved gadgetry that has either died or been rendered obsolete by the latest Apple updates. You could provide them with an outlet for their grief about saying goodbye to the best friend they will ever probably have in this life (or at least the one they spent the most time with and paid the most attention to), let them blast out memorial eulogies about their electronics to all their friends and followers via social media (free viral promotion), and relieve them of a hundred bucks or so in the process. Could be a really interesting business model. What is the most remarkable kind of death that you have seen on the internet? Friendster. I don’t even like to think about it because it makes me so sad. R.I.P..

Here are a few questions for you that we crowd-sourced from fans of Death on Facebook: Shawn in Portland, OR:

Do you think growing use of the internet will lead to digital life insurance? That way we can take control of our digital life and our digital accounts after death. There are certain accounts that someone might want deactivated, erased or preserved after they die. Maybe we want a last Facebook status update. I’m of the opinion that our lives are no more than the aggregate collection of photos, status updates, check-ins, shared links and other content we use to create a carefully-curated projection of ourselves on the internet. I mean, that stuff is the real essence of who we actually are as individuals. So in death, it seems most fitting to let our legacy of internet activity live on in perpetuity exactly how we left it, so the world always knows that we were alive, and we “liked” a list of the “20 Funniest Things Kim Kardashian Has Ever Tweeted.” Ariana in Victoria, BC:

What do you think about that idea that technology will end death? I don’t think of human beings as people, but as ones and zeroes, potential metrics that can be converted into business units. So I see technology as a natural extension of this mass-manufactured humanity that simply allows us to monetize ourselves via products and industry, bridging the gap between the natural and artificial ideas of ourselves. So in this scenario, death becomes irrelevant because the symbiosis between humans and technology creates an infinite and self-perpetuating circuit (information flowing back and forth between man and machine, all with sponsored ad integrations) that the smart ones of us can penetrate and exploit for cash. Jessica in New York, NY:

Viral marketing strategy relies on existing communities and/or the creating of communities through common thread appeal. The same goes for crowd sourcing of content. As the internet grows up and individuates, how will marketing survive? Can the internet inspire us to monetize ourselves and our interest in ourselves? Or will this separation from community ultimately kill the internet and the marketplace in general, therefore killing the First World? And how will humanity survive even the adolescence of the internet? As Americans, our societal and economic adolescence is held by a string; that string is war. The internet and war? I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m just going to keep tricking people into clicking on things and trying to make a dollar or two in the process. I don’t really give a shit about whatever else happens.

evan gruzis l: Untitled (Second Version) r: Am I Floating (Void)

7 17

winston chmielinski

/ in memory: carve & crystalline 1

Each issue of Death includes a themed section asking contributors to comment on a particular topic as it relates, of course, to death. Seen here: animals.

Illustrations by Renaud Vigourt

candle Topher Sinkinson

saw her tonight. Only it wasn’t her. Had her death not still been heavy hitting I would have told her to get back in the house. Instead, I just stared from across the street. That’s not her collar. She barked at me. Same bark. Ghosts don’t bark. Bridget said I would see her again. She said she had that ability: to appear at moments “when I least expect it—but need her the most.” This would be one of those moments. I crossed the street. Slowly. It was getting dark. Warm breeze. Chill-bumps. I blinked. She was still there, tail now between her legs as I approached closer. Just like her. This was no ghost. I felt stoned—or fucked up. Both. Gray muzzle. Tuxedo top. Bat-wing ears. Strangely same, but strangely not. Owen’s ghost started eating dirt out of an aluminum pie tin on my neighbor’s lawn. Gross. This was not Owen. Owen was classy. She walked like she was wearing heels with jeans. “Shake” was instead: “Show me your Diamonds.” One dainty paw in the palm of my hand. “Gorgeous.” She’s been gone six months, but watching her (or not her) eat dirt tonight got me thinking. And remembering. Corn chips. She smelled like Frito’s. I’ve spent so much time trying to forget how much it hurt to lose her, it felt good to see her. Smell her. Run with her again. If only for a moment. Right after she died, I asked Bridget to contact Owen. Bridget was an intuit and could see “the other side.” Through pictures. Clips. Movies. She told me that Owen had special powers. That she was a very old soul. I knew this already, but she clarified. Owen and I had been friends for a very long time. Together here. And together on the other side. In fact, my dog of nine years had been with me since the 1600s. She saw images of the two of us—in Spain. We had travelled together. But we’d never been to Spain—or anything that looked like Spain. At least in the past nine years. Since day one I always felt that she was a part of me. People say that about their animals all the time don’t they? I had never really felt it—before her. Well maybe one time. When I was fifteen and wished that I was my cat so I wouldn’t have to go to my afterschool job at the Winn-Dixie. But that was different. With Owen, I felt something more. A deep connection. I first knew this feeling when I watched her being born on my

brian kenny / Delivery Dawgz

a similar buckskin pouch. Magic. He had a vision on his living room floor. In this moment she chose me. (Again). walk over. Owen was flying. A black crow with one white Bridget confirmed it. Owen was more than just my dog. We were connected. She was my spirit guide. My familiar. wing. Nic was roasting bones in the oven. For a soup stock. Dan’s dog Mesa was Owen’s mom. Mesa and Owen “Rich smells.” She loved when he cooked. I lit a candle. lived together with Dan and me for the first four years Nic a smudge stick. Dan a chunk of pine pitch. Oh-Ohof Owen’s life. Inseparable. Mesa moved out with Dan Ochocos. Oh. It smelled like and his boxes after we split up. She died a year Owen & Allie that hot day. It smelled like later. Mesa (also) had superpowers. Most likely Rob Halverson last summer. Camping linked to where Dan found her as a pup. Teenage with her. We laid fresh hitchhiker. Outside the Navajo reservation. cedar boughs on the Blasting in the hills. She was a mirage in the distance. coffee table. Then A tiny black blur on the side of the road. Getting closer. spread out the buckskin He told me he found her when he “least expected it—and that Nic and I found needed her the most.” at the leather store. Bridget asked Owen if she was with her mother. “No. Dan opened Mesa’s pouch. Mesa was now a dog named Allie.” At this point I was on There was a bit of ash that the floor. Allie was a friend’s dog that Owen had met had spilled. He rubbed it twice at the office. Owen was a borderline with his finger and drew a “shy-wild type.” She seldom made a fuss gray stripe in the center of over new friends but loved to party with Owen’s buckskin. Her mom them once they grew close. This took would always be with her now. I time. Both of Allie’s visits to the wrapped Owen’s ashes in the fabric office were instantaneous full-on from her worn-out pillow. (She slept on it Heartbeat City. True love. for years.) It was made of flannel from inside a Long-lost friends. (Lovers sleeping bag. Illustrations of deer. Bucks. Running. It was what I had jokingly thought at the smelled like Fritos. Then I wrapped her with the sweater I time). They were together the entire day. Never leaving made for her. (She shivered a lot as a puppy.) I placed this each other’s side. Just staring at each other—or rather tiny bundle inside the flattened sheet of buckskin hide. In Owen was locked on Allie. I noticed everything about her; the center. On the ash stripe of her mom. I took apart her so on these occasions I noted the change. The connection. shrine. Piece by piece. Slowly laying the haunted bits with What was it that drew Owen to Allie? The truth was more her. Next to her. On top of her. Remembering. Each bit than I could have ever known at the time. Or understood. as special as the next. A rock from Summer Lake. (Scott Until now. After Owen died, I started collecting meaningful bits found it on a hike with her.) A feather. (Nic brought it back from a trip.) Her worn out tag from her wild teen years. from haunts we used to frequent. A sprig from her favorite (Heart-shaped metal. Her name barely there anymore.) A tree in the park up the street. A flower from a manzanita hanky that I used to put around her neck on camping trips. that was blooming. Pink in the yard. I laid them with her (She looked like a tiny black deer otherwise.) We were ashes on a dresser in my bedroom. Over the next two done placing. We wrapped her and her favorite things into weeks, the collection turned into a small shrine. In the center was a portrait of her that my friend Corey painted. I the naked buckskin. Secured shut with buttons made of antler slices. The girls were together again. In bundles. Of had taken it off the wall the night I got back from the vet. The night she died in the back seat of my car on the way to the veterinary hospital. I can still hear that last squeak she made while we raced down the freeway. The squeak that left me with an empty couch. Suddenly one less thing to spoon at night. Sometimes, when I turn off the hot water in the shower, I can hear that sound she made. I still try to get the note just right. Every night I lit a candle next to her portrait—in her shrine. As close to midnight as I could get it lit. The tiny candles usually burned until dawn-ish. Illuminating the dark painting. My room. Until the sun took over. The night (turned morning) before I wrapped her ashes in a pouch made of buckskin, the candle burned the tiniest flicker— strangely for an extra 6 hours. It went out the moment Dan walked through the door with Mesa. Her ashes wrapped in

love. Owen told Bridget that she is still with me wherever I go. I’ve felt this. But it’s not like it used to be. For now. She said I can expect to see her again—as another dog. I asked how I would know it was her. She told Bridget: “Look into my eyes. You will know me, without a shadow of a doubt.” So that’s what I’ve got. And that’s what I’ve done since. The past six months, I’m haunted by other dogs. By music. By the sounds my shower makes. I know it’s too soon. But I can’t wait. Sometimes the lines blur. And it gets confusing because of the (sur)realness. The double feeling. The Sad/Happy. Like with the dog that was eating dirt across the street. For a bit there I wasn’t sure. Her sameness was reassuring. Real. Not real. I looked into her eyes. She wasn’t mine. She was someone else’s. At that moment I heard a sound. Electricity. I looked up. Street light. Flickering on. Dark everywhere else. I looked back. The ghost dog was gone. As suddenly as it had appeared. In that way, she was just like Owen.

birds of a feather Peyton Marshall

For

the past thirty years there’s been something of an ethnic cleansing in the Marshall family yard. Ever since my mother joined the North American Bluebird Society in 1979, she’s had it out for the English House Sparrow, a bird which, when it isn’t snacking on flowers and butterflies, is pecking out the brains of bluebird mothers, dumping their lifeless bodies into the grass, and then throwing their children out to die. “Imagine if you had a neighbor like that,” Mom once asked me, “What would you do?” I came home from grade school one day and discovered the yard bristling with traps. They were all made by the Havahart Corporation, dozens of “no-kill” boxes mounted on steel poles, jutting out of the ground like little gun towers. Mom would bait the traps with birdseed—the same kind of seed that she used in the main feeder.

All the birds that took a chance on the new food source found themselves suddenly imprisoned. If they were good birds, then my mother immediately released them. If they were bad birds? Their fate was a little different. “Think of them like feathered sharks,” my mother said. “They’re little vicious criminals.” Soon, however, there was the question of what do with these—admittedly tiny—feathered sharks. Mom felt that gassing was the most humane option. Once the cages were full of sparrows, she ushered the birds into a trash bag and held its end over the tailpipe of the family Mercedes. But there was one problem: the bag inflated like a balloon. The birds fought and protested, but they didn’t die. “It’s a diesel,” my dad called from the garage doorway. “It’ll just give them black lung.” And he was right. A diesel engine, apparently, didn’t generate enough carbon dioxide to asphyxiate. So my mom gave up on the family car as a means of execution. Instead, she would bring the bird bag with her when she collected me from friends’ houses after a play-date or an overnight. I’d wait with sickened horror for her knock on the door then try to busy myself with packing a bag or looking for some supposedly lost item, listening through the pleasant hellos, waiting to hear the words I dreaded. “Do you think I could borrow your car? I’ll just need it for a minute,” she’d say. “Maybe less.” A particularly devastating occasion was my friend Mandy’s eleventh birthday party. After the festivities, my mom picked me up—cheerful, colorfully-dressed, and bearing the garbage bag of struggling birds in the trunk. I can still visualize with astonishing clarity the little girls tottering out of the backyard, wearing their party hats and smocked dresses. We all stood around my mother as she held the black trash bag over the tailpipe of Mandy’s mother’s Chevrolet. The bag became a giant bubble. “Now, girls,” my mother said, “there are some things that just cannot be tolerated. There are some creatures that cannot redeem themselves no matter what they do.” I could see the shape of wings hitting the plastic skin of the bag, and then they were still. The little girl’s faces went slack and even though my mother explained everything,

brian kenny /

Empire Later Shot

they persisted in asking: “But why? But why?” When I was in eighth grade, my mom decided she would harness these exterminatory powers for the good of the general populace. She promised my science teacher at Little Langley Middle School several dozen birds for dissection. But it was a lean year for sparrows, and of course she was very serious about making her quota. Suddenly, dead birds were everywhere. She would pull over in traffic to scrape them off the roadway or sneak onto a neighbor’s lawn with kitchen tongs and a plastic bag. She added these corpses to the ones from her traps. She stored them all in the freezer, nestled between the frozen corn and the ice cream. And so eventually that spring we dissected them. My biology teacher, Mr. Rinker, plunked the partially thawed crows onto the table in front of us, one after another. He asked the class to “give a special thank you to Mrs. Marshall for bringing us our specimens today.” All the other kids turned to look at me. I pretended not to notice. Instead, I inspected the crow with its feet curled around an imaginary branch, the feathers alongside its beak as fine as human hair. “By the end of the day,” said Mr. Rinker, “you will know everything about the crow except why.” He was always saying things like this. He had once been a monk. I stared down at the black-feathered corpse on my tabletop. Its eyes were sunken, its body awkward but still strangely beautiful. I picked up my knife with a trembling hand. I hated making this incision, but I had no choice. Every spring, my mother prepares for the fledging flight of the bluebird chicks. It’s the moment she’s been working towards all year. She calls the neighbors and tells them to keep their cat inside. She stands in the dining room window with her binoculars and keeps a running commentary, like a sportscaster. “First chick is out. He doesn’t look confident. He has questions. The mother bird is scolding, but now he’s up! He’s flapping his wings! Come on, little guy! Come on!” She is their champion, the unseen force, watching out for their safety. She is their mother, too. And so, there just aren’t many sparrows in the Marshall yard, these days. I wonder if the word is out, if the birds have somehow communicated that there are places you don’t go, yards you don’t breech. Stay in your element, they say. Don’t travel too far. And never investigate a new food source, especially if the food is served in a cage.

the executioner’s psalm Jim Carey

12 14

hear the

G othic strains of a great cathedral organ,

the notes eerily warped as they slalom and weave down the subterranean curves. I see candles lining the water’s edge and Baroque chandeliers projecting dancing shadows along the stone and mortar walls. The procession floats from light to dark to light, its shadow-self stretching and shrinking as if moving streetlight to streetlight down an Edward Hopper night. This is the funeral I caused. I can’t make it go away. My son loved frogs. Legos and frogs. Not much else. I recall a mostly lonely boy who retreated into solo pursuits, not yet secure on his own rock amid the bluster of playground rivalries and rutting rituals. My ex-wife recalls someone different: a child of super imagination, happily escaping into worlds of his own invention. Such is the relativity of truth. We had, at best, mixed luck with his frogs. Some lived years. Others, unaccountably, mere weeks. We thought we were getting the system down. We scrupulously followed the steps prescribed by the Goth teen pet shop clerks who’d found safety among the tarantula cages and glowing fish tanks. We shifted from paper to coconut fiber lining. We changed the soaking pool water regularly. We boiled it first to remove any chemicals. We splurged for the pricy amphibian bulb, which deftly replicated a Queensland autumn while maintaining the day/night cycle on which a frog’s feeding rhythm depends. We always washed before handling. We spritzed the terrarium to a humid sweet spot. We lavished down crickets. Large, meaty crickets. We kick-started the Darwinian cycle, showering the critters within easy tongue-flash distance, lusting through the glass like Romans for a kill. In boon times we watched the frogs grow fat and, we assumed, happy, though bliss was hard to qualify. Frogs wear their emotions close to the vest, being mostly immobile, expressionless, inscrutable. Still, our labors seemed largely impotent. Some frogs thrived. Others didn’t. Of the five or six my son cherished (Tom, TomII, Froggy, etc.), there was a cruel randomness to their fate. Inexplicably, you’d note a slight dulling of the

shiny neon skin, some excess wrinkling, followed quickly by a cold, lifeless corpse. Rigor mortis set in almost immediately. The first was the hardest for my son—and me—to handle. But it never got easy. We honored each passing with a proper, solemn, ritual burial. We debated the merits of continuing. Were the highs enough to offset the looming heartbreak? In the end, we frogged on, even though I sensed my son was beginning to outgrow them— outgrow them with the profound weight of passage from that which has nurtured you, stood by you, indeed become a marker to a moment in time. In the frogs’ wake lurked an imminent void. I was cleaning the cage. (So much for the “your pet, your responsibility” dictum. Sons make fathers weak. Or weak fathers spineless.) I removed the cover screen and the heat lamp. I lifted out the soaking pool and dumped the brackish water down the toilet. I took the terrarium outside to empty, compost and hose clean. At first, I couldn’t find the frog. No big deal. They are elusive, often hiding in branch hollows, burrowing into the fiber or suctioning themselves high in glass corners. This hide and seek was normal, our usual dance. Still, as I pulled out perches and eliminated the usual suspects, I grew uneasy. When the cage was fully empty, I sprinted back upstairs. Could he have jumped out in the mere seconds when the lid was off? It wouldn’t be the first time. We had combed the house for missing frogs before. This time was different, though. Suddenly, I grew nauseous. I pictured the brown, coconut fiber skim floating atop the surface of the toilet water. I ran to the bathroom, hoping I hadn’t pulled the handle. If you’re amused, you’re not a parent, certainly not of a child so sensitive, so wary of change, that rearranging

the furniture shook his sense of place. I had killed his frog, his dearest friend, plain and simple. Flushed it down the toilet. The sadness for the thing was bad enough. My son’s grief would be unbearable. Not only what had transpired, but how. A panicked, chaotic, alien death. Cold, black and violent. This was not a cinematic ride I wanted him to contemplate. I had a choice to make. I chose deceit. Abetted by my wife, we scoured the phone book, and city, for a stand-in amphibian. The usual pet stores failed us. We branched out to more distant reaches. We needed something close enough in size and color, not to mention species. Hours later, we found a candidate. Not a perfect double, but a fighting chance given the shifts in color and bulk frogs go through day-to-day, even hour-to-hour. I didn’t lie to spare myself. I didn’t do it to avoid the rap. Though I realized there was a lesson available there as well, a lesson about owning up and facing the consequences. About the sanctity of truth. A lesson for another time. Now, ten years gone by, I still grieve what my son never had to. The lie worked so well, in fact, that I soothe myself now with small delusions. I think, “maybe it’s warm down in the sewers. Maybe it’s teeming with slugs and bugs, a veritable amphibian smorgasbord.” Maybe, in fact, this funeral didn’t transpire that day, but after a long and idyllic existence. Maybe one frog finally got the dozen years the damn Goth kids always promised. Yeah, maybe. And to you, my son, I am sorry. Very, very sorry.

bird watching Bowen Ames

mother has become a bit of a delicate bird. Sitting outside a coffee shop in Brooklyn last spring, I took a call from her in which she benignly suggested I come home for the weekend with some drugs so that, together, we could sit in the woods and I might help her die. It seemed she had reached some sort of imbalance. This was, she decided, the best thing to do. Birds as creatures are inherently delicate. I reacted calmly and took the stance to which I’ve grown accustomed; I defend the act of living. I told her then, one is not supposed to invite one’s child home for a picnic with death. It was just inappropriate. It wasn’t just an invitation, she clarified. She was asking for my permission. She wanted to know that I’d be okay. My mother wanted my blessing. In defense of living, I told her that my permission would not be granted. I reassured her that we would find her balance again. I needed my mother, the delicate bird, to live, and I would watch her do it. Birds are innately delicate as their bodies present a

housing problem. Immediately after birds hatch, parasites invade, striving to survive on the tiny heart that beats within the creature. Fleas, flies, ticks and mites all burrow within the bird’s feathers. Internal worms, flukes, microscopic protozoa, fungi and countless forms of bacteria bounce and surge through the bird’s system. If the balance is upset, the parasites take over, bringing death to the host. Miraculously, all living birds manage to keep these parasites in balance. Their systems are accustomed to hosting the imminence of death. Somewhat miraculously, my mother made it to fiftyfive before she reached her present imbalance. I know that my life, at least, was enough to keep hers going. My life reminds her that her marriage was successful for twenty years. She had another son and a career. But soon after her divorce from my father, the balance began to shift, and death became an option. I moved to Brooklyn. She had only a few friends. She left her career. She found herself alone, an alcoholic, alternately frantic and somnambulant. Bipolar was the clinical diagnosis. In defense of living, I sat outside that coffee shop in Brooklyn and talked it out with her. I explained that ordinary people think of death as a swift stroke of fate. One doesn’t ordinarily decide upon it, welcome it, and speak of it on a Sunday afternoon phone call with one’s child. At this line my voice cracked just a little. I was illustrating, perhaps for the both of us, the contrast between what should be and what was now playing out. A child should not have to take this sort of phone call, I said. The problem was I completely understood her perspective. In defense of living, I couldn’t let her know this, not entirely. But I do understand her exactly. The living world swarms with animals that, because of their size, can live inside or on the surface of a host, a bird for instance. The very word “parasite” means “one who eats beside another.” Although most laymen, and even some biologists, look upon parasites with repugnance, the reality of them cannot be disputed. That is to say, they are always there. They wait for an imbalance on the side of death. I couldn’t let her know that her request acknowledged my assessment of reality. Those not going about in constant awareness of death are the fortunate. For my mother the parasites of life showed themselves more and more. Her co-workers had complained about her erratic and boisterous behavior in the office. My brother grew concerned that she was too depressed to be capable of occasionally looking after his children. When I’d visit, I’d harp at her lack of housekeeping. Her messes piled up around her. Her bills might go unpaid. It didn’t take this phone call for me to realize why she had decided upon death. Keeping the parasites at bay could be fucking exhausting. Still, where I don’t agree with her is that she sees herself, her body, as inherently flawed and unable to find a balance in favor of living. The diagnosis of bipolarity became her uncomfortable perch, a telephone wire. Death

meant easily falling to the street below and always an option. Eventually, at the risk of losing her job, she was persuaded towards finding a medication to correct the imbalance. My mother saw a psychotherapist and began ingesting a regular dose of Ziprasidone. The pharmaceutical company that markets Ziprasidone calls the drug Geodon, hoping to bring to mind the phrase down (don) to earth (geo), referring to the goals of the medication. The goal was to bring my mother off the telephone wire and to restore her balance. A bird’s nerve and muscle tissue, the lungs, glands and digestive systems are all habitats for at least one kind of parasite. So delicate are their adaptations that certain kinds of lice inhabit the feathers on the head of the bird, while completely different kinds inhabit the flight feathers. Likewise, bipolar disorders vary among patients. The imbalance of any given patient is less obvious than a louse beneath a wing. There are endless mood disorders defined by the presence of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition and mood. There is no clear consensus as to how many types of bipolar disorder exist. And so with Geodon, we—my mother’s therapist and I, who had become a bird watching duo—kept a close watch and hoped to bring her down to the street, to reinstate her capabilities in flight. The trouble with pharmaceuticals that address mental imbalances are the side effects, which can disrupt the balance further. Geodon is known to trigger mania in some bipolar patients. At the time I heard my mother’s call, as I sat outside that coffee shop in Brooklyn, the Geodon had begun to take a disproportionate effect. The drug had acted not as a harmonizing additive to the parasitic imbalance, but instead as a sort of poisoned seed that weakened her system. My mother was considering death with shocking ease. Our conversation was lucid and clear. She had opted for death, and I was forced to unwaveringly defend life. I only learned about the physical process of Geodon after I took my mother’s call. It is somewhat confusing, as it affects both the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex of the brain. By affecting the basal ganglia, the prefrontal cortex does what is called identity change. This is a process in which enzymes are switched from one section of the brain to another. In short, it attempts to change the makeup of the species. It tries to convert the bird from one who sits on the telephone pole and considers falling to the street to one that flies—a depressed and out of place penguin to a finch or swallow. Ornithology, the study of birds, was once considered a mere hobby. Birds are pretty little things. But the science of ornithology has evolved to complex studies of evolution, definition of species and behaviors which allow certain species to thrive. Parasitology as a biological discipline is not determined by the organism or environment in question, but by the parasite’s way of life. I began to watch my mother and the parasites that

brian kenny /

Heer Dear Run

she housed with closer observation—less the way things should be versus the way they were playing out—and closer attention to the sound of her calls. I asked her what she’d done that day. What had she eaten? Who had she spoken to? What was she reading? I listened. Bird watching most often involves a significant auditory component. Many species are more easily detected and identified by ear than by eye. Anyone can point out a louse beneath the wing of a swallow. But there are other cases with subtle shadings in the relationships between parasites and their hosts. Certain animals—such as the protozoa which cause bird malaria—must live as parasites throughout their entire lives and cannot exist apart from their hosts. But others, notably ticks and mosquitoes, are usually only parasitic at single stages in their lives and spend most of their time in a free state. Some parasites are fully capable of living their lives as free animals. By dust bathing and preening, the host holds down their numbers on the feathers and skin. And with a correct diet, special blood cells and antibodies fight to prevent overcrowding in the lungs, liver, trachea and blood. Death can be present for the living without surpassing. And so rather than attempt to eliminate the presence of death in my mother’s life, I, the bird watcher, would suggest a change of habitat. In the months after her invitation to a bird watching picnic with an arsenic dessert, we moved her into a new home, weaned her off of Geodon, found her a new job and changed her diet. In some cases birds and their parasites live together largely oblivious of each other. That is to say, we needn’t constantly be aware of death. Some scientists believe that neutral relationships began originally as parasitic but evolved into truces. My mother’s, and therein my own, relationship with death has largely taken the route of the successful parasite and bird relationship. The presence of the parasite is inevitable. The ideal parasite does not bring about immediate death; if allowed to live out its life, the bird will furnish offspring for future generations of parasites. We must live for the life of others. What I didn’t let on, as I stood outside the coffee shop in Brooklyn, was that I needed her to live so I might do the same. Though calm and quiet in tone, and having taken on the role of a birdwatcher rather than a bird, I know too well this taking sides with death. I needed my mother to provide an example for me, her offspring. I needed her to evolve, to cope with her parasites so that future generations might be better able to do the same. We must live to die. Some academic studies of bird watching liken the practice to a belief in the supernatural. Bird watchers will often proclaim the experience has anxiety-buffering effects. Just as a belief in a supernatural higher power increases in response to the idea of death, bird watching is a place where some seek solace and calm, a place to distance themselves from the imminence of death. I’ve

been closely watching my mother, the delicate bird, for the last ten years. And like any mother/son relationship, she is where I go to seek solace, where I go to fight my own parasites, to fend off the imminence of death in my own life. We all need reasons to live, and mine is bird watching.

afternoon lay heavy Gay Bradshaw

A fternoon lay heavy. The heat of the day had settled making the air impenetrable. Then, as if out of nowhere, they broke through the wall of heat, materializing in a shimmer of the light’s mirage. Slow and ponderous, one by one, they walked up to whitened bones lying stark on red earth. Light as a dancer’s hand, each ran the tip of a trunk

along the jawbone’s line. The elephants began to sway, their awesome grey bulk moving effortlessly to the melody of a silent song. A soft wind awoke and moved through grass and leaves. The Ancestors had answered, the spark of recognition flamed through generation after generation of the ancient civilization. Life and death met in the quantum of somatic memory with the hope of renewal and salvation. It is an indictment of western society that its pundits continue to ponder whether or not animals understand death. The frigid crouch of a rabbit under the gaze of a fox

and the heated escape of a gazelle pursued by lions fail to signify meaning in scientists’ eyes. The conveniences and insularity of modernity have made life and death optional, electives from an otherwise mundane palette of lifestyle choices. Elephants are one of the few animals that researchers tentatively concede may indeed appreciate what it means to transition from dust to dust. But of course, for those who live in the intimacy of the wild, for those whose blood pulses in syncopation with the seasons, the space between breath and death is no one’s private property.

Stories of elephant grief and burials are renown. George Adamson and his wife Joy are two of many who have witnessed elephants in the passion of life’s cycles. Adamson recounts how he once came to a clearing where the soil was dark and furrowed, littered with rags and bones where an elephant had killed, then buried, his human victim. This was no simple crime scene. Over time, the elephant lived atonement for his actions, returning to the grave each afternoon to plow the ground around the grave with his tusks, white on red. Adamson describes another incident involving the mother of his Turkana game scout. Being half blind and finding herself lost in the woods as dark began to settle, she decided to seek sanctuary under a big tree for the night to avoid the risk of becoming prey to nocturnal predators. Suddenly in the deep of the night, she awoke surrounded by elephants. Each approached and lay branches and leaves until she was completely covered. Her son discovered her in the morning, safe but covered in a mound of earth and sticks. The scout told Adamson that the elephants had presumed his mother dead and buried her in the manner and with the respect they afforded other humans whom they have killed. Grieving and mourning rituals are integral to elephant culture. A mother grieves over her dead child for days after his death, alternately straining to revive the baby and caressing and touching the tiny body. After Emily, a matriarch so named by researchers, died, the family performed extended mourning rituals. Later, when hyenas and vultures had dissolved the last vestiges of her massive flesh and the sun and wind had whitened the giant’s bones, the family would come to pay their respects. A seasoned observer of elephants, Cynthia Moss describes what she saw one time: “The three animals stopped and cautiously reached their trunks out. They stepped closer and very gently began to touch the remains with the tips of their trunks, first light taps, smelling and feeling, then strokes around and along the larger bones. Eudora and Elspeth, Emily’s daughter and granddaughter, pushed through and began to examine the bones, and soon after Echo and her two daughters arrived. All the elephants were now quiet, and there was a palpable tension among them. Eudora concentrated on Emily’s skull, caressing the smooth cranium and slipping her trunk into the hollows in the skull. Echo was feeling the lower jaw, running her trunk along the teeth—the area used in greeting when elephants place their trunks in each other’s mouth. The younger animals were picking up the smaller bones and placing them in their mouths, before dropping them again.” Pat Derby, who cares for elephants rescued from the ravages of zoos, recounts the tender relationship between two aged elephants. When Annie’s companion of forty years, Tami, died, Pat describes how “I have never seen such grief. We thought we were going to lose Annie. She just became passive, and when she looked up, it was as if she looked right through us. The only thing that seemed

Excerpts from

EVERYBODY DIES: A CHILDREN'S BOOK FOR GROWN UPS KEN TANAKA

to give her pleasure was to float in the jacuzzi that we had built for Tami. After Tami died, Annie refused to lie down to sleep at night. It was only in the Jacuzzi that she would be able to get some rest. She would walk in and then float and nod off and relax. For seven months she lived that way. Then suddenly, one day, it was like she had turned off a faucet inside. We were leading her up the hill when she suddenly stopped halfway and looked at us with the funniest expression. Then she turned around and went down to the lake to be with Minnie and Rebecca. She was ready to be with others again. It’s as if she had to have this period of mourning for Tami, and then that was it. You can tell she hasn’t forgotten Tami. Even though she gets along with the other elephants, she’s still off into herself. You know her relationship with Tami was so special that there is no one else who can take her place. She’ll be devoted to Tami’s memory the rest of her life.” These accounts are more than evidence that other species know of death, more even than an understanding that the hand of the universe penetrates deep into the hearts and souls of other beings. It does elephants and other animals a disservice to merely equate what we see them do with what we may have experienced ourselves. The real message is to wonder what we do not see, what lies beyond our perspective. A realization of commonality signals an open door to worlds long vanquished by human denial. In modernity’s carefully constructed world of counterpoise—the agonistic pairing of mind/body, male/female, human/animal—there is little room for understanding the intimate relationship between death and life. Ready and anxious for conflict, the Western mind cannot imagine that the living, the dying and the dead are familiar companions. Similar to Hamlet, the elephants caution that we, as strangers to death and the elephant world, are wise to “give it welcome.” Look upon death with open hearts as someone who lives beyond what human minds may dream. Listen! Listen! Are those the notes of the elephant’s silent song, heard among the whispers of the gentle evening breeze?

lostalgia Keri Thomas

This is a

tale of two penguins, both lost. In June, 2011, a young Emperor penguin emerged from the water and stepped out onto Peka Peka beach on the west coast of New Zealand. Three thousand kilometers from its nest in Antarctica, it veered off course somewhere in the depths of the Southern Ocean, surviving what was likely a maelstrom of truly frightening obstacles: Leopard and fur seals! Whales! Sharks! No sooner had “Happy

Feet” (for this is what the penguin was immediately and regrettably named) waddled ashore and started eating sand, mistaking it for snow, did folks around the globe begin to lavish on the unsuspecting creature their deeply imbedded desires and anxieties about what it means to be lost and found. HF could not stay in Peka Peka, they exhorted, not because he wasn’t its most adorable, and now most famous, resident, but because to let him stay would mean people would have to confront the agonizing idea that he might be lost forever. Everyone knows that there is nothing more wrenching than the sight of a lonely, lost little penguin. But biologists countered with the sobering reality that HF could have picked up any number of infections en route to this unfamiliar environment and to return him could threaten the health of his entire colony back home. Folks responded to this news by zeroing in more fervently on the task of “saving” HF. Comment sections ignited with speculation: What would become of HF? Why couldn’t he simply be tested for infectious diseases? Who were these so-called wildlife experts anyway? And, why it had taken so long for them to even determine HF’s gender? “Can’t someone put him on a plane to Antarctica? We can put the fare on my credit card,” wrote one desperate citizen. What she may not have known was that a similar solution had already been suggested by millionaire investment banker George Morgan, who offered HF an icy bed on which to flop as he made his way back home aboard Morgan’s Russian ice breaker. As HF dawdled away his days on Peka Peka, the beach was overrun by onlookers wielding various documentation devices, ooh-ing and aah-ing and patting their hearts. They watched, captivated, as HF grew lethargic, the pile of sand he’d ingested finally creating an intestinal emergency. Biologists at the Wellington Zoo came to HF’s rescue, performing five surgeries on the bird behind a clear glass wall designed for public viewing. One observer reasoned, “at least they finally decided to intervene. I hated it when they said they would just let nature take its course.” Back in Antarctica, filmmaker Werner Herzog captured another such penguin just beginning a similar journey. We watch as the penguin walks in a herd, framed on all sides by the epic crystalline expanse of Antarctica. The penguin stops and seems to contemplate the other birds as they continue to the water or turn in the direction of the nesting site. The penguin looks toward the water. It looks toward the nest. A moment of North By Northwest tension fills the screen, then the penguin lifts its slick black head to the sky, clear and blue as the ice it stands on, and inexplicably chooses a third way, away from both water and nest, toward a towering mountain range that marks the continent’s interior. The penguin walks away alone, across the white landscape, the small black dot of its body slowly diminishing. Amidst the white noise of this penguin’s

solitary escape, and the peculiar, lonesome image of HF so far from his natural home, Herzog’s dry German accent sounds the question we’re all harboring: “But, why?” One simple explanation is that penguins, not unlike other animals—sea lions, whales and elephants come immediately to mind, to say nothing of domesticated pets and humans—become disoriented and sometimes wander away from the relative security of their clan. It happens more frequently than is comfortable to imagine, away from cameras and onlookers, and almost always—at least for wild animals—ends in one logical conclusion. As real and common as disorientation may be, most animals other than penguins don’t have to contend with the penguins’ turf, probably the most the unforgiving, homogenous and deadly landscape on the planet. Antarctica takes up 5.4 million square miles, ninety eight percent of which are covered in ice approximately one mile thick. Surprisingly, it’s considered a desert, albeit an icy one, with windy, dry weather and temperatures that can drop to negative 100 degrees Farenheit. Every day penguins find their way in blinding blizzards. Even in the clarity of the sun, where every vista is a mirror inside a mirror of every other vista, their skill at navigation is an astonishing, yet perfectly routine, miracle. A little disorientation now and again seems a reasonable response to an immensely unreasonable environment and a decent explanation for why penguins take sudden and very inhospitable wrong turns in the first place. What can the disorientation theory make of the fact that a penguin of disoriented mind, if returned to the nest with its fellow birds, will set out repeatedly toward that same mountain range, will venture again and again into uncharted waters? How can it explain the bird’s unquenchable urge to slip into the unknown and, very likely, find its own death? Is that disorientation here, or irrepressibility? Or, perhaps, some composite of the two? One thing feels certain: the wayward penguin cannot simply be set straight or reoriented. Let’s pretend, for instance, that you find yourself

confused when faced with the choice of several tunneled passageways in the Tokyo subway system, and that from them you happen to choose the worst passageway possible—an easy but unintentional mistake that could end in catastrophe. Would it not then come as a blessing to be redirected to your intended destination by a courteous and resourceful fellow traveler? “Ah ha! Thank you, fellow traveler, for returning me to a place where I now feel comfort instead of panic,” you might say. Conversely, one might well imagine a “disoriented” penguin giving the equivalent of the penguin finger (the flipper?) to its rescuer as it heads straight back to the abyss from whence it was plucked. Isn’t it possible that at least some of these penguins simply look in a direction of their liking, feel the wind and follow a feeling? Here’s another story. You are eleven, maybe twelve. The campsite you and your family—father, mother, older brother—have chosen is strategically positioned for maximum privacy. A wall of pines obscures your tent, which would be difficult to see anyway because it lies at the base of a slope that falls away from the interior camp road and the entrance to the site. At the edge of the slope, ten feet from the tent’s zippered door, a healthy stream runs from the mountain. And on the other side, a wooded glen with great pockets of darkness so thick you squint into them for minutes through the mesh of the tent door, their mystery only growing more opaque and more inviting the more you look, blank holes that feel like familiar portals inside of you. You unzip the door, toe across the rocks in the stream and disappear through a hole in the woods. You have no idea where you are going, but your destination feels fixed, certain. Would you say you are compelled, insane, or merely “disoriented?” I don’t want to suggest that penguins actually resemble humans in their motivations or feelings; March of the Penguins already pummeled us with cuteness to that specious end. But, like humans, animals often undoubtedly feel pulled toward the unknown, toward some

FROM THE ANIMAL DESK Pearl, who prefers the gender neutral pronoun “v”,

was born a free range chicken on a farm in West Virginia. Within the first few weeks of life v was introduced to the realities of death when one of v’s siblings was run over by a car. This left an indelible mark on Pearl and v began an inward journey that continues to this day as v tries to make sense of the brutality of mechanical death machines. Pearl has learned to work through so many early traumas through creative expression (poetry mostly) and occasional forays into modeling, because sometimes all that introspection causes v to forget v is a physical as well as spiritual manifestation in this earthly realm. Pearl is very into quiet time but can also be extremely outgoing— especially at parties (v loves drugs). As the only surviving “chick” of her litter, Pearl feels it is very important to leave a permanent record so that other creatures (v identifies as a chicken but has at times questioned where v falls on the “trans-species spectrum”) will remember v’s humble yet loving familial origins. Anyway, as I was saying, although v identifies most strongly as a chicken v occasionally enjoys abandoning v’s beak and feathers and donning the fur and eyeliner most commonly associated with cats.

A Pearl You can’t kill me for I am holy. You can’t kill me I’m already dead. I am holy. I am everything magpie, village, old woman dying sun, living God Angel of Mercy praying mantis selfish desire, unconditional love I give myself to you am part of you am you. You can’t kill me you’re already dead. You are holy. You are everything. -blessed be.

poem by Pearl introduction by Mx Justin Vivian Bond

Pearl is very specific about how v is to be addressed when in cat regalia—for instance, v HATES being called a “pussy”. Pearl doesn’t speak english but v can read it and write it and is very sensitive to the subtleties and nuances of intra-human communication—tones... words... Pearl doesn’t fear death, nor is v afraid to kill when necessary. Actually, Pearl has tried to kill several people I’ve been intimate with—v is jealous and sometimes vindictive—but v’s murderous intentions have, for the most part, been unsuccessful. Offhand, I can only recall two or three successful murder attempts on v’s part, but v may dispute that number. V has, most certainly, infected me with the “cat lady” worm, so it’s only a matter of time before v will find me dead on the kitchen floor and will with utmost nonchalance either eat, lick or peck at my cheeks, allowing the worm to at last return to the host. But that’s another story for another day...

thing—unidentified, probably unknowable, but potentially restorative. It’s not illogical to assume that these penguins, on occasion, unzip their own tent door. Or they could just be insane. “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark,” writes Rebecca Solnit. “That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself are from, and where you will go.” Deliberately, perhaps like Herzog’s and Peka Peka’s penguins, we set out to lose ourselves—in a shadowy wood or a good story, in the arms of a beloved, across the Antarctic tundra or the Southern Ocean. Solnit suggests we do this in pursuit of transformation, an exploration of alternate versions of the self. Okay, but it seems as likely that what we seek has less to do with transformation than confirmation. Getting lost involves saying yes: Yes, we are a part of the beloved. Yes, this story is my story. Yes, we are all composed of the blank hole in the woods or the abyss of the ocean from which we all came and through which we will all pass. Ever find yourself atop a bridge, peering into a body of swaying water, and feel something barely repressible in your sternum, a sensation that seems to say if I jump right now I will know real freedom? It’s a burning but beatific desire to be at once enveloped in mystery and to finally harness it. For the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, it is this desire that precedes sin, the moment before one gives oneself over to the wolves, commits oneself forever unto the abyss of unexamined, unregulated behavior. Luckily for most of us, the phenomenon feels more like concentrated abandon, what Solnit calls the “blue of distance,” a drive toward authenticity, fresh beginnings, real freedoms. In short, it feels like the promise of the ultimate good time. Getting lost also carries with it an unavoidable anxiety. It is wrenching in a familiar way to see HF alone on a foreign shore eating sand. I’m talking, of course, about our own fears of one day becoming so disoriented we mistake our shoe for a steak. Or about our despair at finding ourselves alone on a Friday night, watching bad TV. I’m talking about how we’d rather not imagine ourselves washed up alone in the end on that final distant shore. How, if we could, we’d hire a millionaire with a private jet to fly us back to our nesting site, even though it is fouled with the smell of our own kind and burdened by ritual and crappy weather. At least there we’d be among known things. There, we would never eat sand and call it snow. Knowing where we are makes death an abstraction. I’m in my kitchen. I’m on the number nine bus. I’m at Fernhill Park, at the dentist, in my mother’s green bathroom with the shower curtain of frogs. Here are my objects—purple mechanical pencil, New Mexico coffee mug, lavender hand lotion, fifty-foot garden hose. Here is my sleeping puppy, my enterprising friends, my grumpy mailman on his break smoking out the window of his truck. I will not die, not really, not in this known world.

And so it is: if we are not lost, we are safe. But if we do not let go, we risk being held down by those same things that offer us the illusion of security. Thus, it’s with a mixture of anguish and euphoria that we watch Herzog’s penguin shrink against a baffling emptiness and watch HF be nursed back to health in an air-conditioned room filled with ice and fatty salmon. We recognize the joy and also the terror of travelling into the unknown. We see the sweetness and bitterness of pining for something abstract, a person or place that may be gone or may have never even existed. The Portuguese call this longing saudade, a lovely word that makes me think of the singer Sade, no stranger herself to the beauty and pain of letting go. However, I think another term gets closer: lostalgia, the uncomfortable and exhilarating desire to become lost, to think about losing oneself, or to pine for a lost or nonexistent place. Awash in lostalgia, we swing on the eternal pendulum of contradictory desires: to lose ourselves and gain freedom and connection with the mystery or to stay safe, but strapped, among our familiars and avoid the thought of certain death. HF now waits in the Wellignton Zoo for an available ship and opportune weather, at which point he will be transported to the sub-Antarctic and released, meant to swim home in reverse the same route by which he materialized on Peka Peka to begin with. One dour voice in cyberspace echoed the general feeling about this new plan: “It sounds like certain death,” he wrote. As for Herzog’s penguin, well, let’s assume that it simply, blissfully got lost.

he Sarah Shapiro

I used to dream H awk was dead. All the time. I’d forgotten him in some dark, rotting shed. And then I’d find him. Ripping padlocks off the solid door. Crying. Up to his knees in his own shit. Eyes dull. Labored breathing. And then dead. The same dream, for years. In life, we galloped ragged through the avocado groves, paralyzed by the heartache of sage and the stinging salt sea. Every moment of my life for Hawk. Wishing all the time that I could sleep next to the train tracks with him, on a bed of straw, him spooning me like a lover. But there were rules. He didn’t jump when I bought him. Me: 13, with $500 of babysitting money. Him: a 4 year old horse off the Mexican track, balls cut late, locked in a pipe corral next to train tracks. He exploded when I got on his back. Glimmering, deadly, and utterly stunning. Flying through time and space, windless and

magnificent. Living every morning to get to him at 3. His smell the last thing I heard before the pillow at night, body dreams of bounding through space—my legs, his legs. Every moment of my life for him. My mom took him from me when I was fifteen. Adult logic. The divorce. We were broke. He was sick, bucking because a bone in his foot was rotting, and I didn’t have the money to fix it. She loaded him up into a borrowed trailer to drive him north. Some family I didn’t know. We drove him north past Burger King and a fake Danish village with windmills into the green young grass country and then out of that, into the dry place with soft sandy ground that didn’t grow anything, but that would feel good on his sore feet and blow around in the wind, turning his wet nose into mud. The kids came out of a little house that might have been a trailer, cats everywhere and wind chimes on the porch. I couldn’t breath, my guts ripping while they smiled and explained. The little girl squealed with glee and pulled at his rope. I couldn’t let go, the fibers melted into my skin. Mom taking the rope, throat closing as she put it in her hand, his eyes moving from me to all the new people. Trying to explain what he needs, but choking. My whole body telling me, take him and run. Logic and grown ups handling papers. I dreamed about him a lot, for five years. Always waking like the dream where you’ve murdered someone and there is no way to undo it and the ground falls from under you and it’s all gone and you’re a dead-forever feeling. When I was old enough to know how, I tried to find him. I didn’t know anything about the family except they lived past the grass and into the dust. The parents had divorced and moved away. He is living three hours away, and I can go see him. I can drive now. I have a crappy car and know the names of freeways. I can try. I find him living with a goat in a tiny barbed wire lot, with coyote brush and a bathtub full of slimy green water. His eyes are dull, head hanging, open-lipped and dry. His coat is moth-eaten with sunburned ribs poking out. It’s like the dream, but not dead yet. I cry. I pull at the gate. I go to him, and he stumbles backward, shocked that I’d want to touch him. I take him out—Jesus, just to walk him around!—and he rips out of my hands, roaring down the road. He hasn’t been out in, what, a year? Air sucking itself out of time with absolute horror as I piece together what his life must be. I start making the drive once a week. It’s a long, ugly drive and terrible when I get there. The husband in the family kept him out of spite after the divorce. Now he is lonely and lives in a trailer in this small town and keeps Hawk as a pet. He hits on me twice, and I let him because I want to keep seeing Hawk and have no legal rights. He gets

my phone number so we can keep in touch. I ask him if there isn’t some way we could get Hawk a little more room. I ask him nicely, while inside I am dripping poisonous frantic blood and screaming, horrified. You are living my nightmare. I move for work and can’t see him any more. I am working all the time and can’t pay my rent and don’t know how to do things. A year later the man calls. Hawk is in the hospital. He’s dying. Can I come? Leaving work that minute with no logic. Twelve hours on the road. I walk into the dark stall. He is on the floor, labored breathing, belly shaved after a surgery. There is no one in his eyes. Head on the ground, hooked to an IV that hangs above him, it smells of death and iodine everywhere. I fall on the sawdust and put my face all over his belly, kissing him hard, smashing my cheek against his shaved skin to feel the hot blood still moving through his destroyed veins, trying to get my arms all the way around him, under him, scraping my arm on the cement floor sliding under his eight-hundred-pound rib cage. Crawling towards his fallen noble head to kiss his mouth, hug his neck, rub his forehead, pulling pointlessly at his mane. His cloudy, vacant eye tilts towards me under his lid and finds me there. “I was trying to get my shit together to get you out of there, Hawk.” He doesn’t know what to say. “I love you so, so, so much.” Choking. “I can’t believe I left you there, years of living hell. I’m so sorry. I should have stolen you. I didn’t know where we could go. I didn’t have anywhere to... I didn’t have anywhere to take you. I couldn’t have fed you; I can barely feed myself sometimes.” Pushing all of the light I have left into his heart, aching everywhere, straining to give him my life. Wishing I could smell him one more time, instead of this sterilized version of him. Mentally ripping back the hands of time, to that day at fifteen I gallop him off the family’s land, my mom screaming after us, to become a fugitive teenage horse bandit in the hills, eating leaves and berries, with tattered clothes. The sounds of death demolish the logic of adulthood and silence the choir in my head. Crystal clear. Everything. Who gives a fuck if I have rent money or health insurance? What could possibly matter more than this? They robbed us of a life of passion and glory and replaced it with step dads, jobs, “taking care of things” and barbed wire lots. His enormous last breath expands up his throat, his head soft and heavy in my hand. Bodies pounding. Waves exploding. Sunburns. Thundering towards an impossibly huge fallen log. We sail over, landing beautifully on the other side, bursting into long, deep, hungry strides. Over and over again.

winston chmielinski

/ in memory: carve & crystalline 2

ALL PHOTOS PAGES 27-30 GRANT CORNETT

Lamont Goldfish,

resident of Brooklyn, New York, died of undetermined causes on September 27, 1984, at the home of Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable and Mrs. Clair Huxtable. Lamont was found “floating on his back” in an understated glass bowl amongst a white lighthouse and a handful of tan rocks by family busybody, Vanessa Huxtable, 11, daughter of Cliff, 47, and Clair, 41, in the bedroom she shares with her youngest sister Rudy, 5. Lamont’s age and place of birth are unknown. Lamont was purchased after a bargaining plea was settled between Dr. Huxtable and Rudy, in which she agreed to eat her peas in exchange for a goldfish. According to Cliff, Lamont was hand picked by Rudy from the local pet supply store out of a tank of many. After numerous failed attempts and Rudy’s insistence that the sales clerk still had not caught the “right” fish, Cliff exclaimed that Lamont simply jumped into the hovering net, suggesting an instantaneous—if not magical—bond that was felt between Rudy and the fish through the tank glass. The funeral was attended by Cliff, Clair and four of their five children: Denise, 16, Theo, 14, Vanessa, and Rudy. Eldest daughter Sondra was not in attendance. Cliff spent the majority of the day persuading his hesitant family to attend the service. All members, with the exception of Rudy, felt it is was “absurd” to have a funeral for a fish, but Cliff insisted, both to help Rudy through her loss and to teach her siblings a lesson in being supportive, even as jokes between them about the dead fish ensued. Denise, Theo and Vanessa vehemently protested, but Cliff threatened to call their local church minister to host the service if they did not agree to attend. Somehow the tactic worked; the thought

of sharing a fish funeral with the Reverend was humiliating enough to get them into their Sunday best. The event was held in the children’s second-floor bathroom of the family’s Brooklyn residence. The full bathroom was left as is, with no special funeral adornment or preparation for the service. A clear plastic shower curtain with a palm tree motif was left open. Used towels of varying primary colors were littered around the room, and the countertops were cluttered with toiletries. Clothing was left on the floor; several pieces even hung freely from the shower bar, and Cliff pulled them down in an attempt to tidy the room moments before Lamont’s body arrived. The commode, Lamont’s shuttle to his final resting place, had a matching toilet lid cover and floor rug in shaggy cobalt blue. Theo, the lone pall-bearer, carried Lamont to the service in a standard green fish net. He wore a fitted, wool, gray blazer with plaid shirt and blue-green, knotted cotton tie that was straight at the bottom. His slim chino stopped just below the ankle, revealing his brown loafers. Against tradition, no music was played as he handed the body over to Cliff, boasting that he had closed Lamont’s eyes. Cliff coordinated the service in a black suit with white-collared pink shirt and blue tie, and he had a white flower as an accent on his lapel. Clair apprehensively wore a simple three-quarter sleeve navy dress with beaded floral detail, per Cliff’s suggestion. Her hair was down, and she went without jewelry, also at the insistence of Cliff. Her daughters Vanessa and Rudy stood by her side for the event. Rudy wore Lamont’s favorite dress, a blue sailor baby doll with square neck and red accent, because ac-

cording to Vanessa it must have reminded Lamont of the sea. She complimented the dress with red knee high socks and red bands in her pigtails, tying it all together with leather Mary Janes. Vanessa, in a more offbeat and out of character fashion choice, wore her dance leotard with matching black tights. She claimed in defense to her father, “I don’t have anything else black.” The most fashion forward of the group, Denise, donned a heavily pleated drop-crotch chino in a lightweight blue denim with neon green top and an oversized dark blue blazer with enormous shoulder pads. Her accessories included a matching neon orange bowler hat, scarf, socks and large, rectangular sunglasses with neon green accent—all to her father’s exhausted dismay. Cliff requested Denise remove the sunglasses for the funeral, only to reveal geometric neon face paint. Cliff tersely asked her to put the sunglasses back on. The exaggerated yet unexpectedly short sermon was delivered by Cliff, with multiple interruptions that ultimately unraveled into mayhem and toilet humor. Cliff started thoughtfully, “We’re here to say goodbye to a cherished friend, Lamont Goldfish. Lamont was a good fish, happy and brave,” to which Vanessa added, “I always felt safe with him around.” Cliff quickly shot Vanessa a stern eye roll and continued on, “…and so as to all fish, Lamont’s time on this earth....” As his sentence lingered, Dr. Huxtable was cut short by Rudy’s sudden and distracted demand to go watch television. Vanessa quickly seconded Rudy’s statement. Cliff, visibly irritated by the requests, insisted everyone must stay, bringing additional tension to an already unsteady service. Clair defended

that Rudy should be able to leave since it was her fish, which simply escalated Cliff’s stance. He argued more aggressively, “We got dressed up for this and we are going to have it!” At this point, Rudy had reached her threshold; distressed, she ran from the bathroom. Immediately following Rudy’s abrupt exit, a car horn was heard in the distance, and Denise took off excitedly for her date. Left behind were Theo and Vanessa to reason that “Lamont didn’t say goodbye to us,” at which point they confidently turned and exited too. In just a matter of seconds, the funeral had been abandoned, unraveled. Cliff and Clair were left to complain amongst themselves, while Lamont hung above the toilet in the fish catcher in Cliff’s waving hand. Clair snapped that the funeral was a “ridiculous” idea that no one except Cliff cared about. She also argued that he needed to leave for his shift at the hospital (Cliff is an obstetrician and was on call to deliver a baby.) Suddenly reminded of his lady patient in labor, he looked at his watch with alarm, accidentally turning the net over and plopping Lamont’s body into the open toilet. In hurried disbelief, he flushed and shouted, “I’m sorry, Lamont.” As the sound of flushing water filled the room, Rudy reappeared in the doorway. Cliff, relieved, suspected she was back to have a final emotional moment with Lamont. Rudy requested some privacy, and Cliff asked if it was so she could have a last word with the fish. Rudy replied, giggling, “No. I want to use the bathroom.” Her face turned red; she grinned largely and cupped her hands in embarrassment over her face as Cliff and Clair scurried out of the room, ending the service with a potty joke and a closed door. -Stephen Scott Smith

As broadcast on You Tube: Cat

Memorials in Three Parts

1. Cat Funeral, uploaded by “mechanical3600,” 2:34. (29 views) September 8, 2011. Mechanical3600’s cat, Kitty, has been euthanized and wrapped in a blanket because she pissed herself. The young man guides us through the recent history of Kitty’s situation, while unpacking her from a damaged cardboard box,

gripping and lifting her by the scruff of the neck. We learn that this cat suffered from liver failure and hadn’t eaten in a week, and that it cost $112 to put her down. Not a total loss, because the fresh hole was dug just two feet deep so that “Jay” could come back in a year for her skull and cast jewelry out of it. We also learn that Kitty was the protagonist’s sister’s pet for just four years, and that she was not a very pleasant cat. I wonder if the services would have been more sentimental if this were not the case. I also wonder where this sister is today. As Mechanical3600 shovels the first scoop of dirt over the still cute but now blue-shrouded corpse, he grins widely and shares a funny moment with the cameraman (who sounds gay—perhaps this is Jay?), while they both proclaim, “Bye, Kitty!” 2. Melma Lorenz’s Funeral, uploaded by “Zebonka,” 6:03. (365 views) June 19, 2010. I am not very good with accents, but if I had to guess I would say this was an Australian funeral service. It begins with a friendly old man entering a stand-alone workshop, carrying a small coffin he has fashioned out of wood. His name is Pete, and he looks proud. There is some uncomfortable laughter, as it appears that Melma (wrapped in blue cloth—as with the previous funeral—only this looks more like a towel) is too large for the casket. With a little wriggling she settles in just fine. Multiple hands enter the frame to rub the swaddled body with sweet caresses, and a lady coos, “Oh I miss ya, honey…” in Australian. The participants, not all of whom are visible (there seem to be at least three and up to five present besides the cameraman), then lay special objects on top of the cat: a glazed donut with a leaf of catnip placed in the hole, a “tooteroo” (this is a child’s noise-making party-favor, the kind that unrolls when you blow it), a few pink flower caps and one long blade of grass. The female attendees are crying. A lid is placed on the coffin, while the saddest, most vocal woman interjects, “That’s not a very nice lid, is it?” Old Pete does not look ruffled by the comment, but the cameraman comes to his aid and tells her it’s the best that Old Pete could do at the last minute. Likely because of this, the

mourners decorate the lid with painted stars, flowers, the name “Melma” and an Egyptian ankh. What follows is a rather organized procession to the back yard. Words are offered by Scotty Lorenz, who has been ordained by the Universal Life Church. He reveals that Melma was 20-ish and quite “human.” The casket is formally lowered into a hole in the ground with ropes. It fits, and we are now in the midst of a two-minute musical interlude of “John Nineteen: Forty-One” by Andre Previn. After final goodbyes and some unusual chanting, Melma is sealed into the earth with multiple spades of dirt. As the mourners wrap up the funeral, Old Pete is caught saying this: “Be glad you’re still alive, you know? We’re standing here, and you’re not. You know? Time just runs out, and then one day you’re next...Your life; it’s good, isn’t it?” He looks around at the messy yard and battered brick walkway, “I’m not complaining about the bricks, either.” The cameraman responds, “You could complain about the bricks, but today is not the day for that.” 3. Celebrating My Cat, Zoe, uploaded by “traineraustin,” 4:56. (202 views) March 4, 2011. This piece begins with the clear, unpracticed narration of a very deep-voiced Southern man: “Last night, my four-year old cat, Zoe, was hit by a car. For the last twenty-four hours, my heart has been heavy. I don’t know why I’m taking it so hard or why friends are here in the back yard burying him; after all, I’ve gone through this with two dogs before. But here I am saying, ‘Rest in peace, sweet Zoe. I’ll never forget you.’” The rest of the film is a montage of this man, in a blue jeans and a cowboy hat, excavating a hole for Zoe in his suburban, working-class backyard with a fence-post digger, set to Alabama’s “Angels Among Us.” Beside a concrete lawn sculpture of a monk and a length of chain-link fence, and interspersed with photos of the cat, his wife and child watch on, as does a morose neighbor from the other side of the fence. This is the only service I viewed that contained no smirking or indication of irony at all. -Varsity Adler

evan gruzis / Perfect Mess

brian kenny / Bone Picking

E KIL A T S A ISUH T NE- NON DN A T S A ISUH T NE EH T ROF EN I Z AGA M A