fold: the reader: SACRIFICE by Rebecca Targ

SACRIFICE

fold: the reader

VOLUME 2

:fold: the reader

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publishing body. Published by Rebecca Targ, editor, chief cook and bottle washer, under the aegis of fold: the reader. Marketing and website by the inimitable Liz Tapp. Proofing and editing by Dena â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eagle Eyesâ&#x20AC;? Targ. Mailing address: fold c/o Rebecca Targ UTC Dept of Art, #1301, 615 McCallie Ave. Chattanooga, TN 37403

Book designed by Rebecca Targ, with the exception of page design by contributors Alex Jovanovich, Harry Epstein, Maggie McMahon, Constance White, and Dolores Wilber. ISSN: 1553-0183 Printed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA by Allegra Print and Imaging

Dear Reader: Welcome to the second issue of fold: the reader. You are looking at a book of written and visual work that I design and edit. I invite people whose work I know from across disciplines to participate and then I file, arrange, design, distribute. I love this project because it brings me closer to people I miss and who are fascinating to me, but also because a large part of what happens is beyond my control. In a collaboration, there must be a release of the authorial grip, but, dialectically, there must be the push of ego, the rise of purpose and intent. Multiple parties proffer their ideas before any of them are fully formed, the ideas meet and interact, changes occur symbiotically and a final product is formed wherein the individual contributions are dissolved into the whole. Of primary (and cross-disciplinary) concern is how to engage people in a way that allows their own authorship in the engagement, how to engage people from across social, economic and educational (constructed) bounding lines, and certainly the concern of some kind of ending note: a goal or product or thing, such that the engagement is allowed to continue. I believe that we need to know that experimentation is allowed, is progressive, is the essence of engagement. Where does that get us? We have now multiple parties who collaborate toward a goal. We have the context of art-making, or meaning-making. We have the discrete and arguably immutable form of the book (a binding, pages that turn, some printed or affixed image and/or text). Energy begets energy. My reason for starting this journal of written and visual work was initially to bring together the work of people from diverse backgrounds and educations. People living all over the world whom I know and want to draw closer to me. I knew I could rely on the quality of their work, and I also knew that the wide variety of work would force any reader into an active role. The title of the book acts as an umbrella and the disjunct between different works inside makes the difference from work to work visible; an armature rises out of it instead of the directed content but muffled structure of a traditional book. Disjunct meeting formal structure forces ACTIVITY. THE WORLD IS ACTIVATED.

The reader of fold will also be a key creator of its content. Thank you, dear reader, dear contributors. I hope you all enjoy this issue of fold, and I hope you will continue to participate in your own ways.

Rebecca Targ

Editor

table of contents 7–11 Contributor biographies 13 Rebecca Beegle / 15-17 Tyrick Christian / 19 Stephanie Tate / 21 Marion Wilson 23-28 Alissa Perrucci / 31-36 Talia Welsh / 39-45 Carl Bryan Hunter 47-52 Angela Dittmar / 54-55 Susan Seaton / 57-61 Shawn Huelle / 63–65 Melissa Anyiwo 67-74 Abhay Ghiara and Matthew Goulish 77 Maggie McMahon / 79-81 Harry Epstein 82-83 Alex Jovanovich / 85 Marlene Targ Brill / 87-91 Liz Tapp / 93-97 Adam Trowbridge 99-105 Dannielle Tegeder / 106–112 Constance White / 115–121 Jessica Westbrook 123–137 Dolores Wilber / 138 Rebecca Targ / 139 Rebecca Targ and Brad Elliott / 141–147 Bob Sloan 149 Image information / 151 Thank you

Anyiwo

Melissa Anyiwo is an Assistant Professor of History at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. Her main areas of interest are African-American Women’s History and the studies of dominant stereotypes therein, primarily focusing on the Jezebel and the Mammy. She is from London and earned her PhD from University of Wales Swansea. She has a sweet red car with the Union Jack on the front grille and enjoys a nice buffalo wing now and then.

Beegle

Rebecca Beegle’s work has appeared in Fence, Hobart, elimae, the Austin Chronicle, and 5-Trope. Her plays include Have You Ever Been Assassinated? and Don’t Drown. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a company member of Rude Mechanicals. Her piece in fold took inspiration from The Golden Arm Trio’s album of the same name, and from the personal correspondence of Jim Thorpe.

Brill

Marlene Targ Brill is an award-winning author of more than 60 books and countless articles. Her work is mainly nonfiction and historical fiction, and she writes for children and adults. Several of her writings have received honors from IRC/CBC (Children’s Choice), Society of Midland Authors, and education associations. This segment comes from Michigan and originated from research into early lives of Native Americans, who sacrificed so much.

Christian

Tyrick Christian is a designer working in Chattanooga, TN.

Dittmar

Angela Dittmar holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she was awarded the Outstanding Achievement in Art Award and the Authors and Artists Award. She has exhibited her work in several juried exhibitions and has installed and removed filaments and other constructions in buildings all over Chattanooga. She is currently working toward an MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in painting at Hunter College, City University of New York. She recently studied on exchange at the Slade School of Art, University College London.

Elliott

brad elliott is a writer born in toledo, ohio currently living in eastern tennessee. he hopes to have a chapbook out soon with lavender ink. http://pumpkinheaded.blogspot.com

Epstein

Harry Epstein worked as a seasonal cannery worker at Agripac, Inc., and then Chiquita Processed Foods, LLC, from 1971 until 2001 in Eugene, Oregon. His guess is that he has dumped more broccoli than you have. His main claim to fame is that he is a friend of the beautiful and talented Lane Community College Department of Business Technology Administrative Office Assistant, and Outstanding Student of 2001, Nobuko Murakami.

Ghiara

Abhay Ghiara grew up speaking five languages and accompanying his father, an economist, on fieldtrips spanning the Indian countryside. He studied economics and yoga at Bombay University and founded a popular movement-based performance company. He now lives in Berkeley and teaches economics, yoga, and improvisation.

Goulish

Matthew Goulish is a member of Goat Island performance group. Routledge published his 39 Microlectures - In Proximity of Performance. Recent essays have appeared in the anthologies After Criticism, and Live - Art and Performance. Matthew teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and practices amateur economics.

Huelle

Shawn Huelle has an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began PhD studies at the University of Denver in the fall of 2007. He recently taught high school German for a year in Scottsbluff/ Gering, Nebraska.

Hunter

Carl Bryan Hunter lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and two daughters. In 2002, Hunter received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He divides his work time between software development, visual art and poetry. His poems have appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Preling, the Nashville Scene, and Exquisite Corpse. An iteration of his manuscript, Spooky Actions at a Distance, was selected as a finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Award (Alice James Books) and a semifinalist for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize (Sarabande Books). He is currently writing a new revision and accepting wishes of luck for next season.

Jovanovich

Alex Jovanovich is an artist living and working in Chicago.

McMahon

Maggie McMahon has been on faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 1985, where she is a UC Foundation Professor of Art. Her work was included in “USA: Portrait of the South” at the Museum of the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, Italy and she received an emerging artist grant from the Southern Arts Federation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maggie McMahon has had solo exhibitions at the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, Asheville Museum, Asheville, NC, and the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN.

Perrucci

Alissa Perrucci, PhD, works in the field of reproductive health research and evaluation in San Francisco, California. She has a PhD in clinical psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and an MPH from UC Berkeley. At Duquesne, she studied existentialphenomenological psychology, with an emphasis on qualitative methods. Her dissertation research explored exotic dancers’ experience of privacy. At UC Berkeley, she investigated factors associated with delay in receiving abortion care. Her current research focuses on the impact of policy

on women’s and minors’ access to reproductive health services, the relationship between privacy and subjectivity, and the role of stigma in women’s experiences of abortion.

Seaton

Susan Seaton’s current work explores the relationship between a mentally challenged man and his neighborhood. She has an MFA in painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and teaches in the Art Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Sloan

Bob Sloan is a working writer who doesn’t have, and isn’t pursuing, an MFA. He and his wife Julie live on thirty hillside acres east of Morehead, Kentucky, with one big dog and an embarrassing number of housecats. Their house and farm once belonged to Bob’s grandfather, and later to Bob’s father. His Appalachian commentaries have been heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and seen on the Herald-Leader’s editorial page, Kentucky Educational Television and in the Christian Science Monitor. Wind Publications has released three books from Bob: the short story collection Bearskin to Holly Fork: Stories From Appalachia and more recently, Home Call: A Novel of Kentucky. A sequel to Home Call, entitled Nobody Knows, Nobody Sees: A Novel of Appalachia, was published in the spring of 2006. Bob won a Gold Medal from the Faulkner Society of New Orleans, and a PRNDI from the professional association of public radio news directors. He says his goal as a writer is “to write honest stories that reflect the hard lot and the intelligence of the Appalachian working class and working poor.”

Tapp

Liz Tapp’s primary interests are in collaborative projects and the interweaving of multiple disciplines into a single unit. Tapp moved to Chicago in 2005 after graduating from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a BFA in Graphic Design. In addition to editing and making designs for Mule Magazine, Liz perpetually collaborates on a myriad of design projects. She most enjoys working on conceptual clothing structures, making regular designs for Punk Planet magazine, and maintaining a website of her own drawings and fancies at liztappdesign.com.

Tate

Stephanie Tate is a photographer and designer living and working in Southeast Tennessee.

Tegeder

Dannielle Tegeder received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and presently lives and works in New York. She has had several solo exhibitions in the US and internationally and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in major institutions, such as PS1/MoMA, The New Museum, The Brooklyn Museum of Art and Artist’s Space. She has been the recipient of many residencies and grants, including The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, The Fulbright Scholar Grant and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Fellowship.

Trowbridge

Adam Trowbridge is, in a manner of speaking, focused on artistic research that fractures the intersection of sensation and cognition. Materially, his recent work has been in the form of sculpture, computer-driven installation, and video. He is attending the University of Illinois at Chicago as an MFA student in Electronic Visualization. He holds a BFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Central Florida, where he studied under sculptor Jóhann Eyfells. His work has been featured nationally and internationally including Anthology Film Archives, NYC; Pleasure Dome, Toronto, Ontario; Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ; MicroCineFest, Baltimore, MD; and Square Eyes Festival, The Netherlands.

Welsh

Talia Welsh, PhD is an Assistant UC Foundation Professor in philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She specializes in the philosophy of psychology, 20th century European philosophy, and feminist theory. In particular, she works on how phenomenology helps clarify and critique applied work in psychology. Her publications include the forthcoming translation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s lectures in child psychology and numerous articles on Merleau-Ponty, feminist thought, and psychology.

Westbrook

Jessica Westbrook is an artist, designer, and photographer living and working in Chicago.

White

Constance White is a designer, artist, and educator. She is Adjunct Associate Professor of Visual Communication at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work on the lynching of African-Americans, done in collaboration with colleague Ann Tyler, was shown most recently at the University of Redlands, California, in the exhibition “The Edge of Conscience: The Long Shadows of Lynching”.

Wilber

Dolores Wilber is an interdisciplinary artist whose investigations begin in the ties that bind us together, our physical bodies and psychological and social violence. As an artist, designer and educator, she grapples with the cultural exhaustion that the broken promises of empty language and meaningless images create in our lives. Her most recent work addresses questions of vulnerability, issues of crime and punishment, and our loss, as humans, of a place in the world—a loss of home. Her work is often collaborative, and the form depends on the peculiarity of the investigation, variously taking the form of a photomontage, a text and image manifestation, an installation, video or live multimedia performance.

Wilson

Marion Wilson has had exhibitions at New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; Exit Art, Sculpture Center, NY; Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY; SPACES, Cleveland, OH; and Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, NY; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and scopeMiami/ Art Basel and scopeNew York. She is currently represented by Kasia Kay Gallery in Chicago and Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts in NYC. She has

been awarded residencies at the International Studio Program funded by NYSCA and the Elizabeth Foundation; the Nancy Graves endowed Chair for a sculptor at Millay Colony and a funded residency at Sculpture Space. She has received grants from Gunk Artists in the Public Realm; NYFA artists in the school; and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation. Wilson has been commissioned to do public projects by New Museum of Contemporary Art, Sculpture Center, scopeMiami and scopeNew York, the city of Cincinnati, OH, and co-directed Big Important Town in Syracuse, NY. Wilson is a graduate of Wesleyan University, CT (BAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;83); Columbia University, NYC (MA Urban Pedagogical Studies); and University of Cincinnati (MFA Sculpture). She lives and works in Syracuse with a studio in New York City. Wilson is the Director of Community Initiatives in the Visual Arts at Syracuse University.

The Tick-Tock Club A week’s hotel bill and nothing to pay out with makes a man feel like going on a big drunk. But I did not drink. I spent the day watching drunks go by like toy ducks at an amusement park. But I did not drink, no. My lips did not touch the rim of any glass. When I was thirsty I drank water from the fountain, no cups. Like I promised. I am broke and older than you by many years. To some this will matter. You make me want to remember instead of forget. What I mean to say is that you make memory good again. Not all of my life was a tragedy, after all. I am famous. I have children. I competed and more often than not I won. For most men this would be enough. What I know that they don’t? All that rustling and hustling comes down to not a whole lot. Things have sure gone wrong. Oh I was great in my time. I think this thought from a public bench looking out at a great lake. Too cold but I did not bring my coat. It sits back at my hotel, doing nobody no good. Maybe it will figure out how to settle up with the front desk. When I return it will have grown bills and nickels. I want to marry you and I will. Do you know what it means to have something to look forward to? That is you. What can I say about this lake? I wish you could hear it. Some things you wouldn’t expect end up having a voice. I’m not saying it’s not scary. I sit here terrified. I am being honest with you which I hope you will take for love.

BEEGLE

When I am dry we will have twelve years together. (I can see the future for a second.) Twelve is too few to think of now, from where I write this, in a big city with my pockets empty except for one stamp to mail this and a bit of chaw. But I can’t stop. It is my nature to count down.

CHRISTIAN

TATE

WILSON

A Brand New Heart Beatta Jeffries rolled east down the county road in her grey pickup truck. She flicked her cigarette ash out of the window and felt the warm summer night’s breeze on her face. She was on her way to see her mother. The shocks and struts on the truck creaked, and she felt every crack and crater in the cooling asphalt. She loved driving a shit car. There was a sharper, more intimate connection with the road and a closeness to the essence of the machine. During this particular period in her life, a great deal of Beatta’s waking hours were spent on the road. She worked on the ground fleet for a company that delivered organs ready for transplant to nearby hospitals with transplant teams. The organs were packed neatly into a sterile cooler and sealed with red biohazard tape. No mess, no indication of blood or bodily fluids. She would place the cooler in the car carrier secured in the passenger’s seat and fasten its seat belt. It sometimes felt like it was a little person; her little passenger. She knew that the organ was freshly removed from someone’s body, so wasn’t it possible that it was, in some sense, alive? About to be put into a new body and asked to resume its organly duties, she wondered in what manner it might be a sentient being. Beatta hadn’t worked through this possibility just yet, but she was planning to contemplate it further. The sun was setting over the flatness of the horizon. Beatta loved flat road and she loved to drive at a good, solid pace on a highway with few drivers. That was getting harder and harder these days. The world was too full of people. There were too many of them packed into the cities. Rural life was more spread out, but if you chose it you had to deal with small minds and strange hatreds that flowed among the residents. For some it took on a fetishistic quality, like the hatred really stood for something else, taking on an almost orgasmic quality for the person who had it. These kinds of people freaked her out. She had lived amongst them for her entire childhood, and had not been unaffected by their words or actions.

As she passed through field after field of farms, her mind turned to her childhood as it always did on her trips back to see her mother. Beatta’s childhood home, where her mother still lived, was pretty much like everyone else’s. There wasn’t too great a difference among folks in money or status, at least amongst the townspeople. As for the farmers in the rest of the county, she couldn’t say. Beatta’s mother was a clerk at the county courthouse; their town was the county seat. She had worked there all of

PERRUCCI

The truck hit a massive bump and Beatta caught air. Instinctively, her hand went over the passenger’s seat to keep the absent cooler in its place. She always protected the cooler, as if it were a child. When she was in high school she had an older friend who used to thrust an arm in front of the passenger’s seat during a sudden stop, as if a hand could have stopped Beatta from going through the windshield. But it was the sentiment that she found touching, recognizing the older girl’s need to be protective.

Beatta’s life. Her Dad had been a truck driver for 18 years, but he had died of a heart attack when Beatta was 25 years old. Beatta’s parents were White, and she was Black. She had been adopted at birth, but considered her parents to be her real parents through and through. Her felt sense was that she been conceived and born to her parents just like any other child. She knew that this defied logic, but the feeling had grown stronger as she grew older. For the most part, kids growing up had accepted the fact that she was adopted. Meeting a new kid always came with the obligatory explanation of why she looked different from her parents, but for children the novelty wore off quickly. It was only adults who felt the need to perseverate on it. One adult in particular had fixated on her family and the fact that she was not the same color as her parents. Mr. Shotwell was the father of three children – a girl and two boys – with whom she played regularly. The Shotwells attended a church on the far edge of the county, whereas other folks attended the Baptist church in the center of town. Mr. Shotwell was a deacon in his church and a member of the school board. Once, during a long day playing in the woods, Beatta had fallen and cut herself on a sharp rock buried in the mud. They had gone to the Shotwell house to get a bandaid. Mr. Shotwell came down the stairs to find the children dirty and Beatta injured. He stared at Beatta’s wound then disappeared into the bathroom to get supplies. He placed antiseptic, gauze and tape on the kitchen table, pulled up a chair, and motioned Beatta to come towards him. As he cleaned the wound, Beatta noticed the dirt under his own fingernails and the pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his shortsleeved shirt. He placed antiseptic solution on the gauze and rubbed the wound, each time dirt and blood coming off in the gauze. After about the third piece of gauze a wry grin broke out across his face. “Are you sure you’re black?” he blurted out, sarcastically. She could tell that for him this was a joke, but it didn’t feel funny to her. She shot an anxious glance toward her friends, who began to giggle. Their father’s remark seemed to momentarily remind them of her difference. Anger surged within her. Later, when she told her mother of the incident, June Jeffries empathized with her daughter and tried, not for the first time, to explain the nuances of people’s beliefs about race and belonging. As she got older she never forgot this incident. But she grew to know that no matter what other people said or felt about her, no one could take away the truth of her bond with her family. Sometimes Beatta wondered to what degree her intuition about people was attributable to years of sifting through other people’s reactions and projections. Out of their own feelings of superiority, people pitied her family for what they considered to be an unfortunate situation. While they held in high regard the idea of adoption, it was not something they would ever do themselves. Publicly people praised a family for

adopting a child, but privately they would thank the Lord that they themselves did not have to go to such extremes. She learned that there were distinct ways that people referred to adoptive vs. biological children within the same family. Once, she overheard two women talking during an open house at the school about a family from a nearby town. “Cathy and Mike finally got pregnant! Exclaimed Mrs. Newhauser, buzzing about the latest gossip. “They have two adopted girls, but now they’re going to have one of their own.” Beatta, only about nine at the time, had caught Mrs. Newhauser’s eye as she passed by and recognized the flicker of embarrassment that passed quickly over her face. It was as if people believed that no quantity of adopted children could ever equal the essence of a biological child. She also knew that the same people who would never adopt a child were the first ones to pass judgment on a woman having an abortion. To Beatta, that was the supreme manifestation of hypocrisy.

When Beatta smoked, she often thought about what her heart and her lungs were thinking. That is, if they could think at all. Were they angered by the hot smoke? Were they begging her to stop the onslaught of chemicals and poisons? It was harder to have empathy for her own insides but she definitely worried about her mother’s and what they had weathered through the years. She remembered a show on television that she had seen years ago, an image of a surgeon holding a coronary artery after

PERRUCCI

As she barreled down the road, Beatta thought about what she would talk about with her mother; what they would laugh about. She always had such a good time at her mother’s house. They both missed her father, but they weren’t afraid to bring him up. In fact, they sometimes spent the better part of the evening roasting him and reminiscing on all the funny, clever things that he had done or said. If her father were still alive, Beatta would have a lot less to worry about with her mother. Now, she felt the burden of her mother’s age falling solely upon her shoulders. It wasn’t so much that her mother was old; in fact she was turning 60 this fall. In theory, she still had many years to live. Her mother had smoked much of her life, and given up only recently. The impetus had been her husband’s death. They had both smoked, a fact that was not lost on Beatta as she lit a second cigarette. She stared into the red of the setting sun, pulling the hot smoke into her lungs. That was the part that she liked the most, the work of pulling it through the filter. She used to watch her mother as she lounged on the front porch, leaning back in the rocker, a cigarette poised between her fingers and her wrist bent just so. Her mother looked like she ruled the world when she smoked a cigarette. Beatta wondered how much of that perception arose out of something that belonged to her mother, and how much of it was a result of advertising on television.

an autopsy. The camera zoomed in close as he squeezed his fingers around the artery and flattened it down to the other end, just like a tube of toothpaste. The stuff that came out the other end was thick and pasty. The surgeon said it was a smoker’s artery. Beatta pretty much believed it, but held in reserve the possibility that her smoking would not kill her. That’s probably what her father thought, too. She was glad that her mother had quit and hoped that there was enough time left to repair damage that was already done. Beatta turned the truck into the long graveled driveway of her mother’s home. The porch was empty except for her mother’s new patio furniture. The house was entering a shabby phase. Her mother had not had work done on it in quite some time, and regular maintenance had definitely slowed down since her father died. June Jeffries heard the rumbling sounds of her daughter’s approaching vehicle, and appeared at the front door. The two women met at the end of the porch and exchanged a long, warm hug. “How are you, honey?” said June. “It’s been too long, sugar.” Beatta loved how her mother always addressed her as some form of sucrose. She knew that some would find it annoying, but to Beatta the warmth of childhood radiated in those words. Her mother motioned her to sit. Spending a Sunday afternoon on the porch was made possible by the comfort of the new chairs and the shelter from the sun that the wide awning provided. June went inside to get them some iced tea. As she sat on the porch waiting for her mother to return, Beatta surveyed the lands of her childhood empire. Most of it had been good. She had been taught by her mother and father to be strong and to stand up for herself. As a young child, she did not have problems fitting in. She had friends from all walks of life with whom she played. The largest conflicts arose over issues of sharing of possessions, which were usually resolved by the children themselves. Only rarely did parents have to get involved. When Beatta was five she entered the Kindergarten in town. Children came from all over the county. There were some kids there whose parents took objection to the inter-racial aspect of her family, but her mother had sheltered her from much of that in her early life. June appeared with the iced teas, complete with lemons on the side. They sat on the porch and sipped, enjoying the cooling of the sunset. They shared stories about the neighbors, their health, and the weather. June told Beatta that Mr. Shotwell had been at the hospital for some time, awaiting a donor for a heart transplant. He was weak, and if he didn’t get one soon he would probably die. “As you well know, honey, I was never very fond of Mr. Shotwell,” said June. “Neither was I,” replied Beatta, her mind drifting off as she watched the horizon.

As Beatta looked across the yard, past the fields and back, she once again gazed upon the Shotwell house. Mr. Shotwell had been a tall, imposing figure with incredible

power over his own children. When he ordered them to do something, they did it and they did it without question. The children were given little freedom and rarely pushed the boundaries of their father’s authoritarian spirit. Beatta remembered another encounter with Mr. Shotwell one afternoon in the parking lot after school. Parents were lined up waiting for their children. On the way to her mother’s car, she caught stares from Mr. Shotwell. He locked his gaze on her as she walked. His eyes were piercing grey slits and his brow was furrowed with disapproval. Innocently, she wondered if Mr. Shotwell had been apprised of the mistake she had made in class that day. Miss Cassell, the Kindergarten teacher, had been quizzing a group of girls about colors. The girls worshiped Miss Cassell, and Beatta did as well. “What’s the opposite of black?” Miss Cassell had asked. “Red.” Beatta had answered. “No,” Miss Cassell said gently, “the opposite of black is white.” While there was no trace of anger or disappointment in Miss Cassell’s voice, Beatta was embarrassed. She hated the feeling of having let her teacher down. Even though she realized her mistake, to her the colors had their own distinct order. Whenever her mother bought her a plastic paint box with a brush and eight little ovals of watercolors, she would pop them out and create her own spectrum. Red was first, followed by green then blue. It just felt more right to her. Throughout her childhood, June Jeffries had struggled to communicate the reality of other people’s racism without destroying her daughter’s sense of trust in the world or creating a burdensome fear. Looking back, Beatta had to admit that her mother, faced with this horrific task of balancing the truth with a protective instinct, came to a compromise. In the case of Mr. Shotwell, June told her daughter that he had been born with a bad heart and it had made him mean. Beatta later realized that her mother’s choice of explanation was grounded in the knowledge that she would be having these conversations with her daughter throughout her childhood. There would be many more opportunities to take the conversation to a deeper level once Beatta had reached an age when she could be both circumspect and strong. But at age five, June needed to introduce her daughter to the tragic imperfections of people in a manner that she could handle.

The next morning, she awoke at 4:00am to the sound of her medical pager going off. There was an organ that needed to be delivered. In accordance with her standard routine, Beatta called in to the center to get her pick-up location. She downed a glass of orange juice and brushed her teeth. It was too early for coffee. She put some cereal into a plastic zip bag, grabbed her paperwork and headed out to the truck. She took city streets to the Methodist Hospital.

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Beatta hit the road well after the sun had gone down. She passed by farmland then merged onto the highway heading back to the city. She thought about her mother back at home. She felt that she was safe, but knew that she was lonely. As much as she wanted to be there for her mother, there was just no way that Beatta could move back.

She checked in at the front desk and took a seat in the waiting area. She was on the basement floor. A sign reading â&#x20AC;&#x153;Coronerâ&#x20AC;? framed double doors leading to a set of hallways and offices. Within ten minutes, a technician called her back to an office down the main hall. They filled out the mandatory paperwork, and then he handed Beatta the sterile cooler, sealed with biohazard tape. She passed back through the front desk area, turned, and headed out to the parking lot to the medical transport vehicle. Once inside, she switched on the dome light and reviewed her paperwork, double-checking her destination so that she was sure where she was going. It was nearly halfway through her journey that Beatta made a connection between her destination and the conversation that she and her mother had over the weekend sitting on the porch sipping their iced teas. She was headed straight for the county hospital near where her mom lived; near where she grew up. She was going to the hospital where Mr. Shotwell was being treated, and instantly she concluded that she was delivering Mr. Shotwell his brand-new heart. At once the smoothness of the road vanished. Her tires felt like they were driving through tar; she could swear that she felt the transmission begin to grind as if all the oil had drained from the engine. She looked over at the sterile packed cooler. It looked different than the other coolers that had occupied that seat before. It stared back at her, as if it were thinking. Was it possible that a heart could refuse to be implanted into a certain body, a certain person? She had never considered this before. Could a human heart, still alive although separated from its original body, pass judgment upon the new body in which it was placed, rendering it an unacceptable host? If so, then it would be a cruel form of punishment to the donated organ to place it into the body of such a person. Maybe if Beatta didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make it to the hospital in time, she could liberate the heart from this imposed sentence. Maybe it actually wanted her to do this. These thoughts raced through her head. The exit for the county road was coming up. She thought of her mother and what she would say, what she would do. The exit for the county road was upon her. She stepped on the gas. Then she swerved the vehicle to the right, just missing the metal guardrail. Anger surged inside her momentarily, and then dissipated. As she returned her focus to the road, she noticed the sun was peeking up over the horizon. She reached under the sun visor for her sunglasses, took a deep breath, and headed east.

André Houston, Texas is not much beloved by those who’ve been forced to relocate to its tropical heat, its wealth of large and vicious insects, its endless suburbs and its ceaseless traffic. A post-apocalyptic mixture of a tropical swamp and a polluted metropolis, if the breeze blows against your favor you get a chemical, wet, rotten stink. If you want to escape the city, you can drive (either one, two, or four hours depending on traffic) out to Galveston for a dip in the ocean. Just don’t wear a white swimsuit unless you were looking for a cheap dye in a brownish variety. Yet, when we drove down to Houston from Denver, I thought Houston was beautiful. My father and brother took the old, brown Landcruiser with Winston, my mother and I trailed in the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera with Tika. (There was some heated debate if separating the dogs was a good idea, debate that inspired Winston to inspect his hindquarters thoroughly.) On the ride, my mother and I located the deep depth of our musical incompatibility. She asked what kind of jig-a-boo music Depeche Mode was. Now you might read that sentence and think, wow, her mother is a racist. Or despite the unfortunate choice of words, Depeche Mode is such cracker (British wanker?) music (if we must use racial slurs). I think I called her a racist.

Not only did most homes have private pools, each subdivision had a large community pool or two. If you traveled slightly north under the power lines that even made the house of baseball star Steve Portugal look miniscule, you would find a large Olympic sized pool which I swam at as an extremely mediocre backstroker with the local high school team. Driving past the Olympic pool, past another development—rich one on the right (one of the biggest owners of Houston-area Dairy Queens lived there)— poorer one on the left, you came to the master planned strip mall. Here too, all the buildings were neat and shared similar brown brick store fronts and blue signs. It was

WELSH

My parents had bought a house in First Colony. First Colony was a master planned community. The words “master planned” are thrown around pretty freely in the suburbs of America. It is my belief that there are likely no rules for calling something master planned since many “master planned” communities do not look to deserve the words “master” or “planned.” However, I would find it hard to find a more master planned community than First Colony. It was surrounded by gates complete with guards. Each smaller subdivision, green space, shop, or golf course was separated by long boulevards with immaculately manicured trees and lawns. Golf courses, intersecting 18-holers, wound around the developments and it was a rare day that you didn’t at least see a few souls next to their golf carts putting in their hours of labor against that all-too-challenging game. The subdivisions also had names. For instance, Sweetwater was the richest of First Colony developments and boasted possession of some famous athletes. Some basketball stars, doctors, and the other very wealthy lived in the community called Sweetwater. Our community, The Commonwealth, was somewhere next in line of richness.

complete with two grocery stores, a Chili’s, an Applebee’s, a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a YogurtFreeze, and my first job outside of babysitting, Soup ‘N Salad. Soup ‘N Salad was owned by Palestinians who paid us little, but who gave us all the free salad and soup we could desire. We were asked to tell the illegals who worked in the kitchen what to do, but none of us knew much Spanish so we used a great deal of charades. I never liked how Mr. Hammuda would always speak in Arabic to his brother when I was standing nearby. I couldn’t imagine what he would have to say about me, but I still didn’t like the feeling he could talk about me. Lacey Patterson who worked there with me pointed out that the illegals did the same thing, talked about us in Spanish, but as far as I could tell they didn’t know English so they didn’t have a choice. (Except she didn’t say “illegal” instead: “wetback.”) Years later, I would have aesthetic and moral queasiness thinking of the sterility, the uniformity and the complete lack of architectural imagination in such a master planned community. But at 15, when we drove in, Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration playing quietly, I thought it was the most beautiful place to live I’d ever seen. Everything was so green! Everything was so clean! The houses were so big, so stone and brick, so impressive! Oh my god, every other house had a private swimming pool! I am quite sure there was little similarity between us and the first colonizers, but colonizers we were of this swampy, buggy, flat plain of the Houston area. We molded that clay ground into greens and terminated fire ants as fast as possible. We cut down messy trees and planted attractive ones neatly in rows. We cleaned the limbs of those disgusting webby bug nets. (It is true by “we” I mean “illegals” but, we had the master plan.) The last summer I spent in Houston, I was on a mission to save money for college. With the Landcruiser as my vehicle, I searched for a job. Soup ‘N Salad had fallen by the wayside of my senior year and I felt a need to go beyond handing ice teas and facilitating the soup choices. I found a KinderCare in Missouri City. Missouri City is not a city, like Houston is a city, but another far-flung suburban center to the south of Houston. However, it does not have a master planned community like First Colony. I responded to an ad for a lifeguard, having decided that a lifeguard was just the kind of move up I needed. My mother asked if it was in Black Town to which I said “yes,” and then “don’t be a racist.” She said she wasn’t being a racist if she said “black” and blacks did live there. “But you don’t really say “White Town” for our community.” “That’s because it isn’t all white.” “So you’re saying that if I applied for a job in a town where most people were white, which is like almost every other place we’ve lived, you’d say ‘White Town.’” She laughed and said, “Well, I guess not.” KinderCare possessed a pool which was slightly larger than a whirlpool with its deepest end being all of 3 feet. As I surveyed it, I turned to Keisha Taylor, Head Teacher and Director, and asked “Why do you need a lifeguard?”

“Yeh, I know. It’s the law. We have the kids swim in groups each afternoon from 3-5. We pay $5 an hour.” “Great.” And with that I began an absurdly easy job. Each afternoon I would take the Landcruiser over, a/c off, letting the ripe, humid air blow over me to acclimatize my body to the an afternoon outside. I would stand to my waist in the warm water for two hours, playing with the kids and monitoring the occasional splashing game turned vicious. The KinderCare “pool” was bordered by three feet of concrete on each side. To the left, if you were standing waist deep in the pool with your back to the sun, was the KinderCare building. The rest of the sides were covered by 8 feet of chain fence with barbed wire on the top. It looked like a pool for midget convicts. We had no chairs (or any pool toys for that matter). Some of the kids came and swam in their shorts which we weren’t supposed to allow but it seemed cruel to forbid them to swim if they didn’t have a suit. A month passed. Mother suggested I needed to work more than 10 hours a week. I concurred, but a month still passed before I organized a one-day experience of utter horror of working at McDonald’s. To my shame, I “quit,” if by “quit” you mean never showed up again after my first afternoon shift (even though I was scheduled to work a further 15 hours that week) and didn’t bother to pick up the check for my one afternoon of fast food labor. To my utter delight, Keisha asked me later that week if I would be interested in being a teacher in the mornings for the toddlers. Teachers were paid $4.25 an hour. “Less than a lifeguard!”

How I loved the toddlers! Half of the backroom was the toddler zone which was created by a white picket fence and a little gate. I would come and relieve the only other white employee, Mary Ferguson, from the earliest morning shift at 10am and stay until the pool shift started. Mary sometimes worked overtime in the baby room after I arrived. There was fastidious, beautiful Thomas whose nature made him abhor finger-painting and also made it impossible to potty train him. I think he just didn’t want to have any knowledge of the entire mess down “there.” He would lie on the changing table looking steadfastly at the ceiling with a tight jaw until we were done. There was RayMonica (her father was named Ray and her mother Monica) who was the loudest and craziest toddler and who always got everyone to play, even little Thomas couldn’t resist her enthusiasm. There was poor white trash Emily whose entire sibling family came to our KinderCare, all five of them. She often sported bruises and “was simply the most stubborn child known to man,” Mary would say.

WELSH

“It’s the law.” “To pay teachers less?” “No, fool, to pay lifeguards $5/hr.” I laughed. I felt like hugging Keisha and every child that passed me. No more McDonald’s! Hopefully mother wouldn’t ask if I quit. I just now had to avoid ever going to McDonald’s until I went to university and left First Colony for good. I started frequenting Burger King.

The punishment for a misbehaving toddler was to place them in a high chair. Some would just sit there quietly viewing the chaos of the half-room going on under their feet happy to have some moderation imposed upon their emotional tantrums. For Emily, it was torture to have to sit still and she would rock the chair dangerously if you turned your back for a second. In my presence, she never got the chair to fall over, but Mary thought we needed to find a different punishment for her given the likely consequence of her high chair agitation. Occasionally the older kids were taken on a field trip, the nature of which I was never quite clear since the toddlers never went. One time I did drive the big van to a local school to pick up some kids from a camp, but this was my only time in the van working for the daycare but away from it. The van smelled like old food and that sickly sweet disinfectant they used. It smelled like children, like school corridors, and heavy summer air. One day, I was left alone in the building with the toddlers. Some teachers hadn’t shown and Mary went home early since there were no babies. Keisha asked if I would be okay for a few hours alone. I found out I had to keep an eye on one older student, André, since his parents had not signed the release form. I knew André, as I knew all the children, from pool time. He was a large kid, not fat or “husky” as one might try to kindly say, but large: tall and strangely muscular for a five-year-old. With his shirt off in the pool he looked freakish, not because of any disproportion, but because his body looked so adult. He didn’t know how to swim, but in the bathtub pool this lack of skill hardly mattered. The older kids liked to show they could swim by making the one or two strokes possible and turning around to perform the same feat. I noticed André couldn’t manage it and seemed shamed by this, as you are when you are a kid, shamed by not knowing how to make your body do the things other kids know. I have memories of shoe-tying being a challenge that wasn’t resolved until third grade. Someone ridiculed me when I had to have the teacher, Ms. Simpson, do it for me. She didn’t chide my little colleague. I knew she was irritated. André refused to come in the toddler half-room, showing no interest in playing with the younger children which occasionally the older kids beg to do. He did take some interest in our ritual post-nap finger-painting session (which Thomas would sit out looking horrified at our messy designs and mostly at our messy fingers). André painted, with a singular focus, a much larger picture than the toddlers could achieve; he painted the classic picture of all children: a big sun, a tree and a house. A few of them even looked with something like awe at this enormous picture, which took up an entire piece of large poster board. He was slightly less grumpy at being left behind at that moment of adoration. Charlie looked and mumbled something which wasn’t yet comprehensible words, but obviously meant appreciation of André’s enormous scene.

Here is where my memory grows dim. I believe I wanted André to sit and not move around the corner of the backroom to the other side. If he went there, I couldn’t see him and I couldn’t leave the room where the toddlers were. But I am not sure if this is what started our disagreement or not. Perhaps it just started with him getting increasingly churlish after I tried to wash his hands post-finger-painting. I was willing to allow for dirty fingernails, but I couldn’t tolerate his hands actually being sticky from paint. He would get that cheap watery poster paint everywhere. André did not want my help, but wouldn’t wash his hands any more than a quick rinse. In some frustration or rebellion or grumpiness or headstrongness, André started heading around the corner out of my sight. “André you get back here right now!” I yelled. He stopped. I stormed out of the gate, shut it, and my crowd of toddlers came to the fence to witness. I took André’s arm firmly. I told him in no uncertain terms he could not play in the other side until the other teachers returned. Until then he would have to stay on this side of the room. He pushed away from my arm. I held firm. He wiggled. Breaking free, he made a rush to the next room. Although he was strangely big and strong for a five-year-old, I had a good three feet and hundred pounds on him. In two steps I had his arm again. At this point, or a minute later, André went berserk. He screamed, he bit, he flailed his free arm around, started kicking with his legs. I grabbed the other free arm and held him up and off the floor. As in a cartoon his legs kept at it and he yelled at me “Bitch! Cunt! Bitch!”

André’s “cunt!”s and “bitch!”es stopped after what seemed to be fourteen hours, but probably was one or two minutes. He lay there panting with exhaustion and then cried a little. I took my legs off him and he crawled into my lap and hugged me. He had wet his pants. I was really regretting just about everything I had ever done in my life at that moment, but I also remember wishing I had another pair of pants. We stood up. I asked him if he had another change of clothes, a KinderCare policy (in case of accidents). We found his other clothes and he changed. He asked me to not tell his mother he wet his pants, I said, “of course.” He came back by the toddler enclosure and quietly looked at a book until Keisha and the rest of the kids came back.

WELSH

Finally I grew tired and put his flailing, profanity spewing self back on the floor where he screamed loud enough for the folks on the other side of Houston to hear, “I’ll cut you! You white bitch! I’LL CUT YOU YOU WHITE BIIIITTTCHHH!” as he fell to the floor. I backed off and he came at my ankles with his hands and mouth. I saw it coming and managed to secure him with my arms before I got bitten again. I got down on the ground and pinned him under my legs in what seemed the most delicate but secure way to hold his jittering spastic body. I looked occasionally over at the toddlers who were entranced (or crying in fear) by this point; none of them had moved from the fence so I could make sure everyone was safe.

When I left that day, I quit, almost crying with guilt, but furious with Keisha as well. I could not believe I was left alone, something I didn’t appreciate until my interlude with André. I shook with a surplus of emotion on the drive home. I didn’t tell my mother who at that point in her life had her own worries, large and overbearing worries that seemed to seep out of every pore, worries I knew better than to offer another contribution. As I stood in the kitchen, drinking a Diet Coke, looking at our immaculate clover shaped pool and pondering if I wanted to sit in the floating chair and read a book for awhile, Keisha called. She begged. She pleaded. She told me André would never be in my care again. She promised she wouldn’t leave me alone in the daycare again. I relented, not because I needed the money. The summer was almost at a close and well, I lived in a house in First Colony, subdivision of The Commonwealth. I agreed because I had reduced a small child to wet his pants while being pinned under my legs. The next day as we were packing up to leave, Keisha asked to see me. I was wet with chorine pool water, drips rolling down my face, my wet chlorine greenish-blonde hair in a ponytail. André stood at the front door in front of two large black people in business clothes: his parents. The father, a giant of a man, letting me see where André’s unusual size came from, said tersely: “André what do you have to say for yourself?” “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry, ma’am.” The father growled. “I’m sorry, ma’am.” “Oh André, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” I felt as if my stomach fell, my heart was broken, guilt constricted my throat. I still can feel that moment reaching back from that wet, humid summer filled with kids and anticipation of going to university and all those pools: both big and small. I smiled at the parents and assured them it would be fine and André and I would get along well. André’s head looked up a little at this and he seemed less defeated. I blushed. The parents looked angry. Keisha wanted the day to end and sighed meaningfully. We shook hands awkwardly. I went back into the toddler room as if I left something there which I hadn’t, but I couldn’t bear the thought of walking out with André’s family.

Day at the Races

I. Games You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.1

In 4th grade we took IQ tests. I didn’t have a strong grasp of standard deviations, but the bell graph I understood. There was no joy, only doom and the fear of mass. Given a thousand kids; 998 would chase me through a jungle, clobber me with firewood and stomp my head into a nest of roots. I planned for secrecy and searched for alliance. In 7th grade one of my best friends was a girl named Amy Windle. I can say with certainty that she was cooler than me, but years earlier she had sought me for alliance. For us P.E. felt like the yard in a prison movie. We often perched on the aluminum bleachers and tried to predict who would be in a fight that day, who would win, and what the winner and loser would be doing in twenty years. All day she had looked a little freaked out. She blurted, “It’s really just fucked up that my pussy is so near my butthole.” I had been brained and sat silent as she continued, “Why would God think that makes sense?” The egg is covered with fine gold inlay, and ornamented in lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl. Unlike most eggs, this one is hinged and closed with a delicate looking clasp. The egg appears extremely fragile. > Open egg.

Exerpt from the 1980 computer text adventure game Zork written by Infocom.

HUNTER

You have neither the tools nor the expertise.

II. Frivolity Big ogre scrambling across the rocks— that’s me: the one with his nut sack flapping. His years are like another’s uneventful day. Sometimes he will go a minute without breathing before nodding into motion with a sigh. That’s the one you might have loved if he weren’t such a capacitor, if he weren’t so slow to burn. The banjo boys were sitting in the salt flats. My grade school teachers were thrown like spears and sunk shin deep in the sandy paste. There they teetered at the angle of repose. The road from Badwater to Owens Lake carries a borax wagon of songs. West of Yucca Mountain I saw a jackrabbit run up a bluff faster than a rock could have fallen down it. I chased a roadrunner down a dirt road. The roadrunner wasn’t so fast, well not cartoon fast, but fast enough. A stranger sitting on the tailgate of his Jeep had seen me chasing. Feeling silly I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back.

III. Occupation At the ministry of weights and measures we were always cruel, which is why we all felt holy and fair. At the Grand Ole Opry, an old, dying fiddle player finished his piece. Everyone clapped as he walked from the stage, but then he tripped over a chord and fell cracking his fiddle. We were all concerned until the announcer soothed us by saying what a vibrant rascal he still is. In space, gravity always plays the smart money on a fall. When gravity plays, I back away from the table and fidget with drink and look for smudges on my glasses.

HUNTER

Our boys were mad with the crusherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the big green one. We knew they were weak and would cry mommy. We knew god loved us. We knew kicking their balls and throwing handfuls of gravel would send them sideways. We love to see them sideways. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for what mommy would hug us most. As is often the case, I understand the jist, but the accounting is beyond my level.

IV. Family Life I got an eyesight ready for the loading; a tongue that make infrequent deliveries. I got a heart who thumps oddly these days. My album plays on with the needle circling over the core. When I die it won’t be my heart though; someone angrier than I’ve ever been will do me in—I’m pretty certain of this. Maybe I’ll be eighty, but I see it coming. Antigonne, now she was something. If I ever have a daughter, I’ll name her Antigonne. I’ll say, “Fetch me a big mess of anarchy, darling.” And out the side-door she will scamper looking for the prettiest one. I am going to miss her like crazy until she’s finally born. This morning I remembered the old story of the beekeeper’s daughter who playing one day, kicked a ball into a hive and was stung to death, and of the wolf keeper’s daughter who was eaten by wolves, and the knife maker’s daughter; the spin doctor’s daughter; the bomb maker’s daughter. Working alone, my grandfather lost his left leg in a sawmill. Machines hold no notion of what is too much to bear. If a machine catch a body comin’ thro’ the rye If a machine kiss a body need a body cry? The machine says, “I will cut down the tree, I will kill Humbaba, the whole world will know how mighty I am.” Even Machiavelli, great maker of machines, could never hope to reason with a machine.

V. Slumber

HUNTER

“Law of science” is to “rule of law” as “faith to rule” is to (blank)? On my cot in the Mojave, the night sky was so foamy thick with stars it appeared solid; like looking down into a canyon. I kept feeling I would fall up into it. I kept jerking for the rails. For the first time the Milky Way was actual. I had never before called them the heavens. My sleep was the very sound of the Sun burning and the ghost ship moon creaked in the black spray. My hairy legs in terry cloth. My feet soak in a pan of warm milk. My dear god I cry for everything I’ve never known.

VI. Letters Dear Polemarchus, I had a good friend in high school who said one day that he would kill anyone if I just asked him to. He wasn’t just fucking around. He really would have done it—probably still would. I had another friend in high school who turned me in for drinking on a science trip. He had no reason to squeal just a great desire. Tonight which old friend should I trust? Dear Winston Smith, What do you think of our philosopher king? Dear Thucydides, The light was burning in the little room where old Porteous sits so I knocked and we talked about Corcyra. We talked about Gilgamesh and what it means to be a hero. How the public definition of hero has become: “One who is unlucky; One who by random chance suffers or dies instantly.” Porteous liked the wool socks and asked me to pass on his thanks.

VII. Civics Just to see a man wash the stupid from his forehead— that grim ash of terror being soaped right off. I wish to not despise so many of my countrymen. I so need to play with the others, but History that unsympathetic fugitive, fearing exposure, covers my mouth and drags me into the woods. History’s got a mean wad and whispers secret stories about unknown heretics and hisses I’m be doomed if I repeat them. When should I say love and mean fear? When should I say freedom and mean control? What numbers are allowed to add up to four?

HUNTER

Words again have had to change their normal meaning. The Peloponnesians and their violent teacher ride the night sky like bones down a creek bed. Yippee you damn genius here’s my throat.

DITTMAR

Train Line on Wallpaper Identity markers Color attachments Building blocks

Mark Wigley lays the footwork for his argument that architecture is used as a structural metaphor for philosophy and how translation binds discourses together in fluctuation and how deconstruction theory attempts to reveal the incompleteness of those discourses through a thorough interrogation of the con-

With that in mind, do we form our identities and realities the same way we develop philosophical and theoretical discourses? If so, how do we embrace the flux of our identities without losing the very grain of who we are? How does this fluctuation affect the decisions we make about our engagements and the people involved? Thus, how does this affect the way we understand our selves?

DITTMAR

Through my experiences and engagements in daily life, I have learned that ideas and concepts can be shared but not fully translated from one person to another. And similar to language, my conscious thinking, which has been constructed through language, images, and sensory experiences and which produces the ideas and concepts that I develop exist in a state of both constant fluctuation and reliability on my past. Jacques Derrida alludes to this quality of language that weaves us together through the fractures and folds of incomplete translations happening across the layers of linguistics in his text Of Grammatology. Furthermore, Mark Wigley reinforces Derridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept by carefully analyzing how the following discourses: philosophy, architecture, deconstruction, and translation, are all reliant on each other in their constitutions as well as independent of each other in their functions through the folds found within their languages and structures in his text The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haunt. I am specifically interested in how we, more specifically me, use these systems and structures to build identities and personalities. And conversely, how we construct our identities based on the judgements we make about the engagements we have within the systems and structures that we exist in. From the first time a baby starts to recognize what satisfies his or her body, little minor judgements are being made; and they act as a record of everything that is good and bad. These judgements collect and are organized in schemas, a term in psychology used to describe the collection of similar information stored in memory. And possibly providing a ground to support the next and a basis for the development of a personality. Similar to the trace of a sign and to the body of language, incomplete translation governs the connection between each judgement. And of course, each judgement can lead to the formation of sanctums, as in privilege or bias, stereotypes, and stigmas. Deconstruction is a key tool for deciphering sanctums surrounding a particular subject, detaching what could be considered debris and expansion of its subject into a new or updated form.

stitutions of each discourse, how they relate and subordinate each other. Wigley supports and discusses Heidegger’s idea that the architectural term “ground” is only another word for support in metaphysics by discussing the relationship between the ground and the edifice of a structure. This idea has been extended to elucidate the material sense of security, or the feeling of groundedness, that is formed through the metaphorical construction of a ground/support. Thus becoming a basis for identities, concepts and discourses, that which the “edifice” stands upon. Within this discussion, Wigley cites Walter Benjamin’s concept that through a translation an original can be revived, as if a translation was a means of continuation. By providing a supplement to the first, the translation extends the life of the original. This new life allows for new ideas or possible adjustments or expansions. Conversely, this form of progression also calls to question what is lost or forsaken in a supplemental system. Derrida expanded on Benjamin’s theory with the notion that this negotiation is one of incomplete translation so that the original remains attached to the translation, recognizing the importance of the original context. A complete translation would be a replacement or substitution, discarding all original information and context. With this interrogation, Wigley provides us with a new way of understanding philosophy, architecture, deconstruction, and translation as structurally interdependent while also retaining an explicit approach to understanding different ideas and concepts. It appears to me that, generally speaking, he has provided us with a better understanding of how languages and structures can cross over the linguistical gaps and fractures, strengthening the community of human thought that is connecting us rather than dividing us, while still retaining the importance of individuality. From here, it is important to recall Derrida’s idea of the French word “supplément” with the addition of these two elements—his own idea of incomplete translation and the idea of the detachment of unnecessary or sanctioning judgements–in an effort to see how deconstruction theory can really find a balance in expanding without losing the historical importance of the subject. Derrida’s definition of supplément, this term embraces a division in its descriptors where the supplement is either a substitution for the original by replacement, or as an addition to the original by expansion. The latter form of supplement may in fact be of completion or be or become ornamental, taking a loss in function, but can be a gain in other regards, sensual, perhaps. Both incomplete translation and detachment appear to occupy a positive space of connection. It is this idea that an incomplete translation and detachment can supply a space for change and growth that I have come to understand how the public of New York City uses the city’s transit system’s codes. The coding system of the Metropolitan Transit Authority trains and train lines involves both a color and a character, which is either a letter or a number. Compositionally, the character is placed as the figure within a circle of color, the

ground. The character represents which train is running on which train line, represented by the color. The colors are seen on the transit subway maps, and then in conjunction with the character overhead while transferring to another train line, on the platforms and on the individual trains. The train lines are not compatible with each other; hence the need to distinguish them. The characters represent the destinations of the trains on that specific line and the speed of the train. However the train cars are interchangeable and can replace each other when needed, but then are not always coded correctly.

The actual paintings that I have made in response to my experience of this system and with the community that uses it are color fields of each train line on wallpaper pasted to my studio walls. I have chosen to work reductively, eliminating many other factors about the system and the actual paintings, to enhance the focus of the work. It is my intention that the texture of the thickly applied latex house paint with a semi-gloss sheen on the surface of the wallpaper reflects the actual gritty feel of the subway stations. I understand that although the visual colors of the subway codes have not lost their function on the maps and in identifying the train lines, they now seem to occupy the sensual space of the dĂŠcor of the subway stations in the minds of the local commuters. I anticipate

DITTMAR

As a newcomer to this area, I was aware of the adjustment I was going through. With the change of settings, my own sense of being or identity was offset by the new structures and systems that surrounded me. It was like I had to filter through the new contextual information to regain my balance and redefine my own structure to be able to adjust. In using the transit system, I do rely on the colors to help navigate the system; however, through my interaction with local commuters, I have become very aware of their lack in using the colors. Over the manifold of rides, the function of the color has appeared to have become invisible, or simply is stored in a deeper consciousness. As a commuter becomes more familiar with the system and its inconsistencies, it appears that the characters are the only item that is associated with a specific train line or destination. Albeit, color initially is recognized by memory faster than a character is as it refers to only a visual experience; and I imagine the system would be much harder to navigate if the color were completely removed from the maps and symbols found on the trains, platforms, and transfers. Still in the minds of the commuters, color has been detached from the usage of the codes, and the characters are the present signifier, possibly a choice made long ago as people gradually started recognizing the inconsistencies and aligning with one train, instead of one train line. This also reflects that many live outside of Manhattan, where the train lines divide to cover more territory. Still, color seems to be invisible here throughout the communities. Is it possible that the two factors in the case of the NYC transit system assume different roles when presented in a public arena? Could this be an example of an incomplete translation of a structure? Or is it possible that color becomes a signifier of the unconscious? And are visual experiences subordinate to language due to the level of tangibility?

that when I remove the pasted color fields from my walls, they will no longer be read as color field paintings, but more as remnants or artifacts even, of the investigation of the system and the experience of the paintings, emphasizing the temporality of how we engage with both tangible objects, structures, and systems as well as what might be less tangible, sensoral experiences that we meet on a daily basis and how we organize the information we gain from these moments in our minds. Although the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engagement with the transit system is far from a temporary experience, our engagement with art, people, and other aspects of life that inspire emotive responses can be momentary and often full of spontaneity. The memories and evidence of these experiences are intangible, and seemingly unrelated connections made in our minds. Although they seem to exist to describe the past, they start to illuminate how interwoven these connections are and the grain of our being seems to be formed by this fabric. This is where the recovery of lost elements can help us to understand why certain experiences make sense and become important when they might not have been at the time. The security that we seek in our being seems to lie in the way we recognize this importance and embrace what each experience has to offer at the time of the engagement and how it might build, break or expand on what we already know.

*Written in 2006 by Angela Dittmar, edited in 2007.

Bibliography Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jan. 8, 1998 The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haunt by Mark Wigley, Aug. 4, 1995

SEATON

On January 14, when the hills across the valley were long and white, Emma returned home from the weaving mill and found a letter at the far end of the entryway to her building; it had been sent from the side where there was no shade and no trees, and it informed her that her father had died between two lines of rails in the sun. She was misled at first by the side of the station and the warm shadow of the building and a curtain; then the unknown handwriting (made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies) made her heart flutter. Nine or ten smudgy lines covered almost the entire piece of paper and the girl with him. Emma sat at a table in the shade, outside the building, and read that Sr. M. had accidentally ingested a very hot overdose of the express and died in forty minutes on the third in the hospital. The letter stopped at this junction for two minutes and was signed “What should we drink?” by a resident of the rooming house in which her father went on. “He could not have known,” the girl asked, “that he was writing to the dead man’s daughter?” Emma dropped the letter. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table. “It’s pretty hot,” the man said. The first thing she felt was a beer in her stomach and a trembling in her knees; then, a sense of blind guilt, of unreality, of cold cervezas, of fear; then, a desire for this day to be past into the curtain. Then immediately she realized that such a big wish was pointless, for her father’s death was the only thing that had happened in the world, yes, and it would go on happening, two big ones, endlessly, forever after. She, the woman, picked up the piece of paper, two glasses of beer and two felt pads, put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table, looked at the man and the girl, and went to her room. Furtively, the girl was looking off. She put the line of hills away for safekeeping in a drawer. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry, as though she somehow knew what was coming. She may already have begun to see the things that look like white elephants. She said, “I’ve never seen one.” The man would happen next. She was already. The person she was to become drank his beer. No, in the growing darkness, you wouldn’t have, and until the end of that day, Emma might have wept over the suicide of the man, who in happier days gone by had said, “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.” The girl recalled summer outings to a small farm, she recalled (or tried to recall) her mother, she recalled the family’s little house that had been sold at auction, she looked at the yellow lozenges of the bead curtain, recalled the verdict of prison, the disgrace, the anonymous letters with the newspaper article about the “Embezzlement of Funds by Teller,” recalled (and this she would never forget) that on the last night, her father had sworn that the thief was formerly the manager of the mill and now one of its owners. Since they’ve painted something on it, Emma had kept the secret. She said, “What does it say?” She had revealed Anis del Toro to no one, not even to her best drink. Perhaps she could try it. The man shrank from it out of profane incredulity. Perhaps she thought the man called, “Listen.” The secret was the link between herself and the absent man through the curtain. The woman didn’t know she knew; Emma came out from the miniscule fact a sense of power. She did not sleep that night, and by the time we want first light (two Anis

HUELLE

Hills Like Emma Zunz

del Toro defined the rectangle of the window), she had perfected her plan with water. She tried to make that day want it with water (which seemed, I don’t know, interminable to her) like every other. In the mill, there were rumors of a strike; Emma declared it good with water, as she always did. It’s all right that she was opposed to all forms of violence. “At six, when her workday was done, she went with them to a women’s club that had a gymnasium and a swimming pool with water?” asked the woman. Yes, with water. They joined; she had to repeat “and then it tastes like licorice.” The girl said she had to applaud the vulgar jokes that accompanied the struggle to put the glass down. That’s the way with everything. She discussed with the girl and the younger of the “everything tastes of licorice” girls which moving picture they would see Sunday evening. And then there was talk of boyfriends, especially all the things you’ve waited so long for. No one expected Emma to have anything to say, like, “Oh, cut it out.” In April you started it. The girl said she would be nineteen. I was being amused, but men still inspired in her an almost pathological fear.… I was having a fine time. Home again. Well, let’s try soup thickened with a fine time and some vegetables. All right. I was trying early, went to bed and forced to sleep. Thus passed Friday the fifteenth—a day of work, bustle, and the mountains looked like white elephants—wasn’t that the day before the bright day? On Saturday, that bright impatience wakened her. Impatience, not nervousness or second thoughts wanted to try this new drink—and that’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try the remarkable sense of relief that new drinks had reached this day at last? I guess there was nothing else for her to plan or picture to herself; so within a few hours she would have looked across to the simplicity of the fait accompli hills. She read in Lovely Hills that she was to weigh anchor that night from Pier 3. She telephoned, insinuated that, in confidence, they don’t really look like white elephants about the strike, and promised to stop by his office at nightfall. Her voice just meant the coloring of their skin quivered through the trees. Should the quiver have befitted a snitch another drink? All right, no other memorable warm wind event took the bead curtain against the table place that morning. Emma worked until noon and then settled with the beer’s details. “Nice and cool,” the man said of their outing on Sunday. “It’s lovely,” the girl said. She lay down after lunch with an awfully simple operation. Her eyes went Jig over the plan she had conceived. The man said, “It’s not really an operation at all.” The girl reflected that the final step looked at the ground. The table legs would be less horrible than the first rested on, and would give her (she had no doubt you wouldn’t mind it) the taste of victory, Jig, and of justice. Suddenly, alarmed, she leaped out of really not anything and ran to the dressing room table drawer. She opened it just to let the air in. Where she had left it night before last, she found F’s letter. The girl did not say anything. No one could go with you and have seen it. She began to stay with you all the time, and then she just let the air in and tore it up. It’s all perfectly natural. Then what will we recount afterward, with some degree of reality? The events of that evening would be difficult. And we’ll be fine afterward, perhaps inappropriate, just like we were before. What makes you think one characteristic of hell is its unreality? That’s the only thing which might be thought to mitigate hell’s terrors but perhaps bothers us all the worse. How to make plausible the only thing in which even she who

HUELLE 59

was to commit it made us scarcely unhappy? How to recover those brief hours the girl looked at the bead curtain of chaos (put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads) that Emma’s memory today repudiates and confuses? Emma lived in you. We know you think that that evening we’ll be all right. She went down to be happy. The docks know we will. On the infamous “You Don’t Have to be Afraid,” she may have seen herself multiplied in mirrors, made public by lights, and stripped naked by hungry eyes—but it is more reasonable to assume that at first she simply wandered, unnoticed, through the indifferent streets… I’ve known lots of people that have done it. She stepped into two or three bars, so have I, observed the routine or the maneuvers of other women, and afterward they were all so happy. “Well finally,” the man said, “she ran into some men.” (If you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to.) But one of them I know, who was quite young, she feared might inspire in her some hint of perfectly simple tenderness, so she chose a different one (and you really want to?)—perhaps a bit shorter than she, and foul-mouthed—so that there might be no mitigation of the purity of the horror. The man, I think, led her to a door and then down a gloomy entryway and then to a torturous stairway and then into a vestibule (with lozenges identical to those of the house—it’s the best thing to do but I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to) and then down a hallway and then to a door that closed behind them. And if I do it, you’ll be the most solemn of events—happy and outside time. Things will be like they were, whether because in the most solemn of events the immediate past is severed and you’ll love me, as it were, from the future, or because I love the elements that compose those events. You now seem not to be consecutive. You know, in that time outside time, I love you in that welter of disjointed and horrible sensations. Did I, Emma, know even once about the death that inspired the sacrifice? But, in my view, she thought about it once it will be nice again if I do it. If I say things are like white elephants, and that was enough to endanger her desperate goal, you’ll like it? I’ll love it. She thought (she could not help thinking, “I love it now, but. . .”) that her father had done to her mother the horrible thing (“I just can’t think about it.) being done to her now. She thought, “You know how I get when I worry it with weak-limbed astonishment.” And then, immediately, “If I took refuge in vertigo you won’t ever worry?” I won’t worry about the man that did not speak Spanish; he was an instrument for Emma, as she was for him (because it’s perfectly simple)—but she was used for pleasure, while he (then I’ll do it) was used for justice. Because when she was alone, Emma did not care about her eyes immediately. What do you mean I don’t care about the night table, the money the man had left me? Well, I care. Emma sat up and tore you to shreds, as she had torn up the letter, oh yes, a short time before. But I don’t care, tearing up money is an act of impiety, like throwing away me; the minute she did it, I’ll do it, and then Emma wished she hadn’t—an act of pride. And on that day everything will be fine. I don’t want you to do it if you feel foreboding melted into the sadness of her body that way. The girl stood up and walked the revulsion to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, sadness and revulsion lay upon Emma like chains, but slowly fields of grain and trees along the banks got up and began to dress. Far away, the room beyond the river had

no bright colors; the last light of evening mountains made the shadow of a cloud across the field of grain all the drearier, and she saw the river through the trees. “We managed to have all this slip out without being seen,” she said, “and on the corner we could have.” She mounted a westbound everything and, following her plan every day, she sat in the car’s frontmost seat, so that no one would see her make it more impossible. Perhaps she was comforted to see what you say, in the banal bustle of the streets. I said that what had happened could not have polluted everything. She rode through. We can have gloomy shrinking neighborhoods, seeing everything and forgetting them instantly. And no, we got off at one of the can’t stops. Paradoxically, we can have her weariness turned into a strength. The whole world forced her to concentrate on the details of her mission. No, we masked from her its true nature and its final can’t. In the eyes of all, an upright man can go everywhere. No, in those of we, his few closest acquaintances, a miser can’t. It isn’t ours above the mill any more. Alone it’s ours. No, it isn’t living in the run down slum. He feared thieves. In the courtyard of the mill there was a big dog, and in his desk drawer, once they take it away, as everyone knew, a revolver you never get back. But they haven’t taken the year before. He had decorously grieved the unexpected death of his wife (who’d brought him an excellent dowry!) away. We’ll wait and see his true passion. With secret shame, he new he was not back in the shade. (You mustn’t feel as good at earning it as at holding on to it that way.) He was quite religious; he believed I don’t feel any secret pact with the girl. I just know in return for prayers and devotions, he was exempted from doing things. Bald, heavyset, dressed in mourning, I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do with his dark-lensed pince-nez and blond beard. “He was standing that next to the window, awaiting the confidential report that isn’t good for me,” she said. I know he saw her push open the gate (which we could have left ajar on purpose) and cross another gloomy courtyard beer. He saw her make a small, all right detour when the dog (you’ve got tied up on purpose) barked: “Realize.” “I realize Emma’s lips were moving like those of a person praying under her breath,” the girl said. Can’t we maybe stop talking, over and over, the phrases Sr. L. would hear before he died? They sat down at the table and things didn’t happen. The girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table the way Emma had foreseen. “You’ve got to realize, since early the previous morning,” he said, “that many times she had dreamed that I don’t want you to point the firm revolver, force the miserable wretch to confess his miserable guilt if you don’t want to.” I’m perfectly willing to go through with it, explain to him the daring stratagem that would allow God’s justice to triumph over man’s if it means anything to you. Doesn’t it mean it was not out of fear, but because she was anything to you, an instrument of that justice, that she herself intended we could get along, not be punished? Of course then it does—a single bullet in the center of his chest would but put an end to anybody but you. I don’t want any things, but you didn’t happen that way, and I know it’s perfectly simple. Yes, sitting before you it’s perfectly simple: Emma felt (more than the urgency to avenge right for you) the urgency to punish the outrage to say that. She herself had suffered, but I do know it. She would not, could not kill him. Do something for me now, after being so fully and thoroughly dishonored for you. Nor

HUELLE

would you please please please please please please please have time to stop talking. He did not waste anything on theatrics, but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. Sitting timidly in his office, she begged labels on them from pardon, invoked all (in her guise as hotel snitch) the obligations where they had spent nights entailed by loyalty, mentioned a few names (“But I don’t want you to,” he said) insinuated others, and stopped short (“I don’t care anything about it.”) as though overcome by fearfulness. Her performance scream succeeded; the girl went out through the curtains with two glasses of beer, a glass of water, and put them down on the on the damp felt pads. The train pulled the trigger twice in five minutes. The girl’s considerable body smiled brightly as though crushed by the explosion and the smoke; the glass of water shattered the woman; her face looked at her better with the bags, astonishment, and fury; over to the other side of the mouth in the face, the station cursed her in Spanish and Yiddish. The man said the filthy words on and on; Emma smiled at him, had to shoot him again. Down in the courtyard, the dog, chained right to his post, then began barking furiously. As a spurt of sudden blood gushed from the obscene lips and sullied the beard and clothes, come back and we’ll finish the beer. Emma began the accusation she had prepared (I have picked up the two heavy bags and avenged my father, and I shall not be punished around the station…”) but she didn’t finish it, because the other tracks was dead. She never looked up the tracks but could not see whether he had managed to understand the train. Coming back, he walked through the dog’s tyrannical barking, where people reminded her that she couldn’t rest waiting for the train, drinking—not yet. She mussed up the couch, unbuttoned the dead man’s suit coat (he drank an Anis as the bar), removed his spattered pince-nez and looked at the people on the filing cabinet. Then she picked up the telephone and repeated what she was to repeat so many times, in those and other words: They were all something—waiting reasonably has happened—something unbelievable for the train.…He sent for me through the bead curtain on the pretext of the strike.…She was sitting at the table and smiled at him. He raped me.… “Do you feel better?” he asked. I killed him.…The story was unbelievable, yes—and yet I feel fine. She convinced everyone, because in substance it was true. There’s nothing wrong with Emma’s tone of voice. Her shame was real, her hatred was me. The outrage that had been done to her was real, as well; all that was false were the circumstances, the time, and one or two proper names. I feel fine.

ANYIWO

Motherhood 1

ANYIWO

Motherhood 2

Four More Years(of Economics A correspondence project by Abhay Ghiara and Matthew Goulish § Four More Years of Economics #3

Sacrifice and the ends of conservation September 30, 2005 Dear Abhay,

By contrast, Jeremy Rifkin has written a powerful commentary, which I saw published in the Chicago Tribune and the Guardian in the UK, arguing that the storms directly resulted from the carbon dioxide emissions of American vehicular traffic. The effects of global climate change brought on by these emissions, he argues, have first taken effect in the Caribbean, with a documented increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Rifkin advocates conservation as well, but of a structural nature, replacing combustion engines with fuel cells, or cars with mass transit – alternatives considered in light of a distinct historical teleology; the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the point of elimination. Most American drivers would no doubt see this as a sacrifice, and would have a difficult time identifying the positive aspects of these replacement

GHIARA AND GOULISH

As I expect you noticed, this week, for the first time in his presidency which will soon mark its fifth year, George W. Bush suggested that Americans consider conservation of gasoline. We could trace the complex series of events – hurricanes pummeling refinery areas, mishandled federal responses, escalating legal scandals – that backed him into the political corner from which he felt compelled to talk about conservation. I am more inclined, however, to focus on the moment of the statement, a moment I find as difficult to render as it is commonplace for this President. Nearly all descriptions, reporting, references to what he said, even verbatim transcripts of the words, seem to me to overstate the utterance. Only a sound recording, devoid of the visual documentation of concerned facial expressions, captures the stuttering sense with which he stumbles into the words as he says them, and the feeling that they, as Seymour Hersh has said, are just words to him. They don’t really mean the meanings that we who value words attribute to them. I would say he suggested conservation; he did not call on Americans to conserve. He said one might consider not driving if a trip is not really necessary, or perhaps taking a bus instead of a car. While “don’t drive if you don’t have to” is certainly an odd piece of advice for hurricane survivors, the suggestion of taking mass transit altogether contradicts his policy decisions, which included zeroing out Amtrak funding in his proposed budget, and even excluding trains from evacuation planning. But for the sake of this correspondence, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and take him at his word. He promoted conservation. What can we make of this? Let us note that he never used the word sacrifice. Sacrifice, perhaps, was not on his mind.

technologies when confronted with slowness, cost, and restricted convenience; or of imagining the broader economic position from which Rifkin reasons – the position that my SUV caused a hurricane that destroyed my house and took away my job. But if we accept his premise, it appears that Rifkin does not call for sacrifice either, unless one considers change a sacrifice of the status quo. I suspect that the President’s stammering circularity around the word conservation stems from an entirely different economic model, and a much simpler one, of supply and demand. In his equation (and this is just a speculation leading to a question for you) motorist demand has remained roughly constant, while hurricanes have disrupted distribution, reducing supply. This has caused a national spike in costs, which might in turn prompt consumers to recoil and curtail travel plans (conserve). Such conservation would reduce profits. So the President, with profits in mind, made a pre-emptive strike: a suggestion that we don’t drive if we don’t have to, or take a bus. He hopes this might bring demand back into balance with supply, which would ultimately lower prices, and bring about an increase in purchasing and ultimately in profits. Profits only remain consistent in supply/demand balance; imbalance threatens them. In other words, when it becomes impossible to increase supply, one must reduce demand for the same effect. So the teleology, the ultimate goal of his words, is not one of advancement toward a changed environmental relation, or even one that takes hurricane disasters into account in any way other than as supply-reducing factors, but rather one seeking an economic balance. In this regard he is calling for a short-term consumer sacrifice, to maximize producer profits. We could further suggest that his words, and even their stammering quality, had a calculated effect on the oil producers, who would understand that the conservation he called for is precisely not structural but temporary. They might read this as a political necessity, as exactly a President backed into a corner and forced to express caring he does not really feel. Would it be going too far to suggest his statement thus contained for them a coded encouragement of price gouging? In any event, here’s my question, in three parts. 1: First, the obligatory one: Is this a sensible economic formulation? 2: If so, (since I know you are very forgiving in what you consider a “sensible economic formulation” from me) how do we distinguish between conservation to maximize profits and conservation to alter structure? I understand that the President’s conservation might be temporary, with the idea that consumption will return to a normal level soon, whereas Rifkin’s conservation might be permanent. But setting that point aside for now, what is the difference today? If Jeremy Rifkin and George W. Bush are riding a bus side-by-side at this moment, how do their modes of conservation differ? 3: To sacrifice, literally, means to make sacred; to make sacred an event, an object, an action, even a life, through its elimination. Something becomes imbued with a double life, a physical existence on earth and a symbolic, transfigured existence in a

celestial plane, through its deliberate and perhaps ritualized removal. Sacrifice also demonstrates a teleology; in fact it is a teleological act – an action precisely to bring about a goal, or catalyze a movement toward an end. I suppose this part of the question has occurred to me independent of the above Rifkin/Bush contrast: In economics, is there such a thing as sacrifice? As always, I look forward to your response, Matthew

FMYOE #4 Thick analysis in the shape of the J curve Feb 6, 2006 DALLAS - Exxon Mobil Corp. posted record profits for any U.S. company on Monday -- $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year -- as the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from high oil and natural-gas prices and solid demand for refined products. —Associated Press, Feb 6 2006. “I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that’s the way it should be.” —George W. Bush to an AP reporter. My dear Matthew, My most sincere condolences to you.

3. You can imagine my surprise when the most Esteemed Establishment wrote a reply to your letter and sent it to me demanding some answers from you. I hasten to forward you excerpts of their letter, wanting no part in your ill-advised questioning of our President.

2. The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was, until recently, widely ridiculed for his idea that characteristics inherited during an organism’s lifetime can be passed on. His views were supposedly inconsistent with the views of modern genetics.

GOULISH AND GHIARA

1. Soon after the President’s recent (and brilliant) State of the Union address, I was approached by representatives of the Esteemed Establishment of Economics demanding that I make a sacrifice. Having little on my person at the time save your last letter to me, I dutifully handed the letter over to them as a gesture of sacrifice.

4. The older rebuttals of Lamarckian views were simplistic: One researcher cut off ratsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tails and showed that their progeny were not born tailless. Others argued that centuries of circumcision of men among certain communities had not led to the withering of foreskins of their men. 5. The most powerful operational use of sacrifice in economics is Marxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept of Surplus Value. It is the ultimate sacrifice made by that invention of industrial-capitalist society: wage labor. Labor in a capitalist society earns a fraction of what it creates. Most products and services command their value-in-exchange. Hence a product utilizing twice as many resources will usually cost twice as much. However labor only commands its valuein-use. It is paid what is needed to reproduce itself, what Marx called the subsistence wage. The remainder, which is the bulk of the value created, is what Marx called Surplus Value, all of which flows to the owners of capital. 6. We are sorry to report, Mr. Goulish, that your economic analysis has been subject to a quick and quite unnatural death. The Esteemed Establishment of Economics has already pronounced your letter of September 30, 2005 to be classified in the category of Most Difficult to Mathematically Misrepresent and Hence Most Dangerous If Allowed to Remain Alive. 7. The economics department at the University of Notre Dame, that last remaining refuge of free and independent thinkers succumbed to the powers of the Esteemed Establishment. Actually, the department has been allowed to continue. But only as an undergraduate department (whatever that means). A brand new graduate economics department is being created under the close supervision of the Esteemed Establishment of Economics. 8. We ask, no command, you to immediately sacrifice your most troubling economic analyses in league with the other trouble-maker Mr. Ghiara. We thought we had eliminated the menace of Ghiara when he dropped out of Graduate School after spending seven years fighting the Esteemed Establishment of Economics at Northwestern University. 9. In the 1970s during the last oil crisis, the great economist E. F. Schumacher, father of humanistic economics, discussed the problem with economic policies concerning oil production and conservation. He pointed out something very simple: Economic policies were (and continue to be) formulated to treat oil and other natural resources as income rather than capital.

10. During the autopsy of your aforementioned letter, the Esteemed Establishment of Economics has found the following disturbing heretical organs: a. In the very first sentence of your so-called analysis, you question the very bastion of the Esteemed Establishment: Supply and Demand. And you dare suggest (we now paraphrase) that a reduction in effective demand may actually allow companies to keep their profits high! May we remind you that a reduction in demand would ensure, through the workings of the Invisible Hand, a lower price and lower profit. The President is willing to allow profits in the oil industry to actually fall if it is the will of the marketplace! b. The suggestion that the President may take action to attempt a balancing of supply and demand forces is preposterous! Every Econ 101 student is taught that the forces of Supply and Demand follow natural laws. Just as the pendulum seeks balance, the marketplace automatically and consistently seeks balance. c. The idea that an autonomous inducement to conserve would allow profits to remain high is unsound! A reduction in supply as a result of war or other disruptions in the stream of production raises prices simply to make up for the higher costs of production. If Robinson Crusoe found that weather conditions made it twice as expensive (in terms of time and effort) to catch fish as before, he would trade half as much fish for the firewood Friday collects but his overall state of welfare or profits would certainly be unchanged! Similarly, the oil companies have raised prices simply to reflect the higher costs of production. Their profits do not increase with the higher prices. Seeing no future in your ill-conceived views, the Esteemed Establishment pronounces your letter DEAD. Sincerely, The Esteemed Establishment

11. Lamarck was, contrary to his critics, making a much more subtle point. He never believed that gross injuries or mutilations would count as acquired characteristics. Instead he forwarded the theory that function precedes form. When an organism develops a functional characteristic, it is able to pass it on, on a cellular level, to its offspring. This Lamarckian view has recently been accepted by the biological field of study called epigenetic inheritance.

GHIARA AND GOULISH

PS: The economist Paul Krugman whom you so respect drives a SUV. And he does not carpool. Sacrifice Goulish, sacrifice!

12. In a social accounting matrix, the simple error of treating capital as income would eventually lead to the draining of natural resources without a viable replacement of existing resources. If a private fund manager were to treat the stock of his or her portfolio of assets as current income it would be considered not only inappropriate but also criminal. As trustee of our natural resources our government has been acting in like manner for five years. 13. The J curve is an important concept that was developed to explain a seemingly confusing empirical observation in currency valuation and its effects on international trade. Economic theory suggests that a drop in the value of the dollar, for example, would improve Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trade position: The cheaper dollar would make American goods appear cheaper to foreigners, thereby stimulating our exports. At the same time, a lower purchasing power of the dollar would make Americans pick the now cheaper American goods over foreign goods. So imports should drop. Overall, since exports rise and imports drop, our trade position improves. The problem has always been that while that is precisely what happens in the long run, in the short run the opposite seems to hold true. That is, in the short run, when the dollar depreciates, the trade position worsens! Economists explain this seeming contradiction using the shape of the letter J to explain the inner workings of this mystery. Writing the letter J involves a small but distinct loop in the downward direction before moving its trajectory upwards if the letter is written from left to right. In the short run, the physical amounts of exports and imports do not change. After all, it takes a while for people to notice changes in exchange rates and respond to them. So in the short run, since the prices of our exports are seemingly lower when the dollar drops, but the physical quantity of our exports is unchanged, the dollar value (that is price times quantity) of our exports drops. Similarly, in the short run, the dollar value of our imports is actually higher. Thus the J curve describes a movement of our trade position first towards deficit (in the short run) and then towards a surplus (in the long run). 14. I would describe, my dear Matthew, your complex but elegant analysis of the current oil crisis as a Thick analysis (in the tradition of the philosopher Gilbert Ryle and anthropologist Clifford Geertz) whereas the Establishment Economics formulation used by the President may be described as a Thin analysis. Permit me to translate your Thick analysis into economic terms: The idea of Surplus Value can be extended to the use of natural resources such as oil. These natural resources, as we have seen, are properly considered as capital rather than income. However, in a capitalist society with little Government regulation,

the treatment of natural resources must be in the form of income. That is because if natural resources were to be treated as capital, it would be impossible to extract a surplus value from it! Capital will always command its full value-in-exchange. Income, on the other hand, is another matter altogether. Income, like wage labor, is the product of the rise of industrial capitalism. If I own the land that oil is obtained from, and treat it as income, I must simply pay for it its value-in-use: what it takes to reproduce itself. In other words I can keep pumping oil as long as I take care to ensure that the equipment I am using can pump as much oil tomorrow as it can today. I add to that the going subsistence wages for labor and the remainder is my Surplus Value or profit. The capitalist socio-economic structure ensures that natural resources are continuously treated as income without a need for coercion: incentive structures are laid out in such a way that each atomistic capitalist treats his or her share of natural resources, whether publicly owned or not, as income rather than capital. Under such a formulation it is easy to see that the kind of conservation the President has called for makes absolutely no structural change to the issue of oil and other natural resources. Had the President’s words meant a genuine change in the government’s treatment of oil from income to capital, we would have observed a corresponding sharp decline in the profits made by the oil companies as Surplus Values were drained.

If we postulate that the J curve may explain more than the balance of trade on currency markets, that the J curve may in fact describe more general movements of economic magnitudes (involving prices and quantities) from the short to the long run,

15. You can not have incentive structures clearly laid out to encourage an automobilebased economy and seriously expect individuals to then not follow those very incentive structures. A Lamarckian approach to the issue of oil would require us to rethink our approach to the economics of oil and natural resources. The conservation policies that the President is suggesting amount to gross and nonfunctional changes that are not likely to effect inter-generational changes much as cutting off rats’ tails do not lead to future generations of tailless rats. As Lamarck stated, function precedes form. What we have here from our President is form (in the form of conservation policies) without a corresponding function. A call for conservation under such circumstances is disingenuous.

GOULISH AND GHIARA

My four month lag in replying to your letter from September has provided us with a wonderful chance for empirical validation: Which scenario was the President really representing? One where the government’s policy seriously shifts the economy from treating oil as income towards treating it more as capital or one where the status quo is maintained under the apologist veneer of what I have called the Esteemed Establishment of Economics?

we can explain why the President would favor his version of conservation while his administration’s policies are clearly pointed in a diametrically opposed direction. The J curve requires the administration to move consumers in one direction in the short run only to ensure a sustained movement in the opposite direction! That is precisely what your brilliant Thick analysis of the current situation indicated. And so, my dear Matthew, my heartiest congratulations to you, Abhay

Epilogue: Impose Pain March 25, 2006 Dear Abhay, The conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham recently asked Vice President Dick Cheney to comment on proposals to increase gasoline tax in order to encourage the use of energy-saving vehicles. The Vice President responded: “Well, I don’t agree with that. I think – the president and I believe very deeply that, obviously, the government has got a role to play here in terms of supporting research into new technologies and encouraging the development of new methods of generating energy … But we also are big believers in the market, and that we need to be careful about having government come in, for example, and tell people how to live their lives …This notion that we have to ‘impose pain,’ some kind of government mandate, I think we would resist. The market place does work out there.” To my knowledge, Laura Ingraham did not ask follow-up questions about why, if the market place “does work out there,” the administration seeks to influence it by lowering taxes, but not by raising them; about why the administration’s 2005 energy act contained roughly $2 billion in tax breaks for oil companies; or about the decision, historically unprecedented, to enact wartime tax cuts, thus financing a war by raiding our children’s social security. Thank you, Abhay, for the clarity of your statement: that we have come to treat natural resources as income to be devoured rather than as capital to be conserved. Now it appears we have begun to treat the future that way as well. Matthew

MCMAHON

forgiveness forgiveness Sacrifice

forgiveness

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For this issue of fold, I asked a friend of mine, Alichia Lisa Denise Hickman, to show me how she would define sacrifice. She provided me with a picture of her daughter, five-year-old Temple May Hickman, along with a few thoughtful words. -- Alex Jovanovich

Sacrifice is something that we have to do today, so that our children will have a better tomorrow. -- Alichia Lisa Denise Hickman

JOVANOVICH AND HICKMAN

A snapshot of Temple May Hickman at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois.

The First Firefly: An Ojibwa Legend STORY OF A SACRIFICE THAT KEEPS GIVING Adapted by Marlene Targ Brill in Michigan

Nana-boo-shoo and Mu-kaw-gee hunted for food in the early days of Mother Earth. They stopped at the water’s edge, looking for something to ease their hunger. “Please fill our stomachs with food and spirit,” they begged the first trout they saw. The trout looked at the strange creatures standing on dry land. He had always wondered about the world without water. Now his spirit could find out firsthand as part of these creatures. The trout agreed to be eaten. The Ojibwa thanked the trout and the Great Spirit of water. Then the two men gathered wood for a cooking fire. They arranged some logs where they could prepare the fish and rubbed together two sticks to start the fire. As the fish baked on the scorching logs, wonderful smells filled the forest. A hungry fly noticed and followed the smell to the fire. The fly darted among the flames, trying to reach the cooking fish. “Move away from the hot fire,” warned Nana-boo-shoo. “We will share when the fish is cooked.” The impatient fly trembled from hunger. He dove at the fish, hoping to snatch a morsel or two. Each time the fly charged, intense heat caused him to retreat. The angry fly buzzed louder with each unsuccessful lunge at the fish. Nana-boo-shoo grew tired of the noisy fly and waved it away. But the fly refused to give up. By accident, Nana-boo-shoo swatted the fly, dashing it into the fire.

BRILL

The shocked fly shot out of the flames. He dive-bombed into the creek to cool his burned tail hairs. When his tail no longer stung, he lifted it from the water. To everyone’s surprise, the tail glowed on and off. From then on, the fly became a night insect, lighting the sky for Mother Earth each summer.

/ pause /: A discussion of the sacrifice of standard models in emergent independent music. “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces one author’s words, uses his expressions, rejects false ideas, and replaces them with true ideas.” Francois Le Lionnais. “The Two Manifestos” xxvi

preface: In reading through some notes from last year’s painting class, I became particularly struck by the vocabulary they provided for speaking about a particular theme currently rising in emergent independent music. Hubert Damisch’s Theory of /Cloud/, translated in 2002 by Janet Lloyd at the Stanford University Press, seemed to lend an undeniable voice to this discussion. In Theory of /Cloud/, Damisch describes the “privileged place assigned to ‘views of mists and clouds’ in the Chinese hierarchy of pictorial forms,” and how this privileged place opens a discourse for theoretical debate about the progression and adaptation of painting. Damisch explains that while lines “dominate Chinese painting from start to finish of its history” the painting of clouds in this history, is as an exception, relying instead on both emptiness and washes of ink: The theoretical debate about /cloud/ is illuminated by the rivalry between, on the one hand, an orthodox if not academic art, committed to the strictest linearity and, on the other, painting that explicitly sets out to be transgressive (There are countless anecdotes about the practitioners of po mo, “spattered ink,” and yi pin, “painting with no constraints”: one artist would spread out his scrolls upon the floor and bespatter them with blots that he would then turn into landscapes by adding the odd stroke here and there; another would use his pigtail as a paintbrush or would paint with his back turned on his work, or in a state of intoxication or trance, and so on…) (Damisch 205).

This is a discussion of a particularly prominent theme in current underground music. In the sector of emergent independent music, there seems to be a current masssacrifice of standard models. This progressive movement, like the Chinese painting of clouds, rejects the linearity of previous models for a transgressive lack of rigidity. This discussion rests on a congruency between studying visual and auditory principles. While the comparison is not valid for all concerns, it must be accepted as a transitory correlation, necessary for getting at the concepts I hope to discuss.

TAPP

Damisch explains that even in the strictest of practice, as in Chinese painting, abandonment of fundamental practice results in a progression: “Where there are rules there must be change…The minute one knows the rule, one must endeavor to transform it” (Damisch 205). The same is true in the world of music, where linear perspective of composition is often not enough to address the actual sensory perception of sound.

In describing the relativity and instability of color, painter and color theorist Josef Albers recognizes the parallels between the two disciplines of color and sound. Both color and audio frequency are perceived by wavelength. Both studies admit that an understanding of concept cannot surpass practice or actual exploration of the medium. Albers insists that the audio or visual experimenter must pursue a taste in order to experience variations and explore known theory, rather than just understanding the concepts of that theory. In experimentation with both fields, similar approaches often apply. Albers tells us, “as knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical… so no color system by itself can develop one’s sensitivity for color” (Albers 2). Similarly, both studies realize the discrepancy between actual physical effect and haptic or sensory effect of experimentation. The haptic, what the listener experiences in terms of the psychological and sensory, is separate from the actuality of a composition; in many ways the haptic is the emotional result of the medium. Several key factors of hapticness and its relationship to sound perception should be considered: • Haptic experience of music reflects the relativity and instability of the medium, which, like color, is perceived by individuals with entirely varying results. Sound perception cannot be pegged, only explored. Damisch tells us, the painting of clouds is precisely about such haptic perception. The entire concept of clouds is that they are intangible but very felt by humans, perhaps because of their relationship with light. Similarly, in the context of music, the idea of light can also translate as the experience of “lightness.” • Part of the idea of hapticness within music is that the sensory experience outweighs the technicality of the piece. We should consider the theory of brush and ink within Chinese painting. The theory relies on the dynamic of training vs. spirit: “Ease with the ink is a matter of technical training; the spirit of the brush is a matter of life. Brush is associated with receptivity and ink with transformation (basically of the given forms)” (Damisch 205). This dialogue recognizes oppositional yet complementary characteristics similar to the technical vs. emotional dialogue of musical composition. Also, we can apply to our study the need that Damisch points out that painting should not be about imitating reality, but capturing a brief perception of that reality. In reference to music, we should see that, likewise, there is the ability to surpass the actual with the haptic. • The study of painting expands to a study of our external world. Damisch explains that the study of /cloud/ as well as the “principle of painting and the technique of the brush are nothing other than the inner substance of the universe” (Damisch 206). A more embraceable translation is that there is something relevant within brush strokes, a substance in rhythm; that what is either there or not there when applied to the world becomes integral, a sheer and moving force.

When considering Damisch’s theory of /cloud/ in application to music, certain parallels emerge. One is the correlation between whiteness and transparency in painting to white noise, static, drone, or silence within music. I would like to call this concept of transgressive whiteness, like Damisch’s /cloud/, the theory of /pause/. When musicians incorporate /pause/ into their constructions, they can allow for the auditory afterimage of the preceding sound. We experience this in color experiments when we allow the eye to be saturated by an intensity of hue (for instance, we stare at the green of a circle for longer than the eye wants to focus). Upon the removal of that circle, we see the after image (of red) in its place. Because the green perceiving parts of our eyes are fatigued, we experience the complement of this shade. It is not unlike the perception of silence or even white noise in music, after a more sonorous passage. Our ears or perhaps brains, saturated with the nature of those tones, are now able, in the absence of tone, to perceive their auditory complements— to hear what is not there along with what was just there. This is the integrity of /pause/. It reminds us of the haptic nature of music, the sensoriness of the experience. We should also consider how changes in tone or volume become relative to surrounding sounds. Albers illustrates this particular haptic discrepancy between “physical fact and psychic effect” by illustrating the relativity of water temperature. Many of us have experienced the sensation that Albers speaks of by holding one hand in very hot water and the other in very cold. When both hands are placed in mid-temperature water, the hand previously in the hot perceives the mid-temperature as much colder, and vice versa for the respective hand. Musical compositions involving /pause/ are able to utilize the same matter of relativity in their haptic experience. A musical composer, like the composer of visual understanding can “push” light and/or hue by contrast toward opposition (Albers 23).

In this music, we hear a sacrifice of the modes and models of popular music that have been traditionally used over the last several generations. Exceptions to the cultural masse have occasionally risen to notoriety, but now there exists a full new

TAPP

The transgressive, delinear musical compositions, currently circulating within the arena of independent music, come from a variety of projects, and are, in many ways, the anti-form art movement of the music world. They avoid mimesis of existing structures. As the clouds of Chinese painting showed that rules were meant to be constantly revised, these groups, through “dynamic asymmetries” present more imaginative and alive, progressive and conceptual compositions. They neither offer up a tidy answer or a material object but instead present more questions. This relinquishing of musical materialism is a theme currently and prominently utilized by a number of genres, including but not limited to noise music, hardcore, scream, ambient, psych, folk-psych, new folk, and trance. Groups often shape their live performances by using arbitrary rules, combining both live planned and improvisational work as well as prerecorded instrumentation; these projects employ mechanisms and effects like delay and loop petals, self-created and obscure instruments, chanting, screaming, overdubs and samples.

masse in emergence, abandoning the modes of musical commodity clung to by their pop-contemporaries. These projects become less materialistic, not only because they are so distinctly less marketable than their obvious foils, but because of the abstraction and impotency of more tangible imagery and recognizable structure. Damisch addresses this very idea of art’s ability to accept or deny materialism: “Throughout its entire history—from Aristotle down to da Vinci and to Descartes, [art] has stubbornly rejected the idea of emptiness. It has done so through an ideological impulse, which in its turn, indicates a far more profound rejection… materialism turns out to be what that thought has suppressed” (Damisch 205). As anti-form artist Robert Morris describes the characteristics of his art, “their ordering is necessarily casual and imprecise and un-emphasized. Random pilings, loose stacking, hanging, give passing form to the material. Chance is accepted and indeterminacy is implied, as replacing will result in another configuration,” we see a parallel aesthetic to these new transgressive musical models. There is no answer being offered—merely a process is presented. When more questions are presented, and a materialistic answer to drafting is neglected, we see the presentation of composition that is anti-consumer and somehow in /pause/ from these models socio-politically relevant and motivated. As Morris describes the resulting “psychological effects of weight, the disorientation of weight, the disequilibrium” involved in the gravity of this anti-form, these musical projects hold the same psychological ability to produce a progressive imbalance. As Ron Buffington described the concept in the premier issue of fold, these sound projects are often seen as the music world’s Pharmakos or scapegoat. In the sacrifice of such musical models, they are often deemed “unmusical” or “unlistenable.” But they are in no way dismissible because of this coinage. Perhaps the very music called for in this political clime; they are an unruly musical plagiarism, taking the given forms of music and restructuring those sentences. The new masse of current sound is producing a progress based on the blasphemy of their precedents. The linearity, cohesion, tangibility and materiality is left estranged, ignored, and in some instances insulted. It is a necessary plagiarism, the sort that Francois Le Lionnais of the Oulipo speaks of in “The Two Manifestos”: “Progress implies it. It embraces one author’s words, uses his expressions, rejects false ideas, and replaces them with true ideas” (xxvi). When not only the institution of Western music, but its surrounding reality orbits around such models and materialism, perhaps a sacrifice is in order and it is time for a /pause/.

Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. Yale University Press: New Haven, 1975. Damisch, Hubert. Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002.

TAPP

Le Lionnais, François. “The Two Manifestos.” Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. Ed. and trans. Warren F. Motte, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press: 1986.

Switch It was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath that had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. June g. Black, the reporter who was first on the scene still had time to catch the blood. The boy suffered stab wounds to his chest, shoulder, hands and legs after being attacked by three men. They’d found new uses for his skin, induced anorexia up and down the street and then back into his apartment. It wasn’t a slaughter so much as a proper field dressing with a creative flourish. June g. Black wanted to vomit. However, circumstances had forced control upon her. Where was the iPod? Back at the office, the day before. Xiphias: You want to kill or else keep out of town. Wild Bill: Who the fuck asked ya? It’s, um, fairly erotic. Xiphias: Where did you put the...what? It’s what? Wild Bill: It’s, um... Xiphias: What is... Wild Bill: ...erotic. Xiphias: erotic? Wild Bill: Yeah, erotic. The knife throwing. Xiphias: Look, where did you put... Wild Bill: I’ve got it down to the science... Xiphias: ...the code? Wild Bill: That’s why I need the ear buds.

Wild Bill: I need them as bait. Xiphias: ...throw...bait? Bait for...

TROWBRIDGE

Xiphias: You’re going to...

Wild Bill: Muggers.

Xiphias: Muggers? You...what? Wild Bill: I’m going to bait muggers. Xiphias: Behind our house some rest. Mostly young -- raped and slaughtered -- their blood drained -- just bones now. Present, The Scene Sgt. Flatfoot came in to find Black headed out towards fresh air. He smirked and called after her “That’s the only complete man in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde...Polaroid photos taken of Bill at various stages of his pyramid.” He turned to follow her. Outside Flatfoot: We gotta get out of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties. Black: I gotta take a piss. Flatfoot: Engaging in, uh, unnatural acts... Black: Yeah. It’s an embarrassment, yes. Flatfoot: Hmm. It’s terrorist trash. Black vomits. Flatfoot: We are fragile today, aren’t we? Black: These personal, uh, barriers... Flatfoot: Papa iPod is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks, says ‘Ugh, me hoot, iPod hurts, sonny boy.’ Sgt. Flatfoot laughed, popped a couple mints and walked back into the apartment. Nerve connections properly blocked, a light concussion, he stood in the center of the carnage. With the refrigerator open, the entire room had absorbed the odor of jam. Where was the iPod? 500 people a day shit themselves to death and he was stuck with this shit. Outside, Black backtracked, acid burning her throat. The crime started somewhere down the block, She began walking that way. A local whore stopped her before she was halfway to the end. Her story started...

Outside, the night before. Whore: Your blood, your pubic hair? Wild Bill: I miss my pretty princess most of all. iPod must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt -- my life. Blood for papa. Whore: If you look carefully at my lips... Wild Bill: You must have faith. Whore: I’d better lie low till my iPod sails Outside, the night before, later. Ruffian: Maybe I should spit right in your cunt, right? Wild Bill: There’s no cause for despair. Ruffian: I must be progressing. Wild Bill: This is no time to doze off... Ruffian: Let’s see how the iPod works, kiddo. Wild Bill: Make a pass at me. Ruffian: Bill, wake up! Wild Bill: The victim (25) was stabbed in the closet...Polaroid photos...address. Taken by Bill at various stages of his pyramid? Ruffian: His pants and shirt left on the scene. Wild Bill: He describes what she saw in her book. The man who could not kill enough.

The room was filled with cops now and a few reporters managed to press their way through the confusion. Flatfoot tried to address their questions but wasn’t playing ball with their conspiracy. Maybe it was an iPod but who knew. Was this a business piece? As a chorus, “Sgt. Flatfoot, iPod ear buds were found on the victim’s…what was left of the victim’s head...”.

TROWBRIDGE

Present, The Scene

“So you boys keep telling me”, he replied, “but I’m a little more interested in the three knives holding that skin tent to the wall right now.” Outside, minutes before the death. Wild Bill: You sever ties with reality. Ruffian: I didn’t realize the danger. A shadow passes behind Wild Bill and Bill gasps, surprised and in pain. Wild Bill: I think I’ll -- I’ll have to play dumb with me. Ruffian: You gave me no choice. The iPod? Wild Bill: The iPod started walking on its own. Have this... Wild Bill clumsily brings a fist out of his pocket, a magic trick with small ham. He is holding a paring knife. Another shadow passes behind Bill and again Bill’s eyes widen in surprise as he is stung in the back. Ruffian: You ought to try iPod out! While Bill’s hand hangs in the air, his knife useless, the Ruffian’s own knife snatches out and back into Bill’s soft belly several times. Bill drops to the ground. Wild Bill: We’re expanding, boy. Like a tadpole’s tail. Ruffian: Some sort of colossal con. Wild Bill, swimming in blood: We met once before, remember? MacWorld. Ruffian: When father iPod gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath. Wild Bill, dying: It smells like...hot plastic. Ruffian: I don’t want to lose your best thoughts. Present, The Scene June g. Black returned and called Flatfoot outside, other reporters held back by cops. He had some meat for them when he returned. “One witness, a prostitute, described the attack as ‘wasps on a different wavelength then everybody else -- programmed to

TROWBRIDGE

kill.’” A young reporter wasn’t fazed, “What about the iPod? Where is the iPod?”. The other reporters stopped mid-syllable to hear the answer. Flatfoot looked directly at the man before answering. “This Bill, the victim, he’d been looking for a little bit of stalk, a little bit a run. He found some monsters instead. In any case, he never owned a fucking iPod.”

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WHITE 112

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WESTBROOK

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“ It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming

that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” —Ian McEwan in Atonement

The Adjacent Possible

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by Dolores Wilber

The postcard read B C A left to right. Un remarkable landscape except for the letters indicating something not known. Important marks but god knows why.

THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE by Dolores Wilber Read by 10-year old Alex Schorsch

The three laws of thermodynamics have been explained as: 1 – You can’t win; 2 – You can’t break even; 3 – You can’t get out of the game. This sounds like some people’s definition of hell, but it’s other people’s explanation of life on earth — or how energy happens, how things change. In modern times, thermodynamics has been based on theories of mixing. When you mix cream into your coffee, the coffee and cream come into an equilibrium. The energy dissipates, it falls apart, but it doesn’t disappear. The swirls in your coffee, the tempest in your teapot are fractals. Fractals are units of measurement in geometry. They are irregular shapes, self-similar bits, that look like the whole of a thing but are independent of scale. They look similar, no matter how microscopically small they are, yet they all differ in shape and size. This phenomenon is almost more than a person can grasp. Each one is differ ent and each one is the same. Like snow. Or mountains, Or clouds. Maybe even like you or me. The second law of thermodynamics —you can’t break even — is entropy—things fall apart, always. There’s disorder. And some say, the inevitable increasing disorder that leads to the inevitable heat death of the universe. Someone

u can’t get out of the game.

explanation of life on earth — ynamics has been based on theoeam come into an equilibrium. The our coffee, the tempest in your

ctals are units of measurement in metry. They are irregular shapes, -similar bits, that look like the ole of a thing but are independent cale. They look similar, no matter w microscopically small they are, they all differ in shape and size. s phenomenon is almost more than erson can grasp. Each one is differ and each one is the same. Like w. Or mountains, Or clouds. Maybe n like you or me.

different ways to play. This has lead to an idea called “the adjacent possible.”

A leap. A leap away and out of that inevitable disorder. Or mayb It’s chancy but consider this. It’s like the first flying squirrel (and have used it). Maybe that first flying squirrel just had handy when she jumped. Maybe there wasn’t anythin encoding or the way her squirrel family raise Maybe she just jumped into another trail of Can’t we all just jump—leap—into the adjacent possible? Will you jump with me? Or am I alone in this game?

ak even — is entropy—things fall nevitable increasing disorder that Someone has proposed a 4th law which is this. The game keeps getting more and more complicated and there are always different ways to play. This has lead to an idea called “the adjacent possible.” A leap. A leap away and out of that inevitable disorder. Or maybe just a leap out of the game. It’s chancy but consider this. It’s like the first flying squirrel (and this isn’t my metaphor, others have used it). Maybe that first flying squirrel just had ugly flaps of skin that came in handy when she jumped. Maybe there wasn’t anything inevitable in her genetic encoding or the way her squirrel family raised her that taught her to fly. Maybe she just jumped into another trail of stars. Can’t we all just jump—leap—into the adjacent possible? Will you jump with me? Or am I alone in this game?

Transcribed and edited excerpts from Death in Gaza by James Miller

AHMED I’m Ahmed. I’m 12-years old. I like playing with my friends. I want to be like all the kids on my street. I don’t like fighting with anyone.

A It’s not good here. There’s lots of shooting. Tanks come every other day. The paramilitaries say ‘When tanks come into MOHAMMED our where I’m we live. Mohammed. ’We must I was born blow somehere and thing up.’ I didn’t know any of my M friends. So This is a I started hand growing and grenade, growing. made And I got to of iron, know my sulfur friends. and sugar and I got to know charcoal. Ahmed. He’s so nice A to me. He’s For throwing like my at the brother. enemy. He’s my very best friend. M Because he’s This is to better than protect us, to the others. make the He isn’t bulldozers go greedy. away. He’s so nice to me. I want to be nice to everyone, all the world. Apart from our enemies.

A The hand grenade, it can’t hurt a tank or a bulldozer. But if it was near to an enemy, it might kill him. A piece of shrapnel could go into his eye, his head, into an organ of an enemy body. Maybe his heart. It might kill him. That’s why we ribbed it like this, with a machine.

M It’s not possible to have peace. Because they have killed so many people. A We’re the same. Exactly like each other.

M I worry about Ahmed. I worry about him as much as I worry about myself. A He worries about everyone, he worries.

M Neither of us M is stronger. Why do I worry about We’re the Ahmed? same in everything. I’m afraid that he will He and I are be martyred. friends to That he will This other the bone, like die and one stays in brothers. I won’t. one piece. I worry so It might What he much about break in two, does, him. but most of I want to be it stays like him. A together. If he dies, He worries I want to die about me, I This one flies after him. worry about apart. And he’s like him. I mean it that too. fragments. All these The one bits, they who gets all fly at martyred is the enemy. very happy. If it landed He goes to near them, heaven and I mean. sees all his martyr friends.

M I would like him to be martyred and me as well. I don’t want one of us to be martyred without the other. I always want to be with him. And he feels the same way. Yes, because I’m always with him. I don’t like being without him. Most of the time, you’ll find me with him. I’m with Ahmed. You always find me with him. I go to school with him. I go to football. I go to . . . anywhere I’m going I go with him.

A So even if your mother is sad, you want to die with me? M Yes. I’m not better than anyone else. Let every house give a martyr. I want to do whatever Ahmed does. James Miller was killed while filming the documentary.

Impertinent Punishment If a boy’s fault is one of wrong physical response, the correction may perhaps be made by physical means. But disobedience, carelessness, thoughtlessness are not primarily wrong physical responses. They are a failure of the boy’s heart and mind to correlate and respond properly. Correction then should be directed at influencing these attitudes, changing the heart and mind feelings. Spanking a boy in a horizontal position in a more or less sensitive region is not a direct approach to the desired result—does not lead even indirectly to influencing attitudes of the heart. The approach is so roundabout that he boy will seldom make the correct interpretation of its significance. The contact is too far from the heart . . . There is no logical connection between the cause and the result. If punishment is to be effective, there must be an intelligent connection between the failure on the boy’s part and the correction administered. The penalty must fit the wrong. The boy must see the significance of his error and the justice of the correction. The punishment must teach what we want it to teach, or else it is completely impertinent. To attempt to punish a boy for disobedience and thereby merely teach him dislike of the one administering the treatment is worse than no punishment. The punishment needs to be understood by the boy and accepted as fair and fitting. He must understand its purpose. At least he must recognize down in his heart that it contains an element of justice—that he deserves it. —Scout Leaders in Action by Walter G. MacPeek, Abingdon Press 1969

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TARG AND ELLIOTT

protect the insular I’m so sorry mom

stop being so cute so hilarious so telling

at midday raw onions and family fractions stick out screw letters

demanding one thing wanting everything the body is never distant

i want to go to prison

CODE PINK skills and math hanging out

that’s why she is the hero of her own dream

monkey girl isn’t immune to rejection

red sea + love

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Enex Ground The cemetery was unplanned, its existence the outcome of events unpredictable as a coin toss. If it hadn’t been for a killing, the clearing would have become a cabin site or cornfield. Toward the end of the unCivil War two young men from the Enex family were conscripted by one of the guerilla bands that infested Kentucky’s Blue Ridge, even after Appomattox. Their service to the Confederacy or the Union --no one knows which side claimed the irregulars’ allegiance-- was brief, just a short ride deep enough into forested hills their folks never heard the shots that killed them. Murdered for their horses and guns, the youngsters lay undiscovered for days. After seeing the work of possums and crows, ants and spiders, the kin who found them lacked heart or stomach to move the bodies too far, or allow their mothers to see. Known ever after as “the boys,” they were buried where they fell. No one’s sure who decided the boys’ interment made the clearing a cemetery, but sometime before 1870 the first planned grave was dug. Most likely the excavation was done by members of the Enex clan--my great-grandmother’s family--to bury one of their own, but decades of snow and heat, rain and wind have erased any identification hacked into the oldest stones. We’ve been digging occasional graves there ever since.

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Not long ago the county historical society visited, a day or two after one of our clean-ups. The next issue of the local paper declared the Enex Cemetery “abandoned.” It’s not, and never has been. Descendants of those buried there still maintain it, still visit the cemetery, though in fewer numbers than in earlier years.

SLOAN

All of them are family, and a few of us come together now and then to mow wild grasses seeding in from the woods, to clear dead limbs shed by a towering cedar tree. We patch broken tombstones, do other chores to show we remember people gone so long almost no one’s left who heard even one of their voices. In spite of our maintenance, the cemetery doesn’t much resemble family plots closer to highways and roads. It’s just a clearing in thick forest, an hour’s uphill walk from any house, different from other clearings only in having a couple of dozen tombstones jutting from the earth.

For decades, every Decoration Day branches of our blue collar clan, home from Ohio and Indiana factory towns, trekked en masse from Cousin Milton’s to the cemetery, a hard up-hill hike for children and old people. Milton provided an easier way, towing a hay wagon behind a tractor belching black smoke. The trip seemed to test the machine’s limits as severely as it challenged the legs of seventy year old men. The emergence of mountain children into adulthood is marked in small but significant events, like the presentation to a boy of his first shotgun, the first meal a girl cooks entirely unaided. Our elderly take similar short steps into their dotage: one spring their vegetable garden is a little smaller; that autumn they begin using a cane. Each year, the fact a certain child didn’t ride in Milton’s wagon, or an old woman climbed onto it after a minute or two of quarrelsome protest, gave notice the wheel of life had turned a few degrees. Ahead of a dinner on the ground, elders in the crowd told stories about the kin buried there in Enex ground. They recalled how Eliza Jane, believing a tow-headed grandson to be evidence of a daughter-in-law’s adultery, poked at the boy with a cane whenever he came close. “Get away from me, you damned little Underwood,” she’d hiss. (The despised Underwoods, on the other side of the ridge, sported loose morals and hair blonde as an Aryan dream.) And someone described the sad way Thomas ended his term on earth. He was only twenty when he earned his corner grave, crank starting a gas engine attached to a grist mill. He didn’t get out of the way fast enough when the handle “kicked” against his belly, and his mortal injury seemed more awful for its invisibility. He was dead in three days, two of them spent in fearful delirium. Henry and Jim, who carved most of the tombstones, were remembered by those old enough to have ridden in the brothers’ mule drawn wagon, to the place they hacked slabs of workable bluestone out of a hillside. The journey and the work were recalled in detail, the memories savored. Decades later, my father’s cousin John I (the “I” standing for nothing, like the “S” in Harry S Truman), recounted larger versions of those stories, adding information not shared at Decoration Day picnics.

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Thomas was blind drunk when that grist mill engine fatally struck him. Sixty years later, the older brother who warned Tom to leave the cranking to those who were sober still feels miserably responsible for the death. Jim, the stone-cutter, never saw his fortieth birthday. A quart of poison moonshine killed him, and though the family tried to learn the seller’s identity, no name ever came to light.

The grandmother whose cane fended off the attentions of the fair-haired boy who became my father was more than an amusing eccentric. Murderously senile, she over and over tried to kill her detested daughter-in-law, attacking with knives stolen from the kitchen. John liked visiting the cemetery at least monthly, and whenever I got the chance I’d go along. I was there when he selected the bit of Enex ground we’d bring him to on an April day five or six years farther ’round the wheel of life. John meant to end his stay on earth not far from where it began. Straddling his burial plot, the old man studied the sky a moment, then declared he’d bet money he could aim a twenty two rifle into a rainbow trajectory, hit the old barn near the home place. On sunny days it was a fine thing to sit on a convenient tombstone and listen while John recalled people he’d known personally, or repeated stories about those who died before he was born. When it was just John and me, getting comfortable never seemed disrespectful. He’d tell how whiskey killed this one, inform me that one over there was a woman chaser, and the lady buried yonder had a baby without ever telling its daddy’s name. Now and then John remembered the hard death of a sister in a 1919 flu epidemic that carried off whole families, described the awful sound of a teenaged girl’s futile fight for breath, while in another room a younger brother was thought to be dying as well. The brother survived. When he lost a leg in a car wreck after World War II John and some cousins and nephews brought the limb to the graveyard, carried in a special box. John could show exactly where they buried it. The old man’s memory never let go of a piece of information, once it got a grip on it. Once, my sister challenged his recall. He hadn’t seen her in well over a decade, during which my sister grew from gawky adolescence into a married woman with three kids. “You don’t know who I am, do you John?” she teased at a family reunion.

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Birth dates weren’t all he remembered, and in time it was those other recollections I most appreciated. In my middle twenties, like many of my cousins, I fought serious, occasionally bloody battles with alcohol and other drugs.

SLOAN

He looked her over and said, “Well, on the fifteenth of April in nineteen and fifty three your mommy had a little girl,” and went on to tell Sis how much she’d weighed at birth, what time of day she came into the world, other details of her arrival. John finished with “Your mother decided to name her little girl Joy. And here you are.”

My first trip home after finding something in the way of resolution for those miseries marked another Decoration Day. A heavy load of guilt and shame rode along when Pop and I carried John to the graves he wanted to visit. A great high oak rises twenty or so yards from the house where one great uncle lived. Under the tree is not cemetery, but Uncle George asked to be buried there, and he was. Slouched beside that uncommon resting place, John looked me over and confided, “You know, whiskey’s taken an awful toll on our family.” A dreamy look, the sign John was dredging up distant memories, softened his aging eyes. “Yes sir, it’s killed a slew of us.” “Like who?” I wanted to know. Reactions of my folks and others to those who’d grown up “bad to drink” suggested my generation was the first in our family’s history to explore alcohol and other recreational intoxicants. Memories settled and sorted at last, John delivered a long accounting of blood kin who lived hard, even died while figuratively swimming a rolling wild river of whiskey. That was the day I learned alcohol could be blamed for the death of my father’s older brother as much as an engine’s kick. Uncle George himself, whose grave brought us to the foot of that oak tree, was a moonshiner. He died of injuries incurred while defending his still from larcenous competition. I don’t recall how many names were included in John’s litany, but they all had intimate relationships with liquor I’d never imagined. Somewhere in the course of the old man’s recitation I glanced at my father, whose eyes were fixed where the toe of one shoe shifted springtime dust around. When Pop looked up, I could see in his face this truth: he would have never delivered this old news. I couldn’t help smiling, and turned back to John, who seemed near the end of telling how grievously alcohol beat up our family decades before my cousins and I were born. John paused, took a long breath. “And on your mother’s side…” he began, and then told me about those people. A year or so later, he let me know my generation wasn’t the first to discover illicit sex, any more than we invented an appreciation for beer and bourbon. Even in the old days “love children” were a common consequence of too much moonlight away from parental eyes. They included a wise and wonderful old man whose relationship to our family I never understood, until John explained how, in the years before he met grandma, my grandfather knew a lady up in Cincinnati. Knew her Biblically… 144

Then fetched home and raised the son who was a product of that knowledge.

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The Driscoll House was, in the thirties, the sort of “house” where every bedroom had--still has, for that matter--a convenient sink not far from the bed. My father talks about being there as a small boy. After delivering a load of timber, with a few dollars folded into their overall pockets, Pop’s older brothers and cousins sometimes stopped at the Driscoll House on their way home. He says he had no idea what was going on, but the sweet smelling women were more beautiful than anything on Holly Fork. They coaxed him down off a timber wagon with candy, while one-by-one his brothers and cousins disappeared inside for a time. There’s one tale about the house I’ll probably never know in its entirety. For decades Pop occasionally reminisced about “the prettiest redheaded woman I ever saw,” said she and John I had a serious thing going at one time. There was talk they might even get married, until a man running the Driscoll House stabbed her to death. More than a few who knew both claimed the redheaded woman was carrying John’s baby at the end. The man who cut her disappeared, and while some believed he went back to wherever he was from, others claimed the killer was dead before he made the county line. A couple of years before John I died, I asked him about the redhead. Suddenly the man happy to tell secrets in which family--including himself--played embarrassing roles, the man who disclosed things my aunts and uncles believed were well-guarded secrets, a man famous for telling it all had nothing to say

SLOAN

I learned which aunts were pregnant when they married, though they still don’t know I know. John named the uncles who’d been “bad to fight,” told me who among them carried personal awareness of what lay behind the iron doors of the old Rowan County Jail. John I was a wonder, a well of information freely offered, just because we were family. There didn’t seem to be anything he wouldn’t tell me. Until I asked about the Driscoll House… Cousin Fred deals in real estate and called a while back, said he’d been offered a tour of the Driscoll House in advance of its going on the market. When Fred asked if he might bring along a reasonably well behaved cousin, the lady organizing the display of the house for real estate agents said that oughtn’t be a problem. So one Saturday afternoon I walked through rooms I’d heard of all my life, in which I never expected to stand.

about that redheaded woman, or the mysterious disappearance of the man who murdered her. By and by, what John did tell, leavened with imagination, became a short story published in a literary quarterly. About once a week Cousin Fred and I drink beer together, most often beside a pickup parked next to John I’s grave. Lately we’ve speculated about John and that nameless redhead, wondered which kin, reference book, or brittle yellow newspaper pages might yield answers about her. We’re not sure, not yet. Nearly all John’s peers are dead, and the one very old man who might be able to tell us something is deaf as a post. Asking him about anything provokes a long, detailed narration about events and people entirely unrelated to the question. Five years ago he almost surely could have told us a lot about what happened at the Driscoll House decades ago, but his memory doesn’t work like it once did. I don’t know where or what the answers to our questions about that woman are, or if Fred and I will find them. We’re looking, though. That’s why I don’t get too caught up in genealogy. People on both sides of my family can tell me where and when a certain seventeenth century someone was born, married, and buried. But I can’t find a soul to give me the name of a beautiful woman, whose red hair yet shimmers in the memory of those who met her as children, a lady gone far longer than I’ve been alive, but still talked about. A lady I believe John I may have loved enough to kill for. John was almost eighty when he took a last long breath and slipped away from us. After his well-attended funeral, a considerable crowd followed his coffin past Campbell Branch and up the hill toward the Enex ground. A hard morning rain had turned the primitive road into a muddy mess, and the hearse bogged down in the last sloppy quarter mile. John’s casket was transferred to the bed of a four-wheel drive Civil Defense pickup, and anyone driving a similar vehicle was drafted to transport the old-timers who were John’s friends to his grave on Enex ground. A hundred or more stood there at the end, and it took a while to get all of us in place. Nobody minded the wait. Appalachian spring was all around us, every breath brought the reek of renewed fertility, and the encircling forest was lively with rustling and singing from scores of birds. The birds are what no one who stood at John I’s grave has forgotten. A few minutes before the minister started a brief final speech, 146

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my mother leaned close to whisper, “Watch up in the trees.” And I did watch, glad to have something to look at other than a gaping raw hole in the earth. Though it was early afternoon, entire flocks were coming to roost like it was sundown. Every tree or bush, every limb large enough to support the negligible weight of sparrows, or the more significant presence of jays and cardinals became a perch, bending into ground-grazing arches. Strands of barbed wire fence at the limits of Enex ground sagged, then sagged lower as still more birds came to roost. A quiet country cemetery became a cacophony of sound, so much so any sort of conversation required an ever louder voice. I do not necessarily believe in ghosts, or hold to superstitions. I’ll not be disappointed if, after death, I become only so much mud. There are worse ways to spend eternity than slowly evolving into a piece of Kentucky hilltop, and with no personal sense of a world beyond this one, I’m suspicious of “spooky” tales told by others. But I offer this single piece of truth: when Reverend Whomever opened his Bible to read a final few verses over the mortality of John I Sloan, those birds quieted as though an avian choirmaster signaled, “Enough!” John’s grave side service ended in a profound hush befitting any church. When the preacher was done, when he closed his Bible and affirmed we had gone as far with John I as anyone could go, and gently suggested we leave that great and good man to the peace and rest he’d earned, with a babel of chatter and cheep, the birds were gone, all gone, in seconds. I can’t explain, won’t offer rationalization for what happened that April afternoon. I know John loved that plot of ground. In memory I still hear the rhythm of his voice explaining how all those graves came to be filled. It would be lovely to believe the birds welcomed him to a peace and rest he assuredly deserved. In life John felt at home on Enex ground, and if there’s any consciousness or awareness after death, I’m confident he’s still comfortable there. It hasn’t changed much. The biggest alteration since Milton’s tractor dragged a wagon load of children and old folks up the hill, a few dozen others following, breathing hard at the climb, is John’s stark white V.A. tombstone.

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IMAGE INFORMATION

15 16 17

American Idol: Barbie, digital output American Idol: Liberty, digital output American Idol: Jesus, digital output

Tyrick Christian

We All Look The Same, photography

Stephanie Tate 21

Last Supper: Manny Babbit, cast iron Last Supper: Timothy McVeigh, cast bronze, dry ice and mint chocolate chip ice cream Last Supper, cast bronze

Marion Wilson

47, 48

Hunter College MFA Building Restrooms, xerography

Angela Dittmar

54 55

See the Baby, oil on canvas Mother and Child, oil on canvas

Susan Seaton Forgiveness?, digital output

Maggie McMahon

99 101 103 105

ommunity Under Construction, mixed media on paper C Eastern Paem Zartia, mixed media on paper Negreeyg, mixed media on canvas Welloy, mixed media on canvas

Dannielle Tegeder

106-112

Reflection, digital media

Constance White

115 117 119 121

Nature Scene, photography Nature Scene, photography Nature Scene, photography Nature Scene, photography

Jessica Westbrook

123-137

The Adjacent Possible, photography, digital media

Dolores Wilber

149

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For support above and beyond the call of duty, and in all forms, thank you. Harry and Dena Targ, the Berkson family, the Brills, Rebecca Beegle, Judith Matz, Liza Blair, Andrew Barnett, Talia Welsh, Shannon Johnson, Stephanie Tate, Angela Dittmar, Liz Tapp, Valerie Job, Jessica Lowe, Tyrick Christian, Joseph Shipp, Jessica Westbrook, Adam Trowbridge, Kathi Beste, Alex Jovanovich, Beth Nugent, Judith Caulfield, Maggie McMahon, Ron Buffington, Robert Cox, Randini, Nick Dupey, Susan Seaton, Lisa Yinwen Yu, Ibtissam Bouachrine, Gyuri Tury, Thomas Stachel, Abundia,

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and the students of the Department of Art at UT Chattanooga.

ISSN: 1553-0183

Anyiwo Beegle Brill Christian Dittmar Elliott Epstein Ghiara Goulish Huelle Hunter Jovanovich McMahon Perrucci Seaton Sloan Tapp Targ Tate Tegeder Trowbridge Welsh Westbrook White Wilber Wilson