faith in literature and art
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POETRY
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01 ISSUE
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K<M fia]bUhY 3 ruâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;mi-nate: TO CHEW THE CUD; TO MUSE; TO MEDITATE; TO THINK AGAIN AND AGAIN; TO PONDER
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issue one
staffeditor-in-chief prose editor poetry editor visual art editor consulting editor design director
ruminators
BCH9G :FCA MCI
Dear Editor, As you well know, I have never written a note to the editor before. But then I have never really known an editor or felt any sense of ownership in a new magazine. Simply undertaking this project with clear pure Faith, lots of hard work, wonderful friends and absolute confidence is a tremendous success in itself. My wish is that this magazine will serve some small part of His purpose in a world in dire need of an outlet for talented people to freely “Ruminate” for their benefit, but also for the rest of us too. I look forward to getting each issue of this great idea and trust that you will not hesitate to let me bite off a chunk and chew…once in a while. I love you. 8UX CORTEZ, COLORADO
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Dear RUMINATE, I saw a reference to you on photographer Cole Thompson’s website, and I did a Google and there you were. I am a Christian that loves good writing and good art, especially photography so I thought I’d subscribe. Sounds like you scratch where I itch! ;Ufm 5faghfcb[ CLEBURNE, TEXAS Dear RUMINATE, A life of faith is a life of truth, expression and exposure. It sounds like RUMINATE hopes to convey truth through creative expression and to expose life in all its positive and negative colors. As any artist will admit, contrast is a captivating thing. I pray blessings upon your venture as you relay the contrasts of life and faith in a 2D form. With anticipation, ;fUW]Y 7\]g\c`a CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
)
ruminating
98=HCFÈG BCH9
hUV`Y cZ WcbhYbhg
fOR US
(young graduates, a traveler, a designer, new mothers, a veterinary technician, and a florist) the process of discovering this little magazine was a meal of gulping, with sips and nibbles in between—of chewing the cud we had created. After many prayers and puzzling over ideas and proposals for weeks, we noticed that our ultimate aim was to reveal faith in art. We decided this was a good aim and kept going. And through this our vision materialized, the title was chosen, and our first issue’s theme “Chewing on Life” surfaced. Yet we found that creating and publishing a magazine, much like ruminating, isn’t done in one swallow. Often it was, “Can we make a literary magazine? Yes.” Grab. Scarf. Gobble. Gulp. And then, “Oh no. What were we thinking?” Cold food. Nibbles. Sips. But in spite of our somewhat erratic pace, a feast was served and taken. We were lucky to have such great artists submitting, chewing, believing in the task at hand. We were fortunate to find encouraging yeses when they were most needed. This is what brought RUMINATE through the ponderings and onto the presses. We are grateful. And we hope you enjoy—it is far richer than we ever dreamed. For it just so happens that “Chewing on Life” occurs at the end of a pier, is as real as a cow’s cud, as big as The Blues and The Classics, as particular as a well-made pie and as substantial as the communion table. To create is to chew. To believe is to chew. Take and eat. And cheers to a good meal.
NON-FICTION Al Haley >Ygig Hcc_ h\Y 6ig hc 7\]WU[c 13 ;C=B; 8CKB H<9 FC58 K=H< H<9 6@I9G
Hannah Faith Notess
Bethan Holland AYX]hUh]cb cb h\Y AU[] 30 KY][\h cZ KcfXg 43 5IHC6=C;F5D<M C: 5 F958=B; @=:9
22 ;iYgg]b[ Uh 9bXg
FICTION Leif Peterson 5b[Y`g 8cbÈh G`YYd 34
Alexa Behmer 6`UW_ @YUh\Yf G\cYg 24
WHO PASSED AWAY LAST SPRING BECAUSE SHE WAS THE ULTIMATE LOVER OF WORDS AND ALL THINGS WORTH CHEWING.
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Laurie Klein 29 5faYX k]h\ ghcbYg kYÈjY Zcf[chhYb 28 K\UhÈg @YZh CjYf 28 =bhYfWYgg]cb ]b C]`g Debra Rienstra 33 HU_Y 8f]b_ 33 FYg]`]YbWY
ART Nicholas Price COVER
Cole Thompson IS FOR MY GRANDMOTHER
21 HUc HY 7\]b[ 5[UdY 21 7caaib]cb Andy Patterson
With many thanks, 6f]UbbU JUb 8m_Y
12 @U ;`cf]U HUeiYf]U 12 Cab]dfYgYbWY 5[Y ) David Von Schlichten
Laura Peterson
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FIA=B5H9
POETRY
:Ua]`m DcfhfU]h Hkc <]dd]Yg H\Y 9bX cZ h\Y D]Yf 8Um 8fYUa]b[ GcW_g 8Uf_ G\YYd H\Y 5b[Y` ;UVf]Y` KfYbW\Yg
8 9 10 11 23 27 32 54
Alohi Ae’a 42 Hf]VihY 42 ?i`YUbU Paul Willis 50 5 :]g\ Ghcfm 51 AcXYfb @Ub[iU[Yg 51 GUWf]ÑWY
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ruminations
5FH=GHÃ&#x2C6;G BCH9
Wc`Y h\cadgcb
FAMILY PORTRAIT Cole Thompson
www.colethompsonphotography.com
TWO HIPPIES Cole Thompson ,
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THE END OF THE PIER Cole Thompson
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DAY DREAMING Cole Thompson
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6YWUigY ]Z mci hfUbg`]hYfUhYX ÅhUeiYf UÆ ]bhc 9b[`]g\ mci Wci`X [Yh gcaYh\]b[ `]_Y ÅhcW_Yfm"Æ cf ÅhUWckfm"Æ Cf ]b U @Uh]b ]X]ca. ÅhUeiY`cf]ia"Æ
`U [`cf]U hUeiYf U HANNAH FAITH NOTESS
6YWUigY h\Y Òcif hcfh]``Ug UfY kUfa UbX hk]WY Ug V][ Ug d`UhYg" 6YWUigY ]b \YfY h\Y `][\h g]Zhg ]b h\fci[\ d`UhY [`Ugg [`Un]b[ cfUb[Y UbX mY``ck Zcfa]WU"
^Ygig hcc_ h\Y Vig hc W\]WU[c GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD WITH THE BLUES Vm 5`VYfh <U`Ym You may bury my body, ooh, down by the highway side, So my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride. “ME AND THE DEVIL BLUES,” ROBERT JOHNSON, 1937
6YWUigY bYlh h]aY mci WcaY h\]g ]g cbY cZ h\cgY d`UWYg = WUb hU_Y mci hc g\ck mci \ck VYUbg UbX f]WY YUhYb ]b h\Y f][\h `][\h Wcc_YX Vm h\Y f][\h dYcd`Y UfY ZUf acfY h\Ub ^igh VYUbg UbX f]WY" 6YWUigY h\Y ;`cfm cZ h\Y @cfX ]g fYjYU`YX Uacb[ ig" 6YWUigY ]b GkU\]`] ihiZi_i kU VkUbU iaYÑ_U Xib]Ub]" 6YWUigY YjYfm! k\YfY YjYfmk\YfY dYcd`Y UfY g]hh]b[ Xckb
cab]dfYgYbWY U[Y ÑjY HANNAH FAITH NOTESS
hc[Yh\Yf hc VYUbg UbX f]WY [`cfm UbX `cb[]b[" 6YWUigY = WUbÈh UbmacfY VY Uh \caY ]b h\Y [UhYX \]``g _bck]b[ h\Uh VYUbg UbX f]WY WcibhfmÄX]fhm hUeiYf U WcibhfmÄ]g gcaY\ck W`cgYf hc h\Y WYbhYf cbY ]bW\ bYUfYf hc h\Y iddYf W\UaVYfg cZ h\Y kcf`XÈg GUWfYX <YUfh" 6YWUigY `]_Y g\Y gU]X h\YfYÈg U WYfhU]b g`Ubh cZ `][\h UbX = gUk ]h Xckb \YfY cb A]`dUg U a]bihY U[c" 6YWUigY h\Y HfU]b cZ <]g FcVY Ñ``g h\Y fYghUifUbh k]h\ ]h UbX h\Y d]Wc XY [U``c ]g ZfYY"
\UbbU\ ZU]h\ bchYgg IS CURRENTLY
WORKING ON HER MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY, WHERE SHE ALSO SERVES AS AN ASSOCIATED POETRY EDITOR FOR THE INDIANA REVIEW. HANNAH HAS POETRY FORTHCOMING IN THE CRESSET AND THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY.
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hip hop aUm \UjY Ub ]aU[Y dfcV`Ya Vih h\Y V`iYg g]b[Yfg kYfY XYWUXYg U\YUX cZ h\Y fUddYfg"
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these ladies and gentlemen `cc_ `]_Y h\Ym ZY`` Ug`YYd Uh KccXghcW_ UbX kc_Y id `cgh ]b h\Y KYgh"
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they seem to embrace an older view of the gods, h\Uh h\Ym Yl]gh hc gYfjY ig UbX fYacjY \UnUfXg hc cif Yl]ghYbWY"
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U`VYfh \U`Ym
IS WRITER IN RESIASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY IN ABILENE, TEXAS. HIS SHORT FICTION HAS APPEARED IN THE ATLANTIC, THE NEW YORKER, AND ROLLING STONE. DURING A RECENT SABBATICAL HE STUDIED DENCE AND
THE HISTORY OF BLUES MUSIC AND FOUND
“SCHOLARLY RATIONALE” TO ADD TO CD COLLECTION. THIS INCLUDED A NEW FAVORITE, TOMMY MCCLENNAN, THE LAST OF THE HOLLERIN’ MISSISSIPPI DELTA SINGERS AND THE WRITER OF “WHISKEY HEAD WOMAN.” A
HIS BURGEONING BLUES
XUj]X jcb gW\`]W\hYb IS THE LUTHERAN (ELCA) PASTOR OF ST. JAMES EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN YOUNGSTOWN, PA. HE HAS NUMEROUS PUBLISHING CREDITS, INCLUDING A RECENT CHAPBOOK ENTITLED POEDIFIER (PLOWMAN MINISTRIES). DAVID LIVES IN LATROBE, PA, WITH HIS WIFE, TWO STEPCHILDREN, AND FIVE CATS.
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What if we loved like water, yielding to rocks and eroding them? &%
:fYg\ k]h\ [f]YZ cjYf h\Y XYUh\ cZ am Xc[ = g`]ddYX ]bhc mcif Yadhm WcZZYY g\cd UbX [fibhYX am cfXYf acifb]b[ ]b am acbcgm``UV]W kUm" = Wci`XbÈh \Y`d Vih bch]WY \ck VYUih]Zi` mci kYfY VY\]bX h\Y WcibhYf \ck U ga]`Y WfYdh UWfcgg mcif Vfck Uh h\Y dUWY cZ [f]YZ gc Ug bch hc ghUfh`Y aY "
SOCKS Cole Thompson
Mci YlhYbXYX WcZZYY dUgh h\Y kY`WcaY gdUWY VYhkYYb Ñb[Yfh]d UbX W\Ygh/ U []j]b[ cZ \YUh \Y`X di``YX W`cgY hc \YUfh à U g]b[i`Uf [fUWY"
UbXm dUhhYfgcb
CURRENTLY A RESIDENT OF SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA, ANDY PATTERSON READS, COOKS, RIDES HIS BIKE, PLAYS MUSIC, BUILDS FURNITURE, AND, OCCASSIONALLY CONSIDERS WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO LIVE IN A TOWN WHERE FRESH CILANTRO ISN’T AVAILABLE AT THE CORNER MARKET.
HIS WRITING HAS AP-
PEARED IN A NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS,
CUP OF JOE AND THE UPCOMING FALL ISSUE OF MANZANITA: POETRY AND PROSE OF THE MOTHERLODE AND SIERRA. INCLUDING THE ONLINE MAGAZINE
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=hÈg f]g_m h\]g Vig]bYgg cZ W\Yf]g\]b[ h\]b[g. `]_Y h\Y acaYbhia cZ hfU[YXm ]b <Ua`Yh/ Cd\Y`]U UVcjY \Yf ghfYUa hYYhYf]b[ kU]h]b[ Zcf gcaYcbY ]b h\Y UiX]YbWY hc fYgWiY \Yf Zfca h\Y gWf]dh" 6ih h\Y YbX ]g U`kUmg h\Y gUaY. g\Y ÒcUhg ZUWY Xckb acih\]b[ XYgdU]f k]h\ \ig\YX hcb[iYg cZ kUhYf" 6ih mci mci VfYk U \ibXfYX VY[]bb]b[g YjYfm XUkb Vf]b[]b[ h\Y acfb]b[g k]h\ mcif \U]f \Ud\UnUfX`m h]YX VYWUigY YjYb cb h\Y kcfgh cZ \U]f XUmg YUW\ YbX ]g WcibhYX"
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forgetting could actually be erasing Yg V`UW_ `YUh\Yf g\c 6Y\aYf Vm 5`YlU
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U`YlU VY\aYf IS A FULL-TIME MOM AND
DARK SHEEP Cole Thompson
ONGMONT, CO, DILETTANTE WRITER WHO LIVES IN L TWO CHILDREN, AND , L WITH HER HUSBAND, MICHAE ATES HER WRITENTR ASHER AND HARPER. SHE CONC , TO PAY THE AND , S POEM ING ON SHORT STORIES AND R SHOES” IS EATHE L BILLS, GRANT WRITING. “BLACK . BEWORK SHED HER FIRST PROFESSIONALLY PUBLI ING READ AND ING WRIT TWEEN DIAPER CHANGES AND SSIS A TIVE XECU E AN SENTENCES, ALEXA WORKS AS T. S AT AND ENT OVEM M TANT FOR REFORMED YOUTH . TRY MINIS S ’ N WOME IN H VRAIN PRESBYTERIAN CHURC
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what’s left over 7caY 8YWYaVYf AcbYhÈg [\cgh gh]dd`Yg h\Y kcf`X k\]hY WUbX]Yg h\Y hifZ" Hf]aa]b[ dUghfm k]h\ 8UXXm k\Yb = kUg U []f` =ÈX gb]hW\ dYhU`g h\Uh ZY`` Zfca \]g _b]ZY Ã
gW\b]VV`Yg kY WU``YX h\Ya gi[UfYX VU_YX ibh]` ÒU_m h\Yb [cVV`YX" H\Ym aUXY U Wfigh cZ am acih\ gWcfYX ]hg hYbXYf d`YUhg gc h\Uh YjYfmh\]b[ hUghYX cZ k\Uh kY \UX aUXY YjYb WcbjYfgUh]cb" KYYd]b[ U `]hh`Y cif d]Yg Wcc`YX cb Ç)$g Zcfa]WU ÒYW_YX k]h\ [c`X" H\Y h]aYf fUb cih Ug ]h XcYg bck" = fYaYaVYf h\Y `Ugh h]aY 8UXXm \ib[ id \]g Udfcb" Gbck gY[iYg U[U]b hc fU]b" Gh]`` = f]gY h]Y cb U X]g\hckY`
intercession in oils
armed with stones, we’ve forgotten h\Y aYUb]b[ cZ [fU]b Ug YUW\ hcgg gWUhhYfg h\Y WUff]cb V]fXg" GhfUbXYX U bYgh`]b[ [fUmYf h\Ub h\]bb]b[ VcbY a]ffcfg h\Y `]hh`Ygh fYZi[YYg. hk][ ZYYh hfUjYfgY h\Y YUfh\ UbX cdUeiY Ug YbUaY` h\cgY YmYg g\]bY" =b h\Y fiVV`Y Ub c`X aUb WfUX`Yg U \YY` cZ V`UW_ VfYUX hc \]g VfYUgh Ug ]Z Ubm acaYbh ZUhY aUm VfUbX]g\ gifdf]gY _b]jYg" K\UhYjYf Zc``ckg h\Y eiYgh]cb cZ 7U]b VY ]h ghihhYfg cf d]YhmÈg mYUghm df]XY kYÈfY U`` VY[[Ufg \YfY W`iadYX k]b[g ghiW_ h\fcUhg g_m!k]XY"
Vck cjYf h\Y ÒcifYX W`ch\ d]YW]b[ gcaYh\]b[ [ccX Zfca k\UhÈg `YZh cjYf"
`Uif]Y _`Y]bÈg POETRY AND PROSE HAS APPEARED
THE SOUTHERN REVIEW, MARS HILL REVIEW, COMNEW LETTERS, TIFERET, THE NEW PANTAGRUEL, THE HEALING MUSE, AND NUMEROUS JOURNALS AND ANTHOLOGIES, SACRED AND SECULAR. HER CHAPBOOK, BODIES OF WATER, BODIES OF FLESH, WON THE 2004 PREDATOR PRESS COMPETITION. LAURIE LOVES TO GARDEN, EAT, RIDE HER RECUMBENT BIKE, AND READ. SHE ALSO SERVES AS CONSULTING EDITOR AT ROCK & SLING: A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE, ART AND FAITH. IN
MONWEAL,
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aYX]hUh]cb cb h\Y aU[] Vm 6Yh\Ub <c``UbX
I have a seven-year-old brother named Eliot, after T.S. Eliot. I was thirteen when he was born, all slime-coated and blue, but not wailing like most newborn babies. Our baby, my parents’ sixth, my fourth brother, my fifth sibling, was born under extreme duress. One more second inside my mother and he would have died. But somehow (providence perhaps?) things fell into place. Doctors just happened to be within earshot of my mother’s screams, the nurses were swift, and our baby was born safe, although a little traumatized. So my father and I named him Eliot, our baby out of the wasteland. As I said, I was thirteen when all of that happened, so at the time I pretty much got the sugarcoated telling of the events. But, I knew there had been problems – they were difficult to miss. My mother and Eliot stayed in the hospital much longer than normal; and when my mother was finally able to come home, she did not get out of bed for over a month. In the hospital, Eliot was placed not among the other plump, eight pound babies in the regular nursery, but in the ICU, flanked on either side by a set of tiny, china-doll twins who looked more like aliens than humans with their translucent skin and eyes. Our baby looked like a beast-child in there, in the ward filled with sad mothers, the ones who couldn’t yet hold their babies, or who knew they never would. There was no show-off window into that ward. Anyway, I knew all of these things were signs of a near-miss with doom, but I did not press the issue because, honestly I didn’t want to know. I think it goes back to that line from The Four Quartets, a line in “Burnt Norton” where Eliot writes that “human kind cannot bear very much reality…” All of the messy details of my brother’s near-peril were too much reality for me. Me, a thirteen-year-old with a new baby to play with. Who cares how he had gotten there; he was there, and I got to name him. Sure we had begun to look like a family of Mormons, or worse, home-schoolers (which we actually were at the time), but that was all right. I think I just wanted everyone to be thankful, congratulate me on my brilliant name choice and stop making such a big deal about it all. Over the years, I did overhear enough stories, see enough faces go white to know what really happened when my brother was born. There was a rare-ish complication involving my mother’s uterus rupturing. The baby was cut out just in time, with only seconds to spare. Nine times out of ten, women who experience this lose their babies; sometimes the '$
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women die. And the pain, the pain is excruciating. And yet Eliot is the jewel of my mother’s crown. One would think after such pain, after the death she had to go through to give him life, my mother would want him out of her sight, at least for a few days. But as soon as she woke up, all she wanted was to see the baby, to hold him, touch him, drink in the life her dying had generated. I know this sort of paradox is not uncommon; that most of the time for there to be life, there must always be some sort of death. Nature must die in the winter to be resurrected in spring. Babies are always born through the pain and dying of their mothers. Even things like gardening, completing a crossword puzzle, and creating a piece of art come at a price, through sacrificing or losing some of ourselves in the process. This whole idea of life through death is something I seem to be thinking about constantly, which is probably why I often return to Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi.” The magi leaves all that is familiar and comfortable to search for a baby, the supposed fulfillment of a prophecy, a magnificent future king. When he and his companions finally reach the baby, the king is bewildered by what he finds. They have come all that way to see a baby king, following rumors and whispers of greatness, of grandeur, a birth heralded by an enormous blazing star; yet when they arrive, it is not as they had anticipated: “This Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death…” In this moment, gazing on a very different sort of King, he finds a part of himself dying, his old self, his old ways, his old way of life, in a way that takes him totally aback. The king realizes that nothing will ever be the same, and when he goes back to his place of origin at the end of the poem, nothing is the same. And yet he is thankful and says, “I should be glad of another death.” This is something I can never quite reconcile. I see that it happens all the time, and that all these stories echo the ultimate
Story, and that it is something that should probably be mundane to me now. Yet, it is not, and perhaps there are things that should remain mind-boggling and inexplicable and wondrous. Perhaps if these things were reconcilable, if Death and Life were reconcilable, then I would begin to grow numb to them, and they would grow unimportant. When I was thirteen, I thought it would be a waste of time and sadness to dwell on Eliot’s near death, so I didn’t think about it at all. But being somewhat older, I can look back and realize that it would be a waste of time and sadness to think only on what we nearly lost and all the worry and pain we suffered. But, to think on it in juxtaposition with what we gained - A brother! A life! A new creation! That is of infinite worth.
VYh\Ub accfY \c``UbX
DELTA AND IS A UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI. SHE CURRENTLY RESIDES IN FAYETTE COUNTY, TENNESSEE WHERE SHE IS A GRAMMAR SCHOOL LATIN TEACHER. SHE HAS A DEEP AFFINITY FOR CHAIM POTOK, FLANNERY O’CONNOR AND HOT TEA. THIS IS HER FIRST PUBLICATION. WAS RAISED IN THE GRADUATE OF THE
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THE ANGEL GABRIEL Cole Thompson
XYVfU fY]bghfU IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFES-
ENGLISH AT CALVIN COLLEGE. SHE GREAT WITH CHILD: ON BECOMING A MOTHER, A PERSONAL MEDITATION ON MOTHERHOOD; AND SO MUCH MORE: AN INVITATION TO CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY, WHICH IS A GENTLE INTRODUCTION TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. SHE LIVES IN MICHIGAN WITH HER HUSBAND AND THREE CHILDREN. SOR OF
HAS WRITTEN TWO BOOKS,
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The worst job I ever had was walking Mrs. X’s dogs. But it was the job that introduced me to Jeff, and for that I’m grateful.
from another era, although I couldn’t have said which one.
Jeff had an Akita that was an angel. I don’t mean that he was well-behaved and good. I mean he was actually an angel, a celestial being, one of the heavenly hosts come to earth incarnate as a dog to teach us that there is wonder and mystery in the world, that the free gift of grace is available to us, that God chooses to be among us, if we just have eyes to see it. At least that’s what Jeff claimed.
Jeff ’s sweater, the blue of it, reminded me of my mother’s delphiniums. I was sitting on a bench not really reading my book when he and Raphael emerged from the trees on the far side of the park. They walked across the rolling lawns, together, and yet, not exactly together, both of their noses turned slightly up to the breeze, as if on the lookout for something. I watched the two of them mesmerized, feeling an electric tingling at the back of my neck, something similar between my legs. I pushed my sunglasses up on my nose and watched them make their way across the green grass. He wasn’t especially attractive, not in the angular, sinewy, mussedhair garbage man way. It was more his substance I noticed, his largeness, the way he looked at the world, seeing everything and absorbing it.
I know that people are given to moments when everything is altered for them, key instances when a word or a look or a wayward galvanic notion cements that nothing will be exactly the same again. For me it was the chance encounter with Jeff and his dog, Raphael. But maybe chance had nothing to do with it. Mrs. X had three Corgis, a breed that is amiable and cute, but has manic herding instincts and doesn’t know how to wipe itself. I took them to the park every weekday at noon where I would let them off their leads and watch them herd the squirrels and ducks and other dogs. Mrs. X made me take them, whatever the weather, but mostly it was nice, and I could sit on a park bench and read. It really wasn’t a terrible job, but I was grieving and feeling insignificant, aimless and generally bad about myself at the time. So, I naturally transferred these emotions to my employment. A year earlier I’d had everything figured out. I was going to spend the summer working as an editorial intern at The Garden City Review then start graduate school in the fall. But a week before my internship was to start, my parents were both killed in a car accident. I spent the summer putting their affairs in order and drinking screwdrivers for breakfast every morning. By the end of the summer, it was clear even to me that I was in no shape for graduate school. I’d closed all my parents’ accounts and paid off any outstanding debts. I hadn’t bothered to pay the phone and only paid the power bill once all summer, enough for the ice for my screwdrivers. I still hadn’t decided what to do with the house. I didn’t want it, but selling it seemed more than I was capable of. I sat in my parents’ drab olive kitchen one morning toying with an untoasted English muffin and sipping a screwdriver that was more vodka than orange juice when I spied Mrs. X’s ad in the paper. I read the ad over then looked out the window where a garbage truck had stopped between our driveway and the neighbor’s. I watched as a lanky young man with unkempt hair dumped the neighbor’s garbage into the truck then replaced the cans neatly on the lawn. I hadn’t put out any garbage in weeks because I wasn’t generating any, but the young man still walked over to the foot of the driveway and lingered there a moment, as if he was uncertain what to do. He glanced up at the kitchen window and brushed the hair away from his eyes. I gave him a little wave, but there must have been a glare on the window because
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he didn’t react. I was thinking, C’mon in. Take a load off. I’ve got nothing better to do. But the truck started moving and Mr. Lean and Lanky jumped on the back holding on with one hand, his other hanging casually at his side in a way that I thought was overtly sexual. I was left staring at the neighbor’s empty trashcans. I really should be generating a little garbage, I thought. Something more than orange juice cartons and bottles of vodka. If not for myself, then for the nice garbage man. I couldn’t help thinking he was a little disappointed with me. The next day Mrs. X met me at the door and looked me over. She must have been satisfied because she allowed me into the tiled foyer and began explaining my duties, which was walking the dogs for two hours every day and occasionally picking up some groceries. She ate only organics and shopped one day at a time so everything would be fresh. Her husband was dead, her children were grown and gone, and she was working on a translation of a Portuguese book of poetry that had been written, as far as anyone could figure, around 1500 A.D. She’d gotten the Corgis after her husband died, but almost immediately regretted it. “What was I thinking?” she said as she handed me the leads. She had gray hair, which she wore up, fastened with pins, but it was always half undone, charcoal wisps of it falling over her face and always getting pushed aside. “I thought they’d be nice companions, but it’s like having three toddlers in the house again. They’re really quite annoying.” That they were. They bounced on top of each other and barked and yelped and continually got tangled up in their leads. They always had a smear of shit on their backsides, and if it was raining their bellies quickly took on the look of a piece of fleece dragged through a cesspool. But once at the park, I could let them go. They’d run in manic widening circles in search of something to herd, and if they couldn’t find anything they’d herd each other, although it was never very clear how that was working. I walked Mrs. X’s dogs all winter, my disdain for them escalating until the days started growing longer, then leveling off into disinterested apathy. I was still medicating myself with screwdrivers in the mornings, but I was also throwing out the occasional pizza box for the garbage man, which I rationalized as a sign of emotional health. I was, after all, thinking of someone besides myself. Jeff and Raphael walked into the park on a spring day that was bright and warm, but to me seemed dull and matted. Spring was when my mother would spend hours on her knees in the garden, cleaning the beds of last year’s detritus around the perennials and planting flat after flat of annuals that burst forth in reds and yellows and oranges and blues. She always wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep the sun off her face, and I thought it made her look like she was
The Corgis noticed them soon enough, streaking and yelping across the lawn; intent on corralling them, their myopia impressive, containment their sole objective. I was worried for a moment about how Raphael would react to this onslaught. He was massive, his powerful jaws capable of snapping the Corgis’ backs like dry twigs. But as the dogs approached he merely sat. The Corgis were so taken aback by this maneuver that they suddenly stopped and, mimicking Raphael, respectfully sat. I left my book on the bench and went over, feeling for the first time something I hadn’t felt since my parents’ death. I couldn’t have said what it was, only that it was new, and I suppose, welcomed. Jeff stood several yards away from the dog’s strange tableau, not noticing, or not thinking anything unusual about it, but when I approached he turned and smiled. For a moment, I looked into his cactus green eyes, but then I found myself focusing on a spot below his chin. “Is this your dog?” I asked.
')
“Raphael is an angel. I imagine your dogs are impressed.” “They’re not my dogs,” I said. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized how belligerent it sounded. Why was I being combative? Was it because my parents were dead? Because all my plans were spoiled, and I was alone and miserable, and it would be a dishonor to their memories if I started to feel otherwise? Jeff laughed and held up his hands.
“How do you know he’s an angel?” I tried.
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’m his human.”
Jeff looked at me for a long moment, his head slightly cocked. He had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, like a freshly plowed field.
Normally this kind of pantywaist sentimentality would have made me nauseous, but the way Jeff said it was so unaffected, as if it had never occurred to him that Raphael might be his dog, as if they hadn’t yet figured out what their relationship was to one another. He noticed me staring at him and took a step closer.
“Raphael has taught me to see things. To notice things.”
“I’m Jeff.”
“What kind of things?”
He looked at me as if I might need clarification, as if a simple introduction of first names might be beyond my ability. Was I acting strange? Had I lost the capacity for dialogue?
Jeff kept staring at me, and I forced myself to hold his gaze.
“And this,” he said, indicating his dog, “is Raphael.” At this, Raphael turned his attention away from the Corgis for the first time and looked at me. For a moment he seemed to be sizing me up, but then his eyes narrowed and blinked with compassion. “Hello, Raphael,” I said. I turned back to Jeff who was removing his sweater and tying it around his waist. The sky was a radar blue; and the park was suddenly full of the scent of pine, the chirping of birds, the sound of children’s laughter, the faraway gurgling of the stream that bisected the park. I tucked my hair behind an ear and felt a slow pulsing. I wanted him to kiss me. I needed him to. I hadn’t been touched by another human being since my parents’ death, since that awful afternoon when strangers streamed into my parents’ house carrying casseroles that piled up on the kitchen counters like debris at a demolition site. I desperately wanted his lips on mine. But I knew at the same time it was wrong, that I’d be flirting with something I didn’t fully understand or deserve. I shoved my hands into my jeans and looked down at Raphael. “How does he do that?” Jeff looked at the dogs and gave a little shrug.
“Like the sorrow in your eyes,” he said. I looked at him for a moment then looked over his shoulder to the edge of the woods where two boys were fighting with swords, which were really sticks. I crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t feel like crying, but all the emotion of the last year came rising up. I wanted to die or to leave, but I had nowhere to go. Why was I still living in my parents’ house with the phone turned off ? I looked back at Jeff ’s green eyes. “My parents died last year,” I said. “I have vodka for breakfast.” This statement seemed to visibly cause him pain, but he didn’t reach out to touch me like I thought he might. He turned his face into the wind and took a deep breath, and nodded. “My parents are dead too,” he said. Please don’t say, But they’re in a better place, I thought. But he didn’t. He just looked at me in the way he did that made me feel like something was gurgling inside me and asked if I liked coffee. Coffee, I thought. Yes, coffee. It seemed like a foreign word, like a word from a language I’d
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once known but had forgotten. “I love coffee,” I said. “I know a place that makes the best coffee on the planet,” he said. “Will you be here tomorrow?” “I’m here every day.” “I’ll bring you some.” He smiled and ran his hand through his hair, which I noticed was really more white than blonde. Then Raphael suddenly stood up and began walking toward the woods, and Jeff followed. I watched until they disappeared, then I looked at the Corgis who were still sitting but were now looking at me for direction. “That big dog was an angel,” I said, as if that explained everything. *** Since my parents’ death, I’d been sleeping on the living room couch, unable to fall asleep without the TV. But that night, after fixing myself a screwdriver, I wandered into their room. It was thick with a dim light that hung in the air like gauze. I ran my finger over the surface of their bureau and snaked a trail through the accumulated dust. I picked up one of my mother’s earrings and held it up to my ear in front of the mirror. I never thought we looked much alike; but now in the dim light, with all the weight I’d lost, I looked much older and thought I saw a resemblance. A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood. I ran my hand over the quilted bedspread and sat on the edge of the bed. When I finished my screwdriver, I lay back, fanned out my arms, and closed my eyes. I dreamed that my parents had gone to a foreign country, a country I didn’t recognize. On one of their excursions, they rented horses and rode high into the mountains along a river that glittered in the sunlight. After awhile they could see faces beneath the surface of the water, and the horses had turned to bridleless dogs. They turned away from the river and crossed a razor-stubbled cornfield, like a sheet of gold. The dogs ran side by side, their gait so even that it was possible for my parents to hold hands. Their silhouettes got smaller and smaller until at last they vanished in a burst of golden light. I awoke and imagined that Jeff and Raphael were in the room. I thought I heard Raphael’s quiet breathing somewhere in the corner.
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“Are you there?” I said. I waited and found myself trying to conjure Jeff ’s appearance. When I was with him, I hadn’t thought much about what he looked like except that he was large, that he took up space, but whether this was his physical being or what he projected emotionally and spiritually was hard to say. I fell back to sleep and dreamed that I quit on Mrs. X. I was dreading doing it, but knew I had to. I had to be free of her and those stupid dogs. I walked to her house, and for some reason I had the dogs with me. They tugged at the leads and pulled in different directions and got so tangled that I had to unfasten them to get them straightened out. We took several wrong turns and walked down streets I didn’t recognize. At last I spotted her house and went up and knocked on the door. I didn’t know how she would react. She had come to count on me and I didn’t want to let her down, but I had to make her understand that I couldn’t do it anymore. Yet when she opened the door, I saw that she was holding the book she’d been working on. It had been published, bound in manila cloth with gold lettering. She held it out to me. I took it, trading her book for the dogs. The next morning someone was knocking at my door. I pulled myself out of bed and noticed that I was still wearing my clothes from the day before. I stumbled down the hall and into the kitchen. The knocking continued, but I took the time to pour myself a quick screwdriver. “Who could it be?” No one even knew I existed. I took a long sip then pulled back the curtain and saw Jeff and Raphael standing on the front porch with the morning sun pouring down on them like a spotlight. I opened the door, and Jeff produced a steaming cup of coffee. “I didn’t think you’d want to wait until noon for this,” he said.
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I took the coffee but couldn’t think what to say. Raphael sat down on the porch facing the street. Jeff just stood there. “How did you know where I lived?” I asked. Jeff smiled. “Raphael knew,” he said. There was a slight southerly breeze. A strand of hair blew across my face and stuck between my lips. I brushed it away and tucked it behind an ear. I looked at the coffee. It smelled nice. It had been a long time since I’d had coffee. “Do you want to come in?” I asked. Jeff looked up at the indigo sky and squinted. “I’m not much of an inside person,” he said. “No,” I said. The coffee was warm in my hands. “And I don’t suppose Raphael is much of an inside dog.”
to quietly cry, which did not seem to disconcert Jeff and Raphael in the least. They were good company. They gazed across the street, their noses slightly raised, taking everything in. When I’d stopped crying Raphael gave my cheek a single lick with his coarse tongue then dropped down with his chin between his paws. “How much does he weigh?” I asked. Jeff looked at Raphael seriously, as if he’d never considered the question. “With or without the wings?” he said at last. “I don’t see any wings,” I said. Jeff was about to laugh, but then he stopped himself. “Yes,” he said. “Well, the wings don’t weigh much.” We watched as a boy on a bike coasted down the middle of the street. I wanted Jeff to kiss me. I wondered if he ever would. I wanted the two of them to move in, so I could always feel this way. Jeff looked at me, the lines of his face soft in the morning light. I thought he could tell what I was thinking. “How’s your sorrow?” he asked.
Jeff laughed.
“I don’t notice it so much when I’m with you two,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Even in the coldest weather he prefers to sleep outside instead of at the foot of my bed.”
I took a sip of the coffee. The spice seemed to be growing stronger. I ran my fingers through my hair and took a breath.
Something about this statement seemed strange to me. I took a sip of the coffee, which was thick and strong and had the faint hint of some spice I couldn’t identify. I stepped out onto the porch and sat down next to Raphael. I ran my hand through the thick fur at the back of his neck. Jeff sat down next to me and put his forearms on his knees.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Beautiful day,” he said. That it was. The grass was green and the sky was blue and the air was warm and sweet. The trees that lined the street were filled with small brown birds that chirped and flashed from branch to branch. There was a soft salmon sunlight that warmed my shoulders. Across the street in the neighbor’s yard, I saw a bunny appear from beneath a bush and nibble the grass. I experienced one of those flashes of insight when everything seems absurd—when all your troubles, all your worries, all your hopelessness, suddenly seems trivial and overblown. I started
“It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself feel anything,” I said. “Things other than anger and bitterness and disillusionment, the feeling of being betrayed and left. I haven’t had a cup of coffee in a year.”
“Very much.” Jeff looked across the street. The bunny had ventured into the middle of the lawn, further from the protection of the bushes. “Have I ever told you about the Human Fly?”
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“What happened?” I asked. I found the story was making me angry. Why would someone needlessly take such risks with his life? What is this need for danger and attention? Did the Human Fly ever think about the people who loved him? Jeff looked at me, and for the first time I saw what must have been there all along— my sorrow reflected back in his eyes. I suddenly missed my mother terribly. I wished she were here, so I could share Jeff and Raphael with her. Isn’t he peculiar? I’d say to her. The way he phrases things. Like that question, like he’s known me for years.
“He fell, right?” I said.
I touched Raphael’s soft, warm fur and looked down at my bare feet.
The breeze blew warmly across the porch, and Jeff scratched at something on his lip.
“I don’t think you have,” I said.
“He never fell. He died of a brain tumor.”
“His name was George Gibson Polley. One day, when he was a boy in Richmond, Virginia, he hit a baseball onto the roof of a six-story building. Since it was the only ball they had, he climbed up to get it. They went back to playing, but for the rest of the game, George was distracted. Climbing that building had stirred something inside him. In 1910, his family moved to Chicago, and George got a job as a newspaper boy. One day he saw an expensive suit in a store window. ‘I’d stand on my head on top of this building for a suit like that,’ he declared. The storeowner heard him and laughed. ‘If you did that, I’d give you the suit,’ he said.”
***
I looked at Jeff ’s profile, but kept stroking Raphael’s fur. I had a feeling he was talking about himself. “What happened?” I asked. “George got the suit. And a career. The episode attracted so much attention that a local theater offered him a booking. He climbed buildings to attract crowds to the show.” The coffee was making my head buzz a little. The air was full of the smell of honeysuckle from the neighbor’s yard. Raphael rolled over and let me scratch his belly. “He became known as the Human Fly,” Jeff continued. “He climbed buildings all over the country. In Boston he climbed 500 feet up the Custom House. In Hartford he scaled three buildings in one day. In New York he climbed the Woolworth Building - the tallest building in the world in 1920. Part of his act was to pretend to slip and fall; he would suddenly drop from one ledge to another never failing to make the crowd gasp. By the time he was 29, he’d climbed 2,000 buildings without a fall.”
That night I again woke in the middle of my parents’ bed. The house was quiet and cool, and there was the soft patter of spring rain outside. After a few minutes of staring at the invisible ceiling, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep. I kept thinking about Jeff ’s story. What was the point? That life was random? That terrible things happened? That it was all out of our control? What had he been trying to tell me? I went to the kitchen and I discovered that the power was out. I flipped the kitchen light switch several times, as if repetition might be the solution. After awhile I went into the living room and sat on the couch staring at the blank television. I pulled my nightgown up and touched the smooth skin of my knees. I thought about Jeff and Raphael walking away down the street together, the morning sunlight making the air around their shoulders glow. I thought about the Human Fly who continually de-
fied death only to be struck down by something inside his own body. I got up and wandered around the dark house, realizing I knew the layout of walls and furniture so well that I had no need of lights. I went to my old room, which smelled of the perfume I used to wear as a young teenager. I stood there for a long time, thinking of my life not as a path, but something else, something that went in several directions at once. I knew it was wrong to think of the Human Fly as selfish and inconsiderate. His death was not something he orchestrated. His death was not something he did to someone else. I went back to my parents’ room and picked their wedding picture up from the bureau. I wiped my hand across the glass, and a single tear fell onto my mother’s face. “I know it wasn’t your fault,” I said. “I know you didn’t leave me.” For a long time I stood at the window. I could see the rain slanting through the glow of a streetlight halfway down the street. For a moment I let myself wonder where Jeff and Raphael were sleeping, but then I caught myself. Because I knew that people like that didn’t sleep.
`Y]Z dYhYfgcb IS THE AUTHOR OF THE NOVEL
CATHERINE WHEELS. HE WAS THE PUB-
LISHER AND EDITOR OF THE LITERARY MAGAZINE
KINESIS AS WELL AS THE FICTION EDITOR FOR MARS HILL REVIEW. HE HOLDS AN MFA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AND CURRENTLY RESIDES IN NORTHWEST MONTANA WHERE HE WRITES AND RAISES PHEASANTS.
Jeff stopped, looking back in time. A car drove past, stirring up some debris from the gutter.
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U`c\] UYÈU IS KNOWN BY MANY NAMES:
LO, SIS, SISTA-FRIEND, AUNTY, COACH, KUMU, MISS...AND SHE’S CONVINCED, AS WERE HER ANCESTORS, THAT JULIET CAPULET KNEW NOTHING WHEN SHE SAID, “WHAT’S IN A NAME?” BORN AND RAISED IN HAWAII, ALOHI RETURNED HOME TO HAWAII AFTER COLLEGE WHERE SHE TEACHES, SURFS, LEADS A SMALL GROUP, TALKS TOO MUCH ON THE CELL PHONE, AND ONLY HAS TIME TO WRITE POETRY. BUT FOR NOW, SHE SAYS IT’LL DO. SHE’S TOO BUSY LIVING UP TO HER NAMES. ALOHI HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN GROWING UP LOCAL, AN ANTHOLOGY BY BAMBOO RIDGE PRESS, AND ‘OIWI: A NATIVE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL.
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If parents and educators really knew the potential consequences of so vehemently encouraging kids to read, they’d think twice AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A READING LIFE about doing it. My parents couldn’t have known what they were Vm @UifU DYhYfgcb setting themselves up for when they read to the infant me so often. And what if I’d had even a hint of what I was getting myself into when I was young, a voracious and indiscriminate reader in the early stages of bookwormishness? Would I have stopped short, found a different hobby? We underestimate the effect of stories on our lives, and thus leave ourselves vulnerable to their seduction. Maybe no one chooses a bookish life. Maybe, when you’re young and defenseless, bookwormishness chooses you. People say that reading as a hobby is dying out. It’s “at risk,” according to a recent survey published by the National Endowment for the Arts. They’re wrong—it’s pretty much dead. Bookworms like me are an anomaly. You can recognize us by our poor conversation skills, one of the symptoms of spending too much time in books. Multiple times I’ve had the same painful experience: I’m sitting in the airport, or on a lunch break at work. Some one asks politely what I’m reading. Just trying to start conversation. I sigh, because the odds are not good they’ve heard of, much less read the book I’m holding. I’ve been a bookworm a good many years now. I’ve covered a lot of ground, a lot of pages. Still, I stick my finger in the page so as not to lose my place, hold up the cover to face them, and answer, Tom Jones. Then follows the inevitable “Oh…” and pause, as the name fails to register. “Who’s the author?” “Henry Fielding. He was a Victorian.” “Oh…” Still nothing. I offer an apologetic smile and we go back to our respective lunches. Bookworms like me are entirely at fault for such conversational debacles as this one. But I can’t help it. I have to read the Victorians; they’re way back on my list. I’m a slave to my reading list—the list I keep of Books To Be Read Before I Die. And at the rate I’m going, I plan to become immortal. I write the list in a little volume, a gift from a friend, designed for the purpose. In the front is the section for Books To Read, and in the back I list Books I’ve Read. One of the signs of a true reading addict is that the front section of this little book grows much more rapidly than the back. In fact, sometimes I think the To Read list never dwindles at all, and I wonder what I’ve been doing with my time. The Books I’ve Read list grows steadily, though slowly. There are, after all, an awful lot of writers out there, and I’m only one reader. I keep up my list because it’s most satisfactory to look at—it’s more than just a history of my readerly tastes; it’s a list of conquests. Think what it would be like if bookworms could stuff conquered books, the way big game hunters do their trophies. Anna Karenina would be an awfully nice piece to put up on the wall in the living room. Sometimes I want to carry my list around with me and show off my list of Books I’ve Read the way people do those accordioned wallet-size portraits of their grandkids. ('
My mom started teaching me to read before I went to school. Not on purpose, though. It just happened, accidentally—she says. We had one of those alphabet books—you know, A is for apple, B is for balloon… And Mom had the idea to teach me the letters’ sounds along with their names. She tells me that the day I started reading, it all happened at once. It was a Helen-Keller-at-the-pump moment. One day while riding in the car, I started reading street signs. It wasn’t too big a jump from the alphabet book to deciphering S-T-O-P. Surprised Mom a little, I guess. I remember thinking, when she told me this, Well, what did I do in the car before I could read street signs and billboards and stuff ? Did you ever try to not read? I tried, to see what life had been like before that fateful stop sign. But the trouble about reading is that once you start, it’s pretty much impossible to stop at will. The danger of stories, especially to an impressionable prepubescent girl, is the havoc they wreak with an unripe personality in its developing stages. I read Little House on the Prairie and resonated with Laura, because we shared a name and both lived on the prairies of the Midwest. Laura took pleasure in simple things—milk fresh from the cow and Pa’s fiddle. I wore my hair in braids and my grandma sewed me a sunbonnet like the one Ma was always telling Laura to put on. Next there was The Babysitters Club. Infinitely more sophisticated than Laura Ingalls. And there were so many of these books! Series which ran into the hundreds always presented an irresistible challenge. Under the influence of Stacy and Claudia, I started painting little hearts on my fingernails. I begged to be allowed to get my ears pierced. I tried to plan my outfits with flair Stacy would have approved: all black-and-white one day, all the colors of the rainbow the next. The girls of the BSC were louder and brasher than Laura Ingalls. I concluded, from reading The Babysitters Club, that “Oh, my Lord” was not a swear, because Claudia said it all the time and we still had the books in the library at my private Christian school. Later on I discovered a series of books about hockey players. I went on a hockey kick in which I pretended, for as long as that series lasted, that I cared something about sports and knew something about hockey. I based this knowledge entirely on the glossary of terms the author so thoughtfully included in the backs of the books. So I was a tomboy for a while (belying my true bookwormish hatred of gym class and competitive sport of any kind). For a long time, around my sixth grade year or so, I read nothing but mysteries. It may be largely due to their influence that my dream job is still to be an international undercover agent for the CIA. Each of these phases ended in its due time. Living in South Dakota, I was inundated and quickly oversaturated with pioneers and their prairie narratives. I refuse to this day to read any more of them. I sickened of The Babysitters Club because the narrator had to explain, in every single book, what The Babysitters Club was, in case not all her readers were sensible enough (i.e. not as sensible as I was, as any good bookworm would be) to start at the beginning of the series. My deep-seated hatred of sports assured the short life of my hockey kick, and I realized after fifty or so mysteries that they were all largely the same. (I do, however, maintain good relationships with Sir Conan Doyle, David Lindsey, Dashiell Hammett, and John Grisham, mystery authors who don’t deserve to be lumped into that dismissive remark.) And so, in my newfound reader’s maturity, I decided to embark upon Classics. In my definition, Classics covered the broad category of anything you might ((
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The danger of stories, YgdYW]U``m hc Ub ]adfYgg]cbUV`Y dfYdiVYgWYbh []f` ]g h\Y \UjcW h\Ym kfYU_ k]h\ Ub ibf]dY dYfgcbU`]hm ]b ]hg XYjY`cd]b[ ghU[Yg" expect to read in an English class—Dickens, the Brontës, Austen and the like. This was the step off the cliff-edge which led directly to my current state of dependence on my list. Once you start reading Classics, all you hear about is what else there is to read. If a bookworm in still more advanced stages of the addiction hears you’ve read George Eliot, he wants to hear what you think about Mrs. Gaskell. So you go out and read North and South. (Theoretically. I don’t really mean that anyone should actually go out and read this book, because it’s unbearable.) But the next bookworm you run into wants you to compare the Eliot novel you read not to Gaskell’s, but to another one of Eliot’s which, naturally, you haven’t read. At this point, the young bookworm on the brink of maturity reaches the depths of despair. Not only must she take on the impossible task of sampling something by each of the worthy authors in the world, she is expected to have read everything by each of the worthy authors in the world. She makes a list, hoping to fend off overwhelming insanity. The reading-induced identity crises didn’t go away, of course, when I started reading Classics. They just got more intense and complicated, affecting my psyche more than my style of dress or career choice. I read Pride and Prejudice and dis-
covered I was Elizabeth Bennett (like probably every young girl who reads it). I read Great Expectations and wanted to be Estella; I reread it and realized I was Pip. I read The Portrait of a Lady and marveled at the similarities between myself and Isabel Archer. Did I somehow manage to keep stumbling over characters who were what I wanted to be—or did I want to be each of the characters I stumbled across? It was years before I realized that my favorite books were the ones in which I found these literary kindred spirits. Those I loved, while the rest I merely found worthwhile. (I finished them because they were on my list and needed to be crossed off.) It seems simple enough to love best what is most like myself. Maybe it’s not such a crime to like books with which I can identify, but I think it led me to judge prematurely in too many cases, both for and against a book. It’s first a compliment to a writer, I think, to identify with a created character. It means the character is real and believable. To decide too quickly, however, that such a character is “just like me!” is to limit the character, or oneself, or both. It lead me to flatten too many wonderfully multidimensional characters until only the traits which matched up with mine were perceptible. If, halfway through a book, a character took a turn of which I didn’t approve, I found myself conveniently forgetting the last half of the book. That’s not fair to the ()
aah ! But to become oneself so light as a stroke a syllable a character against the sky for the length of one minute to float is difficult Impossible so high up to breathe…
A good reader hYghg \Yf ]XYUgÄUVcih `]ZY \YfgY`Z \Yf dYfgcbU`]hm""" author, and my life would be a lot more boring if all my literary acquaintances were just like me. A good reader tests her ideas—about life, herself, her personality—against the characters of a good book, letting them bounce back rather than forcing the character to absorb and embody them. When a reader lets a story’s character, narrator, even author show herself in all her multi-faceted glory, a sort of conversation develops between reader and book. Sometimes, if the character you relate to is older, you catch a glimpse of your potential future. If younger, maybe you’ll make some sense of your past. This is when reading can get really dangerous. This is when it can force you to change your life. C. S. Lewis wrote, “In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for.” On very very rare occasions, a reader’s ideas bounce back from a book nearly unrecognizable. A single book is capable of changing a reader’s entire outlook, but usually a particular book serves as a capstone to years of influence by other authors. When I started college, my To Read list was as long as ever, and growing. So I declared an English major. It seemed an efficient way to keep chalking up the titles and get a B.A. at the same time. And I was secretly hoping that sometime in the space of the next four years, I would discover a career in which someone would pay me to read. I am disappointed now, a week away from graduation, (*
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to report that no such career exists. In fact, very few career options specifically for English majors exist at all. (Another thing my parents ought to have considered before hooking me on books.) I began to suspect this halfway through college, so I declared a second major in German. It seemed somehow more useable than the English one (though you might argue that I ought to have picked Spanish or Chinese) but still involved lots of reading. Suddenly whole new realms of literature were opened to me. I was delighted and intimidated—now I must read everything by each of the worthy authors in the English- and the German-speaking world. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of poems by the German poetic genius Hans Magnus Enzensberger. My translation of his poem “Chinesische Akrobaten” (“Chinese Acrobats”) goes like this: To throw a word in the air, the word difficult, is easy. To ink a character in the air, the character for impossible, is not impossible. Or stroke by stroke to place bamboo or delight or plate syllable on syllable on syllable to balance ever higher and higher
Allow me to explain something: the German word for easy and light is the same—leicht. Difficult and heavy are both schwer. Enzensberger’s word play with these meanings is fascinating. (Read the poem again changing light for easy and difficult for heavy.) Words are light, flimsy things, he says. In another poem called “Leichter als Luft” he says they’re lighter than air. It’s easy to toss words around at your pleasure. Real life, however, is heavy. Difficult. Someone has to remind bookworms every so often of the disconnect between books and reality. “Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the world,” Annie Dillard comments wryly. “This explains why so many books describe the author’s childhood. A writer’s childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience.” Reality and words don’t always balance out. It’s the hardest thing to remember for a bookworm like me: humans can’t live exclusively among words. We gasp for air at the altitude where they float. Was wiegt? Enzensberger is asking. What has weight? What’s weighty? From the German verb wiegen comes wichtig—important. If words are so light, as easily tossed up in the air and away as the poem suggests, how much can they weigh? How important are they? How important can a writer make them? “What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?” asks Annie Dillard. “What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” Having devoted the past four years more deliberately and more thoughtfully than ever to immersing myself in books, it seems necessary now to contemplate the true weight of words. The words of Dickens and Brontë, Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, Chopin and Dillard and Shakespeare have shaped my life—not necessarily each individually, but taken altogether as a driving force. Does is matter that, despite their weight in the life of a bookworm, these authors are largely ignored by half the adults in America? The great irony in Enzensberger’s poem, the irony which he uses so wonderfully throughout his work, is that he’s using the words of a poem to contemplate the weight of words. How else can it, in fact, be done? Once, in an interview which I was privileged to attend, Salman Rushdie said that many writers are born out of readers. It’s a natural progression, I guess, from reading to thinking about reading to writing down your thoughts. I have journaled for years— but journaling isn’t so much real writing as it is spilling your guts onto the page of a blank volume and then slamming the book shut, smashing them flat to preserve them, like a leaf specimen for science class.
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I’m really only a pretend writer. This is to say that I am mostly a reader who periodically thinks, Gee, I wish I could do that! I keep quote books full of appealing sentences and paragraphs and turns of phrase, collected over years of reading, which I always intend to toss nonchalantly into everyday conversation, or into my own writing to make it better by association with the greats. This tactic has never really worked out the way it was intended to, though, because not only can I never remember to use the quotes, but I periodically misplace the notebooks in which I’ve written them down. I have one friend who believes I’m a real writer—despite having read nothing of mine in years since I showed her one short story I wrote in high school—because I like to talk about writerly things with her. The great characters who come into the bookstore where I work, for example. This friend is an artist, and I think she prefers to believe that I am a writer because it would complement her nicely, and I go along with it because I think so too. Maybe if I spent more time with her, I’d become a real writer sort of by default. I suppose the main reason I’m not a real writer is that I don’t think I have much of anything to write—anything worthy enough, that is, to permit me to join the rank and file of the great authors on my To Read list. Before I can put anything out there, I’ll have to take in an awful lot more. It will probably be another twenty-some years of reading before I’m ready to write anything. And I consider this a healthy state of mind. The German novelist Jurek Becker comments that “das Romananfang scheint eine art Krankheit zu sein, von der viele in jungen Jahren befallen werden wie von Mumps”—beginning to write a novel seems like a kind of sickness which befalls many in younger years, like the mumps (my translation). So I stick to journaling, and writing to friends. I am confident in my belief that we’d be a better race of humans entirely if we all still wrote letters. I had pen pals all through elementary school, filled shoeboxes in my closet with letters. But e-mail has now replaced actual paper-and-envelope letters, and I think it’s a shame. Especially when I’ve been reading a lot of Austen. Not that I don’t write just as many e-mails as the next guy; they have their use. But who wouldn’t rather get a thoughtful letter that actually originated in Cairo or Uruguay or Shanghai or Vienna and traveled all that way to their mailbox, than a hasty e-mail written in an Internet café somewhere, probably in the back of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop? When e-mail wasn’t fast enough, everyone jumped on the Instant Messenger bandwagon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly against IM either. I’d be as addicted to it as anyone else if I hadn’t developed early on a penchant for the paper and ink thing. But if anything is decreasing the overall weight of words, it’s Instant Messaging. In the name of speed, Instant Messangers rip the guts right out of the middle of words: ppl; probly (or even “pry,” as one of my friends types it); def. for definitely. Enzensberger has a great poem called “Altes Medium” (“Old Medium”) that starts out like this (my translation again):
(,
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I’m so sorry hc \UjY kf]hhYb U dcYa""" 6ih mci UfY UZhYf U`` fYUX]b[ ]h" What you have in front of your eyes, ladies and gentlemen, this swarm, those are letters. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Difficult to decipher, I know, I know. An imposition. You’d rather have it audio-visual, digital and in color. This poem is par for the course of Enzensberger’s habitual sarcasm and irony. I’m so sorry to have written a poem, he writes. But you are, after all, reading it. As the reader, you begin to suspect that the poet is not nearly as apologetic as he professes to be for making you drag out your seldomused skill in reading: “You must know how it is,” runs the last line, “Many never unlearn it.” Though painful for me to admit, reading and journaling and letter-writing are slowly being usurped by films, blogs, Instant Messenger. What’s a bookworm to do in this audio-visual age? Why keep reading—why keep dooming polite strangers to conversational agony by persisting in this outdated hobby? Because as Martin Luther says, Ich kann nicht anders. I cannot do otherwise. Because reading is too deeply ingrained into my life to stop now. Because, in every way possible, I delight in books. But more than that, now: because words have weight, solid and commanding and lasting. Words shape thought, and thought shapes people. I delight in words, in language, which the poets and authors know best how to handle. I read because literature is something vital to, yet still outside my self. “Why are we reading,” writes Dillard again, “if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?” In this hope I keep reading. My lists grow longer by the year, because there will always be more books.
`UifU dYhYfgcb GREW UP IN
SOUTH DAKOTA BUT NOW MAKES HER HOME IN GRAND RAPIDS, MI, WHERE SHE RECENTLY GRADUATED FROM CALVIN COLLEGE (MAY 2006). SHE WAS AWARDED A FULBRIGHT GRANT AND WILL BE LEAVING THIS FALL TO WORK AS A TEACHING
ENGLISH CLASSROOM IN BERLIN. IN HER SPARE TIME LAURA WILL ASSISTANT IN AN
BE WORKING ON A PROJECT INVOLVING
GERMAN LITERATURE, SPECIFICALLY THAT GERMAN SPEAKERS. THIS IS HER FIRST PUBLICATION. WRITTEN BY NON-NATIVE
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Driving the Salinas Valley in early June, I swerve to avoid heads of lettuce rolled and squashed along the shoulder, as if the roadkill has become the green man, guillotined.
I went down to the stream to fish for a poem. It finned under the lee side of a mossy boulder, not about to venture out for anything so obvious as an iamb. I tried a silver anapest, then a flashy hendecasyllabic lure. Nothing doing. Then I attached the promise of a prize in The Southern Review. Honorable mention— that old, rusty, barbless hook. No luck. The borrowed effusion of salmon eggs came next, but they got snagged on somebody else’s line. So I clamped on a lead-shot sinker or two with my back molars and let the native earthworm—the one I had found beneath the rotting bark of my conscience— writhe to the bottom of the pool.
Then I see a flatbed truck pulled off the highway, boxes of lettuce collapsing from the backside, a ruinous crumble, what children do when they become bored with stacking blocks. What seething fear in los trajabadores spread among the spoil, waving plastic bags at me that I might slow down, that I might not collide with the harvest. What sure disaster in their eyes. I pass them for the open road, not knowing how or what to help, my inclinations scattered behind me like so many Samaritans, wandering among the wounded.
The poem darted out from the rock and took the worm, the line, the rod—even my hand. It’s all the way to my shoulder now, close to my heart.
dUi` ^" k]``]g IS A PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT WESTMONT COLLEGE IN SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA. PAUL’S MOST HOW TO GET THERE (FINISHING LINE PRESS, 2004). AND HIS DEBUT COLLECTION OF CREATIVE NONFICTION IS BRIGHT SHOOTS OF EVERLASTINGNESS: ESSAYS ON FAITH AND THE AMERICAN WILD (WORDFARM, 2005). WITH DAVID STARKEY, HE IS CO-EDITOR OF IN A FINE FRENZY: POETS RESPOND TO SHAKESPEARE (UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS, 2005). A FORMER MOUNTAIN GUIDE IN THE CASCADES AND SIERRA NEVADA, HE NOW SPENDS HIS SPARE TIME RAMBLING IN THE SAN RAFAEL MOUNTAINS BEHIND HIS HOME. RECENT POETRY CHAPBOOK IS
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