2. Fields (of Fury) (in original version, "of Fury" is crossed out)
I come from an explosive dud that buried itself in a cold French foxhole, beneath the anxiety of its unhurt Army cook who paused from the letter to his beloved in nervous death-preparation.
Tick, tick, click, nothing. Silence, heartbeat, thump, thump-thump-thumpmpmpmp.
Nothing.
The shell immerses itself in soil and disappoints its German dwellers with sterility.
My grandfather never killed a man, so the shell was justified in its roulette of choosing. He trained as a soldier and flourished as a cook—even more, a lover of food. Before and after the war, Papa was a farmer. After his three kids (the youngest, my mom), his farm expanded to hundreds of acres full of corn, tobacco, cows, barns, chickens, pigs, and enough fruits and vegetables to keep my grandmother elbow-deep in preserves, skinned animals, and fresh vegetables.
I always knew my love for cooking would come eventually. It’s a genetic trait of accomplishment in my family—the females never cease to amaze me with southern-style vegetables, perfectly-fried meat, pies like candy, and honest-to-goodness sweet tea.
But that’s about as southern as I get. I disinherited my mother’s multi-syballic “Haaiii-iiii!” and my father’s excessive use of double negatives and incorrect past tense, such as “You ain’t got no sense—I knowed it would happen!”
Then again, I can’t tell if my obsession with hills and fields is Wordsworthian or if I inherited from my own garden-growing father or my farm-tending Papa.
My goals are much different—I want to extend my home to the ironic dry and fertile African culture rather than arrive with the orders to relocate. Papa served in Europe for the Army where I want to serve in Africa for the Peace Corps.
I’ve been to Europe, I’ve walked the centuries-old cobblestone streets of Belgium and I’ve seen the waterways of Bruges. I’ve absorbed the smell and taste of history in an old, sturdy barn. And I’m still relocating. Because I remember the excitement of tasting food and the fun of adding recipes to my own southern repertoire. I remember the resemblance of a Belgian garden to my father’s.
Now I want contrast. I want Africa. I’m in search of a dry, golden field with strange animals and new customs where I’ll take silent refuge in a waterless hut when I need a moment’s privacy to regain my sanity. I will sit in my sandy fox-hole of a hut, maybe invite some new friends from the village, and tell them how I came from a hole in a boat and a dud of a shell. Then we’ll share recipes and stories because all stories are recipes, and all recipes can surely generate a great story.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Unwritten South: Part 1 (to be revised)
1. A Diary from /Dixie/ D-Day (side-note: in the real version, Dixie is crossed out)
I come from a hole in a boat.
The boat fills with water, the boat turns back.
My grandfather was a leak away from becoming another statistic on the bloody shore of Normandy. Instead, he and his fellow 49th Engineers arrived three days late via the un-holey replacement boat. The beaches were still swollen with war remnants as the shore swayed with gun shells and soft, bubbling waves of American veins.
In my mind, Papa’s veins were shriveled in blue cruelty in his frail, double-stroked body. My only memory of him sans the wheelchair is at my grandmother’s dinner table when he unmercifully forked a meatball off my plate and plucked it into his wrinkly mouth.
In the wheelchair, he loved looking at picture albums and often cried, wiping his tears with the damp and fraying tissue in his left hand. And he loved my tiny-child hands adorned with my birthstone.
“It’s aq-ua-ma-rine,” I would say. “That’s for March, my birth-day.”
He would smile and pat my back with his only functioning limb.
By March of 1944, Papa had left North Africa for Europe.
He hunched in the cold earth of a French foxhole, ate bread and slept in a Belgian barn, and waited six months in post-war England to see his wife and newborn son.
He wrote letters to Mema, and very little about the war.
In Europe, I didn’t really think of Papa. I thought of history—the overwhelming amount of history in the little Belgian towns I browsed.
I didn’t think of Papa until I stepped in an old and well-kept Belgian barn.
“Hondreds of years old,” said the Belgian man, “it went t’rough many wars.”
I should have told him my grandfather’s story, to let the story-circle be complete. To give my grandfather a remembering presence. I wrote about it instead.
I come from a hole in a boat.
The boat fills with water, the boat turns back.
My grandfather was a leak away from becoming another statistic on the bloody shore of Normandy. Instead, he and his fellow 49th Engineers arrived three days late via the un-holey replacement boat. The beaches were still swollen with war remnants as the shore swayed with gun shells and soft, bubbling waves of American veins.
In my mind, Papa’s veins were shriveled in blue cruelty in his frail, double-stroked body. My only memory of him sans the wheelchair is at my grandmother’s dinner table when he unmercifully forked a meatball off my plate and plucked it into his wrinkly mouth.
In the wheelchair, he loved looking at picture albums and often cried, wiping his tears with the damp and fraying tissue in his left hand. And he loved my tiny-child hands adorned with my birthstone.
“It’s aq-ua-ma-rine,” I would say. “That’s for March, my birth-day.”
He would smile and pat my back with his only functioning limb.
By March of 1944, Papa had left North Africa for Europe.
He hunched in the cold earth of a French foxhole, ate bread and slept in a Belgian barn, and waited six months in post-war England to see his wife and newborn son.
He wrote letters to Mema, and very little about the war.
In Europe, I didn’t really think of Papa. I thought of history—the overwhelming amount of history in the little Belgian towns I browsed.
I didn’t think of Papa until I stepped in an old and well-kept Belgian barn.
“Hondreds of years old,” said the Belgian man, “it went t’rough many wars.”
I should have told him my grandfather’s story, to let the story-circle be complete. To give my grandfather a remembering presence. I wrote about it instead.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Unwritten South: the introduction to a piece for Creative Nonfiction
I’m sitting in a very tall library, and I’m eye-level with the tops of very tall trees.
There is a white-ish skunk stripe in the sky between the two dreamy-toned pinks and blues of the post-sunset. The branches and fresh buds are black against the sky.
I’m surrounded by books. The eighth floor of the library is dedicated to literature and I feel at home against the back wall, stuck between the world of books and its sacrificial source.
For study breaks, I glance out the window; a large yellow house looks like a small cottage. The front yard is neatly trimmed, but the back is the jam-packed junk closet of a tidy house—like the box beneath the bed that hides the nudie magazines, or the eternally-closed garage that holds fifty years of hoarding.
It gets dark so I start gazing at the books. At first, I just see hues. Brown bookshelves, lighter carpet, blue chairs. I’m among rows of the crisp and the faded, the shelved and the disheveled. Hues of all sorts, sardined into organized little blocks of literature. I love being among literature; it’s like creating good karma for myself. Sometimes I lay my head on a book like a pillow, hoping for osmosis to seep brilliance into my brain.
"Fields of Fury" jumps out in a faded-embossed title. Then "A Diary from Dixie" and "Experiment in Rebellion."
Strange, I think.
Then the entire Confederate section of the Civil War attacks my computer-tired eyes in environmental confusion.
Confederacy! I look left.
Confederacy! I look right.
Confederacy!
I start feeling uncomfortable and attacked. Ashamed, even, that half of me doesn’t recognize the battles and generals in the titles, and half of me wants to reject this red, white and blue pseudo-persona that used to hang in the front window of an old house down the hill. History.
Confederate and Dixie and South leap into my mind with Scarlett O’Hara’s southern-sweet, manipulative voice.
"We Need Men" sits in big, blocky letters.
I think, "God, yes," and correct myself with feminist scrutiny.
Then I see it.
This book will not contain my history or have the essence of me within its old pages.
But its title does.
And my unwritten, southern self will remain unwritten no longer.
I'm taking the title, too.
There is a white-ish skunk stripe in the sky between the two dreamy-toned pinks and blues of the post-sunset. The branches and fresh buds are black against the sky.
I’m surrounded by books. The eighth floor of the library is dedicated to literature and I feel at home against the back wall, stuck between the world of books and its sacrificial source.
For study breaks, I glance out the window; a large yellow house looks like a small cottage. The front yard is neatly trimmed, but the back is the jam-packed junk closet of a tidy house—like the box beneath the bed that hides the nudie magazines, or the eternally-closed garage that holds fifty years of hoarding.
It gets dark so I start gazing at the books. At first, I just see hues. Brown bookshelves, lighter carpet, blue chairs. I’m among rows of the crisp and the faded, the shelved and the disheveled. Hues of all sorts, sardined into organized little blocks of literature. I love being among literature; it’s like creating good karma for myself. Sometimes I lay my head on a book like a pillow, hoping for osmosis to seep brilliance into my brain.
"Fields of Fury" jumps out in a faded-embossed title. Then "A Diary from Dixie" and "Experiment in Rebellion."
Strange, I think.
Then the entire Confederate section of the Civil War attacks my computer-tired eyes in environmental confusion.
Confederacy! I look left.
Confederacy! I look right.
Confederacy!
I start feeling uncomfortable and attacked. Ashamed, even, that half of me doesn’t recognize the battles and generals in the titles, and half of me wants to reject this red, white and blue pseudo-persona that used to hang in the front window of an old house down the hill. History.
Confederate and Dixie and South leap into my mind with Scarlett O’Hara’s southern-sweet, manipulative voice.
"We Need Men" sits in big, blocky letters.
I think, "God, yes," and correct myself with feminist scrutiny.
Then I see it.
This book will not contain my history or have the essence of me within its old pages.
But its title does.
And my unwritten, southern self will remain unwritten no longer.
I'm taking the title, too.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Thoughts on a Peace Corps Future
I don't write about the Peace Corps a whole lot--I try not, anyway, because its an experience I violently wish for but have yet to encounter. I suppose I don't want to jinx myself, either.
For narrative purposes, I have applied for the PC. I have undergone the interview with positive feedback, and today, I found out that my recruiter, in fulfilling the next step of the process, has nominated me to teach ESL in Sub-Saharan Africa. If I am invited to whichever country, I will leave in November.
Let me pause in contemplative silence for a moment.
Okay I'm done--AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so freaking excited!
Okay I'm calm again so I don't jinx myself.
But this is where I wanted to be! I am willing to go anywhere, but Africa has been my goal--this just sounds so amazing to me! I could possibly be living in a hut with no water or bathrooms, and I'm fine with that... the adventure and experience and culural immersion I will get! I want to think positively here. I want to be confident. I want to just experience it!!!
The next step of the process is for me to undergo a very specific physical and other legal type things as my application is reviewed by PC people in DC. I should know by the end of summer/early fall where I stand in the competitive part of the process...
so
I am really really really ELATED! :D
For narrative purposes, I have applied for the PC. I have undergone the interview with positive feedback, and today, I found out that my recruiter, in fulfilling the next step of the process, has nominated me to teach ESL in Sub-Saharan Africa. If I am invited to whichever country, I will leave in November.
Let me pause in contemplative silence for a moment.
Okay I'm done--AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so freaking excited!
Okay I'm calm again so I don't jinx myself.
But this is where I wanted to be! I am willing to go anywhere, but Africa has been my goal--this just sounds so amazing to me! I could possibly be living in a hut with no water or bathrooms, and I'm fine with that... the adventure and experience and culural immersion I will get! I want to think positively here. I want to be confident. I want to just experience it!!!
The next step of the process is for me to undergo a very specific physical and other legal type things as my application is reviewed by PC people in DC. I should know by the end of summer/early fall where I stand in the competitive part of the process...
so
I am really really really ELATED! :D
Friday, April 9, 2010
A published poem
I submitted this poem to Zephyrus, WKU's literary journal that generally rejects almost any and everything it encounters.
Lucky me, I am no longer rejected by one of Western's many writing extravaganza's.
They accepted this poem:
Body Language of Christ
A boy in church found Jesus
at the altar a couple of years
after pulling a Trojan
out of his wallet in the wooden pew.
He found Jesus and cried
and stomped around the small church,
hugging everyone
as they cried and sang and shouted Amen!
I cringed with every sloppy tear
and every drop of spit that
flew like a gnat out of the preacher’s mouth,
and I cringed with every hug from condom boy;
he smelled like decades,
like green shag carpet
and musty, shit-brown recliners
with specks of orange
and green; he smelled like a yellow and white
crochet blanket with a big
brown cross knitted in the middle.
The kind of blanket you want
to hug for warmth, but then the smell
of decades envelopes your entire body
as the smelly crochet folds
between your legs.
At this point, in this hug of
smelly decades, condom boy begins to rock
back and forth, crying,
I love you, he says, I want you to be saved.
He squeezes so that my chest
sinks inward, my ribs enclosed,
And he rocks—
hump, rock, hump, rock.
I focus on my fingers against his back,
they flitter with pat-pats
of acknowledgement. Okay, pat-
pat, I understand, flitter flitter.
He leaves, I breathe
until he comes back minutes later
for round two—
Hump, rock,
Hump, rock,
A crochet blanket
Sneaking between my legs.
Lucky me, I am no longer rejected by one of Western's many writing extravaganza's.
They accepted this poem:
Body Language of Christ
A boy in church found Jesus
at the altar a couple of years
after pulling a Trojan
out of his wallet in the wooden pew.
He found Jesus and cried
and stomped around the small church,
hugging everyone
as they cried and sang and shouted Amen!
I cringed with every sloppy tear
and every drop of spit that
flew like a gnat out of the preacher’s mouth,
and I cringed with every hug from condom boy;
he smelled like decades,
like green shag carpet
and musty, shit-brown recliners
with specks of orange
and green; he smelled like a yellow and white
crochet blanket with a big
brown cross knitted in the middle.
The kind of blanket you want
to hug for warmth, but then the smell
of decades envelopes your entire body
as the smelly crochet folds
between your legs.
At this point, in this hug of
smelly decades, condom boy begins to rock
back and forth, crying,
I love you, he says, I want you to be saved.
He squeezes so that my chest
sinks inward, my ribs enclosed,
And he rocks—
hump, rock, hump, rock.
I focus on my fingers against his back,
they flitter with pat-pats
of acknowledgement. Okay, pat-
pat, I understand, flitter flitter.
He leaves, I breathe
until he comes back minutes later
for round two—
Hump, rock,
Hump, rock,
A crochet blanket
Sneaking between my legs.
Outlets
I have a lot of static/electricity that sparks and builds and lightnings through my brain... after tonight's Bible study, I realized that I do have a pretty nice gift of being able to shut off my brain when I need to cool down, but I love discovering new outlets for expression and peace of mind.
Clearly, writing is pretty much my life. And reading. Music, of course, is important, too, and when in the mood, running.
I just started painting, and I like it. I've never been a hands-on, paint-and-such type, but I really wanted to apply myself in that way. I used to hate coloring as a kid because I could never stay inside the lines.
Now, I embrace that quality in myself. I never color inside the lines--I still struggle with it to this day. I'll color a little in Ella's little Dora coloring book, and I have to concentrate SUPER hard without distraction to perfectly fill in colors between the curvy black lines. It still doesn't work and I don't really enjoy it that much.
But on a canvas, there aren't really lines. There are restrictions to the size of the canvas, but the rest of the space is up to me to work with. So I can paint a girl's skirt with a tree trunk in stead of legs, and I can paint an eye using make-up products for my paint/color, and it's outside these pre-structured walls of black lines and caution tape of "Do Not Enter."
I have outlets, and I love them.
Clearly, writing is pretty much my life. And reading. Music, of course, is important, too, and when in the mood, running.
I just started painting, and I like it. I've never been a hands-on, paint-and-such type, but I really wanted to apply myself in that way. I used to hate coloring as a kid because I could never stay inside the lines.
Now, I embrace that quality in myself. I never color inside the lines--I still struggle with it to this day. I'll color a little in Ella's little Dora coloring book, and I have to concentrate SUPER hard without distraction to perfectly fill in colors between the curvy black lines. It still doesn't work and I don't really enjoy it that much.
But on a canvas, there aren't really lines. There are restrictions to the size of the canvas, but the rest of the space is up to me to work with. So I can paint a girl's skirt with a tree trunk in stead of legs, and I can paint an eye using make-up products for my paint/color, and it's outside these pre-structured walls of black lines and caution tape of "Do Not Enter."
I have outlets, and I love them.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Another Mondover
Yesterday was a bit of a busy Easter...I was at church from 7-1, drove home for Easter lunch with the fam, drove back for Easter dinner with my surrogate family, and then drove to the apartment to roll around in stomach-agony of the repercussions of eating 3 incredibly southern, heavy meals. Yikes.
So I have a weekend, non-alcoholic hangover. I'm hung over from the surplus of fried, greasy foods, I'm hung over from lack of sleep, and I feel oddly desensitized.
I have celebrated Easter every year, but I rarely feel extra spiritual on Easter. I feel absolutely desensitized to the idea. I mean I guess it's like any other Christian holiday--sometimes the commercialism/consumerism detracts from the deep, spiritual meaning. I had a couple of moments singing in choir...one of those "Wow" moments, but I'm somewhat disappointed that Jesus' resurrection does not completely baffle me like it does other people.
At church yesterday, a man was surrounded by a fort of family and friends who huddled around him like front-line protection. They reached out to connect each other like a wall, and they reached out to touch him in prayer while he prayed. He was a big, burly man with a cut-off t-shirt, arm tattoos, and one of the kindest faces I've seen. He looked like one of those big Harley men who look completely bad-ass and probably are completely bad-ass but are also extremely nice/thoughtful. He looked like the 'good ol' boy' type. His face was a matriculated cherry bomb, and during prayer he shouted some--this guy was searching so hard for peace and for God. He raised up and that cherry bomb face was absolutely blooming. He looked liked a kid in relief--you know that moment when a little boy finally catches the ball his dad throws him? The man looked like that. That re-visitation of innocence.
I was happy for him, of course. And I suppose I got a little teary--especially because this man went directly to the altar without help. He knew what he needed, he knew where to get it, and he received it independently from God, not from words or the plantation of fear. He sought with a purpose.
So I have a weekend, non-alcoholic hangover. I'm hung over from the surplus of fried, greasy foods, I'm hung over from lack of sleep, and I feel oddly desensitized.
I have celebrated Easter every year, but I rarely feel extra spiritual on Easter. I feel absolutely desensitized to the idea. I mean I guess it's like any other Christian holiday--sometimes the commercialism/consumerism detracts from the deep, spiritual meaning. I had a couple of moments singing in choir...one of those "Wow" moments, but I'm somewhat disappointed that Jesus' resurrection does not completely baffle me like it does other people.
At church yesterday, a man was surrounded by a fort of family and friends who huddled around him like front-line protection. They reached out to connect each other like a wall, and they reached out to touch him in prayer while he prayed. He was a big, burly man with a cut-off t-shirt, arm tattoos, and one of the kindest faces I've seen. He looked like one of those big Harley men who look completely bad-ass and probably are completely bad-ass but are also extremely nice/thoughtful. He looked like the 'good ol' boy' type. His face was a matriculated cherry bomb, and during prayer he shouted some--this guy was searching so hard for peace and for God. He raised up and that cherry bomb face was absolutely blooming. He looked liked a kid in relief--you know that moment when a little boy finally catches the ball his dad throws him? The man looked like that. That re-visitation of innocence.
I was happy for him, of course. And I suppose I got a little teary--especially because this man went directly to the altar without help. He knew what he needed, he knew where to get it, and he received it independently from God, not from words or the plantation of fear. He sought with a purpose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
