Mr. Big Stuff

The crackling fire filled the silence among the group of strangers. Shadows danced around the surrounding forest, smoky embers rising into the cloudy night sky.

“This should do for now,” said a tall, strong-jawed man. He dropped a few twigs onto the fire and then settled down, pulling his long coat tighter. He cast a glance at a couple beside him, who smiled back. They had seemed to be the most useful so far, knowing how to start the fire and keep it from burning through the forest.

The rest of the group remained silent. Little had been said for some time.

It had been a few hours since their bus had crashed on the highway, swerving to avoid a deer. Although no one had seen the deer except for the driver, who had died sometime later. The only casualty. Now all that remained were the nine strangers. The bus was a turned-over wreck, and no cars appeared on the dark highway, so all that remained was finding shelter and keeping warm. They just had to survive the night, then find a way back to civilisation.

“Does anyone have any stories?” said a young girl huddled beside her boyfriend. Her wide eyes sparkled in the fire light.

A rotund man with a goatee shook his head, smiling. “What a good idea. It’ll help pass the time.” He looked around the fire-lit group. “Anyone have anything?”

Another man shook his head. “You don’t wanna hear my stories, man.”

The strangers looked between each other; some looked away.

“I have a story.” This came from an old, white-haired man who had yet to speak since the crash. “One of magic, immortality, and eternal tragedy.”

“What, like a fairy tale?” someone said.

The old man shook his head, his frown creasing his wrinkled features. “Not a fairy tale. This is the story of a man named Mr. Big Stuff.”

***

Snow fell over the small mountain town. White roofs were highlighted by the wavering lights coming from hundreds of little windows. The wind howled upon the cliff top, but I was numb to the bitter chill that night.

I stood there now, like I had stood many times before, overlooking the snowy town, my boots on the edge of the cliff. A moment that had once brought a serene bliss had now become a hollow, bitter resentment.

I have gone by many names in my hundreds of years, chained to this world as an immortal being. While my birth name has long been forgotten – if I was even born – the name that has stuck with me the longest is Mr. Big Stuff. A strange moniker, for sure, but one that came from a special person, so long ago.

The origins of immortals like me, of which there are few, have become lost throughout time. Some stories have been told of us, however, from the few that have seen more than our quiet human costumes. Those who have witnessed a bloodied battle, magical spells, or our heightened agility, have re-written us as fantastical beings. Some call us Vampires, although I have never sucked blood or turned into a bat.

My sigh blew a puff of smoke into the wintery air. I brought out a vial, its luminous blue liquid a beacon of light in the darkness. The light illuminated the specks of blood on my hands.

This is what I have struggled for, I tell myself. Everything has led to this potion. Drinking this will make me mortal. Make me killable. I cast another look down over the cliff, at the darkness below.

I could finally end it all, so easily. Return to the darkness that had likely spawned me.

What good is this life I have been given, if I can never truly live it? Despite the love I’ve known, the love I’ve given, it all ends the same way – me alone. But this vial can change that.

I look over my blood-stained hands, and the specks sprayed over my dark coat. So much death, so much hatred.

The horrified faces of my foes still flash through my mind. Ripping through their flesh, tearing limbs, I was a whirlwind of blood and death. Seven beings, once-immortal, were now a pile of mutilated flesh.

At least I know that this potion actually works.

The liquid was synthesised from a fabled crystal, known as a God Killer. A crystal that, when eaten, could turn an immortal into a mortal who would age and die. It had been a decades-long task of mine to find and bring the crystal to those men.

They had been so happy when I finally brought the crystal to them, not knowing that I’d synthesised a part of it into a liquid – which I had dropped into their wine.

I admit to taking pleasure in their shocked faces when they realised something was wrong. There was also pleasure when I attacked them, and they discovered they were mortal. Sprayed blood was highlighted by the flashes of sorcery thrown about. Decades of resentment and hatred unleashed on them.

I had to do it, I tell myself. Their hold on me was too strong, and I had caused so much destruction for them. But now I was free.

Not that it mattered anymore. My love had passed away, just a month ago.

“No more pain,” she had said to me. Her frail form was nestled in bed, her light slowly fading. “No more pain for me. And, promise me, my love, no more pain for you.”

I gripped her hand, feeling the loose skin of her wrinkled fingers. Six decades together had not been enough.

“Peace, Lucas,” she said quietly. “Let my death bring us both peace.”

Melina was the strongest, most special person I had ever known. Far greater than this world deserved. I had told her everything about me, and she accepted it all. When we vowed to spend our lives together, it meant turning our backs on civilisation. We moved to an old castle of mine in the Carpathian Mountains, only visiting the nearby towns and cities on occasion. No one could really know us, and see that I was not aging.

“Please, do not return to those men,” she said, pausing to cough and grimace.

“I promise,” I whispered. “Once you pass, there is nothing more for me.”

Melina smiled weakly. “Never use it, for any purpose. Please. It can do no good.”

We both knew that she spoke of the crystal, the God Killer, and of those evil men I was bound to.

“It will remain with me, I promise. There is no more vengeance left in me.” Even back when I said those words, I knew I was lying.

Melina turned away slightly, her eyes slowly closing. “I will tell the angels of Mr. Big Stuff. And they will tell me they have heard of you.”

I held her hand tighter, sorrow tightening my throat. Despite her aging, her mortal shell withering over the years, she remained the same person I loved. It was a remarkable thing.

“I will see you some day, my love,” I said, fighting back the tears.

Her expression softened, a small smile remaining. Then she became still.

The tears finally fell, and I remember strangely regretting not crying earlier, so that she could see my tears. But she would remember me being strong, and that was a good thing.

We had both come a long way since we first met, which had been strange circumstances indeed.

It was during a battle with a great enemy of mine. My foe and I were bounding through the city streets in an uncommon public display of our powers. Our darting forms must have been dark blurs in the night, although no one could miss our magical bursts.

A car was thrown into the air, hurtling towards a woman in the street below. I dove off a building, streaming down to catch the car just before it crushed her. Despite the moment – my physical exhaustion and the on-going battle – my breath was taken by Melina’s bright green eyes. Oddly, I remember smiling at her.

The heat from an oncoming blast of sorcery brought my urgency back, and I spun and caught the energy with the car, which melted in my hands.

My enemy landed in front of me, her hands blazing with the purple fire of Fie magic. She extinguished the flames and stepped forwards. Behind me, the shocked woman ran for cover.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I told the sorceress, Alryan.

A heavy cloak flowed behind her, revealing the tight combat clothing beneath. A streetlight showed her long face, firmly set, her dark eyes shining. Her shoulder-length hair fluttered in the wind – much shorter than the long, sleek look she had when I last saw her. She raised her gauntleted hands and shook her head.

“Look around us, Mister,” she said, her voice breathy from the fight. “It’s too late for it to be any other way. It was always going to come down to this.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I never wanted it to, Alryan,” I said, frowning. “Not like this.”

My shirt was ripped and mostly hanging off me, smudges of dirt over my arms and trousers. Her left shoulder was bloodied. How did it all come to this?

I darted into the air, pushing off a window sill and landing onto a rooftop. At this time of night the streets were mostly empty, although I knew that several people were watching us and I wanted to take the fight away from them.

While Alryan wasn’t an immortal, she possessed superior magical abilities to me. But she was still mortal. While she was planning on overpowering me, likely intending to chain me up or keep me somewhere far away for eternity, I knew what I had to do.

The fight took us across the rooftops to a nearby riverside. I managed to barge into her, gripping her tight as we fell through the air and crashed into the water.

She struggled to throw surge after surge of sorcery, but we plunged further into the dark depths. Although breathing under water was not a problem for me, she only had minutes left. Her expression grew pained, her eyes widening, but I held on to her and dragged us down further.

I would never forget her face at that moment. Somewhat pleading, shocked, and something sorrowful. I’d like to think it was regret, a plea to start over. But it was too late. Alryan was taken from me. I had taken her from this world.

I know there was no other way.

But it wasn’t always like that, between her and me. We were lovers for many years, drawn together under the strain of tragedy. We were the best of friends before she changed. No, that wasn’t true. Maybe I changed. Maybe we just grew apart, because it wasn’t the same for a long while.

When she found out a dark truth of mine she erupted with fury. Sorcery entered our arguing and she attacked me then. Her anger brought the building down around us, and while I escaped, she was crushed under the rubble. Or so I had presumed for many years, until she returned, far more powerful, and tried to kill me.

I have never known anyone to possess as much passion and perseverance as Alryan Aldobrasse. She was a descendant of an ancient race of witches, and one of my greatest loves.

Before we became enemies – before we became lovers – we were students under the same mentor.

We trained and studied in a monastery in the mountains, under the mentorship of Yenophis Creel. As a young woman, she witnessed the murder of Yenophis. That face she made when I drowned her was similar to her horrified expression as Yen was killed, torn apart by a figure wreathed in shadow. I could never forget either of those expressions.

It was clear why Yen had been killed, for he possessed the only remaining God Killer crystal in the world. The only one that was known of, anyway. The dark creature took the crystal as it departed, never to be seen again.

Yen was the closest to a father figure I had ever known. I trained under him for many years, discovering the ancient art of Fie sorcery and gaining mental and spiritual strength. He was the wisest, most sincere man I have ever known. While Yen was an immortal like me, he was of a kind that could be killed by conventional means. That he had lived for over four hundred years was a testament to his abilities and strength, and it took a very dark creature to take him down.

Alryan became a student of Yen’s at nine years old; an orphan who had somehow stumbled upon the monastery in her wanderings. Yen saw this as fate, and agreed to bring her under his tutelage.

It was strange at first, me a grown man, learning alongside a young girl, but Alryan and I eventually became friends. I watched her blossom into a young woman, strong willed and fierce. We shared many great times together, visiting the mountain villages, sailing off the coast. Yen and I both marvelled at her feats in conjuring magic. It would be later that we’d learn of Alryan’s magical heritage.

One night, she and I stumbled upon a hidden room within the monastery. We were in awe of a small chest hidden in the ground. It was there we found the God Killer crystal. Yen appeared, full of bluster and anger, but he explained the crystal’s power to us. When swallowed, it could turn an immortal into a mortal, who would grow old and be killable. The crystals once belonged to his people, he told us, and this was the last that remained. I later wondered if his people’s prolonged exposure to the crystal was what had caused them to become killable immortals. Perhaps they were like me, once. But no one had those kinds of answers, as far as I knew.

I was a far different man when I first entered that monastery. Homeless, aimless – a wreck. I had heard of Yen and his teachings and was greatly relieved when he agreed to help me.

My time in that monastery contained some of the most pleasant and enlightening experiences of my life.

That all ended the night Yen was killed. Alryan ran away, and I was left all alone.

Alone, like I should be. Like I deserve to be.

I never wanted my life to go in the direction it did. I have owned many lands and properties, seen the world shift and communities grow and dissolve. I have possessed a great wealth, as well as lived without a penny to my name.

It seemed that those evil men knew just the moment to find me. How they knew of me, I couldn’t say. But there I was, a bum in the streets, having given up on life. I was ashamed at how weak I was, but could see no other way to go. A depression had taken hold of me. Several lifetimes of experiences and memories weighed me down.

They came to me as businessmen in suits, but I knew immediately they were more than that. When they took me in, they revealed they were immortals also. They had existed for almost as long as time, or so they claimed.

They offered me a deal. Do one thing for them, and eternal wealth and happiness would be mine. I was a fool to believe them, but I had no other choice as far as I could see. All I had to do was kill a man, and return a crystal to them.

Before I made the vow, I had to promise my soul to them. Until I returned the crystal, I would be bound to them. Once they found me, they could take away all that I loved, and all that I have ever loved before. They would burn my entire history if I went back on my word. I believed they could do everything they said.

Kill a man. Give them a crystal. It seemed simple.

I could never imagine that this man would become a father figure to me; a mentor I would love and respect above all others. While I tried to go back on the deal, once I had inserted myself into Yen’s life and seen what a great man he was, I found that there was no going back. Those men would take Alryan away from me, and take all that I have ever known and cared for. I had to do what I did. I was just glad that she didn’t know that dark figure was me.

Well, she didn’t know until many years later. But even our love couldn’t stop us from becoming enemies.

This was all so long ago, however. As I stood there now, on that cliff top, I had a choice to make. It seemed simpler now that I’d had time to reflect.

True happiness came from being with loved ones. To truly love and be loved. That meant sharing your life with someone. Someone who you can trust without question.

I removed the stopper from the vial and swallowed the blue liquid. The remainder of the crystal I kept with me, just in case I’d need later.

My body warmed and tingled almost immediately. The synthesised God Killer worked its way through me, turning me into a mortal. I was overwhelmingly tired, as if a great weight had come over me, and at the same time I felt lighter. Cleaner.

I looked over the snowy mountain town, knowing that somewhere out there was the monastery I once trained in. I had come to this cliff edge with Alryan many times, and had even brought Melina here a couple of times.

I studied the darkness below me. That was the last time I would look into that darkness, I told myself.

I turned from the cliff edge and began the rest of my life. Perhaps to love again.

***

“Whoa, that’s some story,” said the young girl who had requested a story.

“It’s nice alright,” said a man around the campfire. “But I call bullshit. Ain’t no one like this Mr. Big Stuff ever been around.”

The old man smiled, though his eyes were sorrowful.

“Hold on,” said the large man with the goatee. “Just how do you know all that?”

A gasp came from the group. They all stared in awe at the old man.

“You’re him,” the young girl said quietly.

The old man just smiled.

The Dead Television

The Dead Television

 

Who Was Jeanne?

 

I was Jeanne, Jeanne was I,

my friends called me Moon Pie,

but now I’m dead, deceased, at rest,

though I still hate my ex.

 

My husband Mick, he always won,

I’d love to beat that prick,

but love I did, I did, as well,

I loved that Beatle John.

 

I laid a guy once underneath

the bleachers at my school

then came my daughter Emily

and god I loved her too.

 

Jeanne seemed asleep lying in her coffin. Her face was appealing, glowing—her hair golden like sunshine. I cried when I saw her. Couldn’t help it. She somehow looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her. There she lay, all tension of life now absent. I fumbled forward, forgetting the formal setting of the funeral home. My fingers ran through her curls, twining, becoming entangled. I kissed her, wetting half her face. Maybe a minute went by, maybe an hour. I only know that Jeanne’s sister, Marianna, at last, pulled me from her.

“Are you done?” she asked.

I stared at Mariana and said nothing. I bent forward one last time and nibbled the tip of Jeanne’s nose.

Mariana gazed inside the coffin through bothered eyes. She nudged me out of the way and fixed Jeanne’s makeup, that death mask she would wear to the crematorium. She prodded at her dress, a blue frock with lace. She combed her hair back into place.

Jeanne had always hated Mariana. I never knew why until that day at the funeral home. Mariana had hired a priest to preside over the ceremony. One noted to possess knowledge of a secret door to Heaven, through which those who had died under questionable circumstances could enter. I suppose the details of Jeanne’s death had given Mariana pause. Mariana’s hiring of such a guy gave me pause. But what could I do? Mariana was running this show. She had all the rights.

Jeanne and I had shared the stage many times before her final performance. We were actors, working for the Old Stage Players. We were a traveling troop and did as many as six performances a week. We were doing A Christmas Carol one December in Colettesville, NC, and that’s the night I first kissed Jeanne.

After the show, Jeanne and I were the last ones left outside the theater. Everyone else had headed back to the motel because it was freezing cold. But Jeanne was in the mood to talk.

“I’ve met Elton John,” she said.

“No way.”

“Yes, I have. I’m the one who turned him gay.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“How’d you do it?”

“He fell for me and I turned him down.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said.

“Well, it seemed like it at the time.”

We were bundled up in fur parkas, our breath freezing like cigar smoke. Jeanne was clinging to me to keep warm.

“I know everything about John Lennon,” she said.

“You couldn’t.”

“Yes, I do. Ask me anything.”

“What’s his favorite color?” I asked.

“Brown.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, it’s not blue. That’s how.”

“How do you know it’s not blue?” I teased.

“Because blue is everybody’s favorite.”

“So, maybe it’s John Lennon’s too.”

“No, John’s too cool to be like everybody else.”

“That makes sense.”

“I always make sense.”

The night got colder and Jeanne and I walked toward the motel. The wind picked up and we ducked into a store front to shield ourselves. We window shopped until Jeanne got bored looking at tools and coveralls and horse feed.

“You want to help me practice my kissing scene?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“Thought you’d say no.”

“Why would I say no?” I wanted to know.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Jeanne was clinging to me and our frozen breath mingled and rose like a mist. She stood on her tiptoes and we kissed.

“Because of Mick. Most guys won’t let me practice on them.”

“Was that one just practice?”

“Yeah.”

That one wasn’t just practice for me. I was crazy about Jeanne ever since I first saw her. I talked to her every chance I got during work. She called on me to practice lines. We always joked around. We had great times. But she was right about Mick, her husband, the owner and artistic director of the troop.

Mick was a tyrant. Most of the guys were afraid of him. He seemed to enjoy humiliating those with whom he was at odds. He had his fun with the rest of the troop at their expense. For those guys he fired, he topped it off with a poor recommendation. If Mick had a beef with you, watch your back. He was both mean and sneaky. He had no mercy.

I was willing to be just friends with Jeanne until Mick began to treat her as badly as he had some of the others. I was shocked one day when she was away from the theater and Mick had the entire troop laughing at her.

“You just can’t fix stupid,” he’d said.

“Neither can you fix a cliché,” I told the stagehand, Terry, a local, whom we’d picked up to help move the sets during performances. Terry was one of the few who hadn’t laughed at Mick’s cruel joke.

Things got worse between Jeanne and Mick. I became her confidant. She told me a few times that she was afraid of him, and that she didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know either, but Mick seemed to know. He stuck to his usual pattern of berating Jeanne to the troop every time he had the chance. He referred to her as “our idiot blonde” once right in front her. The troop had laughed dutifully.

The great blowout in their marriage happened a year later when we were doing A Christmas Carol once again. Mick had cast Jeanne as young Ebenezer’s wife. Jeanne had always played the female leads, and to her, being cast in this inconsequential role was the absolute affront. I’d never seen her so angry in all the years I’d known her. I had the night off and was hanging out with Terry when Jeanne came by my apartment.

She was crying so hard she shook. It was several minutes before she could tell us what happened.

“Mick locked me out,” she said.

“No way!” Terry said.

“Yes, way! He told me to go outside and wait on him. We were going to talk. But then he locked me out.”

“Somebody needs to have a talk with that man,” Terry said.

Terry was right. That was no way to treat anyone, especially Jeanne. We all stayed at my place that night, and I decided to have a talk with Mick the following evening.

When I got to rehearsal, Mick had left word for me to come and see him. That’s convenient, I thought. I found him back stage and we went into the box office to talk.

“I’ve decided to cast you as Charles Dickens,” he said. “It’s the best role you’ve ever had. Do a good job and who knows where you’ll go. I’ve been keeping up with what you’re doing. Consider this your big break.”

“Tell me one thing first,” I said. “Why’d you lock Jeanne out of the theater last night?”

“That’s not your concern,” he said. “I’ve fired Jeanne and she’ll never play another role here or anywhere else if I have anything to say about it.”

“But she was badly traumatized.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she told me. She came by my place.”

“You have a choice to make and you’d better think hard about it. You have a chance to play a great role, but if you continue to see Jeanne, you will never play another theater role again. Take my word for it.”

“Jeanne is a friend,” I said, “a real friend, and that’s something you know nothing about. You’re a pathetic bully, and I’m ashamed that I’ve worked for you as long as I have. Find yourself another Dickens.”

Outside, I told Terry what happened.

“Well, I’m quitting too,” he said.

“Tell him about me.” The voice came from a pickup truck parked nearby. I could see a brunette woman sitting there.

“That’s my girlfriend, Jane. She just started in ticket sells and she’s quitting too.”

“I couldn’t ask you to quit your jobs that way. How will you live?”

“Jane just got a settlement check.” Terry’s grin was catchy. “We’re set for a year. Besides we like Moon Pie, right Jane?”

“Yeah, we want to be her entourage.”

I thought that was just splendid. We headed off to tell Jeanne about it, and the four of us partied at my apartment that night. Jeanne played piano and sang show tunes. Terry and Jane had a slapstick comedy routine they performed, which kept us in stitches all night. I confided that the reason I had gone into show business in the first place was because I could neither sing nor dance nor act. So, naturally, there was nothing else I could possibly do.

Terry and Jane rented a place nearby. We all became friends, and, more often than not, prepared our dinner together on the grill. Terry was a winemaker, and he shared many bottles of his special blackberry. Jane possessed the talent of coming up with a joint of good smoke. Jeanne would entertain us on piano.

I bought a rattly old van, and the four of us often road-tripped together. One night during dinner, Jeanne had the idea of traveling to Wilmington to chase Hurricane Fran. She had been following this storm on the weather channel, and, given that we all had seen Twister, this seemed like the perfect idea. An hour later we were on the way.

Wrightsville Beach was deserted. Many of the hotels were boarded up. Others demolished totally. The storm had blown through just before we arrived, and the few people we met were scared or angry.

“Did you have your premiums paid up?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they’ll pay, then.”

“They better.”

“They will.”

“Well, by-god, they better!”

The hurricane tide had left the beach strewn with debris. After a long walk, Jeanne got a phone call. I figured it was Marianna. Had it been Emily, Jeanne’s daughter, she would have been smiling and laughing. But, Jeanne wasn’t smiling or laughing. In fact, she was quiet and shaking. Not angry shaking but something else. She was horrified.

“What’s the matter?” we asked.

No answer. Jeanne just started walking back toward the van. “I’m going home,” she said.

We finally got her to tell us what happened. Emily had attempted suicide. Jeanne and I had visited Emily many times, and she us, so I knew she had suffered from depression. And I knew she had been in the hospital for it. Jeanne had talked about this more than a few times.

I liked Emily, but she wasn’t like Jeanne. She was analytic, always trying to figure people out. Figure an angle with people. How to have her way with them. She and I talked for an hour once before I figured out that she had wanted me to pay her water bill. Jeanne, though, was the essence of creativity. She rarely thought outside of how best to play a theater role or how best to teach her piano students or how best to prepare a rack of ribs.

Back at home, Jeanne spent the next weeks visiting Emily. They let her out of the hospital after a week, but Jeanne stayed on. She was driven, on a mission to save her daughter. And she wasn’t about to leave her until she knew she was better.

When I went up to visit, Jeanne’s appearance stunned me. She seemed withered, dispirited, as if her character had dried up and blown away on a hurricane. She had aged ten years. She seemed to care about nothing other than keeping tabs on Emily. She seemed obsessed, looking for some “in” into Emily’s psyche. She had taken on her daughter’s persona, her habit of analyzing.

Back at home, Jeanne’s spirit continued to decline. She gave up teaching the piano. She spent her days staring at the weather channel. That light that had been so apparent in her, and had been the core of her character, had faded. Her smile and her laughter seemed nowhere to be found.

Terry, Jane, and myself were on the porch one evening having a glass of wine when Jeanne came out. Her face was animated, and I believed at that moment that she was okay again. I think Terry and Jane thought so too. It had never occurred to any of us that she would never be okay again.

“The television’s dead,” was all that Jeanne said. And she went back inside.

It was Jeanne’s eyes that had died. On that desolate beach in NC, her bright, enchanting eyes were destroyed. The beauty of those eyes was shattered and left lifeless by the dreadfulness of the thought of losing her precious child.

I wondered, even before Jeanne’s decline, how she would be able to manage. She had lost her position as an actor. She had little hope of continuing her career. She had lost her marriage. I imagined that the two of us would marry one day, and I suppose I thought we’d live happily ever after, like in the shows we performed. But some shows depict the tragic nature of life through their twists and reversals, and such was the nature of mine and Jeanne’s experience.

I came home one day to find Terry waiting for me on the porch.

“Is he here yet?” Jane’s voice drifted from inside.

“Yep,” Terry said. He gazed at me, right steady.

“Did you tell him?”

“Not yet.”

When they told me that Jeanne was dead, that she had committed suicide, all I saw was the porch floor rising toward my face. Terry and Jane picked me up and brought me inside.

 

~*~

 

Jeanne’s brother, Mark, rescued me from Mariana. He brought me to a seat in the chapel and we sat. Jeanne had loved her brother and I understood why. Unlike Mariana, he was patient and caring. I thought he might hold my hand there in that chapel like I had seen him hold Jeanne’s, but he didn’t.

I stared at the yellow carnations on green wires standing around Jeanne like sentries. I willed them to die. But they remained triumphant and leering. They reminded me of Mariana. I decided to take Jeanne’s hatred of her sister upon myself. I took on her love for her brother as well.

The minister rattled on for twenty minutes and, finally, secured a place for Jeanne in Heaven. He claimed that despite Biblical references to the contrary, Jeanne should be admitted because her depression was responsible for her death and not herself.

In spite of this message of reclamation, and Mariana’s gratified eyes, the ceremony put me off. I wanted a celebration of Jeanne’s life and of her beauty and of her brilliance. I understood that everyone has to die, and that many of us do so before we reach that mind-failing age when our bodies fall into disrepair and ruin. I understood that depression is just as surely a disease as any of a physical nature. I just could not understand relegating ourselves to the place where we have forgotten about the excellence and the grandeur and the sublime wonder in our loved ones in favor of living in the shadow of religious doctrine.

After the service, the minister was shaking hands with the crowd, and I stood in line. But I never shook his hand. Instead, I told him that Jeanne did not need his message.

“She owns a heaven more accessible than yours,” I said. “In her heaven, everyone is invited without exception. The only ones who do not come are those who are too fearful, too mired in their smug little worlds to imagine the possibility.”

 

~*~

 

Overall, I can only imagine that Jeanne had tried to take Emily’s condition onto herself through transference, and then carry it to the grave where it could harm her daughter no longer. Such healing was typical in the West before the onslaught of the Enlightenment, when science came to the fore and religion took a backseat. I wonder, if, in following science, we have strayed further off the mark than where religion had us. At any rate, it seems that Jeanne’s style of healing worked, for Emily seems much better.

 

 

The Suicide of Jeanne Little

 

Jeanne, you asked me once how long

I’d remember you when you died.

I smiled and said, a day or two.

You shook your head and cried.

 

You really should remember me

much longer than that, you said.

I smiled and shook my head and headed

tiredly back to bed.

 

A little spirit came to me

as I was driving in my van,

a little spirit like a comet

buzzing all around my head.

 

Go away you little spirit,

must you be so bothersome?

Go away and leave me be,

I have work to do today.

 

Then I learned that you’d been found

lying dead behind the door,

prescription bottle by your hand,

tablets scattered on the floor.

 

Alone on Christmas Day, I sat,

staring at the dead TV,

in my blue rocking chair with her

blue chair now empty there with me.

 

Jeanne, you got me good this time:

you’ve rearranged my world,

left me reeling in a daze,

lost in a hazy maze.

 

Then you appeared in apparition

radiant there in front of me.

You laughed and said, I got me too,

and then you flew inside my eyes.

 

I now see through your eyes, Jeanne,

I learn and laugh for two.

When darkness reigns in my cruel world,

I often seek out you.

Harry’s Last Trick

Harry’s Last Trick PDF icon

1.

 

The most innocuous way to begin this story is to tell you that I hit a dog.  This happens to hundreds of people every day with not much recourse.  Yet, I had somehow avoided this sad fate for forty-three years.  The requisite guilt was intensified by all of my years as a non-dog killer.  The morally upright person that walks around during the day doesn’t hit animals.  The only marginally aware, emotionally consumed, and half blind idiot apparently does.  I don’t know if this story has any clear “moral,” but that might be a good one.

 

2.

 

I started this story off in a manner that I referred to as “innocuous.”  Now I would like to fill in that skeletal portrait with a few (possibly) hard to believe details.  I will begin by describing the car that I was driving on the particular night of the accident.  This would be a standard issue 1975 Volkswagen Beetle.  (These, obviously, are better known in popular language as “Bugs.”  The cars that were shamefully clunky and unloved until Walt Disney gave one of them a human consciousness and mediocre cast mates).  My “bug” was originally the conventional color of yellow.

Many years ago, I had repainted the hood and body to look like a person wearing a tuxedo.  The hood was the bowtie, shirt, and jacket while the rest of it was the body of the suit wearer.  A black “top hat” I had fashioned out of Plaster of Paris completed the “suit”; this was secured to the roof of the vehicle.  I had wanted to finish this transformation by attaching a mannequin arm holding a magic wand to the passenger door.  This had been done, and resulted in a rather costly ticket because the city court was convinced it was a “hazard.”  (I even spent an hour arguing with a judge about that arm.  My defense entailed me stating that it “brought joy” to the thousands of city dwellers I passed ever day.  This was clearly not successful, and the arm came off the next day.  I would add that my suggestion to perform a few card tricks in the court room was also very poorly received.)

The arm with the magic wand should be a tip off to my profession.  For the last twenty years, I have been a professional magician.  The kind you see struggling to entertain children at various birthday parties, or laboring at “gigs” in the back of bookstores and libraries.  If I am unduly lucky, I might get a slot at the depilated theater that holds events for “charity.”  (I have never figured out who is benefiting from these said “events.”  I just know that I can go home with a cut from the store.  I can lay in bed and stare at the door money stuffed in my hot little hand and ruminate about having finally “made it.”)

The car had lived for much longer than I ever thought it would.  Unfortunately, it was currently serving as my home when I ran mercilessly into my four-legged friend.  The evening before I had returned to the place where I was staying and found the lock had been changed.  I had been bunking in a friend’s magic shop (sleeping on a couch in the storage room).  I have come to believe that this unhappy outcome was far beyond my control.  I looked in the window after struggling with the door with several minutes.  Everything was gone and the room was covered in a sickly white color from a nearby streetlamp.

You now have a solid picture of what the car looked like.  Now I need to tell you about the beast itself.  The mongrel in question was well over a hundred pounds.  The pitch-black night obscured many other details (the most obvious one being the actual breed).  The one detail that can’t be overlooked; the dog completely demolished the front of my car.  There was an inescapable dent and a very large plume of smoke that followed the metallic crunch.

The damage is not the remarkable thing about this story.  The fact that the dog looked directly in my eyes and then walked off very much alive is.  I didn’t see where he went, but I got out of my totaled magic mobile with a purpose.  I was off to find what was left of the dog.

 

3.

 

Here are a few details to consider as “setting the scene.”  This was one of the coldest nights documented in a very long time.  I got out of my car and realized that I was in a part of the city that I didn’t even recognize.  Typical “urban” elements like telephone polls and brick buildings were contrasted by dirt alleys and unpopulated roads that led out of town.  I was to discover that very few of the citizens of this area believed in leaving their lights on.  (My imagination conjured up every explanation from devil worship to shameful nudity to explain why all the windows were dark).  I was dressed in my “uniform” for shows.  I had invested in a highly tailored suit that I had horizontally outgrown (my gut burst over the pant line).  A back length red cape made out of velvet that collected asphalt as I walked had always complimented the suit.  The red from the cape was most likely the only detail that the occasional driver could see with their headlights.

I always have painfully clear insights after a car accident.   They don’t always have a logical succession, but they do have a sick sort of staying power.  The first major one; my “career” in magic was probably over.  My trademark (the bug) was permanently damaged and my income was not going to provide for a replacement.  The very thing that got from one gig to another had committed suicide by dog.  I might be able to salvage the material from the back of the car (old props, costumes, and the same “how to” books I had studied since childhood).  All of that stuff was now horribly dated.  When I was still living in the magic shop, I had caught a ritzy cable special of a much younger and hipper magician.  The idiot had toys I couldn’t even imagine, not to mention a fully articulated light show behind him at all times.  This was the sort of example I had been seeing lately of talent being only “optional.”  The crowd was sedated by memorization and distracted by charm and showmanship.  I just had the same old jokes followed by the plethora of tricks for eons now.

That is what led to another realization; there was nothing extraordinary about me.  Magicians all over the country were doing various versions of my act right now.  They were far from plagiarists, because every good magic show should have an element of the familiar.  I just began to wonder if I had ever done anything completely unique.  I wasn’t just talking about my show…I was turning over every unexamined aspect of my meek little existence.

My eyes kept scanning for the dog as I walked into the darkness.  As I continued walking, the question: “Why?” popped into my head.  I thought I could ignore it and move on.  To make matters worse, I started imagining the word: “Why?” appearing like a neon sign in front of me.  The sign in my head would point to a formerly unspecified destination that would contain all the mythical answers I could possibly desire.  What was the “why” really asking?

I didn’t even have to ask because I inherently knew.  “Why magic?”  I was about to discover when I turned another corner that I had become lost on a back road.  Nothing looked even remotely familiar to me at this point.  I started to turn around and walk back in the direction I came from.  I found myself thinking: “Fine.  I clearly have a walk in front of me.  Why magic?”

 

4.

 

My very first memory has to do with a soup can that was on my mother’s kitchen counter.  I was all of about two and a half years old; I can remember thinking that if I concentrated hard enough the can would move.  The next image that comes into my mind is of the can being in a completely different spot.  This wasn’t like watching a ghost drag a inanimate object across the counter.  The can had very much been transported by what I saw as my own willpower.  I know that any rational person can shoot this full of holes and I don’t need a believer.  This was simply my own experience of what I thought I saw.   This led to other incidents; causing the TV to turn off and on, causing the school bus tire to blow out, and even willing a black out during one of my bored school days.

I might not have thought I was directly responsible for any of it, but I couldn’t help but forge a connection in my mind.  I was dreadfully bored during that school black out and just as my frustration reached its zenith: “Pop!”  The bus incident was also similar; this was after I had grown to hate going to school.  My younger psyche had been filled with various escape plans and a nagging, eventually all-consuming dread.  What could be done to ensure that the bus didn’t arrive at school when we hit the end of the line?  After all of the grotesque children had been collected, and the bus door shut for the final time…there had to be an escape.  The moment I brought that thought into my consciousness the tire exploded and the bus was barely maneuvered to the side of the road.

What about the TV switching off?  That mostly had to do with a leak my family had in the roof.   I walked by one night feeling flushed with power and a giant torrent of rain came storming through the leak.  The TV had been displaying a particular program I didn’t approve of and I took this as more circumstantial evidence.

These brief examples are all just previews for the main attraction.  I have large chunks in my memory leading up to making this decision.  However, when I was sixteen, I decided that I desperately wanted to end my own life.  There was a crumby bridge by my house that overlooked a marginally crowded intersection.  I had written some self-indulgent poetry (in lieu of a suicide note) and stuffed it in a pocket.  I figured that whoever found my mangled corpse might be able to read whatever was left decipherable.  (There clearly wasn’t strong logic operating inside me at this time).  That particular night I arrived at the bridge around one a.m. and teetered on the edge.  I read my bad poetry to the world and then got up the gumption to make the descent.

The miracle happened when I decided half way through the jump that I wanted to live.  This is what I swear to you happened; a breeze came and redirected my ninety pound frame into a row of bushes.  Don’t get me wrong; I still attained several serious injuries (broken bones and a long gash across my forehead).  That wasn’t the point to me.  I had once again willed myself to circumvent fate and ended up alive.   That meant that I had some particular destiny here on the planet.  I was supposed to do a ‘GREAT THING” that I perhaps had yet to discover.  (The phrase “GREAT THING” might as well be another one of my directionless, neon flashing signs.)

Then, after the bridge incident, I had to go away for a while…

 

5.

 

I was jolted out of my pleasant recollections by my first sighting of what I would refer to as: “The Mongrel.”  I suddenly spotted the dog hobbling towards a giant empty space in front of me.  The space was populated by what looked like dark and misshapen structures.  (I had a distant memory of a TV program I had seen once about elephant graveyards.)  I stuck my hand up (almost as if I assumed the animal could see me) and started to run after it.  As I approached the empty space, my eyes spontaneously adapted to the darkness surrounding me.  I realized I was in the middle of a large dirt lot.  The “dead elephants” turned out to be circus tents.  I was in the middle of a traveling show that had obviously closed up for the night.

The Mongrel was nowhere to be found as I walked around the perimeter.  I saw a couple of the carnies wandering around the corner and decided it was best to hide.  I didn’t want to go into a long explanation of what I was doing or why.  I found a particular (and perfectly sized) spot to hide at the exit of one of the tents.  That is when I noticed a smaller tent directly in front of me.  The word MAGIC was displayed proudly on the roof and the tent was illustrated with pictures.  There were magic wands, cards, dices, and a rather pitiful looking rabbit popping out of a hat.

I couldn’t believe it; my “GREAT THING” was staring me right in the face.  I knew the tent probably housed another performer.  (One I assumed was infinitely more talented than I was).  That didn’t prevent me from walking into the unprotected entrance.  I found myself in a relatively cozy environment with only about thirty seats and a small stage.  The stage displayed a coffin and a saw (without the lovely assistant).  There was an oversized deck of cards on top of an ancient picnic table.  There was also a velvet backdrop that hardly covered the canvas wall.  I was home, and I decided to perform a few tricks.

I leapt up onto the stage and bellowed: “For my first trick…”

 

6.

 

“For my first trick…”

That was a very old line in my life from when I first started doing tricks.  That was after I went away for a while to The Place Which Shan’t Be Named.  I found myself surrounded by human beings in various stages of emotional turmoil.  We were all constantly on watch by a man I liked to call “The Specialist.”  The Specialist was a dry humored, bald, and overly diplomatic man that we all had to spend at least an hour a week with.  The other half of the time was spent with the Specialist and the rest of us seated in an awkward badly formed semi-circle staring at each other.  I was never quite sure of how any of this was supposed to translate into anything productive.  I wonder if we all were led to believe that a cure would present itself at just the right time.  The good news was that we had the evening (mostly) free and there was a wide selection of books.

I was having one of my bouts of sleeplessness when I decided to go wandering the halls.  There were various bookshelves tucked away and completely ignored in just about every corner.  The books and shelves collected more and more dust as they were spread further out.  I eventually got all the way to the end of one of the hallways and found a case with a single book.   By this point, I was in almost complete darkness with nothing but a bit of moonlight shining through the venetian blinds.  I attribute that fact to my motivation for picking up this oddly orphaned volume.  In any other circumstance, I would have turned a blind eye and kept on walking.

The moonlight fell on what I perceived to be a diagram that held little appeal.  That was before a bit more study illuminated the fact that it was instructions for a card trick.  That was enough for me to tuck the book under my arm and walk away with it.  I was fortunate enough to have a room to myself.  (That had to do with my last roommate having an unfortunate encounter with the ceiling and his shoelaces.)   I could flip on the light at random and read for many hours on end.  I found entire nights vanishing under the influence of obscure “magical spells” and slights of hand.  This allowed me to sleepwalk through just about everything else.

The final culmination in becoming a magician was to give my first real show.  I was pleasantly surprised that the Specialist was all for this “opportunity.”  He even donated me an hour or so on the cafeteria stage after our “medicine” break.  I found myself performing magic tricks in front of a bunch of zonked out patients.  There were two sizable takeaways from this particular experience.  The completely unreceptive members of the audience were hazing me for the future.  I also did a full out stumble when I first took the stage that brought down the house.  This was the unintentional creation of a personae; the bumbling idiot that was at least marginally competent.  I would go about pretending that I didn’t know what I was doing.  That would make the pay off of each magic trick a surprise.  All of these events seemed accidental until I thought about it later.

My mysterious streak of self-appointed “luck” was continuing.  I was “approved” to leave The Place Which Shan’t Be Named.  I was never to lay eyes on the Specialist again.  He might not have been visibly present, but he was forever in my thoughts in a nightmarish way.   The voice of unintentional deterrent is a pleasant way to refer to him.  I always have his voice in the back of my head saying: “Is that really such a great idea?”

 

7.

 

The small stage I stood on was now consumed with a wash of magic supplies.  I had found a stack of boxes stuffed in a corner.  Each one of them had been badly taped together and was clearly overflowing with the tricks of the trade.  I had started to perform almost on autopilot.  I was only dimly aware of stage lights slowly rising on me as I did my usual “competent idiot” act.  I didn’t even notice a dark figure seated at the end of one of the aisles.  That might have continued if I hadn’t heard oddly incongruous applause after one more card trick.  I looked out into the darkness.

That is when I saw a familiar face; the Specialist was watching me intently.  I couldn’t mistake the face or the antique pair of spectacles.  The only thing that had changed was that he was wearing a clown suit.  There was even remnants of white make-up around his eyes (he didn’t finish cleaning himself up).  I looked directly at him and he exaggeratedly clapped again.  I was so dumbfounded that I had to wait for him to speak.

“You’ve gotten better,” the Specialist said.

“Was I bad before?” I said as I walked towards the edge of the stage.

“You were…unformed,” the Specialist told me.

He got up and walked towards the edge of the stage and I helped him up.

“Why the clown suit?” I asked.

“Sort of a childhood ambition,” he said.

I had never noticed a beach ball that was rolling around on stage.  (I fully acknowledge the fact that it might have always been there I just hadn’t noticed it.  That is a completely unimportant detail to me).  We started to pass the ball back and forth in a standard game of catch.   That was until the game mutated and the Specialist must have grown a new set of limbs.  The man was infinitely more agile than I ever could have imagined.  He would dart from one point to another and I could never quite locate him.  I would toss the ball into the darkness and watch the clown suit materialize out of nowhere.   The ball would plummet back into my arms and simultaneously release itself.  I found that I could dash away just in time to catch the ball at another location.

The ball finally landed and my feet and I didn’t have the inclination to toss it again.  The Specialist appeared out of the darkness and started to cradle the ball like a baby.

“When did you ever want to be a clown?” I asked, out of breath.

“More of a direct route to happiness,” the Clown informed me.

“How so?” I found myself sitting down.

The Specialist sat down next to me, still holding the ball for dear life.

“What I did,” he started to explain, “There’s theories and techniques.  There’s charts to follow.  But clowns make people laugh.”

The Specialist smiled, which was also something I didn’t know he could do.  He eased the ball into my lap and pushed it down with his hand.

“I thought of a final trick for our act,” the Specialist said.

“What act?”

“The one we were doing just now.”

I wanted to push the ball away from, but found the same kind of paralysis.

“Okay,” I said, “What is the grand finale?”

The Specialist looked me dead in the eye: “I want you to make this ball disappear.”

I placed my hand on the ball and concentrated.  Wasn’t the ball just like my childhood soup can?  I closed my eyes for a fleeting moment and felt the strangeness of the rubber.  The ball wouldn’t recognize my willpower.  I didn’t feel the cold air that my imagination desired.  The emptiness that would signify that I was just as powerful as I had always assumed.  When I opened my eyes, I found the dead looking beach ball staring back at me.  The Specialist, however, was completely gone from the stage.

 

8.

 

I had vague ambitions when I got out of The Place Which Shan’t Be Named.  The title “magician” was wonderfully evocative but aimless.  This trade, if you can call it that, doesn’t have a clear path.  There aren’t clubs that people join or signs that sprout up on the side of the road that say: “Magicians Welcome.”  I didn’t go to school; I just read many books and slept out in parks at night.  That same crazy faith was with me at all times.   The faith was made worse by the various wild and almost tangible daydreams.  In my head, I had reached the absolute zenith of success.

Here is a sketch of that particular doubled headed monster.  I had somehow found an abandoned house in my wanderings.  The door was open when I found it and everything was relatively clean.  This, in my crazed state, was now a wonderful place to “rehearse.”  This was directly after I had decided on my new nome de plume: “Harry the Magnificent.”  Have you ever created an alter ego?  They give you a wonderful excuse to blame everything on a ghost.  The skeletal, hungry version of me could say that “Harry” stole the candy bar out of the convenience store.  “Harry” could have a total disregard for sleep when I spent all night pouring over magic books.

“Harry” was the person who transformed this house.  “Harry” found various bright colors of paint in the garage and mercilessly splashed them on the white walls.  “Harry” decided that he needed a bonfire in the living room to stay warm.  “Harry” painted crude pictures on the walls of what should have been the children’s rooms.  Little by little, I imagined that the entire home was my stage.  The original home started to fade away as “Harry” entertained his millions of adoring fans.

I would also tell you that “Harry” was the person who chased off the people who showed up to reclaim the house.  I believe that “Harry” rushed at them and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Now I will make you all vanish.”

 

9.

 

“Harry” was with me tonight.  “Harry” was the one who started to decorate the stage.  He pushed the coffin and saw in the center of the stage.  He was the one who made a vain attempt to clean the debris off his stage with his foot.  “Harry” was setting the stage for a certain person to show up.  I had rather ambivalent feelings about her, but “Harry” needed her to come.  The question was how long both of us were willing to wait.

 

10.

 

I found myself wandering again after having to leave my house/auditorium.  “Harry” would appear to me from time to time as the laziest travel guide who ever lived.  He would be my guiding instinct when it was time to eat, sleep, or move on.  I only have dim memories; there is a traveling circus, a few children’s birthday parties, and a disastrous appearance in the back of a bookstore.  The wisest thing would have been to stay in one area and try to truly establish myself as a “name.”  This just didn’t suit my dual personality.  The best way to deceive myself (and “Harry”) of my mysteriousness was to show up as a foreign object in each new environment.  I would perform (many times illegally) on various street corners.  There was even a few times when my fear of the law got so great that I gave “late night shows.”  The various non-human and human vermin would gather around me as I used streetlights as stage lighting.  On some nights, there might only be five or six audience members.  That mattered very little to “Harry” or myself because the applause always sounded deafening to both of us.

This was around the same time that I discovered that joy was an oddly tradable currency.  People would take me in with no questions asked.  There would be the opportunity to shower and stay two or three nights.  My trademark suit appeared because I met a tailor with a few extra pieces of clothing.  (The cape was his idea and it fit me just right with the exception of a few inches that trailed behind me.  He even offered to correct it but I absolutely refused.  This was, in my mind, part of the “Harry” gag.  How does this idiot even walk around without tripping on his cape?)

My sense of time completely eroded while I was traveling.  I can’t tell you precisely how long I was out roving.  There was only the exact moment when it stopped cold.  I had found some other anonymous city to wander through.  I was right in the middle of scouting my spot for tonight’s late night show.  I was crossing a bridge when I saw a pale skinned, black haired girl standing a tad too close to the ledge.   She was wearing what looked to be a ball gown.  This was not the most important detail; she had an elaborate pair of angel wings strapped to her back.  The logical part of my mind knew this was just a costume.  “Harry” was the one who saw her, as she would like to be seen.  The fact that it looked like she was about to jump off the bridge had not escaped either one of us.

 

11.

 

The inside of the tent felt like it had expanded.  There were new rows of chairs that I hadn’t noticed before.  The stage grew in size; the interior of the tent (which had originally felt cramped) was now oddly cacophonous.  The canvas on the back wall was slipping down and starting to reveal some kind of poster.  I walked away from the coffin and saw towards whatever the piece of the art was.  I was about to find a piece of artwork that I had fashioned years before.  The woman I just told you about stood on the bridge with her wings.  She faced the onlooker with a radiant, death-defying smile.  I had illustrated her standing under a streetlamp just in the way I used to.  The younger version of me stood next to the woman.  That’s when I was reminded of the unfortunate truth that I was once considered handsome.  The obscene handsomeness canceled out the over all ludicrousness of the magician’s costume.

Bold lettering at the bottom of the picture read: “Amelia Flies!”  I checked to see if I could find a date for this performance.  (The date of the original performance had long escaped from my memory).  I finally found the date hidden at the very bottom of the picture.  That is when I found tonight’s date staring at me in the face.  There was no other way than to see that as the final sign; Amelia was going to be here soon.  I had started to feel my anticipatory nervousness when the picture shifted.  The reflection surface of a mirror replaced the two figures and the magic proposition of flight.

I can’t remember when I had made the habit of intentionally not looking at myself.  Perhaps I had begun to assume that a youthful profession would keep me from the ravages of age.  That was not going to be the case; I could only see remnants of my formerly handsome visage.  Everything had unfortunately dropped or receded to an uncorrectable degree.  My suit was severely distorted by weight gained over the long course of a life filled with health related neglect.  The most disturbing thing to look for me was my own set of eyes.  They have oddly changed to a darker, battle weary color of green.  I looked like a person who physically couldn’t stand waiting for another second.

How much longer would I have to wait?

 

12.

 

As you have no doubt gathered, Amelia was the woman on the bridge.  The heroic piece of me felt the need to somehow intervene.  I approached her and magically made a bouquet of flowers appear in my hand.  I handed it to her and she accepted without giving me eye contact.

The very first thing Amelia ever said to me was this indicative statement:

“My dear, I’m not sure your magical flowers will ever quite be enough.”

“What would, then?” I asked.

Amelia turned her face to me and said: “Make me fly.”

Amelia was a classically beautiful woman with one minor exception.  She had a long scar that ran from the top of forehead to the bottom of her nose.  As I was going to find out, her explanation would change constantly for why she had this.

“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked.

“With your magical powers,” she retorted, “You do have powers, don’t you?”

“I would like to believe so,” I said.

“Use them now!” she exclaimed.

That is when Amelia hoisted herself off the bridge into the shallow body of water below.  There was at least a brief moment I could have sworn that her wings organically flapped.  I did everything I could to concentrate (much in the same way that I had on the soup can from my youth).  I can’t really attest to how much help I was.  The worries over my true abilities were canceled out as I rushed down to help the woman I had just met.  I even went as far as to jump into the water without any concern for my suit or cape.  Amelia surfaced from the water with any superficial injuries and an eerie smile.  This was a regular practice for her (as I was about to find out).

I dragged Amelia out and set her on the ground.

“Magic doesn’t exist!” she proclaimed, before passing out cold.

That one line might have been enough to cement our history together.  Disproving it became more than a hobby; it slid into the world of a deeply sick obsession.

 

13.

 

I realized the surface of the mirror at the back of the tent had faded.  I was watching my first encounter with Amelia in front of me like some dreadful movie.  I’m still not sure where the mirror shifted back and I could see the inside of the tent.  The night was still very much in tact outside.  The arena was cast in dull shadows that just seemed senseless to me at this point.  That is when I saw the mongrel I had hit wander into the space and to the edge of the stage.  I bolted around to confront it and just saw a sad dog smile.  The animal was still mobile and almost didn’t look damaged.  The only hint of the accident came in the form of blood dripping out of the mouth.  I wanted to utter an apology and found myself unable to do it.

Then the dog was gone from the space.  I walked slowly around the room looking for any sign of it.  I walked back up on the stage and found the mirror flickering again.

 

14.

 

Amelia and I had found each other during another one of my bouts of homelessness.  She offered to let me sleep on a dilapidated couch in her living room for an indefinite amount of time.  I assumed that she wanted intimacy; instead, I was going to be subjected to months of not being touched by her.  The constant denial of any kind of physical bond just made me more desirous of her.  Whenever I made overtures, she would push me away and say: “No, I care about you too much.”

Over the next few months I was going to discover that Amelia had “gentleman callers.”  They would show up at her home; each one looking more hopeless than the last.  They were the absolute dregs of society; men with unsightly skin conditions, amputees, and those with an almost unfathomable sadness. She would pull them into her tiny closet-sized bedroom.  If I didn’t want to hear the sounds of their encounters, I would have to retreat to the hole in the wall diner below her apartment.  There was a pretty waitress there who would take pity on me and give me free coffee.  I would let it seep into my very being as I seethed about what I was denied.  The fact that the waitress was paying me attention was completely lost on me at the time.  (Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep, I find myself thinking about the waitress and what become of her.  I have invented numerous scenarios in which she has nothing but infinite security and happiness.  The thought that someone is at peace helps me rest a bit).

What kept me there?  That would be the nonsense of what was to be deemed our “project.”   Perhaps I should explain how Amelia’s mind worked.  She was haunted by a singular childhood dream about flying over a range of mountains.  This was done completely without any kind of assistance (the way many of us fly in our dreams).  She had a similar GREAT THING in mind to me.  This led to a childhood full of near accidents; higher and higher surfaces from which to plummet off of.  Somewhere in her lost years she started wearing the angels’ wings as a trademark.  The fundamental difference between Amelia and myself was relatively simple.  She had stopped believing, and I didn’t understand how that could happen.

On the second night at her place, I found myself vowing to give her a functional set of wings.  That led to months of scouring libraries for every kind of book on aviation.  I discovered that I was capable of doing very complex mathematical problems.  I even was to discover that I had somewhat of a gift for elaborate construction.  I had to find a way to conceal all of the mechanical inner workings of the wings in the right amount of feathers.  The wings, in turn, had to look naturally attached to Amelia’s tiny body.  The last pair I was ever to produce was almost credible as a real set of angelic limbs.

I was to discover that this was mostly “baptism by fire” work.  Each new pair of wings had to be subjected to a number of rigorous tests.  Amelia would hurl herself from a high surface with frantically flapping arms.  I would use this an excuse to “catch” her.  By the time we developed the last set of wings, a strange and miraculous thing occurred.  Amelia stopped flapping and flew for a magnificent thirty seconds.  She glided to a safe landing on a nearby piece of dirt.  I had closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I possibly could; this time I let my desperation bleed out into the atmosphere.  When Amelia and I looked at each other, there was a silent understanding that magic had been achieved.

The next few weeks were spent plastering the town with our “Amelia Flies” posters.  This mystical event was going to take place on the same bridge where I met Amelia for the first time.  I have forgotten most of the details of the actual day.  I wish I could tell you how many people showed up.  I even wish I could repeat word for word my introduction.  My distorted memory would have me believe that it was one of the great oratory performances of all time.  Truth be told, I can’t even the sensation of giving it.  The words left my mouth and then Amelia took her position on the ledge.

The next few minutes always expand in my mind to be longer than they were.  Amelia flapped her wings, glided, and then crashed into the ground next to the water.  I heard gasps from the audience as she became motionless.  Her eyes closed, and I found my first impulse was to run.  That’s right; I didn’t stick around to see what happened or how I could help.  No one chased after me because there was a dying woman on the ground.  The armchair psychologist could tell you that I didn’t want my naïveté shattered.  My steadfast dedication to belief in magic would have taken a severe blow.  Was that really it?  The fundamental truth is that I have no earthly clue why I bolted.

 

15.

 

I stopped looking in the mirror after the last image of Amelia on the ground faded.  The theater remained empty, and the stage remained silent.  I could feel the sensation of disappointment as a knot in my stomach.  I started to head towards the exit.  That is when the tent was swamped with light.  The seats were instantaneously filled with a crowd of well-dressed spectators.  The sounds of wild applause deafened me.  Through no action of my own, I found myself back on stage with a confidence I hadn’t known before.  The marginally competent “Harry” was nowhere in my body.

My voice boomed as I said: “We’ve all had impossible dreams!  Dreams that haunt us with their impossibility.  What would you do if nothing stopped you?  Maybe you would fly!”  As the last line bellowed from me, I saw an elderly woman with a pair of wings begin to flutter down from the ceiling.  I would have recognized her anywhere at any age.  This was Amelia; but her black hair had turned grey and her distinctive scar had gotten longer.  Amelia’s style of dress had gone from revealing dresses to what respectively looked like a hospital gown.  The crowd loudly voiced its approval as Amelia whirled around the top of the tent.  There were moments when she would just vanish into darkness only to emerge triumphantly in light.  The vanishing act was supplemented with elaborate summersaults and mind numbingly excellent flips.  The final trick consisted of Amelia coming to a dead stand still in mid-air.  I could physically feel the audience holds its breath until she descended down to the stage.  She bowed to wild applause that I thought would never end.

The entire time I watched Amelia’s flying out with a professional distance.  Her wings were even more realistic than anything I could fashion.  They moved with organic grace and precise birdlike timing that I couldn’t help but marvel at.  I even found myself wanting wholeheartedly to believe they were real.  They even folded up as Amelia went into a second bow for her delighted audience.

The lights shut off we were covered in complete blackness.

 

16.

 

I found Amelia and I engulfed in a floodlight that made very little else visible.  I realized in the moment that a person’s smile never changes.  Amelia’s was just as paradoxically distant and warm as it had always been.  I felt my smile plaster onto my face as tears welled up in my eyes.  She stole the exact thought from my mind as she began to speak.

“I was finally able to fly,” she said.

“You fly beautifully,” I answered, “No thanks to me.”

“That’s unimportant now,” she said, reaching for my arm.

We walked together in the darkness for a while.

“Was it everything you expected to be?” I finally asked.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say so,” she stopped walking.

“Why?”

“The most satisfying feeling came after I landed for the first time.  The knowledge that I could finally look back and know that some kind of miracle was achieved.  You can’t spot a miracle when you are right in the middle of it.”

“I’ve been trying to my entire life.”

She laughed gently and touched my face.

“Have you still not done it yet?” she said, laughing.

“I keep thinking that I’ll be able to spot it.  Be able to look around at the world transforming around me while smiling.  I’ve spent so much time imagining it…shouldn’t I just be able to freeze time and know it when it comes?”

“No,” she said, “you should feel it in your gut.  Here…”

She grabbed my hand and set it on the wings.  This was just as I imagined it to be.  There was no separation from her flesh; the wings moved underneath my nervous fingers.  That was when she started to vanish from my sight.

“Wait,” I said, “how is this possible?”

“I stopped wishing,” she called back, “and then it happened.”

After that, Amelia was completely gone.  I could just hear her laughing from somewhere in the pitch black.  I suddenly realized how long it had been since I heard her distinct brand of chuckle.  The one that accompanied every single part of our flying “work.”  She would laugh at every single fitting of a new pair of wings.  She would even chortle after thousands of rough landings.  There was nothing that would ever stop her from a certain pleasing ironic distance.  Was that why I did it all?  Just to hear a beautiful woman laugh?  The women that I just let vanish again from my sight.

The Specialist appeared out of the darkness dressed in his clown suit.

“Should I have just been a comedian?” I asked.

The Specialist just raised his eyebrow and snapped his fingers.

 

17.

 

I was back on stage again with the Specialist with the house lights up.  I could see every one of the joy filled faces as they applauded.  The Specialist stood at a microphone stand off to my left and gestured at me wildly.

“Please applaud Harry,” he proclaimed, “Please applaud Harry the Magnificent in his final performance.”

Two words were clearly etched in my memory; and they were final performance I wanted to ask The Specialist: “Is this really it?”  I knew from personal experience that I wouldn’t get anything back but a non-answer.  I turned to another direction, and that is when I saw the dog again.  The dog was laid on its side and breathed in a terminal sounding shallow manner.  I turned around to see the Specialist nod at me to approach the dog.  I turned my back towards the Specialist as I heard his authoritative voice boom through the microphone.

“For his last trick ever,” the Specialist said, “Harry will save the life of a dying dog.”

I found myself crouching down by the dog and putting my hand on its midsection.  Hadn’t my entire life trained me to do the impossible?  The journey that began with an innocuous can of soup was about to end.  The crowd was relying on me to save this animal that my Beetle had such an unfortunate run-in with.  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the animal well.  I attempted to imagine its entire life as the most blessed existence a dog could ever have.  I extrapolated that this was a life the dog wanted to return to desperately.  The only way to do that was to rediscover his vitality that was right at my fingertips.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes to discover that the dog was even more distant.  The dog’s eyes were now closed and the body was even stiffer.  My magical touch was not being summoned; I suppose that would lead more logical people to realize that it was never real.  I was so much concerned with the discovery of my own delusions at the moment.  If I couldn’t save the dog, what could I do in this moment?  I took off my cape and covered the dog.   I gave it one final pat on the head and then stood up to face the crowd.

“I couldn’t save it,” I cried out, “But I could make it disappear.”

I heard the crowd laugh approvingly and then begin a loud applause.  The Specialist walked up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“That was exactly the right answer,” the Specialist told me.

The crowd rose to its feet and I waved one last time and began to exit the stage.  The lights snapped off again and I found myself in an empty tent.  The space was back to its tragically original size.  I could detect a few early morning sunrays streaming through the cracks in the canvas.  My cape was still on exact same spot that I had left it when I covered the dog. At any other time in my life, I would have hurried to pick it back up and reattach the thing to my suit.  I knew that I wouldn’t do that again as I continued to study it.  That is when I realized that I wasn’t alone.

A burly, tattooed carny was staring straight at me with a combination of confusion and menace.

“Old timer,” he said, “I’m afraid I am going to ask you to leave.”

“Just one moment longer?” I asked.

The carny shook his head and pointed to an exit.  The frown was the most prominent thing I noticed as I took off my top hat.

“Maybe what you need most,” I said, “is a top hat.”

I jumped off the stage and placed on the hat on his head before he could protest.  Then I rushed out the exit into the burgeoning sunrise.

Editor’s Note

 

Many an interdisciplinary researcher will question themselves, and rightly so. Altogether, disciplines are merely puzzle pieces, that when combined, lead to a bigger picture. As suggested by Allen Repko and Rick Szostack in Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory, to ignore one or more of the other pieces would make for a fairly haphazard puzzle by denying “the focus [on the particular] problem or issue or intellectual question that each discipline is addressing” (7). In order to construct the larger picture, there are calls for unbiased research. Not surprisingly, interdisciplinary can, at times, be confused with neutrality.

Even if neutrality were attainable, it might not result in good research. As Katrina Griffen believes, “preferences and inclinations can fuel a person’s enthusiasm or provoke attempts to comprehend the facets of the universe” (3). When taking a biased stance toward research, it’s a sort of driver. Understandably, too much bias is bad, but a nugget of bias can be beneficial to research. A certain kind of bias guides passion for knowledge. If everyone were neutral all the time, their dispassion would lead them nowhere.

Perhaps neutral or objective is not a word that should be placed alongside interdisciplinary studies, but rather, an open-mind. The terms might seem similar, but they are different. Neutrality or objectivity is assuming a stance from a distance, and how can anything be learned from a distance? However, keeping an open-mind allows for proximity, while utilizing the nugget of bias necessary for research results. Admitting to and assessing disciplinary and personal bias can help toss out the bulk of it. Yet, Griffen contends that it’s impossible to get rid of bias, and scholars should avoid pretending it’s not there. Not taking all the facts into account is a sort of bias all by itself. It is the mission of Penumbra to encourage transformative ideas and storytelling, which means calling for greater interdisciplinarity of research.

Interestingly, there is a bias towards interdisciplinary scholarship, which as Tom McLeish notes, is often seen as a periphery concern. Scholars should strive to synthesize foundational knowledge with multiple facets, to lead them to a larger and illuminating summation. Indeed, identifying bias allows for richer interdisciplinary conversations, and a niche from which to begin research.

 

  • §

 

This issue of Penumbra includes seven critical articles, two essays, two short stories, and various poems. The work comes to us from scholars in academe and out, established and emerging writers and artist in the U.S. and abroad, individuals using traditional and experimental styles to explore the power of critical and creative expression as it relates to the interdisciplinary approach.

In his essay, “The Power of Poetry: Story, Symbol, and Incantation”, Robert Ratliff examines three elements fueling the healing power of poetry: story, symbol, and incantation by breaking down the meanings of these basics, and shedding light on how poets who possess an understanding of them can use this knowledge in making their own poems more powerful. Similarly, Dr. Dana Kroos’s “How to Find a Blackhole in Your Kitchen” is an all-encompassing series, condensed with emotion and beauty, including photographs of enthralling carvings, with accompanying poetry. “Harry’s Last Trick”, by Dusty McGowan, echoes the epic narrative as shown by Kroos, and places it in short story format. In another deviation on storytelling, Matt Grinder offers his essay, “Discourse on Anxiety: An Analysis of Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” His research suggests the rift between men and women has been a social construction that began taking profound roots in the nineteenth century Western conception of what social spheres men and women should occupy, as exemplified in Gilman’s work.

Rollin Jewett’s poem, Junk and Treasure, focuses on the unwanted material possessions, and the true meaning of treasure. Another poem collection by Jose Duarte, is untitled, based on the work of C.S. Lewis to examine imagination and form. Sherri Moyer reviews Magdelana Kubow’s article, “Women in the Church: A Historical Survey”, to assess the arguments made about why women are not ordained in the Roman Catholic Church today.

In keeping with perception and change, Jose Duarte shares his untitled poetry collection based on the work of C.S. Lewis. Next comes a fictional piece from Dr. Matt Weber, who combines science fiction variations and post-apocalyptic themes to underscore the use of weapons in this timely satire of violence and the police.

In conjunction with domestic affairs, Jacinda Lewis proposes new methods for dealing with sex offenders in “Trends in Substance Abuse Treatment and Applications for Sex Offenders.” Likewise, Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard offers political commentary about her year in Syria in her poetry collection, including the piece Highway Drone. More on domestic policy comes from Olatunbosun F. Leigh in “America’s Drug Policies: What Works, What Doesn’t.”

Once again, Robert Ratliff shares his writing, this time in the form of a poignant creative non-fiction, “The Dead Television.” Picking up on the emotional elements of Ratliff’s work, Dr. Sandy Feinstein’s poetry collection boasts strong selections, such as Learning to Write in Two Languages and 40 Martyrs Church.

Danielle Johnson writes of the need to study magical ruralism in “No Place Like Home: Magical Ruralism as Cultural Discourse.”

“Mr. Big Stuff” is the last short story featured in this issue, written by the illustrious Alex Pilas. Likewise, the last poetry collection comes from Michael S. Begnal: Five Homage Poems.

The last critical article underscores philosophy and a need for a post-structural analysis in “Kant We Hegel Our Way Out of This? The Problem of People in Postcolonial Studies” by Charlie Gleek.

Adding greater perspectives is the mission of this journal. Indeed, the above submissions encompasses a myriad of disciplines, such as art, history, literature, education, law, and more.

Overall, by distilling issues among different perspectives, the spectrum of possible solutions and/or theoretical approaches becomes clearer. Additionally, the formalities of methodologies and epistemologies will help to sharpen learning skills, and narrow focus by acknowledging and moving past bias. Part of that focus is what Repko and Szostak term “telescoping down”, which is a “strategy that forces us to think deductively, to move from the general to the particular,” and then later we will understand “how the parts interact, and […] identify gaps between the disciplines.”

As emerging scholars, the ultimate goal should be to see what has not yet been seen, to explore what has been missed.

 

—JONINA ANDERSON-LOPEZ

 

 

The Powers of Poetry: Story, Symbol, and Incantation

The Power of PoetryPDF icon

Introduction

The healing power of poetry has been apparent to many throughout the ages. Arguments to this effect can be made by informed poets at the drop of a feathered quill. The complications we face in life: the suffering associated with failed relationships, sickness, the deaths of love ones, and so on represent, in a sense, the beginning of the healing process. Writing or reading poetry can mark a commencement to such healing. Healing through poetry begins, as Gregory Orr contends, “when we ‘translate’ our crisis into language—where we give it symbolic expression as an unfolding drama of self and the forces that assail it” (4). That is, by putting our suffering to page, we have given it a healthy distance from us as well as allowed a sort of reshaping rather than bearing it in an unresponsive way. A single step marks the beginning of a journey. Probing more deeply, however, it becomes evident that collective elements within the personal lyric serve to enhance and fine tune a poem’s healing power. In the following investigation, I will consider the questions of what these poetic rudiments are and how they work, both independently and cooperatively. Orr has it that “there are three abiding and primordial powers that shape language into poems: . . . story, symbol, and incantation” (94). The journey from the chaotic effects of trauma to an ordered understanding, or making meaning, is accomplished through setting symbolic stories to incantatory rhythms. I would argue that a study of these fundamentals may reveal some instructive possibilities concerning the making of lyric poems. Following Orr, I shall explore the poetic essentials of the power of story, the power of symbol, and the power of incantation.

 

The Power of Story

An examination of the element of story may offer clues as to how we can create our lyric poems to be more powerful. Perhaps the most revealing and persuasive means of communication between people is the relating of stories. For instance, I could tell you that my Uncle Larry is a great car salesman. At this, you might shrug as if you are not convinced. Or I could tell you the story of how he sold twenty cars in one day, two of them to passersby who did not even know how to drive. In this case, the focus of the story is Uncle Larry’s prowess as a salesman, and focus may be the central element of story. This story not only lets us know something about Uncle Larry, it also lets us know a little something about the world in which we live, of our societal values, of how we in the U.S. tend to honor those who perform well in their occupations. As the theorist Jerome Bruner might say, it helps us to “make sense of the world” (qtd. in Orr 95), which is another way of saying that through storytelling, we are establishing an ordered mindset in the face of disorder. In writing lyric verse, opposed to prose, the focus of our poems is particularly important because, as Orr points out, all that does not reflect the focus is “stripped away, and meaning is compressed into action and detail that reveal significance” (95). The final version of the lyric poem, then, is a scaled down portrait of the poem’s thematic focus.

While maintaining focus is imperative, conflict is another essential element of story. In personal lyric, nearly always there is conflict, often with someone. Someone close to us has hurt us in some way, is sick, or has died. This conflict does not have to be that outlaw meets sheriff at the O.K. Corral kind of dramatic action. In the words of Orr, “Merely introducing two pronouns into the opening line of a poem creates the tension essential to story” (95-6). That “I” and “you” tends to have the effect of drawing readers in because they naturally place themselves and their own situations into the equation. Cindy Goff’s “Turning into an Oak” is a good example of the merging of focus and conflict:

I looked down at my husband leaving me.

I’m seventy feet taller than he is now.

The bones in my arms splinter into thousands of twigs;

my legs grow together and twist

into the ground. It doesn’t matter

where my car is parked or where my house keys have fallen;

I no longer care what I weigh.

I am sturdier than a hundred men.

From up here I can see Cape Cod,

shaped like a lobster tail.

I watch my husband become a speck

and consider how I’ll miss

being touched. (108)

Nearly anyone could relate to the “I” and “you” in the first line of this poem; that is, any lover who has suffered the pain of a breakup. The conflict becomes apparent in line 1 and lies with the speaker and her husband. The focus begins to reveal itself as the message from each of the following lines meld into a single shattering idea: that empty, disheartening feeling we get when we are suddenly alone after having become used to being together with someone. Not a single line or word in this poem veers from this focus. If one did, as Aristotle reasons, it should never have been there in the first place, “for that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole” (1463). The conflict between speaker and husband is not resolved in the poem; rather, the conflict merges with the focus. The husband becomes “a speck” and is gone. That which remains is the speaker with an inner conflict, which could well describe the true nature of the heart of all personal lyric.

It is true that the focus of a lyric poem is usually on an idea, but this idea, however tragic, would do well to be grounded on a metaphoric center. While it is true that the story in a lyric poem evolves in a narrative fashion, it also, as Orr insists, “wishes to disclose meaning by focusing on something central and leaving out peripheral details unless they reinforce the central subject” (98). Goff’s title, “Turning into an Oak” offers a barefaced clue as to her metaphoric focus. In line 2 of Goff’s poem, her speaker has suddenly grown to an enormous height. In line 3, her arms transform into branches. In line 4, her “legs grow together and twist / into the ground” (108). Goff’s thorny language, that of splintering arms and nothing matters anymore confirm that she considers the metaphor of becoming an oak to equate with the hardhearted nature of her speaker’s newly found single situation. In reflection, Ariel, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, was not turned into a tree, but was confined “into a cloven pine; within which rift / Imprisoned [he] didst painfully remain / A dozen years” (1.2.77-79). I bring up the Bard because of the possibility that becoming a great oak could be seen as a metaphor for a good thing; however, this is not the way I read Goff.

While abstract ideas have their merit in certain forms of narrative, it is the concrete details that give lyric poems their power. William Blake emphasizes this idea in verse: “Labour well the Minute Particulars:” he writes, “attend to the Little Ones; / . . . / He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. / General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; / For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars” (Blake). It is usually crucial that lyric verse be written using specific details from title to the final line. Goff’s title is not only precise, but it suggests the metaphoric center of the entire poem. As for concrete sensory details, her depiction of seeing “Cape Cod, / shaped like a lobster tail” presents a visual image that is novel and unique. As Orr notes, the “who, what, where, and when” (100) is organic to most all good writing. This includes lyric poetry! Goff shows in very specific detail the who: speaker and husband; the what: husband left speaker lonely as a tree; the when: the present; the where: at their house near Cape Cod. All these minute details merge to form a cohesive, barebones, and stirring portrait of experience. But they do so much more: such as, fill with affirmative narrative the place where silence might turn into shame or fear and rob us of our present experiences.

 

The Power of Symbol

While story is often the primary vehicle that carries lyric verse right through to its ending, the narrative is commonly rife with symbolic meaning. Some poems, however, seem to state only the trauma of an experience, offering no solution, no enlightened realization, no healing. In fact, these personal lyrics would seem to affirm the disorder, letting it into our minds and lives. Yet Orr insists “that it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry’s ability to help us survive. It is the initial act of surrendering to disorder that permits the ordering powers of the imagination to assert themselves” (47). In essence, the mind, when it confronts chaos in narrative, begins to allow compensation to occur, like a person who loses one eye, and the remaining one compensates naturally by developing a wider peripheral range of sight. As Fox asserts, there may be some growing pains to deal with here, but “poetry can be a safe guide, a wise presence, so you don’t feel alone while moving through the inevitable dark place in life” (29). Bottom line, in lyric poems, such recompenses happen due to the symbolic language in the narrative. Marie Howe’s “The Dream” is a good example of just this kind of personal lyric:

I had a dream in the day:

I laid my father’s body down in a narrow boat

and sent him off along a river bank with its cattails and grasses.

And the boat (it was made of skin and wood bent when it was wet.)

took him to his burial finally.

But a day or two later I realized it was my self I wanted

to lay down—hands crossed, eyes closed

—oh, the light coming from down there,

the sweet smell of the water—and finally, the sense of being carried

by a current I could not name or change. (83)

In Howe’s poem, the speaker dreams of sending her father off on a watery burial, but the conflict becomes apparent when, “a day or two later [she realizes] it [is her] self [she wants] / to lay down—hands crossed, eyes closed” and cast off upon the river of expiry in that small boat. The speaker and her father exist in a state of dramatic tension, connected undeniably by the poem’s focus: the idea of letting go to that impenetrable death experience. As far as the narrative alone is concerned, this is all we have to go on. However, to come to an understanding concerning the healing effects of the poem, we can look to the symbolic language for clues. The biblical story of baby Moses comes to mind. As an infant, in order to save him, he was placed in a small boat and hidden among the grasses and cattails “beside the bank of the Nile”. (Complete Bible, Exod. 2.3). Is Howe’s poem, then, about saving the speaker’s father? I think not because it is the speaker herself who desires death, so she really wants to save herself, but from what? The symbolic language Howe uses to describe the father’s death ark may provide clues: “(it was made of skin and wood bent when it was wet.)”. This wood covered in skin could be symbolic for the body, and the fact that it is wet and bent could describe some form of trauma (both wet and bent tend to possess negative connotations) which would explain the speaker’s obsession with death, both her father’s and her own. The death Howe describes for the speaker is not a dark and scary death; on the contrary, it is one of surrendering to a state of illumination accented by the sensory image of “the sweet smell / of the water.” Howe’s speaker puts her faith in an afterlife myth associated with being carried along safely on a river of patriarchal benevolence, an experience she had not found in life. So, the poem confronts a trauma associated with the speaker’s father and fills the vacuum of silence allowing her to regain her identity, or create one. Having reinterpreted her trauma metaphorically centered on a slow ride down the tranquil river of death, the trauma now has less power over her. The writing or reading of the poem stands in the place of an actual death. The speaker is free to live and write another day. What sort of trauma is Howe really writing about? I’d say there is not enough information to say for sure. Abuse, neglect, the father not living up to the speaker’s expectations of what a father should be? Who knows? In basing such speculation on a few symbols, it would be entirely possible to get off the mark concerning Howe’s meaning. Symbolic meaning tends to vary from reader to reader, and readers tend to respond to symbolic language in accordance with their own unique experiences.

It is very likely that most any given symbol will possess more than one meaning, or that the meaning remains ambiguous. The small boat among the reeds and grasses is an ancient symbol, one that could hold a multiplicity of meanings. “All the meanings,” Orr writes, “do not and cannot emerge; they lurk still in the object/symbol, refusing to give up all their mystery to the need for understanding and explanation” (104). There could be a hidden meaning within an ancient symbol that we cannot recognize, or, moreover, meaning of which society no longer makes use. For instance, Isler, et. al point out that poetic incantation has been used throughout the centuries for not only relief of headache, but for the general maintenance health of all the body parts. Here’s a poem from an 8th century monastery at Lake Constance in Switzerland:

O King, o ruler of the realm,

o friend of Heaven’s hymn,

o persecutor of turmoil,

o God of the Heavenly Host!

In the first stanza, the poem repetitively and rhythmically invokes and calls on the Christian God. Today’s society certainly has a very good idea of the symbolism connected with God, but our ideas are very contemporary. The 8th century Westerners were very likely, as a whole, way more conservative in their outlooks concerning dogmatic Christianity, and so the symbolism, from their points of view, would necessarily be interpreted differently than most conservatives would interpret it today. Not to mention our societal liberal progression. I’ll move ahead to stanza 2 where God is called upon to cool “the noxious fluxes / that flow heated in my head.” We do know something of the symbolism concerning the “fluxes,” those excessive and flowing discharges associated with various health problems. But, again, medical conditions are looked at differently today than they were in past centuries. The third stanza of the poem takes the healing theme beyond the headache to other parts of the body:

that he cures my head with my kidneys,

and with the other parts afflicted:

with my eyes and with my cheekbones,

with my ears and with my nostrils. (Isle, et. al)

God is beseeched to heal and protect the individual parts of the body. Today, doctors would check all these parts but rely on scientific medicine rather than the spiritual for healing. I wonder if we have, in following science exclusively, found ourselves off the mark. At any rate, no one knows what all the body parts may have been symbolic of for the people who used this poetic remedy. Such symbolism is no longer needed. As society evolves, the minds of the people expand. As we learn more about the past, old meanings may become increasingly clear. New meanings will be discovered throughout the generations. Bottom line, we do not know all there is to know about symbols, but grappling with a poem’s meaning in light of its symbolic language is certainly one way of coming to a subjective understanding of it.

 

The Power of Incantation

While story and symbol merge to make powerful and healing expressions, it is through implementing incantation into our lyric poetry that we, like our ancestors, can confront the more serious traumas that come our way. Incantation, that rhythmic replication of poetic reverberations, according to Orr, “is like a woven raft of sound on which the self floats above the floodwaters of chaos” (106). The incantatory effects of a poem have to do not only with repetitive language but also with rhythm. Rhythmic or musical verse alone can be described as incantatory, but when the element of linguistic repetition is added in the spirit of high emotion, the personal lyric becomes forcefully and dramatically puissant. American poet Edward Hirsch observes that “Incantation [is] a formulaic use of words to create magical effect” (Hirsch). “Healing Incantation,” performed by Mandy Moore in the Disney movie Tangled is a good example of incantatory verse:

Flower, gleam and glow

Let your power shine

Make the clock reverse

Bring back what once was mine

Heal what has been hurt

Change the Fates’ design

Save what has been lost

Bring back what once was mine

What once was mine (Healing Incantation)

In the movie, the animated character Rapunzel, voiceover by Mandy Moore, uses this incantation to heal the character Eugene’s injured hand. I deliberately chose it because it presents an unobstructed view of incantatory verse; that is, it possesses no story and very little symbol and can be a universal panacea, effective in healing just about any trauma one could name. With her opening line, “Flower gleam and glow,” Moore summons the healing light; common in many of the light religions such as Paganism, the light is representative of an omnipotent healing force. Right away, readers sense the rhythm or musicality evident in the prosody of the metered lines. Flower, of course, is symbolic of beauty, so the poet healer confronts trauma with the combined powers of light and beauty.  “Make the clock reverse” seeks to bring the injured person back in time to where the trauma had not yet occurred. Here I get a sense that this poem could be used as a charm against aging. Many feel traumatized by the effects of getting older, our beautiful bodies sagging and wrinkling before our eyes. The poem probably would not stop this natural process, but it could possibly help to slow it down and certainly help a poet or reader to make the psychological adjustment to the change. After all, is it our young bodies that we miss, or is it really our youthful outlooks? We come to the beginning of the repetitive incantatory effect of the poem with “Bring back what once was mine.” Here, Moore is referring to ownership of wholeness. Things were good before, and she wants them to be good once again. The following lines all reiterate that which has already been stated: “Heal what has been hurt,”  “Change the Fates’ design,” “Save what has been lost” are all just other ways of claiming that ownership of wholeness that was the norm before the trauma set in. In a sense, the repetition occurs throughout most of the poem, and then we get toward the ending with the reoccurrence of “Bring back what once was mine.” And then the final haunting, echoing ending: “What once was mine.” As powerful as Moore’s poem is, I cannot help but wonder if it would be all the more prevailing written in concrete terms and ripe with symbol.

Many popular poets write in just this rhythmic, incantatory style, Walt Whitman among them. Further, many of Whitman’s poems are also written in story form and packed with symbolism. Here is scene 18 of Leaves of Grass, which inspired Martin Espada’s latest book, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed.

With music strong I come—with my cornets and my drums,

I play not marches for accepted victors only—I play great marches for conquer’d and slain persons.

 

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?

I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

 

I beat and pound for the dead;

I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

 

Vivas to those who have fail’d!

And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!

And to those themselves who sank in the sea!

And to all generals who lost engagements! and all overcome heroes!

And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known. (18.353-63)

In the area of story, Whitman celebrates not the “winners” as many do in the U.S.—America, it is said, does love a winner—but the losers. The way I read Whitman, he does not celebrate the losers of battles because he believes such people are ethically or morally superior. Rather, he celebrates them because he has realized the value of seeing everyone as being the same. He sees men as being the same as women, a very enlightened concept for his time, 1819-1892. He sees the so called physically normal as being the same as those with deformities. Those of color being the same as those of no color. Those of same sex sexual orientation being the same as those of opposite sex orientation. The list goes on and on. The man was a social justice warrior! I believe he realizes this sameness not because we do not have our differences, we do, but because, when we look to our likenesses, we begin to heal our differences.

Whitman’s sketch is also packed to the brim with symbolism. Cornets and drums are symbols of music, that marching band sort of music played as a call to battle. Whitman describes it as strong music. Marching bands at sports events play fight songs to rally the spectators for the benefit of the home team. During the American Civil War both the North and the South used drummers and buglers on the battle field. Those sounds had the power to move soldiers emotionally to the place where they were willing to kill or be killed with musket, sword, or bayonet. In modern warfare we no longer bring marching bands onto the battle arena. But in the ceremonies before and after, those bands are still playing those celebratory songs. All this from Whitman in one symbolic line. Whitman, of course, gives us a new slant on old symbolism. His idea is to raise readers’ spirits for the benefit of those who lost their battles, that ship of a person’s life that sank into the sea of oblivion, that forgotten soul. Whitman seems to believe that the losers of battles are just as important to remember and celebrate as the winners, that, effectually, those who lost are the same as those who won because they share a commonality of spirit.

The incantatory effects of Whitman’s verse begin in the first lines with the rhythmic ordering of words. “The presence of rhythmic patterns,” according to Harmon, “lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response, for it establishes a pattern of expectations and it rewards the listener or reader with the pleasure of a series of fulfillments of expectation” (416). Whitman seems to very generally use a rising rhythm beginning with his own combination of iambics followed by anapests, terms which refer to particular schemas of stressed and unstressed syllables. I would say this rising rhythm works so well in this case not only because of the repetitional effect of the metering but because those reoccurring couplets also raise the scene to a final climactic quintet. And, in that last stanza, Whitman uses actual repetitive language: And to those, And to those, And to all, And to accented by three exclamation points drives the incantatory effect of the entire scene to an explosive peak.

 

Conclusion

I have followed Orr throughout this inquiry, and it seems on point to relate, in conclusion, his personal statement concerning the healing effects of poetry. Early in his life, he experienced a great trauma; being responsible for his brother’s death. Of course, he suffered emotionally for a number of years before he found poetry. On finally finding his way to poetics, he gives the following account:

I wrote a poem one day, and it changed my life. I had a sudden sense that the language in poetry was ‘magical,’ unlike language in fiction: that it could create or transform reality rather than simply describe it. That first poem I wrote was a simple, escapist fantasy, but it liberated the enormous energy of my despair and oppression as nothing before had ever done. I felt simultaneously revealed to myself and freed of myself by the images and actions of the poem.

I would certainly argue that such liberation from the energy of despair could only promote healing. Continuous worry without reprieve seems like a sickness in itself. This might well be another topic to take up in a future study citing healing poems from various sources.

At any rate, in considering story, the question comes to mind of which comes first, the abstract idea or the concrete details describing it. Good poems possess both. Perhaps this is not an either/or question. Perhaps in looking through the prism of our poet-self, it is essential that we remain open to discovering a priori ideas as we experience life in the concrete. I think, however, that every particular experience, no matter how seemingly trivial, is in reality central and necessary. It is the poet’s job to understand this and help others to understand as well. With an idea and a set of details in mind, as we write within the scope of some particular metaphor, those rudimentary symbols will appear quite naturally. In revision, we can shift those raw stones of symbolism into likely places where they can be polished to a glossy finish. Last, as we set our verses to a rhythm for incantatory effect, it may be helpful to be familiar with the various metering techniques, but it is through sounding out our lines that the arrangements are composed. We must write in a solitary cave in order to do this else we be thought insane by passersby.

 

Works Cited

Aristotle. “Poetics.” The Basic Works of Aristotle. Trans. Ingram Bywater. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 2001. 1454-87. Print.

Blake, William. “Jerusalem.” Bartleby.com. Bartleby.com, 2015. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.

Espada, Martin. Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. Print.

Fox, J. “Heart, who will you cry out to? Giving silence words.” In Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-making.  Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1997. 1-31. Print.

Goff, Cindy. “Turning into an Oak Tree.” Gorham and Skinner 108.

Gorham, Sarah, and Jeffrey Skinner, eds. Last Call: Poems on Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance. Louisville: Sarabande, 1997. Print.

Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature. 12th ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. Print.

“Healing Incantation.” Perf. Mandy Moore. Tangled. Dir. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. Disney, 2010. Film.

Hirsch, Edward. “Incantation: From a Poet’s Glossary.” poets.org.poets.org, 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

Howe, Marie. “The Dream.” Gorham and Skinner 83.

Isler, H., H. Hasenfratz, and T. O’Neill. “A Sixth-Century Irish Headache Cure and its use in a South German Monastery.” Cephalalgia. 16.8 (Dec. 1996): 536-40. EBSCO.Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Orr, Gregory. Poetry as Survival. Athens: U of Ga. P, 2002. Print.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. 1611. New York: Signet, 1998. Print.

The Complete Bible. 1939. Ed. J.M. Powis Smith and Edgar J. Goodspeed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1975. Print.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Bartleby.com. Bartleby.com, 4 July 1855. Web. 30 Oct. 2016.