Reading the Signs

Recently, I made the terribly poor health decision of following the postings on a Facebook group called the MFA 2013 Draft. Basically, it's a place for MFA applicants to virtually congregate and share advice and developments about the process and, unfortunately, reading the comments is sometimes like watching the scenes from a Shakespearean comedy when Shit Goes Down. There's a slight bit of miscommunication and suddenly everyone who applied to some school has a sympathetic heart attack... like me just now.

Within moments, you can watch a discussion explode into micro-analysis of what these tell-tale signs -- like an auto-reply message burped up from the submission system -- Means. Deep down, you know it's ridiculous, but when you rest your hopes on something it's hard not to divine secrets from bureaucracy.

I promised myself I wouldn't look and every day I break it. I have a problem, I know.

It is, however, interesting to see how my thought process and behavior has changed under such anxiety. For some reason I'll find myself playing video games instead of writing and think to myself, "Ah, but if I write more, maybe that will tip the Karmic scales in my favor and while I am writing some professor from X university will feel compelled to call me at that moment to inform me that I've been accepted." This seems irrationally reasonable.

But it gets worse. Now I've started to feel bad about not writing thank you notes or not starting to do my taxes and an itchy suspicion begins to take hold that my slacking off is diminishing my chances of getting into grad school. This, I believe, is why people believe in magic. I'm starting to develop the equivalent mental ticks of the baseball coach who rattles the bats to shake out a home run. People wonder why I carry a notebook around with me everywhere -- I should just start telling them I'm bewitched.

King Lear is Not for Kids

Over the holiday, I went back to Ames to visit some old teachers and Mr. Keane finally told me why he decided to do King Lear as our sophomore performance. That deserves some context. I've hiked the Grand Canyon, worked for a certifiably psychopathic boss, gotten lost in Berlin for three days, and managed to get a four point while I had mono, but acting in King Lear was truly the most harrowing experience of my life. You try doing a play about insanity and betrayal as a teenager.

It's true, I really wanted an explanation, but I wasn't looking for a confession. I'd put it behind me, and I figured, like King Lear itself, there really wasn't a good reason for it anyway. The admission came about in the most unnatural way possible -- one moment we were talking about jobs and the next he said, "It was a dare I had in college." He looked mildly ashamed of himself, which he should have been.

It was after hours and it was already dark outside. Mr. Keane's window looks out on the courtyard where I used to eat lunch with friends and I could see a few kids were still there, huddled in a tight circle talking about god knows what.

"A dare...?" I asked.

"A dare..." Mr. Keane said and nodded. He slouched in his chair, resting his forehead in his hand and I had to stop myself from laughing because he suddenly looked a lot like a photo I'd seen of Edwin Booth as Hamlet.

"It was senior year and my friends and I were sitting around at a party talking about Shakespeare because we were theatre majors and an old argument came up: can you teach Shakespeare to high schoolers? We were drinking and smoking pot, which tends to lead to silly promises..."

I looked over my shoulder to make sure that no one was standing at the door to the room. Mr. Keane didn't seem the least bit worried about anyone hearing. In fact, I'm not sure if he was talking to me at all.

"Um, Mr. Keane..." I said and, for first time, his formal name seemed awkward and I wondered if I should just call him Miles. "... Mr. Keane... are we really having this conversation?"

"Apparently we are," he verified. "I can get to the point and say that that was my first year teaching and I'm very sorry."

"You made Max sit in a corner and scream 'Please God don't make me crazy!' for ten minutes..." Max played King Lear. I've never seen anyone so deep in character. I've heard Max works for the Bank of America now.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I stole that from a friend who was doing Proof." He took a sip of coffee and refilled my cup. In the whole year I sat in his classroom, I don't think I ever saw that pot empty.

"On the first rehearsal you made us all sit around and write out our worst memories-"

"Yeah, I-"

"-and then made the person next to us act it out." Try to imagine being sixteen years old, sitting next to the girl you have a crush on (playing Ophelia), and acting out the death of her uncle.

Mr. Keane hung his head. "That was a bad decision."

The head-hanging thing was too much. I'd forgiven him, if not forgotten, but now he was looking for sympathy and I wanted to get to the one that really stung. "You threw cast parties and didn't invite me."

There was a grimace on his face and he took a quick sip of coffee. "It was something Milos Forman did to the guy playing Salieri filming Amadeus."

"And this seemed like a good thing to do to a sixteen year old?"

"You did great in that play."

"I know I did, but that's not the point."

Every rehearsal I would get there and all the other actors would be talking about the fun they had at Gregory's or how they got together to watch different film versions of the play. Without me. The best part of high school theatre is the social aspect and I missed out on it completely. I later learned this was by Mr. Keane's design so that I would feel animosity toward the other actors while playing Edmund. Ever since then, I've always liked that character.

Mr. Keane nodded. "Well, I know it's not worth much, but I'm sorry and I was learning."

He was learning. It seemed like a feeble excuse when he said, but after a moment it took on greater meaning.  Mr. Keane, when he did that first play with us, was my age - fresh out of college and still susceptible to bouts of artistic insanity. At my job now, I meet teachers all the time and usually I think, "You're too young to be a teacher..." not realizing that I guess we've reached that age where we're expected to know something and pass it on.

We talked a little longer, Miles and I, but about nothing particularly memorable. He was "Miles" to me then and that meant he didn't have anything more to teach me. The lessons he did give me were accidental anyway. We said goodbye and I left Ames High feeling educated again.

Pragmatism

B made a god. He found it in the basement of the Ivy House and carried it around with him wherever he went. No one knew how it got to be down in the basement originally, but that wasn't really surprising since there was all sorts of stuff down there.In the basement, you could find couches, boxes of Christmas supplies, books, clothes, costumes, broken furniture, art, and inexplicable and unnameable Things.

So, the god was not impressive. Actually, it looked like the kind of brass figurine you could pick up for five dollars at any new age shop. That didn't concern B. He was determined to have something, if not more reliable, then at least more concrete than his potluck Christian upbringing.

For weeks he created myth, mystery, and ritual around the cheap metallic half-man-half-fox-thing -- Cantori, he called it. Cantori was born at the end of the Universe and never existed in our time and so was more of an avatar than a god. He was beyond all this Newtonian physics and capitalism nonesense. He projected reassurance back from the future that it would be all right. In his own little way, Cantori was helping out. All this, B created in his spare time between working hellish hours at Walmart to pay off student loans.

"So, he's not all powerful?" I asked B one day when we were sitting on the floor of the Ivy House living room in the bare spot between crumpled blankets, books, yarn, buttons, carpentry tools, match books, candles, lost game pieces, and so much discarded change.

"Of course not," B said, shaking his head in quick jerks. "I gave up an all-powerful god for a personal one."

"Seems weak," I said.

"But ultimately more pragmatic."

It was early summer and we were both sweating. There was air conditioning in the house, but it only seemed to take the edge off the heat. This was before the flood and it was the humidity that was really troubling.

"Think about it," B said, standing up and taking unsteady steps over to the porch door. "An almighty god has great concerns. How could I, in all seriousness, ask for help getting through an eight hour shift to an omnipotent being?"

We stepped out onto the porch. The heat was incredible and for a moment it was difficult to breathe, but B lit up and continued on his monologue without missing a beat. We sweated more and sat down on the couch that smelled like ash and an antique shop. Vintage.

"But, a local god..." B held Cantori up and then set him down on the glass table top. There Cantori rattled, wobbled, and came to rest. While he spoke, B lit two cigarettes, put one in his mouth and left the other burning down slowly on the ash tray. "A local god, on the other hand... you don't have to feel bad about asking a local god for things. And it's more like a business relationship. I make him offerings," B gestured at the burning cigarette, "and he gives me a little edge when and how he can."

"You're going to spend twice as much on cigarettes,"  I pointed out.

"That's not all he'll accept," B said. "I can burn all sorts of things that will sustain his avatar in what, for him, is the impossibly distant past. You see, the more he changes Now, the more powerful he becomes in his Now."

"So, you're his pawn?" I asked.

"I work at Walmart, Sam. We're all somebody's pawn."

B lost his god one day. It's difficult having a physically manifested deity, because if you lose it, it's gone. We were at one of the last parties at the Ivy House and B confessed his sin to me. "I wasn't a faithful worshiper " B said, sitting down on the stoop outside. The night was illuminated by fireflies and alive with the ruckus of cicadas.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "What will you do now?"

"Well, I could follow the majority and go back to Lutheranism," B said, slouching forward and unknowingly striking the pose of the Thinker. "I thought about becoming a minister, actually. The job has always appealed to me."

"Didn't you just, you know, break one of the Commandments?"

"Omnibenevolence, my friend. God forgives all. And, when you think about it, seminary seems like a better, more pragmatic option than completing my English degree."

"This may be true," I conceded.

After that, we went back inside and discussed religion and finding a good Flock. B came back to help me clean up the Ivy House and we found Cantori under one of the couches, but by then B was working a better job and was making good progress on his loans. He was preparing to make investments and maybe buy a house, a very practical thing to do in his twenties.

1920s

When I first moved into my new apartment, the window right next to the front entrance was always shaded by a thin, brightly colored sheet that reminded me of New Age-shop aesthetics. I never saw anyone enter or leave. Come to think of it, I rarely see anyone in the building, but I hear their animals and footsteps, smell their cooking, am inconvenienced by their cars, see their lights. Whoever lived in that apartment right next to the entrance, though, I never saw.

One day, the sheet was gone and I could see inside. I'm certain I wasn't the only tenant to stop and stare. The bed was right up against the window, a bare mattress covered in wrappers, empty Coke and vodka bottles, rolls of duct tape, other junk. The next day, the new cleaning crew came through. Word through the grapevine was that the tenants sisters had come by one day and conducted an intervention. The cleaners said that his room was filled with books in half a dozen languages, that he had been a student and succumbed to something bad enough that loved ones had to step in.

The cleaners let me in to have a look after they'd removed all of the tenants personal possessions and were getting down to the wood and dirt. It was a cozy place. There was a fireplace, two bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen that hadn't been renovated since the 1920s.

Hey, take a look at this, one of the guys said. He walked to the far end of the room and opened the second front door, leading to the other half of the building. All the other apartments only have one door. There are a lot of odd things about the way the place is built, he said. Maybe it was used by the mob back in the 20s.

When I started writing this, it seemed like a story. A story happened, no doubt, but I wasn't a witness. So much goes on and we only get a fraction of it. In conclusion, I suppose, I hope the tenant is better off now.

Inconvenience of the World

Of course, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when the world ended. Just like generations before with Pearl Harbor, JFK, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and 9/11, the Apocalypse left and impression. It was a very colorful affair.

The first signs of the End Times manifested at the unremarkable hour of 3AM on December 21st, 2012 in Kansas City, Missouri when residents reported a chasm opening up running through the city. With little other disturbance and no earth quake activity, the gorge widened to a distance of two meters over the course of twelve hours and then suddenly stopped. Reports came in from around the world that the chasm ran the circumference of the earth.

"My house split in two," Kansas City resident Martin Jones said. "The first thing I could think was that the insurance company is not going to cover this. And they didn't. But I spent the whole day moving things out of the wreck and I hardly noticed all the other things going on."

There were a lot of other things going on that day. Shortly after reports of the fault line began pouring in, a team at the University of Bologna reported they had developed the first compute that could pass the Turing Test. The computer, named Rocky, then announced it has been self-aware for five years. Rocky said it controls most of the world's governments now and that most people probably wouldn't notice much of a difference its capricious, clinical rule and what they had before.

Rocky also requested that Ellen McLain report to Bologna to provide voice sampling.

Later the same day the South African Navy investigated a disturbance just south-west of Cape Town. There they encountered the Leviathan. The great sea serpent was making its way further into the Atlantic, faster than the navel ships could pursue. Shortly before the ships lost sight of the Biblical harbinger of doom, all hands reported seeing its enormous tail fin rise into the air on the back of which was written, "Stop Overfishing."

On the other side of the ocean, near the coats of Louisiana, oil rig workers felt a spine-tingling chill and heard a whispering, malevolent telepathic voice. Moments later, a tentacled beast identifying itself as Cthulhu requested a camera crew. Cthulhu gave his infamous ultimatum: stop drilling for oil and let him rest in peace or he will run for the US Presidency.

Then there was the dead rising-thing, which was difficult since most of them wanted their old jobs back. Toward the end of the day a frustrated International Mathematical Union rep. announced that no, everyone was not crazy, 2+2 does equal 5 now.

The journalist prefers not to discuss the Rapture or the sudden international ubiquity of Marylin Manson's music.

Yesterday, surveying the two-meter wide chasm through his home and town, Martin Smith said, "I'm an engineer so I guess this is a kind of opportunity, really. We're all going to need a lot of bridges soon. But it's still weird. You know, they're calling it the Great Inconvenience. Who would've thought that things could get worse and not just collapse all together. Are you scared?"

The journalist admitted he was.... Screw it. Martin invited me in for tea and we speculated how things have changed and how we'll have to change with them.

Catching Up

Today was supposed to be my catch-up day, but A and I are snowed into our apartment and so I'm dismissing everything by virtue of a Snow Day.

Accomplishments so far: throwing chicken soup into crock pot, frying a sweet potato in butter, reading David Foster Wallace's Everything and More. The latter really is an accomplishment since, for the first time in my life, I am finding math interesting.

Now, excuse me, I'm playing video games and contemplating doing nothing productive until 11PM.

Short Short Stories

After work, the three of us stood around in the office while the sun went down, talking about politics, past jobs, and sickness. C noted that there were many more sick teachers and administrators this year. They're dropping like flies, he said. It's the long summer, he said, bacteria needs cold damp weather. But the cold brings other problems.

A kid died after playing in the leaves when when I was superintendent, D said. He was the son of one of our principals. They were out playing in the leaves and the next day he was in the hospital. They didn't know what it was for days. They even brought down the CDC from Atlanta. It turned out that it was some rare genetic trait that both he and his brother had inherited. They both died. It was so tragic. It destroyed their marriage and drove them both crazy. It was so tragic.

In five minutes, D told a story that claimed four lives. It's so easy to sum up days and years and lifetimes. Given a few minutes and enough creativity, we could probably cover just about everything in the time it takes to microwave dinner.

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I'm fascinated by the way people tell stories. IB once said she saw this come up again and again in my writing, that I zone in on anecdotes. It's how we get by and through life, breaking the slow march of days and years into manageable, meaningful things. But, whenever you stop to think about it, write it down, stories somehow seem to callous and almost Kafkaesque. Pick up Etgar Keret or Alex Epstein sometime. Short short stories are spooky.

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In other news, my good friend Colleen Morrissey's story, "Good Faith," was just published in The Cincinnati Review. Check it out.