I hate bumperstickers.

The Rules of Reading

          I am only creative for the length it takes to smoke two cigarettes. During this time I’m tossing ideas out left and right, up and down, and lack clichés if I’m lucky. This essay was started at 2 in the afternoon and I’m already seventeen cigarettes past my creative limit. This is the part of the film when the author played by a B-list actor states to some poor schmuck to “write what you know” and that it only gets “hard” after the first novel. But what about people like me who only have a creative burst of two cigarettes? Will it take months to just finish the first chapter? Should we, as a collective handicap, just keep writing, even if lacking creativity, hoping to get paid by the word as Herman Melville did? In an age with every child is being diagnosed with ADD and most adults are being prescribed either a variation of Xanax or Adderall with their anti-depressant, why should we, as writers and especially readers, have to suffer through another Moby Dick or War and Peace?

           We, as the generations being born in the 70s and beyond, smoke cigarettes because they’re quick; we eat fast food and TV dinners because they’re convenient; we watch short films because their compact, yet we still idealize novels. Short stories, short shorts, and essays rarely read outside of academia and their authors make no money. Yet at the same time, we, as the internet generation, read blogs and follow Tweets of worthless, famous people who contribute little to society. How is it that in this fast food culture short reads are only read by English majors, while novels of vampires and Jesus’ lineage are read by the millions? At parties and coffee shops I’ve realized that people love talking about the volume of their reading in page numbers, not quality. People, as a general statement, love saying the phrase, “Oh, it was such an easy read” in comment to modern (but not modernist in anyway), popular novels. It is as if adults are still in an elementary book club where if your class reads 5,000 pages you get a pizza party and ice cream. People seem to want a fictional stress of knowledge found through literacy without having to analyze anything past the words on the page. “How to” and “idiots’ guide” books also seem to be on the rise which reiterates the masses’ desire of fictional, transparent knowledge. One could read the “spark” or “cliff” notes of Ulysses, but the reader would never grasp the true feelings Bloom has when he masturbates on the beach or Stephen proving his theory on Shakespeare being Hamlet’s dead father’s ghost by mathematics. It might be a social reflection of the industrial revolution and capitalism’s numbers game, but I may be looking too deep into this miniscule detail.

             This is not to imply that readers of short stories and essays do not have an air of impression, but it is a more elite conversation from students, either university or self taught, studying the arts. “Oh, I don’t really enjoy Orwell’s novels, but I love his essays” is a common phrase to gain elite points. Stating that you enjoy reading essays and short stories over novels possibly shows to others that you actually know what close reading means and that you analyze daily and mundane events. Better yet stating something equivalent to “I’m a huge fan of Chininski’s poems.” This is a double point score since it shows that the reader knows Bukowski’s work quite well. This also could be done in the example of Orwell (i.e. “I’ve always been quite seduced by Eric Blair’s frankness”). I’ve also found that bringing a book of essays, personally Drinking, Smoking, and Screwing is one of my favourites, to a pub always looks good. Something about reading pretentious essays about promiscuous sex, smoking, and being wasted, while chain smoking and getting buzzed is always an attractive quality. Another thing to do in public while getting piss drunk is having a Bic pen and a Mead notebook. Must confess, I have met a few beautiful people using these simple techniques. This elitism is something I partake and thus find less fault in it through my own hypocrisy.

              I’ve had this conversation a few times; over drinks I belittle and bash common, popular writing and reading as if I have some weight on the subject. The only argument against my stance is “at least they’re reading.” This concept of “at least” is what has pushed blockbuster movies over creative and provocative films, fast food over family (a loose term, implied as you desire) dining, and ‘super’ stores over locally owned shops. Yes, it is better than nothing, but if one were void or limited in its popularity it would not leave a vacuum of empty space. Since I recently started seeing cinematic commercials for a ridiculous novel that states that President Lincoln was actually Buffy the Vampire with a beard, it seems that Wal-Mart syndrome is imbedded in the modern novel. Even the concept of having a cinematic commercial for a novel seems ridiculous; it would be like having a commercial “jingle” to represent a painting.

            I first started becoming obsessive about Frans Kafka and Margaret Atwood about the same time I started reading David Sedaris and James Frye. Kafka and Atwood would be my contemplative readings. Kafka’s surreal worlds would leave me confused, belittled, and lost and Atwood’s short stories gave light to the complexities of cognitive thought and relationships. Sedaris and Frye were my desserts, something to be read to wind down. I quickly began to realize that I could discuss Sedaris and Frye with ease to anyone I could hold long enough to discuss the weather, but English majors would stare at me with confusion or disgust if I mentioned Bukowski or Kafka. English majors tended to stick to the ‘greats’ who always used no fewer than 500 pages to express their concept. Faulkner, Twain, and Tolstoy are always in heavy rotation, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I just personally have the attention span of a three year old and can’t stand to sit through another fifteen-page description of how the setting sun reflects the autumn leafs. What interested me in English majors’ readings was although they were reading Tolstoy for class, the students were either reading pop novels or nothing at all in their free time. Maybe it’s the fictional stress of being an English major without the full realization.

            Since it is long past my creative time limit and the IPAs have already started to be devoured, I suppose I should just start writing what I know and what I know is that I don’t like convenient things for convenience sake. I like taking the time to cook a meal. I enjoy being known by name at the local food co-op. I like reading an essay about someone’s first cigarette or that time they hired a hooker. I will continue to protest child wizards while I sit in my seat of judgment with a glass of scotch and a cigarette.

Some Folks Die Too Young And Some Die Too Old

“Some Folks Die Too Young And Some Die Too Old”
-Adam Turla

       Last Thanksgiving my mother recalled an incident at the Atlanta International Airport that she had forgotten over the years. After dinner, while my family sipped on their coffee, my mother started in with the facts: she was twenty, waiting with my eldest brother for a plane in the terminal when she saw a suspicious man. My mother took her seat across from me in their carpeted living room as she sipped her coffee and munched on a homemade cookie, “I didn’t know what he was doing. He took out something shiny. I looked away for only a moment, looked back, and then saw blood pouring from his wrists onto the floor.” She then began to elaborate on the empathy she had for the man she did not know, ending the conversation with a Psalm and how God was watching over her. I excused myself from the room for a cigarette and thought, “I am nothing like them.”

****

        I don’t take death well, that is I don’t mourn like most people. I think it’s my perpetual need to look at most situations in a logical light. I tend to view life as the sum of its parts, and when it ends it ends. When I do find myself at funerals all I see is selfishness and self-pity in the eyes of the average funeral goer. The average funeral attendee just has thoughts and thoughts of how the dead can no longer be there for them. I sit towards the back of the room in the dark wooden pews while the organs play and remember the time Thomas was black out drunk singing the Beatles. The Thomas I knew didn’t like pews or organs. But he probably didn’t like getting gunned down while in the Peace Corps either. Very few funerals are actually about the dead and their wishes.

****

        When I was nineteen I lost my steady construction job and needed work, so, being the resourceful and responsible teenager I was, I took the first job that called me back: Forest Hills Funeral Home. It might be common practice, but this company did everything at their location. I mean everything: embalming, cremating, burying, and even dining. The job was a two part deal: during the day I was to be the Funeral Director’s Assistant, while at night I was their “driver” which entailed body pick up and delivery. Joe, the daytime driver, accompanied my first test-run pick up to “show me the ropes” as he put it. Joe was a retired military man who reeked of aftershave and mothballs; I knew if I stayed on long enough he’d be on my pick-up-list.
       My first day of training was disgustingly hot and humid. Joe, myself, and our windowless, unmarked van were in search of 106 in a popular retirement community. The house was the only one on the street with a dark red door. I was always told that a red door is warm and welcoming. I rang the doorbell and waited for the widow to invite us in to take her husband’s corpse.
Joe did all the talking. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, Mrs…”
He was cut off by the widow’s monotone, “He’s in the back room. Thanks for coming so soon; I didn’t want the house to smell.”
The three of use walked through a maze of tile floors and amateur paintings on the walls to the back room holding the corpse.
“Here he is. I hope you don’t need any help.”
“Oh, I’ve got the young buck for the heavy lifting,” Joe joked; out of embarrassment I was the only one to crack a smile.
        The body, weighing 100 pounds more than my own frame, was face down on a home-bought hospital bed. Joe then began to explain certain tricks for moving large bodies by rolling them onto bed sheets and hoisting them onto our stretcher. By his listless voice, I couldn’t tell if he was discussing a human body or ordering take-out.

****

          While at Forrest Hills, the bodies never bothered me; I spent most of my downtime in the cooler or watching the staff mortician embalm. My issue wasn’t being a driver; it was attending all of the funerals and looking empathetic. All I ever saw was a plethora of sad, self-pitying faces and it bothered me greatly. Beyond the obvious overlooking of character flaws during the eulogy, people feel sad because John Doe can’t rub their back, or provide for them, or please them any longer. Even our language displays our inherit selfishness: “I’m sorry for your loss.” It’s not, “I’m sorry John is dead and can no longer experience the joys of life,” which is what it could be. I'm tempted to say "what it should be," but I know death is deeper than the two emotions I see: selfishness and apathy. Is there a third option? Is there an option for honesty? For simply dealing with death? Some people never recover after their loss, but is that merely their own self-obsession? Merely playing the 'victim' card in depression? Or does something inside of the survivors, as the obituary names them, truly break?
          If there is any sadness, I feel it should be for the dead, not ourselves. We might as well say, “I’m sorry John Doe can’t bring you happiness anymore, but life goes on and you’ll find a new John to fill your needs in due time.” I know I sound extremely insensitive to the dead, but I’m not. I’m insensitive to the living. Or at least insensitive to the living who mourn for themselves. Despite the obvious “loss” of losing someone close to us, I feel that most of our mourning is a self wallowing for our own morality. We know that death is inevitable, but I feel that we don’t really know it. This theory of how one should act in response to death is quite linear; in real life it is not as black and white as I see it. Death and loss are multi-multifaceted to a degree that I can’t even begin to grasp through my limited experiences with death.

****

         A few months after the funeral home, I started EMT school for the adventure. My first night of rotations a large woman was rushed into the ER with heart failure due to a lifetime of 40s and fried chicken. Being the newest, I was told to perform CPR even though everyone new it was trivial. She died, literally in my hands, despite my and the doc’s attempts at resuscitation. Typically the body will stay in the ER for a few minutes for the family to say good-bye until it’s taken to the morgue, but this specific body’s family was mourning for over an hour in the makeshift curtain room. 

“Their wailing and crying is going to suck the hope out of every patient around them,” I mentioned to the nurse I was shadowing.
“Give them a few minutes of drama before Steve kicks them out,” the nurse reassured me, “keep an eye out on the drunk in room #2. He keeps pulling his IV out.”
          I walked into the drunk’s room, separated by a curtain from the departed. Before looking up I start off my memorized bedside manners. “How are you feeling, Mr…” I trail off, not saying the wrong name realizing I had the wrong chart. Feeling quite green and sheepish, I finally looked up to see the drunk with a tube in his mouth pumping out his stomach. The bile, a mix of browns and blacks with red highlights, was pouring into a liter plastic bag. He opened his blood shot eyes, lifted his freshly bloody fists, gave me the bird, and proceeded to pull out his IV. As I wrestled with the drunk to keep his IV in place, I over heard Steve, who I assumed was the head nurse, trying to be overly polite to the deceased’s family.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Sir, but we need the room. There is a burn victim on the way and we don’t have any other open rooms.”
           The family didn’t respond with words, just a mix of grovels and tearful mumbles. Steve walked out and told the orderly to move the body to the morgue, “they can mourn at the funeral.” I wasn’t at all focused on the drunk. His IV dangled half in his arm, slowly letting blood leak all over the floor, just as Steve entered my curtain room.

“Fucking shit, shadow. Get some towels and wipe this up while I give our charming patient another IV.” I rushed to the supply room but could hear Steve mumble under his breath, “It’s a fucking body; we can’t have them crying over their loss while the guy next to them is bleeding out.”

****

           When Anthony, my high school poker mate, was hit by a stolen car, I kept playing poker all year long even though I hated it. When Blu was hit by a drunk driver, I have always made sure my driver was never intoxicated. When Shakey overdosed, I kept my life long vow to stay away from hard drugs. And when Thomas was gunned down in Lesotho, I cracked open a bottle of red wine since it was his favorite. When I die I hope my friends finish a handle of whiskey in my honor and move on.

But even in this, I can see my own hypocrisy.

****

          Junior year of high school, Jessica Clinton, the school president and cheer captain, died suddenly from falling on her head combined with an unknown aneurism. Everyone in school knew of her; I knew her casually, not nearly enough to be affected by her death. The next day, the school practically such down. Guidance counselors and therapists were trucked in from other schools to help with the surplus of students who had “emotional difficulty dealing with death” the principal announced over the intercom. I was in McCraw’s physics class when the intercom announced the moment of silence the school would participate. Students al around me started to cry. I knew that none of them personally knew Jessica Clinton. Yet, they still cried. The entire school did. I remember that Amber, or maybe her name was Kelly, came over to me to console me. Amber was the type of girl that over developed in high school and had breasts large enough to smoother a man. She sat next to me and wrapped one arm around my shoulders. She leaned in close, I remember I could feel her large breasts weighing heavy on my arm, and whispered, “It’s OK if you cry.” I felt confused by her offer. Why would I cry? If anything I should be happy that I’m alive; I should enjoy the day since I have it.

****

         When offered to mourn my mind tends to revert to my Protestant, childhood stories of King David. God punished David, for his infidelity with Basheba and the murder of her husband, by infecting his first-born child with a deadly illness. While his son was sick, David fasted, mourned, and prayed that God would change His mind. This begging lasted for about a week until his son inevitably died. David’s next decision is something that has always fascinated me. When his son died, David changed clothes, had dinner, and then got drunk. His servants asked him why he was no longer in mourning for his son and David replied, “Why would I? God can’t raise the dead.” It may seem quite harsh, but there is something simplistic and beautiful about his actions. I think it’s the gorgeous logic behind it, his control over his emotions. It’s something not found in most.
         Death is complex. It is so much more intricate that I make it out to be, merely because I know I can’t grasp the concept of death. Of being dead. As it has been said before, “I write what I don’t know.” Perhaps logic isn't the end all solution to death, to mourning. The emotional whirlwind people experience after the death of a loved one are too complex to just be wished away by logic. There seems to be no simply solution. Yes, there are groups, steps and plans to overcome grief, but are these really solutions? Being young, I know I’m invincible. I know I’m the exception to the rule of endings. When my friends die, I do remember my mortality, but it is promptly forgotten. The lesson seems to pass ever too quickly. Life is fickle and quick, but I doubt I’ll ever learn that. While we are young and our family and friends pass on, we are immediately reminded of our mortality. Maybe that’s why we cry, why we mourn, why we wallow in depression over people we knew. Or even barely knew.

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