I’m Melting: Thoughts on Reading Your Work in Public

By Jillian Avalon

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           I am not a nervous speaker. I believe it was Seinfeld who said that most funeral guests would prefer to be in the casket rather than give the eulogy. However, I never experienced the paralyzing fear of public speaking so many people suffer, as anyone who knows me will testify.

           I was a performative child, as most children begin and many children outgrow. I danced, sang, acted, and spoke without fear of my audience, no matter the size, age, or setting, and I could not identify with professional performers who admitted to vomiting before every show. What was there to fear?

           It took me twenty-six years to experience stage fright. I signed up for a Friday reading slot at my MFA residency. I selected a reading I felt good about, and I practiced it meticulously. Muscle memory is essential to a good performance, no matter how good or bad the material, and I was determined to have this piece ingrained. Friday, I resolved, would be nothing.

           The symptoms began before breakfast: muscle tightness, stomach flipping, occasional trembling whenever I thought about the reading. I started second-guessing my selection. Was it the right tone? Had I picked a section that was a poor representation of the voice of my character? Was it well-written at all? I waded through my work for the day, increasingly worried that I had made a mistake, either in my selection or in signing up to read at all. I imagined that horrible smattering of polite applause, which sounds suspiciously like normal applause, but with a measured, muted quality that signaled no one actually liked the performance.

"Three minutes of my life did not feel like three minutes. I was still shaking when I sat. I took deep breaths, rubbed the sweat from my hands on my lap, listened and applauded the other readers. My stomach wouldn’t settle."

The half hour before I was to read, I was well past anxious. I felt carsick. My hands were shaking. My too-empty stomach flipped and squirmed. I could see where the sweat from my hands smudged the pages I was to read.

           My friend told me it would be fine, and I knew she was right.

           “It would be fine,” I told myself. I would go into auto-pilot, read my piece as I’d practiced. I would not die if I got polite applause. But it felt suspiciously like death.

           My hands still shook when I took the podium. I worried my voice would sound as queasy as I felt. In the winter, the teacher who had worked on my piece wasn’t present, but he was in the summer. And worse than simply being present, he is one of those listeners whose body language telegraphs listening and draws the eye. I looked up the first time at the audience, as trained, and I saw him leaning forward, and I felt dizzy.

           Three minutes of my life did not feel like three minutes. I was still shaking when I sat. I took deep breaths, rubbed the sweat from my hands on my lap, listened and applauded the other readers. My stomach wouldn’t settle. I told myself it would pass by the end of dinner. A bit of a boost to the blood sugar, some time for the adrenaline drop to level out. It would be fine. Some people would say they liked it and I would feel better.

           The food did not settle my stomach. The trembling didn’t stop. I did get compliments, but it mysteriously made things worse. Each compliment from a professor made the nerves spike on the scale again, and I admitted to one that I still felt a mess when I left dinner early and hurried back to our meeting place for the next event.

           She assured me this was normal. She said reading is her least favorite part of the program. Coming in the previous summer, I would not have understood her, but walking beside her with my stomach doing incomprehensible acrobatics and my fingers vibrating like a plucked guitar string, I knew exactly what she meant. I paced alone for half an hour, and even then my nerves only settled to the levels from breakfast.

           It wasn’t all bad, though. I got good feedback on the section, and I slept better that night than any other during the week. And I was left with an important question to mull over. Why was reading my words so different from every other performance I’d done in my life?

           At first, I thought it was something about the stage. In dance and theatre, I usually had bright lights blocking the audience from view. But this wasn’t always true, and almost no musical performance I’d done had this benefit. I certainly had never had a public speaking engagement where I couldn’t see faces.

           Then I thought about content. With dancing, acting, singing, playing, I am taking content created by someone else and sharing it with the world. I am a vessel for someone else’s expression. If it doesn’t go well, I perform something else and move on.

           But my writing is mine. It is what matters most. If ithe reading doesn’t go well, if people don’t like it, it isn’t a matter of performing something else tomorrow. Those words are a bit of my soul, which I’ve spent years forming and crafting and imagining.

           I'm still not a nervous speaker. I'd still rather give the eulogy than lay in the casket. And I'd still describe myself as performative. I wouldn't stop forcing myself to read, because I think it is good for me. But I have resigned myself to a life of hours of before-and-after agony on a reading day, and I do not imagine it will go away. In fact, I am fairly certain this is one of those things that only gets worse with practice.

Jillian Avalon is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Love’s Last Breath (An excerpt)

By C. A. Cooke

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How can I consider love again?

The carnation in Robert’s hand shook as he waited for the train to stop. His mind buzzed - fear and excitement warring over his attention. After Candice, he had sworn never to put himself on a string again. He spent eleven years being yanked on one, and even after the divorce, he came running whenever Candice beckoned. Promises of reconciliation eventually turned to ash in his ears, and Candice cut him loose.

           Robert thought he was done with women, done with dating, and done with love. But then, Lizzy. She popped into his life like a firework, showing up as a random challenger online in the Scrabble boards and chatting idly with him as she laid down triple word scores. There was something about her, something different. He sought her out whenever he was online, feeling lost when he couldn’t find her name.

           After months of chatting on the Scrabble boards he had built up the courage to ask her to dinner. Nothing fancy. Lord knew he couldn’t afford fancy after the divorce. But the diner on Grand had great food for cheap, and who doesn’t like pie?

           Lizzy’s initial hesitancy worried him. He was no Brad Pitt after all, unless Brad was beefing up for a role as the Cookie Monster: Robert wasn’t fat so much as padded and covered in the fine fur bestowed unto him by his Mediterranean ancestry. Lizzy acquiesced, however, and set a date. She insisted they meet today on the train and wouldn’t answer when Robert queried as to why. The only thing she would tell him was that she had a “prior engagement”.

           They hadn’t exchanged pictures, either. Lizzy was old school, and Robert was too shy to send anything more than a vague description of himself. Candace had ever been so aware of his faults, and eleven years of listening to itemized lists of them made it difficult to see anything else. Lizzy laughed when he told her this, typing, “Nobody’s perfect, Roberto.”

           Roberto. Lizzy’s pet name for him. He loved it. It made him swell with the Italian pride so characteristic of his father’s side of the family. Papa died before Candace left him, but Robert had a feeling he would have liked Lizzy. She was funny and wise. She was always ready with a quip and good advice whenever Robert was down.

"Robert checked the hands of every woman that came in. The flash of red of the matching carnation should be easy to spot, regardless of the frenzy."

The train slowed, inertia rocking everyone in the car forward. Robert adjusted his weight like the city pro he was. He hadn’t needed to grab a hand rail in twenty years. Like many metro travelers, his calves were his best feature. The train slid into the station, the tinny automated voice announcing the street. Robert’s pulse quickened, and he rubbed his sweaty palms on his slacks.

           The surge of end-of-day commuters crashed against one another like opposing armies on a battlefield. Those egressing the train pushed forward with all the grit and determination of Patton’s Third Army pushing into Bastogne. The group on the platform washed around them, elbowing and shoving them aside to gain entrance to the carriages. The exchange had all the order and grace of an explosion.

           Robert checked the hands of every woman that came in. The flash of red of the matching carnation should be easy to spot, regardless of the frenzy. Once his eye caught a crimson splotch, and his heart leapt. Its owner, a petite blonde in a navy business suit, stopped and scanned the seats. She moved away moments later, and Robert saw she held not a flower, but a small, gaily wrapped package. He continued to scan the crowd, his panic rising with this heartbeat. He wondered if he had gotten the wrong day or the wrong train. He didn’t want to consider that Lizzy might stand him up. They were soul-mates.

           The crowd settled down and the doors slid closed. The familiar weight of acceleration accompanied the familiar weight of disappointment. She hadn’t come. She’d reconsidered or, perhaps, just forgot.

           “That’s me,” he muttered. “Mr. Forgettable.”

           “Excuse me, young man,” a voice said from beside him. He looked up.

           Gliding around the other riders was a woman in her seventies. She wore black slacks and a tie-died tank-top, over which she had draped a sheer floral-patterned wide scarf, which flowed around her like water as she walked. Her gray-white hair was styled in a textured bob which made her look as though she had just wandered in from a day at the beach.

           “Excuse me,” she said again. “Are you Robert?”

           Robert blinked and nodded.

           “I am,” he said. “But who are—”

           His eyes caught the flash of red in her hands and his mouth went dry.

           “Roberto!” Lizzy said, and threw herself at him, arms open.

C. A. Cooke is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. Visit his website at http://cacooke.com. 

Hush

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By Krista Graham

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If I don’t say it out loud it’s not real
So I won’t speak it
Just fold it like a quilt and hide it
In a chest
My chest
I close the lid

Be Still

I open and let in the light
Retrieve the quilt
Unfold it tenderly lay it on my shoulders and
Feel its weight
My weight
I sit under it awhile

Weep

I let the warmth of it melt what is frozen
And in the thawing I feel
More than nothing then something then everything
And there are tears
My tears
I let myself rain

Krista Graham is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. Visit her website at www.peninmyhand.com.

BOOKS

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Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Review by Justin Taylor, Mountainview Faculty

This past school year, I used an anthology in a few of my writing classes that I had never used before. It was The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, and to be honest with you, I was not persuaded of its efficacy as a teaching tool. The selections are refreshingly offbeat, and the sheer range of the thing (1700s-2000s) is something, but the book contains a lot of typos, formatting mistakes, and errors of fact (particularly in the biographical notes for the included writers) that left me constantly second-guessing my primary course text, which is the one thing a teacher doesn’t want to have to worry about. Oates/Oxford should have hired a proofreader and a fact-checker, or, if they did, they should have fired them. Oh well.

     Still, there were some stories that I encountered for the first time in The Oxford Book that not only yielded fruitful classroom discussions and creative responses, but stuck with me after the school year ended. One such story is “Fleur” by Louise Erdrich, about a woman reputed to be a witch, and the supernatural revenge she may (or may not) have taken on a group of men who violated her. The story, which is less than ten pages long, is masterful in the way it handles point of view, as well as in the way it balances candor and subtlety. It left me eager to read more Erdrich, so I picked up Love Medicine, her debut novel, first published in 1984 (then revised and expanded in 1993, and again in 2009).

     Love Medicine takes place over roughly half a century on (and off) an Ojibwe Reservation in North Dakota. A family tree included in the front matter lays out five generations of Kashpaws, Morrisseys, Nanapushs, and Lamartines, many of whom will get to narrate one or more chapters at some point in the sprawling saga. On the family tree, a legend explains that different symbols are used to distinguish “traditional Ojibwe marriage,” “sexual affair or liaison,” and “Catholic marriage,” as well as “children born from any of the above unions” from “adopted children.” Such scale might overwhelm some readers before they’ve even begun, but don’t be scared off! The novel, for all its technical daring (leaps forward and backward in time, characters phasing in and out of primary-protagonist status) is remarkably lucid and emotionally potent. It’ll have you hooked within five pages, and in full-on binge-mode within fifty.

     I loved it so much I forced myself to slow down around the three-quarters mark, because I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. Happily, it turned out that this was a needless precaution, because Erdrich has written several more novels set in the same community, including the Pulitzer finalist The Plague of Doves, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, and a novel called Four Souls that, as far as I know, hasn’t won anything but which caught my eye because its protagonist is Fleur Pillager, i.e. the title character of the story that first introduced me to Erdrich’s work, so I’m going to read it as soon as I find a copy. (Fleur appears in Love Medicine too, but only briefly.) 

     Philip Roth called Love Medicine “a masterpiece, written with spellbinding authenticity” and Toni Morrison rightly noted that its "beauty...saves us from being completely devastated by its power.” To these accolades I only wish to add a brief teacherly note. Love Medicine is recommended for one and all, but it will prove especially useful for students exploring that gray and intimidating borderland between the novel, the “linked collection” and the “novel-in-stories.” I’ve seen Love Medicine described as all three of these things, but Erdrich herself seems to regard it as a novel, while at the same time regarding its component parts as stories rather than as chapters. (The title story of The Red Convertible, her Collected Stories, is a chapter from this novel.) This makes sense if you think about it, given how many books she’s written about these people and this place: are not the novels themselves mere chapters in some larger book? In any case, if you’re looking for a model, Love Medicine is among the best you’ll find, because it will give you permission not to follow anyone else’s, but rather to build your own.

Justin Taylor is a Mountainview MFA faculty member, as well as the author of Flings, The Gospel of Anarchy, and Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever.

The Mic

By Morgan Green

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It’s 1979, and I’m eight years old. My legs dangle off the edge of a beat-up leather barstool like braids. I swing them back and forth with a shy smile, picking at the edge of the seat with one hand, holding a glass of water with the other. I’m pretending I’m drinking whatever the adults are, so that I feel like I belong.

*

Mama’s always been a natural with the mic. You could tell she was into a song when she took her time. Eyes closed, she'd tip her head to the side, ever so slightly, and caress the mic. She had that same look when she hummed while washing my hair. Her favorite song to sing, as her fingers weaved their way through my curls, was Moody’s Mood for Love by King Pleasure. “My granddaddy would always come in singing that song,” she once told me. Then she started singing, dragging out the lyrics while she ran the wide-tooth comb through my hair, from tip to root.  

               “It’s okay, baby'" she said, after I flinched.  "Come on sing the next part with me.” I joined in. I had no idea what the hell I was singing back then, but we sang it so much that, finally, I knew the words to the song like I did my own name.

              “Good, Nettie.” She kissed my forehead before singing the next verse. I flinched again as the comb yanked at another part of my hair. “These tangles of yours don’t seem to behave either,” she joked. “Gimme the high note.” I smiled up at her through clinched teeth, and she wiped a tear from under my left eye. I added a little vibrato to each drawn out word. 

              “Yes, baby girl!” She grabbed a finger full of curling custard and began to spread it through my hair in sections. “Doesn’t singing make you feel better? It’s like for a moment you forget you’re in pain. With a voice like yours, everyone around you might just forget, too.”

              My favorite part of each day was when she’d do my hair, not only because it was the guaranteed thirty minutes of alone time with her, but also because sometimes she’d get sentimental enough while singing to tell me her stories.

"She isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s holding her mic in the air and swaying her hips to the music playing."

Tonight, like most nights, I must share Mama with other people. They’re snapping and humming along as she sings about police, thieves, drugs, and love. I just watch Mama. Sometimes she drifts off while singing. The crowd doesn’t notice, but I recognize the look in her eyes—it’s the one she gets after hitting the needle. She stares up at the ceiling like she can see stars. Whenever she does this, I look up at the ceiling, too. Try to see what she sees.

              “I have a special surprise for y’all tonight,” Mama says to the crowd. She winks at me from all the way up there on that stage and smiles. “Annette, baby, come up here with Mama”

              The ripped leather tears a seam in my stocking before I run up the steps. She isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s holding her mic in the air and swaying her hips to the music playing. Once I get to the stage, she smiles and hands me my own mic. Then she turns her head to the side and sniffs.

              “Ladies, fellas of Smooth’s," she says to the room, "Y’all think I can sing? Wait until you hear my baby girl. She can’t just sing. She can sang. She’s gonna be a real star one day. Come on now, clap for her.” And they do. And for the first time, I think I feel what she felt all those nights, and I understand why she never would—no, never could—do anything else but take that stage.

              This is the first night my hands ever hold a real mic, not a makeshift one made out of brushes or combs or empty beer bottles. I cry as I sing because when I look up, I finally see the stars. Women in the audience call me baby and sweet pea. Men gently direct me to take my time. And I do. Mama and I smile at each other, finally knowing one another, or at least the part that matters. Our voices blend beautifully. She sings notes that are low like her nights on the street, when we’d sit outside with an open guitar case and sing in front of fountains.

*

She’d found the guitar in a dumpster, somewhere on South Street, and pawned it. She didn’t get much for it, but it was plenty to pay for enough studio time to record one song. She didn’t, though. She used the money for heroin. She said it kept her creative juices flowing. She kept the case, however. She took a red marker and wrote “Corrine and Annette’s Album Fund,” on the inside.

              That was 1977, before Mama found Smooth’s, when men would invite her over so that they could have her, and she’d let ‘em, if it meant it gave her baby a place to sleep for the night.

              “My mama always told me the only thing I’d ever be good for was layin’ on my back," she said to me one night as she washed my hair in this guy’s tub. She yanked hard so she could get the braids right. “She was right,” she said, “but it got me you,” She kissed my forehead. “It got me you, and that’s all I need, baby.” I smiled because I was too young to understand fully what she meant or how to respond.

*

In 1980 I’m nine. I walk into my mother’s dressing room one night and watch as she flicks the lighter and takes a drag from a pipe. I can tell it isn’t her first drag of the night because she takes a deep breath and smiles up at the ceiling, leg twitching until she hears me.

              “Mama?”

              She jumps and the pipe slips out of her hand onto the ground. She flinches as it bounces but I’m at a loss for words. She stares at me, her shock mirrored in my eyes.

              “What are you doing?”

              She doesn’t know how to answer. Instead, she looks down, ashamed, then starts to cry. I walk over and hug her. “Don’t cry, Mama,” I hush her, “I love you.” I kiss her forehead, pretend not to notice her stare longingly at the crack pipe still resting on the floor.

Morgan Green is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. 

POETRY

Spin

By Shawna-Lee I. Perrin

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The summer sun inches toward high,
and I, schoolless, thumb through cassettes
recorded off top 40 radio shows;
fully synthed, effeminate British men
weeping words for lost, exotic loves.

Lurking in my sister's closet,
I push aside school clothes
and crane my neck to the back...
There I find my day in Sage green;
the spinny skirt without which no day
on the hill is complete.
Each tier, wider than the last, cinched
to my eleven year old, hipless body.

Out on the steep hill behind our house,
spinning relentlessly on baby-fat legs.
Guess which tree I'll see when I open my eyes, still.
Blind, deaf and dumb to cars whizzing by just past
two maples - one short, fat, one tall, slender.

Spin
Spin
Spin

'Til the sun drops.
'Til roast beef and rice.
'Til my feet are a deep, dirty green.

Shawna-Lee I. Perrin is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. 

FLASH FICTION WINNING STORY

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Treadmill

By Michael Hendery

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It appears I have forgotten my pants. Of course I remembered my nose hair trimmers, but not my chinos. Blast. I only have -- twelve minutes to get to the clinic from the gym. Too little time to go home. Maybe Glenn brought an extra pair. He was on the StairMaster. No, not even dentists would do that.

     Let’s see, Mrs. Gurley is my first patient. She never makes eye contact. Even if she fixates on the fresh-cut dahlias I put out yesterday, in time she will surely notice my bare legs. They are a kind of shocking-pale white that would stand out even more against my brown leather club chair. I should have gone with the linen swivel. It came in eggshell.

     I have a throw blanket on the couch, but it’s itchy and draping it across my lap would require an explanation. She might think I peed myself. I could say I am chilly, but that might conjure up Mrs. Gurley’s hypochondriasis. She already fears she contracted Ebola from those college students with the clipboards at Forsyth Park. Plus, it’s August in Savannah. No one is chilly.

     So what if I show up to our session in my blue dress shirt, my loafers, and my little, neon-green running shorts? We could have a laugh. I’ve never seen Mrs. Gurley laugh. This could be a lesson in self-deprecation, in self-compassion even. She is deficient in both of these qualities. Maybe this would be a turning point in therapy for her. For months, she has elevated me to such an impossible standard. She wishes the world was full of people like me. If she saw how I am capable of making such an embarrassing oversight -- no, her husband just died last month. She still needs me to be indefectible.

"No one calls her at home, not since the days after the funeral, after she told everyone that she was not going to be divvying up Mr. Gurley’s estate anytime soon."

We could do a phone session, but it’s too late to reach her at home. She’s so damn punctual. And she told me she doesn’t have a cell phone. She said she has gotten along fine for seventy-three years without one, and all she’d subjecting herself to is texts from her kids and grandkids asking for money. That’s what they saw her as -- a printing press, as she put it. I think she meant a minting machine.

     No one calls her at home, not since the days after the funeral, after she told everyone that she was not going to be divvying up Mr. Gurley’s estate anytime soon. Her daughters were waiting for him to die, for months. They figured the occasion would be a big payday for them -- her youngest, Susie, in particular. Vultures.

     Mrs. Gurley is considering traveling to Europe in the coming year, now that she does not have to contend with her husband’s wheelchair and his loathing of airport security protocol. She wants to go to Venice first, then Zurich or London. Why does the word gondola refer both to the boats and the cable cars? she wondered last session.

     I have seen Mrs. Gurley for nearly a year now, twice-weekly. She pays in cash, full fee. She does not want these sessions to be billed through Medicare. It’s none of the government’s business what goes on between her ears. She asked me not to keep a record of her visits. I don’t keep a record of anyone’s visits, so that has been easy.

     The monthly revenue I get from Mrs. Gurley is almost exactly the child support payment I have to make to my ex-wife for my own little vultures. Those horse riding lessons are courtesy of Mrs. Gurley. Band camp, Girl Scouts, Irish Dancing, all paid for by Edna Gurley. We have never missed a session. We even met on Christmas Eve. She brought me an almond roll with a tiny plastic container of powdered sugar to sprinkle on top. It was a nice gesture, but I never eat or drink anything that a patient gives to me, not after learning Dr. Bruce was poisoned by a vanilla chai latte. 

     It’s not that I believe Mrs. Gurley is capable of such direct expressions of hostility. She prefers to punish others with her discontent. She was married for forty-four years to a man she detested. She dropped out of college soon after they met, cared for the kids’ basic needs, but never enjoyed their company. She did not want to give Mr. Gurley the satisfaction that she was a happy spouse or mother. I doubt she’ll make her way to Venice. That could be too gratifying for me.

     Her children ask her for money because she has nothing else to offer them. Her eldest moved to Atlanta and voted Democrat in the last election. Even worse, Susie moved to Asheville. She doesn’t talk about her. She believes the world has come unraveled -- there is not enough God in public spaces, and we have lost too many of our traditions in this country. We are not even allowed to be proud of our southern heritage. It has become a dadgum free-for-all in this country, she said once, before apologizing -- not for her sentiment, but for her passion.

     Eight minutes. It takes six to get to the office. I could skip the session and be out a hundred-and-forty dollars, but Mrs. Gurley is not the forgiving type. Who knows how much this would end up costing me?

     Glenn is over on the treadmill, and his locker looks open. I envy dentists -- they can stick their hands in a patient’s mouth when they don’t feel like talking. And they could position themselves to only be seen from the waist up.

     Glenn and I are about the same size. His inseam might be an inch or two longer. Mrs. Gurley would hardly notice.

Michael Hendery is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

BOOKS

CIRCE by Madeline Miller

Review by Margaret McNiells

When a partygoer and family friend recommended I read Circe by Madeline Miller on Memorial Day weekend, I put the title at the end of a towering list of tomes I plan to read for fun after I finish my MFA. But a random trip to Sag Harbor, NY, and the last available parking space on Main Street, put me face to face with Harbor Books and the stunning cover of Circe. I know we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers but this one drew me in. Before I knew it, I’d purchased the hardcover. I didn’t get to crack it open until after residency, but in this last week, I devoured this book.

     Miller’s prose is gorgeous, lyrical and efficient. Though some of the plot was predictable, I attributed it to how well I knew the protagonist. What captivated my attention the most was Miller’s ability to breathe new life into tales that were first told thousands of years ago, this time through a female point of view. Though I set out to read this book purely for my own enjoyment, there is much to enjoy about Miller’s authorial skill as well.

Margaret McNiells is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

BOOKS

When the Men Were Gone by Marjorie Herrera Lewis

Review by Daniel Charles Ross

When I first saw the cover of this novel, I immediately remembered one of my favorite movies, "Summer of '42." The movie brilliantly details the adolescent lives and times of two boys too young to go off to WW II, the heartbreak of a young war widow, and how those life streams connect.

     The brilliance of Marjorie's based-on-a-true-story novel is that, like the movie did, it distills the life and times of people facing far-off WW II into a local conflict that they must battle hand to hand. The primary battle is sexism: protagonist Tylene (a real person) is the best choice to be the school's football coach, but the men in the decision chain are skeptical—and her opposing coaches are rudely dismissive.

     We look back through our long lenses to those days and just shake our heads today. But this was another time and place that Majorie has reborn and given life.

     Tylene was a real person in the Texas school football continuum, and her "factional" depiction is fully realized as a caring, football-loving teacher and school supporter who just wants to do the best thing for everyone. She infuses even her skeptical football team with energy and directs them with skill, finally overcoming the last barrier when a teammate's brother, a former school football stand-out now injured, gives his support.

     In the end, they lose the Big Game, but they are victorious in pride and self-worth. 

     This is "Friday Night Lights" crossed with DNA from "Summer of '42." It has a little Sisyphean top-spin, with tasks that are both laborious and futile. The coaching trials compete with Tylene's effort to rescue a former student and football star from the life-eroding effects of his war wounds; with keeping her marriage happy and functioning; and occasionally, with her own self-doubt.

Photo by Shane Bevel

Photo by Shane Bevel

This is a finely tuned, lyrical story that evokes a time long past but mostly fondly remembered, the war years when Americans all pulled together to fight the Hun while mostly ignoring the social battles on the home front because that's what they always did then. The Greatest Generation at war sometimes wasn't so great back home.

     Marjorie's seminal work will one day be taught in high school English Lit classes. Full disclosure: I'm proud to say I shared the Mountainview MFA program with her for a time, but it's clear she paid closer attention than I did. I'm told this story has been optioned for a movie, and that's great news.

     But like one often says, the book is better.  

Five Stars: One for any writer facing the anxiety of a blank page; one for an ignored story uncovered and illuminated well; one for finely drawn characters who come to life on the page and in the reader’s mind; one for a terrific cover; and one because I'm happy to think this is just the start of a wonderful career full of great reading for us all. Strongly, unequivocally recommended.

Daniel Charles Ross—DCR—was a Mountainview MFA student in 2015. The thriller that was to be his thesis, Force No One, comes out in the fall.

What the Lobster Saw

By Amy Jarvis

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The lobsters take pleasure in staring at you with their beady, black eyes. Their claws are taped together with manacles that indicate their weight. With their remaining limbs, the lobsters crawl over each other to get a better look through the murky water of their tank – displayed shrewdly near the front of the restaurant. The lobsters must notice the pressed white button-downs and black pants, the dangling apron ties and no-slip shoes. I often questioned whether or not, despite the gratification they must receive from making people uncomfortable, the lobsters swallowed in fear each time a server walked through the doors of Seaside Lobster to begin their shift.

     I never cared for closing a Friday dinner shift. Even though we earned higher gratuities, leaving the restaurant after midnight, after being run ragged all evening, wasn't something I looked forward to. I swallowed hard when I bypassed the lobster tank, and once again felt guilty about working in a restaurant that slaughtered dinner for its guests by tossing lobsters into a pot of boiling water. After the manager approved my uniform and gave me my section assignment, he asked what I would be selling that night. I rambled off piña colada, stuffed mushrooms, and chocolate cake, along with a slightly ambitious seven hundred dollars in sales.

     Although seven hundred usually happened on a bustling night, I never had the intention of pushing guests to order something they weren’t interested in for the sake of meeting my goal. After checking in with the hostess, I stopped at the beverage station, poured a coffee, and walked into the kitchen. I watched as everyone prepared for what was shaping up to be a hectic summer night.

"The first time I ever witnessed a lobster in the kitchen, I excused myself to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, sat down next to the toilet, and sobbed. "

Several hours into my shift, I approached a table that had been seated in my section, and noted a middle-aged man sitting across from his two children. The man studied the menu as the boys scribbled on coloring pages the hostess had given them. Broken pieces of crayon were already scattered on the floor, soon to be ground into the carpet. I tried to hide my frustration and greeted them with my usual script: Hello, I’m Beatrice. I’ll be your server. Can I start you with drinks?

     The man asked for three cokes. Then he announced that he wanted to order a live lobster.

      I prepared to find out which weight they wanted: one pound, two, three.

     “Can my kids choose the lobster?” he asked.

     What kind of sick f—

     “Sure,” I said.

     I was never able to grab the lobsters with metal tongs from their tank and escort them to their deaths. The first time I ever witnessed a lobster in the kitchen, I excused myself to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, sat down next to the toilet, and sobbed. After, I pulled the mini-bottle of Jameson I kept in my apron and downed it before I returned to work.

     I didn’t admit my problem with the lobsters to the guests. Instead, I explained that another server would meet them at the tank shortly. Waiting by the tank, I thought, would give this man’s kids a chance to choose what lobster they wanted to boil. As my table headed for the front of the restaurant, I grabbed the nearest server and asked if he could pick up a lobster. I had only been serving for two months; the other server, Julian, had worked there for several years and had probably grown insensitive to the requirement, or at least he could handle it.

      “No problem,” Julian agreed.

     Julian followed the same route my table had taken. I imagined what the lobster saw: guests working through plates of seafood, followed by the humming kitchen; the salad station where servers carelessly tossed dressing onto premade greens; the alley where servers hastily grabbed oversized trays, piled them with plates hot from the warmer; the line where the food was prepared. And finally, the boiling pot, which was kept behind the line, in the back corner of the kitchen. I wondered what the lobster’s last thought would be before being dropped in.

     I returned to clean the table after the guests left, which included bringing the carcass of the lobster back to the dish station and dumping it into the trash can. When I finished, I picked up the check presenter and paused at the POS to find out how much the man had left me. I wondered if the lobster’s life was worth only fifteen percent gratuity.

Amy Jarvis is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. 

Wire

By Danielle Service

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In the winter of 1995, shortly after I’d graduated college but was living on in the dorms as a Resident Director, I spent one long night on my couch talking to a handsome man who looked and acted just like George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – same demeanor and half-smile, same calculated, lilting amusement. He held dramatic pauses in our conversation, carried with ironic and writerly phrasing. He was exactly my type, a friend of a friend, and as the night drew on interspersed with bong hits (ah, 1995) and deep revelations the intimacy grew. You’d think this story ends with a steamy hookup on a winter night in Atlanta but it doesn’t. He asked just one question, very late:

     “Can I hold you?”

     I nodded, and he did as we continued talking. I don’t remember if we kissed. We probably did, but all I remember is the talking.

     I drove to Washington D.C. the next day to visit a friend, then went home for Christmas. When I came back I expected a continuation of sorts but he held a hand up to the endeavor, pled friendship mea culpa – he still had the hots for an ex. I was disappointed, not crushed. We hung in groups together, partied, did Whip-Its by the train tracks, watched The Doors over and over and over. That was then. We drifted. I moved.

"He sent me pictures of his gun collection and told me he wanted to kill himself. He had started writing suicide notes. Wanted to know if I would read one."

Facebook is the best and worst of all social interaction, like Vegas is the best and worst of all of America’s entertainment. The social network drives you back into arms that would otherwise wave in the wind, the way Vegas showcases talent and vice for the taking that, perhaps, should be left untouched by the commoner. Facebook, the opener of doors that are meant to stay closed. Or not. As society hurtles toward the next tier of technological existence who’s to say how our relationships will navigate? There used to be closed endings to almost all of them. Now they are mostly open. It could be the universe’s way to ensure we will all remain connected. But this is hardly the point.

     So Facebook reconnected us twenty years later. I watched him get married, have a baby boy. Get divorced, unravel. We started talking again on a thread about Stephen King’s It, of all the damn things. Then we started writing. Then he told me he was under indictment for felony charges of embezzlement and wire fraud and was looking at serious prison time. He sent me pictures of his gun collection and told me he wanted to kill himself. He had started writing suicide notes. Wanted to know if I would read one.

     I know a lot of people who talk about suicide like the day’s flavor, just by virtue of the circles I run in. Recovered addicts, alcoholics. Sometimes writers, neurotic types prone to depression and empathy and insight. The thing about suicide intention and idealization is that you can’t freak out when someone suggests it and to be honest there’s not a lot you can do if someone’s bent on it. I read once that suicide becomes an option when pain is greater than the available coping mechanisms for it. So one either breaks or looks for an outlet. I’ve learned to listen and hear people out, not act like they’re crazy or that I have to do something to stop them.

     So I read his suicide note and suggested that in prison he would have so much time to write, and that maybe he could be like Denzel Washington in Flight and take responsibility for his actions instead of killing himself, and he could help other people when he got out. That life would be ten thousand times better once he navigated the swamp of this shitshow. That I’d had myriad students who just wanted their parents around regardless of what the parents had done: kids love their parents no matter what, and his son would too. That maybe a cool book idea would be that he write a collection of suicide notes that chronicled the progression of his recovery and journey through prison.

     I have a dear friend who called a suicide hotline in her sophomore year at a prestigious college. She’d been admitted young and was at the end of her rope. The voice on the other end of that hotline answered, then put her on hold, as in “Suicide hotline. Will you please hold?” When she told me that story I howled laughter, slid my back down the wall while I held the phone. “Oh Christ,” I said, when I could speak. “That’s just too damn good.”

     “But it was that that did it for me, girl,” my friend said. “That’s when I realized that deep on some level that no one gave a shit. Well, not that they didn’t give a shit, no – that it was up to me to pull it together and that the world would go on if I didn’t. Her putting me on hold was a slap in the face.”

     That’s the thing. You never know what’s going to do it. I know I’m good at listening, so that’s what I do.

     My other friend and I continued talking, on and off. I left him alone some, reached out at other times. A couple months ago he told me the charges had been pled down to just wire fraud, a year max in white-collar prison. “I decided not to kill myself out of sheer pride,” he said. “What kind of pussy kills himself over a wire fraud charge?”

     “Fair enough,” I wrote. “I’ll come see you on my road trip this summer if I go that way, before the indictment.”

     “Promise me,” he said. “Promise you’ll come visit.”

     I did. I make it a habit to keep promises as part of my recovery, so I went (slightly) out of my way to hit the mid-sized, southern city where he resided. He was not the same as I remembered. Still smart, sharp-tongued, but sweaty, fraught, desperate. Frenetic energy. He told me I looked great, better than my pizza-delivering ‘powder phase’ days. I don’t have many people in my life still who remember me from that time.

     He asked if he could hold me. I nodded. I let him rub my back. We did not kiss. He had another girl coming over at seven.

Danielle Service is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. She currently teaches seventh grade Language Arts and yoga in New Hampshire. 

Oscar, Walt and Me

By David Simpatico

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A cardboard butterfly. A human cello. A teenage vampire. Three distinctly different images with one thing in common: a thirst for recognition. This is the story of how I lost myself in the Valley of the Giants, and found my way out again with the help of Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

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In 1980, when I was 20, I was featured on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, a mustachioed Northwestern University student-model for a friend’s nationally recognized, student-entrepreneurial cake company. At 22, I was the comic lead in a Porky’s-esque feature film, Screen Test, which has since achieved dubious cult status (perhaps it was my legendary hot tub scene with a naked blonde and a bubbling tsunami of hot dogs?) At 24, I was doing television commercials with legendary director Joe “Where’s the Beef” Sedelmeier. By 32, I was a Franklin Furnace award-winning New York City performance artist, appearing on bills with Penny Arcade, Dael Orlandersmith and other top solo artists. At 45, I was a downtown playwright of not-too small-renown with, finally, a huge commercial, ‘uptown’ hit, the stage adaptation of Disney’s High School Musical. So, at 50, I left the city with my husband, my dog and my computer, to find seclusion, succor and focus in the woods of Dutchess Country. Seclusion, succor and focus. But not recognition. Because recognition doesn’t matter, it’s the writing that counts. At least, that’s what I told myself.

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In 1855, Walt Whitman stepped into fame, and notoriety, with the publication of Leaves of Grass, his groundbreaking book of poetic free verse. His description of a man in the full bloom of life is etched into our memory partly due to the strength and candor of the written text, “…I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, hoping to cease not till death,” but also largely due to the power of the engraved frontispiece that greets the reader upon opening the book. Rather than use his name as the source of author identification, Walt chose an etching based upon a daguerreotype of himself by photographer Gabriel Harrison.

       Walt changed the world of literary publishing forever with that frontispiece. He was among the first writers to publish his own likeness with his work, literally placing himself, via his image, his identity, in the hands of the reader. The carefully crafted image depicts a strong, handsome, bearded man in his mid-thirties, standing outdoors wearing an open, wide-collared shirt, a worker’s hat raked cockily to the side, with one hand perched casually on his hip and a provocative, direct challenge in his eye: a sexy, poetic Everyman. With that single image, he not only declared himself to the literary world, but also introduced a cult of image-based celebrity that continues to our day.

"From the beginning, my work has received consistently polarized responses: half the people love it, half of them hate it, and the third half are terrified of it. So it goes."

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In 1881, by the age of 27, Oscar Wilde was already a celebrity in London’s social and literary circles. Growing up in an eccentric, creative Dublin home featuring weekly salons of the most dynamic individuals in Ireland, young Oscar quickly developed an outstanding gift of gab, coupled with an overwhelming desire to be famous. His conversational skills were unrivaled from an early age; but it was his hulking physical presence that helped bring him his first brush with fame—and notoriety.

       Oscar made a huge splash at the Grosvenor’s Gallery opening, the social event of the season, spouting his educated opinions on the art exhibitions and drawing the attention of the best of London society, as well as the ink from a few poisoned pens. Standing a solid 6’3”, he dressed the part of an outlandish dandy: silk jacket, puffy satin knee breeches, with musical notes and clefs stitched boldly into the wide-hipped design, giving the distinct appearance of a cello from behind. Oscar was a living work of performance art, a Victorian Leigh Bowery.

 

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Using the platform of the aesthetic movement, Oscar fashioned an identity for himself--languid, brilliant, opinionated, eccentric-- from which he could cast his personality and conversation out into the world. It worked. He was featured on several covers of Punch Magazine, bringing him and his likeness into millions of English homes.

       Oscar was just getting started.

       I feel as if I am always just getting started. Over the course of the last 30 years, my writing career has spanned film, television, video, opera, musical theatre, serious drama, dance and performance art. From the beginning, my work has received consistently polarized responses: half the people love it, half of them hate it, and the third half are terrified of it. So it goes.

       I have an ongoing advance/retreat relationship with success. As soon as I started winning awards in performance art, I stopped performing to focus on writing plays and libretti. After Michael Eisner hired me to write the poetic libretto for Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis’ millennium choral symphony, Garden of Light, conducted by Kurt Mazur at Lincoln Center, I veered away from the classical world to write an episode of Blues Clues. And then I quit writing altogether, stymied at the fits and starts of my career. After a year of doing computer graphics, I started writing again, scoring a critical success with The Screams of Kitty Genovese, with beautiful and brutal music by UK composer Will Todd, a dark music drama about murder, rape and apathy. After watching a student production in Boston, Robert Brustein, a leading American theatre critic, proclaimed in The Nation, that Kitty Genovese was “the hope of the American Musical Theatre.” And yet, no one would produce it; too violent, too edgy. Fits and starts. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I switched gears to adapt Disney’s High School Musical for the stage. After making a big commercial success with Disney, instead of hunting up my next big hit, I relocated out of New York City up to the Hudson Valley, where I’m told the stars go to hide from the tawdry glare of the spotlight (the Hudson Valley is lousy with celebs--Uma Thurman takes yoga with my pal Jennifer, Mark Ruffalo is a staple of the local anti-fracking set, Paul Rudd bought the candy store in my town). I was going to clear my life of distractions, create a whole new body of work, and focus on ‘getting it all out.’

       For the last seven years, that’s what I’ve been doing. I have been incubating new work in my house in the woods during my voluntary hermitage. I dedicated two years to earning my Masters Degree, deciding, at 55, it was time to sharpen a few old pencils by writing a two-person play about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde, called Wilde About Whitman. Back in the Hudson Valley, I created a local playwrights group to help get me out of my cave once a week. The writers in my group helped reacquaint myself with the fact that I work in a medium which demands a live audience in order to find fruition; people need to do my work in order for me to finish it. I’ve been so focused on ‘getting it all out,’ the actual next stage of ‘production’ has eluded me. Or maybe I’ve eluded it. Maybe I veer away from the spotlight where vision and identity finally come together; maybe, despite my intense desire for artistic success, I don’t feel worthy? Maybe my ambivalence is a question of identity; what if I’m afraid of who I am, of owning my talent? Maybe I’m caught in a flux of self-delusion; what if my talent isn’t as worthy as I think it is, and I’m afraid to find that out? Agents have no idea what to do with me: they can’t define me--and if they can’t define me, they can’t sell me.

       Maybe they can’t define me because I can’t define myself.

 

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Walt didn’t have that problem. He pulled no punches; he defined himself as a Poet of the Nation; the Nation, however, defined him as a failure, and a pornographer, due to the ‘prurient’ nature of his subject matter. Walt also defined himself visually; he micro-managed a series of carefully produced photographic portraits, defining his identity for others, and for himself. He was tenacious. He was ambitious. He was the second most photographed American of the 19th century, right behind Mark Twain. He posed for countless photographers, including Thomas Eakins and Napoleon Sarony. He was tireless in his photographic self-promotion and fussed over the smallest details of color and texture and design until the image achieved an iconoclastic, keenly constructed ‘style-with-no-style.’

 
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Style, on the other hand, defined Oscar. By the time he graduated Oxford, he identified himself as the High Priest of the Aesthetic Movement. His languorous posing and hyper-intellectual enthusiasm for the world of beauty had London’s tongue wagging. His brother Willie, who wrote the weekly social column at The Daily Telegraph newspaper, made sure his brother’s artistic antics remained in the public eye. But Oscar, and the Aesthetic movement, had their detractors. The young poet had already met and irritated the world-famous comic librettist, William Gilbert. Gilbert had cautioned the younger poet that he should talk less in public; to which Oscar replied that he would be happy to oblige him, but could not, in his heart, deny the public the pleasure of listening to him.

       A year later, the Savoy Theatre, famous for being the first theatre in London to use electric lighting, opened its doors for business with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride, featuring a foppish ‘title’ character based on Oscar. It was a huge hit, and Oscar used it to fan the flames of his own ambition.

       As fate would have it, Patience producer Richard D’Oyly Carte engaged the penniless young aesthete to introduce the Aesthetic Movement to the new world in an eleven-month lecture tour of the United States, dressed as the comic foil, Lord Bunthorne. Essentially, Richard D’Oly Carte hired Oscar Wilde as a ‘sandwich board’ for the upcoming tour of Patience. Oscar agreed, but he had his own ideas.

       Dressed in the dandy’s outfit of knee breeches, cape, bowed shoes and delicate velvet coats, his hair six inches longer than socially acceptable, Oscar played his part to the hilt. He used the lecture tour to spread the gospel of his own identity, celebrity and brilliant intellect through an exhaustive series of lectures and interviews with the local press. He’d spend all day polishing epigrams and paradoxes, for use in conversation later that night.

       Oscar understood the career benefits of cultivating a consistent and professional relationship with the press, in his pursuit of recognition. Even before disembarking in the New York harbor, he presented an endless fascination for American reporters, starting at the US Customs in New York Harbor in 1881, where he claimed, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”

Photo Credit: Charles Chessler Photography

Photo Credit: Charles Chessler Photography

In New York City, at Playwrights’ Horizons Theatre on 42nd Street, my one-act play, Prom Queen, was chosen to participate in the prestigious Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, a high-profile, highly-selective, competitive week-long one-act play festival with a rotation of judges made up of commercially produced writers. This was the Big Event I’d been hoping for, a chance to get myself out of the woods, and back in the game, with a play that showed me at my transgressive best. Before the performance, award-winning photographer Charles Chessler, an old college friend of mine, set up an impromptu photo shoot down on 42nd street, just two hours before the festival. He wanted to get me, as I am, as I was, in the street, full of dreams and shocks and wired hope.

       Charles’ photos were dead on; they captured a happy combination of Angel, Devil and Clown; someone who feels at home in Edgar Allen Poe’s basement. I thought, great, once Prom Queen goes up tonight and makes its impact, once I make my impact, I’ll have a reason to use Charles’ photograph, I’ll be back in the game! Yay!

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Walt wanted to make an impact; he wanted to be noticed; he wanted his work to be taken seriously. From years of experience in the newspaper industry, he knew a photographic image was essential to the success and longevity of an author’s career. A good picture could anchor the author’s identity in the public eye; it could tell them what they should think before any critical response could tell them otherwise. Walt was not above writing letters to the editor in the assumed guise of various ‘public citizens’, praising Whitman’s poetry and even Whitman himself. Taking his career into his own hands, Walt became the ‘voice’ of the ‘people’ by praising himself, as one of them. He demanded, and often provided, the recognition he felt was his due.

 
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During those first few weeks in New York City, Oscar Wilde followed the advice of his friend, legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt, and spent a full day and night with photographer Napoleon Sarony, the Annie Liebowitz of his day. The two men carefully chose the effete costumes and distinctive poses that would make Oscar one of the most famous men in America. The photographic portraits were sent out in advance to newspapers and magazines, portraying a foppish, towering young man whose image beguiled and captured the attention of the country. His audacious photos were used, without his consent, to sell a variety of items, from chewing gum to shoe polish. Sarony’s portrait of Oscar would ultimately gain national and historic merit when the Supreme Court ruled, in favor of Sarony, that photographs could be copyrighted.

       Moments before Prom Queen was about to start, the Samuel French Director of Licensing sat down in the seat next to me; having heard his staff talk about my play for weeks, he wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Prom Queen is risky: the piece is a darkly subversive, feminist satire about eating disorders and self-image, and includes the casual, on-stage, blood-sucking murder of an infant. The lights went down, and two brilliant young actresses in bra and panties took over the stage, portraying two New Jersey high school girls who discover the perfect diet: vampirism. The production, directed by Michael Schiralli, was flawless; the performances were wild and familiar and perfectly over the top; the audience erupted in laughter, shock and thunderous, foot-stomping applause. The Director of Licensing grabbed my leg: Prom Queen was a perfect one-act play, he said, and looked forward to seeing me at the final round of the weeklong competition. I could feel the spotlight warming up; clearly, I’d soon be needing Charles’ pics. Angel-Devil-Clown. Maybe I can work with the image, have some fun with it, shoot some more with Charles, allow myself to fully define my identity….

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A famous photo of Walt Whitman balancing a butterfly on the tip of his finger became immensely popular and enhanced his reputation as Poet Laureate of Nature. It didn’t matter that the butterfly was made of cardboard. To Whitman, the image was the message, and the image was whatever he wanted it to be. He later created the myth of the Old Grey Poet, with his casually chosen wardrobe and wild white hair and beard. He spent hours designing a look that he knew would last forever. And soon, over the course of hundreds of newspaper interviews and countless photo sessions, Walt became what his image promised: the wild-haired genius of his time.

 
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Not to be outdone, Oscar gave more than 300 interviews during the eleven-month lecture tour. His photo appeared over hundreds of times in newspapers and periodicals. By the time he left the United States, Oscar Wilde was once again a household name.

       This was eight years before he would write anything of note.

        My husband and I slogged through three Canadian Club Manhattans in Kabooze, a depressive commuter bar deep in Penn Station, waiting around to hear if the judges had chosen Prom Queen to advance in the festival. Remember, the Director of Licensing himself had called Prom Queen “a perfect one act play.” The drinks tasted good.

       And then, I got a short text from my director. The judges’ verdict was in: Prom Queen had been ejected. Bounced out of the festival. Apparently one of the judges accused my piece of being sexist, missing the feminist trees in a forest of exposed teen flesh. And so, Prom Queen ended its run, ignominiously abandoned, bounced out of the game, shunted to the dark side of the spotlight. Again.

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Identity. Self-definition. Self-promotion. Self-awareness. The power and clarity of the photographic image. Whitman introduced it. Wilde fulfilled it.  Both men understood how to turn this recipe for fame into long, successful careers, using their celebrity to help spread the brilliance of their talent. Both fanned the flames of their ambition, despite either bad critical reviews of their work, or no work yet to be reviewed.

       By focusing on the carefully constructed image, on the photograph, on the self-articulated identity as the artists defined themselves, they were able to circumvent critical literary response as being the sole, defining lynchpin of success. Their image reflected a persona they wanted to promote. Their image became them. And they became their image.

 
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Clearly, I need to change how I play the game. The world can’t get a clear picture of who I am, because I keep changing it. Do I need to take one and give it to them, literally? No. What I need to do is consider myself with the same acuity and awareness exhibited by both Whitman and Wilde, and anchor myself in that image, in that identity. In my own identity. 

       My self-delusion is not so grand as to consider myself in the same class as these two giants; I’m barely in the same school, eating cookies and taking naps in the sodden corners of pre-K. But having stuck my head inside their lecture hall, I can see the similarities and disparities between them and me. Their careers were fueled by a constant belief in self-worth that enabled them to masterfully craft their fame. Their desire for recognition and success were unflinching and creative; it gave them a constant platform from which to spread their brilliant work. I have had a career of fits and starts. My belief in my self-worth would get me to the brink of success, would court the spotlight for my unique voice and vision, but then I’d run from whatever victory I had gained, feeling somehow unworthy of the intensely positive attention, or defined by tone-deaf, negative response.

       Walt posed with a cardboard butterfly because he believed in what the image purported. Oscar paraded as a dandy because he knew he would gain the attention he felt he would someday deserve; by the end of the tour, he would lock the dandy costume in a trunk, and redefine himself as a serious (and seriously funny) man of letters. Neither of them was fully embraced by society; both Oscar and Walt were condemned for their work, and both died penniless. But neither of them swerved from the unshakeable belief in themselves. They each believed that their talent was worthy of the world, and that they were worthy of their talent. They defined themselves in a photo in order to spread a consistent, visual recognition of who they were, but their true definition was not confined to an image; rather, their sense of self exceeded the banks of the image they chose for themselves. Their belief in self was anchored in the knowledge that they deserved their talent. They craved the spotlight in order to better share their experience of the world.

       As I jump once again back into the game, here is what I learned from my visit to the Valley of the Giants: Before you can expect others to know you, you have to know yourself first. As Oscar might say, belief in self-image breeds belief in one’s self.

David Simpatico is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. His full length play, Wilde About Whitman, is slated for publication in The Idaho Review, Fall 2018. 

Such Great Heights

By Sarah Foil

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We arrived at our campsite shortly before the park closed their gates at 10 pm. After an afternoon by the river, drinking beer, eating pizza and enjoying the sun, we were warm and dazed. Daniel helped me set up the tent and air mattress at the campsite, right next to our friends. Once finished, I had assumed we’d spend the evening the way I spent most nights when I camped: drinking wine, roasting marshmallows, and chatting about nothing in particular. Instead, my campmates were packing their backpacks and lacing their boots.

     “You guys ready?” Eric asked. He strapped a headlamp to his forehead. He was a more prepared camper than Daniel and me. He had the gas lamp, multiple flashlights, an overhead tarp for the picnic table, and an air mattress that apparently could inflate on its own in less than a minute. We had brought bathing suits and a cooler filled with boxed wine and Blue Moon.

     “For what?” I asked.

     “Our midnight hike,” Sam said. She’d just taken a shower in the communal bathrooms and smelled like flowers; I’d taken a shower before we’d left home that afternoon and smelled like bug spray.

     “Are we allowed to hike after the park closes?” I asked.

     “Probably not,” Daniel said. “But it sounds like fun."

     “We do this every year,” Eric said. “We’ll hike up to the top the mountain. We’re already halfway up.”

     “But it’s pitch black outside,” I said.

     “It’s totally worth it,” Sam said. “Trust me.”

     Anxiety twisted in my stomach but Daniel was already padding his pockets with water bottles and snacks. Eric tossed me a headlamp, and we followed him and Sam up to the trail.

     I moseyed in back of the group, focusing on my feet shambling up the uneven rocks, mindful of the long crooked twigs poking up from the bed of leaves. Ahead of me the trail wound, switchback after switchback, as we climbed higher. The moon hid behind the clouds and the towering tree canopy blocked residual light from reaching our trail. Anything past the light of our flashlights was lost in abysmal blackness.

     I’d hiked this trail many times before, but it looked sinister without the sunlight, the crowd of hikers and bird songs.

"It wasn’t gone. I knew that. It was lurking somewhere behind, along with hundreds of his little friends, just waiting to bite."

The first portion of the hike went quickly. We talked and laughed. Soon I forget about the looming nothingness on all sides of me and the scurrying insects and arachnids that would, no doubt, climb up my leg if I slowed my pace.

     Eric was in the middle of telling a story about his parents when an unfamiliar noise interrupted us, almost like a vibration or cicada hum.  Every beam from our headlamps and flashlights swung down to the forest floor. What looked like a shabby piece of dark brown cord slithered around the rocks beneath us.

     Eric yelled, “Rattlesnake!”

     I shrieked and leaped nearly a foot back, then cowered behind Daniel. I could hear my heart thudding in my head. My legs shook.

     The snake jostled its tail a final time before it slid off the trail and out of sight.

     “Can we go? I want to go.” I said to no one in particular.

     “You can go if you want,” Sam said. She looked calm in the flashlight’s glow, but her voice quivered. “I won’t blame you.”

     “That’s never happened before,” Eric said. He gave a dry laugh. “That was crazy.”

     “Do you really want to leave?” Daniel asked me, quietly. “We’re almost there.”

     Sam made a face, which said that that wasn’t completely true.

     “I want to go back,” I said.

     “I’ll go with you if you want, but I really want to get to the top,” Daniel said. “The snake’s gone now, anyway. It’s okay.”

     It wasn’t gone. I knew that. It was lurking somewhere behind, along with hundreds of his little friends, just waiting to bite. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen a live snake but this was the first time I’d seen one outside of a zoo.

     “You should stay,” Sam said. “I’ve never seen a snake on this trail before. It’s just a freak accident.”

     “Really?” I asked.

     “First time,” Eric reassured me.

     “Let’s go,” Daniel said. He rested a hand on my back. “I’ll stay back here with you and hold the light at your feet.”

     I hesitated because I was trying to decide if it would be better to continue up the trail or head back to the camp and sit there all alone. Also, I still couldn’t feel my legs. However, I didn’t want to ruin the fun for everyone else and risk missing out on the rest of the trip, so I’d go on, but it would be slowly. Carefully.

     “If we see another snake, I’m leaving."

     We continued. Step by step. Daniel kept his flashlight trained on my feet, while Sam and Eric attempted to keep the conversation distracting and snake-anecdote free, but I remained on edge. Each twig and stick was now a potential enemy. The spiders and centipedes crawling over my feet weren’t the only concerns anymore.

     Occasionally, Daniel lifted his flashlight to scan the surrounding trees. Each time he did, I panicked and insisted he keep the flashlight pointed at the ground. That’s where the danger slithered from. He huffed in frustration but kept the light low. I’m sure he was looking for coyotes or bears or something more terrifying than a snake, but that didn’t matter to me at the moment.

     We inched up the path, which got steeper and ever more treacherous as we climbed. Time passed and my breathing grew heavy from climbing the cut rock that made up the man-made stairs while I suspiciously eyed any and everything that moved. Eventually, the trees gave way to open air and cold wind. The sky appeared above us from the canopy, although it was still too cloudy to see the stars or moon.

     The old fire watch tower grew up out of the center of the landing, chipping brick and rusting metal. It was a short climb to the top of the tower, but once we conquered the stairs, it felt like we were in another world.

     The mountain pass spread out wide before us. We could follow the lights down roads that led back to our homes almost an hour away. We found the powerplant, the city I worked in, the warehouse by my in-law’s home. In the distance we saw bolts of lightning, which looked more like sparkling splinters than formidable forces of nature.

     In fact, everything was small here. The trees were small. The snakes were small. I was small.

     And just at that moment, standing there amongst friends high atop the mountain, while taking in the view of the sleeping, miniature world below,  I was unafraid.

Sarah Foil is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. You can follow her at www.sarahfoil.com: A Blog for Writers, for Readers, for Dog Lovers, for Coffee Drinkers. This story originally appeared in the 2018 web edition of Assignment Magazine.

Like the Flowers

By Katie Pavel

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“It's not that bad,” I say. “If you don’t look over that far, you can almost pretend it’s not there.”

     My mom nods, unconvinced. 

     “Look,” I say. “If you stand here, this tree blocks it out entirely.”

     “When you sit on the bench, though, you can still see it,” my dad says. 

     I frown. “Oh.”

     “It won't be the same,” Mom says.

     No, it won't be the same. 

     I stare down the 80-foot double-wide that is blocking a third of the once panoramic view of the foothills rolling out to the prairie and Bear Butte beyond. It’s not so much the ruined view that is upsetting, though that was part of what made this place special. It’s the fact that the seclusion of the garden has been lost.

     A year or two after my brother died, now going on nine or so years ago, Mom and Dad fenced off a few acres in the upper southwest corner of their property to create a memorial garden for Brian. They chose that particular location because Brian often spent time there taking pictures of the wildflowers that appeared every season. Keeping the horses and goats from grazing has allowed the land to return to its natural, undisturbed state.

     In addition to remembering Brian, Mom and Dad wanted to create a space where family members of those like Brian, those who have shared the gift of life through organ donation, or recipients who have received such gifts, can visit. They built a deck in a cove surrounded by pine trees so visitors can sit and reflect. A year or so later, a local church built a gazebo-like structure where Mom and Dad hung signs that explain the significance of the garden and its purpose. The recipient of Brian’s heart and liver even donated some benches.  Every year, Mom mows paths in the garden so that people can meander through and around the flowers.

"When the rains come, the flowers flourish—cone flowers, sego lilies, wild rose, and lead plant—until the entire hillside is awash with color. "

The garden is far enough from my parents’ house so that you don’t feel like you’re intruding. Mom and Dad say they often don’t realize someone has visited until they hear a car heading back down the road. You can stare out at the view of Bear Butte, listen to the birds singing and the winds swaying through the grass, remember your loved ones, and cry if you want. You can stay from sunrise to sunset for as long as you like.   

     During dry years, the flowers are sparse. You have to walk slowly and search amongst the brome grass to find the delicate harebells blossoming underneath the growth. When the rains come, the flowers flourish—cone flowers, sego lilies, wild rose, and lead plant—until the entire hillside is awash with color. Mom always says the garden reflects life, how we survive through the hard times and blossom during the good. Every season is different and yet the garden, like life, continues to change and grow.

     “Why’d they put their house there? Don’t they understand what the garden is for, how special it is?” friends asked my parents when they found out that the people who had bought the land directly to the south had chosen to plant their house right on the top of the hill, only a few hundred yards from the garden.

     “They haven’t experienced a loss,” Dad said. “They can’t relate.”

     I wish they could. Not that I’d wish the pain of losing someone on anyone. But still.

     “Put up a privacy fence,” I said when I found out. I was kidding at the time, and yet I wasn’t. 

     Dad, always the diplomat, said that wouldn’t be the neighborly thing to do.

     Before the land sold, you had to follow a two track, nothing more than a path, really, through the trees to reach the garden. The track was rough, and while Mom kept it mowed during the summer, it was all but impassable during the winter. Now, the trees have been cut down and a wide driveway leads to the house on top. It makes for easy access to the garden, too, but that’s just another part of the sentiment that is gone.

     As we pause on the deck in the cove and reflect upon how the garden will now be, we reconsider my idea.

     “Maybe not a full fence,” I say. “Just partitions. We could build windbreaks to block the view of the house out in the pasture. The horses and goats could use them, too. And up on top, we could put an art wall, a place maybe where people can donate decorations to hang in memory of their loved ones.”

     Dad mulls over the idea. “You know, that might just work.”

     “Something to consider,” Mom says.

     For now, we’ll wait. We’ll see. Maybe the mood of the garden won’t change. Maybe visitors will still be able to find the seclusion and privacy they seek. Maybe Mom and Dad won’t have to mourn losing a little bit of Brian all over again.

     In the end, what else can we do? Like the flowers, we have to find the good in the bad and allow for change. We have to continue to grow. 

Katie Pavel is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. She has her own blog and runs Little Leaf Copy Editing, an online business that specializes in copy editing and writing consulting.