On The Wing

Editor’s Note: Vince Allen shares another memoir with us in this homage to his grandfather.

My Grandfather:  John Edwin Leatherwood

By: Vincent Allen

Since I recently became a grandfather I frequently find my thoughts returning to my maternal grandfather, John Leatherwood, because he was such an enormous influence on my life before he died. Although he was an imposing figure, he was perhaps the most steadfast family man that I have ever known, and he still managed to be a ton of fun whenever it was appropriate.

Leatherwood, as his friends and co-workers called him, was the epitome of a weathered, tough, and scarred blue-collar warrior that had been forced to work hard all his life in order to provide for his family. By anybody’s standards, he was a large man, standing six feet two inches tall with a ramrod straight back and broad, strong shoulders.

He weighed well over two hundred and twenty five pounds, but there was never a time that he actually spoke about his weight because it was just not one of the things that he focused on during his life. He almost always wore a gun-metal gray worker’s uniform that had full length trousers and a button up short-sleeved shirt.

During the work week his shirts still had the white embroidered patch over the left breast pocket with his last name, Leatherwood, in red letters like the ones that were worn by mechanics and service station attendants. On the weekends, he dressed pretty much the same way except that the shirts would not have the name tags on them.

The natural expression on his face could best be described as a scowl, but old injuries made it seem much more menacing than it really was. He had worked in a bomber factory during World War II and had fallen victim to an industrial accident that scarred his face diagonally from the bridge of his nose slanting upward across his left eye, and it had also damaged and blinded him in that eye.

The damaged eye was scary to little kids and gave him the look of a really tough man, which he actually was in all of the ways that mattered.  He had also lost half of his right index finger in another work-related accident and jokingly referred to it as his nub. He always laughed at the smaller children in the family after he would perform a slight of hand maneuver that made it look as if he could make that half of his finger disappear. All of these physical imperfections combined with his ruddy complexion from working outside most of his life left strangers with the impression that he was not a man to be trifled with, and they would have been right.

If there was ever a person who gave credence to the old saying, “Never judge a book by its cover”, my grandfather was certainly that person. Despite his gruff exterior, he was the most devoted family man that I have known in my life. A large part of that devotion was consumed by the need to work hard all the time to earn a living but strangely enough I remember the other aspects of his devotion much more clearly.

As a young boy and his oldest grandson, he mentored me in all of the many crafts, skills, and trades that he had learned over the years. He taught me how to paint, how to use hand tools, how to do some simple car repairs, and how to install wood paneling. He absolutely insisted that I attended school and took my studies seriously. He did the same for my siblings, cousins, and other family members that sought his support, but somehow I always felt that I had a special relationship with him.

He never hesitated to help other family members when they were down and out. He did not give handouts, make no mistake about that, but instead he would provide exactly what the person needed to help them meet whatever challenge they were facing at the time. He provided food, shelter, and transportation to work for my mother several times during my younger years when her marriage to my father ended and she was left to support four children on her own. Without the help that my grandfather provided to us at the time, our situation would have been very dire and there is no way to predict what would have become of us.

He was just as strict as he was supportive and while his discipline was old-fashioned by today’s standards, he did not have to resort to those measures often. He expected that everybody knew right from wrong and that if you did wrong then you should have expected to get punished for it. He did not take any joy from punishing his grandchildren but he certainly did not shirk that responsibility either whenever it was appropriate. He was also just as quick and took enormous pleasure in rewarding good behavior which is a balancing act that I never fully appreciated until I became a parent myself.

Just because he looked scary and was serious about his family obligations did not mean that my grandfather lacked a sense of humor. He possessed a rapier-like wit which he would use when fencing with insults and teasing other family members. It was a rare occasion when one of us was able to get the better of him when trading jibes across the living room or dinner table. Each of us was tagged by him with a funny nickname that was usually the result of his observations regarding one of our least desirable personal traits. My own nickname was Harum-Scarum because when I was younger I would charge into things without thinking about them first which frequently resulted in some kind of accident.

His nickname for my mother was Queenie because of her sometimes superior attitude. Nobody in the family went unscathed when it came to my grandfather’s nicknames. I remember having fun when my grandfather was in a happy mood and would start to sing some of his favorite old vaudeville or country songs. He had a good voice that was loud and the tone was very deep but he carried a tune well and he would sing some funny songs when he was happy and he felt like it.

Some of the best times that I remember having when I was a boy were the hunting and fishing trips with my grandfather. He bought me my first shotgun, took me on my first hunting trip, taught me how to bait a hook, and was there when I caught my first fish. It was a dark, foggy, morning out in his small fishing boat on the lake at the Flying S Ranch when I hooked a small largemouth bass and reeled it in. We did not catch a lot of fish that day because the weather was bad, but I still remember it as one of the most fun times I had with my grandfather.

There is hardly a day that goes by when I do not think about my grandfather because of something he said or something he taught me about life and family. I am very fortunate to have been able to know my grandfather very well and even luckier to have lived with him and my grandmother during my teenage years, when his guidance helped me to make me into the person I am today. I very much want to be able to “pay it forward” and create memories with my grandchildren that they will cherish as much as the memories I have of my own grandfather, John Edwin Leatherwood, a giant of a man in all of the measures that really matter.

Editor’s note: Mark Kerstetter works with his hands, the bricoleur speaks with and through things, always putting something of himself into it.

Kafka’s Letter To His Father

By Mark Kerstetter

In the wake of the incredible news of the existence of ten safe deposit boxes believed to contain documents by Franz Kafka, and that the public’s right to see these contents is being contested in court, news agencies around the world are asking: should we be allowed to see them? I don’t know anyone who would answer in the negative. Author John Banville told the BBC last week that even one or two new aphorisms by Kafka would be of “enormous” importance. In any case, we shall soon have, by court order, a list of the items.

With this new light on Kafka in mind, I decided to take another look at his famous letter to his father, with whom he had a tortuous relationship. Written in 1919, Kafka wrote that he hoped it would “reassure us both a little and make our living and our dying easier.”  The author gave it to his mother, who returned it.

The first four fifths of the letter are unremarkable, the kinds of complaints and accusations one would expect (Kafka’s situation is not unique), but the last fifth—from about the point that Kafka mentions his writing—is something else. The letter becomes a different type of text than it had been up to that point. Up to that point it is easy to accept Kafka’s stated intention to procure some sort of truce or peace with his father, even if the two couldn’t change who they, in essence, were. But from the point when the son mentions his writing, something changes, and by the end of the letter I find it extremely difficult to accept his stated intention. Was Kafka dishonest? No, I think he was profoundly troubled in mind, and perhaps too confused to see himself clearly.

His mother was right not to give the letter to her husband, if for no other reason than that Franz should have given it to Hermann himself, if he really wanted him to have it, if he really intended it to lead to a kind of truce or peace. It is quite possible that Kafka had one intention when he began and another by the time he finished. The final imaginary answer he gives his father, which concludes, “you are preying on me even with this letter itself”, along with his response to it, which includes the statement “not even your mistrust of others is as great as my self-mistrust”, is a picture of Hell. I see in my mind two demons each gripping the other’s face in its jaws. Can there be peace or reassurance in this? How can such a vision of Hell make anyone’s “living and dying easier”?

One turns to the Diaries for other material from 1919 that may help understand Kafka and the letter. The Diaries are difficult books, so full of bitterness and utter despair that a more distressing read can hardly be imagined. Many of the entries are such enigmatic little knots that I think only their author could decode them. There are only a few entries for 1919, fragmentary and condensed. But one of the fragments could not be more explicit: “…guilt and innocence, like two hands indissolubly clasped together; one would have to cut through flesh, blood and bones to part them.”

Throughout the letter Kafka insists they are both innocent—they are who they are. Yet the objection he places in his father’s mouth is obvious enough. Throughout the letter he levels one accusation after another on his father—the man is guilty. Then, towards the end of the letter, he puts all of the guilt on himself, even speaking as his father to do it. He thus condemns himself and his father together in an indissoluble dyad, and he makes this as explicit as a death sentence. This is the final, and real, intention of the letter.

One might argue that this was the most effective way to make his point, that indeed, as Kafka wrote, it was the truth, that it was logical consistency. One can accept all of that but stop short of the possibility of this truth resulting in a reassurance that could make their “living and dying easier.” No, it could not. Either Kafka was disingenuous on this point or he was suffering too terribly to see himself clearly on this point.

Perhaps a kind of third possibility is that he was suffering so deeply that only a death sentence could appease him. Yet if this is the case, who is he to impose this sentence on his father? It is incredibly egoistic. It is one thing to feel pain, to let yourself feel it and allow it to take its course and pass. Kafka’s suffering is something else. He wanted it both ways: he and his father are both innocent, they are who they are, they can’t change their nature; but they are both guilty in that in being who they are they cause each other suffering. In Kafka’s case his father causes him to feel guilty and there’s no effective difference between feeling guilt and being guilty. Thus Kafka creates the insidious paradox that they are both innocent and both guilty at the same time. He creates a trap for himself in that he can’t accuse his father without accusing himself, that to every degree of suffering he attributes to his father’s behavior, he must implicate his own guilt to the same degree. It’s The Judgment paradigm, in which the father condemns the son to death, except in this fantasy the son would almost have his father share in the vision. Father and son, indissolubly linked, would jump to their deaths together.

Almost, but not quite. In the end, I don’t think Kafka could really believe his father was capable of sharing in this vision. And therein lies Kafka’s hope for health. The only way out of a trap like this is to let pain be pain. His father was a brutish tyrant who caused him pain. He could not change. Period. Move on.

Franz Kafka was beginning to do just that toward the end of his life. With Dora Diamant he was finally able to envision a relationship other than the model set by his parents, a relationship based on joy and not constrained by convention. But he didn’t live long enough.

This simple truth, that pain is pain, is extremely difficult to accept. One learns to accept it only to have it slip away again. For a long time one is afraid one will never be able to hold the truth, and then, when one finally is able to hold onto it, it will still, at times, mysteriously slip away. One of the reasons for this difficulty is precisely because of its simplicity. We want to use all of the intelligence and energy at our disposal to work the problem. In a case like Kafka’s one must write the father off. It feels like giving up. Maybe it is. But sometimes it’s the only way. If you admit the man is who he is and can’t change, you distort that fact by saying he is “innocent” because of it; you then abuse logic by trying to insinuate your way back into a different kind of relationship based on the distortion. The only answer is to walk away.

Editor’s Note: Alex Chornyj is a Reiki Master, poet, writer and man of spirit. His poetry has appeared at many venues including: Articulations, Canadian Federation of Poetry Magazine, Touch Magazine and White Mountain Publications

Bystanders

by Alex Chornyj

In September of 2004 my brother Dave was driving back east on his Gold Wing motorcycle.  It was about dusk while on a highway in the interior of British Columbia  when he was rounding a corner that he was thrust upon a recent rock slide.  All of the safety nets in the world would not have prevented this occurrence.  The sheer massive extent in length and width covered the highway for a few hundred feet.  This was caused by a small earth tremor, but one still powerful enough to affect an avalanche of stone.

Dave’s front tire did not buckle and then roll his bike.  His motorcycle went airborne and as he later described the incident, in mid air Dave was able to flip his machine flat on its side.  Upon crashing back to earth in the span of mere seconds, which felt like an eternity, a strange sensation overcame his consciousness.  It was like the world was in slow motion.  He was able to ride his bike over this jagged terrain for a further two hundred feet approximately until it came to a stop at an embankment.  Thinking about this feat afterwards gave Dave more than a chill up his spine.  Besides still being in a deep state of shock from enduring this ordeal, there was this small significant fact remaining that there was no possible human way of explaining his still being alive.  Dave suffered no more injuries than a strained elbow, a sore hip and much confusion.  This mental state stemmed from his recognition about the miracle that had just transpired.  After being transported to a hospital by ambulance and while explaining the episode to an investigating police officer, a great many more people became perplexed.  The sheer magnitude of these intersecting intervals offered no plausible relevance as to the mechanics of the accident’s death defying results.  Dave’s machine was a complete write-off, but so should he have been at least more worse for wear.  He spent a few days in hospital at the request of a physician thinking rightly so that an underlying, unseen health crisis may surface.  No further dilemma was acknowledged, so on the fourth day Dave was released from hospital.  He was not one for flying, except on a motorcycle, so he spent the next three days travelling on a bus back home.

Upon arriving home, his brother Eric relayed to Dave that he had visited a friend a few days after his bike accident.  This friend Sara, happened to be a gifted seer and what she had to say with her clairvoyance was rather enlightening.  Sara saw Dave’s unbelievable survival assisted by two spirits.  One was a woman who she described as being  elderly with a kind disposition.  This lady, Sara said had just passed over prior to Dave’s accident.  This person turned out to be no other than his Aunt Pat.  The other entity was a dog rather small in size like a fireball, but with a big heart.  Sara stated that this creature who  had been laid to rest in the past year, was actually the same one Dave had given to his parents as a present some eleven years before.  The scene as so adeptly described by Sara had these two cosmic lights readily immersing Dave within this aura of peace, white  light, divine love and understanding.  The resulting effect was the reason for his feelings of transcendence through this timely experience.  It was as if Dave had passed through rings of time.  His awareness and priorities expanded beyond their narrow focus to capture meanings that had always escaped him.  Dave’s life had been spared by this esoteric intervention because he had a higher purpose to fulfill in his life.  This realization sparked changes to his total cosmic nature.  From one who used to only think inside the box, there was a complete reversal in his perspective and centering.  Dave began to evolve and all people near to him understood and had heard of how people who survive near death experiences gain a greater appreciation for life’s simple treasures.  There was no more taking things for granted or waiting until tomorrow for what could be done today.  A kindness surrounded his heart and spirit to the extent that this was reflected by a glow in his eyes.  Dave shifted gears and paths which brought him into contact with others who shared a common wavelength and insight.  In this way did he begin his ascent towards a summit which held much promise for him to realize this efficacious potential with the help of two bystanders.

Editor’s note: Vince Allen is a bear of a man. Hulking in his physical presence, his stature is dwarfed by the goodness in his heart and the warmth of his friendship. It was my privilege to work  with Vince several years back as part of a tight-nit executive team of a troubled manufacturing concern. You find out who your friends truly are when the ships in Corporate  America start to sink, Vince proved himself that and more.Part country boy, part tech savvy IT Exec., Vince is truly one of a kind, though he reminds me of a cross between Mark Twain and Will Rogers with a little Gomer Pyle thrown in the mix.

The only thing that could possibly improve the following Boy Scout romp from years ago is to hear a personal telling from Vince in his booming baritone voice and fried-chicken like southern drawl. What follows is a light and fun read that you just may want to share with your kids.

Fearful Camping Trip

By Vince Allen

There are many times in life that are very frightening when they are happening in real-time but those same events can seem downright funny when you look back on them years afterward. As a youngster one of those scary nights happened to me and a friend of mine named David Bragg. David and I were the senior members of our Boy Scout Troop 650 from Midway United Methodist Church and because of our senior status we had a tendency to overestimate our wilderness prowess. That dangerous practice came to fruition one night when one of us had our personal space violated by a reptile, the campfire got out of control, and some local farm dogs decided that we were trespassing in their territory.

The weekend started out in the usual way with the Friday afternoon bus ride home from Douglas County High School with everybody’s spirits high and the different groups of friends laughing and making plans with each other for the upcoming weekend. The weather forecast was a good one and even though there was still a profound chill in the air at night because of the time of the year that only made it better for being outside, in the woods, being around a campfire with your friends.

My friend David and I decided that we would strike out as soon as we could after our Saturday chores were finished. So with our chores done and our gear properly packed according to our Boy Scout standards we set off down the gravel country road near our house in search of adventure.

Unlike most organized camping trips we did not have a particular destination predetermined, rather we had decided to just walk out into the country and find a good camping spot we had never seen before. As the old saying goes, “some things are easier said than done”, that proved to be the case for us that afternoon while trying to find a good camp site. Our enthusiasm for adventure carried us down that country road for many miles in search of the perfect camping spot only there just was not one to be found.

As the shadows started to lengthen we decided that we would settle for the next isolated spot that we could find away from any of the houses which had proven to be much more numerous on this road than either of us remembered. Finally we came to a spot in the road that was not close to anybody’s house and was heavily wooded with a new growth of young pine trees as if the property had been logged several years ago and new trees planted to replace them. The trees would provide great cover so that our campfire would not be visible from the road, which was a requirement for the spot since we did not have anybody’s formal permission to be there. Perhaps that minor violation of the Scout code was a contributing factor for the things that happened later that night.

We rested for a short time, drank some water from our canteens, and then began in earnest to clear us a good camping site without doing any damage to the property or the trees. The ground was covered in a thick carpet of pine straw from the trees and so in order to have a campfire we had to clear out all of the burnable material from a ten foot radius from the fire. We raked the pine straw outward from the center of the campsite until we had a ring that well exceeded the ten foot rule and we decided that surplus pine straw would make for a nice soft pad beneath our sleeping bags so we unrolled our bags on top these newly constructed wilderness beds and finished setting up the camp.

By the time we had finished preparing and consuming the evening meal it was dark and we were both pretty tired but having a good time being outside. The chill in the night air was kept at bay by our campfire and we were lounging on top of our sleeping bags talking about the things that had happened at school that week, our girl friends, our parents, and a variety of other topics.

Suddenly my friend’s eyes got very big and he had a strange, scared look on his face. He looked over at me and said, “I think that a snake just crawled up my pants leg.”

At first I thought he was joking but it soon became apparent that he was not. We feared that it could have been a Copperhead because they were fairly common in our area but since neither one of us could see it and David was too scared to move we really could not tell what it was. We knew it was reptilian because he said it felt cold and slim and was wriggling it way up his pants leg.

I urged him not to move as that might provoke a bite. I took off my belt and tied it snugly around his leg just above the knee so that whatever it was could not get too far up his pants while he struggled mightily not to move a muscle. A snake bite on the calf or shin could be survived if treated properly but if he was bitten in the groin that would be the worst possible thing because of the major arteries there.

My hope was that if the snake could not get very far up the leg that it would lose interest and crawl out in search of food after searching and not finding any inside my friend’s pants. I was scared for my friend and felt nearly helpless because anything that I might try could easily provoke a bite. My friend was terrified but he was also very brave to remain still for what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like two or three hours.

Finally the stress and anxiety was just too much for him and he screamed, “I can’t stand this anymore!”, and he jumped quickly to his feet and started stamping his foot and shaking his leg to try and get the snake to fall out.

Just a few seconds later a very large salamander lizard fell out of his pants leg onto the ground and quickly wriggled back under the pile of pine straw that was around the camp from our early campsite clearing efforts. We were relieved and very grateful that the snake had turned out to be a harmless salamander but it still scared us almost to tears the situation was so tense and stressful while it was happening.

Little did we know when we settled down to try and sleep later that night that the snake in the pants scare was not the only surprise that this camping trip had in store for us. After reliving the salamander incident and talking about it several times we drifted off to sleep as the campfire was getting low and the sky was filled with stars. Several hours later, I must have gotten too warm inside the sleeping bag because I had turned down the top corner and had my arm outside the bag.

As I rolled over my arm fell onto the pine straw beneath my sleeping bag and something burned my hand. I woke up to find that we were in the middle of a brush fire! Somehow the pine straw had been ignited by the campfire and now the safety ring of straw around the camp was literally a ring of fire. All of the pine straw in the campsite had already burned except for the straw that was directly beneath our sleeping bags, and by some miracle that straw had not ignited.

I shouted and woke up my friend David and we went to work in our attempt to put out the fire. We knew that if we could not get it put out quickly that it would get out of control in the pine straw and could severely damage the property and the wildlife that lived there. We did not have enough water to use to combat the fire so we stamped out the fire on ground with our feet except for the largest flames which we used out sleeping bags to smother them. So there we stood in the middle of our burned out campsite, sleeping bags ruined, and afraid that the fire and our shouting may have been heard or seen from somebody on the road.

With our nerves badly shaken from waking up in the middle of a brush fire that we had caused the decision to abandon the camp site and head for home was an easy one. Once we made certain that the fire was out for good, we rolled up our burned sleeping bags, packed the rest of our gear, and decided to walk back home even if it was the middle of the night.

Our packs seemed to be substantially heavier when we started walking back up the country road away from the burned campsite than they had been when we confidently walked that way earlier in the day. We were tired from the stress and the lack of sleep but that soon became the least of our worries. Apparently several of the homes that we had passed on the walk during the day had large, mean, dogs that they let out at night to guard their houses and property. We knew that we were in trouble when first one started barking, then another and then even more. Now we are standing in the middle of a dark, gravel road surrounded by no fewer than five angry dogs barking, growling, and even coming close to us and snapping at our legs.

David and I quickly got into a defensive position by instinct, almost as if we had been trained to do it. We got back to back and used our hiking sticks to fend off the dogs when they would get too close or try to bite us. Soon we figured out that getting out of there as quickly as we could manage would be the best thing for us, but we could not turn and run or the pack would have taken hunks out of our backsides as we ran down the road.

So we stayed back to back and began walking and swinging our walking sticks at the dogs who continued to follow us for what seemed like a very long time. We were very relieved when at long last we reached the end of what must have been the pack’s territory because they stopped following us and turned and headed back toward the house where they lived.

Both David and I were very glad to see our homes again early that morning when it was just barely starting to get daylight. We had been scared by a reptile, awakened in the middle of a fire, and attacked by a pack of dogs all on the same ill-founded camping trip. I recently found my friend David on a social website after being out of touch for over thirty- five years and the scary camping trip had remained one of his favorite stories and he too has been telling it for years.

Although I still and will always love camping, the lessons David and I learned on that fateful night have remained with both of us for years.

Twitterfu#@ing

By Suzanne Palmieri

I love online social networking. Maybe it’s because, though I come off as personable, I don’t like people. Peculiar? Not so much. I’m a sociologist and a writer. Both of these professions require a good amount of people phobia.

So of course there’s Facebook— the adult Myspace (though teens are finding Facebook and if it weren’t for Farmville and stalking old lovers, we grown-ups would all surely leave– right? Whatever.) And there’s blogging, and youtube. So many ways to wile away the hours of our lives. But Twitter? Until recently I just didn’t get it.

What’s the big deal? You post your status and then other people react or don’t react. Yawn, right? Wrong, apparently. Twitter has become a platform from which the most amazing things (both good and evil) can spring.  I mean, we’re treading dangerous territory when Ashton Kutcher’s tweets make national news. Sometimes I think Twitter was a concept thought up by smart, angry, nerd elves who wanted to play a joke on the world.  And look, we all fell for it.

The thing is, it really all depends on why you’re there. And it’s definitely a there, a place, believe me. Sometimes I think of it as a large room, like an emptied out dining hall at Yale or some other university, where everyone is meandering about holding a plastic milk crate in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. Every once in a while someone puts down their crate stands on top of it and yells 140 characters or less out through the bullhorn.  Then comes the still. The quiet wait for a response. If they’ve caught someone’s attention that person will stand on their own milk crate and yell back.  If it’s a catchy, witty little sentence many people take to their crates and voila! You’re a success! Or in the best case scenario you get an RT (or re-tweet) or even your very own # (or hash mark) which means you’ve become a trending topic.

But usually your tweet goes unnoticed, so you stand there and everyone walks on by, and you have to get down off your crate and keep milling around waiting for the next stroke of genius to hit you. OR you might get tapped on the shoulder by a fellow twit who will make a comment about your statement privately. That’s called a DM (or direct message) and can only be done if you are mutual followers.

The thing is, what you say out there is heard. And sometimes it shouldn’t be. For example, there are many aspiring authors who’ve fallen prey to the social networking dichotomy. I’m one of them. We are told we need a web presence, so we get one. And we’re writers, right? How hard can it be to throw out a good sentence a few times a day? Well, it’s NOT hard. That’s the easy part. The tough part is what happens while you network.

Editors and literary agents tweet too. And you can follow them and listen in on all of their conversations.

At first, it’s charming! Delightful, even, to hear those you admire come in through the static of nothingness and talk about their kids and spouses, friends and lunches. And sometimes you’re brave, and you reply…. And sometimes they reply back and even (OMG) follow you!

Addiction ensues. You race through your day typing 140 characters, thinking about other people’s 140 characters, listening to stories about how 140 characters change the lives of authors you know. How they tweeted and agents contacted them because their tweets were funny and asked for a rough draft of “whatever” the writer was working on. Or the dramatic events that unfold as an agent who knows they’re about to sign a follower teases them and all of twitterverse by dropping little hints here and there about their potential new client.

Slowly the hell of it all sinks in. As the green eyed monster grows, the bull horn gets heavy, the crate pinches your fingers. And then you start to notice that no one is working, that they’re all at lunch or posting blogs or … or…  tweeting! All freaking day. Because you’re not working any more either, you’re tweeting. And  it’s  become intertwined with who and what you are.

@twit Kidlet one in bath saying funny things.

@twit Can’t crack open these freaking walnuts!

@twit People smell in the elevator.

@twit Hide and seek NOT so clever with 1yearold.

@twit All that glitters is not god

@twit Gold. * Grimaces *

And then you find yourself waiting to hear back from editors, agents, literary magazines, etc and as you wait, tearing your hair out and eating nothing but Cherry Garcia ice cream, they are tweeting about how they just finished reading everything and how hard it was and “phew!” they’re done! But. Wait! Hello? My inbox is empty.

Fu@kers.  Stop tweeting and start paying attention. (I’m still tweeting. Do I have to stop? I suppose it’s hypocritical, right?) Fu#k. Okay I’ll stop if you stop. I can’t stop.

So I get fed up and throw down my milk crate, and scream sarcastically into my bullhorn.  (When did this story become first person?)

@twit if there are any literary agents interested in social media addiction, contact me!

Four seconds later.

DM in my inbox. From a literary agent.

Dear @twit,

It depends on the tone of the book. Why not send me a query?

Really? REALLY!!!!!!!!! You’re F@#*ing kidding me, right?

That’s a true story. Holy crap.

So, to keep myself sane, I’ve come up with a term for all of us. (Excluding, of course, the poets and writers and tweeters who are innocently throwing their beautiful words into the twitterverse for the sheer love of the written word)  The rest of us? We’ve all become Twitterfu#@rs. Now, Let the Twitterfu#@ing begin. Long live Twitterfu@#ing.

Editor’s note: Marc Nash knows things. Troubling things and puzzling things. Things he likes to share with other writers. Cutting Dialogue is an intriguing arguments for someone who has much to say. On The Wing welcomes Marc’s voice to our pages.

Cutting Dialogue

By Marc Nash

Be it my novel or peer review site postings, a constant question has been asked of me: “why is there next to no dialogue in your prose?” Talking is one of the main things we do as humans. Conversing. Communicating. It helps a reader get a handle of your characters. It would make your book easier for the reader to get to grips with…

Firstly I want to say that I can do dialogue. Before writing prose fiction, I wrote stage plays for 15 years. Nothing but an unceasing diet of dialogue required for a writer. But I have to say it’s my experience of writing dialogue for that realm that partly informs my decisions to keep dialogue down to a minimum in my novels.

Firstly talking isn’t the only thing that defines us as humans. We also think thoughts. We may silently curse somebody for fear of offense, but still the thought is expressed in our mind. We formulate our thoughts and reactions to things without necessarily always feeling a need to articulate them in sound. We think things through, we try and interpret likely consequences of certain of our actions; think of a pursuit of a particular love mate, how much silent thought we pour into that endeavour. Playing over and over each tiny incident for a sign of likely success. These are just as human as the urge to talk. They are forms of self-expression, albeit held within. After all, the mind constructs thoughts with the same tools as we speak with: words.

So I do  not see dialogue as the key indicator of our humanity. Where it ought to rate greater literary significance is in establishing relationship. Most of what I offered above takes place in isolation, us being left alone with our thoughts.

As a side point, reading is also a two-way communication that usually takes place in isolation, relying on the imagination; the definitions become blurred by Proust’s description of reading as “that fruitful miracle of a conversation that takes place in solitude”. A conversation with one of the people involved being absent? Go figure! It relies on both the imagination of the writer’s words and the receptive imagination of the reader to take those words and build the story in his/her mind.

But back to two people in a room talking. You can get to know so much about them and their relationship, by what they say right?

If you’re watching those two people on stage or up on screen, then yes. There it’s all about the portrayal of their relationship. You’re assisted by their facial expressions, their body language, gestures, inflection of voice, how close they stand to one another. You have none of these automatically embedded in lines of dialogue within prose. You could describe them, where the interlocutors’ eyes are looking, what they’re doing with their hands while listening, the rising cadence at the end of a resonant word or the like, but you would double, treble, quadruple the length of the exchange on the page. The prose would grind to a halt. You could do it more sparingly, the blinking of an eye here, the barely perceptible blush there, but then I always want to know what’s going on in this sentence, that is so different from those lines without any such elaboration? Even people sat in place at a table talking, rarely keep still throughout the duration of their conversation. They drink their coffee, they twiddle the spoon, they stack the sugar cubes in the bowl, they trace an outline in the salt spilled on the table. They may even tune out and look at other people in the cafe. Just go people watch and see this happening.

Dialogue in plays seethe in subtext. Since you have the craft and skill of the actor to bring them out. I defer to the master of stage writing, Harold Pinter. It’s what is not said that is absolutely key there. Of course, skillful prose writing can weave in subtext too, but the more dialogue you have, the longer the verbal exchanges are, you either run the risk of over-egging your subtext and repeating it so often so that there’s nothing ‘sub-’ about it anymore; or the subtly laid subtext gets diluted by lots of lines which have no ‘added value’. I think this latter is a large part of my gripe with dialogue. Many lines of dialogue add nothing (other than imparting their information) eg “Johnny said he’d be here by 5pm”. The context in which the dialogue takes place would clearly tell us that Johnny was in fact not here and it was past 5pm, or that the two speakers were waiting for Johnny before conducting the key business or that they had a cut-off deadline of 5pm to conclude their business. The dialogue line itself really adds very little.

So I believe less is always more with dialogue in prose. Aside from relationship, which you can also render by describing the relationship in space between two characters, distant/intimate/invasive/recoiling etc, you can paint a character by sparing use of their language. The idiom with which they express themselves, how they see the world around them, or what they deem important enough to put into words. Straight away you’d have an idea of their intelligence and level of education. A four/five line exchange of dialogue can do the work of pages if it is honed enough.

I despair on peer review reading sites, when I get swathes of dialogue to plough through. I always wonder why the author doesn’t write it as a play instead. So often it’s about the author trying to convey plot information in the misguided belief that this mode is more interesting and more readable than doing it as backstory. It isn’t. And inevitably the characters end up speaking like no human being would, as they are forced to spout plotlines.

I don’t eschew dialogue entirely. In one novel it makes an appearance right at the end, when it has two functions; firstly the main character who has been addressing the reader directly (and conversationally in tone if not in speech marks) just like Proust’s homily, now is shown exactly whom else has been listening to her story within the novel; and secondly, without giving it away, that very fact puts into question everything she has related up to this point, because of who she is dialoguing with. Up until this point the reader has been addressed directly and seemingly within one set of parameters, and then all of a sudden, through the introduction of a third party as it were who contributes their pov, the reader now is forced to question any assumptions and conclusions he/she may have arrived at up to this point. Here the limited dialogue is subversive.

A second novel has quite a lot of dialogue, but again it is off kilter. Partly it is dialogue typed out on computers in chat rooms and forums, a very different language from that spoken. Indeed it was a great surprise to me as I wrote, to discover that the narrator’s voice which had been in dialect, could not persist once I reached the point at which he started communicating online with his love pursuit. Because he was typing, I was faced with the fact that no-one actually writes/types in dialect in real-life communications. When the two characters do finally talk to each other in the final section of the book, again it is a subversive act; the man who has been pursuing her behind the relative anonymity of an online identity, reveals in a phone call a very different personality and purpose. His actual voice, heard for the first time, is one full of only previously hinted at menace and manipulation. Here dialogue tramples down the distance and fantasy built up over the rest of the novel. And yet it is still not face to face.

A final example sees a father at the door of his son’s bedroom as he lays silent siege to his room to get him either to come out or at least open up and talk to him. No words are exchanged as the father calculates strategies that reveal both his and the son’s character and the relationship as he perceives it. The end of the novella, having had just one line actually spoken at the end of its each of its two chapters, reveals exactly why no words are exchanged in the real time course of the novel and all the regrets the father has of not actually airing his thoughts to his son.

So I write extensively ABOUT dialogue and communication (or the paucity of it), without writing much in the way of dialogue itself. Language is a notoriously slippery entity for doling out precise meaning. Think about how many misunderstandings you have with people in an average week, based on what they say to you, or write or type in e-mails. Phones are the worst for this as again, you can’t judge reactions. That is what playwriting fostered in me. A determination to probe and get inside the nature of how we communicate, by addressing language in particular.  That to me is about getting inside the nature of being human.

My wife and I have exactly one parent left. My mom-in-law is ninety-one and lives with us in our home in Charlotte.

My friends constantly ask me how we do it and try and convene saint-hood upon us because we care for my wife’s mother.

Mumma has lived with us for six years, leaving the small rural Wisconsin dairy farming community she grew up in and raised her kids in. Mumma is deaf and has been ever since she was a child. Outside of that minor inconvenience she is healthy, of strong mind and while occasionally troublesome – who isn’t?- does not pose a great burden for us to care and provide for.

Every day at our house is Mother’s Day. We make sure Mumma has what she needs when we are at work or away from the home. She can fix her own meals and is fairly self-sufficient, though she doesn’t drive and after a few falls we are reluctant to leave her alone for extended periods of time. We keep her favorite food on hand though our culinary tastes and interests couldn’t be further apart. She has her own sitting room, TV, bedroom and bath. We wash her clothes, run her errands and see to her physical needs the best we can. We expend no more effort than most of you do with your kids and I bet no one is trying to Saint you for being a parent.

Is it challenging at times? Of course. Does it get between my wife and I and place strain on us? Yes you bet. But it also brings us closer together and provides a sense of well being knowing that we are making someone, someone who cared for my wife for many years, happy and comfortable late in her life when the only other option would have likely been a nursing home in a community where no one knew her anymore.

Mother’s Day seems so contrived and commercially American. Virtually every other nation in the world, especially third world nations, have extended families that live together and treat their elders with reverence, deference and genuine care. Why isn’t that the norm here?

My wife and I don’t have kids. Who the hell is going to look out for us??

We’ve re-launched On The Wing, Full of Crow’s home for nonfiction essays, opinions, rants and more.

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2007

This is an excerpt of writing by Tye Doudy, sharing his experiences with incarceration. These are his thoughts in his own words. When I first crossed paths with Tye at the OWC, I noticed that his writing had an honesty about it, a roughness. He’s also an amazing artist. What he presents is a snapshot of his world. -LA

Dopesick As Hell Tye Doudy

The five heavily tattooed Mexicans I’m sharing this holding cell with
here in the Multnomah county detention center have somehow smuggled in
some crystal meth. This is bad news for me as I am dopesick as hell. (more…)