The Pariah's Syntax

The Agony and Ecstasy of Appetite

noreply@blogger.com (FreeByronCase) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:25:00 +0000

There is more than a hint of masochism in my predilection for watching Food Network programming. Not that I am a regular viewer, but in moments of intellectual laziness, when I'm searching aimlessly for something to watch on TV, food rarely fails to capture my attention. Against my better judgment, I am a slave to my salivating sensibilities. Happening upon the culinary alchemy Iron Chef America or the goofy genius of Good Eats, I can't not stop to stare. The slight initial shame at watching a program as inartfully named as Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is thrown to the wind when Guy Fieri, the amply-fed host, visits a little greasy spoon in Middle-of-Nowhere, USA, which serves some little artery-clogging marvel like deep-fried Ahi burgers or rum-raisin pizza. Even the frequently unappetizing production line fare of Unwrapped, with the waxy Marc Summers, lures me in with the tantalizing knowledge of how Funyons are made, or the arcane processes involved in the packaging of Harry & David pears. It is hard to pass such stuff by.

On the Travel Channel, I confess to being perversely fascinated by Bizarre Foods — enough to have sat through more than one episode of Andrew Zimmern's lip smacking as he devours durian and ingests invertebrates. My real interest on that station, however, is Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, the only travel show I can comfortably watch. In fact, it is one of the four series on television to which I tune in unfailingly. Bourdain's snarky culinary adventures, though sometimes a little too heavily scripted, and enjoyable for someone who, like me, is kind of a foodie and a firm believer in the "get lost" doctrine of travel. And while the man displays enthusiasm for offal I do not share, most of the traditional indigenous cuisine he samples in his wanderings looks absolutely delicious to my hungry eyes.

But me, in my predicament — why on earth do I watch? The appearance on TV of even the simplest dish — an omelet, say, or some variety of grilled chicken — that would drive the average hungry viewer into their kitchen to whip up the same remains for me a hypothetical: Wow, I'll bet that's tasty. I have no refrigerator full of ingredients to raid, just a barely-used sick-pack cooler; no pantry laden with dry and canned goods to work with, merely a two-by-two-foot shelf bearing quick oats, some ramen soup, creamy off-brand peanut butter — enough that I can make two or three different rudimentary meals, but that is all.

Prison food — mushy, leached of color, taste, and appealing aroma — is everything any teen ever derided school lunches for, but worse by several orders of magnitude. To look at the Missouri Department of Corrections' nutritionally "balanced" master menu is to be deceived. Witness this misleading excerpt from a recent week's menu:

Breakfast
1/2 cup Pineapple
1 cup Hot Wheat Cereal
1 Pastry Item
2 oz. Turkey Sausage
2 pc. Toast
2 tbsp. Jelly or Diet
1 tbsp. Margarine or 3 Pats
5 pkg. Sugar or 3 Sugar Substitute
16 oz. Milk
Coffee

Lunch
3/4 cup Beef Pot Pie over
2 Biscuits
1/2 cup Peas
1/2 cup Lettuce Salad with
2 tbsp. Dressing
1 pkg. Cookies
Beverage

Dinner
1/2 cup Scrambled Egg
3/4 cup Creamed Meat Gravy
1/2 cup Home Fries
2 Tomato Slices or
1/2 cup Chilled Canned Tomatoes
1 pc. Fresh Fruit
2 pc. Toast
2 tbsp. Jelly or 2 Diet
1 tbsp. Margarine or 3 Pats
Beverage

On paper it's a hell of a spread for the fifteen hundred convicts here at Crossroads to be treated. In reality, the breakfast "pastry" is a doughy pound cake; the "pot pie" is mixed vegetables with cubes of mechanically separated, reconstituted chicken in a starchy broth, atop two pieces of leftover hard tack; there is no meat in the "creamed meat gravy," just Imagic Imitation Sausage Flavor Crumbles. What is perhaps the most frightening is that these meals happen to be three of the very best offered. No grilled chicken or fluffy omelets here, that's for sure.

Still, I watch in agonized rapture as Mario Batali works magic with eggplant, as Alton Brown lectures on avocado's chemical composition, as Guy Fieri buries his face in yet another sumptuous specialty burger. I watch and I daydream and my stomach, displeased and avaricious, snarls testily, plotting its revenge.

An O-Scale Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:06:00 +0000

There was a model train expo in Kansas City recently. I wouldn't have known except that a glimpse of an H-scale coal locomotive as I was channel surfing sent me back-tracking to the footage KMBC, the local news channel, was airing of the event. The video showed several clips of miniature trains emerging from tunnels and traveling through tiny scenery. Interspersed were shots of little boys watching with their eyes wide, their mouths agape. One was absently gnawing on his own finger. As a boy, I was fascinated with trains of all sizes myself, and there are some childhood loves whose vestiges stay with us our entire lives. Suffice it to say I know precisely how they felt.

My own model train set was relatively basic: a 4"x8" tableau with grass and a mountainous tunnel, and an oval track that featured a couple of switches for offloading cars. It was a much more elaborate setup than most kids that age probably have, but nothing compared to the detailed vistas of the serious hobbyist I dreamt of becoming. So earnest were my intentions that, at seven or eight years of age, I drew out a three-phase plan for urban development, beginning with the addition of paved streets and some commercial buildings and culminating in an art-deco skyscraper and the replacement of my red-and-yellow Santa Fe diesel with a streamlined 1920s steam engine, preferably in dark blue. That, I figured, or maybe a contemporary foreign express, like the TGV.

At the time of my second trip to France, the TGV – an acronym for train à grande vitesse – held the record for being the fastest train in the world. I was ecstatic for the opportunity to say I'd ridden it before the Japanese reclaimed the title with their own bullet train, which was more of less the sole reason my mother and I were in Paris at all. The day trip we had planned was to take us from Paris to Dijon, where we would stop for lunch, then continue on, via regular train, into Switzerland. On our way to the boarding platform, something caught my eye.

A shop within the station had in its window display an HO-scale TGV – one locomotive, two passenger cars, and a rearward-facing faux locomotive (no motor; made to resemble the powered locomotive at the front). It was cheaply made – I could tell by the look of the box through the store window – and priced especially for tourists, but it was still the TGV and, hence, my opportunity to jump straight to that pièce de résistance I'd been fantasizing about. I could even say I bought it in Paris. Tres apropos, nes pas? So I did some rapid calculation. By sacrificing two thirds of my spending allowance for the trip (my mother and I would be in Europe for another two weeks) I could afford it. Visions played through my head of the little orange blur whipping around my track at home like its full-size counterpart did across the French countryside. To my nine-year-old sensibilities it was alluring, but I ultimately decided it wasn't worth the extortionist asking price. Whatever misgivings I might have had as I trudged away from the shop were obliterated upon reaching the platform, where the fastest train in the world awaited.

Each time I have been to Europe, the rail system has provided the lion's share of my transportation. It's been awhile, but my understanding is that a Eurail Pass remains the most inexpensive option for backpackers and others looking to cover a great deal of ground in under a month and a half. And although one will provide trips via other means of public transport within participating systems (imagine a bus pass that works for taxis, trams, light rail — right on down the list), it's the train that I've always used and enjoyed most. Watching from the comfort of a spacious six-person cabin as scenery passes, all the while relaxing with a good book, a game of Mau Mau, a leisurely snack, or just using the time to contemplate where you've been, where you're going — it's an unparalleled travel experience.

That the United States has never really embraced passenger rail is a shame. I will be the first to extol that singular bliss known so well by Americans, the road trip. My acquaintance with the national privilege of being able strap in behind a steering wheel and go is an intimate one. I know firsthand that picking a destination or meandering route, then driving for days without need of a passport or paperwork, is as near to absolute freedom — travel-wise, anyway — as much of the modern world can know. But there is a certain romantic quality to even the dirtiest, smokiest railway platform to which the chicest gas station cannot hope to compare, and a pleasure in subdued clacking and subtle rocking on tracks for which monotonous highway hum is no substitute.

True, America has tried in recent decades to stoke the fire of interest in rail travel it once had, with fast inner-city lines and upgrades to its sole "transcontinental" service, but the flame will not catch. There are myriad reasons, as anyone who has ridden Amtrak can attest, but I believe it comes down to an unwillingness to let go of the wheel. Ours — America's — is a culture of fiercely individualized assertiveness to which leaning back to watch things happen is anathema. Everything is about control. So many crave the full agenda, the pressing deadline, the gridlocked traffic. They have either forgotten or never learned how to exist within the moment. Being still, sitting alone, existing for a time in silence — these things somehow terrify.

Control, however, is fleeting and illusory. Confinement to linearity, either metaphorically or on physical tracks, is a situation we may find ourselves in more often than we are aware. Life itself is frequently on rails in spite of our fidgety efforts at affecting change. At those times we are swept along under the power of circumstance, bound for the unknown and all points in-between. On the faces of those little boys in awe of the spectacle of a little electric toy going around and around can be witnessed the unadulterated bliss attainable through passive observation. Absorbed in the thing itself, not contemplating it nor employing it as an object of focus while their mind lingers elsewhere, they utterly lose themselves in wonder.

The TGV, ultimately, was a letdown. Sure it was fast, but the ride was bumpy and the upholstery mismatched, and the experience lacked all of the armrest-clutching excitement I'd anticipated. There hadn't even been scenery, since I'd managed to fall asleep en route. When my mother and I stepped down onto the platform in Dijon it was with memorable disillusionment — it was the emperor's nakedness, the non-existence of Santa Claus, a first school dance gone horrifyingly awry. What then had been the point? But the lesson had been learned: speed has its place in the world, often quite apart from pleasure.

I venture now to stretch my lesson further, offering the corollary that to savor a thing is to take the time, and a warning, trite, obvious, and perhaps too often repeated but heartfelt all the same. Take the express, but take care. Too much speed will numb you. Unlike with those scale models, no real-world track is oval — none run forever. Take in what scenery you can, because there is an end to every line.

Saturday Night, Riding The Red-Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:47:00 +0000

The FM signal pops and hisses subtly, so I move the antenna and nudge the tuner a couple of times in each direction. Clunky headphones are an umbilical, link me to my Panasonic as I ready a blank cassette in deck two. The cell is dark, save for the forty-five watt lamp at the desk. I am awake enough, thanks to the ritual eight o'clock coffee — sufficiently caffeinated to ride the airwaves into the small hours. The familiar voice of a friend and some favorite music will be my companions along the way.

It may be difficult to recognize as a scenario from this post-millennial decade, not from twenty years earlier. Radio? Cassettes? But each and every Saturday night this is how it goes. The station, an independent, listener-supported outfit, has an eclectic schedule, offering programming as diverse and divergent as techno, Tejano, and talk. Nowhere on commercial terrestrial radio (not in this Midwestern market, at least) could I hear album tracks from Peter Murphy, Depeche Mode, New Order, nor anything at all, for that matter, by the Legendary Pink Dots, Cocteau Twins, or VNV Nation. My friend's show features mostly a mélange of that sort of retro, electro, New Wave, New Romantic, post-punk fare, as well as contemporary acts inspired by the same. She and I often joke about the "format-free format" of her if-I-like-it-I'll-play-it approach.

As scattershot as her playlists might seem, they're often the stuff of my life's soundtrack. Many songs played are bound up inextricably in the strings of my memory, leading me every week on a tangled, tangential tour of the past as I follow the thread.

Learn to leave me / assemble the ways // Now, today, tomorrow / and always My father has just given me my first Smiths album, Louder Than Bombs. We listen to it on his intimidating hi-fi, seated attentively on the living room sofa. I study the scant liner notes and lyrics. He explains the band's history, their monumental relevance, how they'll never, ever get back together. I am fourteen and forever changed.

I feel so extraordinary / Something's got a hold of me // I get this feeling I'm in motion / a certain sense of liberty My friend Jamie's Barbie-pink Ford Taurus, during our first week in Saint Louis. We are driving down Clayton Road, headed from our new apartment in Universal City, bound for the Central West End. The city, our new home, sprawls out in every direction, replete with exciting promise. True Faith surprises us from the speakers. We sing.

We have a random on the west side / Personality malfunction // He said "I can't give you anything at all / just a room with a bad view of you" This is my old apartment on 38th and Central. I am playing the Star Wars: Episode One edition of Monopoly with my roommate. Instead of "Coruscant," we say "Croissant," because we are geeks and think doing so is terribly droll. I hate Monopoly, and let her win most every time just to get it over with.

Tune back to the moment: the final song of the 8:30 hip-hip show is finally fading out. Here comes the two-minute science segment. I shift in my seat and glance at the darkened world outside my window, anticipating what comes next.

A brief, nearly imperceptible instant of dead air, like an intake of breath.

Shh! The show is starting!

Those Were The Days... Or Not

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:13:00 +0000

The inmates here, they miss how prison used to be, back when the reins were looser and a man could "do real time." The blind corners and open-front cells of the decrepit, turn-of-the-last-century institutions still have their hearts. It pains them that they can no longer revel in the unchecked anarchy of open yards, the permissiveness of bygone wardens, and on and on — a litany of reasons then was so much better than now. On television they vicariously relive the glory days of danger with shows like Prison Break and take heart in knowing there are other, rougher prisons elsewhere, such as San Quentin and Stateville, as evidenced by MSNBC's pride and joy, Lockup. Places like those, inmates and staff maintain a precarious stalemate, and it makes the career criminals here salivate.

Stories abound of life at "The Walls," the sprawling relic once dubbed Missouri State Penitentiary but now, thankfully, abandoned. Inmates who have been in the system long usually know the place all too well. Conditions were appalling. In the winter, toilets in the cells would ice over at night; in the summer, pieces of the crumbling building itself were thrown to break windows to catch a breeze. Except in the communal shower room, hot water was unavailable. Mice and cockroaches reigned. But, to hear many of its erstwhile residents' nostalgic accounts, one might be tempted to believe none of these things mattered. For many, aquariums and console TVs in some cells, stray cats as adopted pets, endless drugs and hooch, and the insignificant threat of a single night in the Hole for fighting made for an idyllic parallel to whatever gladiatorial existence they'd been living previously; prison was literally a home away from home.

"This ain't prison," comes the tired lament, "it's day care." Of course, they're right to note the differences. Prison reform, arguably begun in earnest (but undeniably first felt) in the early nineteen-eighties, introduced a completely different dynamic to how prisoners were dealt with and how the facilities were run. The most notable change was evident in the shift from active reform efforts, which have been proven time and time again to work, to human warehousing. Vocational training and self-help programs were too expensive, which meant they were expendable under new incarceration standards. This, combined with an inrush of non-violent POWs from America's ill-fated, ill-conceived War On Drugs, brought varying degrees of success to the measures being employed to exact control over the once-uncontrollable inmate populations. The comparatively docile prisoners acted as a statistical buffer in the reformers' charts and tables, nicely watering down those violent statistics.

In the comparative calm, the ever-wakeful gears of the great bureaucratic machine continued to spin, however. Docility was not enough. Absolute order had yet to be imposed, so the focus shifted to a higher magnification. More than ever, uniformity has become the prime concern. All property is governed by strict limits, down to the number of rolls of toilet paper or bottles of vitamins one is allowed to keep on-hand. Personal clothing may only be worn in certain places, at certain times a day, and is itself limited to a handful of articles. There even exists a multiple-page list that dictates explicitly what may be placed where within one's cell, and in what condition it must be. Movement outside of the housing units is closely observed and regimented.

Micromanagement is the new way. Hardened convicts (labeled "offenders" in the modern industry jargon) have witnessed the end of an age. Unfortunately for them, and for the society to which many will eventually return, this new way is no better than the old.

A Penitentiary Glossary

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:00:00 +0000

The vernacular of prison is a nasty melange of street slang, backwater babble, and major malapropisms – from a grammatical standpoint, the worst of all worlds. Often confusing, sometimes shocking, it comes to the uninitiated as a completely foreign tongue.

I present this glossary to appease curiosity. As evidenced by the popularity of television shows like MSNBC's "Lockup" and its new broadcast equivalent, "Jail," there are those for whom prison, as a distinctly other culture, holds a great deal of interest. Armchair linguists are also likely to find this entertaining. Neither group is likely to find it especially useful, however. Just as ordinary regional dialects vary, so too will those of prisons in other locales. This list is intended only as a curiosity, neither unabridged nor universal. Should you ever find yourself detained or imprisoned, you would be ill-advised to try these terms out. The results might not be what you were hoping for.

Note: Children, as well as those with puritanical ideals or sensitivity to coarse language should read no further than this point. Much of what follows is, in a word, foul.

* * * * *

bake cakes v. engage in homosexual acts, especially intercourse.
bit n. any uninterrupted period of time spent in prison on a charge or a series of related charges.
book n. a magazine.
booty bandit n. a predatory homosexual.
boy n. one who is tied (see below) to another, usually an older inmate.
box n. a carton of cigarettes.
bullet n. a small, tightly packed ball of any illicit substance, contained within a rubber or plastic casing, and intended to be swallowed or keistered (see below) for hiding or transporting said substance within one's body.
Cadillac n. any item tied to the end of a long piece of string, swung or slid from cell to cell in a locked-down environment, in order to transport said item: When Baker ran out of tobacco, Jones sent him a pinch by Cadillac. v. send something to someone in this manner: Hey, Smith, Cadillac me a lighter! • adj. of high quality; indulgent or expensive: A cup of Taster's Choice with cocoa in it? Damn, that's a Cadillac coffee!
camp n. a prison.
cellie n. a cellmate.
cho-mo n. one convicted of any sexual offense against a child; a child molester.
coal hauler n. one who is not himself black, who is perceived as associating with black inmates to an excessive degree, or who has a black daddy (see below).
creep n. a sex offender.
daddy n. the dominant figure in an exploitive homosexual relationship.
dime n. a ten-year sentence: He's doing a dime for burglary. • (drop a dime)snitch (see below) on someone: Dude dropped a dime on his partner, got him busted on a dope deal.
eat-em-up n. another term for booty bandit (see above): That guy's an eat-em-up from way back. You don't want anything to do with him.
fifi n. any assemblage of materials, such as latex gloves, trash bags, empty bottles, pillow, and so on, used to simulate female genitalia for the purpose of masturbation.
flag n. a piece of paper or cloth displayed in or on one's cell door to indicate to passers-by that privacy is desired: Joe must be using the toilet; his flag's up.
flick n. a photograph.
freak n. a homosexual. • (play the freaks) make false sexual comments or passes for humor effect or to make someone uncomfortable.
freecase v. blame or sentence for an offense one did not commit: They tried to freecase him with another robbery, but he wasn't even in this state when it happened.
hole n. a housing unit or other specified area in which inmates are held in segregation from the prison's general population for disciplinary or protective reasons. • (make a hole run) smuggle an illicit substance into a segregated area for the express purpose of selling it for substantial profit.
house n. a housing unit within the prison. • n. one's cell.
hustle n. a method, usually illicit, of making money or doing business: George had himself a good little hustle selling sugar packets out of the kitchen. Too bad he got fired.
keister v. insert (something) into the rectum, usually a bullet (see above).
kite n. any note or memo sent elsewhere within the prison: To get a copy of his account information, Rusty had to send a kite to the caseworker.
metal n. a shank (see below).
minute n. any excessive length of time: That old man's been doing time for a minute; he knows what's up.
motor oil n. strong, thick coffee.
mud n. coffee.
old head n. an older inmate, especially one who has served a lot of time.
pull chain v. leave prison, usually to transfer to another.
rape-o n. a sex offender.
roll n. a hand-rolled cigarette. • v. transfer to another prison, often one with a lower security level: They're gonna roll him to Charleston tomorrow morning, I heard.
shank n. any improvised stabbing or cutting weapon. • v. use such an item.
square n. an employee of the prison, who is neither a correctional officer nor administrative personnel (i.e.: cooks, recreation staff, maintenance engineers, et cetera). • n. a pack of cigarettes.
stinger n. an electric immersion element with which to heat water for soup, coffee, noodles, and so on.
store n. the prison commissary. • n. an illicit operation run by an inmate, typically selling foodstuffs and tobacco, for trade or on credit, at exorbitant rates.
tailor (also tailor-made) n. a name-brand cigarette, such as Marlboro or Newport.
tied v. in a position of subservience to another inmate, usually sexually: I heard the new kid's tied with Jackson now.
wild adj. (as multiple sentences) consecutive, rather than concurrent: He got twenty-one years—two eights and a five, all run wild.
wobble head n. one taking medication for a mental health condition.
yard bird n. chicken, especially fried chicken.
yard dog n. a correctional officer assigned to supervise or patrol the prison yard.

A Life Amphibious

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:21:00 +0000

My father was born with gills and webbed feet, the son of a mermaid and a merchant marine. The earliest photograph of him I have seen was a grade school portrait, which suggests those features — the gills, at least — atrophied as he got older, for they were nowhere to be seen by then. For the entirety of his life, though, as with any creature born of the sea, my father would remain drawn to water and all things aquatic. At eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Navy, where whatever vestigial toe-webbing remained would have been perceived as an asset. He dove freely into untested waters, canoed down rolling river rapids, fished with nets. He collected seashells and coral. He kept tropical fish. I remember the way he'd whisper to them while sprinkling in their food, inviting them to dinner by invoking their secret names: to him they were not angelfish, gourami, or tetra but Streamer-Tail, Little Bubble-Maker, Prism-Darter. They were his piscine friends, exiles from the same kingdom, and they kept him company in his home on dry land.

Of course he owned vessels — a fifteen-foot aluminum canoe, an inflatable raft, a small sailboat. These were the only way my mother and I could accompany him on his watery communions. Creatures of terra firma is what she and I were — awed by the shadowy ubiquity of water in the world, shaky on deck, barely submersible. My father was our fearless captain, ready to brave the storms and show us landlubbers there was little to fear from the murky depths. When he would change tack to head into a squall, or paddle us towards the rocks, we had to wonder whether he hadn't momentarily forgotten our handicap. But always he brought us through, dampened by the spray, most likely, but quite alive. Being with him in the presence of water meant knowing fervency for life; his enthusiasm was contagious.

We towed the sailboat with us one year on a family vacation to the Florida Keys when I was a boy. Our first night at the coast, my mother and I slept in the van. Displaying uncharacteristic childlike eagerness, my father spent the night in a sleeping bag on the deck, docked in the marina a few hundred feet away. Mosquitoes, of course, left him unmolested. It was blood they craved, not the clear salinity of what his veins pumped. As the sun rose from the center of the Atlantic, Mum and I stumbled salty-eyed into the morning. We found my father already unmoored, gliding aimlessly around the marina on a steady wind he'd been loath to let pass un-availed. He waved to us. There was no telling how long he'd been out. He had to have woken at least an hour before dawn in order to have time to erect the mast and secure the rigging. Out on the blue, his sails were brimming; his smile gleamed.

The day was long and humid, and by late afternoon had given way to the slate horizon of an impending storm. Since that morning we'd been skirting the coastline. Because we had no radio, no compass, no map — indeed, no navigational equipment of any sort (what kind of an adventure would it have been, otherwise?) — we dropped anchor off a tiny, sandy island with a sliver of clear beach large enough to pitch our tent and light a cookfire. We ate thin vegetable soup with crackers and nibbled on roasted peanuts. The soup scalded my tongue as I sipped too eagerly from a battered tin cup. When the rain came, at first with uncertainty, we retreated but left the tent flaps open so we could watch the clouds tumble and the far-off waves clash. I fell asleep to the popping of fat drops on the canvas and the thick air of our gradually smoldering fire. I dreamt of wild seas.

In the small hours, the three of us awoke startled. The tide was coming in. It lapped inches from the front of the tent. Already the remains of the fire had been swallowed; now, ever hungry, the water was reaching for us. Pattering rain kept on as we hurriedly pulled stakes and carried our shelter several feet back, to the tree line. As the beach gradually disappeared, we looked on, unsure if the high ground we'd claimed would be high enough to avoid a late night escape back to our boat. I fell back asleep eventually, as did Mum, but Papa was vigilant. His silhouette at the front of the tent reassured me when I woke again later to the sound of his whispered supplications to the waves.

The scene at dawn was much different. By that time the tide had gone out so far that it had stranded the boat, dry and resting pitifully at an angle, on its keel. Seaweed draped the line that had held it to the shore, imparting a look of abandonment, like a ghost ship in spite of its cheerful blue hull. Not knowing when the waters would again rise, my father set to work righting her the way people attend to a beached whale. Now pushing, now rocking, now patting her belly, he coaxed the boat back into her element.

Packed in and hungry, we set course for the mainland beyond our horizon. Arcane sailor knowledge or natant instinct guided my father at the tiller as he steered us toward the marina from which we'd put out. The wind that morning was robust, consistent. I stood aft of the small cabin, catching briny air in my nostrils. In my ears was nothing but that whooshing roar. Then Papa said something indistinct and my mother laughed. I turned, hoping to hear. They were smiling — such wide, open smiles! — and with the sun radiant on his face I watched my father draw a deep, contented breath and surveyed his neck and jaw line for the row of fishy slits I knew just had to be there.

My Mother, Dynamo

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:42:00 +0000

The last Mother's Day we had together before my abduction, Mum and I brunched by the fountain at Roselle Court, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Since I was a little boy, the museum has been a special place for both of us. On weekends we'd often come to see the exhibits and, during the week, there were wonderful art classes for children — pottery, figure drawing, and so on — that I was privileged enough to enjoy. Afterwards, Mum would often take me for a croissant or some other kind of treat in the softly lit neoclassical courtyard that opened off the museum's main hall. The place holds fond memories for us, as a result. Upon leaving that final time, I presented her with a large potted gardenia. It was in a full bloom of tiny white blossoms and was redolent of wild honey. Because of its size, she could not take it with her just then, so it endured the better part of a day riding around in the cavernous back seat of my old car. Eventually, though, it ended up in Mum's bedroom, where it's delicate perfume could carry her into peaceful, pleasant dreams every night.

One month later, I was gone. During the nightmarish year to follow, she came to visit me twice a week in the county jail as I awaited trial. Often she would come with friends of mine who were there, I imagine, as much in support of her as of me. We all cleaved to one another — it was the only way to make it through. But mostly it was my mother whose face through that half-inch-thick safety glass both reassured and broke my sickened heart. For as long as I can remember, she has said that she's a survivor, and that time was my opportunity to witness first-hand the full reserves of her indomitable inner strength.

The gardenia I had given her, fragrant and soft with its hundreds of petals, soon shed and grew sparse with some unknown botanical illness. Strange white film had started forming on the leaves, like wax. Mum would deliver updates on its deteriorating condition: "I think it's dying." Not long after, it was moved to the glassed-in patio, where she would tend carefully to it, wiping each individual leaf clean. Even with that attention, the prognosis looked grim. It would have been nothing for her to abandon it to chance rather than dote on it the way she did.

Giving in it not generally part of her repertoire. The gardenia was finally able to be moved back indoors, able once again to cense her to sleep, in due course. She brought it back.

With me as well her resolve has yet to flag, even these seven years later. Still she makes the hour-long drive every week to see me, still we talk often on the phone, still she finds within herself energy enough to actively crusade for justice in the face of such obstacles as would drive most to discouragement. She is like a force of nature. From her own resilience I get so much of my own — not in some sociobiological sense of inheritance, but that I am emboldened by knowledge of her strength. And, for whatever it's worth, I wear for her my bravest face so she may take heart in the reciprocity of endurance.

We abide balanced upon one another's resolute love, and on the tenacious hope that some day soon I too will be brought back from my sorry condition, able on days like this to honor her the way she so rightly deserves. And, of course, to give her flowers.

Danke, Mutti, für alles. Ich liebe dich.

Like Oxygen

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:18:00 +0000

She jokes that it's "airport affection" — the kiss we're permitted when she arrives, the all-too-brief embrace, and the same when she leaves. In-between, our hands remain clasped almost constantly to the other's. Everything else is ephemeral: the lingering, wordless stares, the variegated conversation, the easy laughter. By the time she has to go our faces ache from all the smiling. These are visits.

Our telephone calls are virtually a nightly event. The background noise here is not insubstantial, and I know that sometimes she must think there's a riot breaking out, but oftentimes I am so lost within the high vowels and tiny fire of her voice I don't even notice. Let them shout and carry on; I am a man deafened by love. And here is something I never before told her: many have been the times I close my eyes, the clunky handset passed tightly to my ear, and concentrate on assembling a precise mental picture of everything at her end of the line. I imagine myself there, a part of it, whether it's the clinking of plates going into the dishwasher or the mew of a cat beside her on that big, purple sofa, and the world is suddenly a better place because I can visualize our togetherness, regardless of how ordinary our surroundings.

Then there are the letters — hundreds of sheets of paper, thousands upon thousands of words — the reading of which coming nearer to moments of true privacy than any others. When I cannot be close to her I will pull the bulging folder that keeps them safe, and I will re-read. Having the benefit of space, she saves mine in the envelopes they arrived in, all inside a gray box at her desk. They are cherished things; I dream of the day we put the lot of them together, perhaps even bind them, to chronicle how we abided and overcame despite odds, convention, adversity.

I don't expect it to make sense to anyone else; though, the support we have is a testament to how right our union really is. Not many possess the proper proportions of dedication, reserves of inner strength, starry-eyed romantic enthusiasm, and pragmatic stoicism to make love work — even without the kind of obstacles she and I face. Merely suggesting such a thing invites derision from some, skepticism from others (and we should know). But we are made of stronger stuff and tempered by experiences beyond our seemingly limited years. Unwilling to easily cede, or to deny the profound significance of these feelings, we find love non-negotiable. And I need her like — well, you know.

Joe

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:25:00 +0000

It is freeze dried and comes in a resealable yellow bag that proclaims "100% Colombian." Conveniently omitted are specifics, as though, at least where coffee production is concerned, the country is peerless in its inability to do wrong. The dubious provenance becomes all the more worrisome at first taste, which assaults with a body of what can only be described as meatiness before fading to a distinct note of soy sauce. Could they have been rejected beans from another, more finicky brand? Do the fields they were grown in lie adjacent to a reservoir of industrial run-off? Does Monsanto have a presence in Colombia? (An absurd question; never mind.) Assuming nothing, this terroir is still a terror.

The canteen sells four brands of coffee — Taster's Choice, Folgers, Nescafé, and this yellow-bag stuff. It's all instant, all representative of varying degrees of unpleasantness, but this one is by far the most popular. Price pays a larger role than palate; most inmates will spring for the high-dollar product when they're flush with funds. Personally, I am not enthusiastic about any of it. My first two years of captivity were determinedly caffeine-free specifically because my elitist taste buds insisted they were too good for such swill, that dump-and-pour would reduce me to some kind of oral paroxysm that would leave my poor tongue flaccid and useless in my mouth. Better, I thought, to go without.

At some point, however, I broke down. So much time had passed since a truly decent coffee had touched my lips I wondered whether the difference wouldn't just go unnoticed, as if all that gourmet Guatemalan could be expunged from my sensory memory by anything short of catastrophic brain damage. I sipped and winced like an alcoholic resorting to mouthwash, but, all the same, I did sip.

Of course, there was guilt: What would my barista say? There was even a nightmare about coming clean to friends at a celebratory dinner, opening up with prison horror stories.

"…So after the stabbing on the yard, even though I knew it wouldn't do my stomach any good, I went straight to my cell for a hot cup of coffee, some music to lose myself in. I couldn't believe what I'd just seen."

"Oh my god, that's awful."

"It was. I mean, it happened right in plain view but nobody seemed to care what was going on. The guy was covered in blood, and–"

"No, I meant about the coffee. You actually drank instant?"

To which my only possible reply, like some sad, grizzled veteran defending wartime atrocities, was, "If you had been there, you'd understand."

The List

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:56:00 +0000

In a "Talk of the Town" item from the New Yorker's January twenty-eighth issue, much was made of the reading list of folk rock icon Art Garfunkel. Since 1968, Garfunkel has kept a record of every book he's read — all one thousand and twenty-three of them, all in chronological order. Given today's profusion of frantic schedules and the apparent decline of interest in the written word, his average of just over two books a month is laudable and impressive. It also got me thinking about my own reading habits and why I've not kept a list of my own.

Having taken to avid reading at a young age, there have been very few times in my life when at least one book was not to been seen atop my desk, beside the bed, or in my hands at some stage of mid-read. By age twenty, keeping my bookshelves from overflowing was already a struggle: if left to the voracious acquisitiveness of my literary appetite and perpetual willingness to learn, the shelves would become unruly and start to bow under the weight. Every few months, with a thoughtful and judicious eye, I would grudgingly pull the titles most recently purchased and weigh their importance, ask the hard questions. Do I absolutely have to have this copy of Common Sense? Will I, at some foreseeable juncture, need to reference The Dragons of Eden for any reason? It pained me to regularly say good-bye to so many wonderful books, but the local used-book vendors loved me.

When my selection diminished nearly seven years ago, a result of what I call my "abduction," the escapism of literature became correspondingly more tantalizing. I've since read several books I'd never otherwise have considered, which is not necessarily a bad thing. T.K. Kennett commented once that those of us who do not read that which we might find objectionable "are no better than those who cannot read at all," and I happen to agree. (A couple of dime-store novels never killed anyone, even if reading one sometimes might feel like a slow death.) Certainly a few have broadened my horizons in thoroughly enjoyable ways.

Reading about Art Garfunkel's voluminous list inspired me to compile my own, retroactively. Friends are always asking what I'm reading, and they are almost as often surprised that a prison library should be so well-appointed (though never quite well enough, if you ask me). The list that follows is incomplete and, instead of chronological, ordered alphabetically, as it was brought forth entirely from my imperfect memory. It covers only the years of my incarceration. Also, it does not include anthologies, textbooks, or any title I did not read in its entirety, simply because listing those would be disingenuous. To appease curiosity and, perhaps, to show off a little, here is my imperfect list. Thanks for the inspiration, Art.

* * * * *

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe • Life, the Universe, and Everything • So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish • Mostly Harmless

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Tariq Ali, Street Fighting Years

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Isaac Asimov, It's Been a Good Life

Andrew Behrman, Electroboy

John Biguenet, The Torturer's Apprentice

David Blaine, Mysterious Stranger

David Bodanis, Electric Universe

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Arthur Bradford, Dogwalker

Dan Briody. The Iron Triangle

Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske, Howard Hughes

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors • Dry • Sellevision

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

George Carlin, Brain Droppings • Napalm and Silly Putty

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Dan Chaon, Among the Missing

Clay McLeod Chapman, Rest Area

Susannah Clark, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama • 2001: A Space Odyssey • 2010 • 2061 • Imperial Earth • The Fountains of Paradise

Billy Collins, Nine Horses (poetry)

Eddy Joe Cotton, Hobo

Jim Crotty, How to Talk American

Deborah Curtis, Touching from a Distance

Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions

Cathy Day, The Circus in Winter

Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Phillip K. Dick, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said • VALIS • Counter-Clock World • The Man Who Japed • The Zap Gun

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground • Crime and Punishment

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo • The Three Musketeers

Umberto Eco, Baudolino

Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Stefan Fatsis, Word Freak

David Friedman, The Immortalists

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera • One Hundred Years of Solitude

Martin Gardner, Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?

Mary Ladd Gavell, I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly

William Gibson, Neuromancer • Idoru • Mona Lisa Overdrive • Pattern Recognition • Spook Country

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking • The Tipping Point

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

Stephen Jay Gould, I Have Landed

Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

John Gribbin, The Birth of Time

Richard Hack, Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos, and Letters

Daniel Hall, Under Sleep (poetry)

M. John Harris, Light

Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time • The Theory of Everything

Robert Heinlein, Beyond this Horizon • A Door into Summer • Friday

Ernest Hemmingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Frank Herbert, Dune • Dune Messiah • Children of Dune

John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Bushwhacked

Franz Kafka, The Trial • The Castle

A.L. Kennedy, Original Bliss

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis

Rudyard Kipling, Kim

Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Dennis Lehane, Coronado

Jimmy Lerner, You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Matthew Lewis, The Monk

Russ Madison, Chapter II

Roger McDonald, Mr. Darwin's Shooter

James McKean, Quattrocentro

Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do

Cornelius Medvei, Mr. Thundermug

China Miéville, The Scar

Adrienne Miller (editor), Esquire's Big Book of Fiction

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Haruki Murakami, After the Quake • Kafka on the Shore

Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

Anaïs Nin, Henry & Jane

Wendy Northcutt, The Darwin Awards

The Onion, Our Dumb Century • Finest News Reporting

Susan Orlean and Robert Atwan (editors), The Best American Essays, 2005

George Orwell, 1984 • Animal Farm

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club • Lullaby • Choke • Rant

Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Orhan Pamuk, Snow

Michael Paterniti, Driving Mister Albert

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time • The Fifth Elephant • Night Watch

Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Harvey Rachlin, Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We're Experts!

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead • Atlas Shrugged • Anthem

Fredrick Reuss, The Wasties

Richard Restak, M.D., The Naked Brain

Yasmina Reza, Desolation

C.S. Richardson, The End of the Alphabet

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

Phillip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint • Goodbye Columbus

Davy Rothbart, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Salman Rushdie, Fury • The Moor's Last Sigh • Step Across This Line • The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Marquis de Sade, Justine

Carl Sagan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (with Ann Druyan) • Contact • Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, Actual Innocence

Nina Shandler, The Strange Case of Hellish Nell

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things

Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man

K.M. Soehnlein, You Can Say You Knew Me When

Dana Spiota, Lightning Field

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Lesley Stern, The Smoking Book

Mark Strand, A Blizzard of One (poetry)

Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit • The Lord of the Rings

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court • The Diaries of Adam and Eve

Jules Verne, Mysterious Island • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle • Slaughterhouse-Five

Brad Watson, Last Days of the Dog-Men

H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds • The Time Machine

Elie Wiesel, And the Sea is Never Full • Night

Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature • Sociobiology

Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman

Mark Winegardner, That's True of Everybody

Richard Wolfson, Simply Einstein

With Apologies To Hasbro.

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:19:00 +0000

The prison canteen doesn't sell SCRABBLE sets, so we made our own. Tiles, stenciled and meticulously cut, came from the backing of a forty-two-cent writing tablet. A grid, drawn on a legal-size file folder, glued to the reverse of a checkers board and shaded with colored pencils became a passable simulacrum of Hasbro's. The process took days – me lettering and coloring, my cellmate, Jay, gluing and cutting. The thought crossed our minds, but we stopped short of coating the tiles with floor wax to make them smoother and appealingly shiny.

We got a copy of The Official SCRABBLE Players' Dictionary, Third Edition to settle challenges. The Official Word List, that SCRABBLE aficionado's bible, was beyond our ability to acquire, owing to the prison's restrictive mail policies. We made lists for ourselves of every playable two-, three-, and four-letter word. We did drills. We anagrammed relentlessly, often unconsciously. We read about fanatical tournament players in the compelling Stefan Fatsis book, Word Freak, and were less mortified than we should have been to identify so much with its insane subjects. We were, it's safe to say, obsessed.

For two years a nonsmoker, I started again. Locked down in a nine-by-twelve space for twenty-one hours a day, wits and creativity will take you only so far before options seem to run dry, before vice starts looking like a virtue. Besides that, our two-man marathon tournaments demanded we have something to do with our hands as we played into the gray hours of dawn. Filterless, hand-rolled cigarettes of cheap tobacco stained our fingers. Freeze-dried coffee bittered our palates. Once in a while we would venture to ingest solids, too, usually in the form of breakfast—served here at five-thirty in the morning.

Even with the best books and a voracious appetite for literature, one can only read so many hours a day. SCRABBLE left us with none of the numb-headed guilt of watching television; though, most nights our TVs stayed on, muted. They were for visual stimulus while formatting plays and, aside from occasionally distracting us with the antics of an impossibly adorable kitten on The Planet's Funniest Animals, they served well for that purpose. For aural input we had our many eclectic mix tapes, recorded with care from a fantastic nearby independent radio station.

We became word-crunching, chain-smoking, over-caffeinated, kitten-loving machines.

As involved as we were, it feels like a personal failing that I'm not unable to cite specific plays. Neither can I retrieve from memory exact scores. True SCRABBLE enthusiasts remember these things as second nature. Jay did once challenge a Bingo (a single play that uses all seven of a player's tiles) of mine that involved putting an S at the end of his BLOODLETTING and crossed a Triple Word Score premium square. Why that single instance stands out in my mind has more to with his disgusted reaction to losing the challenge (and his next turn) than with any cleverness of the play itself.

Jay went home, in December of 2003, on probation. We've kept in touch. To this day he is still the best cellmate I've had. After him came a string of individuals I'll charitably describe as less-than literate. There was simply no one able or willing to play. My handmade SCRABBLE set was retired. I quit smoking almost immediately. For nearly two years, through institution-wide shakedowns and monthly cell searches alike, it sat at the bottom of my footlocker despite its contraband status as an altered item. In the end, I gave the entire bundle—board, tiles, book, everything—to old Mr. B, with whom I'd played many games in the county jail, the two of us awaiting trial. I knew he would get more enjoyment from it at that point than I. And, sure enough, the following day he let me know how funny it had been to look over the old score sheets I'd left in the box, and to see the plastic bag of checkers still sealed from the factory.

That was the spring of 2006—two years ago, now. Too many times to have kept track, I've seen Mr. B since then. Somehow, it's never occurred to me to ask him if he still has the board, or if he's played any particularly good games on it. I'd like to think, after all, that it helped someone other than Jay and myself pass the time, even if it was with decidedly less fanaticism.

A Tragedy At Ten: Justin

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:54:00 +0000

He broke my cigarette. Just like that: took it and snapped it in half and laid the two pieces on the table like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then he asked to bum another. We started talking, of course, because how do you not strike up a conversation with someone approaching you in a coffee house that way? At midnight, after closing the place out, we carried our talk outside to the cold February sidewalk. It had begun to lightly snow.

“You like tea?” he asked, looking at the sky distractedly, then wiping the moisture from his thick-framed glasses with his T-shirt.

“Black?”

“Sure. Is there another kind?”

A friendship was inevitable.

The irony now is that, as I sit here writing, I have to little to say about who Justin was as a person. He was a couple of years older than me – nineteen – and willfully eccentric. Most people who knew him might say he lived to make people laugh. If that meant exploiting his quirks, he’d do it. The way he’d argue in favor of such concepts as prohibition and socialism struck me as an extensions of that: an affectation to keep people on their toes, guessing, or perhaps merely to assert his individuality – I never knew for certain. He was also a mass of contradictions. While he espoused the glories of independence, he lived off his wealthy parents’ monthly stipend; eschewing materialistic pursuits, he spent money frivolously on novelties and gadgets. Whatever his faults, though, that carefree persona made him endless fun to be around.

There is a song by Tom Waits, one of Justin’s favorite musicians entitled, “Tango Till They’re Sore.” Starting with a shambling, drunken piano, it stumbles almost accidentally upon a tune with the addition of a trombone and double bass as Waits’ cigarettes-and-whiskey growl dredges up that after-hours ambiance. Great as the song is, the chorus still chokes me up after all these years:

Let me fall out of the window
With confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks or better
On a blanket by the stairs
I’ll tell you all my secrets
But I lie about my past
So send me off to bed forever more

It was a disservice to himself in the end, that bold façade he’d erected, for no one knew enough about him to try and help until after it was too late. Even that last-minute telephone call to a sleepy friend he’d claimed was just to meet for breakfast, not a plea for companionship in an hour of desperation. He could not have known the agony and chaos that his absence would engender – no one could – but for both our sakes I wish more than almost anything else that he had.

A Tragedy At Ten: Anastasia

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:53:00 +0000

A full decade now, and the ever-widening wake of her death laps onward, continuing to rock and capsize in spite of the distance. Meanwhile, her memory on our horizon gradually melds with the glare of the sun. Though the precision with which I do so has been dulled with time, I will not ever forget her. Even as we strive to hang on to those we have lost, remember them just as they were, it is a failing of our minds to truncate and generalize our every recollection until, eventually, all we are left with are a few hazy snapshots, some, if we are lucky, slightly more vivid than others.

This is what I remember most about her: her wide, white smile of rounded teeth; the way her narrow shoulders hunched as she laughed, when her head would dip slightly forward with the single, clear “HA!” like a small dropped glass. Always so easy to laugh, but so stingy with it, like she were being taxed for each additional peal. I used to strain so hard to elicit more – a sustained chuckle, a bout of giggling, anything to get that laugh to roll, shimmering and high – but only infrequently did I succeed. Once, I can recall her laughing to tears, though I cannot remember just what I had said or done, merely that she’d sat there, on that sofa, holding her face and shrieking with glee as her eyes brimmed and overflowed. The moment was beautiful.

She was good at comforting. There was a night, when I was betrayed and my heart was broken, when she laid my head in her lap as I cried messy, heaving tears. Stroking my hair until I was done and out with them, she then kept watch as I slept with her dampened knees as my pillow and finally awoke brave enough to bear a lack of human contact. Never was it mentioned, nor did she remind me of the nurturing she offered, as though the whole evening had been nothing. The other friends lucky enough to have her soothing through piques of sadness must know the same gratitude I felt for that solace without strings – the only true kind.

She’d yearned to see Paris, New Orleans, the dangerous and dank corners of London. Old places held her in thrall with their storied decrepitude and, had she been the type to believe in reincarnation, I’m certain she would have fancied one of her past selves as an adventurous member of eighteenth-century France’s petit noblesse or a plucky Victorian socialite. Just beginning college, however, and working retail at a toy and novelty store meant her means were scarcely great; leisure travel was not to be readily had. Today, it is no feat for me to imagine her having occasion to indulge in those much dreamed-of excursions. When I think of her, she often stands in the British Isles, atop some weather-beaten hill by the sea, her fine, chestnut hair whipping over her face in salty gusts. Facing the wide, gray ocean, she stands alone and confident – they way we’d always hoped she would one day. But for all its apparent dolor, the image is comforting to me in a way. I do not wish to remember her as I last saw her: a carved wooden doll in an ornate box. Her spirit was too bright for that, too lighted by potential.

However accidentally, hers is an indelible mark. And though most all of us who knew her will remain in our own ways grieving and angry for a time longer, we will still have those hazy snapshots to bring us some vestiges of happiness from the moments she illuminated our lives.

Double Life, Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:53:00 +0000

The rewards of my job at the bistro were to be found at the end of the evening, when I carried out a backpack full of baguettes, butter, and Styrofoam containers of soup. On my bike and out of the parking lot, I’d take a right down an alleyway, hardly three feet wide, between the aging brick buildings of Old Westport. The alley widened after fifty feet or so, and there, cloistered by the back sides of popular businesses in the trendy entertainment and shopping district, was an alcove in which a single wrought iron bench faced a narrow tree, both murkily lit by one sulfurous lamp. In those waning days of the summer of ’96, it was a favored place for homeless teens to loiter.

Melvin, Kim, Joe, Elise, Doc, Dave – I remember them all well, and at least the faces of so many more. Some had come to Kansas City with the intention of staying; others considered it only a temporary stopover on their way to Portland, that great indigent Mecca so renowned for its agreeable year-round weather and free public transportation. Their reasons for leaving home were as different as they themselves: a few sought escape, a few wanted adventure, and several had been on the streets so long they couldn’t even remember their parents’ faces or why they had left in the first place. Sometimes drugs played a part. Sometimes they didn’t. But every one of them had a story – travel stories like Dave’s, love stories like Elise and Joe’s, heartbreaking stories like Doc’s. How I came to know them was hardly a story at all, though, because they slept in my neighborhood, set up makeshift jewelry shops on the sidewalks, and “spanging” – begging for spare change – outside the coffee shops. I was merely one of the few who chose to stop and talk, or at least smile and say hello. The commonality of age, for most were near mine, made me reach out in a way, where others might turn their heads. Gradually, as I came to know them, where they stayed and what they did with their time, I began taking them leftover food from work.

I’d coast along the bricks, keeping the bicycle straight in the darkness by equilibrium alone, and brake as I entered the light, welcomed by a cluster of smiling faces. Even before I could dismount, Kim was always on her feet and at me with a fierce hug, her soft fuzz of hair smelling lightly of sweat and sandalwood oil.

“Byron!” she’d sigh, as if it had been longer than a day since we had seen each other last. Hugging her back, I did my best to keep from falling backwards and crushing the food on my back.

“Hey, Sweets, how are you?”

“Okay, but I stink.”

“You smell fine,” I always told her. Still, some days I would find ways to sneak her home so she could shower.

“What’s up, Working Man?” asked little Melvin from his corner. His voice was forever tired and creaky, belying his disturbing youth. The baggy jeans and long-sleeved tees did nothing to camouflage his bony frame. Often, he looked jaundiced, and I worried for his health.

“Hey, Melvin,” I would say, and although I knew his stock reply, I’d ask whether or not he was hungry.

“Nah,” he would answer dismissively, “I’m good.” That tiny, lazy smile and squinted gaze told me what I needed to know.

I would lean my bike against the wall and, setting down my bag, unpack the food. Everyone got a cup of soup and, more often than not, a couple of baguettes. There was always a little extra, just in case someone else happened to be there. Theirs was a transitory world, and people came and went as a matter of course. Certainly I was no exception: the kid with the job, sober and with a safe place to lay his head every night. My slacks and dress shoes clashed conspicuously with their patched hoodies and third-hand sneakers. It’s a wonder they allowed me into their circle at all. Yet there we’d be, five nights a week, ensconced in our halo of yellow light, in that secret nook between buildings – just seven or eight kids sharing a meal.

Double Life, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:51:00 +0000

Twelve years ago, when I was not quite seventeen, I was paid a pittance to host at a little bistro of hazily European persuasion, in Kansas City. Its cramped kitchen was closed during the day; the place served coffees and light refreshments until late afternoon, relying more on the patronage of the shop in front, which dealt in imported candies and tinned goods, gourmet cheeses and sausages. Passing through the shop, diners were tempted with a savory selection of coffee beans, neatly wrapped Swiss and German chocolates, and rack after rack of wine – from middle-of-the-road Chardonnays to pricier vintage Shiraz. To walk down an aisle, one almost had to turn sideways, to keep from knocking anything off the shelves. The refrigerated glass counter that ran along the left, the length of the shop, bore an obscene variety of delectably fatty foodstuffs that would make any cocktail party or gallery opening the talk of the country club. Several long strides through the front door would carry you into the comparatively open space of the restaurant.

It wasn’t much: eighteen tables clad in virginal white, with black, shiny wooden chairs, and small vases of wildflowers as centerpieces. The building was new and unadorned, with clean, white walls and recessed spot lighting that was only used during the daytime. A couple of ceiling-high windows offered a connection to the outside; otherwise the walls were solid, decorated with framed, vintage posters for olive oil and cognac. At six o’clock every evening, however, a transformation would take place, and the unremarkable coffee shop would, by a trick of the light and a bit of finesse, become a warm, candlelit sanctuary of gustatory delights. Silverware would be shined and glasses polished. Small loaves of bread that had been so diligently baked throughout the afternoon would be swathed within their basket crèches. Pats of butter would be dropped in ice water to keep them precisely formed until they were to be served. Like soft magic, the posters on the walls would spring to life in the ambient flicker of tabletop votives, and the smoke of Billie Holiday’s voice wafted up from hidden speakers – the perfect soundtrack.

Five days a week, I would ride my ten-speed from my mother’s apartment, less than six blocks away, wearing slacks and a freshly-pressed white oxford, shoes polished to dark mirrors. The bike would be locked to a guardrail at the far end of the parking lot. Sometimes on my way through the front door I would pick up a small handful of chocolate-coated espresso beans and pop them into my mouth before anyone saw. Usually, though, I made a beeline for my lectern – the point at which the shop officially ended and the restaurant began – and started shuffling the stack of notes that awaited me there.

Tim was always the first to greet me. “Hello, Byron,” he would drawl from his roost at the shop counter, always with a tiny espresso cup in his hand. He was fastidious about everything, and it showed through in his work ethic and pencil-thin mustache alike.

“Got your lighter?” he would ask, and by way of response I’d flick a brief flame in his direction without looking up. He kept a hawkish eye on things like that. The status of candles and unlit cigarettes troubled him in his sleep (assuming he slept). If the knot of my tie was found lacking, he’d let me know with a noisy slurp of coffee and a grimace. Most days, he would simply stand there in his apron until the coffee was gone, then flit off to make preparations for his second role as waiter. Every shift he worked was a double, near as I could tell. Without him staring down at me, it was always easier to concentrate on my seating arrangements and the handling of last-minute reservations.

The restaurant was open until eleven, running much the same during those five hours, as any other establishment of its caliber should. Our diners were mainly wealthy retirees, executives, and middle-aged couples quietly celebrating promotions or anniversaries. Clad in bulky, conspicuous jewelry and slyly tailored suits, they arrived punctually, ate, and departed with little fanfare or bother. My duties were the telephone usually kept me occupied for the duration, even overseeing so few tables. From time to time, there would be a lull and I would help the busboy clear and re-set a table, or lend a hand in serving. We all worked well together; no task was delegated. Without fail, the evening would fly by.

It was after the last of the diners had left that we rejoiced in the languor of closing up. Black ties loosened, sleeves rolled, collars rakishly undone, we’d pull together two tables and set about dividing tips over glasses of wine, smoking imported cigarettes. Sitting backwards in my chair, my arms folded on the back, enjoying the loose laughter and easy conversation of my co-workers, I relished the moment. Tall and lanky John, emboldened by one too many glasses of Zinfandel, might stand up and offer a song from his latest performance, making up half the words as he went; or Susan, dark-haired and forever worried, might offer up a tale of some hilarious, awful mishap from her week. We reveled in our stories, our jokes. Never mind that America’s heartland, I never felt so French in all my life – not even sitting in that Parisian café, ironically wearing a beret.

Shortly before midnight, we would disperse. The music would be turned off, the lights would be turned up, the last Shepherd’s Hotel cigarette would be extinguished, and the spell would instantly lift. It was a jarring transition, but only an intermediate one. The place to which I was about to depart was another world completely.

A Compulsory Recollection

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:36:00 +0000

On a wet night in April, windows down at seventy-eight miles per hour, came the smell of cedar – my father’s closet – and I, entirely unprepared for it, pulled to the shoulder, my face suddenly dampened by something other than the rain.