The Picture Plane : a new short story I’m working on

posted/written by caroline picard

Woody Allen Woody Allen Woody Allen

An older gentleman, he came upon a fallen Redwood, collapsed and soundless in the yellow grass. The sun was hot, it stole the sound and smell from the air, except sometimes the man heard a buzzing fly land and when it landed everything was more silent than it had been before. The man studied the log, imagined its figure wearing away with rot, woodmites and termites and peculiar worms, until it wore down into dust—the shit of insects—and fed the dull earth.

Instead, the man took a cast of the tree:

He hired a team of employees and together they gathered around its stupendous girth. They raised the dead log on pedestals—sweating, the whine of the chainsaw—cutting the trunk into eight three foot cross-sections. They took elaborate photographs of each of the tree’s parts. Like a murder scene, quadrants of the surrounding area were taped off. Surrounding tree trunks bore neon pink symbols of work on their bases. Everything was documented.  Everyone wore rubber gloves.

They took a cast of its massive breadth, width, length in sections:

sealing the tree in soap, they poured wax around its parts just before nightfall and in the night the wax hardened and in the morning they cut the wax off in clean, re-sealable pieces. They sent those pieces to Japan in a very cool box.

What came back:

The tree—a new one, it resembled the original—came back without the wax, for the wax had been burned to make the new tree. The tree came in parts, the same eight three-foot cross-sections. Its parts made of wood, not Redwood but Hinoki. Its surface had been carved in a myriad of patterns, different borring strokes; the surface of the replica was carved to look like the surface of the old. This new wood blonder and clean looking, though with the self-same hollowed core of its dead predecessor.

There was a note attached to the mid-section.

Someone was asked to translate:

Once put together, this tree will last 400 years, before hitting a crisis of 100 years, during which it will crack. Thereafter it will last another 400 years before it begins to decompose.

*

Manhattan, New York, 2009: Mr. Allen finds himself sat in the corner window of a high-rise apartment—his own, (he can tell by the family photographs, framed and standing on the bookshelves, and the side table too).  He recognizes the pattern on the carpet; it looks to be Persian, red and black interlaced geometries. He remembers the smell of the place—the smell is both familiar and difficult to perceive; it must be a smell belonging to him.

Soon-yi sounds to be making coffee in the adjacent kitchen and he can hear the clattering of domestic objects as she opens and closes kitchen drawers, cabinets, the dish washer; he can hear utensils bump up against interior wooden walls. Mr. Allen conjures a flash of light pouncing on the landscape of things, sprung suddenly from the dark. He wonders if objects possess a sense of being.

It is as if I am in a dream, he thinks assuming a moment of adolescent existentialism. My actions are not entirely my own but I am more or less comfortable. He looks at his hands clasped in his lap and feels, for a moment, the texture of the corduroy underneath. Past his hands, legs, he looks at his feet in brown, waspy loafers. He isn’t wearing socks. For a moment he imagines his actors feel this way in a set and, going against better judgment, makes the disquieting attempt to peer over the bounds of his imagined consciousness—

into the dark, a mottled grey behind his eyes, either the color of his brain or simply the color of what he’ll never know—

His eyes glassy, he looks at you without seeing. “Talk to me, shout at me, so that I’ll wake up and know that I’m here with you and that certain things really are just dreams.” He is merely talking to himself, a recitation.

Truth be told, he cannot remember living in any other place. At the same time he does not remember how he came to be here.

He lifts a hand to feel his upper lip, relieved to find the moustache still in place.

*

The first opera singer ever recorded had past her prime when she was recorded. By then an old woman in her career, her voice wove through the aria like burning paper. Upon listening to the record, people of then recalled how remarkable she’d been before, as a young woman. “The best,” they told their children, smitten by nostalgia.

Children, when grown, repeated the rumor to respective children. And everyone, ever since, has believed the first opera singer recorded to be the best singer there ever was, for their memories make her so and there is no evidence to the contrary.

*

The young people aren’t any good in his movies. Terrible actors. They don’t understand. They try too much to be like him; they aren’t like him enough. They don’t listen to his direction. They impersonate rather than become. Scarlet Johansson. Jason Briggs. Christina Ricci.

Mr. Allen crosses one leg over the other, relishing contempt. Doughy and plump and taut. Ripe. Budding.

The aroma of coffee wafts into the living room.

*

The dream is one of paradise. In the dream men and women live forever, a glistening surface projected by the whirring of gears and oil and machinations run by invisible, grease-stained hands. The dream is one of desire.

*

Mr. Allen has a hand on his temple. His eyes are closed and therefore he does not see the grey day so much as he feels it. Or, discovers the feeling of it. He can picture it in his mind. The leaves are turning in the park below, across the street; he does not see these either. He knows only they are there. For a moment he imagines that the changing leaves are expressed in the sound of loose interior cutlery. He thinks of the sun as something that pounces.

And then he concentrates:

Music comes from a computer on the desk in the opposite corner of the room. It sounds like it comes from a phonograph. Concentrating on static, the overarching fuzz and pop, as bad as any radio station, he imagines the music to be broadcast from the past.

Mr. Allen presses his fingers into his eyes, pinching the lids together almost, feeling a dull pressure in the back of his head. In the darkness behind his eyes; trying desperately to imagine what she might have sounded like—this siren—when she was young. Feeling through the static, for the traces of her youth. Straining back into the past, her voice the bridge.

In a record, he believes, there is the promise of eternity.

*

Someone said LA was like a Dream Factory. He said working in the Dream Factory was pretty tiring; he was pretty tired of making dreams. He complained about the silt he was always breathing—dream silt. He hoped one day to unionize the workers.

*

In a club in Brooklyn with Soon-yi: Mr. Allen has come to the conclusion that Soon-yi’s friends, boys mostly, hide their sexuality from him. He is conscious of the shadows in the basement barroom—no windows, barely any light. Drums clatter and dash and bang as Mr. Allen is jostled occasionally by flanking, shiny strangers.

“One time in Romania I went to a bar we drank in bars that used to be dungeons they used to torture people in those bars. No I’m serious you could still see the burn marks on the sides of the brick where they used to keep lit torches while they tortured people.” Soon-yi can’t hear him and she smiles in a dreamy way watching the young boys on stage, watching the people at the club, hiding her mouth behind her hand; hiding her mouth from her friends across the room. Mr. Allen feels the shadows like a blanket. “I’ve been feeling so odd lately. I can’t explain. I don’t feel myself,” he says. “I must be getting sick. You can have my whole fortune.” Stuttering. “Did you hear? They finally arrested Polanski.” But Soon-yi does not hear because she’s dancing also, jostling up and down against the others in the room and Mr. Allen feels like an old man wearing socks.

It occurs to him that he will die childless, save for those things that he made in discrete instances; things starring himself in scenes he could control.

*

When Charles Darwin’s turtle, Harriet, died in 2006, they discovered her organs had not aged at all. It was believed that, barring disease or accident, turtles could live forever for evidence of time was not apparent on any of her interior organs.

In Hollywood there is a single mother selling serums of Harriet’s DNA on e-bay. It was manufactured abroad. Black market. It has not been tested. Some of her clients: Ashley Olson, Elizabeth Taylor, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson etc.

*

The next band comes on stage, just after Mr. Allen looks at his watch, notes the time and wonders what time he might be able to go home—

Soon-yi talks to some of her male friends at the bar.

Mr. Allen looks around at everyone in the room and shakes his head. He looks again on stage.

The keyboardist looks exactly like him. Only younger. And shorter. Should the keyboardist step off the stage, he might stand a head shorter than Mr. Allen. Everything else about the fellow is spot on. He hears Soon-yi giggling across the room. He imagines her covering her mouth.

“I have a proposition for you,” Mr. Allen says after the show. There are candles on the bar and they cast an irregular but welcome light. “I would like to hire you. Assume my life.” They sit at the bar. His doppelganger drinks a whisky Mr. Allen has bought. “I’ll pay you very well.” Mr. Allen’s hands dance around for emphasis. He finds himself regularly touching the young man, occasionally going so far as to pinch the fellow’s shoulders now and again, testing the fellow’s firmness. The sensation is exhilarating. Mr. Allen wonders, abstractly, if he was himself the same density once.

“Why should I do that?” the young man asks. He looks amused. He wears a plaid cowboy shirt with opalescent, buttons—snaps. Tight black jeans on and converse. Sideburns and Buddy Holly glasses. He smokes. His hands are smaller than Mr. Allen’s.

“Only, you’d have to cut down your sideburns.” Mr. Allen says, worried suddenly, brow knit. He studies the youth, looking for other discrepancies. “And maybe get just a slightly different haircut. I understand the times are different, but at least for the transition period, you’ll need to adopt a little more of my style.” With a sudden clarity of thought, Mr. Allen smiles, relived. “Oh! I know. You’ll have to go away for a while. I’ll send out a press release. I’ll say I’m going abroad. You go abroad too. We can meet in another part of the world, somewhere where no one will know who we are. Then I can teach you how to be me. Then you can come back to America. It’s very simple, really. We could even make movies abroad. When you, ‘I’” he smiles and winks, “come back, no one will ever know the difference.” The young man shakes his head. He seems not to understand. “This has to be good.” Mr. Allen continues. “I’ll pay you an exorbitant amount of money—where do you work? Retail?”

“Record store.”

“Right. Good. Well. You’re rich. Did you think it would be this easy?”

*

In the end:

After the first recording of the opera singer, but before the death of Harriet, an anthropologist and a sociologist made a movie with a cameraman and they traipsed around Paris and Saint-Tropez playing tag with a camera. The interviewee became the interviewer, each time asking, “Are you happy?”

No one was famous.

Biblioteques San Frontiers

Is it my imagination or are libraries getting modeled on big bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles?

See below the re-model of the Squirrel Hill Branch of the Pittsburgh Public Library.

 

Squirrel Hill Branch--Pittsburgh Public Library

 

 

I propose a movement against this. Call it Biblioteques San Frontiers (“Libraries Without Borders”), because the pun is too tempting. If anyone reading this has similar photos of libraries that have adopted this Borders/Barnes & Nobles aesthetic, please post them below in the comment box.

Book Release This Saturday at Women & Children First

posted by Caroline Picard

PRESS RELEASE:

Book Launch and Live Reading on

NOVEMBER 21^st 2009 at Women & Children First at 5:30 pm

www.womenandchildrenfirst.com
5233 N Clark St
Chicago, IL 60640-2122
(773) 769-9299

*For more information please contact Caroline Picard at lantern.g@gmail.com (773.266.4234) or Nick Sarno at: sarno@thegreenlantern.org

 

We’re at it again!

The Green Lantern Press is proud to announce the simultaneous release of three brand new titles :

Love is a Certain Kind of Flower, an artist book by contemporary artist Stephanie Brooks, So Much Better, a debut novel by badatsports correspondent Terri Griffith & Fascia, a collection of short stories by an emerging writer, Ashley Donielle Murray

On Saturday November 21^st at 5:30 Women & Children First will host a reading featuring each of the three authors, Stephanie Brooks, Terri Griffith and Ashley Donielle Murray. Each title follows an independent course of love (or the lack there of).  Authors will read a selection from each of their books and a question and answer /book-signing session will follow. Books will be available for purchase at a discounted rate.

 

THE SPREAD:

LOVE IS A CERTAIN KIND OF FLOWER by Stephanie Brooks printed in an editing of 250 with full color plates supplied by the artist/author. This small chapbook features an extensive index of love-metaphors used in dime-store poetry collections. Continuing in Brooks’ deconstruction of Romance, LOVE IS A CERTAIN KIND OF FLOWER provides an amusing and sometimes poignant reference for emotive description. 2009 $10

In addition to being an artist, Stephanie Brooks is an Adjunct Professor in the Sculpture Department at SAIC. Her work has been exhibited at the MCA in Chicago, The Hyde Park Art Center, Rotunda in Brooklyn, Center for Contemporary Art in Louisville, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and Gallery 400 in Chicago. She is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago and Peter Blum Gallery in New York. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

So Much Better: a debut novel by Terri Griffith, printed in an edition of 500 w/silkscreen covers by Nick Butcher of Sonnenzimmer and a color plate by LA artist Zoe Crosher. This book describes the inner life of a Credit Union worker as her life slowly unravels. In the absence of her sister and girlfriend, the protagonist becomes increasingly disassociated with her life, until she eventually, unemotionally, comes loose. 2009 $20

Terri Griffith’s writing has appeared in Bloom, Suspect Thoughts, Bust and in the anthologies Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class and Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak about Health Care in America. Along with Nicholas Alexander Hayes, she is co-authoring a transgressive retelling of the Greek Myths. Terri is the literary correspondent for the popular contemporary art podcast Bad at Sports and she also co-hosts the online reading series The Parlor.

Zoe Crosher is an artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Vancouver, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York City.

 

 

FASCIA a collection of short stories by Ashley Donielle Murray printed in an edition of 500 w/ silkscreen covers by Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer. FASCIA describes a series of Southern vignettes, describing various angles of life, from the silent-movie starlet, to the high school prom queen in middle age, to the adolescent boy. In each story three is a delicate web of familial and communal relationships that intersect, overlap and impede on the landscape. 2009 $20

Ashley Donielle Murray was born in 1982. She was raised in Texas and North Carolina, which serve as a backdrop for many of the stories in this collection. A graduate of the MFA creative writing program at Columbia University, she now lives in Queens, New York, and works as an adjunct English professor in Manhattan. She is currently at work on a novel set in the twenties.

You can listen to Ashley reading one of the stories in the collection by going here.

This Report: Jac Jemc at the Parlor

posted by Caroline Picard

A few weeks ago, Jac Jemc read a selection of her work at the former Green Lantern Gallery space. She read to a full house and it was fantastic–I even figured out how to work the camera on my phone (though I apologize for the hand-jiggling. I haven’t meditated long enough to keep things steady). You can download the entire reading here, along with an intriguing question-answer period in which she talks about her process, the role of time in her work and the weight of naming things.

Here are some images from the evening:

 

The Travelers

posted by Heather McShane

I have been involved in a number of collaborative projects recently and have surprised myself in the process. For example, I sang in the video below, which is something especially surprising if you know how shy and quiet I can be at times.

The song, the video, are in response to a poem by Laura Schell who wrote a poem in response to a Gwendolyn Brooks poem. I like this response begetting response begetting response begetting—

So here is Laura’s poem, followed by my video (which, I warn, you might want to watch only once):

The Travelers
by Laura Schell

They keep their pennies in a jelly jar.
It rocks in the glove box of their rusty car.
The tires swell into the tar of the road,
They haven’t gone far.

Two who are changing.
Two who have yet to live their day,
But are not sure of when to start
And what they are going to pay.

And praying . . .
Praying, with eyes shut and fingers crossed,
They grow accustomed to the smells their upholstery has arrayed
of library books and gum and trash and Windex, soda
cans, plastic and mold.

And the video:

Our Trip to the Northeast

posted by Caroline Picard

Last Thursday the Green Lantern went off to the Northeast. We landed in Boston in order to do a reading at Whitehause Family Records in Jamaica Plain on Friday night.

Nate ended up playing acoustic in the beginning of the evening. I read a little something from the Gazette, Chris played a set, as did Luke and then Devin King read the response he’d written about the Gazette; the same one he read at the Whistler a few months ago. Some of the photos are kind of dark, but hopefully you’ll get a sense for the ambiance of the place. There seem to be a bunch of folks who live there; the house itself is large and leggy with numerous door to other rooms which, from the glimpses supplied, seem to boast their own largess. The people there were really nice, though we spent the most time with Kate and Brian. Otherwise, housemates appeared to enter the front door, come in the living room, spend some time watching out show, and then leave quietly–in what direction, I’ve no idea.

I really liked thinking about how the Northeastern architecture might influence alternative exhibit/art spaces–namely because they seem so undeniably domestic. Even the apartments I happened upon during my trip felt more like mini houses inside of larger houses. In any case. Whitehouse Family Records was decorated with years and years of detritus, art project and collective inspiration. There were Jimi Hendrix flags in the windows, paintings dedicated to the Beatles. There was a chandelier decorated with drift wood and horns and glass beads. An orchestral noise-machine composed of similar materials stood in the corner. We sat on a carpet in the living room, lights dimmed, and listened. It was great.

As all this was taking place, I was also installing a show in Providence, at AS220. That meant that every day, Devin and I drove out to Rhode Island to install the show, “Isolated Fictions.” “Isolated Fictions” is a group show featuring the work of Deb Sokolow, Jason Dunda and, in this manifestation, Rebecca Grady. As well, of course, as the Gazette. Neal Walsh was of great help–he had just opened up a small room in the AS22o’s project space; that room is to be dedicated to print projects. Thus it was a good match. In addition to helping us with the installation process, he also brought us to the Atheneum Member’s Library in Providence, where we got to see an original copy of the Gazette.

This library is awesome and feels totally haunted in that way that old places filled with old books and old wood feel haunted. The library was allegedly built in 1828, at the same time that the state built its first prison. The library was built with the intention to educated new immigrants who came to the region for work. It was believed that if the state provided the illusion of power (via education) the emerging lower/working class would not revolt. In the event that they did revolt, Rhode Island also built a prison.

Of additional note is the card catalogue: at a certain point in the 1900’s, a woman went through the library by hand, copying down library cards for all of the books, by hand. In that elegant, spidery script of our forefathers. Her index cards are still prevalent.

This is Providence at Night: On the Night of the Opening

The Main AS220 Space:

Our Show at the Project Space:

Why Weren’t Any Women Invited To Publishers Weekly’s Weenie Roast?

The Academie Française

Publishers Weekly recently announced their Best Books Of 2009 list. Of their top ten, chosen by editorial staff, no books written by women were included. Quoted in The Huffington Post, PW confidently admitted that they’re “not the most politically correct” choices. This statement comes in a year in which new books appeared by writers such as Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker.

“The absence made me nearly speechless.” said writer Cate Marvin, cofounder of the newly launched national literary organization WILLA (Women In Letters And Literary Arts), which, since August, has attracted close to 5400 members on their Facebook web page, including many major and emerging women writers. “It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture.”

WILLA’s other cofounder, Erin Belieu, Director Of The Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, asked, “So is the flipside here that including women authors on the list would just have been an empty, politically correct gesture? When PW’s editors tell us they’re not worried about ‘political correctness,’ that’s code for  ‘your concerns as a feminist aren’t legitimate.’ They know they’re being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that. I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people—writers and readers–who don’t feel good about it at all.”

PW also did a Top 100 list and, of the authors included, only 29 were women. The WILLA Advisory Board is in the process of putting together a list titled “Great Books Published By Women In 2009.” This will be posted to the organization’s Facebook page and website. A WILLA Wiki has also been started for people to share their nominations for Great Books By Women in 2009. Press release to follow.

WILLA was founded to bring increased attention to women’s literary accomplishments and to question the American literary establishment’s historical slow-footedness in recognizing and rewarding women writer’s achievements. WILLA is about to launch their website and is in the process of planning their first national conference to be held next year.

(Note: until recently, WILLA went under the acronym WILA, with one “L.” If you’re interested in the organization, please Google WILA with one “L” to see background on how this group was originally formed.)

For more information contact:

Erin Belieu

ebelieu@fsu.edu

Cate Marvin

catemarvin@gmail.com

Jac Jemc will be at The Parlor Tuesday November 3rd at 7pm!

Jac Jemc sells books at Women & Children First.  Her first novel, My Only Wife, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in 2012.  In the meantime, she has work that will soon be out in Alice Blue, Barrelhouse, Front Porch, Pank and The Rome Review.  She is the poetry editor of decomP and a fiction reader for Our Stories. Mostly though, she blogs her rejections at jacjemc.wordpress.com.

Following her 30 minute reading, Jac will take questions from the audience.

As always, the event will be recorded and published on-line for your repeated listening pleasure on iTunes and at www.theparlorreads.com

All readings take place at 1511 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd Floor

For more information, please visit www.theparlorreads.com or contact theparlorreads@gmail.com

The Parlor is a monthly reading series sponsored by Bad At Sports Podcast (www.badatsports.com).

Let’s Talk About the End

A few days ago I received the following correspondence with regards to a fantasy I’ve been having with more and more frequency for an “art motel”—an abandoned roadside motel that has been converted into an artist’s residency site (rip up the parking lot and put in a vegetable garden)—from a lawyer friend of mine currently in her last year of school at The University of Oregon.  Her name is Jilian Clearman.  I feel it sums up in an eloquent manner the general sense of pervasive anxiety accompanying the particular phase of human devolution that’s been in the air lately, as well as offering some useful advice.  In any case, for your reading pleasure:

“I want to reiterate how enthusiastic I am about the art motel idea.  In part because it sounds like a wonderful creative scene and a worthwhile experiment in community, and also because I want everyone I love to make it comfortably through the bad shit that’s going to happen sometime between 2012 and 2020.  I’m not talking about the Mayan calendar end of the world stuff — I don’t discount that, but it’s not why I’m worried.  I’m talking about peak oil and accelerating climate change.  I can tell you in more detail what I think is going to happen and why.  I can recommend things I’ve read by climate scientists and environmental lawyers that have convinced me.  I don’t think anyone knows exactly what’s going to happen, though.  In my opinion the best case scenario involves a lot of ordinary, middle class people waiting in line for charity and government rations for a while until our food system readjusts to the new price of oil.  The worst involves a Mad Max-style total breakdown of law and order, possibly lasting a long time.  Here’s the take-home: stay out of major cities and establish a reliable food source.  I’m dead serious about this.  I think a year’s worth of stored food and the means to grow more is a good goal to work toward.  And you may want to think about an alternative power source, or at least a way to cook properly without gas or electricity.  And you’ll need a gun.  I’m buying a shotgun when I get to Wisconsin.  Northern California looks like it’s going to continue to be a pretty easy climate, so that’s a good place for you guys to settle.  I know that this sounds a little crazy, but it’s not some hippie survivalist fantasy I’m entertaining myself with.  Maybe it won’t be all that bad, or maybe it will be very bad, but either way we are in for some kind of rough transition, when the way we’ve been living finally becomes unsustainable in an immediate rather than an abstract way.

Take a moment to consider the lot of an environmental lawyer at this stage — to understand these issues (and to understand the pitifully slow and inadequate means that our system provides for trying to address them) is to understand that we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  There’s genuine debate within the community about mitigation versus adaptation — whether it’s useless to try and stop climate change at this point and we should put our energy toward trying to protect the most vulnerable people from the worst of the bad shit that’s already starting, shit that’s too far along to stop at this point.  And there’s the constant temptation to give up and build a little solar-powered compound in the mountains and take care of yourself and your loved ones.  Currently I’m sort of trying to do both.  It makes me wish I was doing this work ten years ago, though.  Or even five.  There was still time then.

Anyway, enough of that.  I’ve made my point.”

 

Thanks Jil.

 

Posted by Lily

 

 

 

Earlier, during my absence from here

Last Sunday, I wrote a book, a short book, but it helps. And before I wrote it, this poem came to me in the night—

I can’t sleep because
I’m in love, having
only just learned how
to write. The shad-
ows move across
the walls, blink
branches.

And I’ve begun another book, a collection of encounters with so-called strangers. Here are some possible inclusions in the book—

A stranger said “beaten and robbed” and then asked me for money. I pointed across the street to the fire department, but the stranger didn’t go.

A stranger complained to me that the bus was traveling slowly. I said something like, “The movement of the bus makes me sleepy.”