Sketch: The Broadway Beacon

One day, as I was digging my way through even more coursework, this time in a seaside town along the Maryland eastern shore, some locals told me the story of two boys, twins, who had stopped going to school and began building a tower from anything they could find and re-use, old rakes and broom handles and wooden deck chairs and planks from doors and broken ladders and the blue-hued tops of desks, they built this day and night until one day it was too tall for their ladders, in fact, too tall for any ladder, and so they erected scaffolding, then stitched together a tarp using the same general model—these two boys who were previously only remarkable for their shared stupidity—and after the tarp was included one could almost see the spire from space, or so the twins had insisted, and yet because of their ambitious plans, they had also completely run out of supplies, the tower stopping midway through the next level so that the last post from a neighbor’s fence stood naked, its splinters hard and bristling from the afternoon winds, and in fact the winds themselves had become a menace, as with every gust the structure moaned and creaked and whistled throughout the cul de sac.

When a retired insurance adjuster happened upon the structure, he was immediately filled with thoughts of making it an attraction, of removing the tarp for all eyes to behold the grandeur after paying the appropriate admission; he bought it outright, he went to work on a name, first the “Pikesville Pylon” then the “Recycled Tower of Babel” then the “Backyard Broadway Beacon”–not that it was anywhere near a Broadway, but rather he felt the name added a certain strength and panache, so enormous were his thoughts that he had already christened it the Eighth Wonder and placed ads as far as his pension would allow, he had booked radio time and local news and a photographer to record, and in a sixty mile radius had papered all available billboard space because the adjuster was dead set on making this thing a sensation, he had plans made to have it gilded, or if not gilded, then at least strung with lights—meanwhile the rains had wilted the ground and the twins had vacated the house and along with the rest of the neighborhood, now gushing its residents, none of them waiting for the sheer slope of the tower to collapse under the weight of all this bluster.

As the story goes, on the day the last one left, the tower did.

Sketch: Cat Names

It wasn’t until the day after my grandfather’s funeral that I remembered this story, having nothing to do with his death but rather the infection that had laid me low, at rest in my bed in cold sweats. While traveling, on a bus because it was all my youthful budget would allow, I met a man who had just been let out from prison. He had served his sentence, that his time was up and so was moving to Portland for a fresh start. This was around 2001, before the coffee and preciousness had formed a film like a fine soot. He was arrested for stealing a pair of sneakers, although when he really thought about it he was caught because he had been smoking a joint a few blocks from the store, and the police had only found the sneakers as a matter of happenstance. While he had been in prison, he had had infrequent visitations from a woman he had been seeing, when I say infrequent visitations really I mean that she had regularly visited every three weeks, but this seemed like an eternity in their elongating interims, because the man wished back for a taste of home. After about five months, she altogether stopped, or at least, the gap grew first to four weeks, then to six, then she altogether disappeared. He had become coarser throughout, and he chalked it up to that. After about four months had passed between the visits, he received a letter from this estranged paramour, initially stumbling but then quickly shifting to apologetic. She said she had wanted to stay in touch, but in the interim it had become too painful, that she had had a miscarriage shortly after the sentencing had come through, and that with the subsequent internment she had felt it was inappropriate to pile onto his situation, that it was fine anyway because she had decided to abort regardless, and that she had only decided to come clean, to clear her conscience, as it were, because around the same time, the cat had run off only to be found dead, hit by a car, an old Pontiac that released black fumes when the pedal was depressed, the letter went on about how her decision fraught but felt to be the right thing, and that now they should both focus on moving forward with their lives and forgetting. He relayed this story to me, only stopping to give me the cat’s name, specifically Chevy, specifically a name he had always had misgivings about because he'd never liked his original Chevy and thought it might have led to exactly such an untimely end, and to show me the tattoo he’d had installed while incarcerated. As the morning began to break and we pulled into the Portland station to separate, he asked me if I had any money for his next leg. In the idling bus, while the other passengers pushed past to get out of the confines, I gave him the twenty dollars I had on hand and wished him luck.

On the revelation of the Ostmark Bell

Apparently, it wasn't just hyperbole:

The bishops...will be followed--with measured tread, as they say--by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. And these will be followed by the National Socialist Catholic population, I thought. And the music will be played by our National Socialist Catholic band. The National Socialist salvos will be fired, and the National Socialist bells will toll. And if we're in luck, our National Socialist sun will shine throughout the ceremony, and if we're out of luck we'll be drenched by the National Socialist rain.

[From Thomas Bernhard's, Extinction, trans. by David McLintock, after the narrator Franz-Josef Murau sees the guest list for the funeral of his parents--who were Nazi supporters through the aftermath of World War II--and brother, at the family estate of Wolfsegg, in Austria.]

The Hans piece, part one

I'm still in the throes of revising, but here's the first section. Because I'm angry, because I have things to prove, I might post more. But it won't be complete, and I would really like readers for when it's done. Drop me a line.


This is the running joke--i.e., the Hans Story--that has existed between Sophie and me for quite a few months. It exists after the break, and it's coming to a close (and p.s, enjoy):

Sketches, May 9 - In the tone of Bernhard

On the 14th of August, already suffering from a pulmonary infection that the doctor had said might not be remediable, I joined my ex-mentor for a trip along the Dardanelles, by sea, in fact, against my doctor's wishes and much too soon for any such engagement or activity, but keeping this in mind although weakened from the same infection I joined him at a disregard for any spreading, for he had required my attention and had required such attention immediately on the 14th with no wavering. It had been too long, he had told me with a stern coolness, asking if I had been keeping up with my reading of Kant, and as much as I wished to lie I had felt invigorated too much to be in his presence and told him I had not, and without any disappointment over the fact of my neglect he had instead set a table inside the sailing vessel we were about to embark on. I had steeled myself for this discussion of Kant, for his disappointment over my not having kept up with Kant, as my ex-mentor had on his last lesson been preparing me for his discussion on Kant, on Kant's sublime and how it relates to the overall full fleshing of Kant's very specific aesthetics, of how the sublime was at the heart of his aesthetics, and thus at the heart of all aesthetics after him, how the sensation of  beauty either mechanistic or awesome was at the base the starting point for a discussion of all learned discussions on the subject of beauty after Kant, but instead he asked me where I was now living, and as I coughed once, for the sea air tickled too harshly the base of the infection, I realized instead that his scorn was about to be placed elsewhere.

Sketches, May 8 - In the tone of Markson

They showed up on a boat, as I have said, a rowboat--or maybe a dinghy--as I recall the method of conveyance was not nearly as important as its conveyees, the boy hamfisted, the girl peeling from a sun-induced rosacea, as the spinnaker flapped useless against a feckless breeze.

She was 12, he was her brother and thus older.

As it was, I had lost track of the days, or weeks, I had been adrift, and the wind stayed quiet in the channel.

Or maybe it wasn't a channel, and maybe I'd simply lost my own sense of location through the grand mush of days, undefined.

Do you have water? he asked first and I said no, Can we come aboard? he asked next, and they boarded my yacht anyway.

I say my only because, by that point, I couldn't remember if the vessel was mine, or if I was simply renting, which is to say that in the grand mush (why do I pick that phrase?), it had long been forgotten the general pretense under which the money changing hands had entirely meant.

The man I handed the wad to--friend, foe, countryman?--smelled of cigarettes and coppertone, but he was lean, and would probably live longer than I, I recalled.

Which is to say that only my bad luck would keep me from not living much longer. Bad luck being my code for pessimism and an overawareness of my physical predicament.

Our house burnt down, the boy said, or maybe he said it was their houseboat, the boy said they had been adrift for days, although they were close to land, and although the fire had not completely destroyed their previous vessel, only scarred it. It's an inevitability, the boy said, that a fire on a vessel surrounded by water would not last too long, what with the air being saturated as it is, the boy added.

The girl, who now seemed less pre-pubescent but at least 17 but gawky, clung to his shirt sleeve like a cloved pineapple, although she did not in fact touch him, although in fact she maintained a wary distance from the two of us the entire time.

Suffice it to say I did not even understand their dynamic, nor did I understand why I let them on the boat, at least while they were still dripping.

Why had I not mentioned they were still dripping, that they boarded the sailing yacht by in fact swimming over, that they hooked over the side like a pair of pirates, that the side was in fact tilted not from the wind but for the own incompetence at ballast.

We did not exchange names. Or we did, and their names were Aguirre and Finn.

Where are you going? the boy asked. About that water, the boy asked. Do you have any food? the boy asked. Do you have any pot, water, beer? the boy asked. I reminded them I had none of the above as a nonsensical matter of fact, the truth of which we both acknowledged simultaneously.

Had I mentioned I'd lost the land myself? That when I had seen it, it seemed to only exist as patches of swamp grass and crowded woods and horseflies, although every bit of that seems to be nonsensical as well, although it's the truth.

There were hikers and runners, although I watched them only as silhouettes, as I lay under the harsh sun, grilling.

Which would account for the lost time, the mush, me being sundrenched , not in my best mental element while I attempted to keep track.

I'm floating, I would have responded, as the boy rummaged through my coolers to find nothing but pooled melted ice. There's a mountain of gold at the end of this channel, the boy said, or if not of gold, then at the very least enlightenment, the boy said.

The girl, as they say, was nary a peep, only for show, not for interaction.

I set sail on a moonless lark, I said, as I waited for the end of days, I said, as I fidgeted for the end to come, I said, as I became entranced by your same-said legend, I said. Which is to say I know about the mountain of Gold, which is to say I'm searching for it. Which is to say you're adrift, he said, I would not say you're incorrect, I added.

He had exhausted his last tick, he had found the beer and opened half. A man at the end of his rope, he said. To excuse the metaphor, although you're not particularly useful, he added. One can rage against the wind, he added, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the wind, he said.

[end of sketch, time to work]

And so we punk

[Ed. note: The following was written for the NPR project Three Minute Fiction after research uncovered that the winner of this installment would receive publication in The Paris Review as well as being read on All Things Considered. Essentially an experiment in microfiction, the task was to create something that could be read in three minutes, about 600 words, on a topic of the guest judge's choosing. This time, a President, any, fictional or otherwise. After the cut is my offering, already submitted but with no real chance of consideration as it will undoubtedly fail the earnestness test that seems a prerequisite for an audience with NPR. It is also a borderline story, more akin to the non-fictions of Donald Barthelme. The piece is called "The President Takes a Sick Day. Enjoy.]