“One Day They’ll Come and Find me” III

I’d been clutching the top of a freight train for three days when I passed an abandoned grainery. Standing alone like that in a field, it reminded me of her and made my stomach growl. When the train reached the cover of evergreens, I grappled down the side of the freight car, my limbs an arachnid tangle sliding down the ballast.

I pried open a door at the base of the silo and needled my fingers into the wall, up to the top. I’ve never entered the adjoining warehouse, but the shared upper level opens into an airy abattoir. Rats had plundered the storage bins. Not a kernel was neglected but somehow the rats remained. Nights I could hear them fighting, a weaker one squealing as another ripped it open. They left bloody paw prints on my clothes.

Now that all the rats are gone, I go out at night to hunt. I put up racks to dry meat. For a while in the neighborhood there were cats and dogs. Somewhere down there, a child feels betrayed. Somewhere down there, a parent will soon be bereft.

Some nights I see searchlights. One day someone will see me, clinging to the side of my turret like a spider, looking for her. She can’t come back, but I can’t stop myself from looking. Strange how we consume what consumes us. I have her, now, in my bones. Her whorish heart beats to my rhythm. She’s a maddening thing, but I love her and she can’t get away anymore.

Back When I was an English Major…

What else? I am thinking about The Masque of the Red Death and rereading “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I just checked out Wisconsin Death Trip and Child of God. All fitting, currently I am considering the Southern Gothic style. I learned this term yesterday. It is making me think about the graphic novel Preacher. Somebody buy me the series and I ‘ll probably put out.

I used to read a friend’s copies of “Preacher” after a breakneck race around the dorms in my rollerblades, then wheel into the elevator, drop some kahlua or whiskey (usually kahlua) into my Doctor Pepper. From there I would head to the brightly lit basement and would stay awake as long I could reading. I miss those days. Istudied harder back then, too. To be fair, I was moodier. But I did like reading that stuff.

Ok, no more beer. Must switch to coffee. I’m pulling myself in two directions right now. mmmm…..

Psych Lecture Drinking Game

I have really got to study, but I skipped my coffee this morning and I’m having trouble focusing. Here, why don’t you read this drinking game I made up for my dad. He gave a speech last night on shifting paradigms in mental health treatment.

If you think you’re going to be called on to change slides, take a shot
If he refers to a psychoanalyst, take a shot
If he uses the word “discredited” take 2 shots
If he uses the word “controversial” take 2 shots
If he includes a slide of the Malleus Maleficarum, just keep drinking
If he mentions scientology, don’t stop drinking. just increase the
angle of the bottle.
If he indulges questions on Mesmer, take a shot

If he mentions his coworkers place in the history of psychiatry, take two more shots and quit playing– you’re done.

I would like to address the house.

 

Spooky takes the floor:

Gentlemen and gentlewomen of the House, to amend a great political figure’s exaltation of change, I posit that while a spirit of reinvention is imbuing the zeitgeist with excitement and optimism, not all change is good. Some things in our lives are meant to be taken for granted, like air and civil liberties; these constants are the threads that weave the tapestry of our lives as Americans. Similarly, Mc Donald’s milkshakes are not meant to have faggy toppings like whipped cream and a cherry. This addition makes for a cup of lies and displace the milkshake within the cup. This decadence is intolerable. Thank you for your time.”

End of the Line II

I arrived early to my stop, though I knew that it would not make the train come any sooner, nor was there any possibility that it would be early, nor late. The ticket was aged and I thumbed it nervously in my pocket, rubbing off the perforation marks where it had attached to rolls of identical tickets. The river coursed past with a confidence that made it hard to believe this hadn’t always been the path of its inevitable march downhill. Patiently watching the water, I turned the ticket over in my pocket before glancing at my watch and pulling the faded piece of paper out. I stood with it in my hand ready to hand it to a conductor who wasn’t even there yet. It had been hard to find, almost nobody had tickets for this line anymore, but there still were a few left around.
This is about the time of year that the train went under, late fall, I read it in the newspapers at the library. The Army Corps of Engineers routed the river slightly to the west, a handful of grey-haired men in Sam Spade suits, flooding the tracks and displacing a few dairy cows. Compensation for the land was adequate; most people were getting out of the farming business by then, anyway. The flooding hadn’t garnered much attention, the headline on the story read “Some cows may not give milk for days.” Maybe somewhere under the water there are still a few stubborn heifers grazing alongside the muddy tracks, chewing river moss.
It had been a sedate undertaking, considering the effort involved in moving a river. So sedate that right on time the next morning, a sleepy crowd boarded their train and drowsily handed their tickets to the conductor, an old man with a soft, slack body, close to retirement. The passengers, heading off to work at the bank or the life insurance office, were the sort to take life on its own terms. Sensible suits and neatly cut nails. Get up early, go to work, the routine punctuated only by the odd illness and subsequent trip to the doctor’s office where a file would be made and pushed back amongst shelves of identical files.
A little girl’s head bobbed and settled against her mother’s shoulder, her mother holding her daughter’s feverish hand. A man who had the look of an actuarian opened the paper and closed his eyes without ever making sense of the words, letting the pastoral surroundings escape as the train urged on and away from its stop. Everyone had been right on time, arriving a few minutes early, milling about until the train arrived, as it always did, with metronomic precision.
The momentum of the train did not allow for much slowing as the train sped into the water. The apathetic glassiness of the water was barely disturbed, until the smoke stack submerged and bubbled for a moment, then ceased as the inner workings of the engine were extinguished. Water, I imagine, poured through the windows and rushed in first at the passenger’s feet. Had the little girl pulled her feet up as it flowed over her childish shoes? Had her mother squeezed her hand to quell some childish panic? We all end up at the end of the line eventually, little girl.
A few moments before the train’s scheduled stop, I could see the black shoulders of the locomotive ascending through the brown water, the light still shining as it must in the darkness of the river’s bottom, the conductor’s face slowly coming into view. Water rushed out of the door as it slid open, a strand of moss hanging to one side. The man took my ticket with his waterlogged hand, ripped it, and passed the damp stub back to me. The little girl was still there, though she sat looking at the floor with her hands in her lap now. I sat across from her, but she didn’t look up. Her mother’s watery face caught my gaze and I looked away. The train groaned, its rusty gears grinding against one another, and we lurched backward into the river. Water rushed in again, and if she had the first time, the little girl did not pull her feet up out of it. Neither did I.

One Day They’ll Come and Find Me. II

I’d been clutching the top of a freight train for three days when I passed an abandoned grainery. It reminded me of her, standing alone in a field. Thinking of her, my stomach growled with loneliness but I waited until the train approached a clump of conifers before grappling down the side of the freight car, my limbs an arachnid jumbling, sliding down the graded ballast.
I pried open the access door at the base of the silo and needled my fingers into the wall, up to the top. I’ve never entered the body of the adjoining warehouse, but the upper level opens into an airy abattoir. Rats had plundered the storage bins. Not a kernel was neglected but somehow the rats remained. Nights I could hear them fighting, a weaker one squealing as another ripped it open. Sometimes they have dried blood on their paws.
Now that all the rats are gone, I go out at night to hunt. I put racks up and use them to dry meat, now. For a while in the neighborhood there were cats and dogs, but no more. It’s cold up here so I tried to make one into a hat, but the fur fell out. I threw it into the wind.
Sometimes I think I see searchlights, from my little turret by the bridge. One day someone will see me, clinging to the side of the building, looking for her. She can’t come back, but I can’t stop myself from looking for her. Strange how we consume what consumes us. She’s in me, now, in my bones and in my blood. I can feel her all around me. She’s a maddening thing, she’s a whore and I hate her and she can’t get away anymore.

Comparing and Contrasting three poems by Willa Cather

Though thematically similar, Cather’s three selected poems vary widely in voice. “Grandmither, Think not I Forget” uses a careful meter of nineteen syllables per line, with the exclusion of the last in conjunction with an almost Shakespearean feeling use of language. I cannot place the time frame she is affecting, but it sharply contrasts the more modern poem “The Namesake”. “The Namesake” is firmly modern in its voice, its brief lines, stanzas and plainspoken style adding to cause. The poem’s direct references to the American states, especially during the time of war and settlement, counter the previous poem’s nostalgia.

Though both poems use natural imagery, thyme and rose and clay in “Grandmither, Think not I Forget,” and stones and earth and various types of trees in “the Namesake,” along with the third selected poem “Evening Song”, but I will get to that one in a moment. Both use natural imagery and both speak from the point of roughly the same persona. In both, the speaker is young (?) woman alone, speaking to a departed relative about a lover from whom she has been separated.

In “Evening Song,” the speaker is apparently not physically separated from her “Love” but seems to feel some emotional separation. She is justifying her expressions of the sentiment by noting the brevity of life. She uses natural imagery again, but these are not the intimate things listed in the previous two poems, not thyme or rue or trees, but instead are stars and day and night and the “deep and dark” sea. Again, the theme of isolation plays itself out, just not so literally in this piece as in the previous two.

I Waited all Day

 

I pulled my ticket from my coat pocket and held it out, waiting patiently for the train.

 
I arrived early to my stop, though it would not make the train come any sooner, nor was there any possibility that it would be early, nor late. The ticket was old and I thumbed it nervously in my pocket, wearing creases into it, before glancing at my watch and pulling the faded piece of paper out, ready to hand it to a conductor who wasn’t even there yet. It had been hard to find, almost nobody had tickets for this line anymore, but there were a few left around.

This is about the time of year that the train went under, late fall, I read it in the newspapers at the library. The Army Corps of Engineers routed the river slightly to the west, flooding the tracks and displacing a few dairy cows. The flooding hadn’t garnered much attention, the headline on the story read “Some cows may not give milk for days.” Maybe somewhere under the water there are still a few stubborn heifers grazing alongside the muddy tracks, chewing river moss.

It had been a sedate undertaking, considering the effort involved in moving a river. So sedate that the next morning, a sleepy crowd boarded their train and drowsily handed their tickets to the conductor, an old man with a soft, slack body, close to retirement. A little girl’s head bobbed and settled against her mother’s shoulder, holding her hand. A man opened the paper and closed his eyes, letting the pastoral surroundings escape as the train urged on and away from its stop. Everyone had been right on time, the train arrived, as it always did, with metronomic precision.

The momentum of the train did not allow for much slowing as the train sped into the water. The apathetic glassiness of the water was barely disturbed, until the smoke stack submerged and bubbled for a moment, then stopped. Water, I imagine, poured through the windows and rushed in first at the passenger’s feet. Had the little girl pulled her feet up? Had her mother squeezed her hand?

A few moments before the train’s scheduled stop, I could see the black shoulders of the locomotive ascending through the brown water, the light still shining as it must at the bottom of the river, the conductor’s face slowly coming into view. Water rushed out of the door as it slid open, a strand of moss hanging to one side. The man took my ticket with his waterlogged hand, ripped it, and passed the damp stub back to me. The little girl was still there, though she sat looking at the floor with her hands in her lap now. I sat across from her, but she didn’t look up. Her mother caught my gaze and I looked away. The train groaned, it’s rusty gears grinding against one another, and we lurched backward into the river. Water rushed in again, and if she had the first time, the little girl did not pull her feet up out of it. Neither did I.

Who you looking at?

 

confrontation

As a species, we dug underneath a carboniferous-era sea, excavated unknown tons of limestone, built towering structures and roads with the spoils and linked people together in ways recently unheard of.

But we are turned away by a swaggering traffic cone.

One day They’ll come and find me.

One day, they'll come and find me.

I’d been clutching the top of the train for three days when either cold or rain induced me to open my eyes as I passed this strange, agricultural fortress. Clanking rhythmically, the cars stacked and slowed like the vertebra of a metallic serpent, slinking though the town. The thing slowed as it passed behind empty warehouses and respectable turn-of-the-century domiciles, a nice enough suburb to brake at. Somebody had lived here once, and lived exactly as their station suited them and their mansions advertised. We all find our homes eventually, through manufacturing or pursuit.

I waited until the train approached a clump of still-green conifers and grappled down, stumbling and sliding down the graded platform, my limbs pell mell in an arachnid jumbling until the soft boggy bottom of a drainage ditch soaked my remaining clothes with melted snow and slush. After three blustery days trying to doze on top of a freight train, the slurry didn’t even hurt.

The building was abandoned, rats hadn’t left so much as a grain or a kernel behind, yet somehow there were still rats. The door to the shaft was easily pried open, and though there was no ladder, I had no trouble scaling the walls. I don’t think I’ve ever been into the body of the building, but the upper level opens into an airy abattoir. I put my racks up and use them to dry meat, now. I go out at night to hunt, now that all the rats are gone. For a while there were cats and dogs, but no more.

Sometimes I think I see searchlights, from my little turret by the bridge. One day  someone will see me, clinging to the side of the building, looking for her. She won’t come back, but I can’t stop myself from looking for her. She’s in me, now, I can feel her all around me. She’s a maddening thing, she’s a whore and I hate her and she can’t get away anymore. Nevertheless, I’m here, in my home, and one day they’ll catch me.