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The Hearth Fire and other stories (Updated 5/24)
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<blockquote data-quote="ForceUser" data-source="post: 1553373" data-attributes="member: 2785"><p>This is a piece of creative nonfiction I wrote for class. Creative nonfiction is a relatively new genre of literature that uses traditional fiction storytelling techniques to tell a biographical or autobiographical story. Enjoy.</p><p></p><p></p><p>“Three American Koans”</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>I</strong></p><p></p><p>Red lights begin to blink as candy-stripe arms lower across the pedestrian walkway. A rumble enters my chest and swirls around, taking up residence between my heart and lungs. A turquoise cyclops thunders ominously down the tracks toward the concrete station.</p><p></p><p>It is a sunny afternoon. I consider stepping in front of the train.</p><p></p><p>I don’t have a death wish. I’m not suicidal. I’m curious what it would feel like. Two steps and a quick hop. I’m fascinated. The engineer wouldn’t have time to stop – she’s already slowing down.</p><p></p><p>I suspect I would bounce off the engine’s nose cone, flop a couple of times as I fell, and then scream as my ankle caught under the grille. My leg would crack and twist instantly, wrenched apart into a mangle of blood and blue jeans, and then my entire body would grind under the train with unrelenting brutal momentum. My guts would burst like a balloon. My torso would flatten like a tortilla. My head would pop off like a firecracker; or would it remain attached, gruesomely disfigured?</p><p></p><p>A shiver caresses my spine. I take two steps back to ensure no one can accidentally shove me onto the tracks. I am paranoid that way around heavy machinery. Consider it a consequence of spending four years aboard an aircraft carrier. I watched the USS Forrestal burn on videotape. A crewman kicked a bomb across the flight deck while the fire raged.</p><p></p><p>The Coaster pulls into the station. I leave Sorrento Valley and step into a world of north coastal commuters and air conditioning.</p><p></p><p>I don’t have a death wish. I’m just curious. I am drawn to the potential for violence. I am as violent as any American. I cried when the twin towers fell. I felt impotent shame when I saw naked abused Iraqi prisoners. I won’t watch a videotaped beheading, though I’m drawn to. I call this having principles.</p><p></p><p>The Coaster snakes along the side of a hill on its way south. I imagine how death would come if I pulled the red handle on the safety glass and executed an emergency evacuation. Birds fly from treetop to treetop a hundred feet below me.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>II</strong></p><p></p><p>Armando Martinez spoke Nahuatl, a native language of the Aztecs. This is what the campus newspaper says. City Heights gangbangers shot him to death. He got an “A” in Chicano studies. I’m not sure what a Chicano is. </p><p></p><p>He wore the wrong colors once but when he took them off people remembered. That’s why he died. Wrong colors. That’s why I didn’t see his story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Wrong color.</p><p></p><p>I am the right color. I live in a North Park apartment with one roommate and a cat. Armando Martinez lived in a one-bedroom flat with his entire family. I have a Navy education. He had a criminal record. If I’d seen him on the street I’d have avoided making eye contact, but I wouldn’t have crossed the street. I do have some pride. </p><p></p><p>I’m not yet that ashamed of being born a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but give it time. I’m still an undergraduate.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>III</strong></p><p></p><p>My dad saw a spirit last year. My brother saw it too. They saw the same spirit on different occasions. According to them, it’s not a ghost. I learned about it while visiting them in Louisiana.</p><p></p><p>This is my dad’s story. He awoke one morning to sunlight streaming through his floor-length bedroom window. He was lying with his back to the window, then he rolled over in an effort to get more comfortable. This is when he saw the spirit. He told me that it was naked and silver-skinned. He told me that it must have been no taller than two or three feet because it stood at eye level with him while he lay in bed. It was standing amid the flowers outside his bedroom window, looking in. He described it as impossibly thin, with huge almond-shaped eyes, spiky black hair and tall pointy ears. Its outline was hazy and indistinct. It looked like air.</p><p></p><p>The spirit stared at my dad for several seconds, and he lay there staring back at it. He says he couldn’t seem to focus on it. Finally, it turned its head to the right and sunk rapidly into the ground and disappeared. In profile, he said it had a long nose.</p><p></p><p>On shift that night, my dad spent hours drawing and redrawing the creature. He settled on an image he felt best represented his encounter and hung it over his bar when he got home from work. This is how I learned he’d seen a spirit. I was lounging in his bar and saw the image and commented on it, and he filled me in. To me, the picture he drew looked like a black silhouette of a slender, pointy-eared, spiky-haired creature. He’d drawn a haze around it using a cross-hatching technique. He’d drawn it in ballpoint ink and framed it. I thought it could be a fairy.</p><p></p><p>I asked my dad what he thought it was. “Sh-t, son, I don’t know,” he replied.</p><p></p><p>I was on the verge of skepticism, but then he added, “Eric’s seen it too.”</p><p></p><p>My brother is an extremely rational person. He works with some Air Force covert ops group. My dad is a nut. “You sure?” I asked. I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so badly.</p><p></p><p>That night Eric and I drove to see some friends in Baton Rouge. Our conversation went something like this:</p><p></p><p>“Dad told me about the thing he saw. The fairy.”</p><p></p><p>“It’s not a fairy.”</p><p></p><p>“How do you know it’s not a fairy?”</p><p></p><p>“We don’t know what it is.”</p><p></p><p>“So it could be a fairy,” I pressed. I played Dungeons & Dragons twice a week. I needed this.</p><p></p><p>“It’s not.”</p><p></p><p>“Well, it’s supernatural at least.”</p><p></p><p>“How do you know it’s supernatural? We don’t know that. We don’t know anything.”</p><p></p><p>I began to feel exasperated. “Well, what do you think it is? An alien?”</p><p></p><p>“It’s not an alien. It’s…I don’t know what it is.” He shrugged and smoked a cigarette. I slouched in the passenger seat, annoyed. I wanted to <em>know</em>.</p><p></p><p>I decided to try another tack. I felt surreally outside of myself, like I was watching a movie starring us, and our characters were driving along a dark road at night, talking about spirits by the dim light of the dashboard. I said, “So tell me what you think it is.”</p><p></p><p>“I dunno.”</p><p></p><p>“Can’t you take a guess?”</p><p></p><p>He puffed his cigarette and shifted his grip on the wheel. I think he was getting irritated at me. I didn’t care. I demanded validation of my interpretation. I knew what I wanted the creature to be. I felt cheated for not having seen it myself. Wasn’t I the one who lived in a fantasy world half the time? It wasn’t fair. I wanted to experience everything I could about this creature vicariously. I pulsed with excitement and vague fear.</p><p></p><p>“I don’t know what it is,” he repeated, “I only know I saw it. It exists. It’s presumptuous to call it supernatural, though, because you’re assuming that just because humans haven’t documented and categorized it, it must be abnormal. There’s a lot we don’t know about the way the universe works. It could be as natural as anything and we’ve just never seen it before. It might have a purpose that we’re unaware of.”</p><p></p><p>What a rational answer. I remained unfulfilled.</p><p></p><p>I decided to believe that the creature was some sort of nature spirit. I hesitate to call it a fairy. I wish I could do so without feeling inauthentic. I didn’t tell Eric that I wanted to know how it belonged in the universe as I perceived it. I lacked the humility to accept what was told to me for what it was. I took their stories as incontrovertible proof. Of what, I couldn’t exactly say. I only knew that I desperately needed to believe that there was something more to the 21st century than fast food, American Idol and Iraq.</p><p></p><p>*</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ForceUser, post: 1553373, member: 2785"] This is a piece of creative nonfiction I wrote for class. Creative nonfiction is a relatively new genre of literature that uses traditional fiction storytelling techniques to tell a biographical or autobiographical story. Enjoy. “Three American Koans” [b]I[/b] Red lights begin to blink as candy-stripe arms lower across the pedestrian walkway. A rumble enters my chest and swirls around, taking up residence between my heart and lungs. A turquoise cyclops thunders ominously down the tracks toward the concrete station. It is a sunny afternoon. I consider stepping in front of the train. I don’t have a death wish. I’m not suicidal. I’m curious what it would feel like. Two steps and a quick hop. I’m fascinated. The engineer wouldn’t have time to stop – she’s already slowing down. I suspect I would bounce off the engine’s nose cone, flop a couple of times as I fell, and then scream as my ankle caught under the grille. My leg would crack and twist instantly, wrenched apart into a mangle of blood and blue jeans, and then my entire body would grind under the train with unrelenting brutal momentum. My guts would burst like a balloon. My torso would flatten like a tortilla. My head would pop off like a firecracker; or would it remain attached, gruesomely disfigured? A shiver caresses my spine. I take two steps back to ensure no one can accidentally shove me onto the tracks. I am paranoid that way around heavy machinery. Consider it a consequence of spending four years aboard an aircraft carrier. I watched the USS Forrestal burn on videotape. A crewman kicked a bomb across the flight deck while the fire raged. The Coaster pulls into the station. I leave Sorrento Valley and step into a world of north coastal commuters and air conditioning. I don’t have a death wish. I’m just curious. I am drawn to the potential for violence. I am as violent as any American. I cried when the twin towers fell. I felt impotent shame when I saw naked abused Iraqi prisoners. I won’t watch a videotaped beheading, though I’m drawn to. I call this having principles. The Coaster snakes along the side of a hill on its way south. I imagine how death would come if I pulled the red handle on the safety glass and executed an emergency evacuation. Birds fly from treetop to treetop a hundred feet below me. [b]II[/b] Armando Martinez spoke Nahuatl, a native language of the Aztecs. This is what the campus newspaper says. City Heights gangbangers shot him to death. He got an “A” in Chicano studies. I’m not sure what a Chicano is. He wore the wrong colors once but when he took them off people remembered. That’s why he died. Wrong colors. That’s why I didn’t see his story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Wrong color. I am the right color. I live in a North Park apartment with one roommate and a cat. Armando Martinez lived in a one-bedroom flat with his entire family. I have a Navy education. He had a criminal record. If I’d seen him on the street I’d have avoided making eye contact, but I wouldn’t have crossed the street. I do have some pride. I’m not yet that ashamed of being born a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but give it time. I’m still an undergraduate. [b]III[/b] My dad saw a spirit last year. My brother saw it too. They saw the same spirit on different occasions. According to them, it’s not a ghost. I learned about it while visiting them in Louisiana. This is my dad’s story. He awoke one morning to sunlight streaming through his floor-length bedroom window. He was lying with his back to the window, then he rolled over in an effort to get more comfortable. This is when he saw the spirit. He told me that it was naked and silver-skinned. He told me that it must have been no taller than two or three feet because it stood at eye level with him while he lay in bed. It was standing amid the flowers outside his bedroom window, looking in. He described it as impossibly thin, with huge almond-shaped eyes, spiky black hair and tall pointy ears. Its outline was hazy and indistinct. It looked like air. The spirit stared at my dad for several seconds, and he lay there staring back at it. He says he couldn’t seem to focus on it. Finally, it turned its head to the right and sunk rapidly into the ground and disappeared. In profile, he said it had a long nose. On shift that night, my dad spent hours drawing and redrawing the creature. He settled on an image he felt best represented his encounter and hung it over his bar when he got home from work. This is how I learned he’d seen a spirit. I was lounging in his bar and saw the image and commented on it, and he filled me in. To me, the picture he drew looked like a black silhouette of a slender, pointy-eared, spiky-haired creature. He’d drawn a haze around it using a cross-hatching technique. He’d drawn it in ballpoint ink and framed it. I thought it could be a fairy. I asked my dad what he thought it was. “Sh-t, son, I don’t know,” he replied. I was on the verge of skepticism, but then he added, “Eric’s seen it too.” My brother is an extremely rational person. He works with some Air Force covert ops group. My dad is a nut. “You sure?” I asked. I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so badly. That night Eric and I drove to see some friends in Baton Rouge. Our conversation went something like this: “Dad told me about the thing he saw. The fairy.” “It’s not a fairy.” “How do you know it’s not a fairy?” “We don’t know what it is.” “So it could be a fairy,” I pressed. I played Dungeons & Dragons twice a week. I needed this. “It’s not.” “Well, it’s supernatural at least.” “How do you know it’s supernatural? We don’t know that. We don’t know anything.” I began to feel exasperated. “Well, what do you think it is? An alien?” “It’s not an alien. It’s…I don’t know what it is.” He shrugged and smoked a cigarette. I slouched in the passenger seat, annoyed. I wanted to [i]know[/i]. I decided to try another tack. I felt surreally outside of myself, like I was watching a movie starring us, and our characters were driving along a dark road at night, talking about spirits by the dim light of the dashboard. I said, “So tell me what you think it is.” “I dunno.” “Can’t you take a guess?” He puffed his cigarette and shifted his grip on the wheel. I think he was getting irritated at me. I didn’t care. I demanded validation of my interpretation. I knew what I wanted the creature to be. I felt cheated for not having seen it myself. Wasn’t I the one who lived in a fantasy world half the time? It wasn’t fair. I wanted to experience everything I could about this creature vicariously. I pulsed with excitement and vague fear. “I don’t know what it is,” he repeated, “I only know I saw it. It exists. It’s presumptuous to call it supernatural, though, because you’re assuming that just because humans haven’t documented and categorized it, it must be abnormal. There’s a lot we don’t know about the way the universe works. It could be as natural as anything and we’ve just never seen it before. It might have a purpose that we’re unaware of.” What a rational answer. I remained unfulfilled. I decided to believe that the creature was some sort of nature spirit. I hesitate to call it a fairy. I wish I could do so without feeling inauthentic. I didn’t tell Eric that I wanted to know how it belonged in the universe as I perceived it. I lacked the humility to accept what was told to me for what it was. I took their stories as incontrovertible proof. Of what, I couldn’t exactly say. I only knew that I desperately needed to believe that there was something more to the 21st century than fast food, American Idol and Iraq. * [/QUOTE]
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