Bus 142

Bus 142 by Anu Khosla A burly man approximately the size of a yeti in a jacket the color of caution tape made a ski cut across the convex roller. He applied the full weight of himself to his ski edge in order to make a line in the snow, releasing a mini avalanche below us. We watched that slab of white wall whumpf its way down like fresh icing sliding right off a still-hot cake. Buddied up for this lap, we locked eyes and clinked our poles like champagne glasses. Go time. Like that famous line from Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter, I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” But for me the summer wasn’t exactly within. Skiing was the summer; it was external. I liked that menthol burn at the top of the throat that arises from cold air quickly consumed. I liked that striated pulse of the quads. It made me feel things: competent, at ease, alive. Happy, even. I’ve wanted to be an adventurer, and to be recognized as an adventurer: one of the brave ones who carries pain like a pack to the ends of the earth and comes back to tell the story.  Camus also wrote that “When one has once had the good luck to love intensely, life is spent in trying to recapture that ardor and that illumination.” I have had the good luck to chase down that ardor and illumination of the outdoors like a dragon. “Forsaking beauty and the sensual happiness attached to it,” Camus continues, “exclusively serving misfortune, calls for a nobility I lack. But, after all, nothing is true that forces one to exclude.”  Somehow, people didn’t want to see me the way I wanted to be seen. There was some barrier to it. Something physical stood in the way.  * Chris McCandless went into the wild and found himself a shelter structure. It was an abandoned bus, Bus 142, found along the Stampede Trail, near Denali National Park. Bus 142 is very similar in shape to Miss Frizzle’s Magic School Bus. It is white on top, and looks to have been previously yellow towards the bottom, but is now painted over in a mossy green. Just above the windows it says “142” in a stylish sans serif, and below it reads “FAIRBANKS CITY TRANSIT SYSTEM”.  Chris McCandless went into the wild. The wild was an old bus that had originated in a municipal transit system. It originated in a history that contained names like Benz and Daimler and Maybach and Ford. The wild was on the edge of a national park that was established in 1917. Denali was number 12 in a line of national parks, an American idea –– “America’s Best Idea” –– first conceived in 1872.  Chris McCandless was found dead in Bus 142 in September of 1992. He was found alongside his journal, whose last entry, tagged Day 102, read: “BEAUTIFUL BLUE BERRIES.”    Jon Krakauer wrote about Chris McCandless in his 1996 classic Into the Wild. Sean Penn directed a 2007 film adaption of the book starring Emile Hirsch. Guys like Krakauer –– and Penn, I suppose ––get to decide what a true and authentically rugged –– always rugged –– outdoorsman looks like.  Thanks to Krakauer, McCandless remains, in the collective imagination, as exemplar bar none of an outdoors person. Meanwhile, Krakauer remains the absolute epitome of outdoor writer. Never mind that McCandless didn’t make it out alive. Never mind that Krakauer had to revise his facts, again and again and maybe again.  The shelter was a bus, not a cave. It was the crumbs of civilization, not the treasure of the untamed.  * Gear is a kind of treasure, and in many corners of the outdoors having old gear is a point of pride. The most embarrassing thing you can bring to the trail (or the crag, or the line up, or the river) is a brand new piece of equipment free of any scratch or blemish. New gear indicates unused gear, which can indicate a poser who has the money to buy the thing but not the marks of experience. The new gear becomes synecdoche, and the person holding it is assumed to navigate no farther than the REI parking lot.  Old gear is an indication that something has been used. The patina of a piece of old gear becomes proof of someone’s time spent doing an activity –– the ultimate source of authenticity in the outdoors. The seams of a wetsuit can only rip and the edges of a climbing shoe can only be rounded through use. Never mind that gear can be bought used by anybody at all. * When I was 11, I traveled to Connecticut for the first time. Every kid I met there asked, “You’re from California? Do you surf?” One would think that you can’t surf in Connecticut, but actually you can, sometimes. That technicality had no relevance to these kids because they lived inland, and they had no access to the shore. They also lacked access to any profound concept of California. They could not imagine that the Northern California coastline is shockingly frigid and unfriendly. I do not mean “shockingly” metaphorically. Each time I dip even a fingertip into the ocean here my body goes into a light shock. The Connecticut kids could not imagine that there was a version of Californian culture that did not encourage scraggly brown girls to grab a board and paddle out.  Someone painted them a picture of California, but that place they imagine is myth. I must live in the real place.  * In the summer of 2023, I am a brown girl entering the De Young Museum in San Francisco to see an exhibit on the works of Ansel Adams. Alongside his prints are more recent photographs from artists who came after him, printing works in conversation with Adams’ pieces.  One of those artists is Binh Danh, an

You Could Have Gone West, Acknowledgements

You Could Have Gone West, Acknowledgements by Kara Dorris Acknowledgementac·knowl·edg·ment  /əkˈnäləjm(ə)nt/ nounplural noun: acknowledgements    1. acceptance of the truth or existence of something.“there was no acknowledgment of the family’s trauma” 1979 was the year. The U.S. established diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal, Three Mile Island melted down, and you began attempting to conceive me, a baby girl, in the back of a ‘67 Camaro. You know, you sought balance, a future sister for a brother, one of each and all of that. The two of the 2.5 kids. Add in Lassie and all set.   At the same time in California, did Brenda Ann Spencer gather ammunition and orange juice, think all set, as she sat in her living room and opened fire on the elementary school across the street. Was she thinking to the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream? You know, the movie came out that week. And, somehow, that thought was translated into, god, I hate Mondays. Reporters. They never see subtext. She surrendered. So, what? I want to know if she longed for death. Could she not face, even at 16, the mile markers ahead? I don’t see how anyone can face the enormity, a mayfly life stretched into double infinity sign. The infinitely looping Route 66.    Don’t you ever wonder what could have been? What if Voyager I never revealed Jupiter’s rings? If the Iran Hostage Crisis never ended? What if you had gone west? If you never went to see Star Trek, climbed into that backseat, took down your pants?     ∞   Acknowledgements You could have gone west, just drove, let the road fill you up even as meth stripped you down, not that you hit the hard stuff then, just the pot and whiskey of a shotgun wedding.  You could have left your son. You hadn’t saved him from anything except oblivion of not being born.  You could have lost your shirt in Vegas. Watched Michael Jackson living off the wall. You looked like the lead singer in an ‘80s hair band, your long lank strands, your tall, lean frame.  Could have protested the canceled Mardi Gras with your mere presence.  Could have been more than a jack-in-the-box, said your name was Joe when you took that Wyoming waitress home. Could have fathered another daughter. Remember your first? You named her Eve, called her Molly. You dream of her still, how sweet and unknowable she was at the beginning, before she became known and knowing. Before she showed you in between places addicts must go.    ∞  Acknowledgementac·knowl·edg·ment  /əkˈnäləjm(ə)nt/ noun    2. the action of expressing or displaying gratitude or appreciation for something.“she received an award in acknowledgment of her work” 1979 seemed to stretch into 1980. A year of attempting to conceive. The Iran Hostage Crisis lasted 444 days. It was enough time to create new families. Was there an after? In An American in Paris, Jerry renames Lise, allows her to forget her occupation past; she pronounces his name with a French accent and suddenly his wartime is forgotten. Can there be an after disaster? Yes. Look at the trench coat, that belt you tie against rain, against time, was meant to hold grenades. And even though your hands blow shit up, you can’t pass yourself off as heavy artillery.    If Dirty Dancing had aired five years earlier, you wouldn’t have settled for him, another not-the-one. You could have carried a watermelon, not a grenade, not a kid, not the rain. Could have not lived in the trenches. But divorce shellshock lingers. What if you had headed west, been on American Airlines Flight 191 out of Chicago? Can death be a kind of life? Even as you slid into that ‘67 Camaro, as you lifted your peasant blouse, unbuckled your bra and leaned into his hands.     ∞  Acknowledgements You could have gone west, been a Vegas showgirl, a Midwest Rockette kicking thighs over chest on stage rather than over the backseat of a muscle car. It was supposed to be the time of your life. You could have scooped out the Grand Canyon with your hands, rode a donkey all the way down, bleached your hair blond, widened that streak of light and rebellion.  You could have become stewardess, flown Paris, London, Minneapolis, learned the sign language of leaving, of always assessing survival tools and nearest exits.  You could have left your son, a lesson you learned from his father. From your father’s father too. And I’m told that leaving one kid is easier than leaving two.  You could have fallen in love with shadows, the way light weaves and narrows, cul-de-sacs of shadows, shadows within shadows, of stones, in drawers.  You would have walked past me never knowing I was never born. You would have loved my shadow. You would have loved your own.    ∞   Acknowledgementac·knowl·edg·ment  /əkˈnäləjm(ə)nt/ noun    3. a letter confirming receipt of something.“I received an acknowledgment of my application”  Somewhere inside these bones, this brain, this heart, I know I wouldn’t rewind, just watch as addiction and depression climb into the backseat of a young man’s sick ride, a ‘67 Camaro. As a young woman’s shoulder pads and legwarmers sink into the floorboard, past, into the pavement, into roots of the overarching trees, ambivalent cover dripping sap against humid windows, no cover at all against the Texas heat, no Bruce Springsteen’s Cover Me, just that song, Do It To Me One More Time playing over and over again in the cassette player, until the ribbon gives out, tangles up, and rips, as all things rip, when you try to untangle.     Nonfiction Home Art by Claire Peckham

Conchology

Conchology by Rebekah Chan Dear Shell, I am writing to remember that time in your car, or perhaps mine. By chance, we drove the same beige Mazda6 Sedan before we became friends after high school. It was not a unique vehicle, but rather the kind that screamed my parents’ car during what felt like the beginning of our adult life. * My early 20s are filled with the scent of cigarettes masked in pine air freshener inside your Mazda, often parked outside the grocery store complex between my house and yours. It was exactly the kind of gray plaza you’d find on every corner in the greater Toronto suburbs we grew up in. We studied at different universities, but both still lived at home with our parents who were church friends. And when we parked beside each other in those sprawling suburban parking lots, it was a homecoming of sorts, a reunion of twin-flames.  In the winters, we’d have our usual Tim Horton’s parking lots to drink coffee inside your car while smoking and listening to Saves the Day and Biggie Smalls. It was too cold to smoke outside, so we’d open a tiny sliver in the window to blow smoke and ash outside. Small gusts of wind always managed to carry little white flecks of tobacco back inside. And this, this existence is how I saw our entire friendship: the two of us in a smoke-filled bubble talking about how fucked up we felt or how fucked up the world was while gazing out through salt-stained windows, and just the slightest crack to the outside world. We were always the sad girls, the only ones who noticed the small injustices of life. Like how we, the purehearted, never got what we wanted: the boy, a job, the grades, the recognition. Instead, we found shelter in each other. Me with a nose ring, you with a chin piercing. Both 5’2” and on the tanned side for Chinese girls. Both with the same ordinary beige car. Both with an unbearable frustration for a life beyond suburban parking lots. Looking back in my 40s I now see how we, or at least I, thought it was beautiful to be sad. You were truly a beautiful sad girl, one who cut herself when she felt too much or nothing at all. Those thick scars on your inner forearms, the ones that people gawked at, provoked me out of the mundanity. Living was to feel deeply. So deeply that it hurt. You were perhaps the most beautiful sad girl I’ve ever met, with distinctly chiseled cheek bones and downward-turned, deep eyes to counter my round, oval face with upward-turned, shallow-set eyes. And back then in my 20s, I also wanted to be a beautiful sad girl. * 1768 – Countries around the world were eager to study the 1769 transit of Venus. This happens when Venus (the second planet from the sun) passes between the sun and Earth (the third planet from the sun). From Earth, Venus appears as a small dot crossing the sun. The transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event that doesn’t happen for more than a century later. In 1769, the next transit would not occur until 1874. On his first voyage around the world, Captain James Cook was tasked to maneuverer the HMS Endeavour from Plymouth, Great Britain to Tahiti by June 1769 to observe this phenomenon. An affluent young biologist named Joseph Banks insisted on joining  Cook to help collect plant specimens along the way. It was an expedition of a lifetime and an opportunity to calculate the distance of the earth to the sun in hopes to better understand the magnitude of the entire solar system. * After university we both work in communications, but we eventually study, discover, and become what we truly want to be. I’m a writer, and you’re a photographer. With different tools, we both try and render our worlds. Me with a keyboard and you with a camera. We both observe and capture moments. I move to Asia for the man I will marry. You move downtown, and when we can, we travel all over Southeast Asia together. In Pai, Thailand, we rent scooters. We try riding separately at first, but we have to shout while trying to navigate the roads, so we return your scooter and keep mine. This way you can just sit behind me and speak directly into my ear while we zip across the Northern Thai highlands. Together, we glid up a tall hill towards a huge pink moon hanging in the horizon. The moon had never felt so close before. You think of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” your first dance song choice with S, your first love, if you ever got back together that is. “In this moment,” you say, “I feel like everything will be okay.” We continue down the long road of the hill in silence, leaving the glowing moon behind us. But then you ask me or maybe no one, “Why can’t this just last?” * April 1769 – Finding Tahiti was no simple task. Despite Polynesians inhabiting the island since 500 BC, it had only been documented by another English explorer a year before, and thus, the exact coordinates were known.  Cook crossed miles of open waters and storms to find an island only 20 miles wide. It took eight months to navigate the Endeavour to Tahiti with the only tools available: hourglasses, knotted ropes, a sextant, and an almanac to calculate the Endeavour’s position according to the stars. They reached Tahiti in April, two months before the transit of Venus, and eventually set up a small fort on the black sand beach at the end of Matavai Bay on the North Shore. From this makeshift observatory, they would study the skies and record Venus traversing across the sun.  * Dear Shell, I am writing to remember, that time in your beige car, or perhaps mine. * The word “mollusk” comes from the Latin

Nonfiction_V17-0

Nonfiction Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Misunderstandings by Emily Hall Non-Fiction Volume 17.0 Conchology by Rebekah Chan Non-Fiction Volume 17.0 The Crash by Ashley Espinoza Non-Fiction Volume 17.0 Carrying Instructions by jane putnam perry Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 I Waited For My Turn and it Almost Killed Me by Maureen Pendras Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Take Care by Nicole Morris Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Something So Simple by Wendy Fontaine Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Yellowfin by Abby McCord Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Fears, Explained by Kayla Jessop Non-Fiction Volume 16.1

Conchology-old

Conchology by Rebekah Chan Dear Shell, I am writing to remember that time in your car, or perhaps mine. By chance, we drove the same beige Mazda6 Sedan before we became friends after high school. It was not a unique vehicle, but rather the kind that screamed my parents’ car during what felt like the beginning of our adult life.   * My early 20s are filled with the scent of cigarettes masked in pine air freshener inside your Mazda, often parked outside the grocery store complex between my house and yours. It was exactly the kind of gray plaza you’d find on every corner in the greater Toronto suburbs we grew up in. We studied at different universities, but both still lived at home with our parents who were church friends. And when we parked beside each other in those sprawling suburban parking lots, it was a homecoming of sorts, a reunion of twin-flames.  In the winters, we’d have our usual Tim Horton’s parking lots to drink coffee inside your car while smoking and listening to Saves the Day and Biggie Smalls. It was too cold to smoke outside, so we’d open a tiny sliver in the window to blow smoke and ash outside. Small gusts of wind always managed to carry little white flecks of tobacco back inside. And this, this existence is how I saw our entire friendship: the two of us in a smoke-filled bubble talking about how fucked up we felt or how fucked up the world was while gazing out through salt-stained windows, and just the slightest crack to the outside world. We were always the sad girls, the only ones who noticed the small injustices of life. Like how we, the purehearted, never got what we wanted: the boy, a job, the grades, the recognition. Instead, we found shelter in each other. Me with a nose ring, you with a chin piercing. Both 5’2” and on the tanned side for Chinese girls. Both with the same ordinary beige car. Both with an unbearable frustration for a life beyond suburban parking lots. Looking back in my 40s I now see how we, or at least I, thought it was beautiful to be sad. You were truly a beautiful sad girl, one who cut herself when she felt too much or nothing at all. Those thick scars on your inner forearms, the ones that people gawked at, provoked me out of the mundanity. Living was to feel deeply. So deeply that it hurt. You were perhaps the most beautiful sad girl I’ve ever met, with distinctly chiseled cheek bones and downward-turned, deep eyes to counter my round, oval face with upward-turned, shallow-set eyes. And back then in my 20s, I also wanted to be a beautiful sad girl. * 1768 – Countries around the world were eager to study the 1769 transit of Venus. This happens when Venus (the second planet from the sun) passes between the sun and Earth (the third planet from the sun). From Earth, Venus appears as a small dot crossing the sun. The transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event that doesn’t happen for more than a century later. In 1769, the next transit would not occur until 1874. On his first voyage around the world, Captain James Cook was tasked to maneuverer the HMS Endeavour from Plymouth, Great Britain to Tahiti by June 1769 to observe this phenomenon. An affluent young biologist named Joseph Banks insisted on joining  Cook to help collect plant specimens along the way. It was an expedition of a lifetime and an opportunity to calculate the distance of the earth to the sun in hopes to better understand the magnitude of the entire solar system.    * After university we both work in communications, but we eventually study, discover, and become what we truly want to be. I’m a writer, and you’re a photographer. With different tools, we both try and render our worlds. Me with a keyboard and you with a camera. We both observe and capture moments. I move to Asia for the man I will marry. You move downtown, and when we can, we travel all over Southeast Asia together. In Pai, Thailand, we rent scooters. We try riding separately at first, but we have to shout while trying to navigate the roads, so we return your scooter and keep mine. This way you can just sit behind me and speak directly into my ear while we zip across the Northern Thai highlands. Together, we glid up a tall hill towards a huge pink moon hanging in the horizon. The moon had never felt so close before. You think of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” your first dance song choice with S, your first love, if you ever got back together that is. “In this moment,” you say, “I feel like everything will be okay.”   We continue down the long road of the hill in silence, leaving the glowing moon behind us. But then you ask me or maybe no one, “Why can’t this just last?”   * April 1769 – Finding Tahiti was no simple task. Despite Polynesians inhabiting the island since 500 BC, it had only been documented by another English explorer a year before, and thus, the exact coordinates were known.  Cook crossed miles of open waters and storms to find an island only 20 miles wide. It took eight months to navigate the Endeavour to Tahiti with the only tools available: hourglasses, knotted ropes, a sextant, and an almanac to calculate the Endeavour’s position according to the stars. They reached Tahiti in April, two months before the transit of Venus, and eventually set up a small fort on the black sand beach at the end of Matavai Bay on the North Shore. From this makeshift observatory, they would study the skies and record Venus traversing across the sun.    * Dear Shell, I am writing to remember, that time in your beige car, or perhaps mine. * The word “mollusk”

The Crash-old

Nonfiction Home Art by Dominick Williams The Crash by Ashley Espinoza Inspired by Aftermath by Elane Johnson After my car slid on the ice and another car hit me. After you had said you weren’t sure you wanted to be a father. After I googled if my seven-week-old fetus could die during a low impact car accident. After I searched and searched every website for an answer. After I found out that, while pregnant, I shouldn’t go on roller coasters or horseback rides, and I shouldn’t be in a car accident either, but no websites would tell me an answer for a 15 mph car crash. After I called to ask if you had made your decision. After I learned the due date was September first. After you didn’t answer the phone, but you did answer the text– you said you hated to say it, but you couldn’t do it. After you never called ever again. After the hospital staff asked if I was sure there wasn’t a name I could put under the father section of the birth certificate. After I cried because my daughter does not have a father. After no one held me. After no one but me held my daughter when she cried in the middle of the night. After I saw you once and hid from you. After I saw your truck as I drove down the highway. After I still look for your truck even though I know you no longer drive that one. After I looked you up on Facebook. After I still look you up and stalk every post looking for an answer. After I am still single six years later and I see you on Bumble looking for something casual. After I cried for years and years and years over you. After I stopped wondering if you would ever care for my daughter. After I drove down your street to see if you still lived there, even though I would have no way of knowing that answer. After I stopped wondering if you would call and change your mind. After my daughter is all grown and probably looks like you. After she asks me to caress her arms in the same way you used to. After she looks right at me and says, “Anyway I don’t even want a dad.”

Misunderstandings

Nonfiction Home Art by Collin Scott Misunderstandings by Emily Hall “Yet here I am, on my way, arm raised in greeting, and then I am no more.” Gabriel Josipovici,  Goldberg: Variations I. Before my husband Fausto and I made the fourteen-hour drive to Maine, he asked if we were going to scatter our dog’s ashes in the ocean there. I paused for a minute because the only time we took Nicholas to the beach he had loved it; but I couldn’t imagine saying goodbye while we watched the current take him away from us, so I said “no.”We were packing for our trip, unsure what to bring because we rarely took vacations. It was a splurge meant to help me grieve the dual losses of Nicholas and my academic career. After fourteen years of teaching college English, I had burned out, but there were no funeral rites to acknowledge my job’s end. In fact, I had spent the last year as an adjunct, so there wasn’t even an office party, just an email from my department chair saying that he thought he understood and an essay that I was writing about non-linear time and waving in Gabriel Josipovici’s novel, Goldberg: Variations, that I buried in the bottom drawer of my desk. When Fausto and I finished packing, we got into our car, laughing nervously as we chose a playlist. We had tough-to-say-the-least childhoods, so we kept giving each other sidelong glances and asking  if we were allowed to do this, allowed to drive for days, stopping for bookstores, donuts, and coffees along the way, because we still couldn’t fathom making these choices for ourselves although we were nearly forty. Two days later, when we crossed into Maine, a place neither of us had ever seen, we waved at the welcome sign and felt a little breathless, like we’d climbed to the top of the world and knew we’d still have to come down.   II. On the second night of our trip, around midnight, Fausto and I went out to our little balcony so we could hear the ocean crash. But as we settled into the faux-wicker chairs and oriented ourselves towards the sea, we realized the waves were drowned out by the sounds of birds we couldn’t identify. Their calls pierced the air, whooping and whistling unseen, while we sat in darkness so deep I hoped my body would melt away until I was just a pale pair of ears absorbing the bird cries. And as I imagined myself disappearing, I remembered a flight we took years before to visit Fausto’s family in Florida. The plane was cramped and overcrowded, but the baby on the other side of our row didn’t seem to notice. From her mother’s lap, she waved a dimpled hand at Fausto, who sat nearest to her in his aisle seat. He waved back, so she excitedly began a series of poses, holding each one for only a few seconds. She rested her chin on her hand, then shyly laid her face against her mother’s shoulder before leaping up to wave at Fausto again, her face blooming into a joyful grin. We chuckled, and her mother laughed in surprise, as if she had never seen her baby do such a thing. The rows immediately before and after us took notice, and soon they were also watching her and giggling softly. Across these rows, our laughter fused and lifted upwards like a cloud, even as our bodies sat belted in tight seats. III.   In the days after Nicholas died, I kept asking Fausto when I would be done grieving. I wanted to pinpoint grief’s place in my body and root it out. “I don’t think it works like that,” Fausto would gently explain. But I wanted a hard date and decided that my grief would be over when I didn’t cry for three days in a row. The first day was always the easiest: I would get through it by weeding the garden or cleaning my kitchen cupboards. On the second, I’d feel the urge to pull up one of Nicholas’s many photos, but I would put my phone in another room and pick up a book instead. On the third day, I’d be triumphant, convinced that I had conquered my grief, and I’d boldly tell Fausto that I was ready for another pet because I had already weathered the worst of it. Then, I’d go for my nightly walk and see my neighbors who’d wave at me cheerfully as their own dogs trotted beside them. In response to their greetings, which always felt carefree and content, fat tears would roll down my cheeks, and I’d rewind the clock to give myself three more days. IV. In Cape Elizabeth, the surf was rough, as were the winds, but the ducks rose and dove unbothered. Fausto and I were watching them from our perch, a bright red picnic table outside of the Lobster Shack where we were eating greasy trays of clams and fries—we didn’t come for the food, but for the view. Now that we had finished eating, we were staring at the vast stretch of rocks before us, and when my eyes finally adjusted, I realized that one of the brown orbs in the distance wasn’t actually a duck; it was a harbor seal. I had never seen one outside of captivity before. Gasping, I pointed it out to Fausto who followed my finger towards its place in the ocean. The seal rose up, its speckled belly winking in the sun, and plunged under again. From what we could tell, it was alone. We watched it in silence, our bodies tense and eyes squinting. After the fourth time the seal surfaced, it went back under the waves and swam out of sight entirely. The seal’s sudden appearance seemed to mark the end of dinner, and we took our trays to the trash and away from the eyes of two seagulls, who moments before had

features_V16-1

Features Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Sayantani Dasgupta Interviewed by Keegan Lawler Features Volume 16.2

Carrying Instructions

Carrying Instructions by jane putnam perry To dowse is to search, with the aid of simple handheld tools or instruments, for that which is otherwise hidden from view or knowledge.  The British Society of Dowsers Dowsing is very literal. The key to asking the right question correctly is to first realize that one question is almost never going to get the answer.  The American Society of Dowsers ~         1. I receive a neuropsychological report as part of legal proceedings after a head-on collision with a car. This is a page from that report. Dowsing Question   Putnam genealogy from the author’s family Bible         2. From: Jane P. PERRY <jpperry@*******.***> Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2022 1:44 PMTo: Diane Rapaport <diane@*******.***>Subject: Family History Research Query Dear Diane Rapaport, I hope you are safe and well and have everything you need.  I am interested in discussing your services for Family History Research. Specifically, I would like clarity on two family stories.  We are purportedly related to the Putnams (who isn’t if your family lived in Salem Village in the 1600’s). My middle name is Putnam, and my Great, Great Grandfather Horatio Perry (b. 1816) married Serena Putnam (b.1818), which explains it, but I would like help learning which branch of the Putnam tree Serena came from, especially because of family story #2.    My mother told me we are related to Rebecca Nurse, who was accused of being a witch in 1692 by the Putnam family and who was executed by hanging in Salem, Massachusetts. I have begun research numerous times and have collected all manner of scraps of paper, as well as some family ephemera, but I feel in a vortex. Are my needs of interest to you? Take care and please be safe, Jane Putnam Perry   Dowsing Question I feel in a vortex. Are my needs of interest to you?         3. mud sticks weighting my lineage I come from soul sacred soil a mystery of possibilities   fractured fissured clay like a heart hardened under horror generations of passed down hurt  clotted footsteps of the booted seeking relief from their rage and harms   saturate the blessed threshold draw into the cracks rest my language holiness is mindful blood and water and ethers exhumed   the short-eared rabbit nibbles tender rain-soaked, sun-lifted leafing what kind of cloud calls out a vertical stack like layers under my feet exhale this d’earthly drought       4.       Re: Progress Report       External       Inbox Diane Rapaport <diane@*******.***> Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, 7:25AM to me   Hi Jane, I have confirmed that Rebecca Nurse was not your direct ancestor, but you are a cousin of her great great grandson, Benjamin Nurse, because one of your Putnam great-great etc. aunts married Rebecca’s great grandson. I’ve also found the deed of Benjamin Nurse’s sale of the Rebecca Nurse farm to your 5th great grandfather Phineas Putnam in 1784. The Nurse homestead became your family homestead. That homestead remained in your own Putnam family for generations thereafter. You are directly connected to the land that Rebecca Nurse and her family called home. As to the 1692 Putnam accusers of Rebecca Nurse, the published Putnam family history that I’ve mentioned, which seems pretty reliable (and I’ll send you copies of relevant pages with my report), has some extended commentary about your 8th great grandfather Nathaniel Putnam. As you undoubtedly know, Nathaniel was a supporter of Rev. Samuel Parris and believed in witchcraft, but Nathaniel signed a petition in support of Rebecca Nurse in June 1692. He did accuse two other women of witchcraft, however, both of whom were executed. Best regards, Diane   Diane Rapaport Professional Genealogist   Dowsing Question “How must it feel to find yourself face-to-face with someone who has made it clear that he has the power to bring your world to an end, and has every intention of doing so?” ~ Amitav Ghosh in The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis          5. water in water out  reckoning the sacred creation yoni from my childhood bring forth my inheritance   wrap my memories sand warm and shaping bury us so only our faces show   rhythms spray spirit sun breaks into pieces sparkling lens what a nice day   dulse source of minerals  harvested in the atlantic  eat it raw take my children   my mother’s ashes in smooth stones a berm separating water from residence but really connecting the two         6. This window was owned by Rebecca (Towne) Nurse’s birth family, photo by the author taken at “The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning & Reclaiming” exhibit viewed at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, on loan from the originally-curated Peabody Essex Museum exhibit of the same title.   Dowsing Question “In moments of injustice, what role do we play?” ~ asked by the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library exhibit “The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning & Reclaiming”         7. strong brown moist loam a history of breaking down and rising the soul spirit of maghemite magnetically removing contaminants   sun-lit glittering ripples running like a school of baby mackerel jubilant ribbons of iridescent yellow green a commune of sparkles   calling me to the shore  to wade amongst the resting matriarchs  their manes of bladderwrack breathing with the tide   dissolved salts, minerals, and ions not impurities but part of the ancestral sitting with filtered to purity  would burn your insides   a plop of rain meets ground trickles over stone and soil scrapes against fish and gill carrying this story in ecological DNA         8. Water, a spirit puppet brought forth by the Nonviolent Direct Action Art Team of 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations. Photo Credit: Peg Hunter, journal.rawearthworks.com   Nonfiction Home Art by Holly Willis

Take Care.

Nonfiction Home Art by Judith Skillman Take Care. by Nicole Morris The biopsy revealed the start of tooth and bone material, keratin and hair, the beginning and ending of what would have been my twin at conception. Located on the right side of my uterus, holding this flotsam and weighing just under a gram, the equivalent of a single raisin or a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar, was a tumor the size of a plump grape.    We won’t have oncology’s final report for ten days, but it’s looking good. I don’t see any cause for concern. The surrounding tissue was clear, and it looks good. You did great.   In my head I thought, how does a person unconscious, under the backward counting water of general anesthesia, do great? Did I take the medicine well? Or did she mean my body did great under the pressure of foreign instruments being inside of it? Did I do great with the stress of my skin opening under bright lights with masked faces? The origin story of my womanhood and the site of my motherhood the main character in the operating theater. Did my wounded womb do great in not fruiting cancer?   The surgeon told me this very good news while looking past my shoulder at the chrome wall clock hung above a pastoral scene of baby animals circled together under a sunless blue. Breathe, the poster commanded.  She avoided eye contact as she spoke to me, which struck me as odd, evasive even.    But this is good news, doc. I wanted to say “Doc” the way Bugs Bunny did. Maybe she was lost in her own thoughts while she autopiloted this update. Was it too late in the day for a coffee? Would that ruin her sleep? Did she leave the chicken breast out to thaw? Would her son call that evening? Would he remember today was her birthday? Or maybe she was embarrassed to see me, the obediently sleeping patient, now awake, eyes open and unblinking. This peculiar girl, me, needing one ovary removed, along with a cyst, and while we’re at it, let’s tie up those tubes, too. Weeks before the procedure, this same doctor tenderly, softly, delicately, asked if I’d want to be sterilized while they were ‘in there.’ It would be painless, and my insurance covered it.    Sure, I said. Fuck it, yeah, why not. I thought I saw her flinch internally at how easily I agreed to close down shop, to seal off the dam. I’d had two babies, now high schoolers; I saw no need to be greedy and ask the stork for more. Plus, I flashed on how liberating it would be to have unsafe sex with no fear of pregnancy. Sexually transmitted illnesses were always the lone bullet in the game of one-night stands and casual encounters; they were resolvable. Mostly.  But an unplanned pregnancy in a country where politicians were pushing for murder charges to apply to abortion, that escalated the self-harm of Russian roulette to a wider and more permanent wound.    Did she remember that conversation now? Or was she offended when I showed up for surgery this Tuesday, at five in the morning, in the newly remodeled outpatient wing of the Catholic hospital on the far east side of town, with a fresh Brazilian wax?  In preparation for this procedure, even though no one would be going near my down there, I paid eighty-five dollars to have it all removed. It felt like a good-mannerly thing to do at the time. And an expensive gesture of anxiety at being naked in a room full of strangers. A Brazilian in the middle of a snowed-in winter up in the mountains of New Mexico during a dating slump when not a soul was visiting my down there was a cost I felt I needed to pay. A tax. A toll paid without being asked so that, while the surgeon would be bypassing that now hairless seam between my legs and going straight to the middle of me by way of lower abdomen into the uterus, landing on fallopian tubage, she would see that I went to painful and costly lengths to take care of my womanhood.   What’s up, Doc? I said it without meaning to. I was thinking it, but now I’ve said it, interrupting her post-op care instructions. No water on the wound site for six days; no excessive activity; expect some spotting; no sexual intercourse for four weeks.    Uh. I—she looked at me now.   Shit, sorry, I offered. More embarrassed at my Bugs Bunny outburst than at the bit of drool that came with it. Why was my face numb? I can’t feel my face when I’m with you. Who sang that? The Weeknd. I need to remember to listen to that song on the drive home. Wait, when am I going home?  Like she could hear my doped-up thoughts inside my head, she returned to my hearing ears now with, It’s fine. The anesthesia can have a euphoric effect. Makes some patients find themselves saying or doing things they normally wouldn’t.  Yes. What? Oh. Sorry. I thought I heard a question in there. It took all of my facial muscles to not laugh. More drool. I lifted up my paw to wipe my face elegantly. With my paw. Wait that’s my hand. Why is it furry?   Doc, I feel weird. Then I laid down on the paper-sheeted table I’d been sitting on. No memory of arriving in this room now. What time was it? I’ll close my eyes for a moment and get my shit together.    That’s normal, you’re ok. The anesthesia will fade from your system in an hour or so. I have a note here that your ride is waiting for you. Can you hear me, Nicole? Ok good. I see you nodding yes. Your ride is here, er, Amir? Amir. He is ready for you,