Street Song

(The following is an original short story.)

            Come. Come, stay awhile. A little diversion, you have time enough for that, right? I know you’re very busy in your gray suits, black shoes, white faces. I hear the tap-tap of your shoes and the tick-tock of your pendulum briefcase and I can feel the aura of too busy and see the cloud of it that swirls and roils among your crowd.

            The cloud is gray, your clothes are gray, this whole city’s gray. The sidewalk, the pigeons, your eyes…

            You know what you need? You need a diversion, a distraction, a daydream. I can give it all—just, stay awhile. Let me work.

            I know—you’re busy. You have colleagues and clientele and a reputation to appease; I can almost hear the groupthink that darts like lightning, zigzag, through the neuron cloud: Stay with the herd, do not stray, do not show weakness. But I will ask you something else; I will urge you to stray. I am no wolf, I promise you, I am not even a sheep, black or white or gray.

            No, I’m certainly not a sheep. Certainly not gray. When you see me on the corner—you do not look, make an effort not to look, but I know that means you see me—you can see the crumpled rainbow a stork dropped from heaven (for that is where we come from, you and me and all of us together).

When I was little, I think, I used to be very particular about my clothes—the colors had to match my refined palette just so, but that was only a dream, and Mom dressed me in whatever she could pull from the clearance racks before I started to raise a fit. And I dressed in the gaudy clothes and went to school and did not die from embarrassment like I screamed I would, and now the garish Goodwill clothes I buy with the money I manage to scrape together do not seem so offensive. I sacrificed my pride for this that’s in my hands...

            Yes, you tilt your noses up and, sniffing, you follow the faint, elusive scent of success, poised like fish in a tank to snatch up whatever morsel may drift your way. And at each passing school of you, I cast my own lines in measures of six strings and see what I can reel to the surface and the light.

They Had Eyes...

(The following is an excerpt from an original short story.)

            There is a keen emptiness in Shaw’s Gardens and a hollow and a lonely kind of feeling that seems to say to me that I should have stayed at home if I wanted some company (Venus, she’s a good cat , though with a fondness for biting and clawing I can’t always forgive), but I don’t want company, just the solitude I feel I earned by being the first one through the great glass doors and up to the semicircle desk. And now I’m a satellite of the lake, and I keep the rock waves on my right and don’t get very far before I step in a giant rain footprint. (I need to watch where I’m going.)

            It’s Monday morning, and at this time I’m always swigging coffee, fighting traffic (never get to work on time), counting the hours and minutes and seconds and dream-ages of sleep I got the night before. And running from the parking garage to the Famous Barr corporate office (May Dept. Stores on Olive St.), I can see the Arch and Busch Stadium and the fountain dyed red or blue and the people in the fountain and around the fountain and around the street and the falling-down bricks and so many blank-eyed cars. But I’m not going to work today (no, it’s a holiday, I just decided), so instead of turning my car back around home, I drive fifteen minutes out of my way, off the highway, past the shop with the twisted, metal garden statue jumble like the beanstalk giant played Jacks and got bored. And now I’m here in the Gardens and this is my holiday because I need it and I think I shouldn’t have to pay the four dollar admission fee just to take a walk when I need a walk, this walk.

            And I’m circling the lake and too busy watching the winding, serpentine trail of white gravel raked with wave-smooth patterns (like waves in pictures, but maybe those aren’t really smooth and I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never seen the ocean), and as I walk, my foot has splashed in a puddle, and I maybe shouldn’t have worn my suit today, because I knew when I was leaving I didn’t want to go to work today. I knew (or guessed) I was going to take vacation time just for today, but what kind of vacation do you walk around in a suit that’s just going to get spattered with cloud-spit?

            I see the togetsukyo bridge, the flat bridge that rolls across the water and makes a tiny island of water to the left (that’s still connected to the mainwater under the bridge, so really isn’t an island, just wants to think of itself that way). There are koi under the bridge—bloated, bubbling koi that haven’t been gold or orange or white since I was a little child, they’re just overgrown, dingy carp. (I think they think they’re mermaids, though—they keep their lips puckered above the surface, or maybe they think they’re frogs and maybe they’re frustrated that all we do is stare at their open, gaping mouths and too-big, too-round eyes.) At one end of the bridge is a gumball machine (50-cent fish pellets) that was always “a superfluous expense,” so I always knelt on scabbed knees and stuck my clumsy fingers through wood slats to find the brown, crumbly spheres the other kids dropped from their two-handful mountain stashes. And like when I was young, the carp burble and pile themselves now in a submarine volcano of fish-flesh and scales and stomachs, capped at the summit with a gaggle of geese who filter all the food (so they are really bird pellets, not fish pellets).

Nationalistic Myth in German and Japanese World War II Propaganda

(The following is the introduction, titled "Myth and Media," to my spring term Junior Paper.)

            During the 1930’s and 1940’s, in both the build-up to and the period after the breakout of World War II, various countries (or, more specifically, political parties or governments) relied on different methods of propaganda to bolster or secure political power and public support for and participation in war efforts. In Germany, this propaganda increasingly became dominated by Nazi symbols and ideology and was used to provide justifications for the war that appealed to the “baser instincts in humans,” particularly with their Aryan discourse.[1] Though manifested differently, such propaganda also appeared half a world away in Japan, where rhetoric about “Yamato suuperioriti”[2] arose in certain circles as a partial justification for the country’s imperialist actions in the Pacific region.[3] In both Germany and Japan (as well as in other nations), propaganda was used to foster not merely a sense of “cultural nationalism”—a collective identity based on factors such as geographic location, shared high and low culture, and ethnicity—but also a “political nationalism,” which inherently derives from existing political power structures and functions as a sort of “state ideology.”[4] Fostering a “political nationalism” is more important from the perspective of political leaders because it ties in the abstract idea of nationalism (based on a common cultural identity or tradition) with the present governmental system. In order to shift the focus from cultural nationalism to political, propagandists employed myths, incorporating them heavily in their political discourse. The specific manifestations of this phenomenon varied between countries, but myths evolving around political figures—grounded on pre-existing myths or notions—and about the collective public’s shared historical past (or, more specifically, a heavily simplified and idealized version thereof) appeared in Japan and Germany alike. These myths were used with the intent to foster the spread of (political) nationalist sentiments within both countries, as well as to maintain public support after the war started. However, the effects of this effort on an individual level must not be over-emphasized, as social and economic realities have a greater influence on the everyday lives and opinions of citizens than do propagandized myths, images, and slogans. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with the fabrication and fostering of myth that occurred at this time remains significant and worth closer examination.

Wolfdietrich B (Ortnit's Last Adventure)

(The following is a translation of the medieval, Middle High German work Wolfdietrich B, stanzas 485-542, as compiled by Walter Kofler in Wolfdietrich B: Paralleledition der Redaktionen B/K und H, Hirzel 2008.)
 

Not long after Lady Sigminne died,

Great trouble befell Emperor Ortnit –

His father-in-law sent two most fearsome dragons,

A horrible woman, and a giant man into his lands.

That was the giant Hell, a horrible man.

His wife was Lady Runtz, whose rage was fearsome.
To the woods near Garda, they brought the wild dragons
To whom the bold emperor would soon lose his life.

Hell concealed the dragons securely in the mountain.

They raised them ‘til they had grown big and strong.
Then they left the forest, wreaking such great havoc.
No one was left in the realm who could stand up to them.

People began to tell the emperor much

About what harm they brought to the land
And – it is said – to many worthy knights and brave men.
The admirable emperor could no longer allow this to continue.

Courteously, he went and stood before his wife.

He said: “Noble empress, I’d have your leave
To ride out to the forest and redeem my birthright.
I cannot bear the thought of my people being ruined.”

The empress replied: “No, my dear lord,

If I am dear to you, you should stay home.
You do not fully know the dragons or that horrible woman, or her giant husband.
The fight would be most fearsome.”

Momo (Mr. Fusi the Barber)

(The following is an excerpt from the German novel Momo by Michael Ende, p.62-70 of the Piper 2010 edition.)

            One day, Mr. Fusi stood in the doorway of his shop and waited for customers. His apprentice had the day off, and he was alone. He watched how the rain splashed on the street; it was a gray day, and the dreary weather was also in Mr. Fusi’s soul.
 

            My life goes on, he thought, with scissor-snipping, small talk, and soapsuds. What have I actually gotten out of my existence? And someday, when I’m dead, it’ll be as if I’d never been.

 

            Now, it was not the case that Mr. Fusi had something against small talk. In fact, he loved to ramble about his opinions to his customers and hear what they thought. He didn’t have anything against scissor-snipping or soapsuds, either. His work brought him great pleasure, and he knew he did it well. It was especially easy for him to shave under the chin against the grain like no one else. But, every now and then, there were moments in which all of that had no weight. That’s how it goes for everyone.

 

            My whole life’s fallen short, thought Mr. Fusi. Who am I, even? A little barber, that’s what has become of me now. If I could lead the right kind of life, then I’d be a completely different person!
 

            Mr. Fusi was not clear on how this right kind of life should be obtained. He only imagined something meaningful, something luxurious, something like what you see in magazines.
 

            But, he thought with a scowl, my work doesn’t leave me time for such a thing. You have to have time for the right kind of life. You have to be free. But I’ll remain a prisoner of scissor-snipping, small talk, and soapsuds my whole life.
 

            At that moment, an elegant, ash-gray car drove up and stopped right in front of Mr. Fusi’s barbershop. A gray gentleman stepped out and entered the shop. He set his lead-gray briefcase on the table in front of the mirror, hung his round, stiff hat on the coat hook, sat in the shaving chair, took his little notebook out of his pocket, and began to leaf through it as he puffed on his small, gray cigar.

Momo (Momo and the Gray Gentleman)

(The following is an excerpt from the German novel Momo by Michael Ende, p.95-107 of the Piper 2010 edition.)

            One particularly hot afternoon a short time later, Momo found a doll lying on the stone steps of the ruins.

            Now, it was often the case that children left behind one of those expensive kinds of toys you can’t truly play with and simply forgot them. But Momo couldn’t remember ever having seen this doll with any of the children. And she certainly would have noticed it, for it was a very special doll. It was almost as big as Momo herself and so lifelike that you almost could have taken it for a small person. It didn’t look like a child or a baby, though, but rather like a fashionable young woman or a mannequin in a display window. It wore a red dress with a short skirt and high-heeled sandals.

            Momo stared at it, fascinated.

            After a while, when she finally touched it with her hand, the doll rattled its eyelids a few times, moved its mouth, and said in a voice that sounded a bit as though it were quacking, as if it came from a telephone, “Hello. I’m Bibigirl, the perfect doll.”

            Momo was startled and fell back, but then she replied automatically, “Hello, my name’s Momo.”

            The doll moved its mouth again and said, “I’m yours. Everyone’s jealous of you because of me.”

            “I don’t think you’re mine,” Momo said. “I think someone forgot you here instead.”

            She took the doll and lifted it up. Then its mouth moved again and it said, “I want even more stuff.”

            “Oh?” Momo mused. “I don’t know if I have anything that’ll suit you. But just wait—I’ll show you what I have, and then you can tell me  what you like.”

            She took the doll and climbed down through the hole in the wall into her room. She fetched a box with all kinds of treasures out from under the bed and set it down in front of Bibigirl.

            “Here,” she said, “that’s everything I have. If you like something, just say so.”

            And she showed Bibigirl a pretty, colorful feather; a lovely speckled rock; a gold button; a little piece of colored glass. The doll didn’t say anything, so Momo nudged it.

            “Hello,” the doll quacked, “I’m Bibigirl, the perfect doll.”
 

The Imperfection of Memory

(The following is an original short story.)
  
          Those fields make me want to start running and never stop. Past the wreathed, white crosses dashing along the highway, they’re just fields of gold that remind me of the summertime and the exuberance of youthful legs chasing after fireflies. My knees ache a little at the memory, but that might just be from the five hours and thirty-six minutes or so (I’m not counting) they’ve spent cramped up against the backpack on the floor in front of me.

            Sophia hasn’t moved her hands away from two-and-ten o’clock on the steering wheel, and two hours or so ago, I told her she looked ridiculous with her knuckles white and the whites of her eyes bugging out at the empty road like this was the first time she’s ever driven above thirty-five. Two hours minus a couple of seconds or so ago, she told me to shut up, so I did.

            That was the rule, and why I was allowed to come: “You shut up about Marcus, you don’t say a goddamn thing,” she said, because like she told me before, she knows I can keep secrets. I’d say she only knows about three-fourths of them. The rest I keep in a shoebox inside my head, and they are only for me.

            We don’t listen to the radio. I don’t mind the quiet, but I think if nothing happens soon, my brain will join the highway litter, and my head will be a bust-open echo box of secrets public and private.

            My stomach speaks for me, and I know she had to hear it, too, but she doesn’t even look at me. I should be used to that. “Sophie,” I say, “we’ve been driving awhile. How about a bite to eat?”

            Her eyes tighten, and I can tell she doesn’t want to hear another one of my brilliant ideas, but her grip on the steering wheel loosens a little, because she knows I’m right. Every single time, except just that once, I’m right. (I’m not counting.)

            “First truck stop, then,” she says.