Michael

[mnaz]

I remember that stretch of Interstate 84, with "God Bless America" frozen on the readerboards. It came only three days after I set out to reinvent myself, after I packed whatever I could fit into the truck and rolled south. I crashed at Jim's place in the Cascades that first night. September 10th, 2001. Television woke me at next light-- something bad. I had sluggish visions of a forest fire or highway accident until I heard shouts of disbelief in the next room and I just sank back under the covers.

The television image from New York of a jetliner plowing through the World Trade Center is indelible.... something I will never be over with.... the devastated towers, ripped open and incinerated, collapsed in unthinkable, murderous hell. An utter failure of the race. For a week or more, in my waking moments, it never happened-- I had imagined it, or somehow misunderstood-- fleeting, half-conscious denial. There would be no answer, except for a search.

So I found myself on that stretch of 84, knowing full well that I couldn't drive out of this one. I rolled toward a new desert home, but it was clear-- the world would not be joining me in my "rebirth".

I almost turned back. There were early reports of five dollars a gallon for gas, and more attacks were predicted. Unshaven, I took a hard look of suspicion from a woman at a truck stop in Idaho. I tried not to think of what Arab-Americans were up against. I celebrated my first Joshua Tree sighting in southern Utah's red earth, but twenty minutes later in St. George, non-stop Global Doom issued from a television thrust over a McDonald's dining room. A crowd gathered. Plastic flags sprouted from car windows.

"God Bless America" was everywhere, as the enemy praised God for our defeat. That's how it would be from now on-- reactionary ascension-- the doctrine of Us and Them. The Middle East would be set ablaze, turning another vicious cycle. We would bomb the living hell out of whoever did this to us, whoever might be thinking of it, and whoever might be in the way, and it would be settled for awhile until the cycle advanced another turn-- another round of bankrupt "martyrs".

Outside McDonald's I caught the horizon again. It wore the same expression. I thought about the elements and about keeping it simple. There's not a damn thing wrong with this place. There is more than enough here. Were it not for the quicksands of false redemption, this basic fact might actually be noticed.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

That place, St. George, is an odd town-- a Mormon settlement on the Virgin River, sitting at the point of Utah, near Arizona and Nevada. A spired tabernacle anchors the town, which now sprawls out around a complex of red bluffs-- another collision site. Simple sweeps of desert in the west break apart as they encounter a puzzle of cliffs, and free-roaming spirits contend with steep canyons as well as a strict doctrine of control. Odd cross-sections of desert rats and tatoos run in the shadow of an orderly white steeple pattern, and Brigham Young's street grid attempts to impose its square logic on a vibrant jumble of rock.

I was to stay with a man named Michael, who is the father of a long-time friend. Michael and his wife, Faith, welcomed me into their hermetically-sealed tract house as the door sucked closed behind us. My guest room had cable, and there was no possible option but re-runs, the further back in time the better. There was a painting on the wall-- a thirty-foot Jesus in a ghost robe-- flowing curtains from outstretched arms to welcome two saints into heaven. "You have done well. You have honored my commandments".

The thing about Michael-- he looked toward the sky when he spoke. At a church picnic, Michael gave vivid descriptions of heaven while I finished my baked beans. He was impatient to see this place; a man of conviction who drifts at times, put on hold to preview his well-defined afterlife. The congregation sang that my redeemer lives, while the image of the plane and the tower replayed as unbelievable cruelty.

The next day I drove to Las Vegas, but it was deserted, so I kept going, out to a place where I broke down completely. On an unknown slope, I lost it. The Las Vegas glow graced the horizon. I tried to drive up the next ridge, seeking solace. I saw no one, but I heard a fighter jet's rumble, and my dread remained. I only lasted one night out there. Two days later, I found myself back in Michael's living room.

Michael claimed it was part of the Plan. He fixated on control, while everyone fixated on CNN, which never went more than thirty minutes without replaying video of the collapsing, or collapsed, towers. Michael's reaction to the utter failure of ground zero played like a cold calculation. He called it a "wake-up call"; one that he couldn't get too upset about. He figured we were better off for it in the long run. Others have made the same mistake.

I thought about the elements once more-- about keeping it simple.
I concluded that failure on this scale cannot be qualified. Was there a "Plan" in force on September 11, 2001? Nineteen people plotted to kill themselves and to terrify and murder three-thousand people whom they had never met. There is your "Plan".

[Zlatko Waterman]

Again, real verve here in these travel notes that reach beyond travel alone: the mage-like ability to turn opposites against one another that marks prose talent--baked beans cotangent with exhortations about heaven. Vonnegut would be pleased to have you under his roof.

I'm reading "In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin. Ever read it?

It is bloody marvelous. Chatwin is a genius, and an itinerant wanderer and luster after the unusual. His reports to us are conjurations of the grandiose tinctured with the uncomfortable quotidian: he's always stirring a thread of the uncomfortable into his romantic bagatelle stew. He's a master of the fragment, the impression, the ghost spooling of incense in the room.

I've read some of his other books also. "What Am I doing Here?" is a terrific collection of his travel writings, "The Songlines" his sustained aria about Australian aboriginals, their culture, "religion" and folkways. "On the Black Hill" is a novel about his native Wales.

Openly hetereosexual and married to an unbelievably faithful wife whom he treasured, Chatwin meanwhile sported through numerous gay affairs and contracted AIDS, from which he died at the age of 49 in 1989.

I have learned much about writing from reading him. He is strongly influenced by a small range of writers: Chekhov, Mandelstahm and Hemingway among others.

Try it; you'll probably like it.

He has his partisans. Some non-partisans who dislike vignettes find him enraging. I think he sings like an angel-- like a Bach air.


Zlatko

[Zlatko Waterman]

A wanderer by the sea . . . (August 2005)

[Arcadia]

you look great in the photo, Zlatko!
saludos,

Arcadia

[mnaz]

Many thanks, Z...

It is an outpouring, no doubt. God, this stuff is difficult to get out. That period of time took me down pretty hard.... still does.

My literary universe expands.... Chatwin sounds like a man after my own heart. I seek the vignette.... I hope I'm up to the challenge.

Thanks again.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear mnaz:


Here's an interesting and fairly detailed tribute to Chatwin by a fellow writer:

http://www.prospector-utah.com/chatwin.htm


Here's a nice overall impression-- not great writing, but reasonably crisp ( ignore the ads for sex toys on the banner . . .)


http://www.spikemagazine.com/0896chat.php





--Z