Otis

[mnaz]

St. George, Utah had a crisp order to it, like all Mormon towns. There was an elementary school every five blocks, with the same kid in a tiny blue helmet wobbling on the same bike. Each measured angle, corner, and well-tended lawn glistened, and parallel rows of white steeples were noted at every third stop sign.
When I locked into the order, I was fine, but if my gaze strayed to the psychedelic red cliffs beyond, I risked heresy. Even so, I had no particular objection until I learned that the place had only one tavern. How could I trust a town with only one tavern?

I sat in a church parking lot, sipping forbidden caffeine, across from the Mormon superstore where I bought it, next to Zion's Bank. "Zion" is a popular Utah obsession. Not only "Zion", as in the promised land, but a "Zion" empire built to take over the now; a profitable Zion, to get a jump on all that projected heavenly glory.

But where is Zion? It had to be somewhere near. It was advertised everywhere. Reggae blasted from my truck; a defiant, bass-driven Rasta track, bound to shock anyone within earshot, except that it too obsessed over "Zion", the place where all trouble evaporates. I thought about rolling south to search for Zion, but I was pretty sure that I would miss the exit.

I took it as a sign, in a land notorious for them. Mormon history is riddled with unexplained revelation, populated by self-proclaimed prophets. In those days after Sept. 11, 2001, here is what I can tell you for sure: I threw a broken heart upon the mercy of the faithful, and they ripped it wide open. I won't make that mistake again.

I remembered the Good Book numerology. I once learned these things in church. I learned that forty-two is a bad number. But add two and you are back in business. The faithful are partial to forty-four, as I recall. And while the number seven has its moments, twelve is a Biblical superstar-- the apostolic number, which figures into Joseph Smith's one true church. But three is the biggest of them all. God's number. The Trinity. There is no known way to top the number three.

I ran up against a trinity of my own in St. George. In the first week, I met a man who declared all Protestant faith to be lost. In the second week, I met a man who declared all Mormon faith to be lost. In the third week, I met a man who declared the first two men to be lost. This man's name was Otis. He was a desert prophet, mainly because I needed him to be one. He certainly foretold how God would appear thereafter from from my driver's seat.

Otis advertised a room rental. His mother took the calls since Otis didn't have a phone. Strange. But maybe Otis was setting up the place. I followed his instructions into the industrial part of town, ending up next to a boat repair shop, in front of an old tin trailer with a crude box addition jutting out from side. A skittery chocolate chihuahua named 'Sweetheart' chirped out a code red frenzy in the driveway.

By and by, Otis emerged from his trailer, in a ripped tee-shirt and jeans, permeated with grease. He was around sixty, with a stubble-stained face and an odd, combative squint; something no desert prophet should be without. He shook my hand and promptly crawled under his truck; an awful jalopy, stitched together from an abused '65 Ford cab and a rusted '77 Dodge bed. He was replacing the transfer case and he asked me to fetch some tools.

"This thing will go anywhere", he repeated, as I pondered the odds of all that spent metal escaping meltdown for so long. Otis was a junk man. His yard was jammed with boxes , transmissions, window frames, and tarps--- something like half a hardware store of perfectly useful stuff. Upside-down carpet was laid out everywhere, "to keep down the weeds".

The inside of his place was vintage trailer; snap-on beige and a hint of mildew. Everything was comfortably worn, faded, and stained, and there were heaps of boxes, books, and fishing gear, plus unidentifiable gadgets piled everywhere. Paintings of Indian sun symbols lay spread out on the living room floor.

"Does anyone else live here?", I asked. "No. Just me and Sweetheart. And I'm not allowed to have alcohol in the trailer, due to the probation". I told him I would think it over.

[mnaz]

Note: apologies, in advance, for some material, repeated from a previous post....

[Zlatko Waterman]

Another fine sketch, mnaz:

I know you will like Chatwin.

"In Patagonia" even has some sketches about Mormons, or some Mormon characters.

Chatwin, similar to the style you use, is highly referential, mixes genres, including "straight" history ( he uses a tone verging on irony in these sequences) and is deathlessly attentive to language and metaphor.

He is one to study.

Good stuff you've written here.


--Z

[jimboloco]

So you were a teenage Mormon, mon?

Interesting the contrast for sure, sculpted lawns and wacky junk man.

Yes I like the idea of seeing Otis as a desert prophet.

I had an event one time, a hitch hiker I picked up gave me some timely advise and it turned out to be a life saving eventr,something about the coincidence, the way the sunlight shone around him, very mysterious, so for me he was an angel, no doubt.

Keep on truckin, desert rat. By the way, my dear old mother is fond os saying, as she rem·i·nisces, that when I was born I lookes like a "wet rat"

Yas yas yas.

So what's cooking with the Mayor of Salt Lake City joining the anti-war protersers

I like the way you left the story open ended, not exactly detailing if you didn't take the "room" or if you headed off for the red cliffs.
Guess that's another chapter.

Our neighbors across the street have a set of three houses along a private lake, well sculpted lawns. On our side of the street, a hodgepodge. The across the street neighbors just gave my wife a tree, a smaller version of a greenleafed perrenial, and I dug a three foot deep hole and a planted it next to its bigger friend, now the house is taking on a shaded privacy, plus we have our victory gardes with backwards flad, also pinwheels and an assortment of bushes and grasses. It is fun to be unscripted. Nice neighbors. we wave, they wave. Our rainbow pinwheels suit the next door folks, a gay couple.

[mnaz]

Thanks, Z.

I'm definitely going to pick up Chatwin.

I need to integrate more specific, concrete elements into my writing.... history, culture, etc. Mostly, so far, I've "immersed" myself in trying to get at the feel of my desert compulsion on this recent trip (and others).

Jimbo:

No, I was never Mormon. I was on a road trip when the 9/11 attacks happened, and I lodged for awhile at the home of a devout Mormon individual in the days right after the attacks. (I added a date reference to this piece). I have never seen so many plastic flags. Nearly every car had one....

[jimboloco]

a review about the author

"In Patagonia" even has some sketches about Mormons, or some Mormon characters.

Chatwin, similar to the style you use, is highly referential, mixes genres, including "straight" history ( he uses a tone verging on irony in these sequences) and is deathlessly attentive to language and metaphor.

so where is some "strait on Chatwin" mon?
let's have some concrete evidence
the hard truth

maybe the author was inspired by his surroundings
it's kool
just jamming with the scene, man, was all he did, mon

[mtmynd]

another of many good reads outta you, emnaz. so easy to read and so.... transportable, yeah! transportable... just drink a few words and you're there.... transported.

thanks for sharing these... while i await some kinda book...

[jimboloco]

next chapter
red cliffs
west of the continental divide

[Zlatko Waterman]

Nicholas Shakespeare, Chatwin's biographer, said, "Bruce didn't tell the truth. He told a truth-and-a-half . . ."

Like Hemingway's Africa, only far more poetic and lyrical, Chatwin's Patagonia is inside his head. Paul Theroux, who wrote a famous travel book about Patagonia, "The Old Patagonia Express"

http://www.travelliterature.org/reviews ... nian.shtml

loved Chatwin's Patagonia book. He understood the mixing of genres and of truth and fiction and history and near-history. Theroux, on a journey from Boston to Patagonia, tells many "lies" on the way.

His book, like other Theroux works, has flashes of racism and cruelty, which makes him hard for me to read, even though, like Chatwin, he is a nimble stylist.

The review you linked to, Jim, which is a pastiche of several pieces on Chatwin, makes it appear that tales of the Patagon and Butch Cassidy and penguins and Arctic landscapes are blurred together
in Chatwin's book.

Not so. Chatwin is a master of the discrete fragment, and also the blended fragment. His composition is solid and well-connected-- but also well-segmented.

He's hard to "type."

He's not really a "travel writer."

"The Songlines", one of my favorite books of his, consists as much of metaphysical speculation grounded in history, myth and aboriginal culture as it does in gritty portraits of old geezers living in corrugated steel huts in the Outback.

"Fabulist" is a partially accurate word for Chatwin, but even that won't do.

He resembles J.M. Coetzee. "Waiting for the Barbarians" and other Coetzee books have the same sort of feel.

One might also compare Chatwin to Borges, Nabokov and W.G. Sebald, whom he resembles in many respects.

Sebald wrote a fine essay on Chatwin in "Campo Santo"--

This link:


http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/200 ... eview.html


and this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Mar10.html

will convey you to comments in reviews and essays on both writers.

Chatwin, like Theroux and Sebald, uses travel writing as a gambit, not an end in itself. The goals of these writers do not include making the reader an "armchair traveler."


BY THE WAY, mnaz:

Do you know the book "The Klamath Knot" by David Rains Wallace?

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9891.html

It's an incisive intertwining of myth and superior landscape/ travel writing about the Oregon/ California Klamath region.

--Z


--Z