just found out that my story ‘the airstrip’ will be included in the upcoming (April) issue of 34th Parallel.
Here is an excerpt:
I think about the phrase “ground-level.”
I think about soldiers on the ground and how you can’t see them as you’re approaching.
My mind plays a scene of a gaucho reaching down and picking up a machete.
My mind plays a scene of me as a little boy going into the closet and looking at my dad’s 12 gauge pump shotgun above the closet door.
My mind plays a scene of him saying “when Martin Luther King was assassinated you couldn’t find any ammo. It was all sold out.”
My mind plays a scene of him saying “can you imagine the Holocaust happening in downtown Atlanta? Our people just gave themselves up. The schvartzes would’ve fought the Nazis to the last man.”
[notes]
1. the charcra or pictured here has been farmed by the same family, Los Colque for 40 years.
2. the land was owned by someone who lived behind the chacra and was described to me as ‘un hombre humilde’ [a humble man], basically a gaucho, who let the Colques work it and make a living.
3. the man, or ‘patron’ wasn’t able to afford taxes starting a few years ago, and the land was reclaimed by the municipality.
4. the town recently began cutting roads into the chacra. they are subdividing it into lots in an area north of El Bolsón called Barrio Arrayanes. the line of dark soil in the middle of the picture is one of the road cuts.
5. the woman here is one of Adela Colque’s 11 children.
6. she’s harvesting arugula.
7. there are wildflowers, wild chicory, mixed into what’s planted. when i asked her about that (i told her where i come from ppl usually clear everything [dejar pelado] then plant) she said ‘asi es como nos enseño mi papa. it helps the land.’
8. this was the first time i’d actually gone out into this chacra even though we live next door.
9. i realize the composition of the photo is ‘off’ and that i needed to give her more space on the right side. but for some reason i get nervous taking pictures of ppl. i just basically held up the camera, felt embarrassed, pretended like i was looking through the viewfinder, then pressed the button.
10. right now as i write this there is the sound of chainsaws cutting down the windbreak of poplars beside the chacra.
11. when i asked the woman’s brother about everything that was happening he looked around and said esta chacra no existe mas. ‘this farm doesn’t exist anymore.’
12. there is something about the way he said it in present tense that made me feel emotional.
13. everyone’s standing outside their houses right now watching the trees come down.
[photo by Laura Bernhein]
1. we have the eastern side of the fence done and the land cleared. i did it all with handtools and machete. also carrying the materials 5 blocks from the house we’re renting to our plot of land. i still need to trim the tops of the fenceposts, but i’ll wait until i have a chainsaw.
2. we planted 4 cherry trees and this apple tree, along with with a walnut tree and a native Patagonian hardwood tree called a radal. also planted raspberries, lavender, and mint. growing there wild is fennel, chicory, rose, and thistle.
3. layla helps me water the trees and plants each day. she also likes to hold the boards when i’m cutting.
4. i don’t like fences actually. a friend of mine andre parels in atlanta made these huge steel structures into fences–that was cool. it was art. otherwise the only good thing you do with a fence is climb over it.
5. but down here you need them to keep horses from eating your fruit trees. and you need them to mark out where you land is.
6. and sometimes you look up and see a hawk sitting on one of the fenceposts and you think about different things.
please reference story here: Notes on a Woman in Calcutta
10:42 a.m – robert wrote [via gmail] ‘ Re-reading my new story, I feel this is the kind of writing I should have been doing my whole life. As I always say, I am thankful for our chance encounter last year.’
11:44 – david wrote [via gmail] ‘as far as ‘the kind of writing i should have been doing my whole life’ — i think what matters is that you’re doing it at all.’
11:48 – [after re-reading story for 7th time]: ‘the border I packed without knowing it.’ damn.
11:50 – ‘But she is many women’ should be its own line. an ‘orphan line.’
11: 51 – ‘orhpan’
11:52 – [looking at different photos on flickr]: the woman needs to be looking at you.
11:55 – various thoughts at same time:
- this woman is breastfeeding.
- in the story it talks about her having a baby.
- there is something beautiful about the way she’s breastfeeding, about her breast.
- some ppl will think this is ‘dirty.’
- the photographer is standing above her.
- it’s weird the way she’s holding the bowl of food. what is that?
- how could ppl think this was dirty?
- in the story it talks about her wearing a yellow sari. that’s a robe, not the headscarf, right? will someone mention that?
- what did the real woman who robert saw look like?
- i think he would like this photo.
12:08 – is the subtitle ‘the pavement speaks to you’ right? it seems like the idea is that ppl only see certain other ppl as part of the scenery. i think that’s right.
12:15 – [after publishing piece, then reading early comments about picture] – ‘borders.’
3:17 -[finishing writing this] – ‘pageviews, transparency, hip hurting from sitting down for a long time. damn.’
‘
workshop of david mather johnson on balboa st in the richmond, SF
photo from david mather johnson
pictured in foreground – surfboard blank, plane
thoughts after posting this picture and looking at it for a while longer:
- sunlight on other side of door.
- how many ppl create things that they then take out in the sun and water and ride?
- terry, who used to have this garage and kept it filled with landscaping equipment, and:
- how he let me sleep in there a few nights when i was kind of homeless in SF and:
- how there was this other homeless dude, Willy, who slept in there sometimes too until:
- he moved to Golden Gate Park, in a thick stand of eucalyptus and how:
- we worked together once landscaping, and i told him how i’d been born here in SF and he said:
- he hadn’t, but he planned to die here and that:
- he’d be ‘perfectly happy as a San Francisco ghost.’