Sine waves of several frequencies. Waves colored like the frequencies of the visible spectrum.

12.31.10 sunset, micael looking up at nahuel pan cascade

And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Deadline: Sept 10

No bullshit entry fee.

I feel like “where” and “when” are more meaningful questions than why.  Why seems closed and finite: “I did this because of x,” whereas “when” gives this sense that  whatever happened and however you felt about it existed in an infinitesimally short amount of time, and that you have “forever” for other things to occur and other ways to feel about them: “I did this when I was 10.”

This week’s contest was partially an examination of how certain juxtapositions of time and space can lead to these kinds of spontaneous revelations–not necessarily epiphanies but more a kind of “airing out” of certain thoughts or feelings.

The most interesting entries, the ones that seemed “successful” in the context of the intentions  behind the contest, were the ones where the thought or emotion revealed didn’t even correlate necessarily to what the juxtapositions were. In other words, the external scene may have helped “trigger”  the narrator’s revelation or confession, but the confession wasn’t necessarily a direct “response” to the scene.

[I should note that the instructions in the contest didn't necessarily lead people in this direction; it just happened naturally in some people's responses.]

I feel like this disjointedness–say for example we’re in Paris looking at the Eiffel Tower but we’re actually thinking about being in basketball camp 20 years ago–is very common in life but is super uncommon in writing.  Even “good” nonfiction can seem “untrue” to me when everything is linear, each observation, description, action, and thought in direct relationship with one another.

[This  leads to a conversation about what nonfiction's "purpose" is--some may argue that the whole point is to create linearity out of turbulence--but I'm more interested in nonfiction writing as something which breaks out of traditional forms in a search for more closely and transparently approximating the writer's way of seeing the world.]

With this in mind, here was Anna Brones’s story:

An old man sits on the park bench, paintbrush poised in hand. Behind him, a dog sprints away from its owner. I have a hard time saying no.

At first when I read this I just felt a certain emotion, something like “damn, I have a hard time not saying no.”

Then I went back and started analyzing the lines.  I thought about symbols–the old man painting as someone both inside and outside of the scene, someone “motionless,”  while the dog is forever in motion and forever “in the moment” (and yet strangely “sprinting away from its ‘owner’”).

Then I tried to “figure out” the story. Is the narrator the dog owner? Is she having a hard time saying no to her dog? That could be one reading, and if it were true  it would still seem interesting to me. Does she literally “have a hard time saying no” because she doesn’t want to disturb the old man?

But then I thought that like the symbols, these questions were all based on “what” or “why,” and seem to matter less than the effect the story had on me and the way I interpreted it the first time I read it, which was the narrator is just someone watching the scene with these disparate elements–a dog, a dog owner, a man on a bench, and for reasons that are only known (or perhaps not known) to her–she realizes she has a hard time saying no.

Even if that wasn’t the way Anna intended for the story to be read, it still feels very true.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story, and congratulations Anna, for winning!

Here’s a mixtape based on Anna’s piece.  Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?1uztzjtyzjw

Tracklist:

1. Billie Holliday – I’m painting the town red

2. Beach Boys – That’s not Me (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

3. Zizek – Excerpt from Fauna Megamix 03 (mixed by Daleduro)

4. Babasonicos – El Loco

5. Atlas Sound – Walk a thin Line (Cover of Fleetwood Mac)

6. Brian Wilson – Put Your Head on my Shoulder (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

Final notes: if you enjoyed reading about or participating in this contest, please visit the MIXTAPE WRITING page on Facebook.

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Author’s Note: The scene: 6 p.m., a hiking trail in Mexico. 1st narrator: Mexican police officer. 2nd narrator: Sarah

6 p.m., Cerro Fortin

Estábamos subiendo la colina cuando vi una guërita, bajando lento con un perro, no mames, buey, un perrote, con unos pinches dientotes, jalando por adelante este guërita flacita. Ella lo jaló por atrás y lo intento parar pero parecía que iba el perro ganando.

“No mames, buey,” le digo a mi compañero, “mírale este guërita. Que madres esta haciendo solita por aquí a las 6 de la tarde?”

“Pidiendo desmadre,” dijo este compañero mío, aburrido.

“Verdad?” le digo. “Quieres pararla?”

“Para que?” pregunta. Pretende ser flojo, pero sé que es mas nervioso que yo, que se pone nervioso con estes jueguitos.

“Para que no, cabrón?” le digo.

La guëra para de repente con su perro, parece pastor alemán, bien pinche grande este perro. El perro se siente y sus dientes brillan como lobo hambriento, buey. Es impresionante este perro.

Paro a un lado de la guërita. Me vea. Es un poco rara, ella. Como que tiene una cara de niña, pero hay algo allí que esta muy dura. Sus ojos son azules, azules. Nunca he visto ojos tan azules. La verdad es que me espantan un poco. Puedo ver que tiene miedo, claro – que madres esta haciendo caminando aquí sola a esta hora? – pero también hay cierto desafio como que no se va a dejar tan fácil. El perro me mira fijo.

“Es bravo, tu perro?” Le pregunto en tono muy serio, para intimidarla un poco.

“No!” dice al principio, y luego rápido ajunta, “pero si le digo, si puede ser bravo.”

“Esta entrenado,” le digo.

“Si,” responde, “normalmente es muy tranquila, pero si tengo una problema me proteja.”

No esta como pensaba – su tono de voz tiene algo firme, como si nos están confrontando. No esta como otras mujeres que a veces paramos – las borrachas que intenten coquetearte y luego se ponen bien pinches bravas, gritando, o las niñas de la escuela que tengan miedo y escondan sus caras, a quienes podemos chiflar todo el puto día sin que dicen nada. Este, no, este tiene otra agenda.

Mi compañero no quiere ver la guërita. Ella te vea directo a las ojos, y no baja su mirada hasta que bajas la tuya. Mi compañero esta incomodo con todo eso – el perro, la guërita, el cerro lentamente oscureciendo. A mi me encantaría tomar este guëra por su pelo hasta que grita, dominarla bien cabrón y enseñarla estar tan pinche seguro de si misma, me gustaría cogerla allá mientras que mi compañero vea, pero creo que no podía suportar sus ojos. Y luego hay el perro.

“Bueno,” dice la guërita, mientras que la veo pensando, “buenos tardes.” Y sigue caminando.

“Ni modos,” le digo a mi compañero, y seguimos subiendo la colina.

~

The wind whipped Stella’s hair back so that she looked like a carefree kid beaming in the back of a speeding truck. She had on that big goofy dog grin she gets after we’ve done a good hike on the Cerro and are heading back in the chill of the early evening. The light played on the tall grasses on the hillside and made them look like something from the afterlife, flashes of memory and place.

I bent down to pick up a stick for Stella and when I looked up there was a blue and white patrol car coming up the bottom of the hill. I gasped, then cursed. Shit. They do patrols sometimes at this hour and they always frighten me, those cops jeering with their power and their dumb uniforms and their total lack of responsibility, driving around looking for a kitten to play with.

All you have is instinct in these situations, instinct and the dog, so I riled Stella up. “Go girl c’mon girl GETEM go girl GO!” until she was yanking at the leash and jumping and pulling and heaving from side to side. When the patrol car got closer I suddenly made her sit, calmly, hoping that the show had had an effect and that they’d size her up and keep on going.

They stopped. Fuck. The officer, a young guy with hair gelled into stiff submission and that fleshy, inflated quality of a certain type of dude here, the body of a fit young man plumped out a few inches by too much food and beer, leaned out the side window.

“Is she aggressive?” he asked with the mock casualness I’m so familiar with.

He was really asking,

“What are you doing here, and do you know I can fuck with you?”

All my power goes to my eyes, then; all the energy of my body that’s under their gazes courses up to my eyes, and I widen and narrow them slightly, making them flash.

“No,” I respond at first, to avoid them trying to use that as an excuse to detain me, but I back it up with, “but if I tell her to, she’ll get aggressive.”

“She’s trained,” he said.

I looked at his partner in the car. The guy was staring straight ahead. He wouldn’t look at me. He was obviously nervous, this guy, not comfortable with taking these risks with a guerita. I had that to my advantage. But the other guy seemed almost to feed off of that nervousness, to want to push it further. Fine, fucker, I thought; people are always surprised at how I respond to these situations. I look so much the part of the lost guerita, the doe-eyed, soft-haired, whispery blonde girl, but if he said anything, tried anything I would grab this guy by his cheap rooster do and shake it around until he punched me.

I said, “Normally she’s very calm, but if I have a problem she’ll protect me.”

I stared into their dank little cave of a police car. I directed that searing energy in my eyes towards them– every gota of my presence on top of them, boring into them. You want to do it, do it, but you’re going to have one hell of a fight.

In their moment of hesitation I said,

“Bueno,” and started walking without looking back. “Buenos tardes.” And they drove on.

_________________________

Sarah Menkedick is a writer and editor currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is the senior editor of Glimpse.org and the director of the Glimpse Correspondents Program. She is also a contributing editor at the Matador Network, and she writes weekly articles about women’s rights for Change.org. She will begin The University of Pittsburgh’s Creative Nonfiction MFA Program in the fall of 2010.

The cover art isn’t up on those sites yet, but you can see below:

For more information about hint fiction, please check Robert Swartwood’s blog. And consider supporting Hint Fiction authors by purchasing this book. Thanks

[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.