Several years ago at Cleveland State's Imagination workshop, I met with a few participants one-on-one after reading their work. I waited to read "Satan's Breath" last thing before heading to the conference, a complicated tall tale filled with bodies and voices of iron workers hanging out at a gas station.
One of the guys wore ripe jeans he never changed, thick with grime and grease. The buddies, if that's what they were, made him get a new pair. When he took off the jeans they stood by themselves for a while, then took off running. They all gave chase but the jeans got away.
Years later one of the guys had a plot of land and a son to whom he wanted to pass on his lore. He took him out in the fields and forests but at one point released a slow, silent, deadly fart he didn't want his son to smell (Satan's breath). Trying to draw the boy away from the scene of the crime, he distracted him with some natural wonder when he saw movement ahead.
It was the pants, still running.
Forgive me Jim for any errors I've made. I'm working from memory. I went from dreading to meet the writer to a kind of wary eagerness. He showed up at the appointed hour, a man my age or more, I couldn't be certain, with a wild gleam in his eyes and springy hair standing all over his head. We talked about the story a while, then he started telling me a little more about his life.
A retired math professor from Athens, Ohio, he collected sticks and roots and burls and gnarls of wood on wanderings through fields and forests around his house. He picked ones with spirits in them, took them home, polished them up. He had some in the trunk of his car if I wanted to see. I figured only cowardice would keep from me from going along.
We ambled to the parking lot, and he really had a load of sticks and such in his trunk. When he pulled out the first, I almost gasped. In the center, around a gnarl in the branch, I saw the three distorted faces at different heights, facing different directions. He asked what I saw, but I wanted him to tell me what he saw.
He pointed out the same faces and described them as I saw them. Each stick, root, or branch had its own spirit looking out, turned to a high polish. On our way back, he pointed out a configuration in a tree and I saw it there too. He gave me a stick, a little one like a natural peace pipe to set on the table when I conduct a workshop or pass around. I've done that a few times.
We kept contact after the conference, with the help of another workshop participant, a brilliant poet named Sammy Greenspan. It was a red letter day when I got new poems from her or new photos from Jim. I call his photographs portals, and maybe he does too. I ogle them frequently, vary them on my wallpaper, and treasure the good fortune that let me meet him.
One of the guys wore ripe jeans he never changed, thick with grime and grease. The buddies, if that's what they were, made him get a new pair. When he took off the jeans they stood by themselves for a while, then took off running. They all gave chase but the jeans got away.
Years later one of the guys had a plot of land and a son to whom he wanted to pass on his lore. He took him out in the fields and forests but at one point released a slow, silent, deadly fart he didn't want his son to smell (Satan's breath). Trying to draw the boy away from the scene of the crime, he distracted him with some natural wonder when he saw movement ahead.
It was the pants, still running.
Forgive me Jim for any errors I've made. I'm working from memory. I went from dreading to meet the writer to a kind of wary eagerness. He showed up at the appointed hour, a man my age or more, I couldn't be certain, with a wild gleam in his eyes and springy hair standing all over his head. We talked about the story a while, then he started telling me a little more about his life.
A retired math professor from Athens, Ohio, he collected sticks and roots and burls and gnarls of wood on wanderings through fields and forests around his house. He picked ones with spirits in them, took them home, polished them up. He had some in the trunk of his car if I wanted to see. I figured only cowardice would keep from me from going along.
We ambled to the parking lot, and he really had a load of sticks and such in his trunk. When he pulled out the first, I almost gasped. In the center, around a gnarl in the branch, I saw the three distorted faces at different heights, facing different directions. He asked what I saw, but I wanted him to tell me what he saw.
He pointed out the same faces and described them as I saw them. Each stick, root, or branch had its own spirit looking out, turned to a high polish. On our way back, he pointed out a configuration in a tree and I saw it there too. He gave me a stick, a little one like a natural peace pipe to set on the table when I conduct a workshop or pass around. I've done that a few times.
We kept contact after the conference, with the help of another workshop participant, a brilliant poet named Sammy Greenspan. It was a red letter day when I got new poems from her or new photos from Jim. I call his photographs portals, and maybe he does too. I ogle them frequently, vary them on my wallpaper, and treasure the good fortune that let me meet him.
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