Things to Be Thrown Away – Jonathan Penner

Jonathan Penner - born 1941

My father has a huge basement. This basement has the square footage of the apartment that M and I live in now.

This basement is filled to about 99.35% of its capacity. It is FULL.

Tools, old board games, CDs, old framed pictures, books, kitchen appliances. Rolls of tape, scotch, collectable watches and general crap that he has found and collected over the past 40 years.

I say 40 because he has stuff down there from his college days – stuff that he has carted from his home town in Iowa to PA to VA back to PA to NJ and then back to PA.

Honestly, there really is a lot of stuff in this basement.

Now, what makes me write about his basement in relation to this story, is that I too must make a decision – sometime pretty soon I would imagine – concerning things to be thrown away from his basement.

I’ve written in the past about how he has already started to “give” me things. This process of “giving” is interesting.

He’ll state that if I see something, and I want it, ask him, and he’ll give it to me.

Well, on one of our last visits, I did just that, and the “giving” didn’t actually take place.

I asked him for something and he would look at it and ponder its signifiganice in his life and the say “…well…I don’t know…I’d like to hold on to this.”

He would then ask if I wanted 5 rolls of duct tape or an old rusty rake ( I took one roll of tape and politely refused the rake).

There is this unspoken knowledge that exists within the entire family where we realize that someone is going to have to take or to dispose of most of my fathers “stuff”.

Over the past several months, in preparation for the baby, I have done a fine job of clearing out the apartment of my life of “stuff”.

I can’t imagine nor would I want to bring into my life all of his stuff.

So, I too must consider what to keep and what to discard.

And, in this process, I must decide what to keep about my father and what I shall let slide down my memory hole.

The Cold Room – Lowry Pei

Lowry Pei – Birthday?? – Grew up in the 50s.

I venture into my own cold room quite a bit.

Sometimes I think that I spend too much time there.

My cold room isn’t necessarily filled with the corpses of memories. I think that they are just in hibernation and each time I visit them, they return to life and I am able to spend some time with them again.

Then again, I’m happy to have the ability to still pull those memories from the recesses of my mind. Who knows how long they will remain. I know as I age, I’ll loose the ability to find them in their normal resting places.

When I crack the door of the cold room and step inside, I think about my days in high school. Friendships…girlfriends.

I think about my college years. Again, all the good friends I had …the couple of girlfriends I had.

I think about my time after college.

My years adrift before my time in Romania.

I think about the “friends” I had in Romania. I think about M and how we met. I think about out time together in RO. I think about our first years in this country together. I think about the innocent first couple of years we spent together…as we really grew to know each other.

I’m happy when I revisit these corpses.

But, deep in the back corner of the cold room, on a shelf, in a box are the really “dead” memories.

I know they are there, and from time to time I will lift the lid to that box and look inside and see them there. Naturally, I don’t spend too much time with them….but I respect the space they occupy on their shelf.

Rosa – Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick born April 17, 1928

If I had not read ‘The Shawl” in the BASS 1981, I don’t think that I would have had the connection to this story that the story enabled.

Having that story in my head through the time I read this really added some depth and body to the story.

Rosa is a rather long story…but worth it.

I always seem to enjoy stories that have a character who is…touched in the head.

I think if written with skill, the effect is wonderful.

Ozick certainly knows how to pull it off.

I think that part of my fascination with this particular trait in a character is my own fear or thought that I may suffer this fate someday.

I already question little mannerisms that I have and wonder how others perceive me. Little gestures, statements, behaviors and quirks. I think looking at myself from the outside, parts of who I am are a bit – well – weird…if not a little odd already. I ask myself – “why did I make that weird noise?” or “why did I screw my face up like that?”.

I have told M about these thoughts I have and she assures me that these are just traits that make us who we are. They are part of our personality.

I suppose she is correct, but I can’t seem to shake that I’m already a bit off center.

My father (in his “normal” days- Pre Alz), had an odd personality. You don’t have to stretch your thoughts too far to draw a connection between the two of us.

I just wish I wouldn’t look back on a scene in my life and be so critical of my behavior in these particular scenes.

I’m too into my own head sometimes. If the normal biological processes of my brain chemicals altering my everyday behavior as I grow older don’t push me into the looney bin – then me fretting over those brain chemicals is going to push me there quicker.

-Screwed huh?

Nairobi – Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates - born June 16, 1938

I haven’t yet narrowed down my inability to finish this volume of the BASS. Sure I’ve been distracted by the pregnancy but I’ve had plenty of time to read and write.

It’s not like I don’t have more years of the anthology to plow through…

Perhaps it’s my lack of disciple showing again.

I don’t understand what is so difficult about spending ½ an hour with a story and then writing something about it the next day.

So…Nairobi.

Oates.

A pleasant enough story. Nothing spectacular – standard fare from Oates (which means that the writing is superior to other authors).

What did it give me?

Well, this was a tough one.

One that caused me to stare hopelessly at the computer screen for awhile.

The first word that popped into my head was illusions.

I feel that the story had to do with the perception of those illusions. Is it even possible to perceive illusions or are illusions something that are stable and cannot be subjected to a certain perception? They either are something or they are not.

Hummmm…

This story caused me to think about the world around me and my existence in it.

How much of the time that I spend in this world is an honest existence?

Reality vs. fantasy.

I’ve written in the past quite a bit about perception and how I am working at how I deal with my own.

It seems, and this may be just because I am hyper aware of it, that there is an awful lot of discussion out there in the world now about the “reality” that we are living in. Was the life we lead before this economic crisis a “real” world or was it a world based on a fantasy?

Was it this illusion that got us into the trouble that we are in now?

Was what happened after 9/11, America’s reaction, based on a realistic plan to fight our enemies? Afghanistan? Iraq?

The internet, TV, the movies, the entertainment and information industries…infotainment…are they reality?

Do we see Nairobi on the other side of the screen and believe that we are there because we have been conditioned to believe that we are there because we are told that we are there?

Illusions and reality – something to be explored and considered.

Glimpse into Another Country – Wright Morris

Wright Morris - January 6, 1910 – April 25, 1998

It’s not that often that we sit back in our little world(s) and attempt to grasp how big the world really is.

We go through our day and focus on our frustrations and convince ourselves that the problems and pains we are suffering are to be our own to bear and that there can’t possibly be anyone out there suffering as much as we are.

I think DFW in his famous commencement speech brought our self-centeredness right to us and helped us realize what silly creatures we are.

Only recently, well, within the past 8 years or so, have I really attempted to grasp the enormity of the world. Even after my trips, life and time abroad, I still failed to realize the scale of this place – planet - until recently.

I think it has only been through the education I have gained over these past years both through my day to day work and in my reading that has allowed my mind to open and to see what is really going on in this world...taking a Glimpse into Another Country.

I think that it’s the mental filters kicking in once again that only allow so much information to pass through into our minds preventing an overload of sorts.

The filters prevent the weight of the world from crushing us. Sometimes those filters malfunction...and well, you can guess what happens when the weight of the world lands on you.

How many times do you glimpse into another country?

Step off that cliff?

Run that extra mile?

Cheat death?

Walk around naked?

I thought that doing so would be difficult given my line of work. I have found this not to be the case.

It all has to do with a shift in your mental state. Knock it off a couple of degrees – (you can choose how to do that) and your everyday can become glimpses into other countries.

I have to remind myself to skew my angle of thought. Not daily...but hourly.

I have to think about how others think.

Think about what others see.

Think about what others feel.

Think about what others do.

Then – I think about what I think and see and feel and do.

And I think about other ways of thinking and seeing and feeling and doing until I know that my next step may or may not be the right one...but it will definitely be interesting.

It’s a big world.

Let your mind take you out there. It’s easier than you think.

Thorofare - Susan Minot

Susan Minot – December 7, 1956 -

It’s impossible it seems to read so many short stories in a compacted period of time, and during such an emotionally charged section of my life, that I wouldn’t seem to think that I was encountering a solid theme emerging from the American Short Story.

I have encountered the “difficult pregnancy” story – (hasn’t helped with my thoughts on our own pregnancy).

The disabled child story (again, toying with my emotions during this time)

The single parent (my father and his struggle with Alzheimer’s...added to the feelings that most kids of the 70s and 80s have towards their father’s who left their family).

The unfaithful spouse (thankfully I can’t draw a “real life” parallel here!).

And finally, death and its impact on the family – no surprise here –

I seem to have come across quite a few of these stories in The Best American Short Stories collections.

Where is my parallel?

Well, I have both a step-father, a father and mother that all seem to be fixated on death – more pointedly, their death.

Discussions surrounding the health of my step-father and his continued time with us have also included the discussion of what we as a family will do when it’s his time to go. That discussion then turns to a discussion with my mother about what she wants to happen to her after she dies.

Then I have my father who obsesses during our visits with him about his long walk down death’s road with Alzheimer’s.

So, I encounter Thorofare and think “oh shit, another death story”.

I wholeheartedly agree that the story should have been included in the anthology. It’s a wonderful story.

It just came at a very sensitive time in my life.

A time where I have two fathers rounding out their lives while at the same time, M and I are preparing to bring another life into this world.

What I take away from this story is not the message of the story...but the timing that it appeared in my life. I could have read this story two years ago and it would not have had the impact that it did when I read it a couple of weeks ago.

Which makes me think – did Updike choose his stories based on the mood he was in that particular year, or was his selections made out of his ability to really recognize quality writing?

Possibly a little of both.

Everyday when we climb out of bed and stumble into the bathroom, piss, and then make our way downstairs to make our coffee – we are opening the book of our day.

We have no clue of the author or the work that we are about to encounter.

Just chalk this up as another reason why I love this anthology.

Morrison’s Reaction – Stephen Kirk

Stephen Kirk -???

We’ve all come up against individuals who refuse to take advice.

Yup – advice.

I really don’t like that word – well, not the word exactly – but the action associated with the word.

I am very conscious of not giving advice. This is difficult for me because of my background but I have found that in life, people don’t usually like to receive it and they don’t appreciate it when it’s given (there are plenty of people out there willing to give advice).

There were cases in my past where I have offered my opinion for the well being of the individuals involved...and to not have the opinion respected or even considered...well, that was quite frustrating.

I have also been on the receiving end of advice and I out of my desire to keep the flow of life smooth, I have mostly heeded all advice given. (I also attempt to place myself into situations where I don’t need someone to give me advice...that helps the entire situation).

So – my advice...don’t give it, just receive it.