Read Rough Likeness: Essays Online
Authors: Lia Purpura
Rough Likeness: Essays (12 page)
Here,
it’s London for us, when we gather, my students and I, three hours each night to talk about books, language, art—forms of flight, forms of landing. With my cadets, it’s getting less strange. All this sitting and reading together helps.
it’s London for us, when we gather, my students and I, three hours each night to talk about books, language, art—forms of flight, forms of landing. With my cadets, it’s getting less strange. All this sitting and reading together helps.
Here, Ryan, one of my hosts, brought me an umbrella since I came unprepared for sudden storms. Here Group Captain Leonard Thorne notes, as I do, the residents of Tuscaloosa’s “wonderful hospitality and friendship.”
Nights, here, I am much impressed by my Hilton stack-up of pillows. (I can easily be made to feel rich by an abundance of bedclothes, plumping them while watching bad, late-night TV, letting the excess fall to the floor.) Seems I would have played nicely with R.A.F. Hazlehurst who “still thinks a pillow is a weapon and not a headrest.” We’d have blurred the room with soft flying weapons. “Born and bred in Derbyshire. Educated at Winchester. ‘Dick’ to his buddies . . . ,” he’s the bareheaded one, no leather helmet-and-goggle set, or dress cap all the others wear, in their
Fins and Flippers
photo.
Fins and Flippers
photo.
And here is E. G. Gordon, transferred from the Royal Artillery Anti-Aircraft, born in London, educated at Kingsbury School, Middlesex, whose chief sport is boxing, who “claims to be the shortest man in the R.A.F and so lives in constant dread of six-foot blind dates.” Here, layered over the land, are his jitters, which, from his photo, it seems he makes light of: his flight cap is precipitously tilted, one side of his mouth hiked, mischievous, laughing, his tie expertly knotted, his meticulous uniform sharp-pressed and not especially diminutive-looking. Whatever he left behind of himself, whatever I sensed on my walk, subatomic, molecularly present—that which I now know to call E. G.—was right
here
. Was so young. In the photo, he’s no more than twenty. If he’s alive now, he’s older than my father.
here
. Was so young. In the photo, he’s no more than twenty. If he’s alive now, he’s older than my father.
Here, I walk into class thinking
Really I have nothing to say to these people, the proper study of writing is reading, is well-managed awe, desire to make a thing, stamina for finishing, adoration of language,
and so on about reverie, solitude, etc. Here, sitting down, I’m going over my secret:
I don’t want to be inspiring, I just want to write and they, too, should want that—let’s all agree to go home and work hard.
I walk in, I see people with books, stacks of books I’ve asked them to read. Besides Woolf, there’s James Agee (let’s take that out class), who lived with the poorest white sharecroppers of Alabama and whose force of nature,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
was published in 1941, as he might add,
Year of Our Lord,
to dignify the event. (
Event.
I choose my word carefully, friends, for, as Agee writes, ‘this is a
book
only by necessity . . .’ let’s turn to page xi. . . .) Now I’m cooking. I, in my flight suit (black sweater and jeans) look into the faces of my cadets. Everyone’s eager. We walk to the runway. We find the ignition.
Really I have nothing to say to these people, the proper study of writing is reading, is well-managed awe, desire to make a thing, stamina for finishing, adoration of language,
and so on about reverie, solitude, etc. Here, sitting down, I’m going over my secret:
I don’t want to be inspiring, I just want to write and they, too, should want that—let’s all agree to go home and work hard.
I walk in, I see people with books, stacks of books I’ve asked them to read. Besides Woolf, there’s James Agee (let’s take that out class), who lived with the poorest white sharecroppers of Alabama and whose force of nature,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
was published in 1941, as he might add,
Year of Our Lord,
to dignify the event. (
Event.
I choose my word carefully, friends, for, as Agee writes, ‘this is a
book
only by necessity . . .’ let’s turn to page xi. . . .) Now I’m cooking. I, in my flight suit (black sweater and jeans) look into the faces of my cadets. Everyone’s eager. We walk to the runway. We find the ignition.
Here, I am escorted to Dreamland for barbeque, and with Brian, my student, eat my first banana pudding. Here, A. T. Grime, Flight Lieutenant, wrote, “anxious experiments are being carried out by the devoted Mr. Davies, our Dietician, with the object of providing an acceptable Yorkshire Pudding à la Tuscaloosa, to satisfy the palates of our gourmets.” “This I think is typical,” he continued, “of the efforts made by all at this school . . . to make your pilgrimage a memorable experience.” The banana pudding is so sweet, so custardy, full of bananas and cakey white fluff, so heavy and childish, if I’d grown up with it, I’d miss it too, when abroad.
Here, in 2008, the assistant in charge of visitors is a “Fifi.” Here, in 1942, the novices en route to becoming pilots first class were “Dodos.” Fifis and Dodos. What a menagerie this land raised up.
Here, the novices have their own games: flag-football with elaborate e-mail invitations. “As you can see, we at the UAEDFL—University of Alabama English Department Football League—are incredibly dedicated to our sport; we always give 110% and we play hurt . . . come this Saturday at 11 and feel the RUSH.” Here the cadets’ training program offered “archery, horseshoes, swimming, tennis, tumbling, softball, volleyball, boxing, relays, calisthenics and, for recreation, golf, checkers (chinese and regular), chess, cards, music, reading, singing, and movies.” Posted at 10:59 one night: “After incessant whining on the listserv and the occasional snide (yet sheepish!) remark in the graduate student lounge, the English Department comes up with an unbelievable plan to raise money by playing flag-football.... Can this ragtag band of writers, researchers, instructors and critiquers settle their views on Derrida before it’s too late?” And stanza one of an eleven-stanza poem, called “Cadence, Exercise” by cadet J. S. Peck goes:
Throughout the U.S. Armies wide
Stand formations side by side
Their contempt they’ll never hide
for Calisthenics!
Here’s Flight Lieutenant Garthwaite, R.A.F. Administrative Officer, in his monthly bulletin “Over to London”: “To those at home we send our sincerest hopes for the future. Although not on the field of battle ourselves, we do but gird ourselves for the great and final overthrow of Naziism. Let us hope and trust the coming year will see this war through . . . and . . . not a little by the fruits of our learning over here.”
Yes, here they learned their recitations: maximum speeds and service ceilings; flight ranges, fuel capacities, and armaments carried by the Arvo Lancasters, Armstrong Whitleys, and Bristol Beaufighters they’d be flying over the skies at home, soon, soon.
Into this vacancy,
something
asserted. Something strange—that is, real—and insistent was here. The land didn’t mean to be torn and tar-covered, wasn’t meant to sprout stock farmers, farm women, and ranchers. The land asked to be considered, and seriously. The land wanted to speak—past the bunkers of rolled insulation, past the earth-eating backhoes, and yellow concoction my farmer (okay,
working stiff
, bare hands in the poison, then wiping his nose) force-fed the grass. Here the land must have been green by the runways. Some of the big trees still here must have seen it. It must’ve been lush once, before hotels started turf wars along Marriott/Hilton lines, and thick vines choked the trees, and the tractors came and the hot blacktop poured, so the SKUs of Big K—hundeds of thousands—might take root and flourish.
something
asserted. Something strange—that is, real—and insistent was here. The land didn’t mean to be torn and tar-covered, wasn’t meant to sprout stock farmers, farm women, and ranchers. The land asked to be considered, and seriously. The land wanted to speak—past the bunkers of rolled insulation, past the earth-eating backhoes, and yellow concoction my farmer (okay,
working stiff
, bare hands in the poison, then wiping his nose) force-fed the grass. Here the land must have been green by the runways. Some of the big trees still here must have seen it. It must’ve been lush once, before hotels started turf wars along Marriott/Hilton lines, and thick vines choked the trees, and the tractors came and the hot blacktop poured, so the SKUs of Big K—hundeds of thousands—might take root and flourish.
I was returned—but not to an Eden, for there were airstrips and the screams of takeoffs, supply roads were laid down for fuel and equipment, the contrails of jets streaked the air, burned, scented, inscribed the quiet so the feel of the whole experience—the desire to serve, the fear of serving—would return whenever humidity, fuel, barbeque combined rightly for the novices.
I was returned, but more in this way: someone dreamed of getting the word, high over Berlin, to top-speed it east toward the Polish border, the Führer,
he’s there!
, it’s the hamlet of Gierloz, fix your sights son, load, steady, and——. Someone considered the glory, the fame, posing for photos with requisite wounds. Family pride, shining future. The world’s gratitude. Because the
boys
must have thought it, because
I
had the thought, it must have been lingering. The thoughts must have held on, hovering, jittery, wanting some rest. But nothing
cadet
was marked on the land, not poems or pudding, jaunty caps, homesickness. Instead, here were lots, grids, boxes, all manner of automata—doors that opened without human touch allowing the body to float right on in and get down to the business of buying.
he’s there!
, it’s the hamlet of Gierloz, fix your sights son, load, steady, and——. Someone considered the glory, the fame, posing for photos with requisite wounds. Family pride, shining future. The world’s gratitude. Because the
boys
must have thought it, because
I
had the thought, it must have been lingering. The thoughts must have held on, hovering, jittery, wanting some rest. But nothing
cadet
was marked on the land, not poems or pudding, jaunty caps, homesickness. Instead, here were lots, grids, boxes, all manner of automata—doors that opened without human touch allowing the body to float right on in and get down to the business of buying.
Here’s where the splintered, close barracks were raised—and then razed, plowed under into a new kind of cloverleaf: blacktopped, clovery only from air.
When the land would not speak and my characters failed, when the land was muffled and my characters stock, this piece was born.
Here is my seed. Here is my search, trail, map of convergences.
Here is the thing I made in place of—
what
, exactly?
what
, exactly?
What did I find myself wanting? Something simple and telling—say a shop revealing the “character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence. . . .” Even better (all this from Thomas Hardy), a “class of objects displayed in the shop windows . . . Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bell-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the ironmonger’s; beehives, butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and plough-harnesses at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows and mill-gear at the wheelwright’s and machinist’s; horse-embrocations at the chemist’s; at the glover’s and leathercutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’ knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs. . . .” Oh, boots to lace up against scalding and scraping! Commerce boiled, reconstituted—made rhythmic with breath, heavy with being.
I wanted a footpath, a field-edge—a
sidewalk.
People at ease with neighbors and chatting. A simple plaque at the site of—whatever :
Here the cadets of 42E sat to eat their first grits
. Scrap of wing or propeller on the Hilton’s faux mantle.
Fins and Flippers
next to every Gideon’s Bible.
sidewalk.
People at ease with neighbors and chatting. A simple plaque at the site of—whatever :
Here the cadets of 42E sat to eat their first grits
. Scrap of wing or propeller on the Hilton’s faux mantle.
Fins and Flippers
next to every Gideon’s Bible.
What did I find? Some Februaries that matched—one then and one now; some novices each with their good fights and good words, their gratitudes, civilities, and homey soft puddings.
I wanted to know what happened here, on land like this.
Now I know.
People learn to fly through it. And then they go home.
Jump
It’s a small thing that holds me.
On the sign that reads
Last Death from Jumping or Diving from Bridge, June 15, 1995,
it’s the
or
I can’t shake. Why fuss with ambivalence when real mystery abides: here stood intolerable grief or failure. Sheerest abandon, joy in a long summer evening. A dare. Need for adventure /a history of. Why work at precision when, hitched as they are to
Death
in this fragment, both
Jump
and
Dive
convey a misjudging of depth, of current, ignorance of rocks below the dark water, and, with “June” added, an insistent sun peaking the river with camouflage ripples. And isn’t it
Death
that I, passerby, secret entertainer of edges and precipices, should instead linger over—approaching, riding, then putting behind me the impulse as I cross the bridge, daily this winter?
Last Death from Jumping or Diving from Bridge, June 15, 1995,
it’s the
or
I can’t shake. Why fuss with ambivalence when real mystery abides: here stood intolerable grief or failure. Sheerest abandon, joy in a long summer evening. A dare. Need for adventure /a history of. Why work at precision when, hitched as they are to
Death
in this fragment, both
Jump
and
Dive
convey a misjudging of depth, of current, ignorance of rocks below the dark water, and, with “June” added, an insistent sun peaking the river with camouflage ripples. And isn’t it
Death
that I, passerby, secret entertainer of edges and precipices, should instead linger over—approaching, riding, then putting behind me the impulse as I cross the bridge, daily this winter?
Someone thought to be personal about it, not slap up an ordinance “By order of” and “with a $$$ fine.” No organization (Bridge Jumpers Anon) claimed the sign; it’s not a fraternity service project or probationary do-good feat. That unadorned “Death” is no stat-like “fatality.” “Or” is a move to cover the bases, and observed here, now, mid-February, the slightest warmth coming on, barest inflection of sweetness in air, the river still frozen—it opens up all kinds of questions.
Imagine the onset of summer in Iowa, each day in June the light and soft air a surprise, a relief from the long winter’s cold. It’s been twelve years now since the sign’s announcement. The bare facts are holding, but time folds the story back into “the past.” None of my friends here remember the death. When I stand on the bridge thinking “twelve years ago now” the form of an actual body in air, in water, is vague and the best I can do to buoy the body is
shirt-puffed-in-wind, corona-of-hair-floating-behind.
shirt-puffed-in-wind, corona-of-hair-floating-behind.
Twelve years ago now. Where’d the story go?
One in which no one moved quickly enough. Because
he
was the athlete. Because she, such a practical joker, would surface any minute, any minute for sure. No one moved off the bridge, tearing a path through the tangle of cattails and blackberry to plunge in and help. Or everyone tried, but she was under too long. Or he stood by himself in the early pink dawn, and the act, intended to purify—the cold water awaken, the silence exalt—was planned as a private moment.
he
was the athlete. Because she, such a practical joker, would surface any minute, any minute for sure. No one moved off the bridge, tearing a path through the tangle of cattails and blackberry to plunge in and help. Or everyone tried, but she was under too long. Or he stood by himself in the early pink dawn, and the act, intended to purify—the cold water awaken, the silence exalt—was planned as a private moment.
Around the sign, around the inconclusive
or
—because of the
or
, the pause it stirs, the space it opens—fragments and conjectures gather: the last person was drunk. The last person, despondent, tied a brick to her ankle. The last person could swim but not well and didn’t account for the rain-swollen currents, for a current at all, it looked so mild, as it does now, even in February. The last person was pushed, wasn’t ready and twisted around to protest. The last person hit her head on the railing, unconscious before she entered the water. The last person trusted his body, young as it was and accustomed to pleasure. And below were the snarled, sharp nests of dumped cable. Roots of river plants tough as rope. She cut her arm on a broken bottle and fainted and fell over the edge. He misjudged the span’s depths and hit the concrete foundation. She didn’t imagine construction debris. She thought the vertigo was over for good a long time ago. He looked up to say he was fine, just fine, but his mouth filled with water and he panicked and choked. She jumped, but midair turned it to swan dive—wanting the grace to set her apart, and to best all the plain summer cannonballers.
or
—because of the
or
, the pause it stirs, the space it opens—fragments and conjectures gather: the last person was drunk. The last person, despondent, tied a brick to her ankle. The last person could swim but not well and didn’t account for the rain-swollen currents, for a current at all, it looked so mild, as it does now, even in February. The last person was pushed, wasn’t ready and twisted around to protest. The last person hit her head on the railing, unconscious before she entered the water. The last person trusted his body, young as it was and accustomed to pleasure. And below were the snarled, sharp nests of dumped cable. Roots of river plants tough as rope. She cut her arm on a broken bottle and fainted and fell over the edge. He misjudged the span’s depths and hit the concrete foundation. She didn’t imagine construction debris. She thought the vertigo was over for good a long time ago. He looked up to say he was fine, just fine, but his mouth filled with water and he panicked and choked. She jumped, but midair turned it to swan dive—wanting the grace to set her apart, and to best all the plain summer cannonballers.
I’m not doubting it happened; I believe someone died. It’s just that the sign complicates, suggests many competing things at once: by “last death,” that there had been previous ones. (But those aren’t listed.) And how to be sure if the sign-maker kept up with the project, if “last” means “final” and not “last recorded”? Or if the span of twelve years suggests precautions
were
taken—and they worked, problem solved. You might even assume, if you’re inclined to optimism, that the sign, in a crude and grim sort of way, is reassuring: that it’s now very safe to jump. Or—given the sign’s plain-spokenness, its weird departure from officialese—someone got fed up with the jumping and used the occasion to blunt-force the message, to speak to kids “in their own language” and “to this day” (see how solid that phrase, how it makes time behave and ties up the story) the tone is off-kilter and not to be trusted, since, as kids know, authority keeps its ear to the ground and cooks up new methods of sounding native. And so, ahistorical and inconsistent, chummy in ways that feel fake, the sign frays and unfocuses; offers, then snatches away. Which accounts for the queasiness I feel standing before it.
were
taken—and they worked, problem solved. You might even assume, if you’re inclined to optimism, that the sign, in a crude and grim sort of way, is reassuring: that it’s now very safe to jump. Or—given the sign’s plain-spokenness, its weird departure from officialese—someone got fed up with the jumping and used the occasion to blunt-force the message, to speak to kids “in their own language” and “to this day” (see how solid that phrase, how it makes time behave and ties up the story) the tone is off-kilter and not to be trusted, since, as kids know, authority keeps its ear to the ground and cooks up new methods of sounding native. And so, ahistorical and inconsistent, chummy in ways that feel fake, the sign frays and unfocuses; offers, then snatches away. Which accounts for the queasiness I feel standing before it.
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