Meet the Folks

His were the eyes of the artist: pale and wide. There were signs of relief in his demeanor, finally believing his friend's forecast that her folks were non-threatening and in many ways more like him than not. The meal was not important in that way. The pair had already settled within the comfy jeans of being good friends. Then the common thread was discovered. It began with the older man reading the younger man’s upper-arm tattoo: Goodbye Blue Monday, the recently discarded subtitle of a famous Vonnegut. That began the conversation between the two men based on their fondness for the author. The younger man seemed to pick up where the older man left off, with Breakfast of Champions. Difference in opinions about the book, perhaps the last in the reign of the great American novelist, illustrated the divide between the generations and equilibrium was reached. Close, but not too close. After all, there must be a reasonable quarter century for the generations to coexist, especially over a nice dinner in a favorite Asian restaurant.

Meeting friends is a point of pride during our trips to Chicago. The younger member of the family, the one with the requisite determination to find her place in society, seems happy to expose her folks to her developing world. One wonders if that is true across the vast parent-child landscape. This child is no child and has not been since the age of twelve. That was when we sat in a small theater and watched an R-rated movie. It was not a conscious experiment. It just happened. There were far too many adult burdens placed on her in the real world as well. And she clearly illustrates the adage, what does not kill us makes us stronger. In many ways she is stronger than her parents.

The next new acquaintance was far more important: the new roommate. There was no need for a predicate to the meeting, but conversation demands something. “She is me, version 10.1,” she said while showing off her new apartment. The huge space sits above an insurance agency on a busy north-west avenue. There was unabashed fondness for the person sharing her home, and once the greetings were made the reasons became clear. The roommate is a thoughtful, engaging and positive person. She works in a research lab and will have a cavalry of initials behind her name someday. There are similar interests between the women and mutual admiration is the undertow of their short story.

There is another roommate. His story is enough for an entire visit with these Personal Notes; perhaps an entire book.

The old guard was in attendance for the most part. The actor/playwright was spotted during a long walk and street-corner updates were exchanged. He is in a new play and one of his originals is being performed somewhere in town. “Somewhere small and below ground.” This is a good place to start such a difficult and demanding craft. The former roomy - also an actor - is in a play in one of the city’s many community theater groups. Her talent overflows a room filled with other friends, new and old, during a pot luck held on the last night of our visit. Thumbnails of a well populated support system prompted a rare moment when we instinctively knew that she would be okay. Worry still? Always. Those of you in similar situations understand that such thoughts and fears will never fade. But when you know her friends, and when you are lucky enough to know her, those dreary little demons stay where they belong: among the dust bunnies that collect under her bed. The bed that remains in her room in your house, and that she claims only once or twice a year, usually during holidays.

Right now, at least, Chicago is where she belongs. It is a city with plenty of flaws and dangers, but it just might be the best city in the world.

Wicker Park, After Dark

CLEVELAND [September 25] 60622: numbers that mean something. A child of the 50’s watching his mother’s favorite game show can still hear the numbers in a promotion for the Spiegel Catalogue Company; Chicago 60609! It meant the end of the needlessly cheerful exchange of trivia and prizes and the beginning of something better: probably lunch.

Now the numbers represent a small town for a large part of the future and family. They designate the neighborhoods in and around Wicker Park, including Ukrainian Village, Bucktown and Near West and River West. It is also the digital plot that is the adopted home; chosen by one, the youngest and most enlightened, but a good choice that affords visits to the city a couple of times a year – whether she likes it or not.

Great cities are like that. They consist of knitted small communities that thrive on the knowledge that there is a fraternity of being, of living under the same circumstances, facing like challenges and enduring, perhaps even prospering at a fairly even pace. Some blocks are more open to others and some are downright hostile. It depends on the city. In Chicago there are examples of both.

Central to 60622 is a fine little green. Shiny black wrought iron spears hold back the street except for wide openings at the corners. In daylight the carefully tended nursery of perennials that lines Damen Avenue offers armature horticulturist a chance to test their identification skills. Mid September the deceivingly unruly bunch sends bold buds over and through the fence, spread wide into inviting chasms for buzzing collectors. One can accumulate a serious pollen count just by holding out a hand while walking by. The right triangle is an inviting destination for those in the neighborhood who seek refuge from the city noise and pace. Children are especially drawn to the colorful giant playthings and a wealth of exploration. The small town within the nation’s third largest city is populated mostly by the young, and many are usually there in the park, when possible, consulting nature to help them with decisions and using it as a suitable backdrop for new love. Being young means every decision is critical, and on average half of them are wrong. There is no difference later in life, it is just that we become aware of the dichotomy. And we don’t use a natural space as much as we should.

Nightfall on Wicker Park is a different story entirely. The blooms are still there, but many shrink into plant-sleep, miserly saving their chlorophyll in case the sun is a no-show tomorrow. The shiny sentries are still in place, welded every five inches along Shiller, Wicker Park Avenue and Damen. But the families are gone and only the boldest – horniest and drunkest - of lovers dare venture in. At night Wicker Park becomes the United Nations, the Situation Room and the Gathering of Eagles in the minds of the unrepentant alcoholics. You can hear them debating as you walk toward the fractiously cool clubs, restaurants and other nighttime hangs that make the five points a serious draw. If you are versed in the language of the drunk, you can hear discussions about the deliberate flooding of black folks in New Orleans – a given – and the positioning of black soldiers as sniper decoys in Iraq. You can just make out future chart-topping rap verses and perfectly plausible reasons why, the only people who are real is us; ethanol enhancement not withstanding.

It is a place this writer has been before: sitting on the picnic table, pacing the ever-shrinking liquid and able, perhaps during the only time such a process is possible, to live in the moment. It is freeing. The life of a nighttime park drunk is brave and short, cowardly and infinite and reveals all the right answers, only to have them dissolved by unconsciousness and forever wiped away by the morning sun. It is a good novel that is impossible to write. Yet there it is, beginning right around 9pm central time, on separate stages scattered neatly

Fear and Loving in Chicago

Family in America usually means family spread all over the country. With representatives in Atlanta, St. Petersburg and Chicago, the tendency is to devote most travel time to a little facetime. Chicago is especially inviting because it might just be the finest city in the world! That is not fawning; there is nothing to gain or lose in being truthful about a place on the map. But Chicago has many things that make it superior to most, if not all other cities. For one it has a unique lack of swagger. Many might disagree, those who do have never been to New York, Philadelphia, London, Berlin or even Los Angeles and Atlanta. People in those cities truly do believe their own press. Chicago just knows it is special and goes about its day trying to prove that to no one.

Travel is important to the writer – no matter what level of success – and to this fledgling storyteller the Toddlin’ Town holds a special endearment. It was the place chosen by the original Elmer as an adopted hometown. Dad sold hats to gangsters and stars from a little shop on the near South Side. There was a time when Milton Berle, among the most famous Chicago natives,walked into the radio station and was more than shocked when our Jamaican receptionists asked: “Can I tell Mr. Alexander who is here to see him?” What followed was a classic vaudevillian double-take and dad was there, in the lobby registering people to vote, just in the right place to catch the natural comic riff. “Hey! That’s Milton Berle! Uncle Milty, don’t your know TV's first real Star?” He gently scolded the receptionist. Dad always scolded with either a smile or a well worn paddle used in his gym class and on his infrequently wayward sons. If not for Elmer Collins being in there to engage the aging star in requisite sycophancy, the visit might have soured very quickly. As it was, Uncle Milty insisted on dad coming back to the studio to, “teach these amateurs a thing or two about respect.”

Yes, back in Chicago dad sold Milton Berle a hat, or at least they both agreed that such an association existed.

Michigan Avenue: probably the most famous street west of Fifth Avenue and deserving of the title The Miracle Mile. It is not just the shops and energy, it is the sense that this is a destination for nearly everyone strolling along the wide boulevard. But driving it is something else entirely. Before crossing the ornate bridge from the south, there is a stream of traffic that flows from cross-town left turns into a stop-and-go ballet that would give the poet Virgil the shivering vapors. Fortune favors the bold in Loop Friday afternoon traffic. And there we were, the driver with cell phone at his cheek seeking the best way over to Columbus Avenue from the only family in town.

That’s when the towtruck driver leaned his chin on the bright-yellow windowsill and said, “’gainst the law talking on the cell phone while you driving.” It was a clear admonishment that cut through the traffic sounds and even the conversation that was abruptly ended. “Where you from? Ohio?” he maneuvered to the front of the sedan and glanced at the plate. “Probably against the law there, too. We don’t like y’all in Ohio no way. Y’all stole the election.” The one sided exchange was pumped out between braking and glancing at the bus in front of him. One would think that between the two concentration-averting activities, the thing in which the Traffic Control Division employee was engaged was far more dangerous than a quick call to find out when the was the best time to make a right off Michigan. But no.

Yet here is where Chicago is different. The driver went out of his way to show the visitors the correct route to their hotel. He even got on his hood-mounted PA to make sure the proper turns were made. Giving us grief, and making sure we had what we needed: that’s Chicago.

Faith and Progress

“God did not bring you this far just to drop you on your head.” Those were the reassuring words of an early sponsor. He had a way of taking just about everything in stride. And given the horrific life from which his new apprentice had escaped, the words were like insulin to a diabetic. With apologies to the many who support this member site yet have a different view of the cosmos, the words are taken on faith. Events of the past have confirmed the view more times than one can count.

Progress is a combination of faith and real indicators, no matter how small, supporting that internal feeling that one is on the right path. When this endeavor began – this gamble that an upstart could wedge his way onto a crowded and cautious team of popular fiction writers – it was understood that certain things had to happen for the process to advance. This is not the first time the word gamble and its companion risk have been used in this space. Believing that there is enough to say, to create, so that pressing the word-images between covers becomes a commodity is a pretty steep leap from working in an established industry. Even one as competitive and difficult to break into as radio is no match for the obstacles confronting the new writer.

But progress had to continue in one form or another. Completing the first manuscript, ripping it apart with the help of some knowledgeable contributors, nearly starting over and refining and sweating over every word; that was progress. Getting it ready (and hoping all chances were not blown by sending out the previous dreck) and re-sending it to the agents who expressed some interest (if you can fix it) and hoping it is fixed; more progress. Getting the agent and immediately starting on the next story, finding the learning curve bending in your favor and really enjoying the process; that is progress.

Then comes a moment when faith truly takes over. There is a clear drop on the horizon and something has to happen. Once again, some progress appears in the form of a phone call. A publisher thinks enough of one of the works to “take it to the next level.” Does it matter that their interest is in the third book in a fairly contiguous series? No. The works were done with the idea that if the previous volume does not make it, the second and third has enough embedded background to make the story cogent – at least that was the plan. This is no small step, but it does not mean the race is won. There is still plenty of work to do. A good start was asking a lot of questions about the publisher – a medium sized independent with a dozen years in business and an interesting core – checking them out on the web and, satisfied that it could be just the right step-up, going back over the manuscript to make sure they have the best possible example upon which to base their final decision. The agent was candid in saying that “their screening is pretty comprehensive, you have a real good shot at this.” And, “the final decision could take as long as six months.” Yes, that great sucking sound is initial elation giving way to reality. And the waters continue to drop into the abyss, now visible with the naked eye!

Faith and progress: the Romulus and Remus of an empire of gathering dreams. This writer has come a long way from walking two miles in the rain to a meeting of recovering alcoholics. There was nothing then, nothing but a desire to change, a critical need to change. Nearly nineteen years later and that world, based only on faith and sobriety, is filled with family, a home, a good and generous career (albeit on hold) and an ability work on a life-long dream. It is no accident, nor is it a surprise that nothing about it has been easy. But just as the promise clearly states, one of many made to those who walked through that first door, took that first step, "life will be better than you ever dreamed possible."

It would be a cruel joke indeed to drop headfirst from such a lofty perch.

A Fair Tradeoff

Writing disposable suspense thrillers, writing disposable anything, what kind of goal is that?

A reasonable one?

In a NYT essay about the role of the terrorists in the post 9/11 novel, editor and novelist Benjamin Kunkel posited the notion that universal fear has changed the very fabric of fiction. He is correct, of course. Just as the universal youth alienation, the Civil Rights movement, the drug culture, the Vietnam War, Woman’s Rights and Watergate shaped the work in the last half of the century. Writers - or more accurately the editors whose job it is to read readers and make decisions based on sound market principles – are not immune to that cosmic Crayola that shades the world and informs taste. Who could help but at least address terrorism in any story worth writing. In 2005 it is as ubiquitous as a ringing cell phone.

Mr. Kunkel knows a little about literature. He clearly reads a book a day; all the right books. And there is no qualm with his view of the state of the novel vis-à-vis a world tilted toward fear and away from happiness. Others with greater qualifications can examine his reasoning and study his post-ironic shuttle into a dark and dangerous adult world; where genius is treated with suspicion at best and imprisonment on a really bad day. It was his early dismissal of Mystery-Suspense-Thrillers that intrigued this airport book writer. The young author and an editor of n+1 is correct in lumping such efforts in the disposable bin. What many of us do is entertain. If a message seeps in and a character strikes a cord, wonderful! But in most cases such qualities are fully unintended.

A wise man once extolled the virtues of knowing ones self. “Do not limit your abilities with someone else’s idea of what you can or cannot do, but do what you enjoy and do it well.” That fatherly advice has worked to both advantage and detriment in the nearly four decades of adult struggle. In radio, literary fiction can be likened to a Classical Music radio station or NPR. Both are nice, perhaps even vital for an educated and well-rounded human being. Without exception those radio stations draw a fraction of a percent of the population and less than three percent of radio listeners. Programming such properties means spending your days with interesting donors, or wealthy and bored listeners who devote remarkable energies to rediscovering the past. It’s a great gig, if you can get it. It was from such rarefied ooze that the spark of Progressive Radio ignited; ultimately providing a staging ground for the Rock of the late 60’s and seventies. Music that is alive and well today.

This former programmer would die a slow death trying to breathe life into such a medium. It was a radio station that was a hit with adults and won over the town or nothing at all! And this reality, this ability has carried over to fiction. For better or worse, the reader must laugh and tear up a little; feel a tightening in the stomach and drop his jaw or roll his eyes when the secret is revealed. Literary Fiction - the good ones anyway - will have some of the same effect. But there is a loftier goal in mind during the years it takes to create such work. Eight months of fun and intensive work and here, Madame Editor, is the latest in a series of…

Writing mystery/thrillers is the most fun one can imagine, if one is prone to do it in the first place. The seed of an idea, the planting of the plot, the cultivating and weeding of the characters and the topiary of the first draft, all this amounts to time well spent and you don’t even get dirty! A little bloody, a little heartbreak, a little suicidal when things don’t happen fast enough, but ultimately it is worth it.

Disposable writing is writing for entertainment, both that of the reader and the writer. Is it as important as the work undoubtedly destined to pour from the word processor of Benjamin Kunkel and other young blazers? No, never. But perhaps the real irony is that there are far more eyes glued to books in airports than there are in cozy libraries of the wealthy and tiny stipend-funded ivy league cells. Seems a fair tradeoff, ya’ think?

At The End of The Rope

With a firm eye on the difficult reality of the times, let’s not leave our story literally hanging from the top railing of the railroad bridge; unfinished and ripening in memory.

The crowd gathered more than 200 feet above a narrow creek in west-central Pennsylvania to celebrate Leap-day 1992. It was an odd thing to do, and this Saturday an equally odd collection of characters strapped on mid-body harnesses and voluntarily either dropped, flung or propelled their bodies into the crisp air. The hope, the better odds were that the final stage of the descent would be saved from causing serious injury by a springy blue line attached somewhere mid-torso. It was a good bet. No one on this day would sustain serious injury. That is not to say all floated and dropped with the greatest of ease.

The promoter of this event was a small band of broadcasters called The Waking Crew. The morning radio hosts consisted of a star, a newswoman, a sports-guy and a producer. The idea of making a statement – doing something wild on the one rare day – was not as well received as we had hoped. No more than a couple of dozen brave souls ponied up the 100 dollars and took the early morning excursion to a barely legal jump-site. Yet among the faithful of Akron, Ohio, it has become legend, ranked right up there with LaBron James’ freshman year at St. V’s, the tear-gassing at one of the famous Akron Rubber Bowl Concerts while Jefferson Airplane kicked into Revolution, and Tiger Woods first win at the World Series of Golf. Everyone was there.

The Leap day promotion may have faded into memory faster than most if not for a piece of audio that survives to this day. The producer, never one to miss an opportunity, wore a wire. For those non-mystery lovers, that is a generally concealed device used to record conversations. In this case the small cassette recorder was supposed to capture the thrill of a man engaging in a popular death-defying activity. It captured something quite different.

The experience of jumping from great heights and trusting the support of a body harness was not new to the producer, the only member of The Crew willing to take to the rail and toss into the abyss. He had tried something similar more than fifteen years earlier, only then it was a static line plunge from a small airplane. Unfortunately the same problem developed on both occasions. When fully engaged, a body harness has four support points: at the shoulders and the tops of the thighs. The problem with a big guy (6’2” and at the time nearly 235 pounds) is that the thigh supports often collect their pressure right up the middle, effectively becoming groin support. Not good, not good at all.

The end of the jump came with the associated thrills, yells, whoops and gestures of pride and accomplishment. That instant of gratification was quickly supplanted by shock waves from a man’s most sensitive and vulnerable space. The whooping became screams of agony, followed by unsuitable-for-broadcast exclamations of deep discomfort. The predicate to this pain, experienced in 1977, was so intense as to nearly prompt the parachutists to slap the harness release at 8,000 feet. Death could not hurt so much. But there was no quick release on this harness and the more he swung, the less he hung (sorry). All male organs were pressed into cavities not used since pre-toddler days and try as he might, there was no way to redistribute the weight so that the lightening would stop striking the cerebrum.

There he was, suspended and calling for help. The highly technical way of bringing a jumper back to the bridge was for three guys to pull the cord and load back up. This took time and to the tortured, it took forever. The tape still exists, much of it bleeps and heavy breaths of a man engulfed in suffering. But from a distance it is funny.

The audio is highly requested and still graces the airwaves, even though the producer, later program director, has long departed opting instead to relate this and other tales to all interested readers. But just thinking about that cold afternoon in the Pennsylvania backwoods brings a renewed throb to the base of the stomach. There are areas in that personal and private region that are still, to this day, as numb as they were on Leap Day 1992.

The Faces of Despair

CLEVELAND [September 7] -- As the nation looked on in horror, it was impossible to ignore the disparate measure of suffering between white and black Americans in New Orleans. The prism through which this nation has been refracted consists of those two points of view, or so it seems, with a halo of brown representing the newest arrivals to the party. Here is a flash for all those who believe that the level of concern, response and dedication to saving lives had anything to do with race: it did not. This is coming from a Black man who in his lifetime has seen plenty of bigotry, violence and sins of omission simply because he is not white.

There is a deep offense in the words from some who would have the world believe that being poor and black means being victimized by government. And there is equal resentment in the failure of these same provocateurs to recognize the wide spectrum of personality in the people they profess to represent. Simply put, there are choices and consequences in every walk of life. There is no disgrace in being hard-working and low-paid, while still caring for family and community. It is often a tough life, but there is still time for laughter and joy. In some cases more joy than that found in the homes of the wealthy. This is no Dickensian justification, it is just a warning that judging another’s life from a distance, for better or worse, is a dangerous pursuit.

So why were so many African Americans caught up in the storm?

Taken one at a time, these are the facts of human nature when faced with such incredible danger: 1) It will not be as bad as they say, it never is. 2) We’ll still have time to leave before it gets really bad. 3) There will be a place for us if we can’t stay at home. 4) We’ll only need the shelter for a few hours. 5) Folks will take care of each other. 6) There is still authority to control the really bad people. Nothing in those six points represents black or white. It is just people – some people - and the natural response to a pending catastrophe. The startling thing is that most of the people who fell in part or completely into those errant ways of thinking were black; certainly most caught by the news cameras.

New Orleans is mostly black. If Lake Erie suddenly rose up and engulfed its shoreline cities of Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo, you would see the same collection of poor and desperate people seeking shelter. We inhabit the cities and for the most part thank God for that or they would become empty holes in a donut of relative affluence; affluence that is proportionately populated by both black and white Americans.

This is not about color, but rather the consequence of our system and our nature. It appears that as long as humans are allowed a degree of freedom, real equality is impossible. With apologies to Socialists and Egalitarians, all people are created equal; once exiting the womb all bets are off. The change is instant and choices made initially by others – and later by the person - take over and we all travel different paths. Some roads lead to fortune and some to poverty; some to public service and some to crime. There is no doubt that living in an impoverished environment makes it difficult to teach the skills for self-improvement or engender the spirit with the confidence needed step up. But it happens. The now famous Ernest Morial Convention Center, a scene of predator behavior that illustrated the worst of us, was named for a Black man who pulled up from poverty and became a prominent force in Louisiana government. Mr. Morial was no stranger to the Collins family. He would have done better for his people: all the people of New Orleans.

In spite of such inspiring stories there is a very real cycle of poverty that requires external forces to break. That is the continued failure of all of us, including those who, for whatever reason, choose not to take advantage of the numerous paths to a better future.

The failures of mass evacuation, provisional shelter, and later aid, rescue and security will be debated for years. Many failed in their responsibility to act against such a profound emergency. The city of New Orleans was left to die for far too long, its citizens most in need left on their own. The stories that will come out of this tragedy will rival any work of fiction in horror and scope. But to say that these failures were because of the color of those faces of despair – or even the faces of government - is naive and overlooks a greater reality: at the hands of nature’s most destructive force, failure is often the only option.

Our Heart Breaks

Northbound. It was an unusually quiet road for a holiday weekend. Gasoline prices soared by the minute and the XM radio, permanently set to Fox News, rotated a ghostly narrative of a nation critically wounded. It happened before. Three weeks shy of four years earlier the nation stopped and wondered, cried and bled; tried to make sense of it all. This time it was a different wrath. There was no one to blame, no enemy to counter attack, no morbid justification.

Try as some might, there is nothing but the unstoppable force of nature and many thousands dead and displaced. It happened. Let’s start healing.

Along the route was some of that healing: long lines of trucks up from Florida and heading up and over. Linemen in their specialized orange vehicles from Pike Electric and white heavy trucks of all kinds from Asplundh Construction caravanned up I-75. The drowsy passenger, recovering from a four-hour stint behind the wheel, watched with mild curiosity as the line of utility work-horses drifted by. “What’s this?” It looked like there was a big job ahead: the biggest job in American history.

“I’ll bet they're heading to the hurricane.” The driver said, trying to keep her speed while overtaking the convoy. It was all too much. A shout to one of the young drivers through an open window determined the destination: Mississippi. It looked as though they were ready to power up the Gulf Shore by morning. But they knew the job was almost endless.

With Thumbs-Up for every truck, it was time to move on. The nearly ten-mile long line edged toward I-10, heading west to the devastation. Later an equally long line and equally task-oriented herd of trucks followed. They were the military, activated for the exception; when armed and uniformed men and women can and must control the citizenry. “Headin’ to New Orleans.” The young man responded to a question as he headed into Sonny’s Bar-B-Que. His fatigues and dark glasses, his demeanor and gait seemed to say, “this ain’t Iraq…we're needed at home.”

The young woman buying dog food at Winn-Dixie was worried about her growing puppy. She said she had to feed him cat food because she forgot to buy the giant bag of meat and grain chunks. Then she began to cry. Her dog was neglected, but her grandparents were in Biloxi and no one had heard from them. It was easier to worry about her dog. What might have happened in southern Mississippi was too much to bear.

Stare at a marble wall
Figures form in the perfect swirls of imperfection
Faces and places come
Fighting through where there is really nothing at all
Nothing but the life of a wall

Look into the face of
Misery. Feel the heat of departed hope
and
Dreams draining through
The mangled life survived but for the imperfect pause
Of deadly and uncaring cause

Stare at our broken hearts
Though we have little there is still room to ease the pain
In this imperfect world
Numbed by the need to run from the Sadness and Fear
Perfectly us
Perfectly real
They are here

Copyright © 2005, by Charles L. Collins