Terror twilight
A 2009 tornadic storm dipping and weaving through farmland south of Peoria.
You may want to skip this. Nobody likes hearing about dreams.
I was living in something approximating the offspring of a mobile home and a house tent. Warnings of a dire storm had me battening down the hatches, zipping any windows and walls shut.
I turned around to survey my humble place; clearly visible through my front window, the inky black maw of a tornado churned with abandon. The idea of being paralyzed with fear seems so ridiculously silly until your body slows with hardening cement and your heart works to dislodge itself.
After an eternity or 2 seconds, I frantically grab a nearby camera with fixed 20mm lens, aim and fire.
Two frames of that twisting wreckage through my window, probably blurry.
One frame of flames licking across the eaves of the house across the street. My roof feels absent.
Two frames of the tornado rushing forward, enveloping said house in debris. I’m still inexplicably ignoring my motor drive.
Three frames of the house exploding, birthing a bright fireball of hell from blackness. My brain is a full 500ms behind what my eyes are relaying.
And then it’s upon me. I dive into a closet, wrapping myself in a pile of clothes, and know deep inside that I’m not going to make it.
All I feel is disappointment. I’m an idiot. And now I’m finally going to die from being one.
Then, amid the din, voices. I quickly crawl toward them, shouting to ask if they have a basement.
They do.
But I’m outside in the open air and it is silent. The funnel has moved on, leaving a terrible void where the neighbor’s house once stood. Dark clouds hang like shredded cotton in the air, stable at last.
One of the voices belongs to a friend’s mom. She’s asking if I have any good photos.
I flip on the screen; there are the half dozen frames that I remember. And then there’s the dozens more that I don’t, awful shots of people pulling away from the tornado, their faces taunt in nauseous agony.
Wake up.
____
So what does it mean? I count four things.
1. I briefly chatted with Lauren right before I fell asleep in my chair. She’s the friend with the mom.
2. I read this yarn in Esquire last week
3. I really enjoy my Panasonic GF-1. It’s my knock-around camera of choice.
4. I need to get much more sleep.
October 17, 2011 2 Comments
Here goes nothing
The author as a senior, trying to keep his cool. Uniforms were mandatory.
I‘m going to tell you that I’m in Wichita for the express purpose of attending my 10-year high school reunion. And you’re not going to believe me.
I may have a screw loose.
This is the whole enchilada; tailgating at the Bishop Carroll homecoming football game against our crosstown rivals Kapaun Mt. Carmel, a campus tour of buildings unfamiliar, and a swanky formal at a downtown art gallery to cap the weekend off.
Never in a million years would you have caught me even considering this idea. But I’m unable to find any downsides.
October 7, 2011 3 Comments
Dispatches from La Plata, Missouri
The train has stopped in rural Missouri, where cell phone reception covers the countryside like disintegrating tissue paper. In front of me, a woman is having a Sunday morning Baptist service with her cell phone.
I’ve heard “Yes Lord” nearly 300 times. “Thank You Jesus” repeated a meager 230 times. She points to the ceiling like a football player after a touchdown. “That one made it to heaven,” she says to no one in particular.
Suddenly, she pauses: “Can you hear me?” We wonder if she’s addressing God or Verizon.
6 minutes later, the call is finished. And she begins singing.
October 7, 2011 1 Comment
Let there be no doubt that I’m an old soul
Sometime in July…
Chicago Theatre marquee, 1952 (Hoagy Carmichael Collection, Indiana University)
Hoagy Carmichael croons from my apartment like he hasn’t since the ’30s and ’40s. What prompted that? This McSweeney’s video mixing writing process with roasting beans.
Our farmer’s market is hot – no, torrid – for a Saturday morning. I still don’t understand the appeal of hosting it on a parking lot, but I deal with it. No fruit, sadly, but veggies are becoming plentiful. I pick up a half dozen ears of sweet corn, along with a couple of squash and cucumbers. A loaf of cinnamon-chip bread rounds out the bounty. I eat a filo-bread breakfast without eyeglasses. Oops.
There was a double-feature at the Apollo Theater in downtown Peoria. The Blob & The Girl Can’t Help It. I like both.
I sit down at the bar, but not for a drink: I’ll take a hamburger with Swiss, please. The bartender is cute with a dash of punky, and I’m out of practice in flirting. Or I never got into practice in the first place. The place is relatively dead, but I sit there silently after a quick high-five from another bartender that I’ve known for years. The recognition feels great, but I’d be lying if I said that I felt happy.
Back to my apartment with my hamburger. I fire up a Garrison Keillor podcast and devour every bit of it.
I’ve been on the porch long enough to notice the moon sneaking sideways across the leaves. There’s a man who keeps walking back and forth on the street, checking his phone and occasionally dropping loose change.
My citronella candle continues to flicker, mixing with both the moonlight and sodium vapor streetlamps, and I’m a content old man.
August 29, 2011 2 Comments
The difference between writer and person
Writing-wise, I share things on the page that would mortify me if they came up in casual conversation, but these seizures of self-disclosure are triggered by the imminence of tongue-loosening deadlines and vertiginous health insurance premiums and should therefore not be confused with me at the post office, where I tend to study my boots and mumble.
- Pg. 159 of “Truck: A Love Story” by Michael Perry
I just finished this book and feel lost. Not because it was a bad book; in fact, it was folksy and comfortable like any summer reading should be. But where do you go from here? I have the intimidating “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace on loan from a coworker… but that just doesn’t work well with ice tea on a porch, does it?
August 24, 2011 Leave a comment