Hiking Liminal Spaces

This is a post where I want to tread carefully.  I won't be including links in it because anyone who wishes to fact check this can easily do so with a quick Google search.  I'm commenting on the three American "hikers" who have been detained in Iran since last August.

The three are all graduates of UC Beserkly (which offers some background about them) who were living in Damascus.  Their ages, at the time of their arrest, are 27, 31, and 27.  These are not kids.  Or, at least, are of an age and claimed experience level to know what they were doing.  They made a trek across Syria (through Turkey?) into northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and, depending on what point of the chronology you examine, were either doing humanitarian work in Kurdistan and "accidently" strayed near the border of Iran ...OR... were intentionally hiking a trail along the "unmarked" border of Iraq and Iran.  Either way, one doesn't stray clsoe to the border of Iran without knowing you're near a country who is a bit touchy about intruders and, especially, Americans.  Perhaps being educated in Beserkly, they were not aware of the tenuous and bitter history between the governements of the US and Iran.

As anyone who may converse with me for any period of time might figure out, Iran is a country/culture near and dear to me.  I am somewhat well-versed in both the history of Persia as well as the 20th Century political timeline of Iran.  Almost lived them as a kid when my dad was offered a position over there with a contractor.  But being endeared to their culture doesn not make me unmindful of the state of current politics.  And being a avid and experienced hiker, I would not go wandering near the border of Iran without deliberately doing so or, at least, knowing I was near such a unmarked space.  I walk all edges, but, as the person who named me as doing so said, I'm always just this side of right.  I love peeking into that abyss, but the entire point of doing so is to come back from the edge to tell the tale of what I saw.  (lapse into a Southern accent:)  It don't matter that I seen what I saw

If these three were intelligent and experienced, they didn't either.  If they accidentally crossed that border I ask, why didn't they have a compass and a map?  With a small guess, being they were Beserklites living in Damascus, perhaps they could have afforded an iPhone with a GPS application?  If I had the money and was intending on wandering such realms, I would consider it.

I guess my opinion of the situation is that of... Morons.  I'm a shade sorry that you're being detained in a foreign land, but then again, you were asking for trouble.  In my opinion, you knew what you were doing and wanted the thrill of bordering (or even entering) Iran's territory.  And you got caught.  Sucks now, don't it?

I tell myself this on the eve of my own travels to a non un-volatile land where, in Kosovo, there are small warnings about how to legally and safely cross the border (Serbia doesn't acknowledge Kosovo's independence so the borders of the region are not considered by Serbia to be international borders.  There's a geographical process to passing through Kosovo, and I have done my research on it and will do so as planned.  However, I fully acknowledge the local government's right to turn me back upon my attempting exit.  At no time do I expect to accidentally cross a border without knowing I'm doing so...nor will I put myself in a position to do so unwittingly).

Again, it's sad to be imprisioned, sadder still for the parents of those kids.  But put yourself in a position where you become pawns of a government that doesn't like the country of your residence, and that's what happens when you put yourself in such a position through arrogence or ignorance.

Their being there indicates that one or the other (or some variation thereof) was in play with them last August when they were detained by the Iranian government.

Also... who goes recreational hiking in the deserts of Iraq in August?



· • ·

It's the beginning of the Sew Age.

Gulf of Mexico    
Late Triassic-A.D. 2010

Some future facts about the Gulf of Mexico:

• A vast dead sea strangled beneath a layer of oil 300 feet thick.
• Indigenous life: none.
• The era will be know as the Sew Age.  Its literature will be "Sewerpunk."
• Old folks will talk about fresh shrimp, birds, and white sand and the kids will laugh and call them crazy for babbling like that about the Petrol Gulf.

This is a wiki-oracle. Add your own prophecy.


(c)(r)(p) kirkesque.

One of his smaller soap box rants...

 Of the several articles I read about this recent event, I'm struck immediately how the angle of viewpoint throughout the piece seems to focus on the economic disruption and not the direct societal impact that is shown to be possible in this.

But also, there's a few things in particular that I pondered more than a moment on:

 A federal official said it was not considered it a terrorist threat.

So it's the ideology and not the act that determines a terrorist threat?

Gabrielle Zecha and Taj Heniser, visiting from Seattle, had tickets to see “Next to Normal” at the Booth Theater on 45th Street but could not get into the 8 p.m. show because the area was blocked off. But they made the best of the spectacle. “It’s a whole different kind of show,” Ms. Heniser said, adding, “It’s almost the equivalent of a $150 show.”

For it to be worth the $150, there would, of course, have to be at least one dead body.

Onlookers crowded against the metal barricades encircling the area, taking pictures with cellphones and video cameras, although only a swarm of flashing fire trucks and police cars was visible.

If this were my story—I deal in fiction—I'd have the bad guy put a couple of other bombs at some distance from the first (which would, of course, be lamely designed so as to appear to be the work of a deranged lone wolf and not an organized criminal conspiracy) that would be more insidious, and messy.

But that's just the way I'd write it if it were a fictional story.


· • ·

In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic.

I don't watch tv. Don't even own a tv. Well, that's not precisely true; I own one, but it lives in the storage unit. The point being: commercials. Even without tv, there are still commercials.

I've taken to watching recently an old tv show on Hulu. I used to watch The Daily Show on Hulu but now that's not on Hulu anymore. Hulu is thick with commercials. Not as bad as tv, but hell, we could go on about that for hours.

In my lifetime I've seen some pretty bad commercials. Awful ones. Those Doxidan commercials linger far longer than they should have. Imitation country music singer: "Doxidan, gentle Doxidan/When nature needs a helping hand..." Oldies are no match for the entire series of amazingly insipid Axe Spray/Shampoo/Stink-fume commericals. It leads me to believe that in addition to strange rather lurid chemicals, it also features a high content of brain repellent. My favorite awfulness—you know, the sort of trainwreck aspect of any given subject, horrifying in the extreme but also alluring in its grotesqueries?—is a wonderously STOOPID movie within an already moronic tableau of brief scenes for the Verizon Network G231/2 or whatever: a man is riding a roan horse cross the surf of a deserted beach with his hot babe straddled behind him. And what is he doing...? Texting or twittering or what-have-you.

Her: "This horse ride on the beach is so romantic, so sexy. I want you."
Him: "Hey, look. With the new Verison Network, I can GPS our exact location right here."
Her: "You use Axe Body Spray, don't you?"
Him: "And I wear Dockers."
Her: "Tell me just one thing..."
Him: "Anything."
Her: "Are you a Pepper, too—?"
Him: "—Hold on, I just got a text."

Brain repellent. Must be the brain repellent.

Hc Sunt Dragones.


· • ·

"Bad writers borrow from other writers; Good writers steal."

Here's a paper I wrote for Books & Publishing class about plagiarism. I framed it around the controversary of Dr. Brad Vice's Flannery O'Connor Award, but included a few other public cases.

In a comment on a semi-public forum, Vice commented about the passing of the author and his mentor, Barry Hannah.

I'm proud to say that you can find my name and a little blurb on the paperback copies of Yonder Stands Your Orphan. Later it was used to make me look like some sort of criminal when my book controversy hit. It really made me depressed. I can't even find the review on-line now as there are more so ... many articles about the review that the review is lost. You could find it on the SFC page if you were interested. I even told my editor when he gave me the book--Look, I've read everything by BH, and I love it all --so if you give me this book, I'm likely to write a good review. He said, "You sound like your qualified for the job." Anyway, it made me so angry that they tried to smear Barry through me. I still can't get over the Lucifarian villain who looks like Conway Twitty--too concerned about his hair to play high school football.

I have no reason to believe he's actually referring to Robert Clark Young being a prissy pansy and disrespectable no-account lying jealous sack of excrement or anything of that nature. No reason at all to associate that person with those traits.

If I ever rewrite this—or write again on the subject—I think I shall bring into the conversation the legal criminology term of "larceny," that is, theft by stealth, and equate it to the Twain attribution. Steal it quietly, make it your own, and wear your influences as evidence of the literary stream which has washed down from those who came before you. Or something poetic like that.



~•~



CRW 321 - 001
February 24, 2009
Wild Card Essay


"Bad writers borrow from other writers; Good writers steal."


This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain, T. S. Eliot, or Oscar Wilde. It's witty and deeper than it seems at first, and completely apropos to our discussion. Without absolute veracity of such an attribution, for the sake of this argument, we'll leave the source of that quote with Mr. Twain.

Does this comment mean that Twain encouraged and condoned plagiarism? Although it may not be immediately apparent in this statement, we can be fairly certain that, indeed, Twain (nor Eliot, nor Wilde) was not encouraging anyone to plagiarize another's work. But let us take a closer look at what defines plagiarism before picking apart what Twain might, or might not, have meant by that.

In examining this subject of borrowing and stealing other people's work—focussing exclusively on the written word and not on intellectual theft in the other arts—we will discuss ideas and intellectual property rights, touch briefly on copyright law, and take a look at three cases involving the accusation of plagiarism, and find evidence that in the world of literature, stealing is not as readily evident from borrowing as one might expect. Following that, we will return to Mark Twain's (attributed) quote and have another look at what it might really mean.

Before we get into our three specific cases, let us take a moment to define some things. Intellectual Property, to put it simply for our use in this discussion, is considered to be—as stated by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—"Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." The term is used to denote the legal rights of a work and not the work itself. Under intellectual property laws, the creator, or rightful owner of a work, are granted certain exclusive rights to their work in any medium. Copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents are just a few examples of intellectual property rights. For the purposes of this discussion, however, we will limit our commentary to copyrights, and not touch upon any of the other defined forms of intellectual property.

So what is involved with copyright law?

A comprehensive answer to that would involve a firm of lawyers and more pages of explanation than a small room could hold—this is why there are specialized attorneys to deal with the complexities of copyright law—but we will try to offer a very brief description of what it covers in relation to our purpose.

The intent of copyright in the United States is based on Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 in the U.S. Constitution, which states: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This is intended to give the creator of a substantive and discrete idea—that is, an idea that is seen to fruition in an extended written work, and not merely the idea itself, nor titles, situations, or characters without their placement in a substantive, discrete work—certain exclusive rights (as we said about intellectual property) to publish, distribute, or adapt their work for a reasonable amount of time. That reasonable amount of time is currently given to be 50-100 years following the death of the creator of the work. This complexity is further muddled by "fair use."

The fair use doctrine does not specifically define "fair use" but rather gives a four point rubric to discern if use of copyrighted material is able to be used fairly by another party. The factors given to consider this are: the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Thus there is a legitimate right to use excerpts or quotes from a copyrighted work "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching […], scholarship, or research," (U.S. Code) which means book reviews can use portions of a work for purposes of illustrating an opinion; schools can use copyrighted work so long as they are not charging a fee for its use in an educational manner; and very brief quotes can be used as epigrams by others in their own work.
Confused by that? You begin to see how quickly complicated this matter can become; especially when copyright/intellectual property right laws differ from country to country. The entire matter is about as clear as a lecture on theological nuclear physics recited by Carl Sagan, backwards, in Pig Latin.

My sarcastic analogy is silly, but is meant to illustrate the complexity of this point. We are three pages into a discussion of plagiarism and we have only now reached the examples.

Our first look will be at the case involving the accusation that in The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown plagiarized the work of Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (although Lincoln's name did not appear on court records in this accusation) in their non-fiction work, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This is a case of fiction appropriating material from non-fiction, which is not as common as fiction appropriating from other fiction, as well as the fact that the accusation hinged upon the direct use of ideas and framework of the earlier material. As author Richard Leigh stated, Dan Brown "lifted the whole architecture—the whole jigsaw puzzle—and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller." (Day)

So the accusation of Brown's plagiarism did not involve direct use of phrases and word choice, but on the framework, background, and general idea of Baigent's and Leigh's intellectual property.

To many in the literary world, the case Baigent and Leigh brought against Brown looked to be a clear case of copyright infringement; plagiarism. Myriad ideas put forth in Holy Blood, Holy Grail (HBHG) were present in nearly identical form in The Da Vinci Code, including a character who physically resembled the third author of HBHG, Henry Lincoln, and whose name, Leigh Teabing, is lifted directly from authors Leigh and Baigent (anagram of Teabing). The Justice who heard the case in UK Court disagreed with the accusers, and the verdict dictated that the ideas depicted in non-fiction work could not be plagiarized.

As a work of historical research, HBHG was often criticized as being faulty and venturing into the realms of fiction. So, ironically, if Baigent's and Leigh's work had been fiction, they would have likely won their plagiarism case against Brown. As it was, copyright precedent had been set for works of fiction to be able to use non-fiction ideas without infringement.

Our next example involves a case of fiction borrowing from other fiction, coming from a first time author and young student at Harvard University named Kaavya Viswanathan. At the age of 19, she had her first novel published to notable acclaim. How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life garnered Viswanathan a large advance along with a two-book deal, praise from the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and many others. An film deal with Steven Spielberg's company DreamWorks SKG had been signed. Her academic and literary future seemed bright (Bailey; McGonigle; Memmott).

Then The Harvard Crimson ran an article claiming Viswanathan had plagiarized 12 passages in her book from two novels by Megan McCafferty. The passages were more than merely similar, they were virtually identical (Zhou). Both the author and her publisher denied the accusations, but things got worse quickly. By mid-May of that year, the New York Times had covered the story with several articles, and the evidence of plagiarism expanded. From 12 passages to 29 passages to more than 40 passages of almost identical phrases had been used by Viswanathan, taken from the two novels by McCafferty, as well as novels by Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot, and Salman Rushdie. As it turned out, more passages from Viswanathan's debut novel were copied from previous works than were not (Zeller; Smith and Moto).

Soon the publishers, Little, Brown and Company pulled the book from stores—at first to republish it with the offending passages removed—but as the scandal grew, they cancelled republication and Viswanathan's book deal (Crimson).

When the initial accusations were reported, Viswanathan appeared on The Today Show with Katie Couric, were that she commented that she must have "internalized" the details of McCafferty's books without realizing it. Following the expansion of the accusations, neither Viswanathan, nor her publisher, offered further comment directly concerning the issue. Viswanathan has since left Harvard and is currently attending Georgetown University (Atwan).
Our third example is perhaps the most difficult to deduce facts from accusation since it involves the overlap of academia, professional publication, and the sometimes uncomfortable meeting between fiction and non-fiction narratives.

In 2005, Brad Vice was an assistant professor at Mississippi State University when he was awarded the 2004 Flannery O'Connor Award for his short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train. Not long after this announcement, a library advisor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (where Vice received his B.A. and where the story of contention is set) contacted the publisher of the award alleging plagiarism in one of the collected stories. Based on this single allegation, and without questioning the author, the University of Georgia Press rescinded the award to Vice, and ordered copies of his book to be pulled from distribution and pulped (Media Bistro).

Following this, Robert Clark Young published an article in the New York Press attacking not only Vice's short story collection, but extending the plagiarism claims to other short stories and articles Vice had written, but also calling into question Vice's Ph.D dissertation at the University of Cincinnati. Young's allegations went beyond Vice's work, but to his academic career, both as a teacher and a student, and made inflammatory comments about a number of another writers—all of whom were graduates of the Sewanee Writers' Conference—including Barry Hannah (Young; Sanford).

"Tuscaloosa Knights" was the story at the center of these allegations. It contained two sentences that were very similar to those appearing in a non-fiction book by Carl Carmer called Stars Fell On Alabama (It would be another year before a British court would offer an opinion as to the validity of fictional work using non-fiction source material, so a case of fiction "plagiarizes" non-fiction had not yet had a ruling in court). Carmer's work is quite famous around Tuscaloosa, as the author had been a professor at the university for a number of years in the 1930s, during which time he wrote his book (York). Vice stated that his use of Carmer's words and setting was an example of intertextual postmodernism, and an homage to Carmer's work. Indeed, previous version of the manuscript, including that of his Ph.D dissertation, contain epigrams to Carmer (Vice).

Critics, particularly Young, argued that it was deliberate plagiarism. Vice's supporters—who included other authors, editors of magazines where Vice's work had previously appeared, and Vice's former professors and advisors—leveled their own claims against Young, stating the latter man was bitter at Vice, Hannah, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference because Young's work was widely panned at the conference, and in his article accusing Vice of plagiarism, there are numerous factual errors concerning the Sewanee Conference and unfounded allegations against its sponsors and organizers.

The context in which Vice used a few sentences of Carl Carmer's work places the appropriated phrases in a very similar setting—that of a nighttime Ku Klux Klan rally in Tuscaloosa—but with different characters and a different outcome. Carmer's "Flaming Cross" chapter of Stars Fell On Alabama, was a description of an actual event (Carmer; Cobb). Vice's story is fictional, although keeps the setting of several people discussing, and then attempting to attend out of curiosity, the Klan rally (Vice).

The result of these allegations against Brad Vice resulted in his loss of the Flannery O'Connor Award (although another publisher picked up the book and made a few minor editorial changes) and eventually his dismissal from his position at Mississippi State University. He now teaches at the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic (ZČU).

These tales of caution bring us back to the quote we've attributed to Mark Twain, "Bad writers borrow from other writers; good writers steal," and our question at the beginning as to what such a volatile statement as that could possibly mean.

Twain is almost certainly not condoning nor encouraging plagiarism. What this quote is taken to mean is that if an idea or phrase or concept appeals to a writer, they shouldn't borrow it, as in merely using the words of another to make their own piece seem stronger or more literary or more legitimate, instead stealing an idea, concept, or phrase, means to take it and use it in a manner unique to the voice of the "thieving" writer; to re-engineer, deconstruct, improve, fold, spindle, and alter it into a manner fitting the voice and setting and framework of a new piece.
If all literary theft was plagiarism, Byron could sue Poe, Petrarch could sue Shakespeare, and Shakespeare could sue almost everyone else. T. S. Eliot called such appropriations "verbal kleptomania," and practiced such himself.

In other words, if you are going to liberate material from another writer—from another source—don't just rent it and make a copy; turn it into something of your own.

The moral of this story may well be: Be aware of where the words and ideas you use have been before they showed up on your page, but when they do—and here I steal a comment from Martin Luther—"sin bravely."

•


Works Cited

Atwan, Greg. "Kaavya Emptor."

02138 Dec. & Jan. 2008-2009, Vol. 3, No. 1.

Bailey, Marilyn. "HOWMTF:

How 'Opal' will make teen famous."

The Boston Globe 17 Apr. 2006.

Cobb, Mark Hughes.

"Book's passages raise questions of plagiarism."

TuscaloosaNews.com.
21 Oct. 2005. 22 Feb. 2009 .

The Crimson Staff.

"'Opal Mehta' Gone for Good; Contract Cancelled."

The Harvard Crimson [Cambridge]
2 May 2006.

Day, Elizabeth. "Two Academic Writers

Assert 'Da Vinci Code' Is Plagiarism."
Sunday Telegraph [London] 3 Oct. 2004.

"Department of English."

Západočeská Univerzita v Plzni,
ZČU. Apr. 2008. Web.

McGonigle, Thomas.

"The Saturday Read;
Oh c'mon, getting into Harvard isn't that easy:

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild,
and Got a Life: A Novel."
Los Angeles Times 8 Apr. 2006.

Memmott, Carol.

"Charming 'Opal' shows smart can be funny."

USA Today 29 Mar. 2006.

Sanford, Jason.

"The literary lynching of Brad Vice."

StorySouth. 18 Dec. 2005. 22 Feb. 2009 .

Smith, Dinitia, and Moto Rich.

"A Second Ripple in Plagiarism Scandal."
New York Times 2 May 2006.

The Today Show. NBC. New York, NY. 26 Apr. 2006.
"U. of GA Press Recalls Stories, Revokes Prize."

Media Bistro. 27 Oct. 2005. 22 Feb. 2009 .

17 U.S.C. § 1-107 (2007).
U.S. Constitution. Art. I, § 8, cl. 8
Vice, Brad. The Bear Bryant Funeral Train.

1st ed. Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

Vice, William Bradley.

The Bear Bryant Funeral Train.
Dissertation. University of Cincinnati, 2001.

York, Jake Adam.

"Fell In Alabama: Brad Vice's Tuscaloosa Night."

StorySouth. 13 Nov. 2005. 22 Feb. 2009 .

Young, Robert Clark. "A Charming Plagiarist."

New York Press 7 Dec. 2005.

Zeller, Jr., Tom.

"In Internet Age, Writers Face Frontier Justice."

New York Times 1 May 2006.

Zhou, David.

"Student's Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy."

The Harvard Crimson [Cambridge] 23 Apr. 2006.

· • ·

Tantalus Muse

This is a piece I'd really like to rework a bit and lengthen.

From the aforementioned misliked Nonfiction course. I guess I didn't mislike it all-in-all, just misliked the way it was taught and the fact that workshopping stories in a Creative Writing Program seems to inherently be:
"Teacher, I can't read this story because the grammar is so bad it's unintelligible."

"Oh, don't worry about that—you don't need to correct it—just push through that and comment on the story."

"But if I can't read to understand it, how can I tell if there even is a story!?"

"Well, that's the assignment..."

Oh, Sisyphean Fates, how you taunt me so‽

The assignment was to write a story (nonfiction) about something you remember one way but found out was, in fact, different than your memory.

I, of course, had just the story...


~•~
(2nd draft)

CRW 309 Creative Non-Fiction
TANTALUS MUSE: The Red-Haired Girl
12/3/08
Final Draft


When I was five years old, my family went to visit my aunt for two weeks, at the end of summer. She lived in a house along the Atlantic shore in Virginia. Her back yard was a wide flat manicured lawn that fell away suddenly in rocky cliffs at the water's edge. There, a pier ran out into the ocean like a long fingertip that pointed into the gray-blue flux of forever. At high tide, the waves would crash up against the rocky shoreline, spraying their salty mist into the cool air, the beads of sweat of its long endeavors. I remember watching the crashing waves for hours wanting to linger on a single wave dissipating into mist, but before I could hold onto the falling drops back into the sea another wave would come along and smash into the remnants of the previous.

I'm sure I watched those waves for hours.

A few minutes, anyway.

My Aunt Gertrude had a proverbially quaint-and-lovely tea garden behind her house next to a koi pond that wrapped around three sides of a small swimming pool. The fourth side of the pool was bordered by a bunk house, long thin deep green fingers of hollyhock vines crawling slowly up its dark fired brick walls. A few sprawling Southern Oaks held a canopy of shade over the garden, towering over a few maples, a single red cedar, and not-so-closely trimmed hedges lining the courtyard. Saw palmettos guarded ever corner, threatening impalement to a three-foot tall five year old, should he venture off the cobblestone path. In the middle of the courtyard of the tea garden the adults would all sit around a glass-topped black iron table and talk about the boring things adults tend to talk about.

I remember the place so vividly—I can still hear the cricket chorus in the evening tune down as the bullfrogs started their nightly swollen throat-song contests that would go on for more hours than most people would believe or ever bothered to sit around and hear—the smell of wet brick and soil and rain and roots. I remember one afternoon out by the bunk house and pool—fallen reddish leaves on the slate cobblestone blown by summer breezes to scrap away days that lasted forever—I first saw my cousin, the red-haired girl.

I guess she was my cousin. I didn't think of her as my cousin at the time, but in the memory, that's the impression I have. When I was five, I didn't make such differentials. She was older than me or my sister. More like my brother's age, I guess. My sister was nine at the time, my brother, fifteen, so I guess my cousin I saw at Aunt Gertrude's would have been about seventeen, maybe eighteen years old.

She had coppery red hair and wore a white summer dress the turned soft yellow or dark amber in the sinking shades of daylight. I followed her through the tea garden and around the wooded backyard, out to the shoreline of the crashing Atlantic. I'd wait for her along the grassy lawn She was nice, and didn't really play any games with me, but didn't mind me following her around like a lost puppy dog, plastic Batmobile in one hand and chewing on my shirt collar. That was a habit I had then. Pull the front of my shirt collar up to chew on until it was soaked with slobber. I didn't mind that sort of thing when I was five. And neither did the red-haired girl.

I remember she thought it was cute that I followed her around, and although I remember we talked a few times, I don't remember the sound of her voice. I remember her smell, like sweet rotten cypress and honeysuckle, and the way she moved, her bare feet seeming to not touch the ground where she walked but getting dirty none the less.

A sure sign that you'd had a good day was seen in how stained and dirty your feet were at the end of it.

Following around the red-haired girl those last days of summer when I was five is a memory that still speaks to me in a wordless language of invisible symbology, a feeling steeped in faith and intuition. Reassurance; the calm certainty that everything is all right. Not so much safe and secure as balanced and still.

Sitting by the koi pond and watching the mammoth goldfish in the dark green waters of the garden pond with the red-haired girl is one of the most blissful places in my memory. And deeply imprinted me in so many ways.

•

There is something very wrong with that vivid slice of the past.

Here is the verifiable evidence of this deeply curious memory: Aunt Gertrude's house wasn't in Virginia, but was, in fact, on a barrier island near Savannah, Georgia; our visit was in Spring, not late Summer; my mother's oft-told story of how I almost drowned when I dropped my plastic toy Batmobile into the swimming pool and dove in after it was in no way exhaggerated.

And there was, in fact, no red-haired girl present at Aunt Gertrude's.

For years after that visit I thought about my cousin, the red-haired girl, and wondered, as years passed, what sort of life she had. When I was older than she would have been when I met her, I asked my mom about her. My mom's a genealogist and historian and she always has the story behind the various weird family members.

"That time we visited Aunt Gertrude," I asked my mom, "Her . . . daughter, I guess it would have been. Maybe sixteen, eighteen years old," I told her, just like my memory held in place, "Whatever happened to her?"

"Aunt Gertrude's daughter?" my mother asked, looking at me like I had a sprouted tentacles from my head.

"Yeah. Isn't that who had the house my the shore, with the tea garden and pool?"

"Yes, Gertrude's house had that wonderful little tea garden in the back courtyard and the pool you dropped your Batmobile in and almost drowned trying to get it."

My mom loves bringing up the highlights of my brushes with death. The local ER had a ward named after me.

"That's the place." I tell her.

My mother's expression of crazed disbelief didn't change. "Aunt Gertrude doesn't have a daughter. I don't know who you're remembering . . . "

Even after several attempts at clarifying, my mother drew a blank on who I was talking about. My brother and sister weren't any help, neither of them remembering anyone at all that I could be remembering.

A figment. A ghost.

I clearly remember spending many hours of each day for two weeks following around and talking to someone who apparently wasn't real in any consensually experienced part of the universe.

Was my memory of a guardian angel? A creepy fetch-spirit? Manifestation of the divine? A succubus come to prey on a little boy?

Hmmm, I don't mind the sound of that.

But then I think, things don't need to have happened to be real.

Memories are real even if the events in them didn't happen in that way. Stories are real, even if they aren't true. Storytelling is creating something that didn't previous exist.

And the non-existent red-haired girl started showing up, wearing various guises, in my stories. Like a shirking shadow of thought, a wisp of impossible memory, my Tantalus Muse would come and tell me a story. I'd write them, but it sometimes seems more like transcribing the words of someone else.

Maybe the red-haired girl is in some other version of this universe and I'm the figment in her memory. Maybe she's the storyteller, that little red-haired girl, in that other universe, and I'm just a character in her tale. The threads of the plot stretch out into the darkness of possibility, and I step forward to find out what comes next.


· • ·

Between Oracle and History

First semester at UNCW was just short of being a nightmare. I couldn't take any fictions courses (having transferred into their program ready to take 400-level courses, but of course, Junior level courses were filled by the time I came in), I misliked my Nonfiction class immensely, and had a history course taught by one of the most willfully ignorant people I've ever known in an educator's position. Ever. This guy taught the same course repeatedly, yet couldn't (or, in a way, worse: wouldn't) answer questions put to him about the subject at hand. Although he could, with great eagerness, talk at length about the Tar Heels basketball team...

With this paper, a biograph of an Egyptian pharaoh, he said he didn't want to just see the same old boring history paper, he wanted something different. I turned in my thesis statement paper and my version of an outline of the crucial information I'd include. Then I told him I intended to take him up on that "something different" kind of paper; would it be all right to play with some conventions in writing it? Yes, so long as the information necessary to fulfill the requirements are met.

I turned in the following and was waylaid to have it returned to be with a D grade on it.

Going to discuss it with him he stated that although I fulfilled the requirements of information and references, a "history paper isn't the place to make up your own rules for writing." He didn't like the creative aspect. Turns out, he did want just a bunch of plain ol' ordinary boring history papers.

I dropped the class 10 minutes after leaving his office.

Dr. —, you're an asshole.

My opinion and I'm entitled to it, you shit-for-brains.


~•~
(2nd Draft)


HST 305 The Ancient Near East
September 22, 2008


HATCHEPSUT:
Between Oracle and History


This is the fifty-third year of my reign as Pharaoh of Egypt and I stand in my Hall of Annals reading the record of my deeds: the construction of dozens of great temples like this one here at Karnak; my many battles and campaigns--none equalling my first, where the Canaanites of Kadesh said my fury in the shadow of Mt. Carmel was like the end of the world; and, of course, my own ornate tomb in the valley where the kings before me lay awaiting the judgment of Anubis's scales. For fifty-three years I have reigned, but not all of those was I the sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt. For the first twenty-two years, I shared regency with my aunt and step-mother. She is now known as a pretender to the throne, a usurper of power. And I, of course, have done nothing to discourage such tales. It is only in my own interest to allow such disparagement, for what is written and told about a person, or even a god, matters more than what actually was. And it is my accomplishments and victories which should now be remembered, for it would be vain for me to believe that I will not soon take residence in my own tomb.

Hatchepsut built this temple where my Annals now stand, I have only modified it by adding fresh sandstone walls on which my deeds are inscribed. It shall be my name remembered at Karnak, not hers. I know there are some even in my own house and court who have whispered that it is out of spite, or bitterness that I have scratched out and hidden the name of my aunt from the walls of these temples. If I had been bitter I would have torn down her statues, stelae, and obelisks when she first died!

No, it is economical this way, that is all. More political. Why spend the time and effort building a whole new palace when you can just rearrange one so recently built? Just because my Hall of Annals covers my aunt's sanctuary where she had depicted the Oracle of Amon, proclaiming herself to be not only of full royal blood--having constantly reminded me that my mother was not a noble and thus I was not born to be king and pharaoh--but of divine blood, and decreed to rule the Two Lands of Egypt.

Behind the walls I have erected where my deeds are carved into, are the original walls of this temple, on which the Oracle reveals, "Uttered by Amon-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of Two Lands, 'Welcome, my beloved daughter Hatchepsut, I am thy beloved father. I establish for thee thy rank in the kingship of the Two Lands. I have fixed thy titularly.'"

Since it was written, it was so. Such is the way of words, and of names. Amon had declared her to be his daughter, divinely born, and she was Pharaoh. Shrewd and ambitious, upon the unforeseen early death of my father--her husband and half-brother--Hatchepsut donned the garb and appearance of a man and claimed the title of both King and Queen of Egypt. I, being too young to assert my appointment as heir, was relegated to be a co-regent of my inherited lands.

She was not a war-faring ruler--leaving such things as directing the armies of Egypt to me--and instead of expanding the empire our forebearers had established, she set about to rededicate old temples, construct vast new ones, and to allow the arts to flourish. It could be said that there was something of a renaissance in the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt under my aunt's rule. She said this was further proof of the divine proclamation that she was the rightful ruler of the dynastic lands. But, of course, that is the way she would have it be remembered, regardless of how true it actually was.

But once a story is etched in stone, it is difficult to dispute. Words are magic. We are sentenced by their spelling.

My aunt, Hatchepsut, understood this and had many monuments adorned with her likeness and name. Sometimes the truth of something doesn't matter as much as how it appears. It was not long after my aunt's death that some took to defacing her monuments and dedicated sites.

Her name was thus erased and my name was carved and spoken. Menkheperra; Thutmosis III.

No, it is not out of spite, nor bitterness, that I now set about eradicating her legacy. It is to create my own. Some of my advisors would have everything she did reduced to the sand like the red deserts to the east; and still others warn me against incurring the wrath of the gods for erasing the name of one who now lays in the valley where our kings await their afterlife.

I attempt to appease both, if only to avoid the anger of old gods and of current diplomats.

It is not that I want her forgotten--my aunt and step-mother; my co-regent; my hindrance to a sole rule. No, I do not want Hatchepsut forgotten, for she had a rightful claim to the throne--her mother was of noble lineage and her father, although not Amon-Ra, was my own grandfather, the Pharaoh Thutmosis I. But I shall not have her remembered as a divine ruler who left more monuments of stone than I.

It will be the name of Thutmosis III that shall be remembered and invoked at the Temple of Karnak, and in Semna, and at Saqqara. Hatchepsut may have been a beneficent queen to the land and people of Egypt, but she altered the history of our gods to proclaim herself the divine Pharaoh.



Bibliography

Books

Tyldesley, Joyce. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh.

London: Penguin Books, 1996.

Articles

Dorman, Peter F.

"Hatshepsut: Wicked Stepmother of Joan of Arc?"
The Oriental Institute News and Notes,
No. 168 (Winter 2001): 1-6.

· • ·

"Two-Thirty in the mornin' & I can't sleep..."

This was about the eighth assignment from Fiction I Class. We were to write "a letter story" (not that the fiction program at Columbia thought enough of us mere freshmen to actually tell us to write an epistolary tale, but that bleeds over into a philippic I will undoubtedly add to this blog at some future time concerning creative writing programs in general, and more specifically, my thoughts on the two I have personally been part of.

As for this piece, the teacher replied to me with, "You shouldn't write about something as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

At no point in this tale is there any mention nor even hint of Hebrew-Arabic strife, and, in fact, since two of the characters have Persian names (incidental to the point of the story), I really wondered if the teacher had actually read the piece at all.

Alas! Not the first time i would clash with the heirarchy of academia, especially in those aforementioned two creative writing programs.

The story here was triggered by a writing prompt: What you do at 2:30 in the morning.

~*~

FICTION I
October 4, 2007


"Two-Thirty in the mornin' & I can't sleep..."

Delivered-To: grim@nepenthe.net
Received: by 13.72.46.5 with PGP; Sun, 2 Dec 2007 11:39:59 +0200
Message-ID:
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 02:39:59 -0700
From: L. Zakariyya
Reply-To: lzakariyya@nepenthe.net
To: grim@nepenthe.net
Subject: Re: "two-thirty in the mornin' and i can't sleep..."
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8869-1
References:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)
iD13EKQZR5s7//SVSiq2uhHMRAknyATKtsXhzyEcq11zxaAIOKJApB7a1/QEdJzx1
+aIq+2jkxhi1JAw1tioEqXI=
=KbGj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Salaam! Shalom! And all other manner of salutations, O Grim One, my brother from another mother.

Insomnia again, so I'm doin' what I do. It's 2.30 in the mornin' and I still can't sleep. At least the paranoia's subsided a bit; it's all just anxiety and edges now.

The front room here is cramped and stuffy and smells like rotting lemons. No one's showered in a couple of days, but then again, no one is complainin' since we all equally stink. Ghada comes from downstairs and complains in her motherly tone about how typing in this dim light is gonna ruin my eyes. I've got my little desk lamp on that spills a tiny circle of light on my desk by the Underwood typewriter where I've been hammering out the manifestos. She reaches up under the thick woolen lamp shade and twists the little black knobs until it clicks twice and the stuffy room is filled with dirty yellow light. She looks down at Syd on the floor in front of the couch and just shakes her head. That's about the only expression anyone ever has for Syd.

Syd pulled the ugly green couch cushions off the couch and laid them out on the floor. With a faded brown crocheted blanket tossed over the scratchy hounds-tooth cushions, he spread out on them about an hour ago and now he's passed out. He's been doin' dex for a couple of days and ate a bunch of valium a few hours ago. He was readin' and now Hitchhiker's Guide is folded open on his chest, rising and falling with his erratic pharmaceutical sleep. We should maybe turn him on his side, but it's not a priority on anyone's list. Kira was matchin' Syd's intake, but she's farin' better than he is. A short nod in the recliner, but now she's awake and all fidgety, watchin' some black and white movie on tv with the sound turned down. Neal's in the other room with El and Fen and a couple of others whose names I don't know. El & Fen. Yeah, that's really their names. 'S what happens when you're "in the field", as it were, as opposed to just holdin' the safe house.

We were all freakin' out just after they got here this afternoon because about a half hour later, all the cops in the world showed up outside. We all went into defense mode, but it turned out their target was the house across the street. They were bustin' some dumb ass with a meth lab in his closet. Kinda funny, when ya think about it. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny, like, well, like the sort of funny where cops are bustin' a meth lab when right across the street. Freakin' meth lab! There goes the neighborhood, right!?

After last week's Thanksgiving bombs--a dozen chain store coffee shops were all blow up within sixty seconds of each other, coordinated terrorist attack, the news called it. The brand name coffee stores were closed at the time, of course, it was a holiday, so there were only a few people injured by the blasts. One person died. Anyway, I digress. Constantly. But you know that. As I was sayin', after last weeks' Thanksgiving bombs, the cops are naturally a bit jumpy. Witness the heavy response to the meth lab across the street. Ironic place for a safe house so close to a cop show like that!

Some cat I don't know comes in from the kitchen and asks me if I want to join them. "Zak'?" he called my name a few times before I noticed. I've been typin' out plans and peakin' out the window between half-open curtains at the chem suits across the street and tryin' to ignore the commotion from the kitchen. Dorian, that's this cat's name, Dorian Gray, just like the book, he's askin' me if I want to join them in the kitchen. "What's cookin'?" I ask. He tells me. Kira jumps at the offer. Absinthe, speed, and now they're fixin' some hot knives to smoke some hash. Strange safe house we've got here, but it's never drawn any attention in three years. I guess all safe houses could say that; they're safe regardless of what goes on inside them until they get raided. I look forward to staying at a place where these sort of things are the standard behavior.

The blend of spice smells is odd, anise and sweet tar. I'd like to, but I need to finish the outline of plans before I get any more fucked up. Not that they shouldn't be, right now. Hell, most of 'em have just finished their end of things for a while, so it's a good time to celebrate, I guess. And a few of the others don't have to be clear-eyed until tomorrow afternoon when they take out the children's gifts. But my end of things has to get done right now. Guidelines. Projections. Organizin'. Mappin' routes. And a couple other things. One of which I have just appointed for myself; that's to be paranoid enough for the rest of us. We had the obligatory visit a few hours ago from the cops who said all houses had to be evacuated because...well, he didn't say aloud why, but it was clear from the chem suit guys across the street in their big trucks. Explosive hazard, they said, and I laughed behind my straight face. I spoke with the cop and told him my elderly grandmother was an ornery ol' crone and said she'd be damned if they moved her out of her own house and where would she go anyway if they did. He bought it with change left over and told us he'd come back if necessary. It wasn't, of course. They hauled off the poor dumb kid--not yet twenty, from the look of him--who'd been cookin' meth in his closet or somethin'. Who'd have thought? Right across the street! It's just a quiet neighborhood.

Anyway, the smells from the kitchen was enticin', but I had to pass for now. Even when I got through writin' up the guide for everyone, and mappin' the routes and placements and such, I still had to go over the various drafts we had for the press release and finalize it. Then there was the finishin' touches to be done on the gift packages.

Ghada comes back in and asks when the Hanukkah gifts are goin' to be ready. The hash smell clings to her beautiful dark skin and bald head and I tell her to just be patient. She abstains from the absinthe and wine, of course, the Prophet speaks against intoxicants, but somehow, by the measures of her mosque, such abstinence doesn't include Lebanese hash. She takes a look over my shoulder at the maps and things I've already finished and seem to be pleased with the dropoff locations. She tries to take a gander at the manifesto, but until I'm finished with it, no one reads it.

The anxiety in the house is turning to excitement. I ask 'em if I could get just a small toke of somethin' before I finish wrapping the presents and they head off to the kitchen and I push my laptop (and this email to you) away and peer out the window again. The last of the chem trucks pulls away and I sigh a deep breath of relief. I didn't want to leave my window seat until they were all gone, so I guess it's time to play Santa Claus.

Does Santa come around on Hanukkah, too?

This year he will, I guess.

Ghada brings me a small hookah and I take a few quick puffs. Plus one more thinkin' of my distance brother. Kira gladly takes over the hookah. A thank you to Ghada and I'm off to the basement where the Hanukkah gifts sit in wait. Even when I smoke hash or even opium I can't sleep.

Just like Thanksgiving, we'll make sure our light display is afterhours. Collateral effects are always a factor in any human endeavor, but our show is not meant to be waged with flesh and blood. The manifesto cries for something beyond that...I triple check the wiring and it is all perfect. The taggants and detonators and caps. Everything is ready. I sit down in the small concrete cellar and smile at my array of Hanukkah gifts to the world. A two dozen packages of T4. The canvas, brush and paints for our masterpiece of fire, glass and stone.

Our Christmas party will be even better.

This is what I do at 2.30 in the morning when I can't sleep--

--Mondays will never be the same,

L. Zakariyya, Nepenthe


· • ·

"I Believe..."

This was an assignment to write a response for NPR's on-going series "I Believe..."

Extra-credit for submitting it, which, of course, I did. And it came as no surprise, as I stated within the framework of the response itself, NPR wouldn't touch it. I did, however, receive an email back from NPR that seemed to have been written by a person, stating that, although several of the editors found it more rational than most rants and more funny than most attempts at humor they receive, they would not use it for their program.

~•~
(3rd draft)


Writing & Rhetoric I
Reading Response #2: "I Believe..."

"I Believe..."

I believe that laughter is a holy, divine human trait.

I believe that it is not unpatriotic to say that I am sick and tired of hearing about September 11, 2001 as if it were the worse day in human history. There were worse days than that, even in American's short history, and there will probably be days which will be considered worse yet to come. I believe that a bunch of schmucks boarded airplanes that morning and flew them into buildings killing more than 3000 people they'd never met or spoken with. I believe that calling someone like Rudy Giuliani a "hero" is derogatory to people who actually do something heroic, like firefighters who, on thousands of other days not called "September 11, 2001", enter burning buildings in an attempt to save life and property of others they may have never met or spoken with. I believe that politicians who so casually use terms like "heroes" or "innocent victims" are likely the same people who continually turn a blind, arrogant eye to the rest of the world's (and their own country's) poverty and pain while they line their pockets with money not legitimately theirs and take profitable advantage of the misery and sorrow of those affected by tragedies such as September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and the continual daily hardships of not having enough food or adequate health care.

I believe that the worst terrorists in the world hold elected and appointed offices. I believe that exchanging liberty for the promised illusion of security is a large step on the path of a totalitarian society. I believe that Democrats are really no different from Republicans, but are probably more inept, although feel slightly more guilty about their incessant greed.

I believe that Bill Clinton is a liar, but he lied well, and with many witnesses.

I believe that George Bush is a poorly-spoken liar, but has enough witnesses to intimidate people from challenging his badly told lies.

I believe that anyone who compares Hitler, Nazis, and/or the Holocaust to anything other than the likes of Pol Pot, Stalin, China, Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur displays ignorance, and, regardless of their skin color or religious trappings, comparing the Holocaust to something that is not a regimented genocide automatically disqualifies the speaker from rational, intelligent discussion. I believe that criticizing the nation of Israel does not even remotely make the critic anti-Semitic.

I believe that there are only two sources for almost any human action or thought: Love and Fear.

I believe that NPR isn't going to touch this essay with a ten foot pole.

I believe that yesterday can remind us all something about what we (hopefully) have already learned. I believe that today is wonderful, regardless of the weather or what I may or may not have to do before it has passed. I believe that tomorrow, like yesterday and today going to be another beautiful miracle.

I believe that whatever happens, I'm still going to laugh.


· • ·

Debate Closes Doors, Inquiry Opens Them

In reading an account of a recent Supreme Court argument, one of the Justices "peppered the lawyer with questions" about his argument and then admonished him to argue the case before them and not try to overhaul Constitutional Law in general. In an analysis commentary after the close of the day's arguments, it was stated by one critic that had the justice in question heard the attorney's recent talks at a Federal Bar Association enclave, the Justice "would better understand where [that attorney was] coming from."

This strikes me as a non-literary instance of a situation where New Criticism trumps all other forms of analysis. As an attorney arguing a case before the Supreme Court, needs must have it that you do not stray from the text (of the case for which you are present), as all outside references to other matters (unless they involve a previous Supreme Court case on the same subject, in which case those cases are part of the "text" over which you are arguing) are irrelevant and, lacking a more comprehensive and particular legal term, verboten. A Justice should not have to attend an attorney's speech outside of the court room to understand the point of their argument inside the court. That's a logical fallacy in terms of a debate.

So where does meaning come from then in this instance?

The meaning comes from—and is rigidly circumscribed to—the text of the case and from the text of the Constitution (as applicable to the case at hand).

Sometimes there are texts for which there is not an allowance for the "reader" to stray from the page.


(March 2, 2010)


· • ·