Writers Can't Teach and Teachers Can't Write
Steve De France's play "The Killers" ran during October of 2006 at the Garage Theater in Long Beach, California. That's where, at age thirty, I reconnected with the semi-famous father I had only read about. Though, I never would have even gone, if it were not for the words of someone I met through my wife, Jenny.
She doesn't just teach high school, she lives to teach high school. Theater is her baby, and she loves being the Assistant to the Production Manager. Even though I make it to the plays several events a semester, she tells me most of her students complain that I'm nothing more than a fictitious character, one loosely based in reality, like Hemingway's Nick Adams.
"Well, do you have a picture of me or us on your desk?" I ask.
"No."
"A lot of my high school teachers did that and it was very effective."
"But we don't have a good picture. I want one that's professionally done, like on the beach or somewhere."
"Can't you just put up one that we already have until then?"
"No. I want you to come to the show this week, so my students will know you are real."
"So, I've got to attend theater gatherings because you are too lazy to put up a picture?"
"Would you?"
BREAK
During the performance, she advises me that later we would also attend a banquet with the Theater Director. Around a chalky, circular dining table sits Theater Director Mat Mcleary, his wife Crystal, Jenny and I. We had already gotten past any awkward introductions a week before when we bumped into them at the Westminster Mall. "So, Rob, what do you do?" Crystal asks.
"I'm an Instructor of Composition at Cerritos and Los Angeles Colleges."
"Wow, okay," she says, obviously surprised by my youthful appearance that I would have such a job.
"What about you? What are your interests, other than taking care of the little ones?"
"I'm an amateur poet and I work whenever I can," she tells me.
"That's interesting. You know my dad is a poet."
"What's his name?"
"Steve De France."
"Doesn't ring a bell. What style does he write?"
"He's vivid, dark and disturbed; he writes about issues dealing with humanity, death, betrayal, and so forth."
"Sounds like a contemporary of Bukowski."
"He was friends with him."
"Really? So, what does he do?"
"Well...," having to draw upon the last time I'd heard his name mentioned, maybe six years ago, "he teaches at CSULB, no, no, now he's at L.A. Trade Tech."
"What else?"
"Honestly, I don't know."
"Oh, does he live far away or something?"
"No, only about five miles away from my house; he lives in Long Beach. But, I never see him."
"That must be hard."
"Not really."
"So, you never see your father?" asks Mat.
"That's not entirely true, I mean," looking at my watch, "I did see him once, about nine years ago. That was nice."
"Excuse me for saying so, but this seems like something you would want to write about…"
BREAK
The next night, my mom Francine, a former English Professor, now Dean, calls me. Only the end of our conversation is particularly meaningful:
"…Well, I don't even know if I should mention it to you or not…"
"What is it?"
"S.D (by which she does not imply his name, but sperm donor), left a really cryptic message on my answering machine the other night."
"Uh-huh, and what did he say?" I always have to really get at her, so she'll say what's on her mind; she's a lot like her father that way.
"You know what, just forget it."
"No, ma, c'mon, tell me what he said!"
"Okay, but I still don't want you to get your hopes up, your dad is such an asshole."
"Whatever."
She laughs, I know now, because that's what Steve might have added there.
"Steve told me about the opening of his play, and he was all proud of himself," the jealousy and envy just paralyzing her every phrase, every inflection, "he invited me, but I assume that also means you, if you want to come…but, you don't have to. I mean I don't even think I'm going."
Despite her many efforts, her creative work has not been published. Later, my dad tells me that she has no talent for writing.
"I think I will."
"Remember, he's very selfish, so just think about yourself."
BREAK
After years of performing and attending various theatrical performances in New York, Los Angeles, Orange County, and Northern California; I finally get to attend my father's play. As usual, we're late. The sign reads do not enter. The show has begun, so quickly, we take our seats and settle in. Out of the smoke after the final scene, an old man walks pompously into our space; for a minute, I don't even realize it's him.
I leave my mom, who has nothing but bad-blood with him, and show up at his house for wine and cheese. Sixty-something now, with an almost unrecognizable face filled with grey hairs and wrinkles, my Dad starts to reminisce, intermittently picking up scraps of seeded crackers and sharp cheddar cheese off his grotesquely obese stomach, shoveling them down his throat with rapid accuracy.
"You can't believe how many people have come up to me saying, 'you knew Bukowski, he was such a genius,' genius, I say, genius, far from it, he only wrote one story. Only thing is he wrote that same story fifty times. Genius, ha, the guy was a lush with a bad memory." "You really knew Bukowski"? I inquire.
"Knew him? He used to crash on my couch for months at a time. He and Raymond Carver were friends of mine. We spent time together, hanging out, partying, drinking-even though I drank them both under the table-discussing topics, and, you know, trying to figure shit out. They were good guys, but they weren't great writers."
Sometimes in my family, this would be a point at which I would call bullshit. Yeah right, my dad knew Charles fucking Bukowski! But not long ago, perhaps a couple months earlier, my mom had mentioned something that confirmed this. She was handing me a book of my Dad's poetry, at my request, when she told me that she remembered sitting in the living room of the Carver's with Bukowski, drinking some premium merlot.
"You knew Bukowski and Carver?" I ask.
"Well, Bukowski was a drunk, of course."
My mom says Bukowski was quite an obnoxious asshole, too. A womanizer. A hurricane on the rampage. My dad might say she was lucky to have even known him."He was a great companion for any activity, as long as it involved or revolved around getting drunk and wasted. And, it's true what I am getting at…"
"Well, it's kind of true about all writers," his wife Chaula interjects.
"Yes and no. Bukowski, more than others, wrote a lot about his experiences, and many of his themes and trends in his writings overlap, making it really just one long tale about the same stuff. You've read Bukowski, haven't you?"
"I've read a couple of his poems."
"And Carver"?
"Sure, I've read some of his writings, mainly What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, but I never really got into him that much. At HSU, I studied some Carver in a weekend seminar class. He went to Humboldt State, too, you know."
"Well, yeah, I know, we went up and visited him a few times," my dad responds. "So, do you like Carver?"
"He's got a sensibility and a style that flow pretty well, I think."
"I agree with you about his sensibility and subjectivity, but not so much on the flow. Mine is much better than his."
A couple months later and over some expensive Pinot Noir that my dad and his wife had bought from a California winery, we continued talking about author Raymond Carver, but this time it came up through my own struggles to write while juggling a teaching career.
"You know, I've really been having trouble finding time to write, between working full-time, having a wife, and playing in these basketball leagues."
"Such is the dilemma of the modern writer. There is no time to write anymore, everything runs so fast, so hyper-efficiently. Nowadays, it's far too difficult to write great books. You remind me of an old friend, haven't talked to him in years, who moved out to Los Angeles, but started working full-time. He was always trying to finish the great American novel, but he just never finished it. No doubt, he's still out there working, but he hasn't published anything. As I said, this is the peril of novelists, right now. That's what's so great about what I do, writing poetry, usually I can sit down and finish a piece in one sitting."
"Wow. That must be a nice feeling. I almost never get that, anymore."
"Oh"?
"Well, I stopped writing poetry, for the most part, and I've been working on short stories and novels."
I pretty much gave up poetry after I let my dad read a piece nine years ago. Of course, he thought it sucked, and told me all the reasons why. Other than giving me his scathing criticism, this poet was not able to pass on the craft of poetry to his only son. His words only shattered my confidence, just like when we played catch exactly nine years before that. He told me I threw like a girl. I quit baseball, only to return and become an all-star a year later.
"Listen carefully, my good friend Raymond Carver was a teacher, like you and I, but he was also able to write novels. His whole thing was writing short enough pieces that you could really get them done in a matter of hours. No wasting time, or even spending too much time on an initial draft. He was a fucking master of making something in no time. He'd always tell me about coming home tired and spent after teaching a full day; then, he'd come home to his wife and they'd have to discuss this, that, or the other thing. He'd never find much time for writing. This sounds very similar to your situation."
"I agree."
"…So, his solution was to writer shorter pieces. Get in, get out, he used to say. He had this thing he used to call relentless motion in a story, like it just kept itself alive and going, until the end. Having to do that in short spurts, without really gaining much overall momentum or practice; such is the challenge of the modern novelist."
As interesting as hearing about the inner workings of great minds like a Carver or a Bukowski was, what really mattered to me was having coffee, tea, and sipping wine with my dad, and allowing me to reconnect with my inner asshole. I no longer seek advice on my writing from him. I just aim to know him.
THE END
haiku
Fuyu Tokete
Orion Hikaru
Nishi no Sola
Natsu matsuri
Yukata ni Koi wo
Shinobasete
Engawa ni
Tatumu Kimono to
Ame no Ka to
Rengeso
Enogu ni Dasenai
Haru no Iro
Kono Hoshi wo
Haha to Yobitsutsu
Kowashiteku
Trans-dimensional-storm
This is where we are standing:
In the tall grass, at night, at the edge of the world.
On the summit of Poe's loftiest crag.
Staring out into the ocean, watching the ship break up.
She's so full of things to say. Some of them are true.
The sound of breaking wood, cracking and popping, the sea takes it in like candy.
The men have stopped screaming.
The maelstrom has them locked into a quiet orbit.
I tried before to walk away from this edge but she wouldn't come with me and I can't
leave her out here alone.
So we're watching this thing go down.
A beauty of a ship.
A crew of fifty-six.
Solid oak and steel and hard work being chewed and soon to be swallowed, gulped
down.
Digested.
Malnourished with the blood of these men.
The sweetest breeze is coming in; it moves the grass around our heads.
We may as well be on the moon.
My eyes ache.
Another pop and the mast is loosed and begins its descent into the guts of
emptiness.
She's telling me about gnats. How we can never talk about gnats.
I say nothing. We won't touch each other.
She's aging in front of me. A year and a half a minute. The moon has her.
The bulk of men enter the whirlpool. One is smoking. Several cling to each other.
I reach for her hand and she laughs.
She throws herself on me and I'm knocked off balance.
We roll off the edge of the world.
A bump and then something shatters.
I've lost her but then there she is all over again, in front of me, smiling.
Finally I can kiss her.
Our mouths dance like old partners reunited for the first time ever.
We enter the maelstrom together, each breathing the others oxygen.
Proverb
Reach into my pocket, slow, slow, and don't
Forget to bring the fabric of your soul
The darkness fears your hand, and patience won't
Remand the seam in time she blithely stole.
Reach deep, and deeper still, and there! just past
That camel laughing in a needle's eye
A quart of lonely honey in a vast
Romantic thimble--all yours to poke and ply.
Reach down around the aching suns, the fine
Young stars that saw the tearing of my soul
When time's wet threads a web began and I
Felt pulsars bleeding gold into the hole
In my pocket, where cloisters silk finespun,
And weave a close on that which lies undone.
Bird Daddy
Yesterday
Yesterday, Bird Daddy
Back there
In your cold
In your hunger winter
Were the skies so black with smoke
That nothing was ever seen winging?
Was the air so bomb-shaken
That nothing was ever heard singing?
Were the ganders earthbound? Were they gone?
From whose evil did you hide your feathered secrets?
Why wasn't the cawing of midnight crows
An anthem relieving the dying within you?
Any answer you give is right
Any answer you give is righteous
any answer you give is okay.
Finches and blackbirds and sparrows
Did not seek out souls from house to house
Finches and blackbirds and sparrows
Only were.
Who am I to demand a phoenix for a father?
I did not crawl for food
And you did not set your land afire
You only were
And they broke your wings for it.
My Daddy
Bird Daddy
Rhode Island Red
I've seen you strut
I've seen you preen
I've seen you behold a new kingdom.
And that's enough for me.
Falling Stars
Peaked in an immortal flame
The mortal mouth like lovers burn
The love that sets their limbs alight
Scorching the snow of breast and thigh
Can have no history but to die
Yet cannot change.
Across the night,
A radiance of falling stars are born
Impermanent.
These are some who burn in the strict and sensual laws called love.
Passing a point of no return
An age consumed in instant flame
The lovers cannot save themselves.
Bound in a swift triumphant arc
Like falling stars the light up the dark.
Our bodies coupled in the moonlight's album
Proclaimed our love through the outlawed times.
So beyond...
Beyond the birds, beyond the sky
Beyond that little boy with his large questions
We notice our shadows, going...
Slowly, but going...
Into that intolerable sunlight that never grows old or kind.
Sister Sestina
Amid the spatter of candles dying
And pupil constrictions at the end of rite
Bids farewell to sisters with a wave
The blonde, tan, crisp, and chatty sister
Romantic episodes passing throughout her mind
As she approaches and mounts the scooter.
Sings and hums and purrs her ready red scooter
And lipstick lips purse and curse the dying
Summer that brings her unprotected mind
Against chill winds, yet toward secret rites,
Untouched, and skyline eyes eye a sister
Gliding the sidewalk to whom she waves a wave.
Even the sinking sun shines through the wave
Cast in the direction of the scooter
As endless paths part before the sister--
Some alive with traffic, some dying
From neglect, but none conforming to rites
Of passage like the kind she keeps in mind.
Fairly flying now she doesn't mind
The dust droplets slowly forming a wave
Of dust--what are they compared to the rites
Of summer that only she and her scooter
Can know, what on earth can tiny, dying
Pieces of earth do to a charming sister?
The sky is crashing down upon the sister.
Now insufferably blinded by mind-
Games she careens off her dying
Laughter into a paralyzing wave
Of fear, ripping open the scooter
And smashing to pieces all her rites.
The air is still. Gone are the sacred rites
Of sunset. Only moving is the sister's
Blood, as thick and as black as the scooter
Oil, swallowing the clear liquid from her mind
And running with the rhythm of waves
Lapping against the shores of her dying.
Everywhere are the rites of dying
As mindless sisters in wave after wave
Regard ready red scooters as distinct from the mind.
The limericks competition was LAHC Engish department's second online contest. Back in the mid-and-late 90's the students (and even some of the faculty and staff) loved to jump into these competitions. There were no cash prizes, though there was always glory, and there were usually book awards. For this competition all of the winners received, you guessed it, books of limericks.
One of my favorite competitions was the Tom Swifties contest. Top prizes were copies of Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire and Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X
limericks
There once was a woman from Bimini
Who liked diving down well-oiled chim-mi-neys
One day she'd relate
That she'd come to her fate
By landing on Santa's arthritic knees
(Megumi Sato-Schroeder)
I once traveled to New Orleans
To get a taste of Cajun Cuisine
But jambalaya and gumbo
Made my stomach rumble
And my vacation was spent in the latrine
(Tricia Ledlie)
Tom Swifties
"I'm ambivalent about the gay lifestyle," said Tom, half in earnest.
Roy Olsen
faux pas
An item in the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times featured a Cadillac with "Lumber Seats."
(good for Pinocchio I guess; submitted anonymously)
This faux pas was in a manual designed to help high school students prepare for the verbal section of the SAT: "The standard pronumciation of an individual word is less important than the appropriate use of the word in writing."
(er...submertid by Kimberley Cullen)
Winter Garden
The icy, leaden dawn advances
over the suburban battlefield.
Silver streaks across the sky
light the corpses.
Frost-coated fences reflect the silver light
that spills onto the sundial.
Frozen in the winter wind,
to the rigid barbs of turf.
Dead, soldier Chrysanthemems lie,
fallen in black disarray.
They lie, piled high,
in cold, hoary corners.
Brilliant orange and yellow Marigolds,
mashed and mangled underfoot.
The fine straight limbs,
pitilessly assaulted in the night-long battle.
A single Dalhlia, its neck broken,
still stands guard over the seedlings,
as a burst of angry,
shattered leaves rain down on them.
The stricken trees moan feebly
as the last leaf falls.
The wind whines viciously.
The battle is lost.
Rites of Passage
They stood on the altar
with me in their arms
My mother - a Catholic by rote
without any faith
My father - a Jew
drawn to the Church
in search of a family
"What name do you give this child?"
"Rebekah Ann"
anointed in oil
the sin of Eve washed from my soul
My parents walked off the altar
Their duty done
The charismatic movement
of the early 70s
brought me back to the Church
Folk masses, communion
A real connection
I never believed
in the consecration of the Host
but I felt the power, the awe
the faith of the priest
And that was enough
I stood on the altar
at age eighteen
baby in my arms
and offered her to the Church
No faces in the congregation
looked our way
Like Abraham and Isaac
It was to God from me
"What name do you give this child?"
"Jasmine Leilani"
Heavenly flower sent from above
to guide my life with boundless love
"I won't baptize her with that name
It is pagan at best"
My heart froze
The church was still
"You can name her Marie"
"Her name is Jasmine"
We stood in this tableau
Man stood between me and God
until anxious to dismiss us
he roughly anointed her with oil
As he walked away, he said
"She only has partial sanction"
leaving me paralyzed with fear
"Now I lay her down to sleep
I pray the Lord her soul to keep"
It took me years before I realized
If you are going to allow someone
to intercede to God on your behalf,
you had better be sure
they are worthy of God's ear
I go back sometimes
drawn by the rituals
the comforting litanies
the sacred, timeless hush
the smells and sounds
balms for the soul