Back to school with The Bird Artist

Guess I took the summer off.

But summer officially ends today, so I return to my writing exercises.

Picked up The Bird Artist (by Howard Norman) this week from a pile in the house, and was struck by the opening paragraph:

My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.

Wow. Laying out your themes in the opening paragraph?

I think Howard Norman owes Ms. Shirley Jackson a dollar: (http://terminationdate.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/this-paragraph-saved-my-story-today)

“Daddy’s heart procedure went fine”

The sweetest heart I know got a shock today when they stuck some tools under my father’s skin and inside his chest paused his pulse a second and turned up the power to reset his heart.

My father is a steady man. He poured the concrete first thing before heading mid-morning to the hospital. He smooths and calms, and calls you on your birthday. He laughs when others might scream and yell. He orders the same Chinese food, the same gin martini.

So how could his heart blip anything but regular?

It wasn’t a big deal, the procedure on my heart, the general anesthesia. I couldn’t even feel it, he said tonight during a call he’d snuck before my mother got home. He dialed my number out to reassure me.

He wanted to know about me.

I’m fine.

I didn’t hear an ugly string of words trapped in a single sentence: “daddy” and “heart” and “hospital”. I didn’t spend the afternoon ignoring my parents’ mortality. I didn’t envy doctors today in Philadelphia, who got to touch the sweetest heart in the city.

Probably they didn’t even feel it.

I do enjoy a verb

Yup, Scott Blanchard.

Give me verbs, give me picky, specific, evocative verbs. I love them. I lean on them heavily when writing. Don’t know when or how that started.

So after I read your post about shoving good verbs into narrative writing, I found myself looking for fun ones a minute today.

Like on this list here. Look at the top two from each column. So punchy, so active.

abandon
abduct
collapse
collar
dramatize
drape
fix
flag
hover
hug
lurch
maim

How do you deal with a dibs violator?

I’ve been wondering: What if someone steals my parking spot?

Do I call police? Hurl a brick through the offender’s window?

Call police, sure, but I think they’ll just laugh. Bricks? Too permanent, violent.

Someone suggested breaking off side mirrors.

Yeah… but wouldn’t it be more fun to soap obnoxious things all over the car?

“I’m the kind of a$@hole who steals other people’s parking”

“I violated dibs.”

“I’m a big jerk.” “I stole a lady’s parking spot.” “I have no regard for society and its rules.”

Etc.

So far, no need. The chairs are working. Noone’s touched my handiwork nor my craptacular plastic lawn furniture.

I won’t have to soap any windows after all.

Writing other people’s words: Nick Cave

Thank you, Nick Cave, for the reminder last weekend about the word “punch”. I don’t always understand “Jesus of the Moon” but I frequently queue it up.

Nick’s a tad poetic for my everyday use, but that’s why I rewrite his words now, to get my hands around other ways to use common verbs.

I stepped out of the St. James Hotel
I’d left you behind curled up like a child
A change is gonna come,
And as the door whispered shut
I walked on down the high-windowed hall
You lay sleeping on the unmade bed, the weatherman on the television
In the St. James Hotel said that the rains are gonna come
And I stepped out on the street all sparkling clean with the early morning dew

Maybe it was you or maybe it was me?
You came on like a punch in the heart
You lying there with the light on your hair
Like a Jesus of the moon
A Jesus of the planets and the stars

Punch.

Satisfying sounds, P, N, Ch and no letters wasted either.

Forceful little verb inflicts pain, not too much, in a single syllable. It’s not a shot or a stab, both so permanent, just a sock to the face, the nose, the groin, the heart. It hurts alright, more than a plain old push.

Like a punch in the ear. Like a punch in the jowl. Punch the sky. Punch through the silence.

A mere fight? No, a drunken punch-up.

Punch.

‘Oak Lawn Marine’s family thrilled to see him in action’

Somebody back in photo was trolling the wires and spotted “Oak Lawn” in photos from Afghanistan. I hunted down his family, loved them instantly and enjoyed this writing immensely.

Here’s a prime example of how five minutes’ talking to set up a story structure makes it flow.

War photos from Afghanistan show family this Marine’s ok

This is the new photo of her eldest son Lisa Eckert-Weaver can’t wait to show off: Jon Eckert’s sitting on the rocky bank of a natural pool of water, his new tattoo sprawling across his broad back. With him is Bee, his black lab, her fur still glistening from their swim
together.

Then the mother explains the idyllic scene:
The water sits atop a crucial power-generating dam in Afghanistan’s deadly Helmand province that the Taliban itch to wreck.

Bee’s a specialized bomb-sniffer, trained to root out roadside bombs.

The tattoo, when completed, will form a peace sign out of large-caliber bullets.

And her son is Marine Cpl. Jonathan Eckert, who patrols the roadside bomb-riddled region around the vital Kajaki Dam that powers a million Afghan homes.

The photo is one of a cluster snapped in recent days by a seasoned war photographer whose work lets Eckert-Weaver know that her 20-year-old son, stationed in the Taliban’s back yard, is still OK.

“I worry about him every day, I check Facebook every day,” Eckert-Weaver said from her Oak Lawn home. “I don’t know a lot of what he does.”

Only now, she can see it for herself.

The shirtless photos show her he’s getting enough to eat.

The one where he’s dodging a firefight tells her he’s keeping a calm head in war.

The shot of him showing his iPod – and a silly “Talking Carl” game – to a cluster of Afghan kids means he’s still acting like his knuckleheaded self.

And all the pictures that include Bee means he’s enjoying his job.

Eckert volunteered to return to Afghanistan attached to the India Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment out of Japan; his second tour in two years.

A Marine since graduating from Oak Lawn Community High School in 2008, he chose the military right after 9-11.

Jonathan – known as JT in the family – was 11 1/2 when the towers fell.

He was feeling patriotic, his mom said, but he also wanted to take care of his then-single mom and younger brother, Jeremy, and sister, Jessica, by moving them onto a military base with him as soon as he was old enough.

His mom’s husband, George Weaver, was a Marine. His mom’s father, who died while JT was on tour, also was a Marine. The family named their puppy Semper Fi.

The Marines, his stepdad said, are the guys who get things done. And JT loved that, his sister said.

So while he was still 17, he pre-enlisted with his mom’s permission, spending Saturdays doing exercises with area Marines.

“I figured the more knowledge he had the better because when he was 18, he’d do it anyway,” his mother said.

JT deployed last year as an artilleryman, manning guns on top of tanks.

Back in the states, he got recommended for the dog program and started working with Bee.

He married a hometown sweetheart and volunteered, with a baby son now on the way, for another deployment.

He needs the money.

He enjoys the work.

He adores the dog.

He despises the terrain.

“Greetings from Beautiful Afghanistan,” he drew in puffy letters on the front of a blank postcard. On the back: “I’m safe and I miss you all and I can’t wait to see you all. Afghanistan still sucks … Love you guys, JT.”

His other letters have made requests: Baby wipes to keep the sand out. Beef jerky for snacks. Toys to while away the monotony between missions. Nyquil so he can drop off to sleep between four-hour shifts. And now he asks for, and his mother dutifully sends, bones
for Bee.

She’s saved his life a few times already now. On cold nights, she keeps him warm as he sleeps, he said, writing home, “It’s really cold out here, I’m spooning with Bee.”

In about a month, he’ll come home from this six-month deployment to do a lot of things.

He’ll hang out with his siblings. He’ll help his new wife, Mante, move from her Crestwood home to his Marine base in the California mountains. He’ll welcome his baby son, due in February.

And he’ll finish the art spanning his upper back, closing the ring of peace around a triad of bullets.

Published Oct. 19, 2010, in the SouthtownStar, on page 1.

On dialogue: Old soldiers, young Marine

Spent the morning as I have all week: With a delightful veteran of World War II, and with his wife of 61 years.

Then the afternoon looking for a delightfully profane Marine in Afghanistan.

Found this (potentially offensive) cache of hilarity. Couldn’t stop laughing.

Look at that handsome face! No, he’s not the point, the caption indicates.

My elderly gents filter their stories and their turns of phrase after so many years, you know? They apologize for their verbal slips or drop their voices when dropping profanity. One made me turn the recorder off so he could talk about circumcisions as medic training.

This young Marine uses no filter in his profile and his frankness is damn refreshing. Enter the corporal and his constant companion, the F-word. He’s a man of few words, carefully chosen. He knows what he likes and who he wants to be with. He won’t apologize to you or anyone.

Here’s another winner. And another. They just keep coming.

No hitter! Headlines!

Go Phillies! And clever headlines!

I like the other front page, too.

Also seen around town: Red-Doc-Tober.

Ok, answer me this, newspaper biz.

Why won’t you all sell a special playoff season out-of-town subscription to fans like me all over America who root for our home team far away from our hometowns? Sometimes the Internet won’t cut it, like when you stick a Halladay poster inside the paper. Or a JIMMY ROLLINS.

Reporting like this all along

This was just a whatever story.

I mean, the announcement was a good one for everyone living along the train line, but nothing spectacular in terms of reporting. Metra advocates (including the recently deceased Phil Pagano) met at the Oak Lawn station on a Monday to announce there’d be more weekend service.

I wrote a respectable news story that was printed the next day, March 3, 2009. I used recordings of the speeches to check the quotes.

But listen! I also stopped while walking away from the station to record the sound of the train.

Why? Why bother for a little news story that wasn’t going to get any multimedia? Why take the time?

Because it sounded amazing. That’s why. Why go to a train station to talk about trains, and never listen to the rumble and whistle and breathing?

Listen: metra-train approaches

May I have your attention please? The next outbound train from Chicago is now arriving at your station. Please stand behind the yellow line until the train comes to a complete stop before boarding.

Here’s a chunk of the story. I hear you all like something to look at as you listen.

Way down at the end of Metra’s SouthWest Service Line, some 50 miles from Chicago’s Loop, commuters are plunking down roots in a charming bedroom community called Manhattan.

And as Manhattan has grown – the population has at least doubled since 2000 – so have the calls for more train service from Mayor William Borgo. On Monday, Borgo was thrilled to hear that better rail service to Manhattan was coming faster than springtime.

Metra is adding daytime trains to the schedule servicing the end of the SouthWest Line and Saturday service at every stop on the tracks to Chicago starting March 21, the transit agency announced Monday.

A midday inbound and outbound train will extend to the Laraway Road station in New Lenox and the Manhattan station, making all stops up the line to Chicago’s Union Station, Carole Doris, Metra board chairwoman, told a group of southwest suburban mayors and U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd), of Western Springs.

“Weekend service is going to be a great benefit, especially during these tough economic times. You can’t beat how cheap it is to get downtown,” Lipinski said. “It’s a benefit not just to get to Chicago and get back home, but to get places all along this line.”

Excerpts from a story published March 3, 2009, in the SouthtownStar newspaper on page A3, and audio recorded on March 2, 2009 at the Oak Lawn station on 95th Street.

Pelican

Poynter orders form last week’s class: Go find a scene. Write it up. See what you bring back. Don’t spend forever on it, just write:

High in Florida’s azure over the basin on this summer afternoon, there are few cirrus interruptions.

Jets sail to their destinations half a mile up. Propeller planes buzz gently across the sky, mapping a line out to the bay past the glassy surface below.

The tallest sailboat barely bobbles where she’s tethered to the docks. Her sleek fiberglass gleams white. Her chrome rails glide around her hull. She’s in from Tampa. They call her Patience.

A splashy mess wrecks a fine silence.

Someone falling off the edge? The dumping of a corpse? Does anyone need help?

He falls alright, this muddy pelican. He crashes hard through the line separating his sky from his sea.

He falls like a drunk, late in the afternoon, thrashed as if seized. His fingered wings splay.

Around him, as he flails, the water froths.

I saw a pelican once before in pictures my Pop sent from his house in North Port. And I saw other local birds my grandfather the snowbird knew would amuse us.

He loved Florida. He napped topless in the sun. When he awoke, he swilled a cheap brewski, or three.

Then as he was trimming a neighbor’s tree, his able brown body gave out.

We flew, in the months after his stroke, to see him in a Tampa rehab. We found his beer belly deflated, his words garbled.

His leathered brown skin faded into the pallor of someone else’s grandfather.

Hi Pop! It’s me! I’m so glad you’re ok!

He smiled with the left of his face.

He needed a haircut, a shave. The nurses only bathed him. My brother wielded electric clippers, then attacked Pop’s toenails.

Between the rehab and his junk-filled house, my mother drove his minivan, the Dodge that still smelled like Pop’s bitey little dog and stale coffee. She chose the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over inland routes.

My sister swapped turns with me in the front seat.

In the back, I fought a gut sickened, I told myself, by the ride.

Out the wide side window leggy herons poked along the shoreline.

Then a big guy with a brown back, a beak bumpy underneath bumbled by. More of them floated a minute on the air. Shed any grace. Crash bombed toward the surf and pulled up at the last minute, sometimes pulled up too late.

One gulped down something that struggled in its mouth.

I craned my neck to confirm: Birds of the absurd! Florida birds! Pelicans!

Pelicans.

My pelican in the basin uprights himself on the water. Jams his pocketed beak under his wing. Roots around a while.

He flaps up to a pile to preen some more. He rolls his head around, stretching out a stumpy neck. He jiggles the flab of his famed pouch from side to side, as a pooch pants, to cool himself.

Baking in the late afternoon, he falls asleep.