Humanity's Rivers Kept Unstagnated by the Disbandment of Separate Entities

Here is a podcast I made for Walt Whitman's poem, "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing," from his collection, Calamus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuZTdJgdogo

We're All Up At Allsup's

Situated in near proximity to China Express, a cheap Chinese take-out chain restaurant, and Abilene's Pet Regency, the Allsup's on Judge Ely has local, rustic charm that can only grow in time. What is almost authentic art deco tiling on the floor and the smoldering sausage biscuits to the left of the giddy cashier bring the visitor back to the exciting era of hustle and bustle that defined the 1920's American attitude. Yet, there is also something noticeably effortless in the Allsup’s aesthetic. Those other chains—7-Eleven, Kum & Go, and Flying J—those are all annoying fronts. Those are the pretentious convenient stores. Ask any of the employees at these stores and they’ll tell you, straight up, that they long deeply for a chance to switch to Allsup’s. Kum & Go has serious problems with its name and deserves all the jokes with sexual innuendo that get thrown back at it by drunken teenagers. And Flying J? Its whole marketing scheme is way too obvious. No, no, no, it’s really all about Allsup’s, a family-owned chain that stretches back to the year 1956 in Roswell, New Mexico, and luckily for us, has extended its branches all the way out to the Texas frontier.
Here at the Allsup’s, local patrons spill into the store at all hours of the day, paying cash in advance for their gasoline, for their cigarettes, and for the 40 oz bottles of Miller High-life they will tape to their hands later in the evening for a classic game of "Edward Forty Hands." The air is full of spices that sizzle out from the humble heat-lamped food section, where you can chose from comforting, classic goods, such as warm pretzels, breakfast taquitos, and, of course, those smoldering sausage biscuits; however, hovering around and above such comforting smells, there is always the same smell of cleaning fluid. As with other Allsup's convenient store branches, this particularly bizarre fusion of smells is part of what makes the store chain so charming. Enveloped in the peculiar aura, the two cashiers, both men in their mid-twenties chatter on to the costumers. The time is 11:30 pm on a Friday night.
The cashier with greased back, mangy black hair sincerely engages with his costumers in conversations that range from Star Wars trivia to "what sort of gar would you recommend for me to buy (that I will later use for a blunt)?" chitchat and all the way to enthusiastic debate on which Republican presidential nominee has been the craziest thus far leading up to the primaries. The cashier with blonde hair looks extraordinarily washed out on this evening. For some reason or another, he can barely keep his eyes open. Mostly, he responds with lazy grimaces.
The cashier with black hair:
—How are you doing this evening, man?
A slender woman with silver hair, blotchy skin, and saggy elbow skin responds:
—Oh, I am doing just fine.
—Is this Four Loko (an canned alcoholic beverage named for its four main ingredients: alcohol, caffeine, taurine, and guarana) an all you’re getting tonight, ma’am?
—Do y’all have any Marlboro special blends (the word “blends” squished out of her nicotine-stained mouth with an incredibly endearing diphthong on the “e” vowel)?
Throughout this discourse, the blonde cashier stands idle. The other slaps the counter of his register and swings his head up toward the cigarette rack:
—You betcha!
—Then I’ll have two packs of the special blends with the Four Loko.
—Alright. Can I see your license?
The woman scoffs in her sixty-something smokey rasp:
—Do I not look eighteen to you? I got a granbaby.
Always able to be light and merry, the cashier responds:
—I know, it’s stupid, but I gotta see it. Everyone’s gotta show some proof of their age now.
The silver fox whips out her license from her wallet:
—It’s the goddamn government interfering with everything.
She probably gets a nod or grunt of agreement from someone in the line. The cashier can only laugh. He’s not very political and doesn’t plan on responding with anything that might extend the conversation. The lady takes her purchases and walks out the glass door with the clearly marked sign that reads “Do Not Open. Use Other Door” and walks out in swanky strides towards her silver Lexus.
The cashiers stand in a square of countertops in the middle of the store. Costumers surround them.  The hustle and bustle of time surrounds them. Alcohol, Fritos, energy drinks, and lottery tickets surround them. Within the square they can relax, all the while not detracting from the store spirit. There are two registers—one on the left and one on the right. Only the one on the right is in use right now by the cashier with black hair. Perhaps the blond cashier would or could be managing the other, but he doesn’t seem up for the challenge of initiating conversation and scanning barcodes at the moment. It is 11:30 pm, so his demeanor is excusable. Right behind the backside of the square, a yellow bucket lies in wait with clean water, ready to be soaked up into a janitor’s mop.
Then, next in line a young, chubby white boy tugs on the sleeve of his mother:
—Mama! Can I get a different bag of Corn Nuts?
The Mother groans and lifts her arm away from the child’s reach:
—Which flavor do you want?
—BBQ!
—Hurry, there are other people waiting.
The more involved cashier bounces in his shoes with laughter. It’s hard to say whether or not it’s forced. His partner, arms consistently crossed, manages to pull of something like a smirk.
A tall man with a brown mustache walks over to the yellow bucket with a mop and stands as if waiting for something to happen or, most likely, for an opportune moment to start mopping the tile. There is not too much communication between the costumers in line, but every now and then there will be a man who looks at what a woman is holding in her arms to check out and then says something like this:
—You having a big party tonight?
The woman in front of the man might turn around and smile. She might be wearing hoop earrings and she might be midriffing. She probably is going to be clutching a six-pack of Miller Light and another of Bud Light with Lime. She will flirt back appropriately, so as not to offend:
—Maybe (she will also be thinking that it’s quite obvious she will be partying).
—Real cool! Alright, that’s what I like to hear!
The woman will laugh and turn back around toward the register and hopefully will not be bothered anymore. In front of her a slightly intoxicated high school student slides down twenty dollars in cash across the countertop to be put on pump four. The blonde cashier finally takes some initiate and opens up the other register. The line is beginning to lengthen unnecessarily.  Larry begins mopping the floor.
Outside the doors to the Allsup's, the neighboring locals congregate from adjacent apartment complexes, sometimes all crowding around the pay phone for a chance to call up their friends for grand old times of cruising out on Abilene's south first street, perhaps to share some Marlboro's, or maybe just to laugh and enjoy the peculiar pleasantness that, really, only Allsup's can offer.
Everything about Allsup's seems ingeniously picked, assembled and designed to create its fast-paced atmosphere, remnant of a time when the locales had their whole lives ahead of them, oceans and oceans, in fact. A time where no economic recession or depression lay as an imposing threat. Larry the janitor mops the art deco tiles cheerily and waves back to costumers who greet him. Larry mops the tile floor so well that the cashiers are able to work with clear minds and the costumers are able to forget about all the dirt in life and continue on in their wild, spiraling motions.
An old couple drinks coffee outside of their Volvo while their son pumps their gas for them. A gruff trucker tucks his big gulp Coke under his coat and walks out of the two front glass doors. This Allsup's store never sleeps, but breathes on into the night.

after your travels

            As a traveler you've had a great time and, now, you feel guilty in not having yet shared the moments, the cafes, the strange smells absolutely or as freshly as you were able to experience them abroad. You should, anyway. Traveling is always a privilege, and you know that. So, you must write to relief yourself of the guilt in leaving the common rabble back at home and going off to better things. Bring new eyes, or whatever you can back to people who are unfamiliar with the culture or obscure locale. After seeing world renewed soprano, Ana Netrebko, in the role of Mimi from Puccini's La Boheme at the Met or the toothless patriarch of some obscure, isolated, Indonesian jungle tribe wail out a folk song that has been passed down through family generations, spanning hundreds of years, next to a campfire, sit down and recreate the experience as best to your ability.
Perhaps at this moment you don't feel guilty at all in knowing that others have not seen of heard or tasted what you have (If so, what is wrong with you?). Maybe you're still relishing in the sublimity or absurdity of those special moments. Well, then take personal time to write so that you can remember, so that you can relive the expeditions and learn how to bring closure to them. Seems a little self-absorbed, but, hey; you are still emptying your travel from your body in ways that upon revisitation will add nuance and layers of meaning to your memory. It's you time.
But even you will get tired of you time. After landing back in your hometown, the travel experience begins to shake itself up inside your body. If too much time goes before you write, the stories will find a way on their own to seep out of your body. The stories will push up at your head, twist it around, and come out in an outstandingly inarticulate way. These regrettable and completely avoidable moments can be annoying for you and your friends (who are also your fans, naturally). The travel experience is a soda that would lose its fizziness if kept contained, except that because you are, really, so ready to share and revisit and empty yourself, the stories never (rather, they should never) lose too much of that special carbonation before you start talking; however, so as to pound in the point, here is an imaginary portrait of someone I know and perhaps you all know who is now unfortunately an exemplar of the flat soda syndrome (FSS):
Sally McGee is a young woman who recently hosted a fun little gathering at her studio apartment downtown. On that day she had been saving a two liter bottle of Coke she bought earlier for the party, but a few hours before the guests arrived she went ahead and opened the Coke bottle to make herself a small drink. She wanted to live a little, so she had her drink. It was refreshing and delicious. So delicious that she didn't think to immediately recap the bottle, and when reruns of COPS came on the television, she bolted into her living room and cart wheeled into her couch. The act of recapping the soft drink was completely forgotten. Consequentially, the soda sat out for hours. Later that evening, guests sat around in their own frothy conversations, talking about this book and that girl, and the Coke remained shoved back on the kitchen countertop. You can imagine Sally McGee's disappointment when she found the bottle early the next day. The soda was completely flat. Flat and as profoundly useless and absurd as turkey gizzard-genitals. Sally was dramatically forced to throw her bottle away and she never got to taste the sweet, gritty softness that is Coke. She had let her friends down. This is the story of Sally McGee, who did not cartwheel, but crawl, miserably and guiltily, towards her grave. This is the story of Sally McGee.
Yes, of course, in order to retain as much of the experience as possible, go ahead and write it down. Enjoy recapturing the way you beamed when you walked up the Spanish steps or the way you gawked during your first encounter with the Thai transvestites. Write before you forget the names of hotels, villages, and foods and your photographs start to all blend together as mumbling starchiness. Before the moments begin to shed off flakes of memory that will be too difficult to peace together again. Write because people are always searching for new ways to get closer to authenticity outside of their own bubbles of comfort. Just realize that there's an important underlying self-interest in your work and that what you're doing is a good thing, not only for others, but also for you. You don't have to go on in your guilt any longer. You can write and, please, do so! It's for your own wellbeing.

Little Piggy

I remember last summer when you sat in your lazy-boy chair and you would snort in jest at politicians squabbling on the television. Made me cringe. God. Last summer you sat like lard, spilling over the sides of your dinner chair with your odious ooziness. It was embarrassing. We all sat with our heads lowered toward our bacon-wrapped venison--and why on earth were we stuffing you with bacon, I don’t know—waiting for the grueling meal to be over.  Whenever you laughed I could see all of your crumbly yellow teeth. I wanted to hit you, but at the same time I did not want to touch your stinking skin with my own. Maybe I could use a very long pole? Swap you off your chair from the dinner table so we wouldn’t have to look at you. What did you even do with the hours of the day? Just sat there, reading blogs, reading your Bible? God, I wanted to just put a bag over your head. God. I can’t see you so must not exist, sort of thing, you know, God. I know, I know.
I’m trying my hardest to piece together an image of you that doesn’t offend me. You’ll be innocent, content. A pig? Snug and without aspirations that crawl beyond your farrowing crate. Here you are again, snug in a velvety red blanket. Same crate, really, you’re just waiting now to decompose. I think the slaughter’s over, but the grease will remain. That’s how you’ll be remembered. Then this really funny image: you are up there and in the middle of his speech, you go oink, oink, and we all laugh. Well, only I laugh. It’s so funny, or maybe I just no longer know what to do with you, so I suppress my uncertainty with laughter. This is how you'll be remembered.

the new 2012 Shinnery Review

http://blogs.acu.edu/shinnery/2012/04/27/announcing-the-2012-shinnery-review/

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For great creative works by ACU's undergraduate literary arts magazine, The Shinnery Review

Plasmapheresis Take 2

New ending for the piece.

The process of plasma extraction is complete. After another few minutes the mousy brunette comes back around and asks me for my name and last four digits of my social security number to verify the account to which CSL Plasma will send funds of roughly twenty dollars. As I bid Rhonda adieu, I try to fathom the existence of the everyday CSL Plasma donor, but it's hard to abstract the character in question.

Simply put, we're just all plasma donatin' lookin' ass mothafuckas, looking for a break, trying not to get stepped on, and trying to earn some cash. I write my signature at the bottom of my letter and climb off the leather bed, my elbow wrapped tightly in sand colored bandaging. While heading back through the waiting room, I notice that the waiting room is full of an entirely new crowd in muddy tank tops, flannel, and medical scrubs. Right now the world demands twenty million liters of our plasma, so it's a good thing that the human body regenerates blood plasma so quickly. I walk outside of the facility's front doors. They always wrap the bandaging too tightly. Two more hours and I'll be able to take off these bandages.

There are a couple of men smoking cigarettes in front of the brick wall. They laugh and joke. They both wear shirts with their names and different company names stitched into the front pocket. One has considerably more stains on his shirt, black and oily. Neither of them seem to have noticed me. Maybe the two men met at the CSL Plasma center awhile ago and have become friends in their common plasma donating experiences. I walk through a very full parking lot under a very bright sky. The sky is always so dizzyingly bright after walking out of any clinical sort of establishment. I slump forward and slide into my car's front seat.

Sorake Beach's Sting, pt. 2

Dr. Cavitt and Randy walk up to the table with their bibles. I feel sweat slowly running down the sides of my torso. The bits of sea long to crawl back to mother sea. Sweat and more sweat. Of course none of us have grown accustomed to the blazing equatorial sun, and to make matters worse, we must wear pants and long sleeve shirts at these gatherings so as not to offend any of the older villagers who were converted to Christianity by conservative missionaries fifty years ago.

The others are coming now. Beat-up jeeps and vans pull into the bumpy driveway in front of our hotel. They come out in colorful clothes, floral prints, smiling, their hands locked with their children's. The women walk into the hotel cafe and sit on side of the room as the men file in and sit on the other. The whole group reminds me of some small town Texas congregation, locked in itself by trees and miles and miles of raw terrain, slow to change, sometimes stubborn and unbudging. Alex looks at me and rolls her eyes. She will not be able to speak tonight. The men of Nias would be grossly offended. I feel uncomfortable, but I smile nevertheless.

Elderly Nias men bang their right fists on their chests:

--Ya'ahowu!

Shivers rush through my legs as something strange and prickly brushes against my pant. I look down, and to my dismay, the warty hotel cat is accosting me for scarps of food. I have nothing. Whenever the odious creature walks underneath the table I cringe. I lift my feet off the ground and cross them under my bottom in my chair. I cannot allow for this fungus-cat to rub against my legs.

My fingers fumble through the pages of my bible where I've taken notes. Tonight I am to speak to the Nias people through the best of Andrew's abilities as interpreter. I hold this holy doctrine in my hands. What is it I'm preaching tonight? Wait, I'm really preaching? I have not known what to do with this book for a few years now, yet here I am about to talk about faith and doubt and promises.

Andrew smiles as he looks at Logan and I. He signals to everyone in their seats to politely end their conversations and to look toward the American students. He introduces Logan and I and "Paul and Barnabas," a sort of joke that the villagers have learned to love when fanny packed-foreigners come with their bibles tucked under their arms.

We have everyone's attention. I beat my chest with my right fist to greet them all:

--Ya'ahowu!

The Nias people love it:

--Ya'ahowu!

I'm wearing my best grin. Something that I feel needs no translation. I uncross my legs and plant them on the concrete floor. Ina Hestu fans herself. Ama Tuna and Ama Toreh wait eagerly for the words I am intended to relay to them from God. I become animated. I use my hands to help conduct this silly opus. Translation takes time. I talk and read from my notes. I quote the bible because I am told to do so to validate my words. I speak of Job and become anxious. My peers comfort me with their presence. Warty cat brushes up against my leg.

The man who has been sitting in the corner of the room with his arms and legs crossed the entire time finally lifts up his hand. As I feel the air of the room harden and begin to drip down my forehead in sweat, I remember Dr. Cavitt's warning. This man can be trouble. I nod to him and point so that he knows he has my full attention.

The man takes off his glasses and snaps his bible shut. His deeply set frown doesn't budge. He sits there now twisted like an old tree. I keep my eyes focused on his eyes as Andrew translates:

--How does God expect us to have faith in him when he gives us bad rice harvests?

My stomach starts to spill into my lap. I try to empathize and twist my face into an expression of soulful pity and love. It's painful.