Matt Snee's Blog, page 51

Second draft in progress

its a process, man

Now that I’ve finished the first draft of this piece, today I got started on the second draft. I’m trying to have the images and the content of the text interact more thematically, and not in a literal way. The images don’t exist to represent material reality but to act as symbols. One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is the Russian Formalist idea of defamiliarization, that is, the process of presenting a familiar item in an unfamiliar way, presenting, not representing, and in turn showing it (and ourselves) in a new light. Intellectual circles get paralyzed by the continental idea that the signifier can mean everything and nothing at once. Is the lack of solidity in our languages really that horrifying to people?

etude

Taking Anna Karenina out of the context of the white page

This is from Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, considered by many to be the finest novel. This isn’t something I would ever consider trying… the book is gigantic. But I wanted to take the opening sentences out of the context of the white page and rethink them. The first aesthetic idea I had with this was to diminish and delineate the opening sentence from the rest of the text. I guess this is how I see the first page. The first sentence, as insightful as it is, is sort of incongruent with the next sentence (not in substance but in style – he goes from pronouncement to drama with barely a breath). The second sentence is not profound at all, but is very direct and tells you the most important thing you need to know to begin to hear the story (you do not need to read the first sentence to understand the story).

Anyway, I’m not sure what compelled me to do this.

The Watchful Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 4

A young, down on her luck white West Virginia woman crosses paths with a discouraged Zora Neale Hurston in Miami in 1957.

Fotosearch / Archive Photos / Getty ImagesChapter 4

Hattie woke up the next morning to Zora knocking and opening the door again. No epiphany had come overnight, as she had spent most of the day unconscious. 

Zora, of course, was furious; she restrained this fury considerably, silently, but Hattie could feel it immediately rip her from the tendrils of sleep. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m leaving!” Hattie crawled out of bed and settled her feet onto the carpet. The world spun, the floor tilted, and the ceiling was suddenly below her. She fell, crashing to the floor. Everything went dark. 

Hattie sputtered as water splashed her face. Zora knelt over her with an empty glass. Hattie gasped, spitting the water from her lips and feeling drops of it sinking into her hair. 

“There’s blood on the sheets,” Zora said. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Did you have an abortion, girl?”

“No… no…” Hattie whimpered, bursting into exhausted weeping. “I fell… I lost the baby…” She squeezed her eyes shut – they were overflowing with tears, and thick rivers of wetness coated her cheeks. Her chest shuddered, her legs felt bursting with nervousness; she drew them up and locked her knees.

“What happened?”

Hattie turned her head away from Zora, not speaking at first. “I just got out of the hospital. I have no idea where I am, I don’t know Miami, I don’t have any money, I ruined everything…”

Zora pursed her lips. A frown formed on her lips, one that seemed to encompass the entire world. She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “When was the last time you ate anything?

“I don’t know….”

“The Delray Diner is across the street. Maybe you saw it, it’s the one with the sign of the fried egg in the bikini. You need to eat. You’re pale as a frog.”

“I don’t have any money…”

Zora shook her head. “We’re going to walk across the street to the diner. I’m going to buy you breakfast. Despite my wisdom. Now, let’s get up.”

Zora helped Hattie lift herself up. Step by step, they ambled out the door.  Outside, things were very different than they were two days ago; the humidity had been usurped by a cool, sea-scented breeze, and the burning blue sky had been replaced by sludges of gray rain clouds that looked like the fingerpainting of a tempestuous child. 

Zora guided her through the hotel parking lot to the street corner. A newspaper page tumbled in front of the cars on the street. The two of them stood together at the traffic light, waiting to cross, neither of them saying anything, Zora’s arm interlaced with Hattie’s, and Hattie carefully vacillating between how much she leaned on Zora – totally dependent one moment, bashful and ashamed the next. 

On the other side of the street was the Delray Diner, a giant pill of chrome and expansive windows punctuated by a rotating, turquoise sign emblazoned the forementioned bikini-clad fried egg and emblems in the shape of rubies. Zora led Hattie through the parking lot, and as the wind splayed Hattie’s unwashed and uncombed hair, Zora’s countenance remained stoic. Hattie wasn’t quite if this was real – the wind and the murky color of the sky were disorienting after the previously unending drip of steaming humidity. Now she could feel goosebumps on her arms, a drop of rain landed on the back of her neck, and the world grew ever darker. At that moment, a soft groan of thunder, like a bear waking from hibernation, rolled across the horizon behind them, and Zora hurried Hattie faster.

They climbed the front stairs of the diner and Zora pulled open the glass door. Inside, a jukebox was playing “Little Darlin’” by the Diamonds, and everything seemed larger and reflective. Despite her lack of lucidity, Hattie realized that something was wrong as the two different shades of the restaurant’s patrons came into focus. Colored people sat in the back of the restaurant, out of the range of the front counter’s mirrors, and white people took up the prominent foreground. Hattie had never dined in a restaurant with a black person, had never dined with a black person in any way at all. She had never questioned that, in a restaurant, like in most aspects of society, the lives of white people and black people were clearly defined and separated. And it wasn’t that she questioned it now – it’s just that, accompanied with Zora, she wasn’t quite sure where to sit. 

She looked at Zora, who seemed to be sharing the same concerns, her brow furrowed as her eyes scanned the restaurant, perhaps for some illusory middle ground. The two of them must have been quite a sight, and Hattie felt relieved that it seemed like no one was staring at them, but still she did not know what to do, and she was painfully aware of the fact that Zora didn’t know what to do either. 

A waitress with an exploding beehive of curly red hair streamed towards them with horn-rimmed glasses and her notebook stuck into her apron like a dandy’s sword. Her nose was highly pronounced, and despite her obvious best efforts, no matter how much makeup the waitress had applied on her face that day, it was still drowned out by the mob of fiery freckles on her cheeks. 

“Come with me, folks,” she said, never decelerating, curving in front of them like she was on roller skates.

Hattie and Zora followed the voluptuous waitress to a table nestled behind a supporting column, that couldn’t be seen from the entrance of the restaurant. The waitress placed the laminated menus on the table as Hattie and Zora sank into the vinyl booth. Air deflated from the seats. 

“Coffee?” the waitress asked.

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” said Zora. 

Hattie did not reply, delirious with the enticing scents of the diner. Bacon, sausage, fried potatoes, steak, eggs – it was a feast for the senses, and Hattie’s mouth filled with saliva. 

“She’ll have coffee too, thank you, ma’am,” said Zora. 

“I’ll be right back with it,” smiled the waitress.

Hattie’s limbs were trembling. She was so hungry. It felt as though she was completely empty, that every movement she made was not the result of a biological process, but some last vestige of her will. 

“You’re pale, girl. Real pale,” said Zora. “I don’t know if you’re okay.”

“I just need food,” said Hattie, enjoying being mothered. For the first time since she had fallen down the stairs at Mick’s apartment, she felt a glimmer of hope. She raised her eyes from their listless stare at the table and met Zora’s. “Thank you, Zora.”

Zora stared back, frowning. “What’s your name, child?”

“Harriet.”

“What kind of mess did you get yourself into?”

Hattie was glad she was too exhausted to cry anymore. “I fell in love,” she murmured. 

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5

a brief examination of my american fathers, chapter 6

Conclusion

The Watchful Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 2

The reason I started making stuff like this was an attempt to create a literature that could exist DIRECTLY on social media, etc.

Weekend MP3s

Download day

Yeah, I’ve sometimes been called “forgetful.”

15 Colossal DeformityDownload16 Baffled WraithDownload

a brief examination of my american fathers, chapter 5

It’s 1958 in Los Angeles, and Hollywood Cowboy John Wayne has adopted a black baby he found in an alley.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN CHAPTER 6

The Watchful Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 3

A young, down on her luck white West Virginian woman crosses paths with a discouraged Zora Neale Hurston in Miami in 1958.

Fotosearch / Archive Photos / Getty ImagesChapter 3

Hattie’s daddy was not a sophisticated man, but he was very opinionated – he didn’t want to hire blacks, but neither did he want to pay a white man’s wages. So, he began his search for a farm hand like Odysseus set sail for home, winding here, being blown there, and he was teased and toyed with by the fickle gods. Finally, he arrived home one day in his truck, clomped up the porch in his heavy boots, pulled open the screen door, and announced to Hattie and her half-interested mother – “I found him.”  

All of this was under Hattie’s radar at the time, as she was graduating from high school, there was prom, why would she begin to care about who her daddy hired for his farm? 

 But, the first time Hattie saw Mick, she knew her daddy’s epic quest had not been in vain. She and her mother were headed out to the grocery store when her daddy called them over to the barn. 

“This is Mick,” her daddy said, pointing to the strong young man in a tank top and jeans standing next to him. “He’s gonna work on the farm for a time. Mick, this is my wife, and my daughter, Harriet.”

Hattie noticed he said “daughter” with more emphasis than was necessary. She stared at Mick awkwardly. He had night-black hair and a sharply defined jaw – not like the boys she knew who still had baby fat in their cheeks. He was a man, sure of himself, with deep, sun-red shoulders, arms thick with muscle… and dirty hands. He was tall. His lips were full, and his nose looked like it had once been broken – it stuck out of his face like a stone kicked out of the ground. 

“Pleased to meet you Harriet,” Mick said, giving her a crooked grin. 

She meant to tell him that only her daddy called her Harriet. She meant to tell him to call her Hattie. But instead she stood there like a dope, saying nothing. 

Her mama sensed the attraction. “Come along now, Hattie.”

Their family was by no means poor – hog prices were up, her mother worked too, as a schoolteacher, and they even had a television set. But her daddy had grown up tremendously poor – “the dirt the other dirt looked down on,” he liked to say – and his thriftiness – or his miserliness, as Hattie sometimes saw it – was too ingrained in her father for him to ever give it up, or even consider any other way of living. That wasn’t to say Hattie’s family were rich – they weren’t, not by a long shot. But Hattie often didn’t understand why every penny was so important all the time. 

It was May. High school was over. She was headed for Fairmount State College in the fall. She had a part-time job in the mornings at the library but in the afternoons there was nothing to do. The next day, around 1, she lay in her bed reading, trying to stay cool. She could hear the sounds of the farm, and was annoyed with them, until she remembered they were being made by Mick. 

Hattie put her book down. Her heart beat faster. She wondered if she could see Mick from her window. Would it be so terrible to look?

Her fingers pressed into the chipping white wood of the windowsill as she watched him. Mick was shirtless, and a gleam of sweat covered his tanned chest, running down the inky hair, dripping onto his belly. The hair on his head was completely soaked with sweat, and locks of it were stuck to his forehead like grasshoppers on a wall. A cigarette hung lazily from his lips, but he would adjust it with his teeth every minute or so. Hattie guessed Mick was in his mid-twenties, maybe older. She imagined his calloused fingers cupping her face. 

Mick turned – looking up to the window and catching Hattie red-handed. His eyes shined, he smiled, and he waved to her. She shrunk back behind the curtain, her breath catching, her heart beating like a locomotive trapped under a blanket. 

The next afternoon, Hattie walked briskly into the kitchen where her mama was cutting out sugar cookies and told her that she would get the mail at the end of the driveway. She told her mother she was expecting a letter. She quickly brushed her hair and checked herself in the mirror, and then strategically rode her bicycle from the back of the house where she knew Mick could see her up close. She was wearing shorts, and she lifted her long leg over the bicycle seat before pedaling down the dirt driveway to the mailbox at the road. Hattie pretended not to notice Mick, as though he was not there, as though he did not even work at the farm, quietly humming to herself. A smile trickled to her lips. She knew he was watching her. 

But when the ecstasy wore off, she wasn’t sure what to do next. She had exhausted all her weapons and strategies. Luckily, the Gods intervened. 

One of the cats had gotten sick and her mama wanted her daddy to drive her to the veterinarian in town. Her father, who thought the idea of a “doctor” for animals was nothing but the highest foolishness, spat out his customary complaints he used any time this happened, and then grabbed his wallet and truck keys. 

They left. Hattie was alone in the house. 

She sat in her room – at her desk, not her bed – and she did not dare to look out the window. 

She heard a knock on the front door. She ran down the top half of the stairs, and then slowed to a calm, cool gait until she reached the floor. “Yes?” she asked him as she reached the screen door. She was wearing a sleeveless lime frock and was barefoot. The sight of him came through the screen door in a mass of tiny squares. 

“It sure is hot,” Mick said, looking her up and down. “I don’t suppose you got ice?”

“We sure do,” she said nervously. She stood breathing for a second. “Come on in. I’ll get you some.”

Mick pulled open the door with a squeak and followed Hattie into the kitchen. She opened the icebox and fixed him some water. When he took it from her hand, his fingers grazed hers, sending a tremor up her spine. Mick took a long sip. Hattie watched his Adam’s Apple as it bobbed up and down. When he finished his drink, he licked his lips, and turned his eyes to Hattie. Anxiety made her hands tremble at her sides. 

“That’s real nice,” he said, looking her up and down again. “Nothing like a cold drink on a hot day. Nothing that is, except you.”

“Ha,” she said, playing with her hands to stop them from shaking.

“You sure are pretty,” Mick said, peering into her eyes and taking a step closer. “You want to go to the pictures with me?”

“Why should I?” She asked, trying to play coy, but she knew she was blushing. 

“Because I asked you to,” he said, showing his crooked grin.

“My daddy will kill you. Or you’ll get fired.” The thought made her feel powerful.

Mick chuckled. “It’s just a job.”

“I don’t know…”

 “C’mon,” he pressed. “I’m real sweet. And I’ll have you back by bedtime.”

“Well…” Hattie said. She wanted to go with him. But she was afraid. Of many things. And as far as her parents were concerned, she was still a child. 

Mick licked his lips again, and Hattie felt something flutter in the pit of her stomach. Anticipation was like television static on her skin. 

He reached out and touched her hip with a finger.

 “Well… okay,” she said, giggling.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4

The Watchful Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 2

A young, down on her luck white West Virginian woman crosses paths with a discouraged Zora Neale Hurston in Miami in 1958.

Fotosearch / Archive Photos / Getty ImagesChapter Two

Someone was fighting with the hotel room’s lock. Hattie opened her eyes; it was still day, or maybe it was the next morning; hot, thick blades of sunlight crashed through the creaks in the curtains, the room was even more orange, like the inside of some pulsing gastronomical organ. Was someone trying to break into her room? She realized that whoever was out there was also knocking – but this sound had been subsumed in the cacophony of the tantrum of the front lock. And whoever was out there was speaking, in a woman’s voice. 

“Housekeeping!”

Realization and terror slashed across Hattie’s chest – it was the next morning. She had fallen asleep, and the night had passed like some darting, half-imagined bird; her sanctuary was breached, the long hours she had counted on had blown out of her hands. She was trapped. The lock succumbed; the door swung open, thick torrents of sunlight surged into the hotel room, blinding Hattie. A figure stepped through the door, and Hattie’s eyes adjusted; it was a saggy but strong-looking black woman in a maid’s uniform. She had caramel colored skin and her hair was cut into a few short waves somewhat disheveled but also as timeless as the Parthenon. A flock of freckles nestled across the woman’s cheeks and nose, and her brown eyes revealed a bemusement her flat lips hid. 

“Housekeeping, girl,” the woman said, as she saw Hattie. “It’s past ten. You should be checked out.” The woman dragged her maid’s cart into the room, as though finding someone in it was a common occurrence. She pulled a bottle of cleanser and a crisp rag from the cart. “C’mon. You have to go, girl. I have work to do.”

“Please,” Hattie, said, her voice weak, her fingers shaking. She didn’t know what to say, what to ask. How could she explain? 

“I’ll call the manager,” said the black woman. “You’re not supposed to be here this late.”

Hattie bit her lip. Her heart was pounding. “I don’t have anywhere to go,” she pleaded. 

“That’s none of my concern.” The maid pulled open the drapes in a loud fabric shout. “Now get up, child. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m going to do it.”

Hattie pushed the covers off. She was lightheaded. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Please, ma’am. I don’t have any money.”

The black woman did not reply. Instead, she imperiously walked to the bathroom and picked up Hattie’s dirty towel. 

“Please,” begged Hattie. “Can’t you pretend the room is empty? Just for one more night. I’ll be quiet. You won’t get into any trouble.”

The maid raised an eyebrow. 

Hattie continued her case. “Please ma’am, please…” She peered at the name stitched on the woman’s uniform. “Please… Zora… I’m desperate.”

The maid still didn’t reply, but was obviously agitated and nervous. She started spraying cleanser on the sink, ignoring Hattie. A thought whirled through Hattie’s mind. “Zora is a strange name,” she mused, momentarily distracted from her troubles.  “I’ve heard it before. There’s a Negro writer named Zora. Zora… Neale Hurston. Have you heard of her? Do you read?”

Zora turned to Hattie, her face in the throes of a combination of astonishment and exasperation. “Heard of her?” repeated the maid, incredulous. “I am her.”

Hattie gasped. “But she’s a famous author and you’re just a…”

“Just a what?”

“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Hattie remembered. “I read that! How can you… be her?”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” said Zora. “And I’m not that famous.” Zora thought to herself for a moment. “How did a…girl like you read my book?”

“My Mama gave it to me. Back home in West Virginia, my Mama teaches coloreds at school. She said the book would open my eyes to the Negro perspective.”

“And did it?” Zora was skeptical.

“Yeah…” said Hattie, hoping her answer would help her situation.

Zora raised her eyebrow again and tossed Hattie a dubious grimace. 

“Look, Ms. Hurston,” Hattie pleaded. “I won’t bother nobody, I promise. Just give me one more day to figure things out. I beg you!”

The old black woman did not immediately reply. Hattie caught Zora looking at herself in the mirror for a moment, like she was weighing an answer, or herself. A low grunt escaped from Zora’s lips. 

“I’m going to clean up. You stay out of the way.”

“Thank you!” Hattie exclaimed. Warm, invisible light flooded her body. “One day is all I need to make up my mind and all.”

“I don’t want to hear your troubles,” Zora said. “You keep to your business, and I’ll keep to mine.”

Hattie sat in a chair as Zora made the bed and vacuumed the floor. This would give Hattie more time. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. 

When Zora was finished, she gathered her supplies and pointed at Hattie. “Now, don’t make a mess. I cleaned the room. You weren’t here. You came back after I cleaned. If you’re still here tomorrow when I show up, I’ll tell the manager.”

“I understand,” said Hattie.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3

The Watchful Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 1

After being spurned in love, a young white West Virginian woman seeks refuge in Miami in 1958…

he doctor discharged her from the hospital. Having nowhere else to go, Hattie took the advice of a kindly, wheezy nurse in the maternity ward, and made her way down the street to a nearby hotel. Outside, there was the din and rush of traffic, and the humid heat was thick and oozing as molasses. The filthy odor of petroleum fumes barely masked the vulgar stench of the trash on the streets that had been rotting in the humidity since before her arrival in Miami a few days ago. She wasn’t sure what hour of the day it was, if it was morning, or afternoon, or some other, undiscovered part of the day that was only revealed to girls like her, to The Damned. She could hardly breathe. The world rolled beneath her feet.

The hotel was smooshed flat across an entire block, one story, as though it had been stepped on. The front doors to the rooms were right out in the sunlight, smeary windows glimpsing inside. The hotel’s peeling, obviously once sunny-yellow paint looked like leftover egg yolk, and the buildings’ corrugated roofs looked like hats pulled down on heads to cover something embarrassing.

Hattie climbed the front office’s cement stairs, pulling herself up by the black, sun-hot railing. She had to use all her weight to push open the heavy glass door, and once it gave way, her excess force made her stumble until she righted herself by grabbing onto the front counter. The office was hot and stuffy inside, and two flies buzzed around the motionless ceiling fan. A heavyset woman in a gray dress that made her look like a giant iron stood pinning postcards to a bulletin board behind the front desk, and she turned to peer curiously at Hattie. She had regimentally straight gray hair that Hattie realized was a cheap wig. The woman was watching a small black and white TV, the volume turned up loud; the announcer’s saccharine voice sounded like an oiled weasel squeezing through a hole in the sewer; and the abrasive laughter of the studio audience was a cacophony of rutting, electric insects.

Hattie had very little money left, and after she paid for the room, she had almost none. The hotel clerk dropped the room key into Hattie’s hands and a few last words crawled from her mouth, but Hattie was too disoriented to make them out. She went back out the door into the sun and searched the buildings until she found her room: #11. She almost fainted as she jiggled the key in the lock. Inside, everything was orange… really orange, from the cinnamon yellow carpeting to the muddy walls; and even the pasty ceiling seamed to emanate a rotten-fruit-like tint. The first order of business, before she collapsed into oblivion, was to close the curtains, which she did marvelously — she didn’t pass out or even stumble. A tentative darkness filled the room. Now the bed stretched before her like a starlit plain, sleep tantalized her, she had made it, she was safe, for now. She was too tired to pull back the top blanket; instead she crawled onto the bed, aspiring for the pillow, but settling for halfway there. Her body pounded in exhaustion. She just needed to sleep… then she would figure things out.

Hattie reached over and twisted the knob of the radio sitting on the bedside table. By some miraculous drop of mercy, squeezed from the stone of Heaven, the soothing twang of Buddy Holly’s guitar gently lifted from the radio and filled the hotel room. “It’s so easy to fall in love…” Buddy sang in his Texan croon.

“That must mean something, there must be something,” Hattie thought as her mind swirled in the darkening paints of sleep, “I’m not alone…”

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2