Jacke Wilson's Blog, page 75

Writers Laughing: W.E.B. DuBois

Happy Labor Day! This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher. But I’ll take a writer laughing no matter the circumstances.

Maybe “historical curiosities” needs to be another subcategory. I guess Mao counts as a writer, too – I was once on cruise ship that had a library with Marx, Engels, volumes of Mao’s poetry, and no other books.

 

The Awesome Princess Ninja!

Whoa. I know I sent you over to the Awesome Blog yesterday (after the purveyor of Awesomeness was kind enough to include me in her roundup), but I want to make sure you’ve all had a chance to meet the Princess Ninja.

Here she is! (And really, what more do you need to see than this to know what a treat you’re in for?)

Created by Amanda Moscou and Antonio Papaleo, the Princess Ninja is so delightful I had to hop over to Amazon to load up my cart. Four copies for my nieces and nephews? Five? Or just go ahead and get ten…?

And guess what? It’s not there! Come on, publishers! Why are you not snapping this up and bringing it to the masses? I mean, just look at this. Here she is saving the prince:

 

My boys would go for this, and they’re a tough sell on anything to do with princesses (alas – we tried, we tried). If I had girls? They’d probably be the Princess Ninja for Halloween. Every year.

Actually, forget Amazon – why is this not a show? This would be better than anything we watch (though I do have a soft spot for The Regular Show).

Ah well, in the meantime, we are lucky to be able to read three Princess Nina Tales at the Princess Ninja website. Thanks, Internet! (And of course, thanks to the very talented Amanda Moscou and Antonio Papaleo. More soon, please! It’s wonderful!)

Image credits: Amanda Moscou and Antonio Papaleo at http://princess-ninja.blogspot.co.uk/

All Sorts of Grateful

The Overseer of the Awesomeness

Wow! Another great day here on the Jacke Blog. Wonderful Reader A.M., curator of the All Sorts of Awesome blog, has included me in her Super Awesome Awesomeness roundup. I’m flattered! And so pleased to hear what she’s been enjoying:

And now, the Super Awesome Awesomeness.

JACKE WILSON! Guys you guys, you have to read his 100 Objects. You have to. They are amazingly well written fictional prose pieces, a series of essays called A History of Jacke in 100 Objects. They. are. awesome.

Thank you!

She singles out a few of the Objects for praise:

His description of the music teacher in this one? Spot on. This one had a really intriguing twist at the end and this one I stayed up reading well after I’d meant to go to bed.

I haven’t read all of his 100 Objects (and he’s nowhere near the 100 mark yet) but every single one that I’ve read has been gripping and insightful.

This is incredibly generous and flattering – my heart is bursting with pride. The little objects! They’re like children to me. I’m proud on their behalf.

The post continues:

I didn’t even realize at first that his work was fiction–the characters and situations he conjures up are interesting and believable: he can make even the most far-fetched moments seem plausible.

Okay, I have to hold back, because I’m practically quoting the whole thing. It’s such a fantastic review I can’t help myself. I’ll stop there. But please go visit the post and the rest of her site too – there is a lot of super awesome awesomeness going on! One last excerpt:

His storytelling ability is jealousy inducing–it reads effortlessly, the flow of dialogue and descriptions and interior monologues and back-stories all flowing together into a very worthwhile read. Nothing feels forced.

I’ve been fortunate with reviews of my books, but it’s nice to see the blog get some love too.  My thanks to the All Sorts of Awesome blog, which has made my day a Super Awesome one indeed. And I’ll be checking it out frequently – we need more of this high-spirited, positive energy to keep us going! Onward and upward, people!

Writers Laughing: Sandra Cisneros

I know, I know. I hear you! Where’s the content, Jacke? Give us some thoughts about studying abroad. Or your argument for a new translation of Dante. Or tell us all about your dream bookstore. Remember when you pitted ? Those were heady days!

Or what about some Objects? You have 75 to go! Get cracking, buddy!

You’re right, you’re right. I’ve spent too much time digging up pictures of writers laughing. Enough is enough! I’ll stop now. Except…

 

…these are just too much fun!

Image Credit: Deborah Miranda

Writers Laughing: Gabriel García Márquez

Another big smiler – like Alice Munro, there are a million pictures of him smiling. And smiling broadly, with his eyes crinkly and his mouth slightly open. But laughing? You just know he had to laugh all the time – but whether those were captured in the pre-cell phone era is another question.

I found a few where he and Fidel are laughing, which I decided not to use. Instead, I’ll go with this one:

And then this one, which I love (“writers laughing with small children” is a good sub-category):

Staged for a photographer? Possibly. Do I care? Not at all!

Image credits: GM Family Archive

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #25: The Equation

My mother appeared in the doorway and my stomach fell. What was she doing at my algebra class? In my high school, in the middle of the day? This was exciting—it was my mother, she was here to see me—but it also felt dangerous.

Years earlier, my best friend’s mother had shown up one day wearing the same expression. We had been in gym class then, playing bombardment. From across the gym, I watched my friend jog toward his mother and disappear around the corner of the stage. Where was he headed? Somewhere cool?

No. He missed school for the next four days. Our teacher mentioned that Bobby, sadly, was attending his grandfather’s funeral.

And now this: I was in the ninth grade, my mother was here, it was me who walked out of the normal world and into the unknown. In the hallway she confirmed my worst fear. My grandfather had had a heart attack. She and my father were on their way to the hospital. I should go home by myself and wait there until they got back.

“Will he be okay?” I asked.

“Pray for him,” my mother said.

I returned to the classroom and sat stunned in my desk while the teacher finished a quadratic equation on the chalkboard. A heart attack? He was my favorite person in the world. He was feisty—that was why I loved him—but he lived hard too. He competed in everything, taking on the guys bigger than him, the rich, the powerful. He beat them whenever he could: as an athlete, as a coach, as a retiree. And then he shook their hands and pounded their backs and laughed with them all the way home.

Pray for him? I wanted him to live forever.

Intensity like his burns like a fire. And eventually it burns itself out. The rational side of me knew it was inevitable. But now? A heart attack?

My head was swimming. Fortunately my teacher let me sit in a stupor without participating. X equals minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a times c over two a… How could that possibly matter? I was lost: I didn’t know what to think, let alone what to do. I was solving for something else altogether.

My mind informed me that I could not take the ultimate reality of what loomed. Merely knowing that he was in the hospital pushed me to my limits. His death would be more than I could take. It would crush me.

Please God, I thought. Don’t let him die. Not until I’m…twenty-five!

The last sentence came in a rush—a blurted prayer—and struck me as odd as soon as I heard myself think it. I was fourteen years old. I had just asked for eleven years. Eleven. From an omnipotent being. Why settle for eleven? Why not fifty?

Well, I had done the math. He was 70 years old, after all. Asking for fifty years? Not very reasonable. God, an omnipotent being if he existed, could let him live to be 120, but that would seem bizarre. 120? Most people maxed out at a hundred if they were lucky. Surely God had received thousands of requests to live beyond that, but 120-year-olds did not roam the streets. God let babies die. Jesus, his own son, barely made it to thirty. Why would God bend the rules for me?

I congratulated myself on not being greedy, which surely would have doomed my chances at getting a fair consideration. Eleven years. Eleven years. Eighty-one. That wouldn’t cause too much attention. That wouldn’t violate any norms. That could just slip right into the general flow of things. Come on, God. My grandfather was a good man. I myself tried to be good. Was letting him go to eighty-one really such an imposition?

My calculations seemed justified when my grandfather, thankfully, pulled through! He was okay! A few weeks in the hospital, a few surgeries, and he was fine, back on the golf course, beating the rich guys at the country club even though they had brand new equipment and he himself played with his “old sticks.” We had eleven blessed years ahead of us, plenty of time! And what would have happened if I’d asked for fifty years? God would have scoffed at me, blown me off. Unreasonable. Greedy. It all might have ended, right there in the algebra classroom.

But eleven! Aha! The perfect choice. I could picture God weighing this one, thinking it over. All right, fine, young Jacke. Here you go. Eleven years. Reasonable. I wasn’t trying to challenge God or make him think I was demanding some miracle. I was hoping for a shrug, an eh, why not?

And I got it!

And this experience changed me: I had to believe in God, or at least it was not open to me to assert that I didn’t. I had turned to God when I was needy. He had saved my grandfather as a favor to me, because I had needed it. Why should I be ungrateful? I had never wanted anything more in my life, and I got it.

And then…ten years flew by. Soon I was about to turn 25, which should have been a great age to look forward to…except I had this pact hanging over me! What would happen now? Eleven years had been the deal! I had been personally spared an inordinate amount of grief at an age when I could not have handled it. But now, in retrospect, this seemed horrible. I felt as if I had condemned my grandfather to die. He was only eighty-one, for crying out loud! Spry! A joyous presence in the lives of hundreds of people! He had friends in their nineties! Why could he not have another twenty years? Because I had only asked for eleven? Because that’s what I thought I had needed? Oh, why, why, why had I been so selfish!

I was sure he would die that year. It was the bargain I had struck. If I believed in the bargain, this was all I would get. If there was a God, it seemed only fair. The math was undeniable.

Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t ask God to reopen the bargain. Still here, God. Still would find it a little tough to deal with. Can we go another five?

But I never asked. Maybe I didn’t believe in God enough to do so. Or maybe I did believe and didn’t want to try his patience.

The year passed. I turned twenty-six…and my grandfather was still alive! Then twenty-seven: he made it through that too! I told no one about my pact and how we were entering uncharted territory.

Was this a miracle? Or was it proof that my prayer in the algebra class was not a miracle? I had to push all that out of my mind. He seemed to be on his own schedule. He was alive: I was not going to ask questions.

And then, a few years after that, he began to fade. This time we all visited him in the hospital room. I stood at his bedside and held his hand and gazed into his suddenly childlike eyes. He was fighting to the very end, seizing as much life as he could, living longer than he had any right to expect. I was terrified at first to watch him go, wondering what the world—and my life—would be like without him. But then, as I watched him try to force what could not be, I stopped worrying about myself and focused on him, and the experience became peaceful and inspiring. It was time. I needed to be ready. He needed it. He needed me—and all of us—to help him let go, to let him slip away.

During his funeral, as I sat in church staring at the stained glass and the iconography and the painting of Jesus, arms wide and welcoming, I thought about my prayer. The eleven years were part of the deal. But after that, what were those? Bonus years? An extra gift from God? A gift to me? You asked for eleven, but you really needed seventeen, so that’s what I gave you. Is that what this had been? A sign of God’s wisdom and mercy?

Or had my request not been a request at all? Thought but unheard?

I had variables on both sides of the equation. I could solve for one side or the other. But what was the answer? The first explanation assumed its premise (that God existed). The second assumed only chance and randomness. Where was the answer key? What filled in the x?

That’s what it boiled down to. Either that prayer landed somewhere, upon some receptive listening being, or it didn’t. Which was it?

For years I thought back to that prayer, wondering what the truth was with my special mixture of sheepishness and gratitude.

Until finally I realized I was left with a mystery, an unsolvable equation, which might have been what I had wanted all along.

Which might, in fact, have been all that I could take.

***

Okay! Not sure if this is even a story, but as a bit of history, I’m glad to drop it into the series. Feel free to check out all the Objects. The obvious one to turn to is #21 – The Speed Trap. You can also enjoy a celebration of teachers and teaching with a hand-picked best-of-Jacke five-pack.

And of course, feel free to check out my books The Race and The Promotion. And now, onward and upward with a little best of Johnny:

Image source: Wikipedia Commons

Writers Laughing: Carson McCullers

Not all cafes are sad, apparently!

Writers Laughing: Philip Roth

Not my favorite author, but it’s still nice to see him young and full of pep:

100 Objects Special: Back to School Week!

Summer’s almost over! Back to school time! This year I thought I’d celebrate the week with a tribute to all hardworking teachers and their achingly confused students…

Jacke Wilson’s Top 5 Stories Celebrating Teachers

Object #7 – The Keyboard*

I started on “Three Blind Mice.” I stopped halfway through. For some reason it sounded terrible.

“There must be something wrong with the piano,” I said.

Miss Steiner reached forward and for a second I thought she might choke me. Instead she seized her clipboard and flung it halfway across the room. It bounced off the top of a kettle drum.

“THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE PIANO,” she shouted. “IT’S YOU—YOU CAN’T PLAY!”   Read the whole story

Object #10 – The Spitwad

In other classes, the teachers released this energy with a few little quips now and then, letting the students laugh and tease and push back, so the air would clear and the business of learning could begin. It was like the quick open-and-shut of a pressure valve.

Not in Mr. Ward’s class. In Mr. Ward’s class it was all pressure, no valve. For months. Something had to give.

Which brings me to the glorious day when Mr. Ward told a joke. Well, sort of a joke… Read the whole story

Object #14 – The Bass Guitar

I was in a band with my son. A real band. A rock band. Who knew where this would lead? His younger brother liked to bang on things and claimed his favorite instrument was the drum. His mother had a beautiful voice. We wouldn’t be Van Halen or anything, of course. But maybe a few local gigs…? Not now, but maybe in a few years…? Read the whole story

Object #15 – The Coffepot

I had not realized how much courage this was going to require. Ms. Laporte, who was sitting in a student desk at the center of the room, reading words one at a time out of a notebook she kept locked in her desk, was an imposing figure in normal times. When running a bee, she took her intensity to a new level. Her straight black hair was pulled off her forehead and secured in a tight bun, exposing her forehead, which was lined with the permanent anger she kept just below the surface at all times. Read the whole story

Object #23 – The Passage

It was left to the wise professor to provide the comment that took me into a whole new world of literary possibility. Not, in other words, literature as what-have-you-read-I’ve read-that-too. Not lists and check boxes. Something else. Read the whole story

*The Keyboard comes with a special followup, in which I hear from an old friend whose artistic father memorialized the music teacher in a fantastic painting.

Onward and upward, everyone!

Writers Laughing: Seamus Heaney

Still working up the next Object. In the meantime, let’s enjoy a bit of mirth with the great Seamus Heaney, caught here in the act of extreme laughing:

That’s the kind of raw exuberance that makes his translation of Beowulf so good! Here’s a more natural one:

And here’s one with a special guest star…

Czeslaw Milosz! And of course, with yet another genius, Joseph Brodsky.

Poets enjoying life! And each other! What could be better?

Image Credits: Charles Platiau/Reuters, LA Review of Books, boston.com, fruela.blogspot.com