How did you get here?

What does it all mean?

Hey. Where did all the time go?

Who are you?

When will you die? Listen. Will you make the world better?

Will you ever truly love anyone? This is it.

DON’T IT’S You are a unique miracle. “But even if the future gave us no cause for Life is as important as you want it to be. “I read the other day some hope - the fact of our existing at all in this here-and-now must be the stron- verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conven- The Exit Exam Obstacle 1 Obstacle 2 Legalities gest incentive to us to live according to our laws and standards: the inexpli- tional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be cable fact that we live precisely today, when we had all infinite time in what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they

which to come into existence, that we possess only a shortlived today in Copyright © 2011 by Tim Peters. Some of the characters and events in may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for this book are fictitious, but some are

which to demonstrate why and to what end we came into existence now you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak your factual. Any apparent similarity to real and at no other time. We are responsible to ourselves for our own exis- latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due All rights reserved. No part of this book persons is sometimes intended by the tence; consequently we want to be the true helsman of this existence and time becomes the outmost,-- and our first thought is rendered back to us by may be reproduced in any form (except author, and sometimes just a coinci- ALL Laziness Fear refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance. One SLOW the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to small portions for review purposes) with- dence. has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: espe- out written consent from the author. each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they How will you cially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it. Why go on clinging to Where the names of real places, corpo- set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they this clod of earth, this way of life, why pay heed to what your neighbor rations, institutions, works of art, com- thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which Laziness Fear says? It is so parochial to bind oneself to views which are no longer bind- The following chapters appeared earlier, merical products, and public figures are flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of say what you ing even a couple of hundred miles away. Orient and Occident are chalk- in somewhat different form: used within this novel, they are some- UP bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is

lines drawn before us to fool our timidity. I will make an attempt to attain times meant to denote only made-up his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they have to say freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by “The Varieties of Gratification,” “The De- stuff, and sometimes meant to denote DOWN come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no

for yourself? the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two mystification Process,” and “The things that are presently real. more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our sponta- Laziness Fear continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is Threshold of Autonomy” at Inside Higher TO neous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole

taught which did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is Ed. cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with Version 1.0 not you, it says to itself. No one can construct for you the bridge upon masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, “Some Very Brief Affairs,” “My Volup- which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. Laziness Fear tuous Delusions,” and “Conspiracy www.timsletters.com alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the con- Gothic” at The Rumpus. NOW YOU which would bear you through this stream; but only at the cost of yourself: viction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide you would put yourself in pawn and lose yourself. There exists in the world “A Sentimental Correspondence” at Wheaton, Illinois - Chicago, Illinois Laziness Fear a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Guernica. May - November, 2011 universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him Do not ask, go along it. Who was it said: ‘a man never rises higher than but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to when he does not know whither his path can still lead him’?” (F. Nietzsche) him to till.” (R.W. Emerson)

What You Need to Do START

2 . 1. Carl worked at a national news program in Washington, D.C., 1. 2. They began with

where he was at the bottom of the company hierarchy. The

studios were at an office in the suburbs of Virginia. Carl rode THE AVERAGE DAY THE

two subway trains and a bus to get to work. When the subway so much joy,

passed above the Potomac River, toward the Pentagon, jet planes

W A K E U P BREAKFAST

landing at the airport crossed just overhead. In the distance were

other bridges busy with auto traffic and passenger and freight s o m u c h to do our loving. I tried to put my hand down her

S O trains. In such moments, Carl daydreamed about his subway COMMUTE G E T G O I N G

train plunging into the river. The commute to and from work VARIETIES

confidence. made him feel like a gelatinous organism being thrust about

COFFEE WORK within some enormous and throbbing labyrinth of iron. He felt if there was to be an accident or a terrorist attack, it would be em- OF LUNCH WORK Instructions barrassing to die amongst strangers like those on the mass transit system. One weekend, Carl caught a stomach flu and on his way to work that Monday he was nauseous. Suddenly, the commute TEA W R A P U P 1.FIRST ENCOUNTER made sense. Nausea was the proper lighting to view this grim pro- cession for the bureaus of Babylon. Carl felt like he couldn’t take COMMUTE DINNER much more of this. Something had to give. GRATIFICATION The Subject perceives the presence of the RELAX SLEEP Other. The Other may or may not arouse strong feelings in the Subject, but stands out and belong to the category of potential mates. They

Respond in the space provided at right to ten (10) of make eye contact. The Subject looks at the Other, inspects the body, and looks again. The 3. Since he didn’t get home until 8:00 PM, Carl’s dinner was an It was a Wednesday evening in February. Carl Subject is intrigued and moves to get into the attempt to solve a culinary equation involving minimal prep time 1 Other’s line-of-sight. and maximal nutrition, flavor, and freshness. For the time being, was just getting home from the studio. It had the following twenty (20) prompts below. the answer to this equation involved: a microwaved sweet potato; 2 4. While Carl found smoking marijuana after work relaxing, he a boiled vegetable, like broccoli or green beans; reheated black been a gloomy, average day. felt it put him into a stupor little different from the stupor he Desire beans or baked beans; crackers and cheese; and a glass of water or found himself in at the office every day. While this evening occasionally a Coca-Cola. For dessert, Carl ate two or three store- stupor was more pleasant and peaceful than the daytime one, 2. CASUAL INTERACTION bought cookies (or graham crackers and honey if he didn’t have they were both just two species of a category of mental state he cookies) and drank a small glass of milk. detested - the state of having nothing to say, of dullness, of intel- lectual constipation. Either by pure chance, or by human machi- nations, the Subject and the Other are Your answers may be of any length, but must be con- His roommate was out. He made himself his brought into a proximity allowing for conver- usual dinner 3 and ate it while listening to classical sation. They talk. The Subject enjoys the music on the radio. conversation and what the Other contributes to it. Eye contact is frequent and sustained. fined to the space at right. 5. Carl’s roommate was an older woman who also worked in tele- vision news, as a correspondent for a national network. She 6. Carl was writing to a female co-worker, a girl named Emma Body language is inviting and comfortable.

disapproved of Carl having marijuana at their apartment and who had a crush on him. He found her intriguing - she was The Subject feels compelled to talk with the

teased him when he went outside to smoke cigarettes. Neverthe- sharp, she read books and had good taste, and she was from Other another time. In subsequent conversa- less, the two of them got along. They enjoyed complaining about the Midwest, like himself. Physically, she wasn’t his type. She tions, the Subject acts and speaks in a their jobs in television, as well as discussing films, books, and the was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, had blond hair and wore a pair social life in Washington. Prior to working in television, Carl’s manner that is generous and playful and After cleaning up, Carl walked out to the back of trendy glasses. Carl preferred women with dark hair and roommate completed a Ph.D. in English. dark eyes - Latinas, East Asians, Arabs. Emma reminded him enjoys doing as such. The Subject begins 4 patio and smoked a joint of marijuana and then of an old friend named Brad, a boy who also had exquisite thinking about the Other. You may write with whatever varieties of tone, mode, taste in books and films (but who became crippled with inse- a cigarette, hoping to finish before his roommate curity when he tried to write or create anything). Brad also 5 returned. had pale skin, blue eyes, blond hair and wore trendy glasses. It was like Emma was a female version of that friend of his, that perspective, register, style, dialect, structure, chro- she was Brad but with a vagina and breasts. This vision was 3. FORMAL INTERACTION repugnant and discomforting to Carl, but he wrote her a flir- 7. Carl gratified his sexual appetite with the same tidy efficiency tatious, witty email anyway. 1.

with which he consumed his milk and cookies after dinner. An invitation is offered by the Subject or

Which is to say, he enjoyed himself without making a mess, with- the Other to meet in an intimate and quiet Indifference out getting indulgent (with neither the magnitude of pleasure nor nology, rhythm, repetition, omission, quotation, font, He went up to his bedroom and shut the door. setting. The invitation is readily accepted. the amount of money he spent on such pleasure), and, more than anything, he enjoyed himself without a single crumb of guilt. He turned on his computer in order to write an They are going on a date. The Subject is ob- sessed with the Other, with visions of aggres- email , 6 listen to music, and, if he had the color, and visual aid you feel necessary. sive sexual congress and soothing parental energy, watch a movie. 8. Carl didn’t attend Phil’s wedding because of a vague feel- embraces, as well as more complex scenarios ing his friend was making a terrible mistake in marrying a soft-spoken and suspicious woman (who like many females of long-term courtship, marriage, domestic- avoided Carl), and because he refused to pay for a weekend ity, child-rearing, and the future of the chil- of cheap debauchery and tawdry sentiment in Las Vegas. dren. The Subject is in a euphoric state, de- 9. Carl most liked watching hidden camera videos of young The two of them hadn’t spoken since Phil got married but spite memories of past erotic experiences women pleasing themselves while alone on beds, sofas, and in thanks to Facebook, Carl could browse through these inti- bathtubs. Even if some of the scenes were staged, Carl believed mate photos anyway. The images of Phil, his wife, and their that began similarly but then terminated ac- Carl felt like pleasing himself. He locked his We want the truth, not the facts. that the orgasms these women experienced were the most larval-looking child at the hospital caused little reaction in rimoniously. The Subject knows that such authentic and lengthy compared to the other kind of pornogra- bedroom door and took two tissues from the Carl, neither a smile nor a sneer but, perhaps, just simple disappointment could occur again, but does phy he watched. He felt like an anthropologist, peering in ano- wonder at the young man in these photos, his old friend, nymity from a forest while a member of a society he did not not care. In preparing for the date with the tissue box on his desk. He returned to his bed who was posing now in an adult scene. To Carl, it seemed belong to performed a private and vivid and inscrutable ritual. 7 unwise and baffling to give birth to an infant who would be Other, the Subject thoroughly bathes, ap- and undid his zipper. Before going to the web- He was aware that the tableau of himself, locked in his bed- making an incessant demand for its parents’ love and care plies perfumes, and grooms the pubic re- room, pleasing himself in secret to the recorded images of site he subscribed to for pornography, Carl and money and free time. What’s the rush? he thought. gions with particular care. another human being locked in her (violated) bedroom, pleas- How could one ever put in all the work necessary to become ing herself in secret was perhaps a pathetic - however modern - logged onto a social networking website. masterful at something, to get noticed and become some-

EMOTIONAL ATTRACTION

There is no time limit. sight. But he enjoyed it, and it was easier and more thrilling body, how could one do that while giving up almost all of than conjuring up memories of his previous sexual experiences one’s energy for a child? Or was there something about (which he did on occasion when a computer was unavailable or giving birth to another human being that Carl just did not 4. EROTIC INTERACTION in a moment of nostalgia). understand? He couldn’t help but think that his friend Phil, despite being a well-read and contemplative person, was now Aversion living as if on auto-pilot, following a script unconsciously Formal Interaction transitions into sexual- He saw that a dear childhood friend of his, written for him by his parents, a script consisting of a young ized bodily contact. The Subject is granted pregnancy, a hasty marriage, and a lifetime of suburban access to the private chamber of the Other or Phil, just had his first baby with his wife. Phil drudgery. Or was he wrong? And was his friend going to be vice versa. The Subject and the Other bare got married only a few months prior.8 Carl happy, to stay married, and to maybe even have another child while enjoying a life of peaceful domesticity? And was Carl their garments. They penetrate one another 10. He feared his roommate would try to open the door and learn looked through the all photos from the mater- going to be miserable and lonely as he reached for glory and and enjoy the sacred sensations that are the knob was locked. The room reeked of stale coffee, fresh thought of no one but himself while sleeping alone at night stimulated by such penetrations. The Subject semen, and lingering flatulence. It stunk in there and he knew it. nity ward, then switched to the pornography in a grinding and soul-crushing city? 9 But in defense of his solitude, Carl believed that in the quiet of a website. and the Other rest alongside one another, bedroom a person can get to know himself. And in a bedroom you their limbs coiled together. They inquire into can read books and have a more sincere encounter with another each other’s more private proclivities and de- human consciousness than in a hundred phony conversations. sires, as well as the potential for future Inter- Carl felt many of the kids his age were either too scared or too con- fused to say what they felt about themselves or the world. He was actions. The Subject may feel both the satis- a misanthrope and a hermit at times, he could admit it, but Carl faction and the depression from having ac- also thought there had to be more to life than comfortable chatting 11. The film was Slacker. One line from the film Carl especially complished a difficult goal, from having and keeping up appearances and having fun. What about Sartre Carl finished with the pornography and liked. It goes, “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as seized an elusive object. Promises are made. and de Beauvoir? Or Heloise and Abelard? Or Henry Miller and cleaned himself up. His roommate came home, apathy.” The film made Carl long for his days as a student, when Anaïs Nin? What about Gauguin and Van Gogh? Or Lincoln and 10 he had long conversations with friends while drinking coffee, Douglas? Or Nietzsche and Wagner? Or Jordan and Pippen? stopped outside his door, and said hello. when he walked or rode his bike to wherever he needed to be, What about the Brontë sisters, or the James brothers? What about when he had the peace and the quiet with which to think. Lorca, Buñuel, and Dalí, or John, Paul, George, and Ringo? What NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY What are the rhythms of human desire? Why says sheʼs going to sleep, but then you PRINT FILM do some desires burn for so long, while others go apologize, rub her arm, sweet talk, and then kiss about the Transcendental Club, or the Bloomsbury Group? What out so quickly? her neck and the flame is lit once again. Austen: Pride and Prejudice 3-Iron Letʼs consider this excerpt from Chaos by Or think about an afternoon together. You go Prompts 1 Brontë: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights American Beauty James Gleick : out the door feeling OK. You go to a movie, you both enjoy it and are happy to have seen it with Carver: What We Talk About When We Annie Hall each other. Youʼre warming up, being tender, about Hawthorne and Melville? Or Hemingway and Fitzgerald? Talk About Love Back to the Future affectionate. But at dinner something comes over your beloved, he becomes forlorn, distracted. It Cheever: “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow” Before Sunrise bothers you. You bicker, then part ways with Chekhov: “The Lady with the Dog” Belle de Jour Or Joyce and Beckett? What about Benjamin Franklin and bitter words, both of you feeling lousy until the next day when you apologize and make love Dante: La Vita Nuova Bonnie and Clyde and forget about it. Or think about a month together - all the nasty de Beauvoir: The Second Sex Breathless Thomas Jefferson? Or Michelangelo and Leonardo? Or Socrates, fights, all the beautiful sex, all the idle peaceful de Rougemont: Love in the Western World Casablanca chatting, all the quiet meals, that entire range of Firestone: The Dialectic of Sex Double Indemnity 11 aversion, indifference, and desire. And then think of a year together, the busy Flaubert: Madame Bovary; Sentimental Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind months, the winter months, when spirits are low, Education The Flower of My Secret Plato, and Aristotle? Wasn’t it possible for people today to live seri- 1. Accessed at: http://www.gravityassist.com/IAF1/Ref.%201-63.pdf when thereʼs not enough time, when everythingʼs Carl put on one of his favorite films but stressful and dissonant and joyless, but then Freud: Three Essays on the Theory of Gone with the Wind Are there couples whose desires converge like thereʼs a vacation here or there, when you do Sexuality Hannah and Her Sisters in the leftmost function and, after a certain nothing but be happily bored and content and in ously and intensely with, for, and through one other, and to create amount of time, feel the same thing for each love with each other. Or those breakfasts on Goldman: “Marriage and Love” Happiness other at every moment of every day? That Sunday mornings in the summertime, or those sounds much too robotic, too programmed. walks in the evening in the fall. How balanced Heloise and Abelard: Letters Hiroshima Mon Amour couldnʼt stay awake. He turned off his computer, What about the second or third functions, the and harmonious it all seems. Hemingway: “Cat in the Rain”; “Hills Like His Girl Friday something beautiful and throbbing in the process, and to inflate 12. Reading The World as Will and Representation gave Carl the periodic ones? Are there couples like this, who Finally then, think of a lifetime - the years with perfect regularity will feel desire and when you were young and dating, then when White Elephants”; The Sun Also Rises Husbands and Wives aversion for one another? That also sounds too you moved in together to an apartment and it Jung: “Marriage as a Psychological In the Mood for Love constant, too predictable. was just the two of you. Then the first child Relationship” In the Realm of the Senses the boundaries of how a human being can exist in the world? Or same feeling as walking through a spiderweb and feeling the silk What about the chaotic function? With comes, then the second and the third. Then the sudden changes from desire to aversion, with no kids get older and more independent. Then they Plato: Symposium La Jetée predictability, but periods of regularity within all leave the home and itʼs just you two again in a washed up, and set his alarm clock. He read a Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet Last Tango in Paris the wild ups and downs. That sounds like a house thatʼs too large and too quiet. Then you was that whole notion just impractical artsy bullshit? cling to your skin. sensible model of desire. And doesnʼt that retire and there are grandchildren to take care Sacher-Masoch: Venus in Furs Lʼeclisse butterfly phase space pattern look like two lovers of, and then the grandchildren grow up and 12 embracing each other? there are great-grandchildren that youʼre now Schopenhauer: “The Metaphysics of the Love Actually Moreover, a chaotic function is a fractal, so its too old to keep up with. Love of the Sexes” The Passenger structure repeats at all scales. That means with You and your beloved will recall with fondness few pages of Schopenhauer, then fell asleep. regards to desire and time, that in any interval of and frustration the strange attractor of your love Stendhal: On Love The Philadelphia Story time - a minute, an hour, a day, a month, a year, around which both of your existences at times Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata Scenes from a Marriage a lifetime - the wild patterns of love and hate slowly and at times furiously orbited until, (Please indicate by filling the corresponding boxes which prompts you reiterate themselves. impervious to the gravity of life and desire, your Wallace: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Sunrise Think of how you can be in bed together and hearts resign, your bodies give up, and you Ware: The ACME Novelty Library: No. 19 Vertigo you say something annoying and she (for converge inexorably toward the steady state of BRIEF AFFAIRS Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway When Harry Met Sally... example) turns her back on you in disgust and nothingness, toward death.

will be responding to at right.)

A time you felt lost

3. arl was ready to quit his big A. He didnʼt know what to do. B. Carl sat across from his boss, penetrated into your blood- city TV internship and chuck Should he quit and leave Washing- Zachary, who was balding and stream within minutes of enter- bespectacled and who received ing the office each day and SINCERE ton D.C. and go home? Or move a fancy graduate degree in withered all your desires, his hard-earned opportu- journalism after teaching hopes, and dreams? Your relationship with your family RAGE English in South Korea for Sitting across from Zachary, elsewhere like New York City? several years. Carl saw how the producers Cnity right into the trash. One day, Carl Googled his bossed him around. boss and found an abandoned “Zachary! Zachary, I need THE 10 blog with his name on it. you! Zachary, do you have a After only a few months of fetch- Why did it seem like there werenʼt On the website was a high- minute?” they would say,

resolution photograph of without patience and without

Zachary sitting on a mountain regard for Zachary as anything any interesting, free spirited weir- ing lunch, logging tapes, running er-

looking out over an East Asian more than a fleshy robot who

sea. could edit copy and update the

rands, and copying documents, Carl dos in Washington D.C.? New York The photo resembled that script.

Caspar David Friedrich paint- Carl wondered if that photo

ing, Wanderer above the Sea of on the mountain was his boss’

City felt like a vain, throbbing, and felt like, in the tank of his soul, all Fog. ideal self-image in those years

Looking at Zachary’s old abroad, when he was the exotic

blog, Carl felt like he was American spending his days screeching inferno, but at least it

the bubbling, life-affirming nectar walking through a dusty attic. around doting English students.

AFFECT Carl wondered how Zachary What was his ideal self-image DEMYSTIFICATION

felt now, having once stood on now? Did Zachary have the had interesting people. had leaked away and been replaced that mountain in Korea or time or the energy to dream of

China or wherever, taking that a towering version of himself,

Your romantic tendencies

bold photo of himself and much less to in someway Carl believed in his fledgling ca-

by a tepid, nihilistic vinegar. posting it to his blog with such convert that vision into an

modest narcissism. objective reality?

pacity to contribute to American What did Zachary feel now Carl also wondered if He drew a diagram in his note-

that he was a nine-to-five Zachary was in debt from his

(8:30AM - 7:00PM, actually) journalism graduate degree.

book that represented his mental culture and he wanted the city to bureaucrat in a stuffy and That photo of the young man

0 cramped office, being ordered on top of the mountain did not

about day-after-day by shriveled look like the self-image of a

PROCESS want him. He didnʼt want to just state at the office from Monday and hunchbacked higher-ups person with $100,000 in grad

IRONIC who didn’t understand the school loans.

Internet, who were bewildered Was this adult city life?

show up and plead for recognition through Friday, a rhythm he de- APATHY by the 21st century, and who Coming down off the moun-

exuded from the depths of tain and toiling day in and day

their souls a stinky miasma that out as a bureaucratic servant? while working a menial day job. scribed to those who would listen

B

A

He decided to speak to his boss. as, “The Cycle of Futility.”

1 2 3 4 Your thoughts on God

The night before talking to his Despite sitting across from him, Carl sent another email to Zach- That Saturday morning, Carl vis- C. D.

As the Mubarak government Grocery Store

boss, Carl came up with an idea to A report on the Egyptian government and its President Hosni ary, apologizing and saying he ited the National Portrait Carl wrote an email to Zachary

was being overthrown in Cairo,

the Graphics people came to

City Park Carl and complained they

MUBARAK change his internship duties such that asking for a change in duties. He hadnʼt been “trying to jump ship or Gallery/American Art Museum.

didn’t have anything to publish

via State Department cables as released by

on the show’s website. E

Hamburger Stand

A moment of inspiration Carl went and spoke to

it would be more enjoyable for him felt confident and good as he anything like that.” He looked at the paintings, and WIKILEAKS

Anna, one of his fellow interns

By Carl Struther and Anna Kanevsky

and originally from Kazakh-

Key: stan. He respected and envied and more productive for the show. YYYY-MM-DD TT:TT SECURITY STATUS CABLE NO. A few days later, during a quiet his head exploded. Every frame on clicked “Send.”

... Anna for how well she flourish- An excerpt from a State Department cable pertaining to Egypt and the Mubarak

presidency.

... ing in this internship and how Link to original cable

frequently she published As he lay in bed and dug out the Friday afternoon, Carl bumped into the wall was a volcano of colors “Short answerʼs no,” Zachary re-

articles and was relied on by

2007-07-28 12:43 CONFIDENTIAL 02CAIRO1423

the producers. ... During his January 6 meeting with the Ambassador and visiting Congressman Steven

Israel (D-NY), President Mubarak described his June 2004 back surgery in Germany to

details, Carl felt hopeful. Maybe it Anna said she read the State repair a slipped disc (he stressed it was not a herniated disc). Mubarak said that the Zachary in the canteen. Carl and lines and energy and ideas. sponded in an email a moment

opening made in his back was "very small," that he was in surgery for one-and-a-half hours, and that after the operation, he had felt no pain. "The next day, I was able to Department cables from Egypt walk." He added that when in Cairo, he undertakes a daily exercise regime in the published by WikiLeaks. She afternoons, but when he goes to Sharm, "I just relax -- no exercise."

He engaged the visitors extensively on the topic of food, stressing that his favorite fare Cafe Home is was arrogant to demand a change said they were interesting and Egyptian popular breakfast dishes, such as tamiya (felafel) and foul (beans). He later. Carl could apply for an in- wanted to tell his boss how desper- Carl went to art museums before, ordered up a huge tray of freshly made tamiya sandwiches for lunch, and lustily had much to say about Hosni consumed several. Mubarak also offered insights into the character of his younger son, Gamal, whom he described as a perfectionist from childhood. "As a schoolboy, if I gave him a notebook Mubarak. with one line that was not straight, he would throw a fit and demand a new one," Mubarak laughed. Furthermore, Gamal is "idealistic" and "punctual." Mubarak added, "If he (Gamal) says, 'meet me for lunch at 2:00,' he means 2:00. Set your in his job, but he felt he had a Carl asked Anna if she watch by it." ternship with Graphics only after ate and trapped he felt, like the why was he moved so violently this

At his golf course retreat in Sharm El-Sheikh, mostly outdoors on a breezy veranda, Mubarak on several occasions seemed to have more than his usual difficulty in wanted to collaborate and put hearing. Nonetheless, he initiated several phone calls. He also displayed one apparent lapse in memory in telling Congressman Israel that Gamal is forty-one years old; he is in fact forty-four (born December 27, 1963, according to leadership profile 20320807). together a piece for the ...

strong argument and a solid com- website, with her research and Link to original cable he finished his six-month term with lights were going dim inside him. time? Was something inside him

his design. 2005-01-09 12:02 SECRET 03CAIRO664

He and Anna worked ... Asked about U.S.-Egypt relations, Mubarak confirmed that "we have very good promise. Why wouldnʼt his boss be relations with the U.S.," but "your administration is not well-informed." However, But Carl said nothing. He told trying to get out, something provoked "I am patient by nature," he said, in apparent reference to U.S. criticisms over Broadcast.

through the night, emailing human rights and democratization. Congressman Shays encouraged Mubarak to The death of a loved one engage with Iraq as much as possible and asked if Egypt would send an

ambassador, to which Mubarak replied "no, I cannot do it. When there is

stability I am willing, but I cannot force civilians to go." one another and talking on the

3. (C) Asked about Egypt's reaction if Iran developed nuclear weapons

capability, Mubarak said that none will accept a nuclear Iran, "we are all

phone. Carl slept only a terrified." Mubarak said that when he spoke with former Iranian President

sympathetic and reasonable? Khatami he told him to tell current President Ahmedinejad "not to provoke the Zachary his plans for the by the presence of the paintings? It seemed to Carl like his boss, Americans" on the nuclear issue so that the U.S. is not forced to strike. Mubarak couple of hours and they said that Egypt might be forced to begin its own nuclear weapons program if Iran

succeeds in those efforts. Art Museum

4. (C) Asked about whether the U.S. should set a timeline for withdrawal from finished the piece by 10:00 AM Iraq, Mubarak said "you cannot leave" because "you would leave Iran in D control." Mubarak explained his recipe for a way forward: "strengthen the

armed forces, relax your hold, and then you will have a coup. Then we will have the next morning. a dictator, but a fair one. Forget democracy, the Iraqis are by their nature too The idea was for Carl to switch tough." we e ke n d , and that was it. To He clutched his forehead and without moving from his desk, with-

... After hours of pushing the

Link to original cable

piece through the circuits of

Art Supply Store

2006-12-30 05:05 SECRET 31CAIRO4155 the editorial bureaucracy, it departments, to go from Broadcast out a glance, slapped him across the reveal to his boss that he was strug- averted his eyes for fear his brain ...

Mubarak hates Hamas, and considers them the same as Egypt's own Muslim was accepted and published. Brotherhood, which he sees as his own most dangerous political threat.

...

As for Iran, Mubarak has a visceral hatred for the Islamic Republic, referring repeatedly The graphic was mentioned to Iranians as "liars," and denouncing them for seeking to destabilize Egypt and the region. He sees the Syrians and Qataris as sycophants to Tehran and liars themselves. There is no doubt that Egypt sees Iran and its greatest long-term threat, both as it on the broadcast that evening to Graphics. He already helped develops a nuclear capability and as it seeks to export its "Shia revolution." gling felt to Carl like it would be would overload. face for this attempt at rebellion. ...

and floated across the screen Link to original cable

Archives for a moment with Carl and ...

the Graphics people with one Anna’s names on it. Maybe Carl deserved it, but it shameful and whiny, so he shut up Carl took out his notebook and

C

project, which was a success. felt cruel and spiteful. and kept everything to himself. filled page after page after page.

5 6 7 8 9 10

A book that impressed you

8.

? E. ? Carl visited other museums on F. G. AboutThe having quit his internship H.

? Carl first walked through the freedom, the freedom to be which didn’t make him feel Carl went back to work that aloud, with a sigh, where he, American Art section. “lords of our tiny, skull-sized much except dubious pride at ? He stared for a while at a pair kingdoms, alone at the center of having noticed that, like Monday, optimistic he would the Executive Producer of the Sunday and walked through the so abruptly, Carlʼs parents had ? of Stuart Davis paintings that all creation.” himself, almost all the I am

feel tougher and wouldn’t get show, was positioned on the were black, white, red, and Presidents had blue eyes. that to green. He felt that Davis’ Carl walked down the hall to Carl then headed to the first { } ? ? paintings were a lot like the Portrait Gallery. He saw floor to go through the Folk Art pulled into the negative loop of cycle that afternoon.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s, in that famous paintings he’d seen a section. capital, stopping to take pictures, ? apathy. They ate at an Indian buffet little to say. worried both of them created these thousand times before in text He entered the west wing of ? really, quite participate

soupy and colorful abstractions books and on television shows the museum, turned a corner, { } { } His internship duties were and when Carl told Miles he ?

with bits of language and images and that were stamped onto his and was knocked off his horse.

mixed in. Looking at these consciousness. switching that day. He had desired to do other things with

paintings was like seeing the There was Benjamin Frankin. He saw in a large alcove James to eat a cheeseburger, to drink a They had planned a trip to Wash-

been fetching lunch, proofread- his life, Miles looked him in let’s call it, in, mushy matter of your mind There was Frederick Douglass. Hampton’s sculpture, The Throne { } { } Your favorite place in the world

spewed onto a wall. There was Henry David Thoreau of the Third Heaven Nations’ ing the scripts, and logging the eyes and said, “Go.”

Carl then walked into a side and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Millennium General Assembly. F

room and saw an enormous Nathaniel Hawthorne. There Carl stared and stared and tapes. His next rotation was in Miles said he would help Carl a life with something like a latte, and to work on a gift he was steady income, health insurance, ington D.C. a month before. Now Thomas Hart Benton painting was John Brown and Abraham stared and had to take a seat on ?

savings for retirement and your an office across the street from and reach out to some media c a l l e d , Achelous and Hercules . Lincoln. There was Samuel a bench and pull out his offspring, a respectable home to ?

The people and plants and Clemens and Thomas Edison. notebook again. His head felt conven- call your own, a vehicle with

the newsroom, in the tape contacts. which to go from place to place, animals in the scene looked like Carl walked downstairs to the like it was going to whistle like a and, too, maybe some social

the limbs of one rippling and contemporary portraits. There radiator. prestige, bureaucratic success, library. That evening, Carl asked his drawing for Julie, a friend of his tional historical importance, excellence they would arrive on Carlʻs last day.

robust body, and that body was David Lynch and Cormac As people passed through the within your chosen field, etc. requires

belonged to an American way of McCarthy. There was Andre room, Carl noted he never heard A fellow intern brought Carl boss for a ride home. As they WORK

being that hardly existed Agassi and Michael Jordan. so many gasps at an art museum { } society over to show him his new sped down the interstate, Carl

anymore, one that was tough There was George Lucas. There before.

and quiet and close to the earth. was Barack Obama. He walked up to the alcove and from high school he dated once who responsibilities. The first task gave his two-weeks notice and Once their visit was over, Carl

For as much as that way of life, Carl needed to take a break read about James Hampton’s

something like a was to peel the labels off old explained to Zachary why he which was that of Carl’s and walked into the courtyard of lonely life in Washington D.C., { }

grandparents and great- the museum. how he worked as a janitor, how tapes, using plastic knives and needed to quit. grandparents, seemed naive or It was a sprawling atrium he built the throne at night in a in so far as or, { } { } repressive or brutal, it was also covered with a wavy glass roof. rented garage, how he worked at was in D.C. doing a law school in- spoons or just your fingers. Carl had offered to buy packed up, moved out, and got into TRAVELS

simple and intuitive and didn’t Built into the floor were shallow it for fourteen years until he died.

waste itself in the effete and reflecting ponds and planters Hampton sounded just like Most of the labels did not come dinner, which Zachary agreed

pathetic and neurotic way that with ficus and olive trees. Henry Darger, the Chicago arist the necessary day in day out effort paradoxical contemporary American There were only a dozen who was also a prolific recluse. { } off easily and the glue wedged to as they departed, but when

consumers so vainly waste people there, spread out at While Carl realized there was ternship at the World Bank. the backseat of the family minivan to up under your nails. they arrived at Carl’s apart- themselves. tables and benches. The atrium something anti-social and sad sacrifice,

Carl thought our ancestors was hushed like a library, not about these men’s lives, he also via long hours and short As Carl sat down to de-label ment his boss said he had other

would be ashamed by how weak just because everyone was quiet thought there was something vacations; kills via a crowded commute and a stuffy office; and dissipated we’ve become, and working or looking around humane and transcendental in his first batch of 100 tapes, he plans. kills via boredom and frustration

It was a warm spring day and the how obsessed with safety and in awe, but because the air was creating something so weird and and stress and rage; kills via head home to the suburbs of Chicago. kills

repetitive and monotonous shuddered and knew this was When Carl wrote Miles to COLLEGE estranged from nature. like a sponge that absorbed enormous and complex. And to bureaucratic labor; kills via

The spirit in this Benton every sound, and the roof and do it in obscurity made it all the staring at a computer hunched all going to stop for him very follow-up on those media over a desk for eight to twelve painting was the common life in walls kept out the noise from more interesting and rich, as straight hours; kills, kills, kills,

America only four or five the street. well as solipsistically horrifying. soon. contacts, Miles never replied.

first blossoms appeared. He wondered if the question generations ago, and now most The only time Carl felt such Hampton’s throne was { } your During his lunch break, Carl Carl mentioned his lunch Americans would be horrified to tangible peace in a big city was uncanny, like something from a i.e. your time alone and { } { } { } have to chop wood for heat or while sitting in a church, but dream that was built on a

A movie that made you think wrote an email to Miles Melka, with Mr. Melka to Emma, the H ride a horse for transportation churches were always still noisy familiar archetype but was yet, chance

or slaughter a cow for in their own pushy, ideological in its details and materials, the Executive Producer of the co-worker he briefly dated at Carl hoped upon returning to mar ks of his future would grow sustenance. ways. strange and grotesque and its HIGH SCHOOL

The opposite of this Benton This courtyard was as if built own idiosyncratic thing. what you tell yourself really your time with others show, expressing his discontent the start of the internship. to counts, the meaningful moments { }

painting was one nearby by by a culture that had peaceably Carl stood up, stretched, and in life - whatever form they take

G and disappointment. Carl felt “Oh he always leads people on for you - the stuff you save your Edward Hopper called, Cape Cod resigned itself to a life without felt like he needed to rest his

money for, the stuff you think Morning. It showed a woman in God and a life without eyes and his brain and get some work on Monday, these good feel- about fondly when you’re like there were sparks flying like that,” she said. enjoy into a fruit that was sweet or a fruit unhappy at work, the moments a dress, leaning forward and intimidating images of that fresh air. you feel connected to something looking out a bay window in her God. He got his backpack, left the that’s pulsing and true and real from his fingers as he typed. That was disheartening, but home. She is alone and there Carl got a coffee, sat near a museum, and stepped into the and good, or, are only trees and grasses and ficus tree, and gazed at the sunlight. { } Miles responded in half an whatever, Carl was just glad to { } sky beyond her house. tourists and the locals while How amazing this place was ings would stay with him and pre- that was bitter, and he wondered hour and invited Carl to lunch be leaving. Carl recognized that writing in his notebook. free and so close to his { both, } ponderous indoor solitude and apartment! It was like he could that Thursday. At the office those last two felt like he knew it all too well. Feeling like his brain had just walk right in, like it in other words,

The painting reminded him of cooled to a less frantic belonged to him. { } The day came and as they weeks, it felt like the spell of

what David Foster Wallace said temperature, Carl decided to Carl shook his head in vent the geriatric miasma from when that fruit would fall from the GRADE SCHOOL walked out of the office, Carl the place was broken and the in a college commencement look through the museum a wonder, checked his watch, and, speech about how the American little more before leaving. feeling like he was alive for the described “The Cycle of old folks’ miasma no longer economy has given us He passed through the moment, continued on with his what you try so hard to get.

tremendous new leisure and Presidents’ portrait gallery, Saturday. Futility” and Miles wondered affected him. seeping into his blood, and that he branch and return to the dust from

wouldnʼt need to quit after all. which it came. BIRTH An adventure far from home 11 12 13 14 15 16

How to raise a child

6. 7. Someone you love, or once loved THEThe JOHANNESBURG THRESHOLD Johannesburg A SENTIMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE THRESHOLD LESOTHO L e s o t h o DURBAN OFof The history of where you come from D u r b a n THE TRANSKEI C A P E T O W N

C a p e T o w n The Transkei AUTONOMY AUTONOMY

1 2 3 4 5 I met K. in an English class spring semester of bus during the ride home and into some bushes K.We departed the next day, and then the of 2009. I mailed to K. an intellectual care With our last couple of days, K. and I drove to sophomore year. It was 2006. along the sidewalk after getting off the bus. Frenchman came to town. package, containing a letter, some books (two by Michigan to visit a professor friend of mine I The class was a seminar on Gothic Fiction. It I convinced her to sleep in my bedroom, even K. asked if I wanted to meet with them in Wallace, Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, and Kiss spent time with in South Africa, and to visit took place in a windowless room deep in the though her apartment and B.ʼs apartment were a Chicago, but I didnʼt want to and said no. I of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig), some arty another friend of mine I met in Argentina who English building and was taught by a bearded couple of blocks away. asked her a couple of days later, just before she knick knacks I picked up in Argentina, and lived on an organic farm near Ann Arbor. old professor who would nervously clear his I didnʼt have any definite sexual intentions was returning to Japan, if she wanted to visit me copies of a few films discovered in the past year. At the farm, K. and I slept together on a The footage He was really freaking out. To try Carl went to the quiet, rural home Carl wanted this video to be a Carl finished the video and throat, run his fingers along the edge of the that night with regards to K., but I fantasized at my parentsʼ house in my hometown. She said It was funny because I had the idea for the lumpy, concave mattress on the floor of a rustic and relax, and for the sake of of his college friend Brad and spent tribute to his brief friendship with showed the final cut to Brad, who arl was wedged into conference table, and tilt backwards in his chair. about things, emotionally messy as anything she wouldnʼt have time. care package a few months earlier, but at that cabin. It did not go well and involved hurt nostalgia, he played a round of golf several days editing together his Marty and to the wonderful and said to him, “I think this is going The first time I ever saw K., however, was in a would have been. I was devastated by all of this, by how brief time the idea came from a mean-spirited and feelings and me almost being punched in the The best way to spend your money at the home course of his high video. fleeting possibilities that traveling to win.” Why was Carl the backseat of a mini- school golf team. The course was Formal Logic class the same semester. She was So, not wanting to diminish my possibilities, I and lame our visit was, by this Frenchman taking manipulative corner of myself, as if I was sending face. Carl used old, unused footage SO opens up for being with others. Carl submitted the entry and it eighteen holes built on a partially from a trip to Nanjing, China he Carl thought back to something was chosen as one of the finalists. in the course for a day then dropped it, but that led K. to my room, where she promptly lay down up K.ʼs time back home, by her not making an the package to prove how refined my taste in The day before, I told K. about this professor bus taxi that was pre - reclaimed landfill. went on while an undergraduate. he made for a woman named After being evaluated by a panel first Monday I arrived late and the only open on my couch and fell asleep. effort to visit me. things was. friend of mine in Ann Arbor, how he was once a When Carl reached the peak of The purpose of the trip was to Monica a couple of years earlier. It of celebrity judges, Carl received a seat was next to a pretty, slim, dark-haired girl, B. called that night soon after K. went to bed She called me when she got back to Japan I acknowledged that nastiness and felt it playwright in New York City and wrote, “Tennes-

traveling through the old garbage dump and looked make a documentary, but the was a little book about love that he phone call from the State who I later learned was K. to say he had a terrible dream - about what he and said she knew something was wrong and that would be better to send nothing than to send a see Williams-type plays about people arguing cariously speeding around him - at the fiery exhaust professor in charge of Carl and the hoped would persuade her to have Department. from a trash incinerator, at the I sat next to her and the lecture, which was didnʼt say - and wanted to make sure K. was OK. I was probably feeling hurt. boxful of pride, so I forgot about it. with each other in their underwear.” two other students told them, despite with him what he referred to as a He won! And in being gleaming razor wire of a nearby jail, also tedious and given by a bearded old I said she was fine and fell asleep. As we talked on the phone I became But then I came home, it was Christmas, I felt K. liked that description and it made her laugh through the South Afri- South Africa for three their non-existent Mandarin skills, “seasonal romance.” recognized as a winner, he felt at the blinking red lights of a cell professor, made her nod off and fall asleep. She emotional and upset and told her I loved her, generous, and I sent the package. This time, and exclaim, “Thatʼs life! Arguing with people in that it was their responsibility to On the book’s front and rear infused with confidence, as if he phone tower, all that mixed with the make something happen. covers were, cut out of colored just ate a salty, sugary, and tasty snored at one point, which caused the professor * * * which at the time I thought I meant in a seemingly, it was a boxful of love. your underwear!” fumes of decomposing trash - he saw The boys practiced and played can countryside along The professor then went off to construction paper, branches and meal. to glance at her and squint with disapproval. semi-Platonic way (and was the easier interpreta- a plausible vision of suburban hell. with the Ultimate Frisbee team and weeks and what was visit his family and work on other blossoms like from an East Asian He now had to decide where he Several weeks went by in this English seminar At the time, B. and K. were seniors and I was tion for both of us to make of such a loaded I was leaving in late January to travel to The morning after the night on the mattress I He felt like it was time get his befriended its captain, Marty, who projects in the city, including the painting. would travel to. before K. and I spoke or had any meaningful a junior. I was leaving to spend spring semester statement). South Africa for five weeks. Just after New said to K. how we had an argument in our a narrow, hilly highway. He was strung shit together. was from northern China and eager interpretation of a lecture for the The image of those blossoms He wanted to go somewhere far One day, he received an email to practice his English as he was interaction. She always sat next to the same studying abroad in Granada, Spain. K. calmed me down and said she didnʻt know Yearʼs, I spoke to K. on Skype and she said she underwear. C world renowned Slovenian applying for a competitive Masters expressed to Carl the transience of enough away to justify a free flight, out from all he had experienced over the announcing an online video quiet, skinny, blond-haired boy, who I coinciden- Before I left, K. said she wanted to visit me for how strongly I felt. She said from then on she wasnʼt doing well and feeling out of sorts. “I wasnʼt in my underwear,” she replied (she he trying to do there? philosopher Slavoj Zizek. certain strong emotions and brief program in International Relations. but also somewhere he would have competition being run by the U.S. tally also had a Creative Writing class with that Spring Break, which I readily agreed to. would know and our friendship would get better. I asked if she wanted to travel with me in was in yoga pants and a t-shirt). Upon being introduced to Carl, Marty showed Carl and the two relationships he experienced in his a chance to communicate with the State Department, the theme of which semester. She planned her trip and came to Spain in late Africa. She said sheʼd think about it. K. and I then drove to the dunes along Lake Zizek seemed like an unstable and other students the good, cheap past two weeks and clutched his back - was: “Many Cultures, One World.” life and that were convenient for locals. frantic but undeniable genius, like a restaurants near the university One day, K. and this boy, whose name was B., March to spend four days with me. * * * I got to Cape Town and she said she was Michigan and sat on the beach, hiked up the Although Carl found that phrase him to continue experiencing given Carl remembered there was a sweaty hybrid of Woody Allen and where a common dinner consisted approached me and asked if I wanted to contrib- We hiked in the olive groves beyond the going to come. Sexual visions sprouted in my hills, and played chess. to be delusively optimistic, he knew his deracinated lifestyle and his famous architect he greatly packs while furtively observing the 23 Karl Marx. of spicy meat kebabs, fried he could compete for the grand preference for temporary admired who was doing work in ute to the English and Rhetoric Club newsletter, Alhambra. We explored a cave that used be a That Christmas of 2008, I made a gift for K. It head like weeds through a parking lot. Our conversation was tense but still, as With their free time, Carl and the dumplings, a bowl of noodles, a prize of a three-week trip to any emotional commitments. South Africa. which they edited. donkey-powered pumping station. We went to a was a drawing of her sitting on rocks along the All of a sudden, however, K. stopped replying always, interesting and thoughtful and honest. bottle of Coca-Cola, and a Africans who were riding alongside him two other undergrads hung out on Monica was not persuaded and His name was Wilson MacDon- country in the world on good terms soft-serve McDonald’s ice cream I was happy to do so and happy to meet both beach on the Mediterranean. We went out to ocean, surrounded by books. I based it on a to my emails about the trip. This silence was We took a lot photos of each other, which to the pleasant and leafy campus of with the U.S. government. cone for dessert. rejected the offer, but enjoyed and ald and Carl knew of him because K. and B., who seemed more lively, thoughtful, clubs and sat in cafes and ate picnics in the picture I took when she came to Spain. unlike her and I suspected something was up. a neutral bystander probably looked like we Carl received the email because Nanjing University. kept the little book. of a philosophy class he took as an Carl felt both the Frisbee team and stylishly dressed than the majority of my shade. All the books in the picture were heavy, She called me while I was at a hostel in the were a young couple admiring each other. in the same van. Carl felt like this taxi Carl brought a Frisbee with him of the fellowship in Argentina he and Marty were rare and worth Thinking about that gift gave undergraduate that was taught by a classmates. Vague sexual hopes once again tickled my canonical, world literature stuff I would, in an Karoo desert and said she broke up with the As we drove back to the suburbs, K. said how “SHOW ME A NICE JOSE NO NO NO NO NO “I HAVE ONLY TO HEAR THE CHEERING UP AN OLD LADY WORD GOD AND A because of how difficult it had been AND IʻLL SHOW YOU TWO EXIT EXIT EXIT EXIT EXIT CURTAIN COMES DOWN did thanks to the State Department. filming. The boys recorded games, Carl a vision for the video. He former student of the architect. PEOPLE EXISTING IN DESPAIR.” IN MY HEAD.” I T to find one during his previous trip Spring Break came and I learned I won a imagination, but I didnʼt get pushy. I was a ideal life, read all the time and I assumed K., in Frenchman and still wanted to come to Africa to when she dated B., he said the only girl he could ride was thrilling, novel, and would After returning home to the ONE WAY “TODAY IS MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY ONE WAY It was fortuitous he had another practices, and scenes of the city, would animate a branch and MacDonald was the distantly N AND I SIT ON THE OCEAN WAVE IN H THE SCHOOLYARD AND WAIT FOR ONE WAY KATE AND THINK OF NOTHING. NOW ONE WAY to China. scholarship to study abroad in China for a month virgin at the time and was too insecure to start my version of her ideal life, would also read all spend time with me. imagine me being attracted to and dating suburbs from his failed big city IN THE THIRTY-FIRST YEAR OF MY E chance - if he could only prove and they interviewed Marty and blossoms in part of the screen, and beautiful star around which all the DARK PILGRIMAGE ON THIS EARTH AND KNOWING LESS THAN I EVER A time you helped someone ONE WAY ONE WAY T KNEW BEFORE, HAVING LEARNED When he and the two other internship, Carl was at first ONLY TO RECOGNIZE MERDE WHEN I himself worthy - to travel abroad discreetly recorded some of their that summer. It was a group program led by a anything, anyway. the time. In the three years I knew K. at that time, I had was...K. herself. SEE IT, HAVING INHERITED NO MORE have them surround like a frame discussions and readings of the class ONE WAY ONE WAY M make for a good anecdote later on, but R FROM MY FATHER THAN A GOOD NOSE FOR MERDE, FOR EVERY SPECIES OF SHIT THAT FLIES – MY ONLY TALENT – courtesy of the same government he students went to the track to play time hanging out with him. overjoyed to return to his simple ONE WAY ONE WAY I SMELLING MERDE FROM EVERY O another part of the screen in which orbited, the purpose of which was to professor from the university and all the chosen The time came for K. to get on her bus and go I sent the drawing as a gift and as an attack never once been around her when she was That night I told myself it was over and that I QUARTER, LIVING IN FACT IN THE VERY CENTER OF MERDE, THE GREAT They shared many fun moments ONE WAY SHITHOUSE OF SCIENTIFIC ONE WAY V so often insulted and despised. catch, it was a shock to see a team of life of reading books, riding his B HUMANISM WHERE NEEDS ARE he could place the video clips. establish the intellectual ground for students received the same, all-expenses-paid back to Madrid and the U.S. I got choked up as at her Frenchman boyfriend, who I knew was single, when she wasnʼt obligated to somebody better just move on and let my feelings dry and SATISFIED, EVERYONE BECOMES AN ONE WAY ANYONE, A WARM AND CREATIVE ONE WAY I and long conversations together, it also felt dangerous and reckless. He PERSON, AND PROSPERS LIKE A DUNG He also felt the competition was Chinese and foreign students playing U BEETLE, AND ONE HUNDRED PERCENT bike to the library, and eating his The branch would flower and the architect’s ideas of sustainability, ONE WAY OF PEOPLE ARE HUMANISTS AND ONE WAY scholarship. we hugged and said goodbye. buying her expensive things for the holidays and else. harden and crumble away. NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT BELIEVE IN E and when the trip was over, it was T GOD, AND MEN ARE DEAD, DEAD, the best kind: it was well funded, a game of Ultimate Frisbee using DEAD; AND THE MALAISE HAS SETTLED mother’s food. The thought, “I’m ONE WAY ONE WAY then the flowers would wither and community planning, and human LIKE A FALL-OUT AND WHAT PEOPLE G REALLY FEAR IS NOT THAT THE BOMB painful to say farewell to their new The class was called “Learning About China” I was and am incompetent at showing my who I assumed was a philistine and incapable of K. was about to buy her plane ticket when I The next day I brought K. to the train station E WILL FALL BUT THAT THE BOMB WILL but poorly advertised. high quality discs. so happy right now,” involuntarily ONE WAY NOT FALL – ON THIS MY THIRTIETH ONE WAY die. freedom. couldnʼt wait to arrive to the Shell Ultra BIRTHDAY, I KNOW NOTHING AND THERE O Chinese friend. IS NOTHING TO DO BUT FALL PREY and we would meet on several Saturdays in April emotions, and Iʼm also in general a cold and the sensitive artistic syntheses of which I was remembered this ridiculous rule about entering and as we waited on the bench I scooted close to T ONE WAY TO DESIRE.” ONE WAY bubbled to surface of his mind. E Marty accompanied Carl and the Carl created these blossoms Carl asked his former professor if “THE ONLY POSSIBLE STARTING “ALL THE FRIENDLY AND POINT: THE STRANGE FACT OF LIKEABLE PEOPLE SEEM ONEʼS OWN INVINCIBLE NO NO NO NO NO DEAD TO ME; ONLY THE and May to get to know each other and prepare abrasive and overly-critical person, but I cared capable. South Africa and needing two, blank, facing her and put my arm around her, hoping to have O APATHY.” HATERS SEEM ALIVE.” R But then Carl read The Moviegoer EXIT EXIT EXIT EXIT EXIT other boys to their train and using stop-motion animation. He he could put him in touch with City gas station to which he was headed for the trip. for K. and was touched she came to Europe to K. received the gift and told me she loved it. pages in your passport to get into the country. a nice, close, warm moment before departing. by Walker Percy and began to see smiled and waved from the tried to get his friend Brad to assist MacDonald and if he could meet some very dark clouds billowing up platform, through the dusty little him, but Brad was dithering and with him in South Africa. visit me and I think my quivering voice gave it It was followed a couple of days later by a letter I emailed K. and told her to check her She was repulsed, scooted away, and said, and once again clutch the tit of civiliza- at the horizon of his hometown cabin window, as they departed for difficult to work with, which Carl The professor did so, and after That first Saturday meeting, I was in the away as we departed. I donʼt know if she I wrote her in which I accused her of being an passport and make sure. no, I couldnʼt touch her. Beijing. existence. knew was one of the reasons he was speaking on the phone with classroom talking with some of the kids when K. noticed, however. indulgent and lazy American and of freeriding She called me a few hours later, as I visited a We had a quick and bitter fight on the Carl tried to keep in touch with Many lines from the novel felt to dumped by the love of his life, MacDonald, Carl and the architect and B. walked in - standing next to each other as the English language and not adequately partici- national park in the Karoo and hiked to an platform as the train arrived. She tried to hug tion, cool himself in its air conditioning, Marty once he returned home, but Carl like nearby strikes of Kelly, who Carl was currently and had plans to meet in Johannesburg. with the months and the years, their always with a little space in-between like birds * * * pating in the Japanese society in which she was overlook called “The Point of Desolation.” She me and I stood there like a mannequin. quietly infatuated with and writing Carl was curious as to why he lightning, lightning that on a power line. living. said she didnʼt have enough open space in her emails became less frequent. Carl She got on-board, I turned away without and bathe himself in its interminable cas- illuminated the world in a horrible heartfelt letters to, despite her hadn’t seen any photos of what also failed to compile their footage Each of them won a scholarship for Learning K. and B. graduated and applied to teach She didnʼt like it. That venomous little passport book and she couldnʼt come. saying goodbye, and strode to my car. I got in, but truthful glare. He made a into anything like a finished, living across the Atlantic Ocean in MacDonald was building in South As Carl worked on the graphic, About China. English in Japan. K. was accepted but B. was not paragraph killed all the good feelings I won from K. and I spoke on the phone several days later and I cried and cried and cried. graphic compiling his favorite coherent documen tary, about Spain, and despite her being in a Africa, but the architect reassured cade of options and choices. he had a nightmare he fell into and That afternoon, K., B., and I got lunch at a and instead found a job in South Korea. the drawing. and I asked why she never thought of me as a which he felt nagging guilt. relationship with a Spaniard. him things were coming along. quotes from the book. became trapped in a garbage dump. Korean restaurant. We had a nice conversation I saw both of them a couple of times the potential boyfriend and why we couldnʼt be a * * * A S S U C H and were on the same team about how we summer before they left, the summer before my * * * couple now that she was single. regarded the English department (derision) and senior year. She didnʼt like those questions and replied After K. left, I read some William Blake and why we were studying abroad (get away from Soon after they moved away, B. wrote me a Before I left for Argentina, I spent a month in with a remark suggesting that, during college, I one of the Proverbs of Hell felt appropriate and Illinois). letter and said K. dumped him. Montreal to study French and travel. I wrote a was part of that vast majority of male losers and consoling. I invited them to a big party at my frat house I wrote him back a long letter, telling him I letter to K. and wrote part of it in French, a while I was “not ugly,” I wasnʼt much better. It was: “The busy bee has no time for sorrow.” that night. They came, we drank, and we hid out hoped this wasnʼt going to be a moment of death language she studied in college. I did so to show I felt like it was either move forward and in my bedroom and enjoyed ourselves and for him, that he would pick himself up and start off how much I was learning and to take another * * * work, or sit and writhe and regret and die. Your favorite athletic activity listened to music on my record player. something new in Seoul. stab at her boyfriend. I tried off and on for the previous year to I noticed K. stared at me several times. B. never wrote back to me. He said he was In that letter, I said maybe getting upset with I returned to the suburbs of Chicago obsessed publish and write professionally, but stopped going to, then I didnʼt hear from him until he each other sometimes can be a good thing and with K. and unsure of where my life was headed. when writing so much to K. that summer. The shadows of the trees began During his long flight to South Carl was excited to see a new Carl took a grayhound bus out I was sexually attracted to K., but it was returned to the U.S. a year later tired and being competitive can bring out the best in us. I went back to caddying to save money as I I looked up competitions and sent pitches to Africa, Carl was hopeful this trip part of the world and he fantasized of the city and into the Drakens- to look like spider webs. Once Carl arrived to the Shell station, hardly just physical. She was at the time the confused and unsure of what to do with himself. K. wrote back, also partly in French, and said thought things over. websites and magazines. would answer some questions and in a variety of ways that Wilson berg Mountains, near the border of Carl wandered to the beach and most self-assured, the smartest, the wittiest girl I (He then fled back to Seoul to be with a Korean she wants to be my friend and not my competitor. After a few weeks, K. became the answer to I got my first big break in September, to write he would come home better MacDonald would take him under After such an initial Lesotho. sat down in the shade. he replenished himself with one-and-a- met. girl who, I was told by a mutual friend, he When I read that I brushed it aside and my questions. She could be my destination and a column about being a caddie at a golf course knowing what he should dedicate his wing and make him an He slept at a peaceful and BUT A British lady from the hostel himself to and which form of living apprentice. remote hostel that served free was also on the beach, but farther She liked The Simpsons and The X Files. She dumped a few months later. B. stopped writing reassured myself by thinking something like, my purpose. in the suburbs, which was an idea I described to half cans of Coca-Cola and three warm, should be the one to call his own. Carl had seen MacDonald once chocolate cake and free fresh milk down. She was eating passion fruit liked to hike and travel and go on picnics. She to me for a second time and I havenʼt heard from “Oh, she doesnʼt know what she wants.” She sent in the mail a portrait she painted of K. during the dinner we had in Champaign when Carl packed lightly for the before at a lecture at his university. disappointment, what that came from a Jersey cow kept the village boys sold her and was liked Eraserhead and Le Samourai and Faulkner him in two years.) me, also based on a photo from our visit in I ranted to her about M o b y - D i c k and how to sunning herself near a herd of cows three-week journey. He had a MacDonald wore a black suit, a on the property. and Murakami and Laurence Stern. She liked to I watched the movie Sidewa ys the other day * * * Spain. It was the first (and, so far, only) time write literature by explaining a profession. curried-beef potpies. The sugar and the He took a 4x4 tour into Lesotho, that were also gathered on the medium-sized hiking backpack and black shirt, and a red bow tie. He dance and drink and take drugs, and to paint and saw a lot of B. in the depressed middle someone depicted me artistically. I know she would be jealous to see I was which involved driving up a sand. a small bookbag. It would be gave a very sleek Power Point and draw and take pictures. And yet she didnʼt school teacher/would-be writer played by Paul I returned home for a couple weeks to get K. wrote me a David Foster Wallace-inspired writing this column and that I won a modicum of Carl’s stomach didn’t feel good. salt were a consolation for all his dis - summertime in South Africa so he presentation that made many would Carl do with treacherous switchback road, along one turn of which was a dead horse He walked around a boulder, out resent her femininity the way other smart girls I Giamatti. ready for Argentina and what felt like the Pop Quiz about our friendship, in which she professional publishing success. didn’t need heavy clothes. members of the audience cry with being eaten by tall, hairy vultures. of sight of the British lady and the knew did sometimes. B. was an insightful, sensitive, and funny beginning of something momentous. restated how ambivalent she feels, how often she A few months later I got an internship at a heartening experiences thus far in South He had one new Moleskine hopefulness for the future of the Carl never smelled rotting flesh That was not to be the case. cows, dropped his swim trunks, However, her relationship with B. baffled me. person and had the talent to do great things. His I wrote a letter to K. the night before I left. It feels cold because of the harsh things I say. news show in Washington D.C. The job didnʼt notebook that his sister gave him human race. the rest of his time before. It was foul and nauseating, Carl ate the mushrooms the and went to the bathroom. They were always around each other, always did silence felt like a betrayal and one of the great was the first time in my life I cried while writing. I wrote K. a much longer Pop Quiz of my own agree with me, but it was priceless to see how for Christmas, an updated Lonely The point of MacDonald’s lecture but also somewhat intriguing. following day. It was the second He felt better, but the sight of Africa, which involved feeling trapped Planet travel guide, and two dense, was that our form of living is everything together, and yet they never showed disappointments of my life so far. The letter was one sheet of paper, front and and said while I had my suspicions about her T.V. works and to see how depressed and While in Lesotho, Carl’s tour time in his life he had taken such his waste was like a glimpse of evil. difficult books he had purchased destroying the earth and that a affection, never touched, never kissed. I told myself, if we canʼt write each other now back. It was the shortest thing I wrote her but I motives - and regarded her as a Barbara nervous and sleep-deprived many world-famous group encountered a teenaged psychedelic drugs. He sat down in the shade again in the shopping mall and electric fence years before as an undergraduate paradigm shift is needed, one The writing class B. and I had together that and figure out seriously and sincerely what we wanted it to be the most important, the most Stanwyck femme fatale character, as a journalists are day in and day out. I know K. on the trip? shepherd who just killed a rabbit, a The first time, while in college, and his mind raced in desperate but put on his shelves and avoided requiring a new philosophy of design, semester was an exasperating Creative want to say to the world and how weʼre going to sincere. seductress who sinks her fangs into men and would have been jealous of all that, too. band of young men smuggling large eating mushrooms made him feel and confused circles. reading via elaborate methods of architecture, and human freedom. wasteland of Johannesburg, then being sacks of marijuana across the ecstatic and wondrous, they made Non-Fiction workshop taught by a grad student. do it - if we canʼt start that now, while weʼre I tried to listen to what K. told me, to hear her extracts what they have to offer and disposes of procrastination. MacDonald concluded the slide border, as well as a famous South him laugh hysterically like he was a In the first story he submitted, B. revealed his young and energetic and have maximal free time when she said she didnʼt want to compete with their withered husks once sheʼs taken all there is K. wrote me one more letter while she was The two books were, Waiting for show with blueprints of African explorer with an enormous little kid and they reset in a good dad committed suicide when he was a boy. And and minimal burdens - then when will we? Itʼll me, that she had good reasons for the life she to take - despite that, I also felt like there was home in Illinois, just before she flew back to misled by a charlatan celebrity archi - the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee, and eco-villages in South Africa that he white beard who was leading a 4x4 way his basic sense of what was real he mentioned having sex in the shower with his only get harder as we get older. lived in Japan with her French boyfriend, and The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz nothing else so meaningful as my relationship France. was working on in partnership with expedition. and what was illusion. girlfriend, who had to be K. I know Iʼm hard on B. and Iʼm sure my letters that if Iʼm going to be her friend I need to be a with K. and if there was one person on the planet It was single-spaced, hand-written, and ten Fanon. tect, and then going on a very bad the South African government. Carl then took a bus out of the Carl knew of bad trips and saw A time you felt satisfied Reading the latter book while on Synthesizing the eco-villages I liked B. quite a bit and felt we were becom- to him were intimidating, but I believed in him. I lot nicer and more sympathetic. Earth I would give myself to, sacrifice myself for, pages long. It tried to end things more hopefully mountains, passed through some of his friends have them and a South African Airways jetliner, into an eco-city and an eco-nation Durban, and then traveled into the stare despondently off into the ing friends. As such, without having to try, I wouldnʼt have written what I did if I didnʼt think I think for the fifteen minutes I wrote the get into an unconditionally committed long-term than what happened at the train station, and to mushroom trip and feeling that he, like flying high above the coast of Africa was MacDonald’s big conclusion. Transkei, which is a distance as they struggled in found myself being respectful of his relationship he had the capacity to give it all back to me in letter, I was sympathetic, considerate, and sexual relationship with, it would be her. stab at my self-confidence and justify her and nibbling at packages of crackers Carl was anxious to sit down semi-autonomous region of South silence with whatever it was a with K. and I didnʼt try to intrude or usurp or his own way. But he didnʼt. generous, and it was painful and uncomfortable K. enjoyed this confession of mine, and then rejection. She said I was “just a caddie” and “a and cheese felt both disgustingly with this man, to challenge his Job, had the veil pulled from his eyes Africa known for its lax drug laws. person struggled with in such a sneak my way into anything. for me to do so. It felt like I jumped out of my said she was heading to Paris with a new French confused little boy still living with mommy and Carl was soon crying and appropriate and appropriately ideas, and to show that he, despite Once Carl got to Johannesburg, Carl felt trapped in Johannes- Carl took a minibus taxi to the moment. K. and I, on the other hand, continued writing dinghy of selfishness and right into the ocean of boy she met for a vacation. daddy” and that I hadnʼt accomplished anything burg and in his backpackers’ feeling cosmically guilty. disgusting to Carl. being in his early twenties, was MacDonald gave him the runaround coast and then squeezed into the Carl ate the mushrooms after and was forced to gaze upon the abyss hostel, which at least had an His thoughts dragged him along * * * deep and lengthy letters to each other. feeling and openness and empathy. great in life yet to be so proud and boastful He had never been to Africa worth taking seriously. and only met with him once. back of a pickup truck to get a ride breakfast, which consisted of two interesting crowd of people in it. a logical and grim sequence, the She began dating a Frenchman who, from her K. liked the letter a lot and said a burden was This made my head explode and I wrote more about. before but after living and Carl also wanted to see these The architect delivered to Carl through dense jungle to an bananas, several spoonfuls of One such person was a pretty conclusion of which was that there So, the semester ended and we left for China description, sounded like the perfect opposite of lifted. In hindsight, I think I swam right back for emails and drew more pictures and sent her a I read the letter a couple of times and wrote and recognize his fundamental insignifi- backpacking through South eco-villages and to meet with local the same Power Point lecture as eco-hostel along the beach. peanut butter, and a juice box. Italian graduate student named was no escaping his existence, America, he felt ready. Africans that would be difficult to before, said he was “frantically The truck was driven by a He set off on a hike for a a few days later. B. my dinghy, climbed aboard, and resumed my care package with hand-made copies of Lett ers K. an email saying I got it and to please not write Anto. there was no easy form of being - He had an expensive prescription meet otherwise. busy,” and got up and left. toothless old man who played on waterfall. I was relieved to be done with the school year Where B. was shy and bookish, this French - proud position from before. I wasnʼt ready to to a Young Poet and a sampler David Foster me again. I said if she is in a dire situation, she It turns out she too had come to no way of living without stress, cance as a human being. For the of malaria medicine. He had a pair his stereo the same Afropop song As he was leaving, some villager and to have nice weather again, as I felt glum man was gregarious and shallow. drift in the waves of generosity and sacrifice and Wallace writings. can contact me, but not otherwise. I said I South Africa to meet with Wilson pain, and suffering - and that in a of binoculars in case he went on a over and over again at a painful children pointed at him and MacDonald. She said the and apathetic that semester. I wasnʼt dating anyone at the time and not love. That summer of 2010, as she dated this new needed to let my desire for her shrivel and die safari. He had a swimsuit, suntan volume. laughed shrilly. When Carl waved, very real sense he was and would moment, however, he was safe in a cool, eco-villages were a sham and that My classes were interesting and going out much either and I felt jealous of K.ʼs Frenchman, K. and I wrote longer and longer before we could resume our friendship. lotion, sunglasses, a pocket knife, a Carl arrived to the hostel, met they did not wave back. forever be alone in a void of MacDonald sleeps at a brothel with challenging...but something felt empty and new boyfriend. I was also skeptical of her desire K. moved to France with her boyfriend and we emails to each other, some of them four, five, six head strap flashlight, and he had a the few Europeans who were Next, he saw a dog lying in the nothingness. well-lighted gas station where his money a Zambian prostitute girlfriend. absurd about the whole process of reading books for him as K. said she wanted to study French continued writing, often with email, as the mail thousand words long. * * * Frisbee in case he found any Frisbee staying there, and went for a walk. shade, looking unwell. Around its As Carl’s thoughts slowed to a She said she was already filming tolerable pace, he felt a sadness and writing papers and taking exams. It felt like and live in France, then she goes to Japan and, delivery between France and Argentina was There was momentum to all of it. We talked throwers. and producing a F r o n t l i n e A few young villagers mouth were a dozen large ticks around him that was like an a codified and silly game and not something in voilà, she falls for a Frenchman. slow. on Skype every week. I told her, once again At the moment, almost a year has passed was good, the bathrooms were clean, Carl had some weird nightmares documentary exposing the approached him carrying beads, embedded into its snout and gums. insufferable humidity. days before leaving for the trip, in architect as a phallocentric fraud. trinkets, and foil sacks of Carl walked along a path into any way real or exciting. And that made me feel For Valentineʼs Day - and February is always I was reading Kurt Vonnegut at the time and in (and this time with a web camera so I could see since our last email. Weʼre still friends on which he was wandering alone and When Carl asked Anto if she marijuana and magic mushrooms. the jungle, but the path hit a dead He decided to leave the hostel numb, frustrated, bored, lifeless, but at the same my despondent time of year - I sent an elaborate one essay about science fiction writers he said, her reaction), I loved her. Facebook, but I blocked her on Gchat. It pains and the shelves were filled with a cornu- Carl heard this would happen. the next day, return to the Shell confused through an urban needed help with the documentary, end at a fence with rusty barbed time I was too scared to rebel or drop out or do valentine to K. that was a copy of the valentine “They meet often, comfort and praise one This time she smiled when I said it and me to see the status updates on her profile, but He traded a pair of socks for a dose wire on top of it. Ultra City gas station along the wasteland populated by strange she said no. She also told Carl she anything but just keep going forward. Ralph Wiggum pathetically and desperately another, exchange single-spaced letters of 20 responded, “I love you, too.” at the same time I feel no urge to be in touch copia of well-known corporate logos. creatures and strange people, but he too had read The Wretched of the of mushrooms, hoping it would be Things were beginning to feel main highway, and move on one So, this trip to China was my first time outside gave to Lisa Simpson. pages and more, booze it up affectionately and with her and I donʼt want to start desiring her didn’t dwell on them. Earth, but in the original French. a happy, fun, weird time. ominous and dreadful. way or another to Cape Town. the U.S. and my first time traveling without my K. kept replying to my missives but didnʼt one way or another have a million heart-throbs When I suggested she not date anyone and again. HOWEVER family. acknowledge these romantic gestures. and laughs.” spend more time in solitude, she became At the close of one of the last letters I wrote Every day was scheduled and organized, with Spring 2008 came to an end, I graduated, All I saw in that sentence was the part about indignant and explained how great and her, I asked if, with time, weʼd end up more like The future of humanity classes in the morning taught by Chinese won a grant to teach in Argentina for a year, and “letters of 20 pages and more.” Reading a rejuvenating an orgasm feels and said I shouldnʼt Mrs. Dalloway and Peter Walsh, or Harry and professors and excursions to downtown Shanghai moved back to my parentsʼ house to work as a description of such a thing made it a possibility control her sex life. Sally, or Heloise and Abelard. I said, no, weʼd in the afternoon. caddie, my job when I was a kid. That summer, for me to aspire to. K. planned to come home and visit in August. just be Tim and K. Thatʼs who weʼd be. B., K., and I formed a clique and would go for K. came home to visit for two weeks. At the time I was also discovering David I hadnʼt seen her face-to-face in two years and I n When Harry Met Sally... , year walks together around Fudan University or go to I was still not dating anyone and wanted her Foster Wallace and caught up with his stories hadnʼt spent more than a few hours with her in between the encounters of Harry and Sally and cafes and sit and write and chat. badly. I thought her dating the Frenchman was a and essays, which were about trying to escape three years. itʼs not until theyʼre in their thirties that theyʼre I remember one day I was in the bathroom of travesty of what kind of relationship she needed from the prison of oneʼs own mind and about At the time, it was unclear if she would be ready for one another. my hotel room - we were all staying in a campus in order to become the hard-working and intense writing in a complex and furious and able to renew her French visa and it felt like that I canʼt envision my life as a thirty-something Earlier in the trip, while in The boys finished the drive to That night, Diana, Carl, and the Carl returned to his hostel for hotel - and the bathroom door was open and the and non-mediocre person I wanted her to long-winded way. situation - leaving France - made her open to adult. I often grope through each day like itʼs a Johannesburg, Carl spoke over Cape Town and Joe dropped Carl at Slovenians went to a dance club. his bags and saw Diana in the As Carl sat at the gas station, he Skype with his friend Kelly in a backpackers’ hostel on Long By the end of the night, as Carl courtyard smoking from her apple. hallway door was slightly open, too. become (and thought she wanted to become, So I wrote longer letters to K., to see if I had considering something with me, but if she could grim apocalyptic twilight and feel like I canʼt Spain. She told him she just broke Street. said no for the third time to a Her purse was open and he saw I was getting ready to go out and wanted to too). it in me and to push myself harder, and to get her visa renewed, then she would stay with look far into the future. But yet, most likely, I up with her Spanish boyfriend. started reading Waiting for the Barbar- Joe drove away to his home along soft-spoken and pleasant the lemon-yellow envelope inside. use my electric shaver and trim the top of my Thinking about K. and coming up with continue impressing her with how talented I the French boy. will someday be a middle-aged adult. Carl asked if she wanted to come SERENDIPITOUSLY He reached in, snatched it out, the sea and to work at his part-time Congolese prostitute who chest hair protruding from my shirt. prescriptions of how she should live her life and assumed myself to be. K. and I made all sorts of vague plans. To visit, since she too had never been job of building and placing owl and said, “You don’t deserve this!” approached him, Diana was I ran into the bathroom and was trimming this coming up with condemnations of what sheʼs I was served a great helping of romantic luck start a magazine together. To move to West I donʼt know what will become of K. and me or i a n s and thought about which bus to to Africa and because she had She grabbed the envelope, boxes. straddling a motorcycle and vague plans to do humanitarian removed several U.S. hundred- chest hair when I noticed someone passing by in done wrong was my most frequent and enjoyable at the end of my time in Argentina, but I didnʼt Africa. I was beholden to everything regarding when, if ever, we will write each other again or Carl found Cape Town to be the embracing a sweaty, sunburned work there in the future. dollar bills, then tossed the the hallway, which I could see in the reflection of hobby at the time. forget K. Writing to her made my Argentine K. and a future with her. see each other again. Iʼm sure we are both still take to Cape Town. A young South Afri- dialectical opposite of Johannes- Slovenian. Carl persuaded Kelly and she envelope and the letter onto the the mirror. And because I never saw the real K. and girlfriend S. jealous, so I wrote to K. in secret. If she ignored an email or came late to a clutching to an idealized sense of who we are burg. The air was breezy and the Carl slept only a couple of fitful said she would look up flight floor. That person was a snoop and looked into my didnʼt talk to her on the phone in those days, I Right before I left South America, I wrote K. Skype date, I became hysterical. right now. humidity was low. The downtown and heartbroken hours and awoke can man with poofy blond hair ap - information. Carl picked it up, put it in his was filled with all sorts of to find the Slovenian passed out on room and the bathroom and the bathroom mirror could just speculate and speculate and speculate by hand an exhaustive, so-what-did-this - I told everyone I could about the situation For a while I had mean thoughts about her. I As he heard her give this pocket, and went off with Joe for a cosmopolitan characters and you and made eye contact with me as I held the and play with my ideal hypothetical version of experience-all-mean-to-me letter that was 24 with K., and I received opposite advice from wanted to destroy her, to become so successful I hesitant yes, Carl’s head exploded the floor of the hallway, outside sleepless weekend of whiskey, proached Carl, said the word “Howzit?” could be out in public without A couple of days later, as Carl Carl asked Diana out for That afternoon, Diana had to go with dazzling sexual scenarios Diana’s door. chess, MDMA, good conversation, electric shaver to my chest. her the way a child plays with a doll. pages long. I hid it inside a book so S. wouldnʼt everybody who listened. Some told me to, “Drop stained every day of her future with envy and feeling threatened. breakfast. As they walked down see a friend and run an errand, so was walking out of the hostel to go involving him and his seductive Carl called Joe. Joe took Carl marijuana, homemade pies, That snoop in the hallway was K. As she see it until I could go to the post office. it like itʼs hot,” and forget about her. Others regret But with each month I think of her less Carl wandered through the to an Internet cafe, he saw a slim, the street, she greeted a variety of Carl returned to the hostel to take and asked if his notebook was a Moles- pen pal. out for coffee, consoled his cigarettes, and swimming in the ocean. walked away and I realized what happened I K. came back to Illinois and I drove to her K. and I also began talking on Skype and told me to buy a ticket for France and pack my and less and less. streets and walked off the pain of men, young and old, with hugs and a nap. short, and hypnotically beautiful heartbreak once again, and invited In the three years they were smiles. Carl spent a few more days in shouted an indignant and playful, “Hey!” and momʻs house downstate and then to Champaign chatting in Gmail. However, many of our conver- bags. If we become more modest with what we want not getting to see Kelly. girl with dark hair and dark eyes As he lay on his bed, he heard him for the weekend to his aunt’s friends, Carl had never once All of them were happy to see Cape Town, finished “Waiting for she laughed and scurried into her room and so we could spend a day together. It did not go sations descended to bickering and trying to I considered the transatlantic drop-in, but felt out of life, we would get along better and be kine. He and Carl had a conversation. First he went to The Company‘s walking toward the entrance. the pop song “Take on Me” playing been around Kelly when she was her and all of them avoided eye cottage in a small whale-watching the Barbarians,” and flew home to Gardens, then to the art museum, They approached the door at the in the hostel office. slammed the door. well. prove a point or be right about something. like it wouldnʼt have gone well. able to look past what annoys us about the other. single. contact with Carl. town along the sea. America. A cause worth fighting for and then he hung out at the very same time and she smiled and Carl felt called to action and got As I drove to K.ʼs hometown, I imagined The only news I felt K. needed to hear was the Even though Iʼve had good sexual relation The young man was named Joe. He was Diana explained over a cup of chic Vida e Caffe. asked where he was from. out of bed. He fixed his hair, * * * seeing her for the first time in a year and many interesting things I accomplished while * * * ships with other women, theyʼve all been brief Rooibos tea the improvised and Carl ate lunch at a Cape Malay She said her name was Diana grabbed his backpack, and amorous route by which she found embracing and hugging and airing out a lot of traveling through a more precarious part of the and I never felt such intense things for so long as a vagabond surfer who walked every - restaurant he heard of called marched down the street to a and she was born in Buenos Aires herself in Cape Town. As she As the trip came to an end, K., B., and I made stuffed up emotions. world than the safe and prosperous First World K. came home to visit a couple of days after what I felt for K. Miriam’s Kitchen. He ordered a Cuban café. but grew up in Colorado. She spoke, Carl felt like he was looking plans to meet later in the summer. B. lived in the When I was walked up to her momʼs house, places she traveled through. my birthday, which she forgot, despite sending At the moment, I look back at what spicy sandwich called a salomie that where barefoot and an aspiring writer wandered upstairs before Carl at some sort of Rocky Mountain He ordered a latte and wrote on was served on crisp and chewy roti suburbs of Chicago like I did, and K. lived her smartass little brother shouted at me from I know I cared for K. and there was something her a gift a couple weeks before for her birthday happened and cringe and think it brought out could say anything. Holly Golightly. lemon-yellow stationary a furious downstate in the cornfields. behind the screen door, “Stranger Danger! special between us, but it was like the closer I and despite laying on the path of our emails the worst in us, or me at least me, and writing bread. At the Internet cafe, he could and elaborate five-page love letter who obsessed over his failed romances For the fifteen minutes he ate I got to sit next to K. on the thirteen-hour Stranger Danger!” got to her the more entitled I felt to jerk her several obvious reminders my birthday was letters to her was a platform for my vanity and feel his heart pounding. This was to Diana. It contained a final his sandwich and drank his fate knocking at the door, he paragraph explaining how he felt plane ride home. At one point, B. got up and Then when we did see each other, it was in the around and make her feel shitty in order to feel approaching. I did so out of the fear she would my competitiveness, and that she was using Coca-Cola, Carl was at peace. with women. He had also just been in By the time he arrived to the supposed. finally ready for a solidly uncondi- walked by us on his way to the bathroom. If he kitchen, in the presence of her tiny and better about who I was and how I was living. forget and it would be embarrassing for the both these letters to betray the men she was dating He then went to a bookstore and Shell station, Carl still had not He hurried back to the hostel, tional romantic commitment and thought of me as a usurper, or thought K. was domineering mother. I was confused by our relationship. At that of us. at the moment. discovered and bought several heard back from Kelly about her styled his hair, and asked the front that Diana should leave Cape Town drifting away from him, he didnʼt show it. I felt stifled, K. probably felt stifled, and we point, two years out of college, I saw several Normally, I donʼt care about birthdays, but a But thatʼs the jaded view of things. How many the Transkei, eating psychedelic mush - volumes of Bitterkomix , w h i ch plans and started to worry. desk if they saw the girl. with him immediately. K. and I talked and talked and talked, and hugged like incurious cousins. friendships of mine wither and die. few weeks earlier she wrote in an email how sad people ever write letters by hand to each other, dumped bile onto all the stupidities While he and Joe drove to the She was in the patio out back, As he finished the letter and How was Carl going of South African society and did so somewhere in our conversation I suggested we As we walked to my car, I wanted to reach out I wondered why K. kept writing back to me it is when the person you most care about much less lengthy and honest and thoughtful rooms, fishing in the sea, and camping Cape, Kelly called Carl on his cell they said. sealed the lemon-yellow envelope, with an annihilating gusto Mark write letters to each other, as a way to keep in and squeeze her and say how good it was to see when so many others - other people who were ignores or neglects your birthday. letters, and do so despite being continents apart phone. She said her passport book Carl walked out there and saw Diana called. Carl invited her to Twain would be proud of. touch and as a reason to write, since both of us her. aspiring writers or intellectuals - stopped So K. visited my hometown. We talked for and never seeing each other in person? was filled and because of an arcane the cafe. She came and he gave her on the beach. He offered to drive Carl Diana sitting in a chair, her They got lunch at Miriam’s South African regulation, she to tell the story of all at the time had strong and vague aspirations to And sure, there wouldʼve been latent sexual- replying to my letters and emails. hours and hours and hours. We cooked Thereʼs something to that, and as I said, of the sandals off, one strap of her Kitchen and went to the art the letter. It matched her become public intellectuals someday. ity in such a gesture, but I would have meant it K. claimed she wrote me out of a sense of duty breakfast and went out for dinner. I gave her a dozens of correspondences I started with various wouldn’t be able to enter the sundress dangling down her museum. At an Internet café, Diana turquoise sundress. to Cape Town, as he was headed back country. shoulder, smoking marijuana from asked Carl to leave a flirtatious She read the first page, and was K. and I exchanged several letters that more out of happy friendship and less out of for friendship, but that reason stunk to me as bike tour of my suburb. We played chess and I males and females, K. is the only person who Carl felt devastated. His a tiny green apple. comment on her Facebook wall so as charmed, and grateful, and said that happened, and summer, and met up once, along with B., at the thirsty desire. over-idealistic and like a gloss of what she really showed her all the new Chris Ware comics I kept writing back to me, and writing back with there anyway. Carl accepted the offer fantasies turned to ash and floated He sat next to her and they to make her ex-boyfriend - who was a she never received such a long and Pitchfork music festival in Chicago. But I couldnʼt. I couldnʼt reach out, couldnʼt felt. bought that summer. I made us watch on a passion and persistence. wealthy Lebanese banker living in to the ground. talked. Diana was soon happily thoughtful letter before. That fall semester, K., B., and I continued squeeze, couldnʼt unclose myself to tell her what She didnʼt seem loyal to any of her other laptop When Harry Met Sally... as we lay on a Though Iʼm reluctant to admit it because Iʼm Cape Town - jealous. He explained everything to Joe going on about Woody Allen, She then folded it up without spending time with each other. Sometimes I was a beautiful friend she was. friends, and there were male friends of mine who bed and drank red wine. still resentful, I know I was lucky and blessed to and felt the onset of a momentum that Carl said he would do it, but for over a cappuccino. P l a t o , The Wild One , M i c h e l reading the rest, put it back into its the price of a kiss. Diana agreed and who would be willing with both of them, sometimes just with B. or K. were loyal and sacrificing but just did not have it After we finished the movie, I asked K. what meet K. and what we did with all those letters “Shame, man. Well there’s no Foucault, Some Like It Hot , and envelope, and asked Carl to come she kissed him, with open lips, for K. and I went for walks, had picnics on the We got dinner in Champaign and I became in them to keep up a written correspondence. was going to happen to us. She said she didnʼt was special and rare and worth remembering. would pull him through his final week in point in listening for fate knocking other sundry and sophisticated hang out with a trio of Slovenian one, two, three, four, five seconds. Quad, and she came over for lunch at my frat curt and arrogant, at one point going on and on know. And, perhaps, contrary to what I feel right at the door if you’re going to be motorcyclists she befriended the intellectual topics. Carl forgot about every one of Your favorite way to relax house. She was also my date for the Semi-Formal about Moby -Dick, which I just read and which I * * * She did say she got a teaching job in France now, our four years of writing were only the first too depressed to get out of bed,” Carl felt his heart beating even the previous disappointments of day before at the hostel. to listen? South Africa. dance, during which we got drunk and had a lot chastised K. for not having read despite being an for the upcoming school year and her visa chapter in something longer and greater and Joe said. harder. his life thus far. Carl agreed, warily. SO of fun and after which she vomited both on the English major. I came home from South America in December renewed. more epically romantic. 1 2 3 4 5

Suggestions 8.

MEDITATION ON WHEELS

Quit Your Day Job. “So little adapted is the atmosphere own. Until you get one, you’ll find your new resolution to

of a Custom-House to the delicate harvest of fancy and

write a lot harder to take seriously.

sensibility, that, had I remained there through ten Presi- “Your writing room doesn’t have to sport a Playboy Phi-

dencies yet to come, I doubt whether the tale of The Scar- losophy decor, and you don’t need an Early American

A S u b u r b a n

let Letter would ever have been brought before the public desk in which to house your writing implements. I wrote

eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not my first two published novels, Carrie and ’Salem’s Lot, in

reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with the laundry room of a doublewide trailer, pounding away

B i k e T o u r which I did my best to people it. The characters of the nar- on my wife’s portable Olivetti typewriter and balancing a

rative would not be warmed and rendered malleable, by child’s desk on my thighs; John Cheever reputedly wrote

elcome to the suburbs Several famous institutions are here,

any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. They in the basement of his Park Avenue apartment building, and welcome to my such as Wheaton College, the Theosophi-

would take neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness near the furnace. The space can be humble (probably GENEVA RD. hometown, Wheaton. cal Society in America, and Chicago Golf

of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses, should be, as I think I have already suggested), and it PUBLIC Population 53,000. 25 Club. 2 HIGH W and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing SCHOOL miles due west of down- The town has also been home to well- GLEN ELLYN

contemptuous defiance. ‘What have you to do with us?’ to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world town Chicago. known men like: Elbert H. Gary, C.B. Mac-

that expression seemed to say. ‘The little power you might and yourself that you mean business; you have made a Farmers from Connecticut incorpo- donald, Edwin Hubble, Red Grange, COUNTY WINFIELD HOSPITAL rated the town in the 1850s, although Robert McCormick, Grote Reber, Billy have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! serious committment to write and intend to walk the walk Native Americans lived here thousands Graham, Bob Woodward, and the Belushi You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, as well as talk the talk.” (S. King) of years before then. brothers. 1 then, and earn your wages!’ In short, the almost torpid TRAIN I was born in a hospital one suburb Wheaton is known for being religious - STATION 3 creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and Seek the Attention of Your Elders. “I was living in New COUNTY over on July 28th, 1986. My parents then there’s a rumor it has the most churches COURTHOUSE

not without fair occasion.” (N. Hawthorne) Orleans, doing whatever kind of work was necessary to TRAIN hurried me to Wheaton where I spent the per capita in the world. It’s also known for STATION TRAIN 4 first approximately 6,500 days of my life being affluent and predominantly white earn a little money now and then. I met Sherwood Ander- STATION

until I left for college downstate at the and Republican. Don’t Lose Heart. “And one gathers from this enormous son. We would walk about the city in the afternoon and

University of Illinois. This bike tour will take several hours.

modern literature of confession and self-analysis that to talk to people. In the evenings we would meet again and

write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodi- sit over a bottle or two while he talked and I listened. In

ntil this past year, I was The size of many homes in Wheaton santly, and frantically follow the law of your another from afar with rifles of righteous- RT. 38 oblivious to the history of could be described as grotesquely ostenta- own being, and to live that law with an ness, but they usually leave each other alone

gious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it the forenoon I would never see him. He was secluded, Wheaton. I could not have tious. They’re large enough to contain a exclamation point through every minor and and let you do what you want to in your WHEATON told you a coherent, passion- museum, a school, or an orphanage. major decision, through your greetings on house or yard or garage, which has been the

U ate, or interesting story about And yet most of them are subdivision the street, the meals you eat, the place where case for me. will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Gener- working. The next day we would repeat. I decided that if how this place came to be or why it is the tract houses, built close together in winding you sleep, the love you seek, the things you I got a tremendous amount of work done

way it is. rows from a handful of similar patterns. As make. while living in the peace and quiet of this

ally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; And until this past year, I could not have such, these houses are excessive, but predict- I’ve seen sparks of spirit in Wheaton, but town. I had a sheltered little ledge from that was the life of a writer, then becoming a writer was

cared less. able, extravagant, but conservative. those were only during high school sporting which to dive deeply into things, and

I had a dim and dismissive view of the It’s as if the spirit of Wheaton requires events; and they, like the houses of Whea- despite feeling lonely, out of place, and

people will interrupt; money must be made; health will the thing for me. So I began to write my first book. At once place and felt like most people in Wheaton you to show off, thereby proving you have ton, were rituals of predictable excess and looked upon supiciously here, I could

existed so as to hide from the fact they were the wealth with which to show off, but to do conservative extravagance. console myself with books, movies, and

alive, so as to forget they had the capacity so in a way that copies how everyone else * * * afternoon and late-night bike rides through break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties I found that writing was fun. I even forgot that I hadn't

to feel strongly or imagine beautiful things shows off, thereby proving you’re not too I finally studied the history of this town the leafy streets and the lush forest

or be graceful and daring. I felt like they rebellious or independent or artistic. a year ago, after having graduated college preserves. 5 and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious seen Mr. Anderson for three weeks until he walked in my measured out their lives with cans of Diet I suppose another way to describe the and lived abroad, and while staying at my If Wheaton is just a small, insignificant

Coke. ethos of Wheaton is: work hard, make a lot parents’ house, working as a caddie, and dot in your consciousness right now, I hope

I realize that most adults in Wheaton are of money, and don’t be weird. writing in my spare time. that this bike tour will slowly extricate

indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and door, the first time he ever came to see me, and said, parents, and that as a parent your children I happily discovered there were several threads from that dot, threads that will * * *

are the heart of your existence, and it’s an I appreciate the idea of working hard, intense and brilliant and occasionally weird bifurcate endlessly into other threads,

instinct to build a solid and secure chest in and I can see how my compulsive hardwork- people who lived here. They became indus- threads that will spread through all the novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not ‘What's wrong? Are you mad at me?’ I told him I was writ-

which to protect that heart. ing tendencies are a copy of my parents’. trialists and scientists, evangelists and regions of your mind until Wheaton

But the majority of homes in Wheaton But I like being weird, and I especially like artists. Some of them fled for the East or becomes not just one place in the world or

care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether ing a book. He said, ‘My God,’ and walked out. When I fin- are so lavish and so endlessly remodeled being around other weirdos who compul- the West Coasts, but others stayed and one suburb of Chicago, but a page with

that you can’t help but think it’s got little to sively work hard. planted private little worlds for themselves endless paragraphs, a pond with unfathom-

do with taking good care of the kids and But when I say ‘weird,’ I don’t really within the boundaries of the town. able depth, a highway with infinite

Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it ished the book—it was Soldier's Pay—I met Mrs. Ander- more to do with discharging the neuroses of mean being deviant or depraved, I mean detours. * * * N

the parents. being free spirited - to insistently, inces- People in Wheaton may snipe one So let’s get started.

6 will not pay for what it does not want. And so the writer, son on the street. She asked how the book was going, 7

Keats, Flaubert, Carlyle, suffers, especially in the cre- THE THEOSOPHICAL NORTH WHEATON WHEATON CEMETERY / WWSHS /CANTIGNY / HERRICK LAKE / SOUTH and I said I'd finished it. She said, ‘Sherwood says that he 1 WHEATON COLLEGE 2 3 4 DOWNTOWN WHEATON 5 6 7 PUBLIC SOCIETY RESIDENCES CHICAGO GOLF CLUB B L A C K W E L L WHEATON RESIDENCES SOURCES RT. 56 HIGH

An easy way to get to Wheaton is As we ride northwest from the We’ll now ride southwest, toward Heading east into downtown Riding south from downtown We now have to sneak through a Now it’s time to finish the tour Barnum, Art. “Ex-parishoner convicted in Wheaton church fire.”

SCHOOL to take a train from Chicago. campus, you’ll notice that the streets downtown Wheaton. Along the way Wheaton, it’s a good time to stop for Wheaton, we’ll come to the Wheaton backyard and get onto the Illinois and close the circle, arriving back Chicago Tribune. 7 Nov. 2003. Web. 26 Sept. 2011.

Bright, Adam. “Here, Now.” The Point. Spring 2009. Web. 28 Sept. Wheaton is on the Union are on a rectangular grid - this part of we’ll pass many large and stately lunch or a snack. Cemetery. Prairie Path (which is so straight and where we began at the train station. ative years of youth, every form of distraction and dis- will make a trade with you. If he doesn't have to read your 2011.

The downtown is recovering from Pacific-West line, which passes town predates modern subdivisions homes. Prominent here is the opulent flat here because it was built over a We’ll ride east along the Prairie Call, Keith. Wheaton. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2006. Print.

through several western suburbs and their curling inbent geography. We’ll stop at one large home in an economic malaise caused by the mausoleum of Elbert H. Gary, a railroad) and head southwest. Path until we reach the high school,

Carlson, William. The Carlson Family of Wheaton, Illinois. Wheaton: relocation of the courthouse and the including Oak Park (birthplace of We’ll go west until we reach Main particular, located at 416 Ellis lawyer from Wheaton who J.P. As we ride, we’ll see Wheaton- then cross into the Herrick Lake 2000. Print. Ernest Hemingway, site of Frank St., which will take us to the Avenue. arrival of corporate shopping centers Morgan appointed as the original Warrenville South High School, Forest Preserve. Chandler, Raymond. The High Window. New York: Vintage, 1988. couragement. A curse, a cry of agony, rises from those ... to other parts of Wheaton and Print. manuscript he will tell his publisher to accept it.’ I said, Lloyd Wright’s studio, and current northern limit of Wheaton. This house, which is now CEO of U.S. Steel - the world’s first where I went to school. We’ll follow the trails, passing neighboring suburbs. Chicago Golf Club, 1892-1992. Wheaton: Chicago Golf Club, 1991. home of cartoonist Chris Ware). On the west side of Main St. will sub-divided into apartments, was billion-dollar corporation. We’ll cut through a park and go underneath a highway and through Print. Nevertheless, many nice Getting off at the College Avenue be the archway entrance to the once a twenty-room, four-story, Just past the cemetery is the along a lane that passes in between an equestrian center, and then wind Cropper, William H. Great Physicists. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. restaurants and cafes can be found station is the best place to begin our national headquarters of the single-family home built on a driveway to Chicago Golf Club, one St. James Farm and Cantigny, two down a hill in the Danada Forest Print. here today. There are no bars, tour. Theosophical Society, the motto of 3.5-acre lot. of the most elite and venerated clubs estates that once belonged to the Preserve. “Fact Sheet.” bobwoodward.com. Bob Woodward. n.d. Web. 2 Oct. books of analysis and confession. ‘Mighty poets in their 2011. ‘Done,’ and that's how I became a writer.” (W. Faulkner) however. (Wheaton was a dry town Heading west, we’ll see the which is, “There is no religion higher It can be difficult to locate today in the world and home to the first McCormick family. We’ll then carefully make our way until the 1980s.) Graham, Billy. Just As I Am. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997.

Wheaton College campus rising up than truth.” because it’s in the middle of the 18-hole golf course in America. Cantigny, on the north side of the through a series of shopping centers - Print.

I recommend Shane’s Deli, at the

on a grassy hill. You’ll notice the The public portion of the main block, away from the street, but the We’ll take a left in-between the road, now contains a golf course, the drivers here are in a corner of Hale and Wesley, or the Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. Print. WARRENVILLE many inscriptions marking the building contains meeting rooms, a house is unmistakable because of its Club and the cemetery and ride gardens, a war museum, and the consumption-induced fog and have a new Austin Barbeque, at the corner school, “For Christ and His meditation space, a unisex height and girth. down Hawthorne Lane - a private, mansion/museum of the late Col. hard time seeing pedestrians and Hitchens, Christopher. “Bob Woodward: Stenographer to the misery dead’— that is the burden of their song. if any-

of Front and Wheaton. Stars.” Salon. 1 Jul. 1996. Web. 1 Oct. 2011. Kingdom.” bathroom, and a library specializing It was designed by Daniel crumbling road that runs parallel to Robert McCormick, former bicyclists. After lunch, I suggest a visit to the Hudson, Brian. “Gunman ID’d in Wheaton standoff.” Wheaton

At the foot of the hill is the Billy mostly in Eastern religion, Burnham, mastermind of the 1893 the golf course and brings to mind publisher of the Chicago Tribune. Not far north of the swimming Leader 8 Jul. 2010. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. improbably slim Popcorn Shop, at

Graham Center, the mission of which theosophy, and New Age spirituality. World’s Fair and visionary of the 1/4 the opening scene of The Sound and We’ll then turn into the back pool will be President St., which goes 111 W. Front St., where you can “J.W. Gates Dead; Ill for Months in Paris.” New York Times 9 Aug. 1911. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. is to, “Accelerate Global The library also contains the tiara “Burnham Plan” to rebuild Chicago The Fury. entrance of Blackwell Forest Preserve all the way to the train tracks and the buy scrumptious bagfuls of candy and thing comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, Get Exercise. “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Kimberly, James. “Man shoots self to death after holding hostages Evangelism.” It contains a museum of “HPB” (a.k.a. Madame Blavatsky), after its Great Fire of 1871. We’ll see numerous old and and ride along the trails toward Mt. College Avenue station where we popcorn. in Wheaton bank, police say.” Chicago Tribune 6 Sept. 2008. Web.

about the history of evangelism in co-founder of the Society. Noah Gary, descendent of one of endangered mansions, some of which Hoy (aka Mt. Trashmore) - a began. 26 Sept. 2011. If you need a quick and lively

America and the life of Billy Graham. Next to the main building is the Wheaton’s town fathers, hired haircut, the Wheaton Barber Shop at Jarvis Hunt designed around the reclaimed garbage dump with a peak Along President St. are several Lynch, David. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

Notable stops on campus are: the Quest Bookshop, which sells newer Burnham for the project near the 216 W. Front St. can be of help. time of the World’s Fair as summer 836 feet above sea level. subdivisions, one of which was where Maas, David E. and Charles W. Weber, eds. Dupage Discovery, Beamer Center, home of Sam’s Cafe; editions of the books in the library, as turn of the century, but went Walking around downtown cottages for the golfers. Looking east from Mt. Hoy, you’ll I grew up and went to elementary and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it 1776-1976: A Bicentennial View. Dupage County Bicentennial Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk Commission, 1976. Print. the Science Center, which contains well as a variety of mystical trinkets. bankrupt during construction. Wheaton, you will find several parks, Turning right at the end of the see on the horizon the skyscrapers of school.

the fossils of a woolly mammoth and On the grounds of the Society are A vivid account of growing up in lane, we’ll pass through the grounds Chicago (on a clear day); looking west It’s hard to explain in words how Macdonald, Charles Blair. Scotland’s Gift - Golf. 1928. The Classics countless churches, the Wheaton of Golf, 1985. Print. a Foucault pendulum, and the Wade a stone labyrinth, guest cottages, and the house can be found in a local Public Library, an Art Deco Post of the Loretto Convent, which was you’ll see the hyperbolic twin towers to navigate these streets without

Moore, Jean. From Tower to Tower. Wheaton: Gary-Wheaton Bank, Center, where you can see C.S. Lewis’ a pond. Just west of the property is memoir entitled, Through the Years, Office, the old courthouse building, built by a member of Chicago Golf of the Fermi National Accelerator becoming terminally lost, but I will 1974. Print.

was conceived.” (V. Woolf) wardrobe and J.R.R. Tolkien’s desk. Wheaton North High School. by Helen Burt Potteiger. and the DuPage Historical Society. for his daughter. Laboratory, in nearby Batavia. try. away from every illness. I have walked myself into my Moore, Jean and Richard Crabb. Young People’s Story of DuPage County. Dundee: Crossroads Communications, 1981. Print.

Moshier, S. O., Maas, D. E., and Greenberg, J. K. "From the

Beginning: Faith and Geology at Evangelical Wheaton College."

Geology and Religion: Historical Views of an Intense Relationship

between Harmony and Hostility.Ed. Martina Kobel-Ebert. London:

The Geological Society, Special Publications, 2009. 299-314. Print.

best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale.

et me say a few more things and newspaper as a table cloth, make out the staple he Theosophical Society is on the oil? As a palliative for the desperate ne of my stronger prejudices and I won the title of Best Woman Singer in owntown Wheaton was a rare Civil War veterans - rounded themselves up and f Wheaton is famous for being a place all laws, [but nevertheless] puts a premium on s we pass my high school, it’s a good we’re all just boats floating through an endless ow we’ll ride through the part of Wheaton.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print. warm-up our mental touring muscles articles of his table. northern boundary of Wheaton and suburbanites who want their lives to be against suburbia is that it seems [the] 1936 Chicagoland Music Festival.” destination for me when I was rode their horses and wagons on a late-night where a prolific man of God like Billy Sunday golf by having its most important time to think about the lives some dark night, the more stars you’ve got in your sky, town I know best - the subdivision I have a few buddies in Wheaton at the L before I talk about Wheaton College. “…Every once in a few weeks [students] T as such was even farther from my painless? O like a place where ambition goes to Helen sang “The Bird of the Wilderness” in D young. I came here for soft chew raid to take the records. I Graham can get his start, then it matches played on that day.” A of its alumni. (The high school the better you can locate and navigate and guide N where I grew up, went to elementary moment, but we met only recently and I don’t I’ll begin with a quote: receive a box, from home, containing a lot of childhood home than Wheaton die and everybody gives up on front of 80,000 people at Soldier Field in Bazooka from the Popcorn Shop, Someone in Naperville was on the side of should also be known as a place where Members of the Club at the turn of the wasn’t always located where it is yourself through the seasons of your existence. school, got in trouble for the first know them particularly well. “We want to serve history only to the extent pies of various kinds and flavors; also a large College and further on the periphery of my There’s an Almodovar film called The Flower themselves and life downshifts into a puttering downtown Chicago. She writes: OverPower cards from the card shop, and Wheaton and left a window of the courthouse a prolific man of money can get his start. century included prominent social figures like: now nor called by its current name of The people who don’t have heroes are in a time, had my first romantic experiences, and Beyond them are maybe a hundred or two that history serves life: for it is possible to value amount of cakes, loaves, fruit, and twisted mind. of My Secret, about a writer in Madrid who is and thoughtless gear. “Looking back over the years, the details of Goosebumps books from the library, but when I unlocked. I’m referring to Elbert Gary and John Gates, Robert Todd Lincoln (son of Abraham), Marshall Wheaton-Warrenville South. It used to be in fog and follow each other’s boats and don’t where my best friends from childhood lived. hundred people I’ve casually interacted with the study of history to such a degree that life cakes, commonly called nut-cakes; likewise a All I heard about the Society growing up was betrayed repeatedly by her husband and who This opinion was and is convenient for my that memorable experience are as clear as went out to eat or shop with my family it was The Wheatonites got in and loaded up the who were born on neighboring farms just west Field, George Pullman, Potter Palmer Jr., Finley downtown Wheaton, and even then it changed know where to go. And some people just have These neighborhoods were built within the here or there in Wheaton - my old barber, a O’Connor, Anahad. “Grote Reber, 90; Built First Radio Telescope becomes stunted and degenerate.” nice piece of dried beef, a cheese, a nicely that a dead body had been found in a hedge has to accept that she must let their current form of living, which is rootless and though the event happened yesterday. Winning always to a corporate shopping center. records but the Napervilleians - who were of Wheaton in the mid-1800s. The men were Peter Dunne, and the McCormick family. buildings and its name a couple of times. one big, blinding star in their skies - this is past few decades and consist of rows of tract couple of baristas, caddies, golf pros, parents of This is from an essay by Nietzsche called baked and stuffed chicken or two; while all the maze on its property, as if it was a ritualized relationship die and get on with her life. restless and often with no more possessions the contest in one sense was a beginning. I have discovered, however, that the waiting for such a raid - rang the church bells spiritual opposites - Gary did well in school, One of the original caddies at Chicago Golf Regardless, the school insists on its continuity Jesus Christ for a lot of people, I think - but you houses that wind around retention ponds and friends, neighbors, etc. ... “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for vacant crevices in the box are filled with some cult murder of some sort. In one scene, she goes back to her tiny ready to my hands than what I can fit into a Publicity and honor opened many doors in the downtown has at times been a stage for drama, and chased after the Wheaton gang. was sober, moral, and an elected leader, while recalled a nice moment while looping for Mr. with those past incarnations.) can’t triangulate yourself with just one star and playgrounds. For a newcomer, it’s a suburban And then there’s a few thousand more for Astronomy.” New York Times 25 Dec. 2002. Web. 23 Sept. 2011. ...

HERE Life.” fine apples, which grew on trees at home, on Once I got my driver’s license in high hometown in the Spanish countryside in order backpack. musical world, some of which I was not mature both of the creative sort and the destructive As they fled, the Wheaton men dropped a Gates was a poor student, wild, daring, and a Lincoln: All of the alumni I’ll talk about were it’ll make you go in circles. desert with nothing to see or do, but for me, townspeople whose faces I would recognize but With regards to the appetite for history, in Father’s own orchard.” school, I began driving past the Society more to grieve. However, after traveling abroad and living in enough to handle.” sort. And the downtown has been a stage for set of record books and didn’t stop to pick distrusted gambler. “...he put his arm around my shoulder, as we enshrined in our high school and I was vaguely I explained these thoughts to Kelly and then it’s an oasis of feelings and memories and who I’ve never spoken to. what kind of shape is the typical suburbanite? I couldn’t help but wonder if it’s a problem frequently and wondered what was going on Her mother says to her: different towns and cities, it’s harder for me to Helen began singing on several radio quiet domestic happiness, too, which is the first them up. The Napervilleians recovered them The two of them together were as devoted to walked down a fairway one day, and asked me aware of them as a student, but only as asked her for the tenth or the twentieth time desires and ideas. So you can envision it like circles of Is he flabby and slow and wheezing, from a diet that a place proudly proclaiming itself as “For inside. On weekends there was a colorful “When a woman loses her husband, because have such a simple opinion of suburbia. programs broadcast from Chicago and at public thing I’ll talk about. and deposited them in Chicago as evidence for the future of capitalism as Billy Graham was to about my home and family and what plans I had background details or atmospheric static. why we couldn’t stop being pen pals living at a These streets are usually quite empty, with intimacy: of sugary, mass-produced, pride history? Is he Christ and His Kingdom” sells cupcakes and ice banner on the front lawn saying “Open House! he dies or he goes with another woman, she I know many people who shifted their drive events in the city and the suburbs. their court case against Wheaton and the the Second Coming of Christ. for the future. That was a real thrill for a distance from each other and have an intimate only a few people outdoors mowing their lawns – Visitors Welcome” or something like that. in life down to an apathetic neutral while yet I recently discovered at the Wheaton Public We can start with Edwin Hubble, a or walking their dogs or going for a run. ? Potteiger, Helen Burt. Through the Years. Sun City, AZ. Print. anemic and gaunt and sallow-eyed, from a diet cream cones and complex coffee concoctions. must return to her hometown. Go to the She sang on a program called “Sweethearts referendum. sixteen-year-old.” sexual relationship instead? ? of bitter, liberal-baked, guilt history? I suppose Christianity for me evokes a spare The main building is set back from the road church, enjoy the fine weather with her living within exciting and glamorous cities, in of the Air” with an old high school classmate Library another local autobiography, this one Then all of Chicago burned down in its In the early 1890s, Elbert Gary was the Chick Evans, the legendary amateur golfer legendary astronomer like Grote Reber, but one She said no, that it wasn’t fun to spend time At the end of the summer, I took my friend ? 1. Myself, family, lovers 2. Fr iends What shape was I in as a kid here in and ascetic diet of bread and cheese and water and reached by a long driveway. At the foot of neighbors, pray with them, even if she's an America and abroad. for thirteen weeks, beginning in February of entitled The Carlson Family of Wheaton, Illinois, Great Fire of 1871, along with the legal records mayor of Wheaton, a county judge for DuPage, and patron saint of the Evans Scholarship was who hastily left Wheaton in order to become with me. I cried. She apologized, gave me a Alec on a second test-run of this bike tour. He 3. Acquaintances

Wheaton? and wine, but that’s me, and I certainly enjoy the driveway is a gateway arch topped with two atheist. Otherwise she'll get lost, like a cow Conversely, I’ve come across people who are 1937. She was making a good salary of $38.50 by William “Willie” Carlson. and Naperville’s case against Wheaton. an officer in the Methodist church his parents also a regular: the person he wanted to become. hug, and we got back on our bikes. I continued had just moved to Chicago for law school. ? 4. Strangers 5. The rest the $2.00 lattes I can buy at the Beamer Center. of the five Platonic solids as well as the emblem without her bell.” in the country or in small towns and yet are per week, but then the contract was not The Carlsons owned a painting business in From Tower to Tower says: founded, president and founder of the “A familiar - and popular - figure around Hubble was born in 1889 in Missouri and giving the tour, sniffling for a while afterwards. While we rode through Wheaton he kept ? Establish a Base. “You can read anywhere, almost, but I have a hazy memory of being taken by my On the subject of becoming a Christian and and motto of the Society: Is it possible that even if you don’t living intensely and thoughtfully and creatively. renewed and Helen decided to return full-time Wheaton and now own a paint and art supply “Thus, a visitor to the County Recorder’s Gary-Wheaton Bank, and a successful corporate Chicago Golf in those days was Chick Evans, moved to Wheaton when he was ten years old. I then thought of another idea I had once, asking, “Where is everybody? It’s so quiet.” ? that one cannot walk away from it.” (S. Kierkegaard) parents to the Wheaton College campus to look preferences for food, Billy Graham, in his rationally and empirically believe that praying I also believed it was easier here to avoid to the suburbs and to the side of her husband store (where I’ve shopped many times), a office in this year of 1974 will find a notation lawyer. who had first come to the members’ notice as He was tall and talented at sports but a lazy that the way people desire each other and get It was a hot Sunday in July and I said, well, Potteiger, Helen Burt. Life and Times of Henry and Edith. Sun City, ? at the rotating glass display of its woolly autobiography Just As I Am, described an or burning sage or chanting or lighting candles one’s neighbors and to lock oneself into a Arnie who was working at an Armor hardware store, and a wallpaper store, among that books numbered 15-20 are lost. Among By 1901, Gary was living in New York City the caddie for Miss Johnnie Carpenter in 1903. student. into each other’s lives works like nuclear forces there’s TV, there’s air conditioning, and there’s ? mammoth fossil “Perry.” incident during his first summer after high have any effect on yourself or on the real lonely shelter of privacy, but I discovered it’s meatpacking plant. other stores in other towns. the deeds which are recorded in those lost and about to become CEO of the newly-formed He became her regular caddie during that According to Great Physicists, at Hubble’s - there’s a curious and friendly long-range other things going on indoors, in air ? That mastodon was discovered one town school when he was a traveling brush salesman material world, that you can nevertheless still just as easy to do that in a large city or in a rural About her brief singing career, Helen writes: The Carlson brothers are known for the books are those of Warren and Jesse Wheaton.” U.S. Steel conglomerate - the world’s first period to such an extent that they became high school graduation ceremony, the school magnetism that brings you together from afar, conditioning, in other suburbs. Circle 1 is the most profound and provokes AZ: 1985. Print. over, in Glen Ellyn, on the property of a in South Carolina: believe in them in some other sense, and that town as it is in a moderate-sized suburb. “I tried my wings and found that everyday complex floats they construct for the 4th of July billion-dollar corporation. J.P. Morgan known as ‘Johnnie and Chick.’ superintendent went up to him and said: but then once you get close there’s a defensive I get the feeling, many times, that these the most feeling and concern; Circle 2 and 3 Federal District Court judge in 1963, when a “Staying in boardinghouses, where a room they can still genuinely work and make a As such, my theories on suburban existence programs and preparations involved hard work parade each year in downtown Wheaton. I said that downtown Wheaton has also been handpicked him for the position. “‘That Christmas,’ Chick recalled, ‘Miss “‘Edwin Hubble, I have watched you for four and hostile repulsion barrier that pushes you neighborhoods are like cemeteries and the less so; Circle 4 makes me feel only “large ‘ige-ace’ bone” was accidentally dug up. and meals cost $1 a day, we ate at the same table difference? are in disarray, and all I can do at the moment without glamour. The experience satisfied my Willie Carlson’s memoirs are more a stage for drama of the creative sort. Grote Gary served as CEO of U.S. Steel until he Carpenter gave me a pearl-handled knife, years and I have never seen you study for more apart, and the two forces balance each other houses like mausoleums. It is unsettlingly indifference; and Circle 5 is so abstract as to Geologists from Wheaton College identified with a lot of coarse-talking, rough-living Slavoj Zizek frequently tells an anecdote is point to concrete examples and try to need to try a musical career before marriage. I fragmented than those of Helen Burt. However Reber is a luminous example of this. died in 1927, receiving a front page obituary in engraved, “Chick, Christmas, 1903.” With that than ten minutes.’ Then, after a dramatic and determine how intimate you can become. quiet and abandoned and lifeless in these arouse no emotions in me. the fossils as proboscidean and hurried to Glen traveling salesmen. I’m afraid some of their about the physicist Niels Bohr and the idea of extract the lessons that are mixed into their knew that church and club programs would fit he wrote his (dictated them to a woman) when According to his New York Times obituar y, The New York Times. knife I carved my initials over all the wooden pause, he smiled and said, ‘Here is a All that also made me think of a line from a streets much of the time. What I find curious and perhaps disturbing

Ellyn, along with people from the Field uncouth attitudes rubbed off on me. One day simultaneously believing and not believing in details. into a home life. I was often asked to sing at he was 83 years old, only a year or so before Reber: But it was only because of John Gates that portions of the golf courses around Chicago. scholarship to the University of Chicago.’” Raymond Chandler novel: “From 30 feet away But for me, within the private theater of my is that - in my hometown, a not-that-large Reber, Grote. “A Play Entitled the Beginning of Radio Astronomy.” Museum in Chicago, to excavate. 115 bones in Lancaster, the boardinghouse biscuits were My friend Andy and I drove past the Society the powers of the extra-physical world. He weddings and funerals. Music could be an dying. “built the first substantial radio telescope Gary abandoned Wheaton and got involved Soon, however, that loved knife went the way of After finishing at U of C, Hubble won a she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away mind, when I walk around or ride my bike it’s suburb - the great majority of people in this were discovered and a Wheaton professor gave so hard we could barely bite into them. I got one night – this is when we were juniors in high writes in the London Review of Books: I was at the Wheaton Public Library about a avocation. There were never any regrets about Carlson was born to Swedish immigrants in dedicated to astronomy and put it in his with Morgan and New York City. most of my other valuables - I lost it. Years Rhodes scholarship and sailed to England. she looked like something made up to be seen as if there’s a never-ending festival of outdoor town are on the margins of my Fifth Circle. Above left: an old photo of Blanchard Hall. Above right: President Edman baptizing updates through a megaphone to the crowds of upset and fast-pitched a biscuit right back school – and felt like investigating. Above: The gateway arch to the Theosophical Society. Below: Founders of the Society, “Surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the year ago when I discovered in the Genealogy Left: The Burnham/Burt house. Right: Helen Burt Potteiger ... in high school, the decision.” Wheaton, in 1915 (the same year as Helen Above: Employees of Carlson’s painting company, in 1922. Below left: Grote Reber’s backyard in Wheaton, Ill... (All that can be said of Gates with regards to Above: An old photo of Elbert H. Gary’s mauseoleum at the Wheaton Cemetery. later, as Mrs. Hall, she, returning from abroad He wrote in a letter to his mother: Above left: The 1 Dayuma, a Waodani Indian from Equador, in 1956. Below: The “Perry” mastodon. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (“HPB”) and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. college, and as a self-proclaimed “schoolmarm.” Below: Robert Todd Lincoln, teeing off at Chicago Golf Club. Below left: John Belushi’s 1965 yearbook photo. Right: The “Ice Man” Red Grange. desires? Below : Lincoln Elementary School, where I learned to read and write. idling gawkers. through the kitchen door at the cook. We drove into the parking lot behind the door of Bohr’s country house, a visiting section a plain-looking volume called Through Burt). He graduated high school during the 32’ backyard radio telescope, in 1938. Below right: A fire at the DuPage County “Mr. Reber was an engineering student in Wheaton is that he grew up a few miles from where she had served as a nurse during the “Work, to be pleasant, must be toward some and spectral young actors replaying the same And yet, and yet...they too, each one of The skeleton was donated to Wheaton “Justice had its day, though. At one house main building. Andy friend parked his car and scientist said he didn’t believe that horseshoes the Years by Helen Burt Potteiger. Helen and Arnie had two children, a girl Depression, then took three “hobo trips” across Courthouse after a lightning strike, in 1988. 1931 when Karl Jansky of Bell Telephone the town and did business with Gary, who was world war, brought me another.” great end; an end so great that dreams of it, Not far from the high school are St. James scenes over and over again. them, has growing in his or her head a lush 93-106. Web. 23 Sept. 2011. Civilization College and dated with radiocarbon to be about where I stopped to sell, I rang and rang the bell. we sat and waited. The windows were all dark. kept evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr The book is an undated memoir written by and a boy. Their daughter, Polly, grew up to the country, catching rides illegally on freight Laboratories, using a large antenna system, most certainly a Wheaton man. However, Many national tournaments were held at anticipation of it overcomes all aversion to Farm and Cantigny. They are two estates that orchard of memories like I do, and their 11,000 years old. The lady did not come to the door, but she did We got out and creeped toward the building. answered: ‘Neither do I; I have it there because Helen Burt while she was living in a retirement become a nurse, and their son, Jon, sailed for trains, about which he writes: made his famous discovery of cosmic radio Gates’ life is so interesting that I am adopting Chicago Golf in its early days. The first labour [note the British spelling]. So until one once belonged to the McCormick family. There by that pond is where I was yelled at by orchards also have ten million fragrant details. Photo Credits: from Wheaton, by Keith Call, via the Wheaton College Archives and Photo Credits: from Wheaton, by Keith Call, Photo Credits: from Wheaton, by Keith Call, via the Wheaton College Archives and Photo Credits: from Young People’s Story of Dupage County by Jean Moore and Richard Photo Credits: from waymarking.com; from 1992 Lincoln Elementary School yearbook The above details I mentioned came from a go to the upstairs window. She saw me down A light switched on, and we fled for the car. I was told that it works just as well if one community in Sun City, Arizona. It was most Photo Credits: from Through the Years, by Helen Burt Potteiger. several years on merchant ships. Both married “It’s a great experience to sit on a freight waves emanating from beyond the solar system. him as a cousin of Wheaton history). American to win the U.S. Open won it in has an end which he identifies with his whole The latter is where Robert McCormick lived a police officer for playing with a lifelike BB gun Each one of them desires and cares and Special Collections. via the Theosophical Society. Special Collections, and from Chicago Golf Club, 1892-1992. Crabb; from 1965 Wheaton Central High School yearbook; and from From Tower to scholarly paper written by Wheaton professors there on the step, and the next thing I knew, Andy peeled away from the parking lot, doesn’t believe in it!’” likely published around 1985. and gave birth to grandchildren. train for the first time. It’s like riding on a Photo Credits: from The Carlson Family of Wheaton, Illinois, by William Carlson; from “Mr. Jansky's results received little attention Wheaton in 1911. He was Johnny McDermott, life, work is hardly satisfactory.” as an adult. According to Young People’s Story of with my friend Andy and his cousin and where I fantasizes, and each one has a drawer full of “A Play Entitled The Beginning of Radio Astronomy,” by Grote Reber; and from Tower by Jean Moore. called “From the beginning: faith and geology she had dumped a whole pail of water right on swerving dangerously into traffic on Gary Reading Helen Burt’s book made me feel the Helen worked as a schoolteacher from the gigantic monster. You have the feeling you are from other scientists at the time, but Mr. Reber, In the 1870s, John Gates got a job with a described as, “a self-assured alumnus of the Hubble graduated and received the DuPage County , he wrote to his mother as a denied responsibility and blamed it all on Andy mental maps, of Wheaton and other places that Mammals Wheaton, by Keith Call, via the Wheaton Historica Preservation Council. at evangelical Wheaton College.” top of me!” Avenue and madly honking the shrill horn of I went to a church in Wheaton this summer same things that I felt watching movies like I 1950s through the mid-1970s, during which she going places, that the whole world is spread out who was also a ham radio operator, set out to barbed wire company in DeKalb, 25 miles west Philadelphia caddie sheds.” following evaluation from Oxford: young man (he was born in 1880): and his cousin. for years, but could it be that I associate what’s there and dig it out from oblivion. are here on earth or in fictional worlds. Wendt, Lloyd and Herman Kogan. Bet a Million! The Story of John W. Wheaton The opening paragraph of that paper reads: different place than the one I’m in. Moreover, the student café had a pleasing his Buick Roadmaster. when I was feeling very low and lost and grim. Remember Mama or My Life As a Dog or To Be and that I am not convinced of immortality of the and Arnie began traveling internationally and before you.” determine whether the waves were coming only of Wheaton and birthplace of the prickly Recent guests at the Club include: President “Considerable ability. Manly. Did quite “I am determined to have a great life and an There in that front yard is where an comfort and tenderness with any female that For decades, that pond had existed in-itself And yet it’s so goddamned difficult and America { included: Ghandi, Thomas Edison, Aldous exclamations like ‘This stuff really works!’) have vandalism or robberies... Street has seen.” Michael Jordan - but needs material. The first “Wheaton College, Illinois is perhaps the And about a year ago, I started reading din to it, and there was music coming from the In general, much of Wheaton College is a We then drove to a pool hall, smoked Huxley, Abner Doubleday, and L. Frank Baum, indicates that I am trending ever more surely I got down on my knees in the pew and said my To Have or Flight of the Red Balloon or Yi Yi or soul. My views seem to drift more and more “Toilets had boxes high on the wall, and we throughout the U.S., often camping in national Carlson then served in Australia and New from the galaxy or from other celestial objects. product. short film he directed was written by an African Bill Clinton, Luke Donald, and Roger Waters. well here. I didn’t care [very] much for his “A catalogue of the { most prominent liberal arts college about what went on in this hometown of mine speakers that I would have been listening to at mystery to me, even though I walk around its flavored gas station cigars, and discussed what who supposedly wrote The Wizard of Oz as a toward the fringe...So perhaps you should old Catholic prayers (even though it was a My Neighbor Totoro - those movies that have the toward materialism... flushed by pulling a chain. Years later, after we parks and driving in a motor home. Guinea during World War II, surviving a heavy “In 1937, using about a half-year's worth of Gates traveled on a sales trip to Texas, where I suppose it makes sense that Elbert Gary is novelist and won a prize at the Cannes Film manner - but he was better than his manner. Hubble telescop when it comes to writing, library carrels, park benches, representing the evangelical Christian before I came into being. home anyway – like Arcade Fire, Sufjan campus and spend a decent amount of time may have happened as we played nine-ball. Theosophical version of Pilgrim’s Progress. consider what follows a final transmission from Methodist church). same mood as a warm kitchen in a cozy home “The more I think of it, the more I feel that had low toilet tanks, my Mother continued to They bought a cottage in Wisconsin and bombing raid on Darwin in 1942. He came the bank, all it says is: and took hostages inside the Wheaton Bank salary he had saved from jobs at various radio ranchers were skeptical of barbed wire. the sober, upright, and Wheaton half of the Festival. Of the many large homes that border the Will get A.” a comet Universe subculture in the USA. Hamilton (1994) wrote Reading the local history books and museum Stevens, and Death Cab for Cutie (for an there. It’s like everybody is listening to a radio Andy said his neighbor’s dad was on the The Dalai Llama visited the Theosophical a fellow traveler who once shared your doubt, a I felt less anxious and decided to ride my on a wet, gray day, that make you feel what common forms of religion are sentiment and ask, ‘Did you pull the chain?’... named it Wildacres, but eventually retired in home, married a girl named Lucille Hahn who “The financial world collapsed for the and Trust. manufacturers, Mr. Reber erected his telescope. He went to the mayor of San Antonio and Gary/Gates industrial dialectic. However, both We played four games of chess and I was { Chamber of Commerce and could get him to Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz how “There’s had been his next door neighbor growing up, asked to put on a show in the center of town. wristwatch (unusual at the time), a ring on his parents’ answering machine, and after which { that Wheaton has maintained its evangelical displays was often tedious and frustrating – like explanation of this see: Hipster Christianity, by station that’s on a frequency I don’t have a dial Society headquarters here in 1980. Call writes farewell report sent from the brink of the event bike to a grocery store. I went to my parents‘ superstition. However, I am not well enough “I was Mr. Kaufman’s best summer evening Arizona. They also went on a 286-mile rafting nation as the stock market crash of 1929 After letting most of the hostages go and “But much like Mr. Jansky's men grew up on farmland that was settled by one defeated quickly each time. I asked Calvin Macdonald. are often located at the core of galaxies; ‘deep Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Riviera

{ { identity and survived the challenges of trying to dig a hole into the ground with a Brett McCracken). I also didn’t know any with which to tune into. investigate, but nothing ever came of it and we that when asked what he wanted for breakfast, horizon...” house and cooked chorizo tacos and black no place like home.” informed on these subjects to take a decided customer for double chocolate sodas. All day trip down the Colorado River, which Helen and ran the family business with his brother. brought on one of the worst depressions in closing the blinds of the bank windows, Long accomplishment, Mr. Reber's invention went He built a barbed wire corral and offered to bet of Wheaton’s town fathers. So why did Gates where he was from. He said Gary, Indiana. Macdonald i { { modernism and post-modernism by adopting plastic shovel. students there except one caddie friend of mine Here’s how Billy Graham described the forgot about the place. he said bacon, eggs, and cereal. The Society beans and ate them with a frosty Coca-Cola. I am going to quote from Through the Years at stand on any position. My ideas are largely the long I anticipated the refreshing coolness and describes as: Their store burned down in 1963 but was soon United States history. It caused financial shot himself. relatively unnoticed, garnering the attention money that the wire would contain a herd of become the gambler and Gary the steady leader? Gary is a decaying steel town that’s as far course architecture. He spent a few years in carried a cane and spoke with an inconsisten Earth { the secular culture’s ‘curriculum, accreditation, But I dug. I excavated. I got down into the named Sulloway and as such felt pleasantly epiphany he had in Florida that convinced him people said no bacon; they’re vegetarian. The When I was talking about Wheaton College, That evening, I miraculously met a girl my length, since I am sure that no more than a few result of independent thought and rich flavor of his drugstore sodas. Right after “...the most exciting event of our rebuilt. reverses the likes of which many persons only of his puzzled neighbors. bulls. From Tower to Tower says: from Chicago as Wheaton, but southeast Scotland as a young man and wanted to create British accent. extrapolation 120 billion galaxies... Wheatonite (he was six years ahead of Belushi li Willard, Wyeth W. Fire on the Prairie. Wheaton: Van Kampen Press, Flourishes admissions, student culture, and even a good layers of Wheaton that had been covered over he would become a preacher and serve Jesus Last year – as part of my Wheaton research – dozen people in Wheaton or anywhere have Carlson was friends with many notable Longhorns were driven into the corral, Hubble became a high school teacher in I first unzipped the pants of a girl and felt the money as I got older. I Am anonymous. rest of the breakfast was bought at the Jewel I said that my day-to-day consciousness feels age named Ginger while riding my bike in a consequently are probably narrow.” supper, I rode my bike downtown to the drug lives...Every day there were new canyons and including Wheaton residents had never It was a few more years ago in downtown In Willie Carlson’s book, the telescope and “Gary was nine years older than Gates, instead of west. golf courses in the U.S. that borrowed the best No scientist has had a finer monument.” and graduated from the school when it was McCormick took over the Chicago Tribune in me? I’m now twenty-five years old and do not here in Wheato measure of faculty culture – without yielding a with years of detritus and on top of which I I returned frequently in order to drink the (this was just before he came to Wheaton.) I I read more about the Society and what was in grocery store across Main St. forest preserve. read it or heard of it. emporium. I have tried throughout the years creeks to explore, pools to swim in, and Wheaton residents, like Red Grange, the pro dreamed. Wheaton that a young man named Adam its puzzling effects are mentioned: harassed by the spectators, and tried but failed having been born on Erastus Gary’s farm near features from the best courses in Scotland and Indiana and coached its basketball team to an the 1900s and often went hiking into Canada flesh and smelled the fragrance of her private Every on { Develops { { ever more displaced, like a noisy and stressful The town was named in honor of Elbert known as Wheaton Community High School). { fraction of its full-bodied, pre-modern obliviously walked and rode my bike as a boy. coffee and to write and to read (often bringing think it’s a good depiction of what goes its headquarters (I was especially intrigued by traffic jam of visions and images and thoughts I first zoomed past her while riding on the Helen Burt’s memories of her childhood in but have never tasted a soda quite like those of waterfalls of breathtaking beauty...In this football player, or Grote Reber, the astronomer. “Somehow, the world held together for the Palinski burned down the Catholic church. “[Grote] got help in building [the telescope] to break the fences. Gary’s Mill in 1846. This would have been an Gary. England. undefeated season and third-place in the Moving on, Red Grange is said to b Life 1950. Print. { supernaturalism.’” And why? Was it just another distraction scandalous books with me like Tropic of Cancer through the consciousness of many people at its library) and I decided to just walk right in So I browsed through the Olcott Library and all racing through me from everywhere other Prairie Path and didn’t give her a second Helen Burt was born in 1915. She was the Wheaton in the 1920s and 1930s is sincere and my childhood... setting, man’s problems seemed far removed He was also a member of many clubs and vast majority of Wheaton residents and by a He was a parishioner and had attended from Holstein Brothers and from the Within 90 days of the show, Gates sold all important age difference at anytime, but The winds from the lake got chilly and I Scotland’s Gift - Golf Hardens As to why putting an ice-age mammoth on from living right here and now? or The Magic Christian). I mostly kept myself to Wheaton College: and see for myself. then went outside and explored the grounds, than where I currently am. thought. I stopped twenty minutes later on a youngest of five. Her father was a successful simple and studded with crystalline details. “Most residents of Wheaton had haircuts at from reality.” committees and was named Citizen of the Year great deal of belt-tightening and conservation, elementary school there. He also went to my Muehlfelts. Swede Holstein helped him weld the wire his DeKalb company could especially at this particular period. When Gary asked Calvin if he wanted to get dinner. We ate most idiosyncratic autobiographies ever written. Emerges display at a college known for supernaturalism I did it because I was here, in town, and I myself but I sometimes observed the students. “My teachers and classmates seemed to Inside the main hall was a front desk and a where there are several guest cottages and a When I first heard of Eckhart Tolle and his trail near Herrick Lake to smoke a cigarette and engineer who traveled throughout the country Here’s some excerpts: John Bauer’s Front Street Barber Shop...In On retired life in Arizona, Helen writes: in 1999. they managed to struggle through the next high school, but was older than me. parts together. Muehlfelt lifted a lot of stuff up manufacture. He was 21 years old. was born there was no railroad and no Turner’s a deep dish pepperoni pizza at a pizza place off The last page

Expands Evolve { is not a contradiction, the paper says later on: had free time, and I was writing stories and The café is located within The Beamer affirm that this ministry was good and right for woman sitting at it with two of her young labyrinth - which is made of flat stones on the book The Power of Now, I mentally heaved it to watch the sunset. until settling in Wheaton in 1923. “We kept chickens and sheep; these pets 1924, my Mother too, willingly submitted to “Our condo group became a social center He writes, “When I look back, I think of decade.” A C h i c a g o Tr i b u n e article on Palinski’s so it could be welded together... He became known as the “Barbed Wire Junction (now known was West Chicago). 53rd street. We talked about collaborating on map of the National Golf Links “The reshaping of Wheaton’s identity as looking for material. Center, which is named for Todd Beamer, an me. But did I want to preach for a lifetime? I children. Other women in workout clothes ground (not the hedge maze I dramatically the ground and spat on it and kicked it into the The same girl slowly rode past me and I The Burt family moved into 416 Ellis Ave. - were kept in the barnyard behind a high board John’s scissors and came home with bobbed that first year for potlucks, happy hours, what a wonderful time I’ve had.” That’s it. No mention of the suicide of the conviction reads: “‘What is that thing?’ said Muehlfelt’s son. King” and came up with the immodest idea of a When Gates was born in 1855 there were both a project, then swapped phone numbers and Long Island, which Ma Rises were walking by with yoga mats under their { ‘evangelical’, as opposed to ‘fundamental’, was And I found things that made me smile and alumnus who died on Flight 93 on September asked myself that question for the umpteenth envisioned) and which I absentmindedly gutter. No! I thought. Bull shit! You can’t find called to her and we introduced ourselves. a four-story, twenty-room house designed by fence. It was my job to open the gate each hair and a marcel wave which was a series of bridge, and annual meetings. Sun City people On regrets in life he says, “I wish I had Gary-Wheaton Bank’s president or its troubles “[Palinski] said in his confession that he “‘He talks to the Man-in-the-Moon,’ said Mr. steel company that would be vertically the railroad and Turner’s Junction. email addresses before going back to the one of the best Woodward, Bob. Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi. in great part led by Wheaton College’s most chuckle or raise an eyebrow or take a note – 11th and who was the man who said the phrase, time on one of my nighttime walks around the arms. stomped across to the consternation of a lady wisdom and you can’t find peace by just reading Ginger and I rode together for a while into Daniel Burnham of World’s Fair fame. morning, open it just enough to get one sheep even tiers in her hair. Jesse was so upset he have time and love to share with others... started investing when I was a very young during the Depression. Nor does it mention entered the church through an unlocked door, Muehlfelt.” integrated, that would do everything from “Gates and Gary did meet apartments we came from. The map reminds me of those in novels like with the new Mt. Wi I famous alumnus, the evangelist Rev. Billy anecdotes, tales, statistics, photos. “Let’s roll!” before fighting to reclaim the plane golf course. The inner, irresistible urge would The lady at the desk asked if she could help who was treading the path with her head down a book or listening to a lecture or buying this or Glen Ellyn and then exchanged phone numbers Coincidentally, Helen’s parents first met head at a time. Then I slipped a noose on each threatened to leave home...There were slightly “Soon my loving husband attended Rotary man...[Also] We forget friends. We let them the suicide of Mr. Hiatt, although the book went to the washroom, walked in the building, The Times obituary continues: cutting open the earth to presenting to the occasionally...One incident is recorded in Born Graham (born 1918, class of ’44). In his public I know now that I can talk about my from its hijackers. not subside. Finally, one night, I got down on me. I said I was there to see the library. She and who I almost crashed into. that special new trinket! and departed. She too was living at home with each other at that Fair (they both also attended head, and our lawn mowers were ready for raised eyebrows and suggestive overtones to Club, played in the Polka and Sun City Concert drift away...My advice: Invest in capitalism happily digresses in a later chapter on a chance drank some communion wine, defaced a book “After two years of developing and testing world a gleaming, finished product. which Gary, already a student at Wheaton Moving, on, if we are going to regard Winesbur New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Print. ministry, he ignored the Scopes trial and hometown with a duration that I couldn’t Some of the items for sale at the Wheaton my knees on the edge of one of the greens. pointed me to a cabinet of brochures. Also on the property of the Society is the Like Robert Harrison said on the radio show her parents again after graduating from college the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign staking in the yard. When there were twelve, it comments, ‘Your mother bobbed her hair!’... bands, and volunteered in Bell Recreation early and maintain good friendships.” encounter that occurred in Hiatt’s drugstore in of religious readings, gave a mock sermon and receivers and roaming the sky with his telescope Gates knew of Elbert Gary as a reliably College, met the younger Gates. Wheato anti-evolutionism. Graham endorsed T h e before – but this bike tour will be a test of College café tingled my sense of propriety and Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. ‘O The brochure, “Theosophy - What Is It?” Quest Bookshop, which has more current Entitled Opinions: if you have to pay for it, then and spending a couple of years traveling and but did not know each other then). was a scramble because green grass beyond the “Mrs. Gale was our housekeeper for several Center Library. He checked out four to six On growing up near Wheaton College, 1924. lit Lent tapestries on fire. A police officer saw nightly, Mr. Reber published ‘Cosmic Static,’ a Wheatonian corporate lawyer and wanted him “Gates and his boyhood pal, Charlie Gary, for preachers, then the equivalent of ... Christian View of Science and Scripture in which whether that talk is just obnoxious volubility or stunk to me of excess, especially the cupcakes, God,’ I sobbed, ‘if you want me to serve you, I reads: editions of the same sorts of books as the it’s not love, and if it’s not love, then it’s not teaching, and she too was trying to write. The World’s Fair is described in a gate was tantalizing. Sweet smells of windfall years. At the top of the back stairs, she had a books per week and tried to catch up on a Carlson says: That encounter was between Col. Robert smoke about 2 a.m. and called the Fire series of articles in The Astrophysical Journal that to help weave this conglomerated spiderweb, were hunting on Erastus Gary’s farm and killed College is Chicago Golf Club. Macdonald dedicated

the Baptist theologian Bernard Ramm whether it’s history in the service of life, which were the size of Baby Jesus’ head and will.’ “The Theosophical Society is an library and sells incense, sage, tarot cards, worth very much. She said she felt stuck, that once she saved companion to Through the Years called Life and apples made the sheep pull up their stakes and nice bedroom with a large closet. Her constant lifetime of reading.” “Sometimes some girl would walk by with no McCormick, the editor-publisher of the Chicago Department, which was unable to save the many scientists today use to mark the birth of and to have J.P. Morgan finance it all. a goose. Elbert Gary was helping on the farm Unlike the College with its prominent grandchildren, and yet in its 300+ p

Life (1916-1992) interpreted the Genesis account as excerpts and facts and fragments of people who crowned on top with a swirl of frosting not “The moonlight, the moss, the breeze, the organization founded in New York City in 1875 crystals, gemstones, and other such things. Likewise, if you can get through it quickly money it always seemed to disappear, that Times of Henry and Edith, which Helen Burt rush for a feast. breath purifier was chewing gum. She smoked Arnie went into cardiac arrest and collapsed lipstick, no makeup. We’d say, ‘She’s college.’ Tribune, and Red Grange, who was home from church. intentional radio astronomy. The idea became U.S. Steel, but J.P. Morgan that day and caught the younger boys in the act. towers and steeples and signs, Chicago Golf is no mention of a pictorial depiction of progressive creation are dead but who dwelled on this ground before unlike a certain mythopoetic Babylonian tower. green, the golf course – all the surroundings to investigate the nature of the universe and I discovered in the literature section of the and easily (the book, the lecture, the therapy, something always came up and she just couldn’t wrote about the lives of her parents. “I loved my sheep, all of whom had names, cigars. Mother smelled it on her breath and on a golf course in 1983. He died a few months In those days of my youth, in the late his breakout season with the University of “After the fire, Palinski walked toward his “In 1944, he created the first contour radio didn’t trust Gates and instead asked Gary to When he demanded an explanati over geological eons.” us and whose ghosts are still swirling through One day, I saw a skinny, pale, sullen-looking stayed the same. No sign in the heavens. No humanity’s place in it, to promote Quest store The Immoralist by Andre Gide, whatever), then it’s not difficult, and if it’s not save up enough to move out of the suburbs. Helen’s mother wrote in a journal entry: but Curley and Sampson were favorites...With a clothes, but Mrs. Gale was too good a cook and later during heart surgery. 20s-early30s, Wheaton College would be seen Illinois football team, during which he rushed home several blocks away on Arbor Drive, map of the sky, with brighter areas indicating lead the company, who accepted the offer (in resourceful Gates reported that the goose had trees. Many of the peopl and rented flats should be courts of last resort - Truman the atmosphere of this place, regardless of undergrad take an industrial-sized tub of ice voice from above. But in my spirit I knew I had understanding of other cultures, and to be a which I checked out from the Wheaton Public difficult, then it’s not worth very much. She also said she was taking a lot of sleeping “The World’s Fair of 1893 has been loose rope and very little encouragement, housekeeper to fire. Everyone pretended to sponsor 10-12 young people to stand on the for over 1,200 yards in seven games. splashed some gasoline on a neighbor's home richer radio sources, the brightest being the what was surely the most world-historical attacked him and his friend, Charlie Gary not even know it is there, and I’ve sometimes designed golf courses. dre Leave Some Things Unsaid. “A tip from Lubitsch: Let the Since I’m already squirreling away from our whether we’re too distracted or bored to listen cream under his arm, carry it to the counter, sit been called to the ministry. And I knew my nucleus of universal brotherhood among all Library that afternoon and quickly read and But maybe I was and am just afraid of having pills to get to bed at night. acknowledged as the best one ever held. Having Curley followed me to school. In winter, we innocence of her habit. When it was safe, I The last page of Through the Years reads: corner of Hale and Front. They’d preach out in The anecdote goes that McCormick told and ignited the door while the occupants were center of the Milky Way. usurpation by one native of DuPage County backed him up. Elbert was not happy about the wondered if Chicago Gol Earth warm-up and scurrying down the first branch of to them. down, and eat from it with a spoon. It seemed answer was yes.” human beings. Today the Society has branches thoroughly enjoyed. the torrents in my head slow to a peaceful By the time I got home that evening, I felt heard so much about it, I planned to see it in a used a shed in the fenced orchard where I would peek through a keyhole to observe her “Happiness from the beginning was the open and sing. It wasn’t rare to be walking Grange how one of his Tribune writers watched sleeping. No one was injured and damage to the “The results of his surveys helped establish over another). incident or the explanation but he let the neighbors and still be here when twilight comes egomaniac, and it’s questionable how much of moving away f our tour, let me slow down and reverse myself. like he was lonely and wanted to get other There’s a novel from 1930 that used to be in some seventy countries, with its On my way out of the bookshop, I picked up trickle. Maybe living here and now isn’t so momentarily lifted from the sorrows and the big way. I left college at the end of May with a carried oats and hot water to melt ice in their smoking by an open window. My curiosity was membership in a loving family of seven. down the street, a college student would walk Grange playing for the Wheaton High School home was minor. radio astronomy as a major field after World young hunters go on their way... to the suburbs and the families flee and the the book is factual. For instance, he doesn’t away a galaxy appeared, th As I look back on my childhood, I was served So, to go forward again: evangelical students’ attention by eating ice cream so but is no longer distributed to incoming international headquarters in India. a copy of The Monthly Aspectarian, which is a difficult, you just have to sort of...give up, let go, worries I was sinking into earlier in the day and party of students expecting to work through the water buckets.” never quite satisfied, and several times I risked Parents and friends determined mental growth up, buttonhole you, and ask, ‘Are you saved?’ football team, but wrote him off, saying he During the trial, Palinski tried to deny the War II and his seminal radio telescope paved But all was not lost for Gates. In the same year The book suggests that Gary liked working Wheaton helpings of history almost every day – at school Wheaton College. extravagantly, though no one acknowledged him. freshmen at Wheaton called, originally, The “The three basic ideas of Theosophy are free magazine the subtitle of which is surrender, like what Billy Graham or D. Randall for weeks prior. I felt like my face had been summer months. I was even willing to miss the “Jesse raised chickens, first in the barn and discovery by Mrs. Gale or my Mother.” and maturity. Singing brought gratification. It My friends learned to say, ‘No, I’m Catholic.’ wouldn’t be good enough for Yale, confession he made at the police station and the way for the landmark discoveries of quasars, U.S. Steel was incorporated, he invested in an oil hard on his parents’ farm from a young age and sw Die and on field trips; in television, movies, and The College is on the north side of town, I thought it was a perverse and vulgar thing to do Silver Trumpet, and later, The Amazing D. Randall (1)-the fundamental unity of all existence, so “Dedicated to Awakening Consciousness.” MacRae said about accepting Jesus. But I feel lifted from the mud. But I also felt like any Senior Ball... chicken house where we hunted for hidden was thrilling to win the Chicagoland Music They’d back off.” McCormick’s alma mater. also in a wiretapped phone conversation. pulsars and the remnant glow left over from the well called “Spindletop” in Beaumont, Texas. (“Elbert could even milk cows by the time he The Club was founded in 1892, just before amateur golf tournament in America - and that as if the America video games; on outings with my family or in an north of the train tracks. I grew up on the in any context, evangelical college café or not. MacRae. that all pairs of opposites - matter and spirit, Inside were many, many advertisements for: like to do that, to loosen my grip, will make me romantic pleasure would at best be a temporary “As waitresses, we had much to learn. nests. Later, he went the scientific route and Helen Burt’s father died suddenly in 1928 of Festival Contest. My love affair was eternal. After McCormick told Grange about his He said in his defense about the phone Big Bang.” Spindletop spouted on January 10th, 1901, was seven. During the spring, summer, and the World’s Fair. C.B. Macdonald - co-founder he did so because he had lost in the final everyth Mammals Universe occasional and fleeting conversation with them. south side of town and was raised Catholic and MacRae is a young man from New York City the human and the divine, I and thou - are telepathic healers, hypnotherapy, astrological stop caring, make me give up on life, make me a painkiller for a deeper spiritual malaise. Tomato soup ordered with a broad ‘ah’ used an incubator instead of laying hens. It was a cerebral hemorrhage. Her last memory of him Added blessings were a daughter and a son. I found one minor but interesting reporter’s hasty remarks, the Colonel said, confession: “I was feeling alone in the world Willie Carlson writes that Grote would stay gushing one hundred thousand barrels a day. fall, the family was up at 5 a.m. and worked, and designer of the golf course - writes i And while those morsels of the past were all attended weekly mass in a church in Glen Ellyn Wheaton College was originally known as who falls in love with a girl studying at transitory and relative distinctions of an readings, discovering your past lives, spiritual docile fool who’s happy with anything. Ginger and I went on a date in Glen Ellyn, pronunciation sent me to the kitchen in a an extremely sad day when the regulator was in Wilmette, Illinois, at the building site Grandchildren became dividends of joy. inconsistency in Willie’s autobiography. “And you might like to know, that man is not and starved for attention... All my friends had with him when he returned to Wheaton after So much oil burst out of the well that a lake except on Sunday, until dark.”) golfing auto stirred together into the crackling mush that (despite there being two Catholic churches in Illinois Institute and was founded in the 1850s. “Wharton College” outside Chicago. He underlying absolute Oneness, (2)-the regularity emergence counseling, Hawaiian energy It’s like in the movie Heat, when Al Pacino’s but then a week later, the night before I turned quandary. One patron asked for apple pie with malfunctioned and new baby chicks perished in for the Baha’i Temple, where he was the “A new career in teaching in later years He mentions how a cousin lived with his with us anymore.” abandoned me. I told a story, no matter how moving his research base to the antipodes: formed around it and caught on fire from the While for Gates, “farm work did not appeal “Extraordinary a Falls was my consciousness in those days, they meant Wheaton). It was a progressive place that orbited transfers there from Princeton and is cynical at of universal law, cyclically producing universes healing, life purpose advising, and solutions for Angeleno detective character says, “I gotta hold twenty-five, my bike was stolen at the College cheese, an unheard of combination in my f lames... structural engineer and working with the expanded my horizons. Travel experiences family in Wheaton when they were young. ridiculous, to draw them back into my world.” “He was an unpretentious man; he would sparks of a passing train. to [him]. He spent all the time he could in Maybe this sort of blindness - blindness to possible for astronomers to make an accurate Man,” which was given to him b CivilizationDecays golf in the States and the conception of the little to me. And why shouldn’t they have? For Church for me was a passive and mindless intellectually around the fires of abolitionism. first of what seems to him like a out of the absolute ground of being, and (3)-the “all your metaphysical needs.” onto my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It Avenue train station and she sent me a flimsy eighteen years. My first tip was accepted with “On moonlit nights when my friends and I French architect Louis Bourgeois. could be shared with family and students. Carlson writes, “[Astrid] was a A vignette like this is all well and good and The article also says, “He told jurors that he bring one shirt. They were going to honor him To distribute Spindletop’s oil, Gates created Turner’s Junction.” World’s Fair in Chicago were s part of what makes a child a child is that he or activity that only required you to show up once In fact, the first black college graduate in the “fundamentalist” school. progress of consciousness developing through keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.” excuse for why she couldn’t hang out with me embarrassment. Later, I learned to work for camped out, we became fairies while dancing in Then the Stock Market crashed and the Complete contentment came with our quick-tempered young lady and not particularly From Tower to Tower is eager to remark how was studying film and acting at Columbia at the courthouse, in the Heritage Gallery. the Texas Oil Company, later known as Texaco. Gates got married when he was 19 and began One who did not live in Chicago at that time necessary she, to quote Nietzsche again, “having as yet a week reasonably well-dressed, to sit quietly or state of Illinois – Edward Sellars – got his When he arrives, he is spiritually apathetic: cycles of life to an ever-increasing realization of My default reaction to the Theosophical David Lynch, a real-life Angeleno, says just the next day on my birthday. I soon left town tips and frown if one was not forthcoming... our nighties by the light of the moon. Front Depression arrived and the Burt family lost Wildacres hideaway. And retirement in Sun happy about working in our house...[My sister] Wheaton could be the crossroads for such College of Chicago and said he had a ‘gift for They said, ‘Can’t we get him another shirt and Gates also built the world’s first oil pipeline, to Declines nothing of the past to shake off, plays in to mumble along to the music, and then to diploma from Wheaton College, in 1866. The “God was a Force, not a Person. You can’t Unity. Society and the Quest Bookshop was to label it the opposite, however. He writes: to visit friends in New York and Colorado and “Every noon the University of Illinois Band and side yards were spacious for our pirouettes much of its savings. Helen writes: City provided the ultimate joy. Bernice got angry and threw her shoe at Astrid nationally influential and historical men. fiction.’” tie?’ carry his dark products to a port on the Gulf of which From Tower to Tower says: people were so far as sporting spirit went and visions and dreams and fantasies - or maybe Hubble married a wealthy Californian { { blissful blindness between the hedges of past forget about it and go on with your life for a school was also co-educational long before worship an impersonal Force; you can’t worship “These abstract ideas have some very as somniferous New Age balderdash. “When I started meditating, I was filled with we stopped texting each other. played in the Illinois building...I would meet and cartwheels. Moon madness would end “The Depression years which followed “Sorrow took its toll with deaths of family and broke the front window.” But I feel like the truth of a place isn’t just “We cooked up a scheme - we went into Mexico. “The management and constant attention the development of physique by outdoor sports. designing that world is a solace for disappointing woman and turned his back and future.” week until the next Sunday. other universities admitted girls. Electricity. You can only worship a Personality. specific and practical implications... Nevertheless, I was tempted to take a yoga anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression Mr. Burt, and we often walked the length of the when my Dad appeared in his nightshirt to send produced tragedies in Wheaton. The president members. Lobar pneumonia and a near fatal But later on in the book, when writing about those of its citizens who stomp up the tower of However, Wheaton historians don’t ignore all Gaede’s. Gaede said, ‘What an honor. I’m Young People’s Story of DuPage County says of Gates: required by the store did not appeal to young After the World’s Fair, Chicago was like a relationships or a dea Eventually, however: I was brought to the Wheaton College Today the school has a conservative And, since there was no Personality big enough, “The world we live in is basically a good class at the Society, because I had never done so and anger... I think it’s remarkable and strange that Midway to take the streetcar home, in this way us off to bed... of Gary Wheaton Bank shot himself when the accident almost took Polly’s life. Adam Jacob his sister Bernice, Carlson says, “Bernice threw civilization and briefly oversee its endless the violence in the town’s past. There’s one going to give you a shirt and tie.’ “He could work twelve to eighteen hours Gates... community of born again. Of course, I do not Macdonald states why golf and outdoors meeting his siblings at his offic { Implodes “…[the child’s] play must be disturbed; all campus a couple of times in high school by a reputation. It’s also quite expensive, costing you didn’t worship; you did not pray. You went place, to be used wisely, to be treasured, and to before and because I fantasized about meeting “I call that depression and anger the Wheaton is home to both the Theosophical becoming better friends... “Roller skating was done in a variety of bank failed... Poteiger born prematurely with lung problems an ashtray at one of the Swedish girls who lived construction. The truth is also those citizens episode that is happily and frequently recounted. “Reber said, ‘When I go back to New without a break. Then instead of retiring to “Elbert Gary...was aware that Gates was wish to convey to the reader Combusts too soon it will be called out of its state of friend who was once, like me, an apathetic about $40,000 a year for an undergraduate. to chapel because you had to…you were glad to be honored: Rejoice in life. there a bookish, fit, and open-minded divorcée. Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. Society and Wheaton College, seeing as each “Beside the wonderful experience of places. Our house had four stories. Above the “Mr. Hiatt was a cherry friend to all in his brought anxious days. We cried through with us. The girl ducked and it broke the front who toil their whole lives in anonymity, You’ll notice in downtown Wheaton a Zealand, I’ll wear this shirt and tie.’ We talked sleep, he preferred going to the races and bet failing as a storekeeper in Turner’s Disappears Catholic but then became a serious evangelical “We develop as human beings, not by working in Chicago, I had saved enough money window of the house.” on horses or have [sic] a high stakes game of (Hubble was also notorious for exaggerating my books. through eastern Wheaton and I turned down a Go Extinct forgetfulness. Then it will learn to understand To go back to the topic of food, Wheaton is get out into the fresh air again, where you could Unfortunately, suburban stasis got the best It’s suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once place more or less denies the other’s existence. third floor was a floored attic with skylights. drug store, the favorite hangout of kids at his Jonathan’s divorce, wondering why. thanklessly laying bricks and filing papers stately old courthouse just south of the train him into wearing it to the ceremony. He visited the Gates store one afternoon, found artistic development. Architecture, painting, the happiness of my life, I feel impelled here to “For years my dad would visit Grange in watching us!” and she’d run out.’” friend Andy and another buddy the phrase ‘it was’: that password which gives Protestant. He took me to the youth group known as having the best cafeteria of any light a cigarette, curse like a man, stretch, forsaking the world, but by cooperating with of me and I felt too intimidated to be around you start meditating and diving within, the This may be something essential to the to buy a complete winter’s outfit, including Evelyn and I would sneak up the back stairs soda fountain. When debts and scrutiny “Near his sixtieth birthday, Arnie suffered a Granted, it’s a minor difference between a within that tower. And the truth of a place is tracks. (Like Helen Burt’s childhood home, the “I always had a queasy feeling when he cards with close friends. After such a period of it closed, and the pro conflict, suffering, and satiety access to man so meetings at College Church, which is next to college in America. I’ve eaten there, and it has laugh, and forget.” nature to preserve and perfect it: Respect the strangers in an unfamiliar place, trying new clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize American suburbs – they’re spacious enough woolen underwear. My hat was a brown felt with our skates and have a jolly time during the became unbearable, he jumped to his death in serious heart attack. Every day of his nine shoe and an ashtray, but I’ll soon get to a more also those of its citizens who try to destroy the courthouse too has been subdivided into stayed with me because he talked through the recreation, he could return to his office and away doing target practice with a { as to remind him what his existence but officially separate from Wheaton College. a very impressive smorgasbord of sandwiches, But the girl MacRae desires is very religious environment and be ecologically responsible. things all by myself, so I never enrolled. how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. that you can buy a good parcel of land and affair, turned up in front with two enormous middle of winter... desperation... remaining years were treasured by both of us. glaring inconsistency in a Wheaton history tower and set it ablaze and halt its frenzy of apartments today.) night to himself, mumbling and talking to continue to work.” Winchester repeater, possibly from the stock of found a footing in this transformation.” sport. Remember how closely interwoven with Hub Capote said he did his best work in motel rooms, but he is fundamentally is – an imperfect tense that can I did not like the youth group gatherings. I soups, pizza, tacos, stir fry, fruit and vegetables, and believes in God and Jesus and eventually “You and I are different expressions of the But since then, I’ve become less dismissive Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom. build a compound on it and make it the blackbirds, poised, ready to take off. A new “After fall gardening was over, [Father] liked “Mom rented out some of the seven The final sorrow came when he died during book. expansion. The truth is the high and the Wheaton is the seat of DuPage County. himself. Lucille offered to wash his socks and Gates died in Paris in 1911. His funeral was guns in the store. Gary allowed that Gates Chicago Golf was originally about having a audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.” { never become a perfect one.” grew up watching reruns of The Simpsons and fresh-baked bread and sweet desserts. There’s MacRae has an awakening. He decides to give same life, so whatever happens to either of us of New Age techniques, particularly after “Anger and depression and sorrow are headquarters of an institute if you felt like it, coat and dress and some cash made me feel to hike in the meadow and swamp area a few bedrooms. Gertrude Lerch was a seamstress heart surgery. middle and the low. There was a controversy, however, back in the found that they’d been mended with Elmer’s held in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He left should be tending his store, and in reply Gates good time as much as playing golf, as its history known were the Olympian and Pythian games sister write In my life, now, it feels like there’s more past Seinfeld every day and the tone and the mood at also many posters explaining the local and up his future as a businessman in New York happens to both of us - our well-being is linked: reading an essay about the guru Eckhart Tolle beautiful things in a story, but they’re like and yet your neighbors will, at worst, spread a independent for awhile. Mama and Papa were blocks away. His first cousin, Francis Dunlap whose Chicago Golf Club customers came to “God gave me strength to endure sorrow Carlson also remembers, like Helen Burt, 1860s, between Wheaton and Naperville Glue. his wife one of the largest inheritances ever invited Gary to the saloon for a drink. Gary book, Chicago Golf Club, 1892-1992, explains. in Greece. No and future than there is present. And it feels the youth group was, for me, uncomfortably sustainable origins of the ingredients. (I City and to live in the suburbs of Chicago and Help your neighbor, and thereby help yourself. called “Here, Now,” by Adam Bright. poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like few nasty rumors about you (this can be seen proud of me.” who was a casualty of shell shock in World War the house for fittings... through the years, and He granted capacity to the suicides in Wheaton during the Depression: It was just last year that a man named Trent (southwest of Wheaton) to move the seat to the “Reber now lives in Tasmania...a happy given an American widow, and this was in a coldly decline the invitation.” It quotes an old member: moulding the chara { { like there’s more elsewhere that I am not a part sincere and effusive – like a serving of cake with discovered at Wheaton that there’s an coach football: “Disharmony and evil are the result of The essay starts: a vise grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, today with Muslims building mosques in I, would join us on delightful walks through “Mother wrote a weekly column for the Elgin appreciate the joy of living. “Two Wheaton businessmen, Mr. Hiatt of Collier went swimming at the pool in south center of DuPage county and to Wheaton. single man still talking to the Man-in-the-Moon.” time prior to income or estate taxes. From Tower to Tower does not cite sources and “I spent that summer of 1895 at the old brick An outdoor sport will mean everything in the Ediwn’s accomplishments. { { { of than a here that I am. too much frosting, like having to spend time evangelical version of environmentalism called “I came to know the Master of my fate, the ignorance and selfishness: Live in harmony and “We should begin with a confession: by most you can hardly get out of bed, much less Chicagoland), and in general just leave you While Helen Burt’s parents were courting, stands of cattails, past clumps of burnished C o u r i e r and society news for the W h e a t o n “I enjoyed the months and years down the Hiatt Drugs and William Gary of the bank, Wheaton, near my parents’ house, then There was a referendum in 1867 to do so and Gates’ obituary in the Times says: as such all its stories may be apocryphal. house on the property, which had been fixed up healthy development of { I dwell with nostalgia or regret or anger on with Rod and Todd Flanders. “Creation Care.”) Captain of my soul, and surrendered to Him. goodness so as to teach others by your life as metrics, I’m a New Age nut. I have a life coach. experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You alone to flourish and succeed or to wither and Mr. Burt was beginning his career in goldenrod, and up a hill where oak trees Progressive. She was a fighter and a survivor.” pathway of my life, and at seventy, I look took their lives during the Depression. I wandered shirtless and in his bathing suit and for whatever 19th-century reason it caused So what is the cultural horticulturist to “John Warne Gates was born on a farm at as a clubhouse. The younger men, and indeed life. Golf is the best of outdoor gam { { motif was borrowed both from The ACME memories from when I was in school or when I I returned to the Wheaton College campus a Here, for comparison, is a description of In surrender I found strength. I found that the well as by your words.” I begin my day with an hour of yoga, then must have clarity to create. You have to be able die as you please. engineering and had to travel and keep in touch managed to survive in a flood plain. We passed forward to many more sunsets.” remember lying on the living room floor after carrying a pistol into a nearby subdivision. He rioting and gun violence and the casting of make of all these Wheaton phenomena? Does Turner Junction, Ill., in 1855. His birthplace is Just a few weeks ago, I was plant-sitting for Charlie (Macdonald) himself, that first year believe, but any is better { { was traveling, or from last month or last week year ago with Andy, my best friend from what a typical Wheaton student ate in 1857: spirit of Wharton is the spirit of Christ. And proceed to my morning journal, my meditation, to catch ideas.” It reminds me of what David Foster Wallace with the future Mrs. Burt via letters. a house which we called haunted. An old man Helen Burt attended the University of dinner. Dad was chuckling reading the was heard mumbling about losing his job and stones and the death of a man named Marriot this town have an unusually inspiring or now West Chicago. He began to show his my friend Alec in Hyde Park (site of the 1893 considered the club as a sort of private know how I would ever have been able to look guilty about not having done more [for his ( { { or yesterday. I desperately fantasize about childhood and a fellow lapsed Catholic. We “Now in due time his potatoes will come out so, instead of sitting in a Brooklyn office, I’m According to Wheaton historian Keith Call, my visualizations and my spoken affirmations. And yet, am I wrong to feel like all those says in his Kenyon College commencement that One letter is worth quoting for its relation lived alone amongst garbage and newspapers Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with her According to a newspaper clipping pasted to newspaper, reading about the suicides. He tried to enter several houses, including that of Mott in downtown Wheaton. oppressive atmosphere? Or is the town’s business ability while still in his teens, and World’s Fair), and went to the chess park to { what’ll happen to me tomorrow or next week or went there on a lark, just to get some ice cream smoking and steaming, just as his meat is done out here tonight having the time of my life in his photographic study aptly titled Wheaton, Yet—and here I place my brittle hand in yours—I treatments and services being advertised in The the wealth of America has bestowed upon us, to the place we just visited on our bike tour. piled up to the ceiling... future husband, Arnold Potteiger. A lot the back of Through the Years, Helen remarried said, ‘I could never do that because I only had a boy I caddied with. Wheaton won the referendum by a vote of ambience just average, and it’s when a person is made his first speculative venture in a take a break from writing. Sundays and holidays, whic years from now. I compulsively read the news from the student café. frying, (If he eats fried meat) and these with training a bunch of the finest young men I the Theosophical Society headquarters was am also, like most of you, I imagine, a cynic at Monthly Aspectarian are loaded with a subtext “The freedom all to be lords of our tiny Mr. Burt wrote: “For years we didn’t have a key to the front happened to her in the summer of 1936. She with a man named Gordon Seery. I do not $10 when I came to Wheaton.’” There was a standoff in the street for two 1686 to 1635. After Wheaton finished born with abnormally large or small spiritual partnership in a threshing machine, which A man sat down and set-up his board. We quieter members and their wives.” contentment if it had not been f about what’s going on in other cities and I discovered, however, that you could buy butter made at home (which by the way is better know to beat North Central tomorrow.” built here in the 1926 on ten acres of land. For heart. I am aware that I am a nut and it shames of: “It will be easy! The solution to your skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all “I have become quite deeply interested in door. Once in a while, a tramp would stop to writes: know whether she is still alive today or has So, there is a history of Wheaton published hours, then Collier shot himself. building its courthouse, Naperville refused to lungs that his existence becomes an extreme netted him capital enough to buy the wood made eye contact and I walked over to play. The Club was criticized by countries and read my friends’ updates about there a tasty, foamy latte, made with local and than that uncertain commodity commonly its first few decades, the Society was a me. I despise the other nuts. I despise my own problems is as quick and simple as swiping a creation.” theosophy. There are good ideas and theories ask for work...A hungry man could see the size “Three major events occurred that August: passed away. She would be 97 years old. in 1974 by the Gary-Wheaton Bank, as a gift to It was just a few years ago in downtown hand over the court records until a lawsuit in and he does what’s uncommon? rights in a section of local timber... He said his name was Calvin and that he was hosting big Sunday matches and being: had upon my welfare.” in California. No funeral was held. what they’re up to. I constantly and solemnly high-quality milk, for $2.00 – a price more than called ‘store butter’). These, with bread baked Before I say anything more, let’s ride north functioning commune, pumping its own well nuttiness… credit card!” in the theosophical belief, but I am not of [our] house and barn. Mother would always Arnie and I became engaged; I graduated from the bank’s customers on its 100th anniversary. Wheaton that a man named Michael Long Chicago was resolved over the validity of the “John W. Gates at the height of his activities a filmmaker. He said these days he’s looking “...supported by well-known citizens, who The Hubble Space Telescope was named for the number one album in America (The Blues can help you in life. The idea is that each hero look fo watch films and read novels that depict a more one-third less than any other café in the entire by some good woman in the neighborhood, are to the Theosophical Society and continue the water and growing its own fruits and vegetables. “But as I bear down on thirty, my recent life Am I wrong to think of most everything in Let’s turn back south and head to an old prepared to accept all of them. The barrier feed a wanderer but would expect him to work the University of Illinois with a B.A. degree Let’s keep going and head east now to It’s called From Tower to Tower. called the police about a phony traffic accident, referendum. Let’s move on and ride south toward the in the stock market was perhaps the most for scripts, that he has good sources of funding ought to know for how much outward r dramatic life in a different moment and a Chicagoland area. set upon the table, spread with a nice clean tour. Famous followers of Theosophy have trajectory (increasingly marked by mental that catalog as some form or another of snake mansion west of downtown Wheaton. between myself and most religious beliefs is for his meals and bed in the barn. We didn’t from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; downtown Wheaton. On the subject of the Great Depression and stole the responding police officer’s handgun, A gang of Wheatonites - including many Wheaton Cemetery. spectacular figure that this generation of Wall in Chicago - and has even done projects for for Sunday observance counts in the respect for southwest. which Great Physicists says: Night Live was the top-rated la an exception; most of us do our best in a place of our (B. Wilder) ... NOW ......

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