 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 My Godfather, Frank. My niece, Sara. One generation follows the Godfather's cane.  My brother Christopher, a man of deep- seated sensitivities, reviews the rules and wears the home flag with Frank  Christopher, when he was Sara's age, wanted to be a Sicilian Ricky Nelson.  A railroad switchhouse relocated to my Godfather's yard. Both Frank and my dad Rosario were railroad men.  The spiral and ...  ... the splash. |
|
"This past summer I traveled and reconnected my mind, muscle and heart with what remains of my shattered family. "For all of our angry complications and needless apprehensions, we are indeed, and forever shall be, una famiglia Italiana." "So what's this going to be, Toscano? Another boring trip down your Miserable Memory Lane? "I'll tell you what. First, admire all your formal education (from whence you drag words like 'whence' from their graves). Next, fold and cut the diplomas, awards and certificates into snowflake patterns that stun the workman's eye and impress the primitive voyeur. Finally, hold your snowflakes up to the fire and you'll see inside the flamed, withered paper and ash that you can be a stupid man who burns his own fingers because he lies too much and prays too little. "Everybody has a Miserable Memory Lane, soldier. You think people are looking for you to tell the more somber among them that they're right, that misery is a great way to go when you're feeling sorry for yourself? Or would they rather master a New Age, Meditative, Talk-Show-Compatible, Sushi kind of exercise program? "If you're not into New Age sushi, you might just say the straight truth, without all of the false poetic rhythms and long winded lilt of language behind which you hide. "And while you're about the slow change, why not disguise these characters a wee bit? Shuffle their cards. Toss the bunch of them high above the barroom table. Then, with your eyes closed, rearrange the sequence of whatever faces fall within touching distance. "You might even make these faces into people instead of noble heroes, demonic angels or lace-curtain ghosts. "Finally, with this odd pattern of clashes and cliques before you -- as one face touches another she cannot recognize -- write a real story, one with a plot that does not require veracity (see, I can sound a silly, noble note like you when I want to; but how many people like the word "veracity," and how many more people think that anyone who uses such words is an ass fit for Edgar Allan's dungeon?)." "My parents, many years ago, formed a phalanx with ten other corpses who together climbed to cliff's edge, then stepped into who the hell knows which falling star, or through which black rip in the tender skin of outer space." "God help you, Toscano. Sometimes you make me laugh until my belly aches and my eyes are all teared-up. Who do you expect to read this overwritten crap, anyway? Another academic with a gas problem? "The corpse-line paragraph is a crazy, clumsy, hilarious and overstated way to say that they just plain died. Tell us, please, why do you so often surrender to these not-so-brilliant snatches of what you think is poetic language? Why not say it simple? They died and now you don't know where the hell they are, or if they ever were. "By the way, a note of mercy from me to you: when you used the black rip bit, I had to admit that the slightest aroma of ripping black silk came to mind. A soft touch of sexy Film Noir mixed with a dangerous whiff of science fiction. The black rip part is good. Keep it. But don't go so crazy with the idea that you start to sound clever. Only academics with gas problems like heavy doses of clever writing." "And yet we who live, and our probable heirs, shall forever be La Famiglia Toscano, a tribe that can never forget its origins, its vile contradictions, its syrup-sweet lies or its sick fairy tales." "My Lord, man, when you blow, you blow a hard two lungs' worth of hot air. If Edgar Allan had been so sweet as to accept guests into his dank and alcoholic chambers, he might have welcomed you with open claws, Toscano. Just for the sense of irony you two could have provided each other. "I know, that you know, that we all know that 'syrup-sweet lies' is a notion you came onto without even thinking. In some ways you're like a dead, black-leather jacket with cheap cologne on its collar and Italian charms inside its pockets. Yet, you're arrogant enough to believe you own a touch of Edgar in your soul. Edgar was on drugs when he wrote his grand philosophies, friend. Remember that whenever you start to think of writing more about cobwebs." "This fact is both good and bad (as is the caterpillar and the butterfly), because I want and need the warmth of my family's arms around me; but also because I now realize that reconnection leads to a an inevitable and knotted intertwine of vine and vein; each one chokes the other, and the outcome of the bout quick becomes an eternal struggle to let the blood run through, to feed the love that wants to escape." "What the hell are you talking about? The truth is that you went to see your brothers and their families (aka: 'famiglias' whenever you become impressed with your own orchestration of words) and you had to change to fit in; you had to try hard to remember who these guys were back then and who they might be now. "I'll tell you the answer to your question, just in order to spare the gaseous academic too much more of your embellished prose. They're your brothers and a few wives who became sisters, by way of the law, if not the spirit. Count the offspring and you have a decent family that twenty years ago you chose to forget. Just in order to survive, mind you. You never were the type to abandon brothers; maybe you just read of Thomas Wolfe's time, rivers, trains and women at an early age, back when most literate folks thought that collecting a trunk load of unedited prose was an attractive, artsy-fartsy habit rather than a man-child's melodramatic notion of himself, a fantasy meant to match his ruffled hairdo. "You didn't know what to expect when you arrived at the destination airport, and so of course you went, you saw and you got the wind knocked out of you. You now have your own trunk load of stories to tell, but ... "I beg you to forget the flowers and comma-complicated perfume inside your language; they belong better in beds, armpits, or university textbooks. Just say what happened, add a few explosive movie scenes and at least one revelation of spread thighs and a slow joining of wet organs as the same two cardboard geeks groan and try to maintain eye contact as they come. "Do all of that and they'll love your book." "There is no way to tell this entire story of ecstasy and despair in one gulp of breath or voice. The trip, reviewed by slant of raptured, corrupted, geometric memory, occurs to me as a design of bleeding colors: youngsters skating down steep, dusty streets at evening's onset; sudden stops of awkward, smoking bicycle brakes; determined restarts and crash-prone intersections that leave me staring into the spiral of life to which I'm bound by artery, bone and bowel. I wonder over the dark-green maples and tender-barked birch that line both sides of the roads I drive inside a rented, dirty-white, Chevy Cavalier." "I believe you, Toscano. You own a fanciful predilection for both bicycles and crash-prone intersections (I almost wish that I came up with that last phrase, but not because I think it's just another failed attempt to dash your prose with poetry. I like this one especially because only a barroom full of drunks would get the joke). "Hear my question well, old friend. Where is your story, the one you claim to be telling right this minute? Your story -- at least this part of it -- is supposed to be about your Godfather, Frank DePalma. I know this because I can hear inside your head. I can hear you whispering about Frank the railroad man, Frank the dapper dresser, Frank the handsome guy who never married because he loved your mother and felt sorry for himself when he failed to catch her. "Look. You put your Godfather's picture at the head of this article. You always type his title, Godfather, with a capital G, no matter proper grammar's dictates. You gave this article a title that aims right for the gentleman's heart. "But after writing all these twirled words and miniature poems, you still haven't mentioned the man's name. "May we take it that the point of this story was supposed to be that you love your Godfather?" "Yes, that's it. I love my Godfather. "His name is Frank DePalma. He was my dad's best friend when they worked together for one of the post-World War II railroad companies (Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Line). "My Godfather loved my mother, surrendered to my dad's more insistent pursuit of the same woman, and then pined away with dignity for many years. Each time my Godfather visited our house, I grew excited and my dad grew jealous." "And your story's bottom line?" "Frank DePalma is close to eighty years old and he's not in the best of health." "I'll ask one more time. What's this story's bottom line? "I am afraid that the next time I make the trip Frank will have died." "Finally we can understand. When you rewrite the next chapter try hard to stick to your story and forget the wild flowers, or I'll refuse to run the rest of your article in our little journal." "I will." "We're depending on you, Anthony; you'd better come through. "So tell us, what's the next chapter about?" "My niece, Sara." "And the chapter's bottom line?" "I love being an uncle." "Sounds sweet and to the point." *** Thanks for stopping by to visit us here at SpilledBeans.com. If you'd like to be notified whenever something new is posted to SpilledBeans.com, then please join the Spilled Beans notification list. -- Con affetto, Anthony V. Toscano, Editor SpilledBeans.com  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|