Jill's Story, or, really, A Conversation with Jill

I wanted to write this because I think it speaks to how resilient young people can be, because I wanted to share the realities of someone specific, and because some shit in this world is more real than I generally imagine.

I wanted to share it here because you'd be one of the few people I'd actually tell the story to, and because no one besides you really ever looks at this blog---if this girl I'm calling "Jill" knew I wrote this stuff here she may be upset, but probably for not using her real name.

I don't know as much of Jill's life story as it may sound, but I'm pretty sure some bad shit happened by the by, assaults of a physical and/or sexual nature are my main guesses, but I don't have any actionable information. Mandatory reporting is serious and we're all trained on the process, but nothing to call on yet.

Jill was one of my kids my first year, and I saw plenty of intellectual potential, plus an attitude I respected. Other adults had issues with her, and usually I chalked it up to points of view clashes. For collaborative activities I usually made her the Boss.

She works at a Starbucks now and complains about having to be restrained with bitch-ass customers, to which all I can do is say, "Yeah...sucks, doesn't it," while I'm truly happy she has the maturity necessary to make jobs work.

She comes and talks to me before things get going in the morning. Topics range from being cursed out by her mom, about the general lack of respect from her mom and how it only happens after her dad leaves.  I met this dad once at an evening event a few years back, and he was British where Jill is certainly not.

It was soon after I heard stories about her "birth mother" showing up and causing havoc, and how her adoptive dad is pretty supportive and one of the fellas in her life she can rely on. A broader picture began to form. The "mom" who is caustic and nasty in the stories I hear is her adoptive mom, and she thinks her adoptive dad should leave her.

The stories about the birth mother appearing occasionally have to do with one of her younger sisters whoring around and trying to get knocked up.

Jill once explained her siblings to me and it sounded like a "Match a Baby to a Daddy" game gone wrong and ended with, "...and oh yeah, there's that baby she had with that gas station guy..."

When work resumed again this August, the first day transpired like this:

(Me setting up powerpoint slides and general room preparations.)(Door Opens.)

Jill: Hey Sherwood.
Me: Jill! How the hell are you? How was summer?
Jill: (Smiling) We buried my brother!

Where does a conversation go from there? Compassionate humans who hear those words from a young person in their charge can only reel.

He was shot to death senselessly, and she wasn't able to tell him something very important to her before it happened, and it haunts her like a bad movie cliche. (She hasn't told me what that important thing is, and I certainly won't ask.)

Later this conversation happened:

J: Hey Sherwood.
M: Jill! How are things?
J: My dad's getting outta jail...at least that's what they're saying. My birth dad...
M: Well...(unsure of the realities) that's a good thing, right?
J: He's so fucking weird, Sherwood. He's like, 'I love you Jill, I'm so proud of you...' and inside I'm like, you don't know me...proud? What do you know about me?

It was about here that I realized she was talking to him while he was in prison (and probably not jail). I had my own emotional response to the idea of a locked up guy who hasn't seen his kid in too long, but what he can see (a mature and competent young adult) is enough for him to beam with pride, but I wasn't able to verbalize any of that. And I was sure she didn't need me defending him, so I said something like:

M: Well...maybe he wants to try to build an actual father-daughter relationship with you after he gets released.
J: Yeah...maybe...so, how's your son?

An easy diversionary trick...always successful.

And then we come to the the "Conversation" from the title of this post.

J: Hey Sherwood.
M: Jill! What's happening?
J: Turns out my dad isn't getting out of prison. Turns out they have a recording of him talking about the crime, which I didn't know about...
M: What!? A recording? Did the feds have a wiretap?
J: No, it was one of those prison phones...he was talking about it and they recorded it...

My face was buried in my laptop at that moment, but when I heard her say that what ran through my head was, "Fucking idiot sonofabitch no wonder you're in prison and not raising your kids you fucking dipshit!!!!" What I said was:

M: Hmm...that's something...

She said some other stuff that I was a little too busy to register, but I tried to ask a clarifying question, like about the severity or whatever, and she was a little too busy fiddling with her makeup at my big mirror on the back of the door of the work-issued closet, so she answered a question she thought I was asking:

J: Well, he's got the death penalty, so he ain't ever coming out.

My head whipped around from my spot at the laptop across the room.

M: What!? Death penalty is for, like, special circumstances...

She may have thought I was being too adult-y with the phrase "special circumstances" but I used it because that's the language of America's legal system. By now she was asking me to look it up online, the incident itself, to find the online news briefs about it.

(Sigh)

The guy---her dad---and his accomplice (see: dumbass buddy), both legit gangsters, went looking for a dude who owed them money for drugs. They couldn't find him, but heard he was staying out at one of the many homeless encampments that used to populate the LA River and freeway crossings. This was back in 2008 before the cops wiped them away like a squeegee.

These two guys grabbed some other guy and forced him at gunpoint to take them to the dude. Once they found him they shot and killed him. Then they shot the guy who took them to him as well as three other folks who were close by, two being a mom and her kid. Kill all witnesses, I guess the plan was.

Jill's dad was already in prison for another murder and kidnapping rap when he spoke about these particular killings ON THE GODDAMNED PRISON PHONE, and they had him again. Pretty cut and dry from a legal standpoint.

Kidnapping and murder as a way of dispatching witnesses represent special circumstances, and for this Jill's dad is up for death.

She had me click on the "Images" tab from google and a series of pictures came up.

J: There he is, that's him. That's my dad...

The way Jill phrased "That's my dad..." was the way a slightly embarrassed kid would explain an over-excited father at a ballgame, and not with the terror one might expect from one connecting the twin ideas of 'mostly apparition of a patriarch' to 'multiple murdering gangster.'

The picture was of a hardened gangster with obvious genetic connections to Jill. My laptop screen is so grimy that I tried wiping a smudge, but then realized that what I was seeing was not a smudge, but was, in fact, a tattoo across both cheeks of this 36 year old man.

"Nut Hood."

As in, this man had, on one cheek, "NUT," and on the other cheek "HOOD."

The Nut Hood Crips are a Watts area Crip-affiliated gang, holding from 108th to 111th streets between Alameda and maybe Willowbrook, and memories of my bike riding shenanigans from a few years back flood my present. I know right where all that is.

Is it just me, or is the idea of a "hardened gangster" clash with a guy with nut on his face? Sorry, "NUT"?

I joke, but because that's my only recourse. I feel like a surrogate father to many of these kids, Jill and and a few others maybe more than most, and I find it hard to reconcile my suburban upbringing and experiences with what can only be described as the horrors many of these kids just call...it...life...the world as they know it...

How would your imagination be warped by living through this kind of shit? Its kind of amazing anyone ever makes it out, and it's a testament to the drive and ability of young people to adapt.

And then, as a father, we come back to that last conversation with his daughter, how much he loves her and how proud he is of her, and a far more chilling and bleak scene is painted. He knew the realities of his case by that point, but took the time to tell his daughter he was proud of her, that he loved her.

And, as fathers, we know: The job of being a dad is more than just feeling it, or even saying it, you have to live it, every fucking day.

I found the Monterreys...

I intentionally spelled it wrong above, as in, I spelled the name of the Spanish General correctly, but not the name of a type of Birkenstock that we thought was long out of production.

Those are the Monterey, a style of the famous hippie sandal (that Germans only wear in the house as slippers and think Yanks who wear them outside the home are a little nutty) that is slightly different from the ubiquitous Arizona.

Once shopping I unknowingly purchased a pair of the Montereys only to notice they were ever so different than the normal Birk, and fell in love with them. And then I could never find them again.

That minor difference, of course, being that the strapping covers more of the bed of the sandal. Here are some pics for comparison:

The Arizona

The Monterey

It's a slight and subtle difference, and I'm not sure the practical realities of that extra length, or why I got so obsessed over it, but it's back! And a whole c-note more expensive! So there's that...

But they do look pretty sleek:

..in a hippie sort of way...

Is This Our Man Pynchon?

In what's likely a murky legal move, someone snapped a photo of an older dude riding a bike in Manhattan of whom it suspected that it's Thomas Pynchon.

You be the judge:

There is an interesting Reddit read about someone who is pretty sure Pynchon lives in their building, and their description isn't necessarily the same as this guy, but it could be...

You can judge that on its merits here as well.

As if living through a Pynchon novel ween't enough, the world shrinks around him in a way he would have guessed.

Best Old Review of Gravity's Rainbow

I came across the best review of Pynchon's magnum opus, Gravity's Rainbow, a few days back. It's so good, and I call it "best" without the luxury of having read every single other review of the prosaic novel.

But I call it best because it says everything I've ever wanted to say about the book, but in a more collected and professional way than I've been able to do.

If you get the time to check it out the grand picture of the basic structure and the book's rhythms will be shown off.

Just click right here for the review by scholar, writer, and teacher Richard Poirier.

Whetting the Appetite

I've been finding some nifty articles lately about Pynchon, since he turned 80 this year and this world continually seems to be a fever dream of his we're just living through.

Here's one about his position as the influential Postmodernist.

There's also the cool random photo:

I'll be trying to get some of the other cool content up here, but, you know, whenever...

Some of the Pictures

I started sifting through the pictures on Corrie's camera and found a few good ones.

Bummer about not being able to see Norman's face, but here he is feeding the deer:

This one is pretty awesome:

Of course that's not how Cass truly feels, but that meltdown moment is classic.

And here's me reading to the kids before we took the Decemberween Picture:

Cass was messing with my copy of Prufrock and I eventually snatched it away from him. I found this Mr. Boffo comic strip inside:

Made me think about you...

I saw this and thought you may have liked to check it out. We didn't have time, but it was free:

This paper was an advertising false-cover to the free lifestyle and happenings magazine Time Out New York (usually abbreviated to "TONY", as in restaurants showing off their TONY-award for Best Cocktail or Best Breakfast).

They were handing them out at the train stop we used to get back to Harlem from the Bronx after the Yankee game.

Below, they show some of their displays, like the middle one, apparently Joe Dimaggio's gift watch from the Yankees owner:

This advertising supplement was specifically about Patek Philippe, but it sounded like there were other brands at the Art of Watches show...maybe I'm guessing and projecting. Wouldn't it be then just be a Patek Philippe show?

Anyway, I like watched enough to have wanted to check it out, but time constraints and travelling with a one year old put the kibosh on that.

Some Content, Part 1

I've been coming across new content and material from all over the interwebs recently about our man Pynchon.

This is a nifty piece written by a Brazilian lady about her experiences reading Gravity's Rainbow (at 13!!), about some of the ins-and-outs of the Brazilian publishing game, translating TP for Brazil, and other interesting historical Pynchonian stuff.

The article's accompanying picture, taken in 1965 and reprinted below, is pretty cool: it shows Pynchon flashing the peace sign from inside a house, while his friend Phyllis Gebauer holds a pig pinata gift she got him:

I'll start putting the other things up here as I collate them.

Happy Birthday Norm!

Just made it!

In honor of your birthday, check out what I found in my laptop:

Day One, 2011, and I'm honored to be a part of it. (Updated: my bad...)

And a few months later, in the aftermath of a long day at Disneyland:

With the Leinad

One of these years...

One of these years we'll leave the families stateside and journey together to check out International Pynchon Week. This year it'll be held in June in the French Atlantic coastal city of La Rochelle.

Sounds Pynchonian: (from their website) "The conveners hope this liminal space on the margins of Europe will inspire Pynchon scholars to sail out towards yet unexplored territories, following some of the leads below or picking up any related or unrelated Pynchonian line."

It looks like (every year) they have some interesting talks and lectures and discussions. I'm curious how well-attended it will be.

Intriguing Article Title

I get a print edition of LA Times' Sunday paper delivered each week. The thick Sports section is surprisingly light on reading content, while the thin (and possibly my favorite section) Arts & Books section is regularly relatively dense. Yesterday, my birthday of all days, the following title caught my attention:

Say what?

I read through the entire article and am inspired to eventually pick up the novel in question, A Little More Human by Fiona Maazel.

Ms. Maazel's website is neat ("Rhymes with Gazelle" is the sub-title) and has a link to the article above. The story is out-there in the sense that we're interested in, but really this is the first time I've found an article written about a woman writer being compared to Pynchon.

Of course there are wild, digressive, blitz-krieg lady writers either inspired by or similar to our man Pynchon, but I haven't been notified of any. Is that weird or a sign of the times? Maybe not everybody aspires to write spiraling and borderline dissolved narratives...

Anyway, the final sentence of Jim Ruland's review sums up bot the work in question and a Pynchon novel pretty well:

"A Little More Human is a character-driven work of literary fiction

that also happens to be a thriller guided by a web of intrigue with 

an ending that not even a mind reader could see coming.              "

Two Pretty Sweet Reads About Link and Zelda

If you get the time, here are two links to pretty rad articles about separate Zelda games.

The first gives a bit of history on the game itself, which I found fascinating, and discusses the apocalyptic feel and the underground masses that love the game nowadays:

The Cult of "Zelda:Majora's Mask"

The second is pretty high praise for the newest edition (as of March 2017), calling it the "Platonic ideal of a launch game:"

A Game without Gates

 If you get the time and all...

As Discussed in Santa Monica...

I finally got around to looking back at the details in David Mitchell's book The Bone Clocks:

The main character is a girl named Holly, the good guys are the Horologists, and the bad guys are the Anchorites. Each of the good and bad guys have longer-styled names, as in the shortening of them for convenience purposes comes to "Horologists versus Anchorites."

The Horologists are people who, once they die, spend 50+ days in the afterlife-plane, then take over the body of a dying child between specific ages (think 4 to 11 or something). The child actually dies, but then seems make a miraculous recovery. That's because an Horologist has entered the body to live a whole new lifetime, merging another pre-personality onto their memory banks. The most powerful Horologists are also the oldest.

The Anchorites maintain the same body nearly indefinitely by decanting the life essences of normals, but so much the better if they can decant an Horologists. They're the bad-dudes.

But that's the background story. The foreground story follows Holly and the people (see: men) who love her in various forms over six different sectional breakdowns, with each breakdown covering a different time period. The first: 1984 England. Then: the French Alps, 1991; Iraq in 2004; Hudson Valley 20-teens; New York City 2025; and finally, the post apocalyptic coast of Ireland of 2043.

There are some nifty storytelling items here, and some that even feel a little hackey, or maybe a bit out of place in a post-modern lit book. Like the battle between psychics using their brain lasers and the like. And serious magic.

The Atlantic compares Mitchell favorable to Franzen, Chabon, Egan, Diaz, and Munro, in different terms for each, and while there are parallels to Pynchon---in that he's created a single universe---I think a critic from the New Yorker has summed up a strange conundrum surrounding with Mitchell:

He tells a helluva story, but does he have anything to say?

Also, did you hear about the previously unknown Walt Whitman novel just discovered? They're describing it has "pre-modern Pynchon"... I wrote about it earlier at my pops and Dan's blog.

New and Different Pynchon Map

If you get the time, because we all have so much free time laying around, you could get lost in this ZeeMaps map of Pynchon's Los Angeles as found in his novels.

It's a pretty sweet resource. I was thinking of swinging by some of the Long Beach/San Pedro vicinity spots. Also: Frank Zappa's house on Woodrow Wilson Ave!?!