iii.autumn.2011

Hey Everybody!


You are in for a treat - we have a full slate for this Fall's Body Electric - poems, pictures, stories - happy procrastination!


First, a photo by Andrew Nguyen:


                                              FIREKNIFE

Andrew took the photo of fellow second year classmate Jarrod Yamanaka last winter. For more photos from the sequence, check out the flickr feed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nguy0833/6241963940/

iii.1

Torn

BY Megan Wood

I miss the innocence I never knew

I can see each time I look at you

Clear as it could ever be

My eyes looking back at me

There’s no question you’re my purpose

Still it boils beneath the surface…

I’m summoned now--it’s pulling me

My Calling, my Passion, my Destiny

Born before you, it staked its claim

Thrashing now inside my veins

Demanding that I follow through

Tearing me away from you…

I’ve never loved two things more

The life I have and my life before

When I could give it all to you

Just like a Mother ought to do

I wish there were another way

That I could go and I could stay...

iii.2

WATER, WATER
BY ALOYSIUS FINK


Water, water everywhere,
yet none of it to drink.
Your sperm is in the gutter,
your love is in the sink.


I see the world everywhere
and love is all around
but when I look into my self
it's hardly to be found.


My fickle heart, my dirty mind,
they constantly compete.
And when the battle's over
they're lying at my feet


Confused, but unrelenting
I once more look around
But naught has changed, and love remains
sought but not yet found


Now when I speak of love, you see
it's the romantic kind
A deep and understanding love,
the core and not the rind


For love, you know, is everywhere
in every face I see
I care for patient, family, friend,
but who will care for me?


Water, water everywhere
yet none of it to drink.
And, if I don't start bailing soon,
I fear that I may sink.

iii.3

COLD NOVEMBER

BY AARON CROSBY

It took me awhile to dig this sucker out. My closet’s a mess with the crummy floor all full of cardboard boxes and all the boots jumbled by the door and the shirts crumpled in the corners 'cause when they fall off the racks you don’t even know they’re down there - the shirts - it just seems like you all the sudden got more hangers. Anyways I found it and a bunch of old flannel shirts too, so I guess I won’t have to do laundry for a good while now. 

Browning. Ya know they don’t make them with real wood like this anymore unless ya pay special, but all the regular ones come with plastic stocks like little Ronald McDonald guns or somethin'. Like Ken doll guns or somethin'. Donny B he got himself a new Remington with the real wood - ordered it special from a guy in Pine City - and his new wife got his name engraved right there on the butt. I guess that means if old DB ever fires the damn thing shirtless he’ll get a nice little tattoo or somethin' like that. Be just like Donny to go hunting duck on a half-frozen crick without his shirt on, the crazy son of a bitch. Probably in a blizzard or something too. Those boys of Tonya’s get him to do crap like that, even with the dialysis he’s got in the cities couple times a week. He’s like a chocolate lab, an old one that don’t know he’s supposed to just lay down by the fire and let the new Chesapeake rollick out of that water with a bird in his mouth and steam rising off his back. 

This here gun I got though still don’t feel like mine. I remember watching the old man ream it out. This grease still smells metallic, like how I think my fillings would taste if I got hit by lightning. The memory of how he clacked the bolt in like his fingers were God’s fingers still makes me feel so small, like the knowledge of everything that had ever been was in those fingers and no matter how hard I squeezed them I could never absorb it. I got newspapers open to the public notices to set it on so I don’t gum up the tablecloth. Darlene had all these creased vinyl table cloths for all the different seasons and the one I got on the table now has little scarecrows in front of red barns and they’re all huddled together in the middle of these wide open fields ready for harvest. It’s just the same pattern repeated over and over across and over and over down. Once I looked at all of the scarecrows to see if they were all exactly identical. They all have smiles painted on and they are waving up at the ceiling so I don’t think they really know or care. I still change the table cloth every month too. 

I got all the guts sitting out next to it and I feel a little ashamed that I need to unfold the yellow instructions to remember how to put it all back together. No matter how many times I take this gun apart and put it back together it will always be his, and no matter how many people come over for coffee after church there will always be an empty spot full of unresolved tension like the last tomato that stays green forever. I can’t sit facing the window or I keep watching, ready to pour an extra cup for her. 87 years and these synovial bolts, his bones and our vacuous chamber are all I can touch with these rheumatoid digits. 

iii.4

tip of my tongue

Tip of My Tongue

By Neil Siekman

THE BODY ELECTRIC ISSUE ii- June, 23 2011

Hello everybody, and welcome to the second issue of TBE. Hopefully finals went well for everybody, and you are now free to relax and enjoy the creative work of some of your classmates. We have some great entries this issue! Now for news:

1.) Whether you are traveling or volunteering abroad this summer or exploring your own hometown, take lots of pictures so we can put together a photo issue in September!

2.) Start thinking about memories that really stick out from your first year! For the incoming first years, we'll be putting out an issue at the beginning of August, and we would love to have people submit short (less than 300 word) stories about their "welcome to med school" moments. They can be funny, embarrassing, sad or all of the above. Deadline August 1st!

3.) New in this issue, TBE posted each entry individually to encourage reader comments on each submission.

-NEIL and AARON

ii.1

ANCESTORS

BY ANNIE JACOBSEN

Mother,

A golden thread

Looping in and out of darkness.

Your bones, heart, skin and breasts

Have died and been reborn,

This body is your testament.

From where did I arise

With these million voices on my lips,

A siphon of your consciousness?

At night we dream of each other

Like holding mirror to mirror,

Eclipse.

ii.2

NEW GLASS

BY ANONYMOUS

I remember asking my mom that night “can’t we call someone and tell them to make it stop? How about the President or the Pope?”

I was eleven years old and I had just felt the earth shudder and watched the hills explode in flames as bombs were dropped on my country. I call it“mine” because once someone tries to destroy something dear to you, you can’t help but call it your own and try to tug it back from their reach. But when has land ever belonged to any person?

The sound of bombs dropping kept me up all night and my stomach was tied in knots as I curled up between my parents on the floor. The question I posed to my mom remains with me till this day because I spent that sleepless night mulling it over. Over and over I thought about who I wanted to call and yell at – who I wanted to call and cry to and beg to and plead to make it stop - and continuously I came up blank.

My gut instinct till that point had always been to reach for my parents when I felt threatened but there they were, beside me on the floor; and tremors rippled through that floor all night long.

That night I was confronted with forces that I didn’t know existed and didn’t know how to resolve. They were dark and beyond my understanding but would forever change the way I saw the world and would ultimately shape the way I understood the concept of justice. But what’s an eleven year old to do with justice?

I kept my eyes open all night but my nightmare was reality.

As dawn broke I woke with my mom and walked with her towards the living room in silence. She grabbed a broom and started sweeping. As the light of a new day forced its way between the clouds, she answered my question before I had to ask: “we can’t put it back together, but we can buy new glass.”

ii.3

ARM WRESTLING
BY ANONYMOUS

“Watch him. Watch how he pulls his arm closer and leans in so he can win.”

He taught us to arm wrestle early. He taught us that the secret was in not the size of the muscles or our stamina; it was technique. Even when we were 10, we all had a hand at trying to beat my grandfather at arm wrestling. When my two cousins, Andy and Henry, were 18, they finally beat my 70 year old grandfather. At that point, he retired from the business of teaching us the art of arm wrestling and it then became our responsibility to share the secret with our younger cousins.

Arm wrestling was among one of the many skills he taught us. It wasn’t until we were older that our parents told us he also knew the secret to growing, roasting, and making coffee, but that was before he came to the United States. That was before any of us had been born.

When he was young, communism in China had forced him to escape to Vietnam and work from the ground up to re-establish himself. Several years later he married my grandmother and had six children. He taught himself how to grow and roast coffee beans and created a successful business selling coffee in Vietnam. Not many years later, communists in Vietnam took away his home and business forcing him to once again leave everything behind and escape to the United States in hopes of a better and safer future for his family.

This time, he was already in his late 40s and was tired of trying. Twice now, he had lost everything he had worked for. For the rest of his life, he spent his time watching the children and grandchildren as they grew. Even though he never shared his secret for making coffee with us, he taught us that hard-work could get us anywhere we wanted to go in life.

He had had two heart bypass surgeries and I knew when I left for medical school I did not have much time with him left. On my last visit, I told him “I’m not coming home for two more months Grandpa.” And everything in me wanted to scream, I’m afraid I won’t see you again.

“Two months passes quickly. Don’t worry.” I know and that’s why I’m scared. I’m not ready for you to go. There is so much we haven’t talked about.

“Just study hard,” he said. And in the silence that followed, I knew he understood that I was saying good-bye.

One month later, he passed away in the comfort of his own home with all of his children by his side. Every part of me says I wish I had one more minute with him, but I know we have said our goodbyes. I miss you Grandpa and I’m scared of all time that I have to sacrifice with my family to become a doctor.

ii.4

COMMON PATHWAYS

BY JAVIER CABRERA PÉREZ

In our dreams I was a fool

in search of a missing fibula and you

were a failed superhero in need of

newtonian mechanics.

We met in a clandestine location,

a small bar about to close,

and discussed the possibility

of finding bones with parabolic

equations.

Kissing in the street corner

we approached each other

as spiral galaxies in eternal rotation.

our years of walking in tightropes

and creaking floorboards

fell behind, and the pain
from dislocated shoulders

(past encounters in the wrong hearts)

was dissipated by the warmth

of our bodies in your apartment

near the outskirts of Cambridge.

I wished I had been there before

to percuss your chest,

listen for breath sounds,

caress the small of your back.

You translated my babbling

(as a polyglot of my brainspeak)

through similar neuronal impulses,

common pathways for tragedy and romance.

You said, would you believe pulsars

are keeping time so well?

here is proof that some things can have a frequency,

the way souls can have frequencies,

and that maybe we are two pulsars

between extremes of dark matter

flashing at the same speed.

In the Boston museum my electrons

transferred weight between my nose

and yours, which confirmed our hypothesis

of being repellent magnetic fields,

not because of being opposites

but simply because of sharing smaller particles,

things too small for the average person

to comprehend unless delirious

or in love.

I have said to you how I wished

I could rewrite all my poems to you,

but the truth is that the most important

poems I have will always be in my dreams,

which, as we already know, you occupy

as a superhero of physics.

ii.5

THE SEMICOLON

BY AARON CROSBY

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my education recently, and I think every experience I’ve ever had was just an iteration of high school English, and if I had to be even more specific and pick one single lesson, one shining gem of dogmatism that so perfectly encapsulates every scrap of information I’ve ever forcibly shoved into my brain it would be the day that How To Use a Semicolon wafted through hormone laden clouds to lodge between my ears, for as a good student I began to incorporate it into my writing; closely related phrases were juxtaposed without the thought-wall that is the period intervening; in fact, I liked to use semicolons most with transitions and adverbs, although sometimes I liked to use it for really long lists of nouns, verbs or adjectives; or, more commonly, for ones containing lots of commas which would be confusing without my new friend, the semicolon; however, the faster I began to hand in papers containing semicolons, the faster they came back covered in red circles with admonitions like “use a period” scrawled in the margins, and as I grew increasingly frustrated, I began to realize that sometimes we are taught things so that we may be taught we are wrong, and that even though to one teacher it may be grammatically correct to begin a sentence with a conjunction and to use a semicolon in your writing, there’s some expert, somewhere who thinks it is an affront to the English language, and that sometimes, when you decide to flex your muscles and are fed up with authority’s opinion of absolute right and absolute wrong, it is necessary to break all sorts of other people’s rules in the course of writing a 300 word essay consisting of a single sentence.

ii.6

issue one 4.09.2011

EDITOR'S NOTE

BY AARON CROSBY

“You should have seen the size of it! It had tusks as thick as my leg, I swear.”

“You are such a liar! There was no mastodon. I bet you just spent the last four days sleeping in an old saber-tooth den and drinking fermented berry juice by yourself. Seriously, man. You smell like the time I forgot the deer carcasses in my cave.”

“Shut it! Let me finish. So I was crouched down real low behind this bush, and my arm was cramping up real bad ‘cause I was keeping my spear at shoulder level, just like you’re supposed to. And this thing, this beast! It was a beast I tell you. It was huge. This beast lifts its head, with these – these”

“Massive tusks, I know.”

“Massive tusks, that’s right. They were monstrous! Well, he must have caught sight of my spear out of the corner of his eye, because he let out one big grunt, just like a snort, and he turned to come right at me.”

“And?”

“And he was coming at me. And the tusks, and…”

“So?

“So I was passed out on the other side of the valley. Guys I think I’m still drunk.”

And so went mankind’s first story, or at least I would like to think so. It sure beats a diatribe on the finer points of huntering and gathering, or a series of grunts, clicks and hand gestures communicating the location of a hippopotamus herd. From the very first time that mankind squatted in the dust and set out to describe his experience of the world to another, we have written ourselves together as a race, creating a pooled experience from which each of us can draw to evaluate our perceptions – the way that light falls on photoreceptors, and I recognize shapes. The way that camphor alights on olfactory neurons, and you describe the Vaporub your mother smeared on your chest as a child. The way that countless synapses, firing with reckless abandon in countless brains, have formed memories and constructed narratives powerful enough to create and mold senses from words, sending eruptions of ideas, emotions and triggered actions bucking and careening down the slope that is human history.

Our words are what make us human. To be human is to be story and poetry and argument. With our fellow animals we share many abilities. Chimpanzees use tools to fish for ants. Dogs most certainly show signs of emotion and happiness toward their masters, as anyone who has had their face lapped sloppily will attest. Bees perform intricate dances, telling the other members of their hive where to locate the choicest flowers. However, none of them can use language as an inducer of sensory experience, of emotion, of thought. Stories are our most precious gift, as the shared nature of human experience is what makes it unique.

Medicine is arguably the most humanistic of all professions and callings, as it requires the utilization of all of the powers of post-Enlightenment scientific empiricism combined drop for drop with water from man’s deep well of compassion and empathy. Thus, if mankind is built of stories, and medicine is a jewel in the crown of humanism, then should medicine not be the most narrative of professions? I would posit that it is. Fundamentally, what is medicine based upon but the history? Every day, across the entire globe, millions of physicians begin millions of stories with, “Patient presents with…” – medicine’s “once upon a time.” Indeed, every hospital visit is itself a collision of stories, those of patients, and families, and workers, and science. Don’t forget science, who will continue down its lackadaisical, meandering path long after we have lain down to rest.

So, what does this mean for us? As future physicians, we should seize our humanity. Self-expression is not just a hobby or a release from stress. It is what makes us human, and keeps us human, and is a lamp that must burn as long as our profession toils and sweats against sickness and sadness.

Perhaps this has gotten a little too heavy and philosophical, so I will leave you with this: continue to share your experiences with each other, both via this forum and anywhere you are given the opportunity. I know it’s a little scary, sharing something personal with the world, but if you need some encouragement – I hear there is some berry juice on the other side of the valley. It’s supposed to be really strong stuff.

A PUFFER FISH

BY HO-SHIA THAO

The brisk morning air suctions from behind me with the closing of the bus door and I feel the sudden change of temperature on my face as I shuffle to the nearest seat. Snot drips down to the tip of my nose while its frozen hairs thaw. I wipe it with my mittens and greet the driver with a stiff, polite smile. The smell of wet, muddy cotton suffocates me and I suddenly wish my nose were still clogged. The bus begins to move after I swipe my wallet and I stumble to sit behind the driver in a handicap-reserved seat, conspicuously evading the eyes of everyone on board. I glance out the windows behind me. The mounds of snow banking on the side of the road are dingy and grimy, not much better than the floor. Melted water ebb and flow with the acceleration of the bus, carrying the trash and debris left from former passengers with it. My iPod plays loudly and I initiate the ritual of meditation to withdraw from the public into the warmth of my coat.

Reaching to change my melancholic music, appropriate for such a dark, sunless sunrise, I notice a grocery bag full of ramen noodles across from me. Searching for its owner, I spot the young woman sitting a few seats away, looking out the front window of the bus. She is a stranger to me, and in all the mornings that I have taken this bus I have never seen her before. She is not much older than I am, and we share a common ancestry, one that displays by the color of our skin. Her round glasses are frosty with tears of dew, her eyes lost to the moving scenery reflected in them. Her black hair is straight and shoulder length. It’s uncombed and covering the top of her thin colorful jacket, unsuitable for this Minnesota winter. I wonder why she is not better prepared for this weather. It’s fucking cold in China, too.

I close my eyes and try to refocus, sifting through my schedule for the day. My agenda is interrupted with the lyrics of Ray LaMontagne.

If it’s a friend you need…

I open my eyes. I’m forgetting something.

Let it be me.

Shit. My coffee mug.

Let it be me.

And my white-out pen. I must have left it on my desk. Shit.

Let it be me.

The woman glances in my direction, but when I raise my eyes to meet hers, she throws their direction back to the window. I raise an eyebrow and search her. My eyes land on her boots. They are wet and black, their edges caked with white and brown slush. They drip and squeak when she moves her feet on the rubber floor of the bus. I wonder what brings her here to Minnesota, to the University. Graduate school, probably. Most likely in science. Typical.

I close my eyes once more and for a moment feel their heaviness begin to sink back to sleep. My chest rises and falls with a deep breath. Damn coffee mug. Damn caffeine-dependent body. Damn medical school with their 8 AM lectures. Ray LaMontagne.

I hear a squeak and am startled by the opening of doors. Fuck. More passengers. She clutches her purse, fidgets, and looks at her feet as a large man squeezes into the seat next to her. She’s uncomfortable and her hands turn red as she folds them into herself. Her face is pink and her glasses slide down her nose, now pointed to the ground. What the hell is wrong with her? It’s a public bus.

The man grunts and shifts in his seat, urging her to make more room. Her tiny frame tilts away from him and she picks up her bag of ramen noodles. Why doesn’t she just move to the next seat? The plastic grocery bag rustles and ramen wraps crackle from their sleep.

More people waddle by, restricted from free movement by the full-length coats they don. I make myself look bigger than I am to divert passengers from sitting next to me. My elbows jut out and I open my knees wider to take up more room. I am a puffer fish, stretching my body to deflect my predators. My space is private. Do not enter. Do not cross. Do not pass Go and collect two hundred dollars. I am determined to ride the next ten minutes to school without having to share. Unfortunately, an elderly woman sees through my guise and excuses herself into the adjacent seat. As I sigh in surrender and deflate my persona, I sense the strange woman’s eyes peering over those frosty glasses. I want to wave and make her feel like a fool for staring, but my hands rest on my backpack, restrained in the warmth of my mittens. My eyebrow rises.

Who are you?

Her stare is broken by the man who asks her to move to the next seat. He says please. She does so, timidly and without a sound. What is wrong with her? Does she not understand the law of entropy? Does she not study science? Does she not want her own safe space for her and all of her stuff, not crowded and far away from this heaving man breathing in all her oxygen? Does she not want the freedom to take up as much room as she wants? To enjoy her ramen noodles in peace? Does she not understand that rubbing against another person will make her smell like them? Does she not want to be left alone? We capitalize on privacy here. The space around us, around me, is my home. It is to be respected. Do Not Disturb, Please.

And then I realize I have seen this mute, foreign woman before. Not only on this bus, but everywhere. And I have seen her all my life, greeting her with the same raised eyebrow. She was the woman at the gym who exercised on the elliptical in sandals, her body wrapped in her religion’s dress code. She was the woman who yelled at her children at the mall, too loud and too alien for the spectators to understand. She was the quiet girl at school, whose tongue could never pronounce the letter R and sent to the ESL room every morning. She was the grandmother who paid for my bag of candy with a single dollar bill when the cashier spoke in a language she did not know. She was my mother who struggled to find her license and registration, when the unforgiving police officer pulled her over for running a red light. She was on the road to the hospital that day. A loose nail lodged in the bottom of her son’s bloody foot. Even then I raised my eyebrow, my eyes full of tears.

I am not the friend you seek.

The bus takes off again as the new passengers settle in, and I take another look at this woman sitting in front me, no longer a stranger. She is a woman I have wanted to save from my own judgment. A judgment rooted in self-hatred for the mark that constantly reminds me that I am just as foreign to this bus, to this place, to this hegemony. I feel for her, this woman, but it is a gut wrenching empathy, casted and disguised as sympathy. A prettier name for pity. Born to immigrants, facilitated by an American dream, I was bleached and washed until my hair turned blond and my tongue tamed to entertain in a language not my own. And yet, I wear it proudly, this mark. I wear it without shame, without hesitation. I choose to wear this mark so that I may fend off the intruders who wander on this bus with a twitch in the arch of their brow.

I look to my own feet. I am a fish out of water. I am both a foreigner to foreigners in this country and to those who claim to be native. A pseudonym for Asian, hyphenated to join the word “American” so that the space I carve out for myself is delineated from that of my ex-refugee parents. Though a simple term, I am torn. Am I the Asian Americans see, or the American Asians see riding on the bus? Where do I draw the line in my skin so that they see both of me, all of me, in one body? How do I reconcile the self-hatred from the self-loving, the friend they seek from the stranger, the poisonous spikes donned on my scales from the vulnerable pink flesh that it protects?

And that is why she looks at me. And that is who she is. And that is why she wonders who I am, where I come from, and where I am going.

FEAR OF DROWNING

BY ANONYMOUS

The funny thing about reexamining the past is that I always find something new. I have a hard time remembering, and so the me of yesterday never seems familiar. I might as well be going through the personal documents of a stranger. Besides, I’ve changed so much that it’s hard to get a grasp of who I was or wanted to be at any given point in time. It’s a good thing that I do a better job than most of keeping track of feelings and thoughts in the moment or else my account of my life would begin somewhere at 17. Luckily, I’ve maintained multiple blogs for the past five years in which I have a record of everything from my adolescent sexual experiences to college admission anxieties to freshman year disillusionment to first loves and last loves. The girl preserved reads like a fictional character to me. Whoever I was then is always too far removed for me to get a good hold on her now. And it’s sad. It’s tragic that I forget.

It’s tragic because forgetting means throwing out the good along with the bad and though I think leaving behind the latter is a matter of self-preservation, it’s the former that makes life worth living, isn’t it? Besides, there are lessons I could learn from myself if only I had the will to remember them. I must admit that there are some things I did better at 15 than I do now. Somehow, things seemed clearer then, even when it came to what I wanted to accomplish with my life. There are other things I’ve simply stopped knowing how to do, like letting myself fall in love without worrying about what risks it might entail.

Last night, while trying to dig up resume drafts from my inbox, I found an old email exchange with an ex-boyfriend I dated two summers ago. In it, Summer Guy said one of the most important things anyone has ever told me: “You showed me that life is too important to be taken too seriously.” The rest of the emails were about our relationship, about falling hard and fast, about — as I called it then — “love … or its short-term equivalent.” We were writing at the height of our passion for each other, and I found what I said to him remarkable because for once, reading the old me brought about a feeling of nostalgia, a sense that I had indeed felt that way in that moment. I remembered her. This hasn’t happened in a long time for me. Recognition of my former self, in place of embarrassment at who she was — or even worse, bafflement — has largely been rare, and yet last night, I could recall what it felt like to love someone.

I don’t love him anymore. At least not in the way that I used to. And though I consider us good friends, I enjoy Summer Guy’s company most from afar … or preferably in short spurts with breaks for good measure. But despite only harboring platonic feelings for him nowadays, recalling how much I once loved him made me smile. It reminded me that relationships are great, and believe it or not, I need the reminder. I’ve been spending the past month trying to convince myself that relationships are the precise opposite of great. Instead, they are emotionally precarious, troublesome, and unnecessary. Maybe I’m clinging desperately to my independence for fear that I will lose some part of myself in the process of falling for someone else. Maybe I simply don’t know how to respond to someone who exceeds the expectations I’ve habitually lowered in light of attached suitors and so-called liberal lovers who later balk at my ideals. Maybe I’m not willing to run the risk of abandonment. But though I’ve been afraid for weeks to make this concession, I must say: by and large, love is worth it. The fact that an email from a former boyfriend can conjure up this rare spark of recognition of the feeling is proof enough.

Love didn’t used to terrify me, and I certainly didn’t think I was scared of it. Because unlike the community pool, love is more like swimming in the ocean. Once you’re far out, there are no lifeguards or railings, and more often than not, your final destination is not forward but back from where you came. For the girl who used to throw herself headfirst into the water without hesitation, it seems like I’ve taken one too many steps away from the sand to remember that the view is worth it, that drowning is more fear than real possibility, that even those who never properly learned how to swim — or who have long forgotten — are capable of staying afloat.

Why Love Is Like A Staph Aureus Infection

By Jennifer Day

Your villainous spheres search over me,

My skin, flushed, yields to your exploration

Seeing what so many have seen and passed over

You decide to stay awhile

There you sit, waiting in the entryway,

Ignorant to your power

Unaware that every utterance is a potent toxin

Drifting along the vessels of my soul

Overwhelming the very same bricks that

Block the others’ advances, over and over

You persist, resistant to the infallible mannerisms

That have caused so many to flee

You stay, loyally infiltrating my being

Thus, I fall, succumbing the virulence of your love

INSTRUMENTAL
BY NEIL SIEKMAN

Below, is something I played and recorded while I was jobless at my parents' house after graduating from college. It was recorded solely with the microphone in my laptop. (Also, because the microphone in my laptop was very lo-fi, I had to record the bass drum, snare drum, and cymbals all as separate tracks.)

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY LINDSAY ZHAO

BUDESTI, ROMANIA

BY NEIL SIEKMAN AND DAN MAHON

The following is based on a screenplay written by me and my friend Dan. It's based on a true story and has been modified a bit for the body electric. Enjoy the first chapter of Budesti, Romania.

Theo is leaning on counter eating cottage cheese out of the container. Margaret paces around the kitchen.

Margaret

Why can’t we ever go out? You know, to a movie or to dinner or something? Kyle would have taken me. He wouldn’t just sit at home all day eating from a can…

Theo

It’s not a can. Yeah, it’s more like a plastic tub.

Margaret

Ohh, is The Room still playing at the Theater downtown? Kyle wanted to see that one I think.

Theo

Getting a little sick of hearing about Kyle. You know, sometimes I still can’t believe you dated that meathead.

Margaret

You know he was your friend too.

Margaret takes a bite of the cottage cheese, slightly disgusted, she continues.

God knows what’s happening to Kyle and here you are just…. You know he’d never talk guff about you like this

Theo

…Well I’m not Kyle!

Margaret

Kyle wouldn’t have said that.

BEAT

I’m going to bed.

INT. THEO’S APARTMENT – AFTERNOON – THE NEXT DAY

Theo enters his apartment and notices a red flash coming from his answering machine. He drops a bag of groceries and a stack of letters from the Dead Letter Office he works at. Unpacking the bag as he listens, a message from Margaret comes on.

Margaret (V.O.)

Hey Theo, it’s Margaret, I just received a letter from Kyle saying that something’s come up. I just wanted to tell you I’ll be out of touch for a couple days. It came from this address…1309 W. Bronson Street in Budesti? Not sure I’m pronouncing that correctly. Anyway, it’s in Romania. I love you.

BEAT

Oh by the way could you stop by my house and water my plants for me?

Theo

Damn.

EXT. STREET – AFTERNOON

Theo drives his station wagon towards Margaret’s house. We hear small faints of “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and The News.

INT. MARGARET’S HOUSE – CONTINUED

Theo opens the door to Margaret’s house except that she has an almost comical amount of plants.

Theo begins watering the plants around Margaret's apartment -- some are really high up, several tucked under tables. After watering the plants, Theo puts on a record and opens the closet to find a large hat one might see being worn at the Kentucky Derby. He puts the hat on. Theo begins playing the game perfection at the kitchen table but doesn’t complete the puzzle in time -Theo then smashes the game out of his view.

Theo then starts walking around the house. While doing so, he sees the draw-string for the attic, he pulls the string opening the attic door.

INT. ATTIC – CONTINUED

Theo walks around the attic, exploring the random awards and gifts that Margaret has received over the years. Theo sits in the desk that Margaret uses to write her scripts and plays. He then notices a couple letters on the desk from Kyle. He holds up one to see the date: it's dated 1984. He picks up another: it's dated from 1985. He picks up one more to find that it was sent in 1986. Theo begins reading these letters and finds that many of them are romantic in nature. Although Theo is currently dating Margaret, he is not too alarmed by these letters because they were sent before him and Margaret were a couple. Theo continues rifling through the letters, and to his horror, he finds that the letters are becoming disturbingly recent. Theo continues to check the dates of the love letters, "1987... 1988... 1989". Finally, Theo happens upon a letter that was sent only a few weeks before. Theo reads the letter...

Theo

“I can’t wait to see you again, I realize now what I gave up by joining the military, but I know that you’re the person that I’m supposed to be with. Growing old with you will be worth this terrible time apart

Love,

Kyle”

Theo

What?

Theo sits for a moment, completely stunned; he has just learned that his girlfriend Margaret has rekindled a romance with Theo's childhood friend, Kyle. Theo leaves Margaret's house and heads home slamming the door behind him.

INT. THEO’S HOUSE – CONTINUED

Theo paces around his kitchen, reaches into the fridge and reaches for his cottage cheese. He then throws the cottage cheese against a wall. He moves into the living room and, although Theo knows that Margaret is not available by phone, he calls her house cathartically and leaves a message.

Theo

Hey Margaret, this is Theo, your boyfriend. I found some interesting literature in the attic today while watering your plants. The fact that you’ve been hiding this relationship with Kyle behind my back? Brassy, quite brassy indeed! Anyway I just want you to know you won’t get away with this. Enjoy your little vacation, but plan to be back in love with me in about a week. You pretentious documentarian – can you hear me all the way up your ivory tower? I’m coming to Romania, do you hear me?

SLAMS THE PHONE SEVERAL TIMES

Huh? Do you?

SLAMS THE PHONE AGAIN

Do you? I’m coming.

HANGS UP