2000 Deciduous Trees: Memories of a Zine

INTRODUCTION

There were only four issues of The Skirt—one of those reality-bite kinds of zines—before 9/11, which, for me, changed everything about the grungy apathy and artistic incapacity of the 1990s when we had endless potential and the freedom to do absolutely nothing with it.

We were a generation on couches. We had a fuck-all attitude and considered this a luxury. We wrote what we wanted and stapled it together for friends.

Of all the moments of Scotch tape, scissors, darkroom chemicals, cardstock, sketches, fonts, stacks of paper on the carpet, heavy-duty staplers, cool pens, trips to the copy shop, coffee, and collages, my favorite production memory is of my boyfriend taping the black, duct tape bindings of that first hot pink issue. He was so precise about something bound to be informal.

Hundreds of copies of The Skirt were mailed from my little apartment at Purdue. The zine was sprinkled everywhere: Chicago, Madison, Indianapolis, Austin, Grand Rapids, Lancaster, Alameda, Poughkeepsie, San Antonio, Boston, Santa Fe, Brooklyn, Rochester, Denver, Athens, Springfield, and to the guy upstairs.

Issues of The Skirt went to a friend stationed on a military installation in Korea and also sat in a Sarasota hospital waiting room between checkups when another friend was having her finger reattached.

The Skirt was the subject of academic discussion in Poland and was read with late-night laughing cigarettes by the cool kids in New Orleans. A friend teaching physics for the Peace Corps received issue number 4 in Kenya while another copy traveled across thirteen time zones with a dear friend who told me in a letter, "I went to a native island in Indonesia where all the natives wear loincloths, etc. I missed a perfect chance to get a picture of them reading (er looking at) The Skirt."

It’s strange to look back at this writing. The maw of one’s twenties is frightful. But I’ve left most of the pieces intact with all the embarrassing vigor and hope of their careless origins.

ANY PILE OF WOOD

Alone isn't one day of sitting on a rock exactly the right size for you. It isn't the deep furrow in your father's brow. It isn't Mother’s giving-up and watching the window eternally. It isn't the neglect of the community or a lack of friends.

It's a force, an emotion, like love. It's wanting someone to come in the door when you're naked. It's talking to a dinner guest who wasn't ever invited. It's noticing that the grout between the tiles in the bathroom is black and taking the time to paint it deep forest green.

It's crying when you see a mannequin being dressed in a storefront window. It's endlessly arranging the furniture in your mind without the strength to move your arm or your feet or your back to move the couch or the bed or the furnace or the recliner. It's waiting for the phone to ring and pretending that’s what you wanted. It's throwing yourself at an illusion. It's nothing. Nothing but you. And that can mean anything at all.

Alone is petrification in the bed in the morning, finally giving up inhibition, imagining what the cat feels as the whiskers escape slowly from her head, or wondering what the dog’s collar might feel like, choking on your own happy leash-length run.

It's showering with a mirror between your legs. It's building an altar over the sink. It's asking that the clothes you buy for yourself be gift-wrapped. It's patience. It's a beer belly. It's strong lean muscles. It's repetition and it’s divorced from reality. It's faith, a religion of constant prayer. It's worshiping beauty without pursuit. It’s learning. It's understanding the world and falling through reason over yourself.

It’s memory with or without regret. It’s pain.

Alone discourages living in the present. It is dreaming of an unattainable future and it’s a consumption by a hole somewhere inescapable but often postponed. It is the electric bill and late-night television. It's Jesus, I guess I have to and calling that other fool from work. It's compromise. It's knowing your body and fearing the mind's retreat. It's nothing to be fooled around with. Alone is the impossibility of fire as much as any pile of wood and a wet match.

It’s the soul's house—and often you’re not even welcome there. It’s void of sensation. It's deafening but drowned by any interaction. It cannot be staved off by music or art, no matter how collaborative. It’s the knee against the breast. It’s the arch of the foot on the edge of boredom tipping over the furniture. It's forgetting about children and death, dismissing both in confidence or contempt.

Alone is never having to wash your hair on an island named by your mother. You are used to the smell of yourself. Until you get sick. Time is measured by what's outside the window. And one is reminded to inhale by the cigarette and tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick, breathe, says the second hand.

Alone is never without vice: knitting, ice cream, brandy, pink plastic margarita blenders on the credit card, and empty bowls lined with popcorn grease, with slippery layers of understanding and self-pity enmeshed, entangled, one pleasing the other, the other wanting more.

It is input and recognition. Alone is the time one has to change the world and to think, or integrate, or study, or believe. It's not too bad for a little while. It is forever until someone's eyes meet yours.

There’s a time before the choices are made when we can all be friends.

MY CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

Haven't you begun to believe

in the twisting fate of this wet

world? Always between building

up, breaking free, and starting

again. That's love swim, you know,

you and me beginning.

Brown striped cream. Your hair,

your skin and eyes. And I

watched with such admiration as

you neatly sewed the bubble day's

film onto the walls of your

circle world. You take such care

with the sunshine of things.

People may be barnacle fools and

cut your feet with their parasite

quick kind of (open close open)

habit world, eating their surroundings.

Snatching up the world’s

fastest times and making

your irregular life so hard.

But you have moved on again, haven't

you? On to the next little room.

I can't imagine in there with you

learning me. I can only see the

afterward. Broken open and dry.

But I'll bet it's all fleshy pink

joy, inside. Filling up new

between the getting-harder walls.

Boys and girls have nothing

thoughts between them all the

time. You know. Just like us.

And there is slippery understanding

there, in the Between, and the Around, and the

Just-where-you-can’t-quite-reach place.

And then I begin to know a you having

nothing to do with me. A you so

resolute and confined. A you still opening

in tolerable nacre carrels, which harbor

your broad Everything.

No such skin for any of it. Spirals; or

words falling short from the way

it all could be. And then that's

good enough for a while.

I'm washing the dishes and

listening to a bit

of the evening

news on a Tuesday, I think.

PAY GRADE

I found a sealed manila envelope addressed to SPC Nathalie Jones. SPC is an army rank that means specialist. I’ve never understood it. But there it is in the chain of command between all the sorts of privates and sergeants. I opened the envelope and found three pieces of paper. The first was a letter of apology from the personnel section of my unit. Apparently I had been awarded, but there was no time to acknowledge me personally. So I was getting my award in the mail.

The second piece of paper was a bit thicker and was embossed with the bright words, Department of the Army Certificate of Achievement. This decoration, although flattering, had very much the same appearance as the ones that are given to third graders after spelling bees or to the bad swimmers after a year of unsuccessful but dutiful competition.

The last piece of paper, dated 4 October 1998, was the most interesting. It was a thin piece of vellum with boxes, lines, numbers, and important people's signatures. This, DA form 638, Nov 94, was the proof of my award intended for addition to my permanent record. Most of it is bureaucratic nonsense so I will spare you. But the last part is interesting. And if you don't mind my bragging a bit I will recount what my superiors have written in their recommendation for my award:

Part III -- Justification and Citation Data (Use specific bullet examples of meritorious acts or service)

Achievement #1

Soldier's knowledge and experience helped maintain the high state of readiness during Operation Scout, even against incredible odds for a potentially Unsuccessful Mission.

Achievement #2

Soldier's professionalism and sterling personal example set the pace for the entire operation as demonstrated during an unfortunate accident involving an M939, 5-ton truck rollover.

Achievement #3

The mission could easily have been scrubbed if not for soldier's tireless efforts and dedication.

Achievement #4

Soldier received on-site verbal communication by the 88th Regional Support Group BG [brigadier general] Bauerle, for the most outstanding static display out of nine displays.

Proposed Citation

For dedication during Operation Scout. Her actions demonstrated high morale and characteristic courage to drive on against incredible odds. Her devotion to duty is in the finest tradition of the military and reflects great credit upon her, this unit and the United States Army Reserves.

The commander did downgrade the recommendation from the Army Accommodation Medal to a Certificate of Achievement in spite of the whole brigadier general thing, but I feel as though I have been recognized. The military has a long tradition of glorifying those individuals who come nearest to death, and I was plenty close enough. Still, it seems odd that I have been honored for being in a vehicular accident and then going back to work, which that day meant showing up at a recruiting tent for the Boy Scout Jamboree. None of this is logical to me. Of course I went back to work. I had nowhere else to go. But regardless this award has given me much pride.

It certainly does make up for the fact that they never did figure out the paperwork to reimburse me for the medical bills. It was unnecessary but precautionary medical treatment involving being picked up by a gorgeous beefy-armed fireman, a ride through two counties in an ambulance, one four-by-four-inch piece of gauze, a small packet of Betadine, and a few good hours of eavesdropping on the guy next door who had fallen out of his wheelchair during the Indy marathon and kept screaming for his plastic surgeon.

GIVE HER WHAT SHE WANTS

Foot Foot Foot Foot Foot Foot

Footfootfootfootfootfootfeotfeetfeetfeetfeetfe

I want an emerald, she said. And he began to run, the miner not the thief. Bare feet chasing the forest floor and his blood running after him. One fist with his livelihood, the other to protect his life. Feet of running and roving through density, green and soft-soiled.

And here he is with a knife against my throat and the blood comes dark red. It's too hot for this. The insects are here already, swarming me. I'm covered in slag from the mine and my feet are cut scars from the sharp chips of rock. He stands above me, heaving. He's too fat to run so fast. Too fat to mine himself. Not like me. I'm tiny and quick. But tired and hungry. And sick of running.

I cannot swallow the blood at my throat. I look up past him to the canopy of trees and wonder if there really is a sun.

The worn leather bag falls easily from my fatigue. And he snatches up its contents. Fourteen this time. Not as many as I've had before. But plenty more than usual.

He knew it. He knew I did well in the mines last night or he would have chased someone else.

I cannot breathe through the blood at my throat and