Gold Rush

April, the subtle tear of spring.
These seasonal movements–
scored by a languid cellist
–are quaint in their sexuality.

The sun asks no simple questions,
and in its light I become a prospector
panning damage for identity.

This month T.C. Boyle sits down with me to discuss the inspiration behind Wild Child, we stream Judson Claiborne’s much anticipated second release, Time and Temperature, Thomas Matlack opines on being a good man, Randall Mann and Glenn Ashley Paterson debut and read new poems, Ruth and Max Bloomquist share their folk, Gabriel Duran makes me laugh, Alexa Meade’s brilliant and innovative installations leave me in near disbelief, and Judson Claiborne frontman Chris Salveter plays an intimate acoustic session in a Lakeview apartment, along with much more.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Evans
Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity

• John Paul Jaramillo Lena’s Trip Home

• Randall Mann Workshop
• X
• J. Delayne Ryms Blackberry Winter
• Glenn Ashley Paterson Connective Tissue
• Daniel Romo 1.21 Jigowatts
• John M. Anderson The Cellini Night
• Dawn Schout Vapors

• Jamie Baldridge Dystopia
• Alexa Meade Acrylic on Flesh
• Michael Massaia Chinatown Nights
• Afterlife

• Judson Claiborne Time and Temperature
• Chris Salveter The Fogged Clarity Sessions

• T.C. Boyle Discusses process and “Wild Child”
• Ruth and Max Bloomquist The folk duo talks and plays

• Thomas Matlack It’s Not Tiger, It’s Not Jesse, It’s YOU!
• Gabriel Duran Birth Rate

• Scott Hightower The Soliloquies of William Wenthe

Friday November 6th 2009, 7:30PM

Molly Jenson

Strand of Oaks

Samantha Farrell

with opening act Milano

Friday November 6th 2009, 7:30PM

Wheaton College Chicago

Tickets are $10.00 for students and $15.00 for general admission and are available at The Wheaton College Bookstore or by selecting an option below.

Brandon T. David

Twenty years after the Great Depression, Tom continues to spend his life trying to recall the moment his father forced him to bury his favorite pet. In his current state of fatal depression, Tom must finally uncover the truth to the secret that tore his family apart before he loses the only thing he has left…life.

Ryan McCarl

Every day for ten years Robert had come to this café on the second floor of the Borders on North Michigan Avenue. He was a talented day-trader, fluent in the language of the market. He saw candlesticks and skylines in graphs where those with less training saw only the patternless movement of a line; in cloud-clusters of data points he saw writing as clear as Times New Roman type, with outliers dotting and flourishing the letters.

Some of his peers embraced the label “speculator,” but Robert rejected it – he was an investor, a finance professional. In earlier days, he had meticulously showered and donned a suit every morning, combed his hair and been out the door with a nod to the morning doorman and a swinging briefcase by seven-thirty – but that was only to visit Ahmed’s news-booth on the corner of Clark and Adams to purchase his cluster of morning papers, and then it was back to the office he kept in the corner of his small studio apartment. Dressed every bit as keen as if he had been entering the Board of Trade with a badge on his label and a firm behind him, and incoming calls on a cellular phone.

He did keep a phone, but it rarely rang. He was a broker for himself, and worked full-time on behalf of the same. His habits were rigorous: six morning papers (and the Journal read twice), several newsweeklies, and then the messages of the market. When necessary he would carefully consult the shelf of experts that sat above his trading desk: Fabozzi, Graham and Dodd, and others, and the great 20th century economists – Hazlitt, Hayek, and Von Mises, whom he loved, and Keynes and Galbraith, whom he abhorred but kept around just in case.

Now seventy, he still worked and would work until forbidden by the seal of the casket. But for the past ten years he had not worked from home; his practice was based out of the café in Borders. To his great impatience, the store did not open until 9:30, long after the market’s opening bell. (He had struggled with himself and with his sister over whether to move to New York to be more in tune with the schedule of the market, had several times packed the contents of his apartment into a few boxes and vowed to make the move that very weekend before the markets opened on Monday, but never seemed to be able to finalize things, to bring that decision to its lonely conclusion).

When the Borders manager-on-duty turned the lock of the first foyer door, Robert would be waiting without fail – the two exchanged a familiar nod and good-morning, and Robert quickly made his way up the escalator to claim the first cup of coffee poured that day, which he drank black. And then he sat at the very same table as the day before, the one with the best view of the old Water Tower through the trees and the horse-and-carriages stomping at the side street. After a sigh and an unlidding of the coffee he would fan his morning papers out across the table and pile a stack of books and company prospectuses high upon an adjacent chair and get on with his business of underlining and graph-reading, finding pictures heavy with meaning in the dimensionless points of the scatterplots and the suggestive starts and stops of the trend-lines.

It was the seventh of June, one of those rainy and sixty-degree days so familiar in the early Chicago summer. He knew the date well, and paused a moment with his pen hovering over an underlined section of a page. His hand trembled with a tremor he carefully ignored. The branches of the fir trees in the plaza stirred, and he paused to reflect: it had been ten years since he made his last trade.

Events in the window and in the café were different and the same – the other regulars, the eternal students, the homeless, and the businessmen seeking refuge from their offices in the Loop, had aged and changed their wardrobes, and many familiar faces were gone, having moved on to other cities and other lives. But Robert was a fixture of the place. On the rare occasion that a traveler with a bit of fondness in his heart for the café would stop by and look to Robert’s table and find it empty, a moment of disorientation and even sadness would follow: a reminder that even the most permanent things of this world must pass.

Ten years since his last trade, and ten years since he moved his daily operations to this table in the bookstore café. He permitted himself only a moment to reflect – this was one memory he could not stand to look at for long, and anyhow there was much to get done before lunch, and he could not afford to fall behind. But the anniversary of that day forced itself into his consciousness, will it away though he might.

One day, when very recently he had begun to dabble in short-selling, that is, betting that a stock would fall but assuming unlimited liability in case it should rise, he had misjudged the direction of a stock. A grave, grave misjudgment – his books and papers had failed him, and it was all he could do not to burn them and burn his apartment and trading desk down on top of them.

The next day, he was sick and missed the morning bell for the first time since his first day on the job as a mail-sorter and clerk for a small brokerage operation in his Indiana hometown. And the day after that, he had been lured away from his desk for a breakfast with his brother-in-law; his sister, who by order of some long-ago court supervised his accounts for reasons of a diagnosis he refused to name as he knew it to be false and a lie, begged off and was unable to attend. He ate anxiously with the brother-in-law and thought of the markets and how he might climb back to where he had been; he thought also suspicious thoughts, thoughts of betrayal – the food tasted strange and the tone of his brother-in-law’s voice was strange. His eyes were strange. Some of the more ominous messages that one finds in the chart of a stock-price may sometimes be found as well in the eyes of a man; this, too, Robert understood.

But it was too late. He returned from the breakfast to find his trading desk empty of its most prominent feature – the array of computers and monitors that surrounded and cradled him as he sat in his hard-backed chair. He always, without fail, locked his apartment door; for Robert to forget to lock his door would be for to the sun to forget to set or for Kant to forget to take his afternoon walk through Königsberg. Besides the landlord, only his sister had a key.

He searched the apartment and opened every cabinet five or six times over, threw his books and papers around the room, kicked his treasured copy of Graham and Dodd’s Security Analysis sprawling spine-broken into a corner, pounded with his fists on the imperturbable plexiglas of his floor-to-ceiling thirtieth-floor window overlooking the desolate landscape of the West Side. The computers, and his livelihood, were gone. Stolen by his sister, his one link to the non-economic world.

His was a blue-chip firm, and he had read much about companies bouncing back from crises. His business, too, would recover from this setback. It must go on – there was meaning in it, it mattered. And within days he had moved his operations to the table in the Borders café, the one with the best view of the old Water Tower through the trees and the horse-and-carriages stomping at the side street. The computers were gone, but in the end he had never thought much of that method of trading – had found it effeminate. The old paper-traders knew how to do things right after all.

Enough of such thoughts: Robert turned back to his papers and began furiously underlining the latest intelligence about the movement of copper prices – it was serious business, it would affect the summer production schedules of many firms in which Robert had an interest.

Eventually he finished his first reading of the morning Journal and, with a sigh and a cracking of his knuckles, turned his attention to the Tribune. Familiar headlines; then he unfolded it and his heart broke as he read, and read again:

BORDERS TO CLOSE FLAGSHIP MICHIGAN AVE. STORE

Damara Kaminecki

Often while riding my bike through the alleys and streets of Chicago, my mind gathers the imagery and often peeks through the windows of neighbors and strangers. I began collecting these images in drawings and later making them into relief prints, carving linoleum to create my pieces with a sharp, clean illustrative quality. However, I found these prints to read as static and flat, and as much as I loved the process of carving and multiples, I was not as interested in creating editions. To remedy this, and to make further use of the vocabulary of imagery I had amassed, I began to cut and collage the prints, making them more dynamic. I was able to change the colors and create arrangements that were completely unique even if I repeated motifs from piece to piece. The end result combines the things I love the most: the bouncing imagery and stream of consciousness of city life, drawing and carving.

The Fogged Clarity Interview

Joe Meno discusses politics, process, and the inspiration behind his new novel, The Great Perhaps with Ben Evans.

Purchase The Great Perhaps here.

Listen

Bill Hillmann

It began at the carnival.

Those magic nights, the whole of St. Greg’s parish there, all strolling
over from the bungalows and two flats and apartments all mix matched
throughout the neighborhood. There were the games, the shouts of the
carnies, the swirling thunder of the Tilt-A-Whirl, lights flashing,
pulsing, the colors of yellow and red and green and blue exploding like
fireworks against the walls of the church, the old nunnery, the high
school and grammar school that encircled it all like a towering red brick
fortress. The carnival set on top the school parking lot, the exits were
the alley to the east near the priest’s house, the tunnel through the
school that led out onto Bryn Mawr and the opening between the church and
nunnery, the noise trapped and echoed with booms that bounced from wall
to wall. And there was the crying joy of the children and the wild in
their eyes and the running and no knowledge of anything else.

Joe was nine years old, he was hanging out near the beer tent with some
kids from the block. His big brother Lil Pete was in the beer tent
drinking with the other hoods, something he’d been doing for years, the
priests too scared to throw the young guys out. Lil Pete was the tallest
of them, his shoulders set close and only his profile revealed the large
potbelly. They were somewhere between greasers, cholos and jocks. Some
wore shirts with sports logos or sweats pants and dago T’s, some wore
Dickies, some with buzzed heads, others with slicked back hair and the
sides almost shaved, their voices rose and fell in that squeaky Chicago
slang. Gold was new to that summer and it shone on their fingers, wrists
and necks. They were a dying breed, the great white flight was taking
their numbers and the neighborhood was changing.

“Aye Joey C’mere,” Lil Pete yelled with a wave of his hairy knuckled hand as he stood near an older woman and a kid Joe’s age.

“Hey did you ever meet Brian?” Lil Pete asked.

Joe shook his head no.

“Well, he’s Mickey’s nephew,” Lil Pete said nodding towards where a
stoutly built young man stood with a round buzzed head, his face flexing
as he spoke to the hood next to him so that he looked like a pit bull. Joe recognized him, it was a hard face to forget.

Joe looked at the kid in front of him, Brian. He was like a mini Mickey,
his hair in a short buzz cut, same pit bull face but softer. He wore old graying Adidas shoes with thick blue laces that made Joe wonder if he was very poor.

“Well shake hands or somethin’, Jesus,” Lil Pete said as his features
scrunched up in distaste.

“What’s up,” they both said looking down.

Joe noticed a thick gold bracelet on Brian’s wrist.

“Nice gold,” Joe said.

“Thanks,” Brian said looking at the tips of Joe’s Air Jordans. “Nice rope. I got one like dat at home.”

“Well, you two go play,” Lil Pete said brushing his hand through his trimmed goatee and mustache as he turned away. “And stay out of trouble you little shit,” he said as they both smiled.

They made quick friends and soon they were laughing and playing with the
other kids, white, black and Mexican kids, dipping and dodging through
the maze of grown ups.

The gunshot was abrupt, and in the masses of people, no one knew what
direction it had come from. Joe saw it though, the fire through the
barrel, and he watched Lil Pete run and jump the fence in the direction
of the tall skinny Syrian kid who held the pistol to his leg, the barrel
smoking slightly. The confusion continued as the Syrian began sprinting
down the alley. Lil Pete gave chase with Mickey close behind him. Joe and Brian followed the older boys. They ran down the alley and turned right, and Joe could hear the wild laughter coming from Lil Pete and Mickey. He glanced at Brian, his brows arched, eyes bulging and darting wildly in their sockets as gravity seemed to turn Joe’s stomach into a helium filled balloon. Joe ran as hard as he could but the older guys pulled away from Brian and him slightly as they turned at the T in the alley, their shoes clapping the pavement as Joe’s Nikes slipped and ground on the light dusting of dirt and small pebbles that littered the cracked cement.

Joe could see them running across Ashland and through the Jewel Parking
lot. Joe and Brian crossed Ashland, Joe’s heart pounding in his ears. He
could see through the parking lot as the Syrian guy ran into the front
door of the pharmacy on the corner across from the 7/11, Pete and Mickey
close behind him, still roaring with laughter. As Joe got close to the
pharmacy, he heard the screams from inside, but no shot. A few moments
later, Pete and Mickey emerged from the drug store. There was a bulge in
Pete’s waistband and as they jogged out of the place still laughing, his
shirt raised up above his belt and Joe saw the wooden pistol handle. They
had not seen the boys who’d ducked into a nearby doorway.

There was still the screaming inside, it was a woman’s voice and it was
the only voice that could be heard, there was a sort of panting between
each scream. Joe listened as he hid there in the doorway next to the
pharmacy, Brian beside him, their chests heaving. After Lil Pete and
Mickey were gone, Joe and Brian entered the drug store. The woman still
screamed, it was loud and rang in his ears. Joe and Brian walked towards
it, both trembling; Joe saw the red puddle on the floor as it slowly grew
like a shadow across the white and black tiles. He walked closer to the
puddle’s edge where he saw the young man not moving, eyes still open as
blood oozed from his head, his frizzy black hair wet with it. The woman
still screaming, was crumbled on the ground with the phone in her hand as she
shook terribly. Joe looked at her in silence and the boys walked out of
the store as others came running to its front door.

The boys walked towards home in the quiet, their heads hung, there was
the weight of it all around them. The air was thick, the carnival roared
on in the distance, the sound of the children’s joyous screams rose
and fell. The boys walked down Clark Street to Hollywood where the yellow
sign of the corner store glowed stale and flickering, they stood there a
while.

“You think dey’re gonna get caught-up?”

“Naw, ain’t nobody gonna rat dem out.”

“Shit… he was dead wadn’t he.”

Brian didn’t answer. They walked down and crossed Ashland with the sirens
floating in the air. Brian went his way and Joe went home. He went up to
his room and sat on his bed a while in the dark, the orange yellow of the
streetlight seeping in through the window. After the others had gone to
sleep, he went downstairs to the TV room where he watched the reports of
the murder.

And that was the birth of Pistol Pete.

The above is an excerpt from Bill Hillmann’s upcoming novel The Last White Hood. The book is an autobiographical fictive work about a family living in the racially diverse neighborhood of Edgewater in the North Side of Chicago.