At 2:30 am today, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of 946 W. MacArthur #36, my first apartment, a one-bedroom with beige walls and a galley kitchen, living room windows that looked out onto the Bollinger Soccer Fields, where children sweated and bled, where parents cheered and consoled. I thought of my bedroom, its quilt made of fabric given to me by Lydia, an old family friend long dead. And I thought of my IBM laptop, my first computer, the one that I spent long nights with, drunk on beer and poetry, smoking cigarettes by open windows in the middle of winter. I wrote then with little worry. I was not thinking of publishing. I was not thinking of building an academic career or what it would take to make one. I was thinking only of recent experiences—all so novel and revelatory—and of the end of the line, the end of the page. I was in and out of love with boys and men and with the men and women who wrote of love between people. I was in love with the power and beauty of punk rock, with the unifying principle of DIY, the heat and sweat of basements and electric guitars. On my first record player, a Magnavox Solid State, I listened to both Ella Fitzgerald and Minor Threat. And there was dancing, of course. And fighting, too. And then there was the making up, the manufacture of love. And there was the sense that life was only kinetic energy, its trajectory yet to be mapped. I was merely a humble cartographer with the sun in my eyes. There was a boyfriend who ran his truck in the winter with his dog in the back seat so he could stay just a little longer. At 946 W. MacArthur #36, there was always just a little longer, a little longer because there was still only onward. Even when it burned.
In her collection Life On Mars, Tracy K. Smith writes:
"…Would you go then,
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?
Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my
Mother and father sat waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired
And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns."
Even if it burned again as it used to then, I would go back, if only for a few days because the one thought that lured me back to sleep was, “It’s been a good life. So far, yes, it’s been a good life.”
Friday, January 4, 2013
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Links to My Work
If you are interested in reading more of my work, you can find my stories in these places:
"The In-Between Girl"
http://www.around-around.com/the-in-between-girl/
"The Newlyweds"
www.paperdarts.org/literary-magazine/tag/darci-schummer
"The Last Supper"
www.bartlebysnopes.com/thelastsupper.htm
"Nobody Moves in Winter"
www.thediverseartsproject.com/summer-2012/2012/6/20/nobody-moves-in-winter.html
"The Bearded Woman of Inis Mor"
www.medcelt.org/feile-festa/v006/prose/schummer.html
"The Tourist"
www.punchnels.com/fiction/the-tourist/
"I Live Among Immigrants"
www.vita.mn/best-of/163803066.html?page=all
Additionally, my work has been anthologized in these great anthologies:
Lyrotica
Available here: http://www.vagabondagepress.com/bookpreviews/lyrotica.html#.UIQPCoanKSo
The Rattlesnake Valley Sampler
Available here: http://rattlesnakevalleypublishing.com/our-catalog/
Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape
Available here: http://www.open2interpretation.com/purchase.html
Any correspondence can be sent to darci.schummer@gmail.com.
Cheers!
"The In-Between Girl"
http://www.around-around.com/the-in-between-girl/
"The Newlyweds"
www.paperdarts.org/literary-magazine/tag/darci-schummer
"The Last Supper"
www.bartlebysnopes.com/thelastsupper.htm
"Nobody Moves in Winter"
www.thediverseartsproject.com/summer-2012/2012/6/20/nobody-moves-in-winter.html
"The Bearded Woman of Inis Mor"
www.medcelt.org/feile-festa/v006/prose/schummer.html
"The Tourist"
www.punchnels.com/fiction/the-tourist/
"I Live Among Immigrants"
www.vita.mn/best-of/163803066.html?page=all
Additionally, my work has been anthologized in these great anthologies:
Lyrotica
Available here: http://www.vagabondagepress.com/bookpreviews/lyrotica.html#.UIQPCoanKSo
The Rattlesnake Valley Sampler
Available here: http://rattlesnakevalleypublishing.com/our-catalog/
Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape
Available here: http://www.open2interpretation.com/purchase.html
Any correspondence can be sent to darci.schummer@gmail.com.
Cheers!
Monday, July 30, 2012
Why I Write Sad Stories
On 1st Avenue and 28th Street in Minneapolis, a house catches fire. Fire trucks arrive in a blur of lights and a wail of sirens. Flames cut the early morning sky. Sweat gathers on the lip of the neighborhood. Smoke fills its nostrils. Neighbors in their housecoats and slippers watch from living room windows and front yards. Children, woken from their dreams, point at the flames, vibrate with terrible excitement. Firefighters battle the flames from outside and walk into the fire to save those who can be saved. They rescue one person from inside the house and then another. They pull two people from the second story window.
But by the time they rescue Jenny, it's too late.
*
My stories have been called bleak, brutal, depressing. And I have been asked why I write such sad stories.
I have a one-word answer: Jenny.
I write sad stories because of ghosts, ghosts of the living and of the dead. I write sad stories to give a voice to ghosts and to give a voice to those who live with the ghosts of their dead and of their former lovers, estranged children, chances not taken, aborted dreams. I write sad stories because they are the adhesive that binds people and ghosts. I write sad stories because the stories themselves are my ghosts that, as Edna O'Brien writes, "are like dogs that bark intermittently in the night."
Moreover, sad stories prepare us for futures we are too brittle to imagine or too ignorant to recognize as possible. They allow us to experience death and loss and desperation with only a modicum of real pain. They are precursors to seasons we have not yet lived.
I write sad stories because I want to live in the past, present, and future simultaneously.
*
On a perfect July morning, I am walking down 1st Avenue in Minneapolis. In front of a burned out 2 and 1/2 story house near 28th street, an empty mailbox gapes like an open mouth, it's red flag 90 degrees in the air. Mylar balloons tied to the fence bob in the breeze. Affixed to the gate is a red sign that reads, Hi Jenny, All students at Magic Beauty School miss you! On the front stairs at the foot of the gate, a plate of spring rolls sits untouched among bouquets of red roses and white chrysanthemums. An open bottle of water and a can of juice wait among burning candles and incense. And in the middle of these funereal offerings is a picture of Jenny, of beautiful olive-skinned, black-haired Jenny.
The air still smells of fire.
I close my eyes, I breathe in deeply, I breathe in until past the smell of charred wood, I think I can ascertain the scent that was uniquely hers, one which will slowly fade out of existence as the last of her things absorb the other scents around them.
I leave a dandelion between two candles that will burn for her until their wicks are spent. Then, I walk home on my strong, good legs, the breeze whipping my hair all around me, a new ghost whispering in my ear.
*
At home, I will work on writing another sad story--a story where there aren't neat explanations, a story where calculations and probabilities all prove incorrect.
And Jenny, my beautiful olive-skinned, black-haired Jenny, this new story, a story where in the space of one night the whole world trembles into darkness, this is the story I am writing for you.
But by the time they rescue Jenny, it's too late.
*
My stories have been called bleak, brutal, depressing. And I have been asked why I write such sad stories.
I have a one-word answer: Jenny.
I write sad stories because of ghosts, ghosts of the living and of the dead. I write sad stories to give a voice to ghosts and to give a voice to those who live with the ghosts of their dead and of their former lovers, estranged children, chances not taken, aborted dreams. I write sad stories because they are the adhesive that binds people and ghosts. I write sad stories because the stories themselves are my ghosts that, as Edna O'Brien writes, "are like dogs that bark intermittently in the night."
Moreover, sad stories prepare us for futures we are too brittle to imagine or too ignorant to recognize as possible. They allow us to experience death and loss and desperation with only a modicum of real pain. They are precursors to seasons we have not yet lived.
I write sad stories because I want to live in the past, present, and future simultaneously.
*
On a perfect July morning, I am walking down 1st Avenue in Minneapolis. In front of a burned out 2 and 1/2 story house near 28th street, an empty mailbox gapes like an open mouth, it's red flag 90 degrees in the air. Mylar balloons tied to the fence bob in the breeze. Affixed to the gate is a red sign that reads, Hi Jenny, All students at Magic Beauty School miss you! On the front stairs at the foot of the gate, a plate of spring rolls sits untouched among bouquets of red roses and white chrysanthemums. An open bottle of water and a can of juice wait among burning candles and incense. And in the middle of these funereal offerings is a picture of Jenny, of beautiful olive-skinned, black-haired Jenny.
The air still smells of fire.
I close my eyes, I breathe in deeply, I breathe in until past the smell of charred wood, I think I can ascertain the scent that was uniquely hers, one which will slowly fade out of existence as the last of her things absorb the other scents around them.
I leave a dandelion between two candles that will burn for her until their wicks are spent. Then, I walk home on my strong, good legs, the breeze whipping my hair all around me, a new ghost whispering in my ear.
*
At home, I will work on writing another sad story--a story where there aren't neat explanations, a story where calculations and probabilities all prove incorrect.
And Jenny, my beautiful olive-skinned, black-haired Jenny, this new story, a story where in the space of one night the whole world trembles into darkness, this is the story I am writing for you.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Summertime.
Summertime
Whenever I think of something waning, I think of Gertrude by Hermann Hesse. The last line of the book reads, “…I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter.” And here we are now, summer slipping away on the soft sounds of lost daylight. And perhaps the months past seem sweeter, more perfect than they actually were. They undoubtedly will when we find ourselves again in the standstill of winter because summers in the Midwest are units of time onto themselves; years within years. They are seasons bigger than seasons, their importance measured in the negative, the degrees that flank them. As this one ends, I have begun to reflect on all I’ve done.
I’ve had an itch this summer, a drive.
Maybe it’s because I knew at its close I’d be 29.
So, I made a conscious decision: to live like so.
Heart as sail,ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess (Italicized portion from “Loose Woman” by Sandra
Cisneros).
I traveled to Eau Claire, Menomonie, Madison, New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island), Colorado via South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa. I, an agnostic feminist, became ordained. In Eau Claire, I married a dear friend to the boy she loves most. And there was power in that, the words “I now pronounce you…” coming from my little red mouth, an appropriation of religious power to a female, ex-Jehovah Witness, unbeliever. I attended the annual Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison and drank delicious microbrews. Afterwards, at the Sirloin Strip, I sang karaoke, specifically “Fist City,” with my best friend. I ate free pizzas with purchased pints, and then drank whiskey at the Buttermilk in New York. I rode the Staten Island ferry while drinking a 40 oz bottle of Blanca Carta. Then, on Staten Island, I ate a delicious onion bagel in the rain. In Colorado, I lost my breath. I crossed the Continental Divide and touched a glacier. I went to the Bar Bar and saw the People of the city, the ones whose stories are verses of wrinkle and missing teeth. I cried. I ate too much, drank too much, thought too much, loved too much, walked too much, rode bike too much, slept too much. In short, I lived and lived and lived until I was exhausted. And it was worth it, all of it, the money spent, the time spent, everything.
I repeatedly think of something my dear friend Mark told me long ago. He said that the people we sometimes think of as “loose” are the people who milk life for all it’s worth. Would I classify myself, as Cisneros did in her perfect poem, a “loose woman,” because I made a decision to live this way? No, that would not be the appropriate term. Something deeper, something hungrier, something where the coordinates of fear and beauty meet, a word for living that constitutes courage, if only recently found.
Or perhaps there is no word: perhaps that’s just milking summer for all its worth.
Whenever I think of something waning, I think of Gertrude by Hermann Hesse. The last line of the book reads, “…I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter.” And here we are now, summer slipping away on the soft sounds of lost daylight. And perhaps the months past seem sweeter, more perfect than they actually were. They undoubtedly will when we find ourselves again in the standstill of winter because summers in the Midwest are units of time onto themselves; years within years. They are seasons bigger than seasons, their importance measured in the negative, the degrees that flank them. As this one ends, I have begun to reflect on all I’ve done.
I’ve had an itch this summer, a drive.
Maybe it’s because I knew at its close I’d be 29.
So, I made a conscious decision: to live like so.
Heart as sail,ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess (Italicized portion from “Loose Woman” by Sandra
Cisneros).
I traveled to Eau Claire, Menomonie, Madison, New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island), Colorado via South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa. I, an agnostic feminist, became ordained. In Eau Claire, I married a dear friend to the boy she loves most. And there was power in that, the words “I now pronounce you…” coming from my little red mouth, an appropriation of religious power to a female, ex-Jehovah Witness, unbeliever. I attended the annual Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison and drank delicious microbrews. Afterwards, at the Sirloin Strip, I sang karaoke, specifically “Fist City,” with my best friend. I ate free pizzas with purchased pints, and then drank whiskey at the Buttermilk in New York. I rode the Staten Island ferry while drinking a 40 oz bottle of Blanca Carta. Then, on Staten Island, I ate a delicious onion bagel in the rain. In Colorado, I lost my breath. I crossed the Continental Divide and touched a glacier. I went to the Bar Bar and saw the People of the city, the ones whose stories are verses of wrinkle and missing teeth. I cried. I ate too much, drank too much, thought too much, loved too much, walked too much, rode bike too much, slept too much. In short, I lived and lived and lived until I was exhausted. And it was worth it, all of it, the money spent, the time spent, everything.
I repeatedly think of something my dear friend Mark told me long ago. He said that the people we sometimes think of as “loose” are the people who milk life for all it’s worth. Would I classify myself, as Cisneros did in her perfect poem, a “loose woman,” because I made a decision to live this way? No, that would not be the appropriate term. Something deeper, something hungrier, something where the coordinates of fear and beauty meet, a word for living that constitutes courage, if only recently found.
Or perhaps there is no word: perhaps that’s just milking summer for all its worth.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Cold Mexican Beer
A steel bridge buckles into its reflection. Cars burn. Bodies bend, contort. In the sky, god or a well-placed hand wraps itself in a blanket of cloud, letting only beams of waning light out from underneath. And somewhere someone yells across a gap. And somewhere someone is baking with cinnamon, sugar, and butter. And somewhere someone screams genocide to the wind. And somewhere someone is drinking cold Mexican beer or bleeding or eating a nectarine or feeling the sun or taking water in his lungs. And here a heartbreak; here a triumph. Here a tragedy; here a tragedy that hasn’t happened yet. Who knows when it will be that molecules pull from one another until there is no floor at all and we are left to solve the problem of trying to walk without making a sound.
Portrait of Shop Window
Portrait of Shop Window
Department store windows light
inscrutably lipped manikins holding
empty gifts.
Nicollet Mall is nearly
bright as Grafton Street. Both too
bulbed and sequined.
I like old things.
Stuttering limestone fences, doorways that open
to waves. Dun Aengus and
the Seven Churches.
Old things, your Ghost of the Holy Spook shirt,
misproportioned, sleeves hanging, gap-waisted.
Things worn soft,
things like us.
Department store windows light
inscrutably lipped manikins holding
empty gifts.
Nicollet Mall is nearly
bright as Grafton Street. Both too
bulbed and sequined.
I like old things.
Stuttering limestone fences, doorways that open
to waves. Dun Aengus and
the Seven Churches.
Old things, your Ghost of the Holy Spook shirt,
misproportioned, sleeves hanging, gap-waisted.
Things worn soft,
things like us.
America: the plum blossoms are falling.
(10/29/06)
I just read that in Iraq, pilgrims making the hajj to Mecca were open fired upon. Sectarian violence. I feel sick.
I just want to wake up and have it all be over.
I remember the first time we invaded Iraq. I was 10 and my father was away working in Indiana. My mother, sister, and I stood in our living room listening to the television. Night vision images blared into the room. Targets hit. But who were they killing, really?
Collateral damage. That's the way you say that people got in the way.
I felt sick, 10, even then.
I had dreams where soliders marched endlessly. Over and over again, lines and lines of faceless men who went everywhere and nowhere. I woke up and it was all over.
Maybe I should just consider myself lucky: I can sit and sip tea in the quiet of a cheap apartment. Feed myself, work, plan a trip to Ireland, go to graduate school at a private university. I'm not scared of 24th Street, of Lyndale Avenue. I don't worry about random acts of violence or about my family's atoms being scattered by a car bomb.
And isn't that what we're fighting for?
Well, then I guess I owe "W" a big goddamn thank you. I hadn't realized that Iraq was such a threat to my ability to sip Lemon Zinger and listen to Leonard Cohen.
Collateral damage.
I think this freedom has become a liability.
"America when will we end the human war? / Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb." (--"America" by Allen Ginsberg)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
