Unshod Quills

Poems on America and Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond.

Old America

The angel above the fountain had not yet descended
when the upstart, carved, brownstone facades
on the new uptown square had begun to decay.
My grandfather might have seen him pitched into place,
so clumsily genteel, Santayana would have smiled.

Gentility outgrown, he wears the stigmata now:
chipped wing, hollowed robes, broken nose,
eroded face and hands
kissed into being
by spray on stone.

With little left to guard, the boughs
that shaded him are gone:
a few leaves drift in the basin
or mold themselves to his sides…
transients, from a place still green,
leaving a lacework of stains
on fragile stone.

Now the upraised palm
that was meant to hold back time
yearns
for its bodiless perfection:
mottled fingers
weathered away –
and he, a fable
in this treeless square.

Faraway
(Ann Arbor, 1968)

Often he used to wonder, after a sleepless night,
why he should gaze down from the attic window
watching the sun burn the mist from October streets.
He knew that the contours of the small city
would never emerge as he dreamed ‑
although the dream shifted from morning to morning:

A winding street on a small hill, pale, stuccoed facades
arching over rough colonnades,
dark women leaning from darker windows,
casements pushed open, refracting the light …

A long shady boulevard lined with clipped trees
and clumps of round tables with neat checkered cloths,
a couple embracing, old men playing chess,
an accordion’s whine floating over slate roofs …

These never were his, but only, each morning,
the grid of straight streets in his own wooden town.

*

But those streets were kind to him, hiding their lines
with a ragged flourish as veils of leaves
cast a mottled aureole of yellow and red
over drowsing cars and peeling front porches
where slat swings hung from creaking chains,
and the tinkle of wind‑chimes climbed
into the sparrows’ cries, into the beat of their wings,
and even the year’s threadbare fashion had glamour:
unbound hair floating over bare shoulders,
ripple of cotton, swish of tanned legs ‑
he was not clever, but still he looked,
and sees these things now,
and sees these things now…

Author Biography

William Ellis received his Ph.D in Literature from Boston College, then taught humanities at Vanier College in Montreal. He has retired after  seven years as the Senior Foreign Expert of the English department at Sichuan University. There, he offered courses in Western Intellectual History, Art History, European Literature, and Canadian Studies. He was awarded the Sichuan Province Teaching Excellence Award in 2008. He is now backpacking around the world for a year with his wife, Denise (Chen Yu).  He is the author of The Theory of the American Romance, an Ideology in American Intellectual History, nominated in 1989 for the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize. His poetry has been published in Mala, Chengdu Grooves, and Unshod Quills.  Contact info: elliswa@hotmail.com.

Photography by Eva Steil on the topic of America. 

Please click image once and again to see largest size.

You and the Navy, Full Speed Ahead - self portrait - Eva Steil - on America

Minda and Wulea Pino, Christmas - Eva Steil - On America

Doors Music - Eva Steil - On America

Artist Biography

Eva Steil is a Las Vegas photographer. She wants her work in your gallery. She can be found on Facebook. Eva was the featured artist in the first issue of Unshod Quills (June 2011)

Unshod Quills features Portlander Riley Michael Parker, musing on the themes of America, somewhere never travelled, gladly beyond and fire.

Five Killers –

on the theme of America

Riley Michael Parker - Alcala - ink and pencil on paper on "America"

RODNEY ALCALA

One of the most interesting American cases, Rodney was a contestant on The Dating Game in the midst of his career as a rapist and murderer. Had he been a known serial killer, I’m sure it would have been the television event of the year. The footage, available online, is difficult to watch. In the context in which he is now known, his actions are very creepy and his words telling, but he actually won the game, was selected that evening as the bachelor worth dating. Seeing him laugh, obviously having fun, is the most discomforting. We like to think that killers are nothing like us, but in truth they are, just like us, because they are all just people. Broken, wicked people, yes, but people first, people who crave fame, and try and get onto game shows, and laugh, and flirt, and make art, and have friends, and help build their communities, and believe wholeheartedly in the right to pursue happiness, if not so much the life and liberty bit. People. Always people. Often white. Often men.

Riley Michael Parker - Bundy - ink and pencil on paper, America.

TED BUNDY

The chameleon. Ted was so good at killing people that it seems as if it happened by grand design. He was handsome, charismatic, and intelligent, all in an incredibly average way that witnesses could never seem to describe with any clarity. He had no sense of guilt. The man was arrested for or suspected of several of the murders that he eventually admitted to, but was so good at covering up his tracks, and, eventually, at physically escaping, that it seemed at one point that he would never be brought to justice. He eventually died in the electric chair, but didn’t understand how he ended up there. The concept of this man is so frightening and so unfathomable that he has inspired just as much comedy in the art world as he has horror, with several of the works based on him described by reviewers as “hilarious”.

Gein - Riley Michael Parker - pencil and ink on paper, America

Ed Gein

Having only killed three people, Gein is possibly the most famous American killer of all time. Gein was obsessed with his mother, and after she died he decided that he wanted to be a female; that he wanted to be like her. His main approach to fulfilling this need was the creation of a suit made from women’s skin, skin that he stole from bodies he dug up in the middle of the night. Gein made masks, a lampshade, even seat covers out of human skin, and kept several preserved body parts. The man had several heads in his home, including the heads of two of his victims, both middle-aged women, and a skull on every post of his bed. He has been the inspiration for so many Americans, including writers, filmmakers, visual artists, americana pop musicians, and quite a few murderers. There’s a good chance that you have at least one piece of art in your house, whether it be film, or literature, or a picture in a magazine, that would not exist if Ed Gein hadn’t murdered women and desecrated human remains. As awful as it is, I would bet money.

Riley Michael Parker - Fish - ink and pencil on paper, America

“ALBERT” FISH

Known as the “Werewolf of Wysteria” and “The Brooklyn Vampire,” Hamilton “Albert” Fish was a child murderer and a masochist of epic proportions. The man would stick needles into his groin and leave them there, and he swallowed objects to cause himself discomfort. Most notably, he was a cannibal. After being apprehended, Fish proudly described his cooking methods to anyone who would listen. You can google them. They are grizzly.

Riley Michael Parker - Gacy - ink and pencil on paper, America

JOHN WAYNE GACY

Gacy strangled and drowned young men and teenage boys, thirty-three in total. Most of these boys were hidden in the crawl space of his house, with a few more buried in his garden. He was a charitable man, a friendly figure, well-liked, and he was known to perform as a clown, a character named “Pogo”. Once in prison, Gacy made a small fortune selling clown paintings, and even painted a portrait of punk rock icon GG Allin (born Jesus Christ Allin), which later became the cover of one of his albums.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Riley, on “fire.”

IN THE HOUSE WE BUILT FROM COFFINS

In the darkness there is a woman in black panties, topless, sockless, with a pipe in her mouth that has never been smoked, her hair unkempt, unruly, but long and beautiful.
In the darkness there is a woman with three sons living inside her, not infants but full-grown men, dressed in pinstripe suits and black overcoats with buttons made of ivory.
In the darkness there is a woman hanging, strung up for talking back to her mother, her dress with unlit candles fashioned at the bottom, turning her from a woman into a chandelier.
In the darkness we are miserable, and so we bring the fire.
We light the candles.
We take up smoking.
We burn the things that remind us of the darkness.
In the light of the fire we see things that frighten and amaze us.
A brother once thought missing walks among us, the boy now mute, a blade stuck in his mouth and out through his neck. We ask him what has happened and he tells us, with ink and paper, that he had taken up sword swallowing to impress a woman, but in the dark someone mistook him for choking and attempted the Heimlich Maneuver.
An uncle who we thought was shrinking has grown to twice his original size, his body now bent over, the man walking like a horse, beatle boots on his feet and hands, wearing a pinstripe suit like any other worthy gentleman. We all ask him for a ride, and he takes us, two at a time, around the estate, kicking and bucking for the sake of excitement, proud to finally have a place in our hearts.
A son has become seven sons, the men huddled together, all immaculately dressed, their hair, black as night, all parted in the same place, their eyes, unblinking, identical wells of eternal depth. We ask them how long this has been going on, and together, the seven shrug.
Sisters in pointed hoods and nothing else.
Cousins naked, holding knives.
Snakes and shotguns and men like bats, antlers, mustaches, fingerless gloves.
An uncle who has become a room.
A mother who is down to fuck.
A father who is now a demon, his head that of a goat and a wolf mixed together, with wings of dark feathers spanning several feet, his black jean pants torn at the bottom from when his feet turned into hooves, and as he hovers a few inches off of the ground he spits leeches from his jaws, and maggots, and mice, and he looks us in the eyes, somehow he is able to focus his attention on all of us at once, and he invites us to be like him.
In the light of the fire we see, finally, the purpose of darkness.

___________________________________________________________________________________

On the theme “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond.”

BACK HOME

We were lost in Noble, a town too small to be lost in, looking for her mother’s house. She hadn’t been to Oklahoma in eight years, maybe nine, it was hard for her to say for certain, and since then her mother had moved twice.
I said, “It doesn’t matter how many times she’s moved, we just need to find her now,” but she was upset that the woman had moved at all, that the town had moved on without her, that the place where she grew up practically didn’t exist anymore.
She said, “None of this looks familiar.”
I said, “Should it?”
“Of course it should. I grew up in this goddamned town.”
We took our time driving through the neighborhoods, me looking for her mother’s house and her looking for herself as a child, trying to place memories with the streets that she had done her best to forget. She would almost speak every so often, just a soft little yelp as she would start to share something that had happened to her, or something she had done, but then she would stop herself, unwilling to validate the memory by acknowledging it out loud.
I said, “Is there anyone besides your mother that you want to try and see?”
She said, “I think I’m the only one I know anymore without a baby or a meth problem.”
I put my hand on her knee.
“Well it’s never too late to catch up.”
She said, “Yep,” but kept looking out the passenger side window, uninterested in sharing a smile with me.
We stopped at a local burger shop to get a soft serve and to ask directions, but when we got to the counter she wouldn’t let me give them the address.
“I spent my whole life here,” she said. “We’ll find the damn house.”
With ice creams in hand we got back in the car and I rolled down the windows. We were burning too much gas as it was and I didn’t want to run the AC anymore. It was a wet heat, not what I expected from Oklahoma, and our ice creams went faster than the station wagon, her eyes looking at each and every house as if it held everything she was looking for, but we couldn’t even find her mother’s street.
“There,” she said. “Let’s stop at that yard sale.”
If she hadn’t of told me it was a yard sale I would never have guessed it on my own. I didn’t grow up in Oklahoma, lived in Connecticut my whole life, but the lawn was how I had pictured all of the south to look like — parts from old cars, dishes and clothes in haphazard piles, two grizzled women sitting in a lawn chairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking sweet tea. We got out of the car and began to look through the women’s wares as they talked to one another.
“…the boy didn’t even stop to help her up, just kept on drivin’.”
One of the women, the younger-looking of the two, the one with strips of dark color in her white/yellow hair, was telling the other a story, smoking for dramatic effect.
“Christ… How did they catch him?”
“Well, that’s the thing, they didn’t.”
This other woman, the older-looking one, dressed in a pink sequined sweater and stretch pants, just glared at her friend, practically begging with her eyes for the lady to finish the story, but the stroyteller, the younger one, was relishing this control she had over the conversation, obviously practiced in keeping other old women in suspense. I tried to ignore the women, took to looking at a box of old VHS, just a couple of comedies from the era of Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, a Looney Tunes tape and the first half of Lonesome Dove, but I kept an ear turned to the conversation. My girlfriend just stood and stared at them, uninterested in subtlety.
“Damn it Betty,” the older of the two women said, “are you gonna tell me what happened or ain’t ya?”
“All right, all right,” she said, pretending to be burdened, “I’ll tell you. So the fella, the Johanson boy for those of you who showed up late,” the woman looked at both me and my girlfriend to let us know that we weren’t eavesdropping, to get it across to us that we were as welcome to her story as we were on her lawn, “was so guilt-ridden from hittin’ the girl, so upset from killin’ a little teenage nobody, and then, worse than that, for speedin’ off like a coward because he was too afraid of going back to jail, well, he got so down on himself that he…” the woman quieted, leaned in, added a quiver to her voice on purpose, “that he went home and strung himself up in his parents’ garage. God’s honest, the boy took his own life to stay out of jail.”
The woman leaned back, trying not to smile, obviously pleased with herself for having this information, pleased with the way that she was telling us the story, how well she was pretending to be broken up about it.
“Yep, killed himself,” she continued. “The mother found him the next morning, swingin’ from the rafters. And here’s the kicker,” she leaned in again, “the child he hit didn’t even die, didn’t even really get hurt, just a little scraped up, and she didn’t tell her parents about it either, worried that she would get in trouble on account of sneakin’ out in the middle of the night. The only reason any of this came to the light of day, the accident and all, was because the boy had a note in his pocket that said the whole thing, even about the girl. He’d recognized the girl he hit and still didn’t stop. I mean, the boy was a coward three times over.”
“Was his name Scott?”
The two women looked up at my girlfriend, their faces twisted in confusion as if she were speaking a foreign language.
“What now, honey?”
“Was the guy’s name Scott? The Johanson boy you mentioned, the one that hung himself, that hit the girl, was his name Scott?”
My girlfriend had told me about Scott before, not a boyfriend of hers but the boyfriend of a close friend all through high school. He was funny, if I remember right, and a bit reckless, the catalyst in a lot of her stories about being young and out for trouble. He was the one who first took her to Oklahoma City, there to see some band he had made friends with, her first concert, I think, held in a country western bar that had been taken over by what would pass for punks in the South, her and her friends having to sneak in the back because the lot of them were five years from the drinking age.
“No,” the older woman said, the one in the pink sequined sweater, “his name was Michael. Michael Johanson, Tom and Marsha’s boy”
“Wrong Johanson’s if you’re lookin’ for Scott,” the other one said. “That would be Bill and Cindy. Their boy hasn’t been around in a while. Last I heard he cleaned out their bank account and went off to Florida with a black girl.”
“Puerto Rican.”
“Like it matters.”
“I’d bet money that he’s in jail. That damn kid couldn’t seem to stay on the streets for more than two months at a time.”
“And he has at least three kids.”
“From three different women, no less.”
“Never had a job though.”
“Not unless you count stealing from his parents and sleeping half the day.”
“Well,” my girlfriend said, “I guess I haven’t missed much then.”
The two old women stopped their banter and looked at us for the first time with interest, first at my girlfriend, then me, and then our car, then back at the girl.
“You from around here, sugar?”
“No,” she said, trying her best to smile, “I don’t think I am.”
My girlfriend showed the women the address, the younger one gave directions, and I bought a romance novel off the older one just to be polite.

________________________________________________________________________________

On the theme “America.”

WE LIVE IN IDENTICAL HOUSES

My wife is a brunette, and you can’t quite say for certain, but it’s possible your wife is blonde. In the summers our children are best friends, but only because they can’t drive and we don’t have the time to take them anywhere, but at school they are strangers at best. Your daughter has told you this, and you told me. My daughter never talks about your daughter, even in the summertime. We have boys too, one a piece, both brunette. Your son once beat up my son in the locker room, over what, neither will say, but for two months a year they stare at the same television, throwing grenades, racing cars, jumping on the backs of turtles. Our wives drink themselves silly.

In the summer, we have barbecues. Your wife, now a redhead but possibly a blonde by birth, makes chicken macaroni salad, and my wife, the brunette, can’t cook anything worth a damn so we bring booze and ribs for the grill. We always cook at your house because we have the dog and your daughter is allergic. Your daughter has braces latched onto big teeth, and straight brown hair, and freckles, and no breasts to speak of. She is funny to compensate, but no one in your family ever laughs at her jokes, hoping to discourage her from being anything but pretty. Her straight A’s amount to next to nothing in your eyes, because good grades are not what it takes to find a husband, and you want your daughter to take after your wife (the woman has never even had a job, not as a teenager or anything, and though you sort of hate this you wouldn’t have it any other way).

In the autumn months my wife always returns to the life of a teacher, our last name scrawled on a white board above a page number, a homework assignment, a due date. She failed your son the year she had him, or moreover he failed himself, but your wife talked my wife out of it so that your boy could keep playing football. On paper he got a C+, but still, you hold a grudge against the woman. She is thin with small hips, has bags under her eyes, but she is pretty. She is an angry woman, not at anything in particular, just in general, usually out to pick a fight and always out to win. We get along best when there’s something to distract us, but I hear that’s how it is for everyone anymore. The sex is irregular at best.

One autumn, a few years ago, your wife made a pass at me. It was early afternoon, and I was home due to weather, and your wife was in her bathrobe on the porch, looking at the mailbox as if it were a hundred miles away, obviously afraid of the rain. As a gentleman, I took your mail up to your door.
“Come in,” she said. “Let me make you a cup of coffee.”
In your kitchen she served me a slice of cheesecake and a cup of re-heated coffee, and she smiled at me fiercely, like there was money in it, and when I looked down her robe was open. Your wife has breasts that look to be just over a handful, only a bit soft, hanging fairly low, but her stomach is flat, her thighs decent. Your wife has brown pubic hair, but this proves nothing. Some women are blondes and brunettes all at once.
I said, “Thank you for the coffee,” my eyes still on her chest.
Your wife said, “Maybe I can interest you in some dessert,” as if she had forgotten about the cheesecake.
I smiled and touched her cheek, then let myself out.

In the beginning of winter we put up Christmas lights, always on the same weekend, keeping each other company, yelling from one roof to the other about this and that, complimenting and teasing each other back and forth. We take pride in our display, take pride in appearances. Our wives buy each other presents, our daughters always get roles in the paegent, and we sit together, husband wife husband wife, me next to yours or you next to mine. Our sons stay home, living their shared life of electronic nothingness, but in separate rooms in separate houses.

In the winter we celebrate our children, both of yours born in February, both of mine born in January, their birthdays running in the shadow of Christmas. My son never wants a party anymore, has been against them since he was only six or seven, and both of our daughters have moved from a child’s party to the sleepovers of an adolescent, and so our winters are not what they used to be, but once, long ago, it was all one big party for us, a reason to drink and get together, to laugh, to confide in our friends and neighbors. Now, after the new year, we will nod to one another if we catch each other outside, or wave, or ask a meaningless question that we don’t care to hear the answer to. Once in a while we will mention a beer, but we almost never get one.

Every spring you lease a car, and I buy something new every three or four years, always a truck, not exactly out preference, but more for appearances. I spend my days with men, telling them where to dig, what to build, and you work with women, selling the houses that I bring into being. On the surface we need each other, but the truth is that no one needs either of us. I did not invent the structure, and you did not invent the sale, and both of our wives are the type to remarry if we passed away. They have never said such a thing out loud, but everyone knows it’s true. Sometimes it feels as if my wife is simply waiting.

On spring evenings we watch the same shows in nearly identical living rooms, drink the same beer from different bottles, call our wives the same nicknames. We are so similar, you and I. We never knew each other when we were young, but it feels like I grew up with you the way our kids have grown up together, but we keep to ourselves more and more with each passing year.
Now and then, if we find ourselves in our respective back yards at the same time of night, the two of us will sit at the fence and talk about our day, or sports, or what our children have been up to. Once, on a night like this, you tried to tell me something important.
You said, “It never feels like I’m me anymore. I look in the mirror and I see my face, but it doesn’t mean anything. I feed the kids, I house the wife, but I have nothing, and I used to feel like I had everything. I don’t really have a family anymore, because none of them will even talk to me. Anymore I feel like I am just a means to an end, like I am a necessary nuisance, a side character in my own life. Do you ever feel that way?”
I took a drink of my beer, looked up at the sky.
“Not really,” I said. “It’s not everything I thought it would be, but it gets me through.”
“Yeah,” you said. “I don’t really know what I meant by that anyway,” and then you walked back to your house, went inside, shut off the kitchen light.

__________________________________________________________

Author Biography

Riley on Riley:

Riley Michael Parker is a cat inside a fox inside a wolf inside a cabin in a forest hidden in the pubic hair of a beautiful (if only pale and kind of short) woman with big grey eyes more like switchblades than anything a woman should have, and this woman is in a coffin in a fox inside a wolf disguised as an old man drinking gin and tonics in the bowels of a sinking/burning ship so far from shore that there is no point in even trying to swim.

Also he is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist living in the Pacific Northwest. His first novel, A PLAGUE OF WOLVES AND WOMEN, is available starting 10/19/2011 from Lazy Fascist Press, and he recently edited the epic story and poem collection NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE for his own publishing company, HOUSEFIRE (available now).

Bunny America: Drafting An Alternative Wiki Entry

Transubstantiation in America

We were everywhere, sent from here, sent to there, left to fade after the war.

What did you do, coming home from the wake? Did you lay down in the sun, asleep in the eel grass, creeping toward a mourning of that night, a pregnant future, dry light driftwood on a beach under the darkness of a new moon?

We drink hurricane lanterns inside your pink wax, touching each others terracotta dust, glitter and disco feeling the soft inside of cracker lips lumbering towards the west with a change of substance.

I begged that you trust your memory, unlocking the door to let me in from our close distance.

I came like a dwelling wound, eyes removed by the lamp in your iridescent space, I came home from the war, bandaged in your skin.

Author Biography

Mark Brunke lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Alternative bio: Handy Johnson is a pinko communist infiltrator poet going all-Roy-Cohn into the Hoover-hole of America.

My America, I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?

My homeland security, my land of absurdity,
My streets paved with gold and blood.
My soaring, smoking towers, my transmogrified presidential powers,
My incendiary, far-reaching, democratic brotherhood.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My white neighbors strengthen, my blue families weaken,
My red suburban wasteland continually replicates.
My fingertips of expedience, my web-savvy convenience,
My fire-breathing, flag-waving, war-mongering state.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My media’s leftist agenda, my media’s rightist agenda,
My middle men and women all but confused.
My elected (un-)officials, my power-seekers in scandals,
My blazing words hurling all sorts of scathing abuse.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My lame ducks in rows, my (reality?-based) nightmarish shows,
My consumerist, conventional, guaranteed trash.
My starving fellows on the street, my land of plenty to eat,
My ever-burning, faith-valued, green-backed cash.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My eyes are heavy, but my fingers are mighty,
My repugnant, reviled, “un”patriotic reproof all but done.
My country shakily stands as, through the neck, slip the sands,
My words, my tools, are my only truthfully American weapons.

My America I do trust. But that’s not the fuss.
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

Author Biography

Jason is an actor, playwright and poet currently living in Shanghai.  His original work has been performed in England (Nottingham University’s New Theatre), New York (Coffee Bean Productions) and Shanghai (Shanghai Repertory Theatre and HALiterature).  Currently, he is a patriot who is wondering what’s gone wrong. More of Jason’s work can be found at www.haliterature.com. 

An American in Shanghai

Saturday night, when Benjamin Martin set foot in the JZ Club near the corner of Fuxing Xi Lu and Yongfu Lu, he found himself in a packed music box, the music venue in town, and it was already full, like every weekend.

Benjamin was in a high-spirited hunting mood.

A handsome man in his mid-thirties, tall and well-built, he believed in taking good care of himself by eating well and strictly sticking to his exercise schedule, even reading, both Internet articles and books, so he could be as physically and intellectually fit as possible. He had been trying his best to train himself into a Renaissance man, equally conversant about wine as well as baseball, the Chinese Tang dynasty’s history as well as the American Civil War‘s, and Shanghai women as well as Paris Fashion Week, all with the goal of easily passing as a perfect lover and a brilliant mind.

A young Chinese girl was looking at his direction. She was a pretty girl about 20 years old, with silky black hair, full lips, and of average height, but with lines of pleasing proportions, with a small, tight,waist that created an illusion that it could be easily held in one hand.

When her eyes saw Benjamin, an almost unnoticeable smile of desire crawled up to her eyebrows.

Benjamin deftly returned her interest.

She turned her head aside at once, pretending to be not interested, but couldn’t help laying her eyes back on him again. He took the hint and went over to her.

“Hi,” he extended his hand, “I’m Benjamin.”

“Spring,” she replied, taking his hand with much delight.

“What a beautiful name!”, for Benjamin never forgot to pay any girl a compliment, “And, may I say, you look stunning!”

She cast her eyes down slightly, however, the pleased flushing shown on her cheeks didn’t escape his observant eyes.

“Are you Shanghainese?” he asked her in the casual way that people have when
they say, “how are you?”.

“No. I’m from Tianjin, the city very close to Beijing.”

Her answer relieved him somewhat. Shanghainese girls had gained some notoriety for being too practical, calculating, and tough to deal with. For Benjamin, it was always a good sign to know that the girl he was hitting on was not a local.

Yes, he admitted to himself that he was holding a prejudice against Shanghainese women based on stereotypes. But, he also justified his prejudice by reasoning, “I’m a very busy man. I don’t have time to waste on proving a stereotype is right or wrong.”

However when it came to himself, Benjamin was more open-minded and impartial, which was also quite human, since we all tend to love ourselves a little more, and was generally quite satisfied with himself. He loved what he saw in the mirror every morning, enjoyed what his mind had to say every day, and took great pleasure in how his body performed every night.

If there was one itsy-bitsy regret, it probably would be that he was an American. Oh, please don’t get him wrong, Benjamin loved his country. Most of the time, he was proud to be a great Yankee. Sometimes, when he crossed borders, he would hold his passport in hand and confidently grin, thinking, “With a U.S. passport, the world is yours.”

But, whenever with other cosmopolitans in this oriental melting pot, he couldn’t help thinking that,were he born French or British, how much easier it would be for him to make others believe he was an interesting and intelligent person, because he would have had better stereotypes to work with in dealing with them, since Europeans are supposed to be cultured and sophisticated, unlike Americans.

As an American, Benjamin was supposed to be rude and stupid. He admitted that there certainly were rude and stupid Americans, whom even he looked down on. But Benjamin certainly wanted to make the point that not all Americans are rude and stupid, and there were also plenty of polite and smart ones, like him, to say the least. So, for him, the phrase, “You are so American” became the worst insult he could get, and he hated every syllable of it. It felt unfair, because it was such an easy comment to make, it also wiped out all of his efforts at being a true gentleman, and, worst of all, Benjamin couldn’t even argue about it, because he was an American.

“What about you,” he heard Spring asking, “where are you from?”
He flashed a charming wink, “Everywhere.”

She giggled at his answer, “Interesting!”  In fact, she couldn’t care less.

He knew very well his “everywhere” would work on a girl: it was cute, indicated an atmosphere of adventure and mystery, and girls liked that.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

She nodded her head, “Dirty Martini,” eagerly accepting his offer.

When Benjamin came back from the bar with two dirty Martinis in hands, he found Spring had another companion by her side, a stout man in his 40s, with red skin and dirty brown hair.  When he came up to her, she introduced them to each other, “ Benjamin, this is David.”

They simultaneously said, “Hey”, and nodded greetings.

“Where are you from?” David spoke in a drawl, coming from through his nose than his mouth.

Benjamin understood his cute “everywhere” answer wouldn’t do here, as it would be too obvious that he was trying to avoid something. So, he replied, “The States. You?”

“Australia.”

Benjamin gave a slight sigh of relief inside his head. Thank God, it was Australia,  as Australians were regarded as equally rude, if not ruder, and crude as Americans.

.
Just then, a third man came up to this little group. He had dark hair and a slightly-snarled face, somewhat like a half-ironed walnut; but also looked stylish in his well-fitted suit, with a bright-yellow-colored dress shirt, and an aura of better-than-anyone-else.

He greeted Spring with a “Buona Sera, Bella!!!,” threw up his hands dramatically and hugged her like a bear crushing a frightened bird. Then, he turned to David and slapped him on the back, “Hey, buddy. It’s been a long time. How is everything?”  Finally, he noticed Benjamin.

“Benjamin,” Benjamin reached forth his hand, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you! Donato. Donato Barboni.” He spoke in the romantic, singing tones of the unmistakeable Italian accent, “Where are you from?”

A bit self-consciously, “The States,” Benjamin replied in a muffled voice.
“Oh…”, Donato smiled, “the U.S.”

“Was it a smirk?”, Benjamin thought to himself.

Evidently, Spring, David, and Donato already knew each other, so they naturally went into their catching-up ritual.

Donato came first, and started briefing what was new with him, with his plans to import Italian wine to Shanghai. He was very excited about this idea, and soon began counting the restaurants he planned to contact one by one, Da Marco, Issimo, Gennaro…
“Wine is so hot here right now, and it’s continually getting hotter. I’m also thinking about organizing a wine tour in Italy next year,” and his voice rose with excitement.

Armed with the spirit of self-advertising, Benjamin realized here was the place to jump in to make the point that he was more than an average American, and was, in fact, a man of culture, “That’s interesting. At least it will give Chinese more to taste and talk about than Chateau Lafite and Great Wall.”

He was happy with what he came up with, because it showed his knowledge of the current trends in food and drink, and what tickled Chinese consumers,too.

Benjamin further amplified his statement’s effect, by rambling on, with utmost enthusiasm, about how Chinese nouveau-riche are obsessed with big names in the wine world, without really caring about the taste of the actual product, the rising price of Bordeaux wines, French culture, New Orleans, Jazz, Hip-Hop, the Taiwanese rap singer Jay Chou, the differences between the Chinese and Latin writing systems, the differences between simplified Chinese characters and traditional ones, the lack of “R”  and “Sh” sounds in Japanese, the difficulties of understanding Japanese-speakers’ accents when they speak English, how Koreans ended up with a bad reputation among their neighbors due to their claims to inventing all of the great Asian cultures, Korean barbecue, Turkish kebab, Egypt and Africa, the latter’s many wars and resources, and, finally, back to China.

All of those words and topics flew out of his mouth like a stream of lotuses, with a lovely, smooth and delicate rhythm. When he uttered the last period of his last statement on them, the other three persons around him all appeared mesmerized and stupefied.

“What were we talking about at the first place?”, they all wondered in their bewilderment.

“Was it one of my never-go-anywhere-but-good-for-a-little-talk business ideas?,” Donato recalled vaguely to himself.

“Jeez, this guy is a talker!”,  the vanquished David thought, while guzzling down his beer, which was already getting warm during Benjamin’s world-tour speech.

Overwhelmed, Spring gazed at Benjamin admiringly, “Wow, there are so many things about China he knows that  I don’t even know. What a great mind he has! And,” with a  beam spreading over her pinkish face, “what a great body he has too!”

There was a prolonged vacant pause among the four-some following Benjamin’s speech,  as if all of the available topics had been exploited that night, and now there was only awkward silence left for them to enjoy.

Benjamin again bravely stepped in, opening his mouth, “You know…”

Before Benjamin finished his first sentence, David jumped up, “Oh, excuse me, I have to go to say hello to an old friend,” and vaguely pointed at the bar area, before hurrying away like a kid escaping from his principal’s lecture.

.“Ah, I just remember I need to get up early tomorrow.”, Donato spoke as he made up his excuse.

“You do? It’s Sunday tomorrow,” asked Spring.

“Yeah, yeah, you know, the wine thing, the thing I was talking about,” he stammered, “I need to get up early to get to that, the wine thing.”

The three of them exchanged cordial farewells, and Donato left.

Now only Spring and Benjamin remained

“Do you need to get up early tomorrow, too?”, Benjamin asked Spring.

She shook her head.

“Do you want to watch a DVD with me?”, Benjamin asked her, throwing just a little sexual intonation into his voice to add to his triumph.

Spring nodded her head vigorously.

* * *

“Come on in.” Benjamin said, as he opened the door of his apartment. When it was shut, Spring turned her face towards him and looked into his eyes with much tenderness. He pressed her closer to him and gently pressed his lips on her eyelids, then on her little nose. But before his lips moved onto hers, she said in a flattering tone, “You are so American, rule them all.”

Ever on the alert, Benjamin froze still, “What do you mean?!”

“I mean you are the man of the men, the ruler of them all…”

“No, the one you said before that,”the smile had gone off his face.

“Before that?” she thought for a second. “The men I’ve dated?”

“No, the one after that.”

“You are an American?”

“Yes, right there! You said I am so American.”

“You are! You are American, aren’t you?”. Spring was innocently confused.

“I am. But when people say, ‘You are so American,’ they mean something else.”

“What something else?”, she asked, genuinely unsure, then added to clear things up, “I love Americans, they are macho and tough, I love that in a man,” and leaned in to him, tipsily and flirtatiously.

“Oh, no, no! Now, you are humoring me,” as Benjamin held Spring by the arms and pushed her away a little.

“You just told me you have dated men from other countries. If you mean what you just said, I want you to be more specific, I want you to write down the pros and cons of Americans point by point. I want you to prove to me I am the best, the most interesting, the most macho of them all.”

“Now?” she asked in the midst of intoxicated and dizzy air, “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“Yes. Now.” He was determined.

“I thought you wanted to…”, she rolled her eyes, “…watch a DVD.”

“Yes, that too. But this is important! Important to me!”.  To explain himself better, Benjamin went on, “Just think about this, if I had a Japanese girlfriend before, don’t you want to know who I prefer, you or that Japanese girl?”

“You had a Japanese girlfriend?”, she became curious.

“It’s a hypothesis.”

Without understanding him, she followed her own thoughts, “Where did you meet the Japanese girl? Japanese, they seldom mingle with other expats here.”

“No. It’s a hypothesis. It’s not real. What I am trying to say is in a similar circumstance, you’d be just like me.  Race envy and rivalry are deep inside us, every one of us.”

Spring studied his eyes for a long while, then finally said, “Did you just say girlfriend? You want a serious relationship between us? I thought this is a one-night thing,” she was almost moved.

“No, no, no. You’re not getting the point here. I am not talking about us. I am talking about me. I didn’t say anything about us being boyfriend-girlfriend. This is a one-night thing.”

She widened her eyes, looking hurt, as there is always something that is better left unsaid, even though everyone knows the truth.

Benjamin couldn’t believe he had been talked into a corner by this girl. Or, was it only by himself?

“You know, you are so not like the Americans I’ve ever known,” she tilted her head backwards.

Right then, he felt all of his night’s long work had paid off, and a deep relief and contentment welled up from the bottom of his heart.

Spring stood up straight  and declared, “You are so sensitive and…”, searching hard for the right word from her limited vocabulary,  until she finally found it, “weird.”

She then opened the door herself and stomped out of Benjamin’s apartment without looking back.

After Benjamin shut the door, he leaned against it, like waking from a dream, and, for the first time that night, asked himself, “Didn’t I go out to get a girl in the first place?”

“Well,” quickly brushing this fuzzy thought aside, “at least I am so not like the Americans she has ever known,” and the corners of his mouth began to curl up with self-assurance.
A charming smile hovering about his lips was reflected on the mirror hanging by the doorside. Benjamin was unspeakably satisfied with himself.

Author Biography

Ginger is a female writer; wRong is an incorrect writer; Chen is a Chinese writer.Ginger+wRong+Chen is a female incorrect Chinese writer, who manipulates the art of storytelling into short stories, film and TV scripts.

AMERICA

Superman Down - Photography - Jillian Brall of Unshod Quills

In June 2011, UQ’s sister site, HALiterature, an English language independent press and journal based in Shanghai, China, conducted an exchange program of sorts with members of the Unshod Quills Writer’s Collective.

Challenge: Panda. Write on the theme of pandas? The Shodomites went nuts, and the HALites went even nuttier, and the results were mad, bad and dangerous to know, like if Byron had been a panda, especially in some of the HAL stories.

Unshod Quills asked WM Butler, director of HAL’s own writer’s group, Groupthink, to ask his people to participate in yet another sister-lit spit swap; this time on the theme of America. Lovely, if only slightly troubled, America.

In response, a few members of Unshod Quills Writers Collective threw some letters, and a little art, on the topic, as well.

Simply follow the links next to each author or artist’s name to see his or her contribution.

Now, where the in the holy hell is Woody Guthrie when we need him?

MADE IN CHINA – Haliterature’s Groupthinkers on America

“America is a feudalistic dynasty…” Populated by bunnies!

Lucinda Holmes of Groupthink – “Bunny America: An Alternative Wiki Entry”

Katrina Hamlin of Groupthink – “The Beautiful Country” 

Jason Lasky of Groupthink – “America”

LITTLE PINK HOUSES – Unshod Quills Writers Collective on America

Images from Eva Steil, of Unshod Quills

Wendy Ellis of Unshod Quills – “America”

Viv G of Unshod Quills – “American Mythology”

Jillian Brall of Unshod Quills – Out of This World

Jason Mashak of Unshod Quills – “American History – Excerpt”

Mark Brunke of Unshod Quills –  Transubstantiation in America

“Stoic, I populate.”

Dena Rash Guzman of Unshod Quills – Salt Box

Joseph Taylor Golding is an American video artist. His recorded images and words, composed of found and original footage and sound, sometimes are like messages from an imagined future long gone cold, but they glimmer lightly with something that smells subtly of hope or perfect summer blackberries.  Joseph’s work is a thing of great discovery, beauty and endurance.

Joseph, in his own words:

We will let Joseph’s work, video poetry on the themes of fire, America, somewhere never traveled, gladly beyond and rapture, speak now. We can’t hold it back any longer. Seldom do I comment on work published by our journal, as I like to allow the art and literature to speak for itself, but I comment now.

Thank you, Joseph. Please continue to do this work.

Anyone who might see this and be interested in learning more about Joseph, or in hearing from him, will please email me at dena @ haliterature dot com.

Dena Rash Guzman
Editor
Unshod Quills

“My Name is Joseph”

on the theme of “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWKJqaGTnM]

Drunk On Empty Words

on the theme of Fire

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4a-7k-cBh8]

Visual Sculpture – The Sky Was Full of Snakes (part one)

on the theme of Rapture

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38zioorHgVg]

Visual Sculpture – The Sky Was Full of Clockwork Crows (part two)

on the theme of Rapture

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zyK_pcXJrI]

More of Joseph’s work can be found here:

Sacrificial Totem

Look for some great work utilizing the poetry of Richard Brautigan.

Satellite American

Satellite American
Part I

I was early but he was ready for me so I went in right away. The shadows had grown long by then. Golden light came in through the window and softened the deep lines of his face. Consoler. Counselor. Same roots maybe? The room was dim and yellow. Of care, of wisdom. Much nicer now than when I’d seen him before. Three forty-two when I turned off my phone.

He asked me a bunch of expected particulars but I didn’t mind. With each question came a space. He waited well and I was unusually honest. Even my hands were somehow truer. I suddenly wanted to tell him everything. Much more than what he was asking. Never felt quite like that before, a kid lost, lucky to be found this way and not another.

So I did. I told him everything. For the moment. All that could be true. All of the things that he wanted to hear and I wanted to say. Seemed like he’d stopped listening right away, right after the information part but dunno for sure. I wasn’t even listening to my self. I was watching him. His eyes, his hands, his pen, and then his eyes again when it stopped, the pen. After each uh-uh, my arm fell into my lap like a do-over. My voice seemed to be the only thing moving in the room, and then it was an hour later.

We scheduled for the same next week. I’ll look forward to it, I said, and I meant it.

Each day before it, something I had said that first day would roll back onto me. Especially the things that made him laugh or move his eyebrows, especially the ones that made him stop, look right into my eyes and part his lips.

Next week, not wanting to come off too eager, I went in right on time. I even faked being rushed. I fell fast into the big brown chair and his smile was warm. Call me Parker, he said, so I did.

The room was darker. The blinds mostly closed this time. He started in quickly about something I’d said the time before. All unexpected — nothing that had echoed during the week, nothing I wanted to talk about. He pressed a little and I looked away, at the floor, at the slices of light behind him and then, finally at my hands.

–Are you ok?

–Yeah I’m fine.

The first lie.

–You’re quiet today.

–I don’t want to talk about that stuff.

–Is there something you do want to talk about?

–Not really.

The second lie.

–Would you prefer to re-schedule?

I might have won with a ‘yes’ here but it’d be the third lie and I didn’t want that. Wasn’t sure what yet, but not that. I think I let go right then cuz the stream started. I’m just talking. There was that space again and I was filling it. It was not just emptiness, it was also safe and inviting, a room full of ok-ness.

I must have gone on this way and that about all kinds of things and I could see eventually that he was not getting me. I liked that he showed me that. That he was perplexed. A liar, if he was one, good at seeming genuine. But I couldn’t tell just yet, that’s how good he was. I like this in a person. Not cutthroat-honest and not totally cool as a cucumber all the time but somewhere in between. I figured that he was above me. I was beyond nervous and I could not. stop. talking. The space he was making was too big for me. I’d never fill it. Like running across a desert you know is going to dry you up. My sarcasm, my deflection, none of it would fly here.

–I want to study rhetoric, I said suddenly, surprising myself too.

He smiled as though proud of me. I’d pleased him with that, and that pleased me, but I didn’t know how to follow that act. It wasn’t an act to follow, it wasn’t an act, it was realizing about the desert.

A long pause and then I looked at my phone – four-twenty-five only. A thought whispered across my brain like a tiny crab … terrible to want so much and not know what it is. I could read him after all. No way could I tell him that so I said:

–Can we do something else?

–What do you suggest?

–You play má jiàng?

–You’re funny, he said, not laughing.

I started telling him all about Pan Pan, a neighbor friend. She lives in the building but she’s actually Moms’ friend. I barely know the woman. Its weird though because my Chinese is way better than Moms’, naturally, but Pan Pan doesn’t seem to know or care. Once, in our kitchen, she was on her mobile while Moms was making tea explaining about her husband, that they’d met at the fake-marriage market, he’s loaded, and totally tongzhi, gay. Just needs a tongqi, a homowife, and she gets a big apartment, a nicer car and a monthly allowance, and don’t worry, the laowai lady is married with kids, always busy. And, she can’t wait to see the person when the person comes to town.

I don’t always know why I’m such an ass to my parents, so jaded, in front of their friends and when it’s really inconvenient, I told Parker then, but that this might have something to do with it.

His pen stopped. I’d lost him again. His face told me that he didn’t even know what to do. Was it a mirage or was this desert smaller all of a sudden? Now I was on top and he was struggling so I threw him bone:

–Sorry, I thought perhaps Moms had told you about the outburst.

–Which one was that?

–You’re funny too.

I’d finally made him laugh. Of course she’d told him! And then I spelled it out.

–I get it most of the time. I understand what’s going on all around us and they don’t. Not because I’m so smart but because I’m from here and they’re not. Its not just a language thing either, its even when no one says anything. They look at me like, what does that mean? What now? And I explain to their blank faces what has gone unsaid. I’m American but only sort of. Satellite American.

–I see, he said but he didn’t, and he wouldn’t.

–Where are you from?

–Ohio, he said, shifting in his chair and moving his eyes to just above my head.

He reached for his desk drawer the way gangsters get their guns in the movies and a book popped out like pez. The cover had a person from behind, sitting on a cliff overlooking an ocean. The person was very alone and very high up. I was going to make a crack. I was going to say, O goodie, a guide to suicide! But I saved it. The real title was “Recalibrating Dynamics”. His name was in puffy gold at the bottom and the biggest thing on there: Parker J. White, Psy.D.

No more talking about anything else today. The hour was up. He didn’t have to say it, only look there again, where he’d hung his wall clock, for good reason.

Satellite American
Part II

–Where truth is a balancing act, said aunt Genie, she’s a tightrope walker — shards of a person but not from falls, from never coming down.

I’ve personally met a string of accomplices, all guilty of her slow self-murder. Meet Gwen, aka, Moms. Easy to play as long as the instrument she’s handed you can be recognized. Her trick is to switch them out when you’re not looking. Imagine, you are playing the saxophone, you pause for a breath and then it’s a tambourine, an accordion, the triangle. Few non-family ever register this about her. I’m better at it than Dad but only since this year.

Through the swamp of a family dining experience I’ll see Dad’s jelly-eyes quivering, a rescue plea. Use to be that protocol was to send aid right away but I’m a big girl now.

The day Dad discovered our new arrangement went something like this:

It was already an odd morning cuz us three were actually in the same service apartment, at the same time, sharing a space called the kitchen, and then Dad goes, Mrs. Chen says your attendance has been sporadic—

–I’ve been writing poetry instead!

I screamed it before the pepper hit their Bloody Marys.

–Wanna hear?

–Of course honey, said moms, a bit startled in her hangover.

I stood up, cleared my throat and faked a nervous but my eyes stayed on Dad’s cuz this was not to be missed:

–She was so Chinese, that she was Mexican.

Ice jiggled. It had hit him.

–What could that possibly mean?

He took a big, long, pissed-off pull from his cold tomato soup.

–It’s too lateral for you
–So is your taste in women

His face. From impatient to total meltdown in like a millisecond. I went interrogation beatnik for the last lines.

–Tonight, we hunt.
–You Skeez You!

This was no poem I’d penned. This was texting with Clubbing Dave he’d neglected to delete. Oops!

Moms was great. She gave me the obligatory support – you’re a poet, what a surprise, let’s develop that. I played into this crap and Dad shut the fuck up that’s what. And then he bolted in some kinda bullshit hurry of course.

When I told the story in session, Parker cracked up. I was laughing too and he went, Haha, what a fool! I was like, Yeah totally! But then the room turned horrible. I didn’t see it coming, a clamp on the back of my throat. Worst feeling ever and by my own hand.

The last laugh would not stay in the family. Parker went back to America, and then Moms and Dad, Ayi and even Fei Yue, our driver, were all gonna be out of town for six days. I’d spend the end of the semester, final exam week, alone.

–I’m sorry, said Ayi to my super sad face.

Moms was nodding yes behind her and saying, can’t be helped hun…

By the next day I didn’t care anymore. Smoothed over by the old bilateral kitchen table note and cash-pile:

“Morning Honey, fridge is stocked and this is your taxi money. Do well on those exams and there will be a BIG hong bao for you when we get back. Good Luck! Love, Mom & Dad

P.S. Emergency numbers on Dad’s desk!”

I would not be leaving these pajamas today and I’ll be turning the taxi money into entertainment. Oh Yes. And if Moms had something to say about it later I’d go, couldn’t be helped. You know how that is right?

In Dad’s robe and Moms’ slippers I mixed up a nice big stiff one and shuffled down to the lobby DVD cart. My stack was getting high when I spied it. A box of TV with the Shanghai skyline on it.

“SATeLLitE AmERIkA.” It said.

I put down the stack and paid for the box.

I was like, whatthefuck? Had this wriggled into my brain long ago all stealthy and I’m thinking that I had coined the term but not really? That was creepy but the truth was creepier.

In the elevator I read the back: “Meet Jax, an American teenager in Shanghai…Growing up in… SATeLLitE AmERIkA.”

The pilot went in and I pushed play.

Once, I was home alone after school and hungry. A can of pears I wanted but didn’t know how to use the electric can opener. So I started to use a steak knife and BLAM! Right through my hand, right through the fleshy web between my thumb and index. It was stunning. I mean, I was stunned. I yanked it out RAMBO-style and tossed it, throwing my blood like paint across the white bathroom. I left this world for a shocked place on the floor. That’s the only time that compares to this day.

One disc after the other was watched without pause. My breathing changed the rate of all life. It all blurred together. A blink later it was dusk. With each scene Parker’s use for me played out right in front of me on our humongous flat screen. There they were, my lies, uncoiling and slithering into fiction.

There was a Pan Pan but her named was Ming Ming. She was the friend of the Moms character and my secret best friend in the building. There was a drunk Moms and a derelict Derek the Dad. There was some crazy CGI one for my falling-off face dream. And then there was an episode called ‘Recalibration’ where Moms visits the Counselor, Patrick, to talk about her troubled Jax. One commercial-break later and they’re doing it right on his desk, with the blinds closed, below the clock, heaving. Next scene, they’re naked and glistening in a well-lit, gym-sculpted, post-coitus embrace where they jeer about the hour being up, about how his four-o-clock is Jax and due to show any minute and its not what he meant by ‘recalibrate your dynamic with your daughter’. I mean, holyfuckingshit, right? Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Seriously, who the fuck?

Low and behold, he indeed had more than one Omnipedia page — one as Dr. Parker J. White, Psychologist (the one I knew) and one as Parker White, Writer/Director. I wanted to find him and slap him. More than that though, to find him, shake his hand and say, Mr. White, Congratulations, damn good show.

The me was the truest to life there was. When her face filled the screen and her hands moved to the music to tell the stories I was literally beside myself. I gripped the belt of Dad’s robe with the nerves of my kin. There was no emergency number for this. When it was over I was nowhere.

Author Biography:

Renée Reynolds grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles. She currently works as a freelance writer in Shanghai, where she has lived since 2007. Contact: renrey2010@gmail.com