Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tristan, Andrew, and Andrew visit Anwyn in Eureka and are taken in her Ford Falcon to the Italian Sons of Arcata courts at Redwood Fields.

Affixed to the chain-linked gate at the courts' periphery was a sign that read in simple, stenciled red-then-green lettering: "bocce only."
The benches were dedicated to the memory of Tesca Righetti by family and friends.

4:30 PM Redwood Fields, Eureka, CA

Andrews Anderson & Shaw-Kitch

6

Tristan Kadish and Anwyn

15

*      *      *

Bocce ball played at Redwood Fields courts on a different day.1 

"Never turn your back on a bocce game."

—Anwyn

In May of 2004 I began to write a book.  I was outside of the Arcata Greyhound Station waiting for a bus to Portland.  It was to leave around 10 p.m.  I got there at 9:30.  The bus, as it turned out, got a flat tire around Willits.  It was four hours late.  The book was about this.
Five months later I was traveling through Arcata again, again visiting my brother.  The book was done, and we talked about it.  The book was also about this.

The next May I began a book in the tradition of Desolation Angels, which I was reading at the time. I went to Mexico for a month with my mom, staying with our friends Megan and Jake in Queretaro and traveling with them for a few weeks to a beach house north of Puerta Vallarta, named for a trio of fugitive brothers that holed up there: Los Ayala.  I read the Brothers Karamazov.  The book was about all of this.

The next May under the influence of Aldous Huxley and too much english literature I embarked on a novella about a six hour period of my life.  Close to completion I came to a halt upon seeing a camera angle in a World Cup game that showed the American goalie's perspective as he booted a free kick out of his area with the jumbotron beyond him showing him to himself ad infinitum doing this.  Bocce ball began to occupy my thoughts.

The next May a homeless man named Ed approached me about collaborating on his autobiography so he could be famous before he forgot everything.  By September I lost contact with him and his story had turned into mine.  This is what the book was about. 2

The next May I finished a series of critical essays on myself that my friend Ernie had commissioned the year before.  It historically describes myself as renouncing writing in late August, seeing the metaphor in a baseball game that I miss for its announcing.

The next May I began the final compositions of a self-referential work on Seinfeld that describes both the show's discussion of itself, and itself. 3

The next May I despaired of writing again.  The World Cup was hosted by South Africa.  Spain won.

This May I decided the bocce ball journey had matured in me long enough for perspective to develop, but was soon to lose its urgency.  A spider was noticed next to the house.  Its web spanned the three foot gap between the roof and the fence.  It came out at night and approached the size of a black golf ball.   Just recently she laid her eggs and is now half her size.  Now, two months later, the perfection of the web has begun to deteriorate.  Her eight grey spheres rest below the gutter, against the beam that holds the roof up, a dispersed collection. Her bocce game has been played and she waits for the end.  The book is about this.

Cuento quiere decir llevar cuenta de un hecho.  La palabra proviene del latín computus, y es inútil tratar de rehuir el significado esencial que late en el origen de los vocablos.  Una persona puede llevar cuenta de algo con números rumanos, con números árabes, con signos algebraicos; pero tiene que llevar esa cuenta.  No puede olvidar ciertas cantidades o ignorar determinados valores.  Llevar cuenta es ir ceñido al hecho que se computa.  El que no sabe llevar con palabras la cuenta de un suceso, no es cuentista.

—Juan Bosch, "Apuntes Sobre el Arte de Escribir Cuentos"

Cuento (Tale or account or short story) means llevar cuenta (to keep track of or take record of or take count of a fact). The word comes from the Latin computus, and it's useless to to try and avoid the essential meaning beating in the origin of that word—someone can llevar cuenta of something with Roman numerals, Arabic numbers, with algabreic signs; but it has to total its sum, to take account of it.  One cannot forget certain amounts or ignore other values.  Llevar cuenta is to go clinging to the fact that is being computed.  One who is does not know how with words to take account, to sum the total, of an incident is not a tallyer/short story writer.