LEARNING TO FLY

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Books on human flying—that is, humans rising into the air under their own power, without the help of any motorized craft or winged apparatus—are usually written by fliers who cannot write or by writers who cannot fly, and their contents consequently tend toward ironically grounded prose or  lofty quotations of the great poets on the matter of man having slipped the surly bonds of earth. “Flying: Explained,” a manual prepared under the auspices of Lift House by H. Dell Mansour (Allogash, Pauling, and Co.) occupies neither of those extremes, instead taking up residence in a wonderful middle. It consists of exactly forty pages, exactly half of which are taken up by black-and-white photos of a human flier in action, annotated sparsely so that the instructions can be clearly followed. The other twenty is a mix of testimonials as to the thrill of being free in open air and candid sometimes humorous accounts of moderately consequential errors. The whole thing has the strong feel of being guided by persons who have had constant practice, not only in their own flight, but in the instruction of children. It is a strong example of skilled experience at work. Only a few parts of the process are addressed, primarily takeoff, mid-flight navigation, and landing, but as these three are the foundation of all flying, this work will be of great value to all student fliers as well as flying parents wishing to pass the requisite knowledge along to their children. Of special note is the section on exercises that should be performed while not flying, calisthenics for strengthening the muscles of the calves and back so vital to proper flight. Insufficient conditioning of those muscles can result in improper form, and as the book explains, once acquired, these unhealthy habits  can be nearly impossible to overcome. The book is packaged with a beautiful fold-out map that identifies some of the best locations for beginning fliers: meadows without sharp rock outcroppings, lakes without extremely cold water or perilous depths, and the like. 

A JEWEL THEFT

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A jewel theft at 8 Silver Park Street was reported last night by Eleanor Rustwick. Items included a ring and necklace given to her by her late husband, Eric Rustwick, who founded the firm of Rustwick and Dollimore back in 1964 and shepherded it through the decades as it became one of the city’s most prominent institutions. Mr. Rustwick, who passed in 2017, was known for his ruthless eye for contractual details and his fierce loyalty to his corporate clients, particularly to those who developed the area of downtown formerly known as The Trunk. Many a family would later recount the dread they felt after walking to the mailbox, expecting a card from a relative or a magazine, and instead discovering a letter from Rustwick and Rustwick, its cream-colored envelope belying the violence contained within. The letter was clear: it was time to go. Neighborhoods were divided or dissolved altogether in favor of the sports complex, the office towers, the luxury apartments. Rustwick made as many refugees as he made reputations. When he retired at the age of 78, he moved himself and his wife into the penthouse of the most exclusive of the residential developments. Within six months, he had renounced nearly all of his previous work as bloodthirsty profiteering, and he began to give away as much of his fortune as he could to groups active on behalf of causes that included environmental protection, criminal justice reform, and financial literacy. He also started to write poetry, which he had not done since he was a child, and to fold his work via origami into housings for the valuables he had purchased for his wife over the years. The ring that was stolen, which was valued at $750,000, had been nesting in a prose poem that Rustwick wrote less than a month before his death: “Bodies in suits. Bodies in dresses. Bodies in blouses and shirts. Bodies in nothing, but nothing is still something, is still skin and blood, tissue and sinew. Bodies without nothing are no longer bodies, are bones, are boxed up, are buried. Bodies are buried.” Eleanor Rustwick said that while she was sad to lose the ring, she was pleased the the poem had been left behind. Police are uncertain how the penthouse was obtained by the thieves.

IT CAN HAVE ASTONISHED NO ONE

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The latest achievement of Wilson Altice, one would imagine, can have astonished no one who know him or his paintings well. The altercation at a restaurant, the ensuing fistfight with a nearby wedding party, the subsequent departure with the about-to-be bride, with whom he moved to Bora Bora and fathered two children, is just just what the outsized he-men of “Pennsylvania Drillbit” and “Blood: You Love To See It.” The men who populate Altice’s large canvases put themselves above everything, which necessarily means putting everything beneath them: all is grist for their boundless vanity. 

Strangers to modern art, particularly the kitschy if fiercely impressive battlescapes that are Altice’s stock in trade,  may know the man only from his advertising campaigns on behalf of soft drinks and neckties—indeed, of all the modern artists, and he has been the most willing to extend himself into the commercial sphere. And if that is where they have seen him, they no doubt equate him with his persona: bookish and bespectacled, with a wry grin offered more often in the back of the frame or its corners than front and center.

But how to reconcile that with Bora Bora, with the bride spirited away to there, with the two children, with the three additional offspring he shared with his Polynesian house manager, with the arsenal of weapons that would shame that of most small nations, with the guard dogs, and finally with the new work, which surpasses the old not only in its wry humor but in its terrifying violence? The centerpiece of the new set is indisputably Force the Forty-Niners, a massacre set among nineteenth-century gold-panners. The size is gargantuan, more than twenty feet square. The composition is cinematic. The colors are overwhelming, with incarnadine reds swimming across fields of gilt. One critic who visited Bora Bora was rumored to have fainted and lay at the base of the painting for more than an hour. It is not possible to discount this rumor entirely. It is perhaps best to recall the tag line from the first commercial that Altice ever filmed, more than twenty years ago, for a high-tech shaving system. “That’s the thing,” he said, beginning to grin. “You just never know.”

NO TRACE OF THE EXPLORER’S BALLOON

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The daughter of the brother of the captain of the steamer that made the discovery has finally told her story, and it is a tearjerker. She is an unemotional woman in most other aspects of her life, which makes it all the sadder. She works in a school library and rarely either smiles or frowns at the children. But in yesterday’s interview she was undone from the first. “My uncle,” she says, and then takes a sip of water. She is overcome with the thought of him. When she was young, he was her favorite, and vice versa. They shared a special bond, in that they both liked speaking of the unknown, much to the consternation of the others, who wished that conversation would focus on what was safely understood. The two of them ventured into places of fancy and fantasy, where castles were built in the air and then torn down by dragons also built in the air. When he married—her dashing young uncle, to a woman of means—she found herself disappointed for reasons she could not quite understand, but that at the same time were undeniably real to her, and she was equally unaccountably joyful when the marriage failed quickly. She was twelve then. Now she is older. Now she has composed herself, and she can go on with her story. “My uncle,” she said. “He had a friend who was very much like him, to hear him tell it. I never met the other man. My uncle said that they looked different: the other man was shorter, stouter, with a strange rapid way of walking as if he was hurrying across burning ground, while my uncle was deliberate in his movements, so as not to admit that anything could get to him. The friend was an explorer. He led an expedition to Blue Island by balloon. He left with fanfare. He kissed his wife and infant child, my uncle’s godson. He was in radio contact for a few weeks and then never heard from again. My uncle waited patiently for months and then when he could wait no longer commissioned a boat to go and find his friend. He did not, but he found the story of the man scattered all around. This was on a remote island. This was a campsite, now deserted. My uncle did not think the balloon landed there, as there were traces of the party having arrived by rowing or walking. The camp had been conducted, it seemed, in an intelligent manner. A few pairs of shoes discovered near a freezing river were worn nearly through, indicating frequent use. One body was found, belonging to an older man who had served as a kind of scribe for the others. He was largely preserved by the cold, and seemed as though he was still consulting the instrument that lay at his feet, along with a rifle. A leather-bound journal found next to him promised to tell the whole tale, but it was empty.” She sniffles. She is sad about the explorer and his balloon but also about her uncle. Harm did not befall him on his recovery mission but within two months of his return he was married again. That union took and lasted for sixty years. She has just celebrated her eightieth birthday. “My memory,” she said, and trailed off.

A NOVEL ATTEMPT

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A novel attempt to cross the backyard back and forth ten times walking on hands is to be made by Alice Senrick, a Woodbridge young lady. The hands on which the attempt will be made are her own. She will be wearing a band t-shirt, specifics yet to be determined, and will tuck it in to her jeans so that it will not fly over her face, obstructing her vision and possibly embarrassing her in front of onlookers. The crowd is expected to include her girlfriend, Judy, and a former boyfriend, Mark, and while they would not be embarrassed by a shirt riding up by riding down, they would be embarrassed for Miss Senrick, as they both still love her deeply and want nothing more than for her to succeed in this test of human agility and endurance. It is hoped that the entire journey will take thirty minutes of less.

THE FEROCITY OF THE BERRY

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

“Mad as a Watchmaker” may be, as Dr. Howard Statofar put it the other day, “an expression of the moment only,” given the recent spate of angry behavior by watch repair professionals in the city that has resulted, to date, in four smashed automobiles, one house set on fire, and six independent episodes of fisticuffs whose damages totaled to five broken facial bones, four broken hand bones, multiple lacerations, and one retinal detachment resulting in permanent blindness.  “It will pass,” Statofar says. “If not, we can begin the painful process of bidding farewell to accurate timekeeping in favor of protecting our safety.” But when it passes, how will anger be figured in speech? There is no shortage of expressions to take its place, for the “Watchmaker” is only one of many to bear the comparison. The list of those consumed by rage, as given in the Beddoes Dictionary, is diverting reading:—

“Mad as a giraffe,” — Baskett, “Top To Bottom.”

“Mad as a mendicant,” —P. Howard Albers

“Mad as a berry,” —“Thailand Guide Book.”

“Mad as Lancelot’s lance,” —Rosemont

“Mad as a Hide-a-Key” —“Take Four,” 2017

Why the giraffe  (unless it was the famous example of that animal that rampaged through a neighborhood of Nairobi about ten years and was dubbed the “G-raff” by the American press, by way of associating it with the slang term for a gangster) or the Hide-a-Key should be famed for anger, I do not know. The mendicant’s loss of calm can be easy explained, in view of his humble circumstances, and the origin of “Lancelot’s lance” is found not in Arthurian legend, but in stories of Lance O’Hara, a Chicago policeman in the 1890s who was legendary for his vile temper and brutal treatment of suspects, and whose nightstick carried the historical nickname. The ferocity of the Thai berry has been established repeatedly, and many of the stories are too gory to repeat in full. What will be the next standard of vehemence?

BEYOND ALL PRAISE

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The singing of Imogen Hauptman was beyond all praise. It enriched her in pocket and did the same for the box office of Gleason Place, where she has been a performer in residence for the past six months. At the close of this year’s fall season, Hauptman performed a revival of “Steel Gray,” the successful folk opera of her own composition, at the Strand Amphitheater. For four performances Hauptmann and her two managers shared a profit of $22,000, gave the band double salary, and made a contribution of $1000 toward the repairs of the balcony. But they also repaired the spirits of the town. The mayor thanked them for “promoting a spirit of decency and right-mindedness, as well as a kind of moral luck that elevates our entire society.” “Steel Gray” is a loosely autobiographical retelling of Hauptman’s teen years in the late 21st century, when her Army major father was dispatched to South Florida to deal with extreme flooding as a result of rising tides. While there, she started a love affair with Dennis August, a former star quarterback for Miami’s professional football team whose career ended early as a result of a gruesome broken leg—and who was embarking upon a second career as a private investigator. Hauptman and August kept the relationship under wraps until she turned nineteen, which was the year that a mysterious man attacked her father in a boat warehouse and left him near death. She and August tracked down the assailant and brought him to justice. “Steel Gray” has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Swedish. Kenny Kilcannon’s rerecording of its opening song, “Tide Line,” became a massive hit at dance-clubs. Dennis August, as a result of his injury, has never been able to dance to it, but attended every performance at Gleason Place.