All posts by rexmerritt

Observed

Bleed Red and Blue


    Occasionally alma mater notifies me about attending orientation sessions for prospective or incoming students. At these klatches it’s hoped alums will attend and act as gushy founts of information (the more arcane the better) regarding the school as well as be enthusiastic ambassadors. In the promotional sense, not as negotiators.

    My high point for transitioning cosseted high school graduates into women and men bearing the Arizona crest ended somewhere in the late 90s. Eighteen years after the fact represents a generational change. The place I knew has evolved into something unfamiliar.

    Had my 18-year-old self attended one of our 1977 events, how might I have evaluated descriptions of the 1959 institution? A perceptive teen, sure I could’ve extrapolated another’s undergraduate years into my present. But doesn’t the overwhelming majority of that age-set looks askance at the old, considering the “ancient” irrelevant to their then lives?

    At 18, who sees him- or herself at 36? While at 36, doesn’t 18 habitually become even more burnished?

    Yet through the 1990s I made dutiful facetime. I owed alma. Am I not obliged to her until my will is recited before survivors? (Won’t that be a jack-in-the-box!) The 2500 miles between Sonora Desert and Northeast excited me with unknowns. The sort which never would’ve infused me had I remained coddled here within the familiar region and among equally mired contemporaries.

    The adult fondly recalls the teen; the young adult never could’ve conceived of today. Continue reading Bleed Red and Blue →

Great Books

My Akhmatova


    When first creating this forum I intended flogging my ebooks Reveries and Cool Brass. That, and resume some kind of writing discipline by telling stories. Nearly two decades have passed since I last graced a newsroom, and 10 years from any article bearing my real byline.

    Writing is easy. Self-promotion is craven. Funny thing is while I’m reticent about myself and my product, I could be P.T. Barnum’s spiritual heir if it came to hawking some loser starving for celebrity or another kind of dog food. Continue reading My Akhmatova →

Quarropas

Let Us Escalate


    Herewith a routine enough American story.

    The police are alerted and respond to a call. What ensues is someone shot dead. An incident, at best run-of-the-mill, balloons into a life and death cycle. And as is common in these United States, the Reaper scythes another citizen inadvertently caught up in procedure gone awry.

    If the public is lucky any subsequent anger is brief, intense, then interrupted, curtailed and supplanted by another urgency elsewhere. Should bad luck befall the police, that being focus of the short-attention span society remaining fixed, questions get more pointed while demurrals harder.

    The latter befell the Quarropas police department. In a strange way. The initial furor subsided, almost as if it entered winter hibernation. However, on the cusp of spring it all burst stronger. Continue reading Let Us Escalate →

Observed

The Exalted and the Excluded


    When did women’s health become a men’s moral issue?

    These last several weeks of governing and campaigning in America have been more absurd than illuminating, but most of all revealing. Sadly much to the detriment of right-wing men.

    The paternalism exposed across these past weeks is a throwback. It harkens to an era when women were belittled as the fairer sex, were denied property rights, the vote, even personhood. No. Real live personhood, not any angels on a pin pointlessness about whether sperm entering ovum confers sentience. Why not ask if zygotes should be counted during census years?

    Naturally men’s misplaced consternation focuses on women’s reproductive systems. Particularly contraception. Even the most ardent abstainers finally agreed stopping results better than fixing them. Don’t believe it? Not long ago retailers stored condoms out of sight behind counters. Buying them required something between bravado and a speakeasy password. Today they’re sold as openly as sweet-laden snacks.

    That’s progress. Especially for horny youths with sugar rushes hindered by shyness. Continue reading The Exalted and the Excluded →

Pop Culture, South America

Sinister Sojourns


    Isn’t the best part about movie remakes comparing them against the original? Or given that today’s moviemakers take such license, the “source material.” Title and characters remain unchanged but the newer efforts detour and slalom moments after the premise has been established.

    Recently the 2010 remake of And Soon the Darkness lent me an opportunity to see how far storytelling has advanced. My interest in both films stems from a distinctly modern actress, Amber Heard. She’d been a bunny on NBC’s short-lived Playboy Club. Maybe that program would still be in production if Frank Ballinger from M Squad, and Crime Story‘s Mike Torello and Ray Luca (all characters from TV series also set in early 1960s Chicago) had run tabs there.

    Heard filled out her bunny costume and shook her tail nicer than I remembered happening inside the actual clubs themselves. Of course today I have much greater appreciation of such nuances. Continue reading Sinister Sojourns →

Quarropas

Broken Valentine


    Several years ago, a friend did something way beyond me. After 30-plus years of being apart from him she married her high school sweetheart.

    Admittedly the romantic aspect is hard to deny. All those years of having her heart fixed on one beloved then taking advantage of circumstances allowing her a return to square one validates true love.

    The interrupted romance started abruptly enough. Back in the early 80s he noticed her, but she made the first moves. From there it got hot and heavy fast.

    Up to and past the point where teen girls mistake sex for love. Continue reading Broken Valentine →

Tales Out of School

Andy Hardy Meets Maigret


    The tough part of winter has arrived. Late fall through early January at least offered a succession of holidays to dread. The only promise to be kept from now until late March is gray and frigid. Naturally there are attempts to alleviate Northeastern nature. Mostly radio stations playing Beach Boys’ tunes. As if reminders were needed of what we’re missing. And while Miami is a direct flight away, there’s always soldiering those returns to LaGuardia parts.

    The only beneficial aspect to shorter colder days is optimum conditions to think, to contemplate. Or if one is so moved, brood. Or if mired, mope. Continue reading Andy Hardy Meets Maigret →

Pornography

Indirect Objects

　

    A feature inside the last 2011 issue of Intervìu by writer Alberto Gayo called to mind comments received about my compilations Reveries and Cool Brass. The latter especially.

    Maybe what Reveries sparked finally ignited in Cool Brass.

    The theme behind Gayo’s article: women taking responsive roles in erotica. A focus: Femme Fatale, a photo compendium by Finn Reka Nyari. Apparently Ms. Nyari’s lens exposed more than female forms offered up as living mannequins awaiting domination or mere male regard.

    You know. The usual. Continue reading Indirect Objects →

Observed

Crossing Off the Crossroads of the World


    Our holidays were so desultory, all we lacked were a revolver and remorse to have made it a complete Camus Christmas. Being between jobs let me skip New Year’s Eve festivities. Just as well. I would’ve been ringing out 2011 anger and ringing in 2012 anxiety.

    The whole stretch of cold-weather holidays from Thanksgiving until St. Valentine’s Day darkens my outlook. An extensive slough of despond.

    If it were possible, I’d enter hibernation the day after Halloween and awake on St. Patrick’s Day. Early on St. Patrick’s Day. Was there ever a man less deserving of enduring the enforced spikes of autumnal and winter jollity?

    Yes. The above is an exaggeration. Thanks to the American labor movement my present unemployment is bothersome, not troublesome. The safety net so many Republicans yearn to shred keeps the wolf at bay. Unlike GOP governors, each a mouthpiece for America’s Mr. Potters, I’m quite appreciative of past labor agitators who organized and fought for workplace dignity, be they have been Wobblies, Socialists, or — shudder! — even Commies. Continue reading Crossing Off the Crossroads of the World →

Quarropas

Merciless


    One of those hoary proverbs came alive for me recently. “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.”

    Alibi wasn’t an enemy. Just a mean piece of man.

    A lifetime ago we’d known each other. Or to be apt circled one another. Among the few things we shared was mutual wariness. As well as his sister Kari.

    Since our last brush Alibi’s condition had deteriorated severely. Good. We crossed paths inside the same rehabilitation center where mother underwent physical therapy. One cannot thwart old age. We may only develop methods to temporarily blunt its more debilitating effects. Continue reading Merciless →