TUNNEL ROAD

by

A. Paul Cartier

1. The View

This was no time to agonize over the decision. H had to make it quickly, really soon, like NOW.

The car was stopped, along with many, many others on the 101, under the shadow of San Bruno Mountain. He had seen the brake lights ahead, blooming in the growing gloom. He started braking to slow, hoping no one plowed into him from behind. But suddenly his controlled braking sharpened as it became clear that this was a full stop ahead, not a creeping caterpillar of cars.

He knew that a storm was on its way, but this was something else. A quake, maybe? You didn’t necessarily feel a quake if you were in a fast-moving car. He’d missed feeling several that way. He turned on the radio. Static. Punching the presets, then the scan button. Lots of static, and distant, whispery voices, like announcers way off around the curve of the planet.

– Daddy, why are we stopped? I need to get home. I’m tired. I’m sweaty. Hungry! I got homework up the…

– Yeah, me too, Boo. But there’s a hangup somewhere ahead. Nobody’s moving. What is weird is that I can’t get anything on the radio. Can you check traffic on your phone? See what it is. We just passed an exit. If we can get off this thing here, maybe…

He looked back and around the car. Locked in, but still could probably get off the road. His freeway claustrophobia was starting to kick in.

– We’ll wait a few minutes first. These things often clear out after a few…

He drummed his fingers on the wheel. Not going anywhere soon; might as well as shut off the engine. He paused. Should check ahead to see if anything’s happening. People were starting to honk impatiently.

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A. Paul Cartier is an artist and writer based in San Francisco, CA. To see Cartier’s artwork and contact the artist, click here.

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Synchronized Chaos is pleased to present you with June’s issue Mind Over Matter, an acknowledgment of willpower and responsibility of one’s fate in the face of seemingly never-ending grumble and quarrel, and complicated obligations.

Featured in this issue are paintings with undeniably obscure emotional messages by Artists, Lorette C. Luzajic and Larry Azoth.

Lauren Gann and Krista Tate delve into difficult and painful family relationships in their creative non-fiction pieces.

Joanna Roberts confronts interracial dating in the South, in her essay, Cancer.

In January Was The Wound, returning Word-Master Simon J. Charlton shares a complex poem that he wrote in response to reading the works of poets such as Charles Henri Ford, David Gascoyne, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and more. We also welcome new international poetry contributors, Steven Fowler and Tatjana Debeljacki.

Reviews this month:

• Kyrsten Bean on Love in a Time of Robot Apocalypse, by David Perez
• Andrew Rahal on Music Crystals Poems (1962-2008), by Hale Thatcher
• Bruce Roberts on How Much Land Does a Man Need, by Leo Tolstoy
• Floyd A. Logan on It Felt Like A Kiss, by Leena Prasad
• David A. L. Brown on Nowhere to be Home, by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West

Also, check out Robbie Fraser’s interviews with up-and-coming writer Brent Vickers and author Brian Doyle. Doyle talks about his most recent novel, Mink River.

We thank those who contributed to this month’s issue and to our readers throughout the globe for their ongoing support. Don’t forget to check out the new Synchronized Chaos Fan Page on Facebook! Click here now!

Lorette C. Luzajic is an artist and writer from Toronto, ON, Canada. Luzajic is the founder of Idea Fountain, a creative portal for freedom of expression. For more information, click here or email ideafountain@hotmail.com.

The artwork featured here is from a recent series that seeks to explore repression, oppression, and suppression.

Luzajic also just released a coffee table book entitled, “A Heartbreaking World of Staggering Glorious: the visual imagination of Lorette C. Luzajic.” The book showcases over 250 of Luzajic’s works. Click here to preview the book!

[Article by Robbie Fraser]

Brian Doyle’s most recent novel, Mink River, manages to showcase the Northwest in the same way that Irish authors like James Joyce showcased their own country.  It’s not a claim one lightly makes, but it is a claim that the book nonetheless deserves.  While a multitude of genuinely unique characters paint a portrait of the fictional town of Neawanka in full, Doyle also manages to present a novel that is accessible to the reader in a way that writer’s like Joyce famously never did.  It is a highly entertaining story in its own right, and provides the readers with a page turning presentation of events amid Doyle’s unique brand of philosophy.  In this month’s issue, Doyle was kind enough to sit down with Synchronized Chaos and offer his thoughts on his novel, as well as give a little insight on his life as a writer

“In a small town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter.  There’s a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries.  An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there’s an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field.  Babies are born.  A car is cut in half with a saw.  A river confesses what it’s thinking…”

–Oregon State University Press

Synchronized Chaos: How long has the general idea for Mink River been floating around in your mind?
Brian Doyle: Probably 25 years. I wrote a short story in the mid eighties, published it, thought I was done with the characters, but they kept chatting away in my head – I could actually hear and see them – very odd. They are not based on anyone – they were, for whatever reasons, real to me. I tried then for years to push and see what would happen, but I am an essayist, not a novelist, and I’d stop again and again. Finally I set about just writing one tiny story a day of the town and its people, and that was the key to it – then it ran loose, and after a couple of years of one hour a morning, quite early, it wanted finally to be a Book. A wonderful soaring puzzling pleasure to have lived with those characters for so long. I miss them, actually.

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Robbie Fraser is an associate editor for Synchronized Chaos Magazine. Fraser may be reached at robbiedfraser@gmail.com.

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Ne-brižljivim

Gubi se u sivilu samoće.
Uljez saznanja-šum iz uma.
Nejasna nit, strasna, surova, bdi.
Plod nije zavera.
Ludak, genije tišine!
Približi se neizrecivom.
Analiza razuma-ropstvo!
U šetnji, vidni stid!
Uzbudljiva autonomija,
Otvoreni vrata,prozori,
Promaja!
U magli stepenice
Vode ka nebu.
Paralizovana savest,
Pokretno ogledalo.
U množini protiv rečitih,
Dirigovanja, ponašanja,
I priznati krivicu.
Crta koja spaja,
Put u svemirski brod.
Mimoilzimo sa omalovažanjem.
Bronzana žena,
Bakarni čovek!!!

[English Translation]

To-uncaring

Lost in the grey loneliness.
Cognition intruder – rustling from the mind.
Unclear thread, passionate, cruel, is awaken.
The fruit is not conspiracy.
The lunatic, genius of silence!
Get closer to the unspoken.
The analysis of reason- slavery!
During walking, visible shame!
Exciting autonomy,
Opened door, the windows,
Draft!
In the mist the stairways
Leading to heaven.
Paralyzed conscience,
Portable mirror.
In the plural against the fluency,
Conducting, behavior,
And admit the guilt.
The line connecting,
The road to the spacecraft.
We walk on by in dishonor.
Bronze woman,
Brass man!!!

Tatjana Debeljacki is from Uzice, Serbia. Debeljacki has published 3 collections of poetry. Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/debeljacki Blog: http://debeljacki.mojblog.rs/

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Shattered Relationship

We have no pictures together other than one. In it I am seven or eight on a family trip to a theme park. I wear a blue shirt and short jean shorts and my hair is pinned back into a bun. My mom wears an orange sleeveless shirt with her hair pinned back as well. She is thin with jet black hair that grazes the middle of her back. We are on a ride where a boat swings back and forth. I got on the ride with my mom and sister. I thought I was old enough to handle it, little did I know. As the boat rose higher and higher when it swung in the air, I yell to get off. My sister laughs at me as the conductor slows the machine down from his control station. I can’t remember the last family vacation that was actually fun like the one from the picture. Now we fight every trip we try to take together, so we have quit taking them.

That trip was the last moment I remember being happy with my mother and the only picture of us two together alone. The bickering between us began my freshman year of high school. I was fifteen, and like most teenage girls, I fought with my mother about everything, especially when my father was out of town which was often. She always nagged me about irrelevant things like cleaning my room, the bathroom or doing the dishes or laundry. My friend Courtney lived down the street, so I would always walk to her house to spend the night to get away from my mother. I was always questioned when I wanted to go to Courtney’s, partly because Courtney was a year older, but also because my mother thought we were going to meet up with boys. Courtney’s mom was a lot more lenient and would let us go the mall and movies alone. We usually met up with boys or had them pick us up from Discover Mills Mall to go to a house party, so my mother was right.

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Krista Tate currently lives in Atlanta, GA, and is an undergraduate student at Georgia Southern University. Your comments and feedback are welcomed. Email kt00673@georgiasouthern.edu.

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[Reviewed by David A. L. Brown]

Make Nowhere to be Home a Home on your Bookshelf

As a westerner, it is easy to condemn any government’s use of violence, fear, and exploitation against its people, yet difficult to make a lasting—or even visible—change to the status quo.  One group, however, is making their mark on the world by creating a stage for victims to speak for themselves.  Toward this endeavor, Voice of Witness, a relatively new advocacy group dedicated to alerting the international community to social and political injustice, recently released Nowhere to be Home, a chilling collection of accounts from Burmese refugees and exiles.

For those who have lived under the shadow of the Burmese government, there is no peace.  Authors Maggie Lemere and Zoë West highlight the daily tragedy of Burmese oppression through a series of interviews with once-ordinary citizens, of whom all have either fled or been forced from their native land.  It is readily apparent to readers that the authors consider no voice too small to be heard.  Nowhere to be Home is the collective experience of mothers and sons, prisoners and soldiers, monks and sex workers who were forced to remain silent about their own victimization in Burma, brought to light for the first time.

From the outset, it is apparent that many of the voices retelling their experiences are undereducated, if at all.  Stories are broken, fragmented accounts reflecting the fragile psyche of each individual victim.  This works for the authors, constantly reminding the reader that these are not professionals reciting well-worn acts.  Despite the apparent simplicity of each narrative, the stories flow easily, and are well-directed.  Once a particular survivor draws you in, you feel compelled to explore every word of their story before putting the book down.  Thankfully, chapters are short, concise, and striking, each leaving a new impression on the reader, and granting new insights into the lives of millions still living in poverty and fear.

David A. L. Brown is a staff writer and reviewer for Synchronized Chaos Magazine. Brown may be reached at brown.davidal@gmail.com.

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