the empire builder

i #3

1 love in a time of capitalism

capitalism

love

the third printing of the empire builder, our analysis of the world, our search for community and audience, a connection basic and without noise.

The Writing

like everybody, americans. weve lost jobs, quit jobs, moved across the country for jobs, wandered the country in protest of jobs, kept disciplined'n stayed at jobs, in the recession. we understand the inescapability of it. we know but dont dig that basic and fundamental question of existence in our system so what do you do? the denition of a person how they earn a wage. everybody consumed by cover letters, annual reviews, progress reports, pay checks, health insurance, coee breaks, promotions. its rst breathe to death rattle. its capitalism. the 9-5 is life. (or) the 9-5 is dead. because in the middle of all those soot-black heavy chimneys smoking greed and material gods, there is love. if who we are is what we do, then love is the binding, the glue that collects our desires, hopes, dreams, fears, shapes them into something that is anti-corrosive and illuminant, a form resistant to the forces of capitalism, visciously-opposed to early bedtimes and well thought-out weekends. ask a dierent question so who do you love? in this issue we ponder love and capitalism, ! orange juice and toothpaste, dogs and summer canned car heat, vegans and bahharr bee ques. love now in capitalism. its time.

3 Indecisive. Sarah Wurzburg 4 Another Family Emergency. Andrew Strasburg 7 Saving Daylight. Dary Picken 8 A Couplet With End Rhyme. Sarah Wurzburg 9 We Moved. Courtney Ryan 10 Substance. Sarah Wurzburg 11 Fred and Abby. Andrew Strasburg
Photo Contributor. Michelle Heitmann Cover Art and Photography. Andrew Strasburg

His had been a good and eective life. He had taken his pleasure, savored his love, paid his debts, and how many people even approached that? John Steinbeck

Indecisive By Sarah Wurzburg

Disposable income Disposable relationships Disposable time Disposable clothes Disposable food Disposable friends Disposable love I give away a gift with no second thought, I can replace anything I own, basically. Perhaps on the search for something better we have started to forget what is here, now. Everything is consumable. Having so much makes it harder to be happy, there is no appreciation for what one has, whether it be an antique chest from a grandmother or another person who wants to sit next to you for as long as youll let them.
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Love To Give By Miche!e Heinemann

Another Family Emergency By Andrew Strasburg

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It's a Tuesday night and I walk North Ave hunting something to eat. e Indian Summer is over, and I'm underdressed now in the colding darkness for the rst time all season. It's windy as hell. It reminds me this morning I watched the suits downtown hold their ties at bay, women's hair styles unkempting in the gusts, ying trash, sad looks and cell phones. I spot a bar and head in. Anything to warm up. e place has a mood: empty, slow. One of the servers sits at the bar eating and she orders a beer as I sit down. She wears oversized glasses, clear frames, her hair short and amber in the bar glow. She's quiet, self-contained but with a sharpness that's authoritative and I measure her intentions in my peripheral vision. She is all that keeps the place alive. See the place is abandoned. e sort of empty that reminds you of your desolation. It makes you eat faster than you would normally. Order another drink. e place plays music hushed and dull. And I can't make out who's playing. ose lights over the cooks glow whiter, invasively illuminating a spotlight on me at the bar. e guy keeps asking if I'll have another drink. Come on man, like I need it. In-between questions he dusts liquor bottles. But there she is, humming in key, no cares for any of it. Do you engage with the unknown person? Do you smile? Slip a nod? Say hello? ese moments happen all the time. ey are challenges to self-comfort. ey are questions of religion, philosophy, psychology, and economics. ey are times when the question is put to us: do we risk rejection? ere can only be rejection when you start to build hopes up. Not tonight. I'll come back later. My lips chapped without saying anything at all.

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I go back one week later. I go back with the best intentions. I'm committed, self-assured, well-reasoned. I understand my fears and accept the risk to my fragile self-trust. She is there as I knew she would be, wearing a black skull and cross bones dress. Her hair pulled back. Boots. And I feel the shield I always wield, the armor of self-preservation, of not-talking to, avoiding, the talking to anyone else but the one person I most want to, I feel that shield disappear. Tonight I will cross over from my world into hers, if only for one moment, to cause things to stir. Something will happen. I stand sipping a pint, using broad hand gestures, smiling a lot. Not looking around the room too much. I sit down. I eat. In-between bites I give myself pep talks. My stomach churns. e anticipation of my fragile invested hopes. I pay the bill the last defense before my door of rejection. I walk to the front. I say Hello Again. I ask her. And to my surprise she gives me her number and says Call Me.

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I'm ne until I call her. She doesn't answer. I sent a text earlier this morning but no reply. Now I'm twice waiting. And I grow anxious. I lose hope. Impending rejection gnaws at me. I think about her. I ponder her intentions. I review positive signals she sent. I cannot quit. ey haven't invented a way to decipher love's signals. We need one. We're used to instant answers. We live in the information age. We can answer everything now now now. But this. People still hold power over people technology doesn't change that. And she does not respond. I wait like a dog that needs putting down. ere's an arsenal of communication forces pacied. She does not re. She does not put me down. So I wait. I was ne until I called her. I want everything to happen now.
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She calls me back and we make plans. When I pick her up she smells of smoke and wears colors in her hair. Her dress ends long in shards of fabric at her shoes. She's wrapped in a long orange overcoat. I drive us to the bar. One whisky, one peppermint tea. We talk about music, small businesses, high school jobs, the best place to see a show. We talk about the city. She gets up and tells me to follow her. Cancel the dinner plans let's walk in the park. She plays music on her iPhone. We dance under an evergreen. And we kiss. She says let's walk back to my place. She puts on my helmet. She's put on my hopes. She asks if I've ever been broken. She wants to know if someone's hurt me. After a while she stops asking me anything. When I drop her o she smells of disinterest. Her hair is dark. I wait ve days on an unreturned phone call. Waiting. I move on.

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I call her just one more time. She's just shy. I'm easy to talk to she'll open up. She's scared I don't like her. I'll tell her how I feel let her know my intentions. She really did have a family emergency. at happens she wants to see me again. Twice. No one uses that same excuse twice she must be telling the truth. She's been busy lately. I'll plan something for next week when we're both free. We met at the wrong time but maybe sometime soon. I'll keep chill for awhile then she'll see what shes missing. We had some fun times which means something. Don't give up too early. I better stick it out really show I'm committed. Let's just be friends. As if I could do something the surest outcome comes naturally. ! So I take a new direction. I emphasize the presence of partnerless. I stop being afraid I can do anything to change it. I begin to focus on what comes naturally. I begin to trust myself.

Saving Daylight By Dary Picken

When Daylight Savings Time arrived, all the clocks fell back Save one. Im keeping my hour, the old man said. Use it when I need it. Eight minutes were spent watching his dog chase squirrels in January. Four were spent on the view outside his window facing the lake, Then he added another four for good measure The water is only calmer when its frozen And he missed his wife. He lost a few minutes in trafc here and there And, careless one night, he unexpectedly dozed after supper And wrote off twenty more. He called his grandson on the birthday they shared And used fourteen minutes replaying their conversation Long after the dial tone died. When he had saved only a few minutes, He started counting his gains in seconds. Eleven on a big bite of cheesecake. Thirty on a passel of beautiful women walking. ! He spent the last seconds holding his breath.

A Couplet with End Rhyme By Sarah Wurzburg

Akimbo Azure Blueblack cold These are the phrases that made me fall in love. 8th grade English class. We read them every day during the unit. It was one of the first times Id truly contemplated words, analyzed them, wanted to know more of them. Its only a good book if you have to look up a couple of words, I heard once, while I think thats probably not true, there is something thrilling about it. The realization that you are like the first person who saw an amoeba through a microscope. A discoverer.
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The only things I will love my whole life, my family, poetry, the Bears, the Cubs. I could never decide what tattoo to get because I thought I would stop liking it, if my mortal love for the object did not last forever I would be dissatisfied. Not reminded of the time when I did love that thing, but just generally annoyed by its existence, and the naivety of it all. Perhaps this why its hard to imagine the timeless love for a person. Will it be end rhymeless?

We Moved By Courtney Ryan

We moved from behind a brown door with a small cabinet standing by for scissors, a screw driver, and envelopes. We unhinged every drawer and lled boxes with books and dishes. Four doors later, inside the house on the corner with a stained red pavement square out front, we unburdened our shoulders and smelled the oorboards, snifng for a balance of dust and vinegar. The refrigerator, left uncleaned, hindered our sleep; it was never white nor empty. Nor was every patch of the bathtub oor, glossed over by bleach and a hesitant heel. We moved again in Autumn. After dust ran down our noses and burned our eyes. We paired cotton sheets with wool blankets in new trunks and old shopping bags. We eloped to the bungalow across the street with the small sun porch that captured late afternoon ashes and street cats on windy days. The one with the basement that still hung three shelves along its cement walls lined by jars lled with old honey or jam. We imagined we tasted the jam while taking a shower or boiling noodles. Our tongues felt the ancient crust around the rim and we choked, slightly. From the basement steps we glared at every congealed decanter and pinched our ngernails deep into their corners. We moved. In April we settled on the two story at the end of the block. Its three front steps genuecting to the earth. Inside the second bedroom, we installed a crib with a light blue canopy and silver legs. We stood with our back to the large closet door as its oak panels stretched beyond our reach. Inside hung a curious rope with frayed ends and a knotted neck. We draped our coats at the opposite end of the rack as the rope hovered silently in the corner of our eye. At night we dreamed of the closet's doorknob slipping from its hinge. We woke up with wiry hair and damp palms, the rope still hanging from a nail angled into the yellowed wall. We moved as the summer stretched into late August. Down a few doors and on the corner next to the post ofce. A cherry tree pined against the dining room window as its thin branches scratched the metal screen. An outdoor streetlamp reected in the bedroom mirror, dimly lighting footsteps to the bathroom or the kitchen for a glass of water. One hallway oorboard softly blended into another. We slept evenly and only woke when the post ofce door swung too widely and crashed back into its clasp. On a late winter afternoon as we steamed ! carrots we noticed a peeling piece of wallpaper. Carefully we pulled it back as a thick, black blot appeared and grew larger until our hand, arm, and neck were blanketed by ants. We moved.

Substance By Sarah Wurzburg

At this point money is ctional, its true. There used to be gold to back up the paper currency, now there is nothing. In the recession most of what people lose is theoretical, on a computer screen, data les, digits changing. Its kind of interesting that so many people can believe in the monetary system, and so few believe in love. Sometimes when Im drunk I buy stuff online, when Im bored. Well actually that was yesterday.
Love Greater Than Money By Miche!e Heinemann

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Fred and Abby By Andrew Strasburg

She is moving back home to the west and so he decides he'll drive her. He is a man driving west with his girl. ey leave one coast without thinking too hard. For the rst time he lives only now. No nostalgia, no plans. He is taking a long walk on the beach, collecting the precious stones of their last days together, lling his pockets up to a weight the signi cance he won't feel till later. One late December day they pack her things in his mom's SUV. All her stu. He admires that. He admires how she isn't a ached to things. e way she gives most of it up. ere's something to it. Her lack of a achment. Her self-comfort. ey don't say if they're in love or not. ey talk about careers and dreams. New businesses to start together. ey talk of places to move. Applications. Interviews. Small business ideas. ey're eager to share. e possible futures exist in their heads. ey talk and move closer. When they touch they notice and wonder what else they've missed. ey cover ground. rough the Midwest they're simple. She walks in front of him in small towns. ey stop and stare. Wide open land where a lack of color is its own kind of beauty. And they are not distracted. e two of them together like they'd waited for. e two of them together they say li le. A Ghost Is Born the only sound. Repeat All like a metaphor for how he'll feel later. Because we all go west someday. ere are plans and there are strategies. ere are self-beliefs. But know that any of these cannot hold up to the allure of the west: jobs, gold, fresh vegetables, boots, fog, outlaws, long blonde hair, ranches, a lack of seasons. e magnetic engineering of ! your tendencies, beliefs, habits, and rituals. One day you will come to it naturally and without eort. You will go west.

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Outside Reno she has one moment. e tree by the roadside holds still like in the movies, enough time to give her time, to feel a wisp of doubt, a ash of regret, a deepening of gut, a sharpening of character. She thinks. She thinks that they had a few good times. He is a man and he is driving her west. He is a man returning alone. We should stop soon he says. Yes we should. What are dreams about? ey are propositions for a dierent existence. ey are projections for self discovery, they are blue prints for a new awareness. ey are acknowledgments that change is important. Disappointments are too much dreams. Expectations do not help. Expectations do not help. Expectations do not help. She asks what he'll do when he gets back east. She thinks out loud about all she has to do. What she'll tell her Oma. He talks about when he'll come back to visit her. e next time they'll be together. Adventures of the future. Tiny comforts. ese plans he makes to fortify himself against their parting. She leans over and touches him. She looks out the window. She counts miles in her mind. ere is a sky and a sun and there is nothing else between them and the coast. At last he reaches the ocean. He walks in the grass and sits there, the end of things solid, the beginning of the unending unformed. Listening to the waves go he looks at the black sky. Above him he can't li his chest. Up he can't li his chest. Up he can't light his chest. He lies there alone awhile. With his hands in his pockets he feels the stones. !

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The Empire Builder is Sarah Wurzburg Chester Bennett and Andrew Strasburg Visit
empirebuilderzine.wordpress.com

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