Nobody's Property 07
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
Release Date: 03/03/2011
Nobody's Property 15
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
Three o’clock in the afternoon, and Shirley, of Shawnee Memorials, just across Harrison Avenue from Fairview Cemetery, was not taking any shit off my dad. We had come here at my urging; Dad had mentioned that he still needed to order a stone to mark the plot where Jenny’s and Edith’s remains were buried together. I could see that if I didn’t push a little, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. And the grass in the Rose family plot, though a bit dry and thatched in patches, covered their grave so smoothly that no one would ever know they were there.
info_outline
Nobody's Property 14
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
The sound of pistons pumping, a lawn-mower pulse and wheeze, comes up behind her, and she looks over her shoulder to see the VW coming up fast: black and chrome, some of the shine worn off and anyway looking duller in this flat November light. She keeps her thumbs hooked under the leather of her backpack straps, walks backward and keeps her gaze straight and sober toward the driver of the car. It pulls over a few paces ahead and stops at an angle on the gravel margin. Under her boots the gray gravel rasps and she doesn't slow down or speed up but keeps up her trudge toward the car. In...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 13
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
"I serve with the German Armed Forces. My garrison is Hardheim, where I am stationed at Carl-Schurz-Kaserne. At present, I attend the Bundeswehrfachschule in Tauberbischofsheim....
info_outline
Nobody's Property 12
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
Terminal burrowing can be identified in reports of hypothermia deaths, but has only recently been given a name. It is a behavior pattern observed in the last stages of hypothermia whereby the afflicted will enter small, enclosed spaces, such as wardrobes, cupboards, and closets....
info_outline
Nobody's Property 11
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
In Tübingen the houses sit along the River Neckar like nineteenth-century ladies on lounge chairs with flowing skirts and big hats: they look comfortable and bourgeois and unassailable. Like most of Germany. From the bridge over the river you can see a tower, painted yellow now, where the poet Hölderlin went crazy for 36 years: a long, slow burn that might, in other circumstances, be called life. This is where he wrote these words, which I found quoted by Paul Auster in The Invention of Solitude:...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 10
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 09
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 08
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 07
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
...
info_outline
Nobody's Property 06
Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia
info_outline
Do you think you are free to live your life? We try to tell ourselves that the worst won’t happen, that we can leave the doors of our lives unlocked and the crazies won’t come through them, or if they do we can talk them down. We search the papers for the reasons behind the senseless murder—the plot. How can we still be doing this?
I grew up with the plot in my head: Jenny died hitchhiking. That was the “reason.” That was the “plot.” Her parents sent her there. That was the “pathos,” the “hook.” And so there were ways to prevent dying, to make sure it didn’t happen to you. There were rules to being safe, rather than dead, and these rules chiefly applied to women, because—let’s face it—women who don’t follow the rules don’t deserve to live.