For someone who has trouble with numbers, I have always loved them: their roundness and their oddness—the absoluteness, the magic they hold. We make wishes at 11:11, we make wishes at 12:34, we are reminded twice a day of birthdays, lucky numbers, an excuse to remember ourselves and our place in the world, to remember those we love, to hope that this will bring us good luck, a sign that things will be okay.

This week: fractured. As we remember the storm that took everything yet left us with something it did not come as cleanly as I expected it to: to wake up this morning with a heavy heart and the feeling as if I cannot get enough air into my lungs to fill up a balloon, to stumble to the shower, to wash everything twice, to spend the day being careful with words because they all mean a bit more: to have a beautiful day to be sad, to speak of love contained yet wider than highways.

I have felt these things and yet the day has not even started to unfold.

On the 25th, I spent the morning doing what I did on the morning of the 27th. I talked with students, calculated grades, divided the low number by the high number to let them know what needs to be done. The water pooled under my drink. The ice melted.

On the 26th, I spent the evening doing what I did on the evening of the 28th. I applauded when our Alabama players moved on up to the NFL. A graduation of sorts. I ate french fries. I threw them up later.

Today, our worlds change again, if only for a moment: we watch the clouds and their movements. We are placed in the middle of the egg of a different story: one that we have already heard and one that we continue to revisit when we hear sirens, when the power goes out. That what we do today matters to who we were then, that if we scratch hard enough you can see us, a year younger yet looking years older. That we hope that we are doing it right. That we have loved, that we have been thankful, that we should toast to something. That we pray that none of the signs we see in the layering tell us that we are doing it wrong. That we are kind when the day is today and the clock reads 5:10, reads 4:27, reads any time that can bring you magic.

We are coming back, we have come back, we are here, we are still here, and we are still working, and we are still apologizing, and we are still in the middle of it all, and we are still reflecting, and we are our reflections. And we are still thankful.

I was asked to write an essay about the Tuscaloosa tornadoes for a magazine—they wound up passing on the essay, but I still wanted the essay to be read.  However, it is a strange thing:  I didn’t feel right submitting it to journals and going that route.  Fortunately, as always, the amazing folks at PANK came to the rescue and posted it on their blog.

(credit to David A. Smith & DSmith Images for the photo--for more 'Tuscaloosa We're Coming Back' photos, check out his gallery)

Tuscaloosa Runs This -- an eBook of Tuscaloosa Writers

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Featuring
Andrew Grace
Jason McCall
Matt Maki
Lauren Gail
Juan Carlos Reyes
Megan Paonessa
Jeremy Allan Hawkins
Caleb Johnson
Darren Demaree
Kori Hensell
Kate Lorenz
Pia Simone Garber
Ellie Isenhart
Joseph P. Wood
Laura Kochman
Madison Langston
B.J. Hollars
Barry Grass
Katie Jean Shinkle
Jessica Fordham Kidd
Alan May
Michael Martone
Erik Wennermark
Erin Lyndal Martin
Steven Casimer Kowalski
Sam Martone
Kirk Pinho
Colin Rafferty
Josh Tucker
Brooke Parks
Robin Mozer
Brooke Champagne
Alex Chambers
Chris Mink
Adam Weinstein
Nik De Dominic
Jessy Scivley
Elizabeth Wade
Danie Vollenweider
Farren Stanley
MC Hyland
Betsy Seymour

Around 5:13pm Central Standard Time on April 27th, 2011 an EF-4 tornado hit Tuscaloosa, Alabama. For those in Tuscaloosa, there are flashes of memory:  the rain wall approaching from the south before the camera went out—the streets mentioned on the radio becoming recognizable, the lights flickering and going out.  The next day, the weight of what had occurred settled on our chests:  the residential areas of Forest Lake and Alberta City decimated, people missing, friends without roofs.

The phrase “Alabama Runs This” has been an inside joke between those here in Alabama about the caliber of work that comes out of here—if you have picked up a literary magazine or read one online in the past couple of months you have undoubtedly come across one or more of the names in this anthology.  There is a pride, a camaraderie, a swagger to writers from Alabama; a grit beyond glamour, a work ethic.  We write hard and we write well; I can say with confidence that this dedication to our work has translated to our efforts to rebuild.

After the tornado, “Tuscaloosa Runs This” became a rallying cry amongst friends involved in the recovery process.  In one sense, when everything happened we didn’t know what to do, but we knew that we needed to do something.  And so, we played to our strengths—our counseling, our writing, our ability to haul, to swing an ax.  As a result there was a lot of attempts:  some more successful than others, but attempts nonetheless.  The works in this anthology are attempts (essays, Montaigne would call them) to capture what it is we love about this city and what it means to us to repair and rebuild our home. The quality of the people of Tuscaloosa is only matched by the quality of their writing.  Here, we have some amazing work from amazing people—all with our city on our minds and in our hearts.  Some of the work has been written long before late April, other pieces written shortly after the storm.

Tuscaloosa is my adopted home:  I am originally from New Jersey and came to Alabama, as many do, to attend the University of Alabama’s MFA program in Creative Writing.  As most people from the northeast who decide to move to the Deep South, I was intimidated and scared:  I was giving up a life I knew for something completely foreign and terrifying.  As with anytime someone moves from one place to another, there are growing pains—the town is small and vastly different from any other place that I ever lived.  It is hot.

The moment I started to love Tuscaloosa was in the middle of the summer of 2007.  I was teaching creative writing in a GED program in Greensboro, Alabama, a small town of about 2700 people about 40 miles south of Tuscaloosa through the Hale Arts Council and the Creative Writing Club at the University of Alabama.  The students were construction workers in the Rural Studios Project out of Auburn University—they would take classes in the morning and build homes in the afternoon.  When they heard that I was from Tuscaloosa, it is all they wanted to talk about:  that Tuscaloosa is the center of it all—there is a movie theatre, there is football, there is an Olive Garden.  They wanted to know where my Alabama Crimson Tide gear was:  why wasn’t I wearing an Alabama shirt?  It was then I understood the importance of where I lived; that there is something here that is envied, that is loved.  It represents “the big city” for a lot of people in West Alabama, a mythical place where Paul Bear Bryant once walked, an opportunity to be the first person in one’s family to go to college, a town full of hope, a home.  I returned to Tuscaloosa grateful and I remain grateful—I have grown in its red clay:  a better writer, a better teacher, and a better person.

In Tuscaloosa, there are cockroaches.  The faux aristocracy of the fraternities and sororities can be suffocating.  There is backwardness to the point of absurdity.  But there is barbecue.  There are quick walks to campus, quick walks to the bar.  There are opportunities to start and sustain anything you wish, whether that is starting an Art Kitchen or a reading series or a locally grown produce nonprofit or a theatre group or or or.  The reason for this is because of the people:  the beautiful, talented, loving people.  The beautiful, talented, loving people that have been operating chainsaws.  The beautiful, talented, loving people that have been sorting through the remnants of homes to find photographs of people they’ve never met.  The beautiful, talented, loving people that are sorting baby clothes, moving pallets of water, making phone calls to shelters, delivering steel-toed boots to people who have lost their homes so that they can return to work on Monday, sending good will and love and money from far away, these things, all of these things.  The beautiful, talented, loving people that are also the authors of the pieces in this collection, sons and daughters of Tuscaloosa—some born here, some adopted into its oak trees for a small period of time, forever changed.  That shout “Roll Tide Roll” in the pregnant pause between “Alabama” and “Where” and “Alabama” and “Lord”, that are comforted by the sound of trains, that just know.

So, thank you for all of your support of Tuscaloosa and those who love this city.  Thank you for your support of Alabama writers.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

--Brian Oliu
Sunday, May 8, 2011
1105 16th Ave, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

From my friend Brittany Travers:

Thinking of donating stuff for Alabama tornado relief? Here are some tips for making your donation immediately useful!

After volunteering much of the last week in a warehouse that is trying to get donations out to the people who need them. Through this experience, I have realized that there are some quick and easy things that a donor can do to facilitate the donation process. Therefore, I wanted to share a couple of tips that I ask that you please consider before donating your items. Also, I think that these tips will be useful to anyone donating to any type of disaster relief in the future. These are things that I had no idea about before going through this experience. However, by following these tips, you will make your donation immediately useful to the community!

Donation Tips:

• 1.       Please box (and do not bag) all of your donations. This is very important because the donations get out to the community via large palettes, and anything in bags falls off the palettes and cannot be stacked. Right now, anything that comes in a bag, we have to re-box before we ship out. We have a very limited number of boxes at our site. Therefore, no items donated in bags will be able to get to the people who need them until we get more boxes.  Therefore, make sure your donation can be quickly made useful, and simply box your donations.
• 2.       Let each box include just one-kind of an item (i.e., “Canned corn,” or “blankets”. I’ve termed this the principle of “boxes of sameness.” This is important because people have specific needs, and a box marked “Food” is less useful when one group of people needs canned meat (because they still have no electricity), and another group of people needs pasta because they have electricity.  If you don’t have enough of one item to fill an entire box, that’s perfectly okay.  We can use that extra space in your box to fill with like-items that others have donated. Just make sure that each box has one kind of thing in it.
• 3.       If donating clothing items, divide your boxes by gender and size. Therefore, each clothing box should read something like, “Men’s Medium Clothing” or “Women’s XL clothing.”  When people come to a shelter looking for clothing, they know what size they are, and this will help them be able to quickly select out the clothing that will work for them.
• 4.       If you are donating new items, mark “NEW” clearly on the box. These items are of the utmost importance, and we want to make sure that they can get to people asap.
• 5.       Label what your item is on at least 3 sides of the box. This helps us quickly determine which palette things should go on.

Once again, these are all tips that I had never even considered before when I had donated items in the past! However, from my experiences this week, I now know that these tips are critical to making your donations immediately useful to those who need them.

If you pre-order my book 'So You Know It's Me' between now and Friday, $5 will be donated to the relief fund. Many thanks to Tiny Hardcore Press & Roxane Gay for making this happen.  This also applies to xTx' amazing book 'Normally Special'.

In other Tuscaloosa Writing, The Offending Adam is presenting a number of authors with a connection to Alabama writing about Alabama.  These are all amazing writers and good friends--two pieces of mine will be up there on Thursday.  A lot of these authors are in Tuscaloosa currently and working tirelessly.  They also have links to donate to the Red Cross & other aid organizations as well.

I've been thinking about this book a lot--as it is a love letter of sorts to Tuscaloosa, and now even moreso.  A lot of the Missed Connections locations that are discussed here are gone now, which is an amazing thing to think about--not only the person/opportunity is gone, but there is no chance to even replicate the place.

I think often about a store I used to go to when I was a little kid back in NJ--it was a Jamesway; a catch-all store that was a pre-cursor to the Wal-Mart.  This is where we did pretty much all of our shopping and I would go there twice, maybe three times a week.  I remember certain parts of the store; mostly the check-out line where I could get candy, the small arcade (Ms. Pac-Man and a shoot-em-up game that I'm drawing a blank on the name), and the toy section, of course.  The Jamesway is gone and has been for 15 years now, and for the life of me I cannot remember other parts of the store.  I knew that I walked through them with my mother, pushing a mint green shopping cart.  I have a vague recollection of where the trashcans were.  Other than that, it is nothing, a blank void:  things I remember and things I do not--a half created building.

I don't know what the brain does when it happens to an entire town.  There's a joke in the south that people give directions based off of where things used to be--make a right at the old pool house, go past where the old Archibald & Woodrow's was.  Is it going to be 'Where Alberta City used to be?'  'Where Forest Lake was?'  What will be remembered?

I don't have an answer.  What I do hope is that when it comes time to rebuild we will do this place proud--no more GameDay condos.  No more abuse of tax breaks to contractors building $2000 a month rental properties.  That everything is remembered because everything is worth remembering.

Friends have asked me about the book and if I should write an introduction now in the wake of the tornadoes.  It's something I never thought about--there's no real introduction to anything:  whether it's a missed connection or a disaster like this one.  My professor Jane Satterfield once said "In a book of 63 poems, the 64th poem is the book itself."  In this case, with 30% of our city gone and people working tirelessly to rebuild it, this tragedy is our final missed connection, and the one that is most lamented, yet the one most worthy of our remembrance.

I started writing this from the Tuscaloosa Public Library, as there is power here and rumors of the chance of Internet, although the network is certainly overloaded to the point where no one is able to get on.  Regardless of this, everyone seems to be in relatively good spirits and there is a lot of information being passed around:  a student just came in with a full-on sunburn telling the head librarian that he’s been out doing search and rescue all day, whispers of classes and finals being canceled are being tossed back and forth.  Myself and my roommate Barry are camped on the second floor, in between volumes of Poetry Criticism and, completely unbeknownst to me until I looked around, the geography section, which has ten or so books on Alabama staring at me at eye-level, with such titles as ‘Tuscaloosa:  Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow’, and ‘Tuscaloosa:  Centennial Progress, Millennial Hopes”.  One book, simply titled “Tuscaloosa” starts with an introduction that states “Tuscaloosa is an old name.  It is the name of a county older than the state of which it is a part:  the name of a city, one of the oldest in west Alabama; and, in translation, the name of a large river that flows through the Appalachians to the broad floodplain and fertile lowlands to the south.”  It’s a good name—a strange one that is fun to say:  one can draw out the “oooo” sound for as long as one wants to, four syllables, an air of pageantry anytime anyone says the name if they’re not from Alabama; you should hear my Catalan grandmother pronounce it—it’s adorable.

It’s also where I have lived, worked, and wrote for the past six years, made art, made friends, made mistakes, always making.  At some point, the town was called “Tuskaloosa”, but there was an executive decision at some point to drop the “K”, perhaps it made the town sound too stammering, too unsure of itself.  There are some old buildings in Alberta City that still had signs that had the “K” still in the name.  Those buildings are gone now.

Being without power and minimal internet, I haven’t seen the footage or the reports—I’ve seen the video of the tornado looming over Bryant-Denny stadium shot from a few blocks away from my house.  I’ve seen the video of the (incredibly foolish) guy shooting the tornado as it crept over Midtown Village from the mall parking lot, driving sporadically and swallowing “Oh my Gods”.  To be fair, I’ve been avoiding it as much as possible—I can’t handle this stuff.  I’ve thrown up every day since the storm and I have a giant knot in my stomach at all times.

My exposure has been minimal:  my street was relatively unscathed, although a storm earlier in the day put a tree through the carport across the street and crushed two SUVs.  I spent the day watching the Barcelona-RM game and then switched over to coverage—as the image of the tornado from the AmSouth building started to creep closer, I started to get further away from the television:  at first, I was on the couch, then to the kitchen, and then when the power went out, I made my way to the hallway where I closed all of the doors and sat in the dark, furiously checking my phone.  The first thing I am thankful for is Verizon (my uncle works on the towers out in California, so there’s an extra amount of pride there), and I am thankful for Twitter, which allowed me to track the storm and the damage that it had done—it told me it was safe to come out, that it was not safe for others, that there was work to be done.  It has continued to provide information:  who needs help and where, what items are needed, how to contact others.

I have prided myself in my love of information:  my friend Jeremy joked that “information is my hobby” and my need to know everything often dominates my day—current events, random facts, information about place.  Before I moved to Tuscaloosa, I researched everything about it—average rainfall, the most popular major at the University, the birthplace of the backup left tackle.  In a way, it helped me explain my move; I was scared and not ready to pack everything up and move South, a place that I had never been to and simply heard about—I was set to move to Boston or Pittsburgh when the offer from Alabama came in.  I spent my day at work researching:  do they have a record store, what bars are down there, is there anything?  That was six years ago.

And so, that’s what I’ve been doing:  assembling information and passing it on.  Finding out where folks in the English Department are and what state their lives are in.  Contacting students and former students.  Just passing everything on.  Barry & I have been hosting dinners at our house the past couple of nights and assembling folks together—just to have all of our friends in one place is a great comfort.  I have cooked more pasta in the past two days than I have in my entire life.  Carl & Ginger came down from Birmingham with tons of food and produce and we are incredibly thankful for their generosity.

My friends have been amazing: heading down into the Forest Lake & Alberta City areas (the two hardest hit spots) and helping out however they can—my friend Farren recounted a story of being thrown a giant log by a Marine and tossing it on the pile.  The Marine realized what he had done and said “you’re pretty good for a girl”.  We are all pretty good for what we are—of this I am certain.  In fact, I would say we are all better than what we are at this moment.

It is bad down here.  There is no sugar-coating that.  But everyday things get better—our Mayor has done an incredible job, and the local response has been great—volunteers outnumber homeowners two-to-one.  A call goes out for volunteers and in less than an hour, a message goes out saying that they’re at capacity and to head to another spot to help out.  It has been impressive and inspiring.  The response from outside of Tuscaloosa has been great as well—I am proud of our President for reacting so quickly and coming down here as soon as possible.  Brian Williams was supposed to cover the Royal Wedding and hopped on a flight to Alabama from London in order to help.  We need all of the help we can get, but we are not waiting for it.  Reports are that the National Guard is a bit overwhelmed with where to step in as everyone is working their asses off.  I hope and believe that this will continue well into the summer and as long as we are needed.

I started writing this as a way to thank everyone who has offered their support and their thoughts and prayers, especially those in the writing community.  People I've never met, editors, publishers, other writers, people I've said hello to at AWP once have been e-mailing me nonstop asking for ways to help, whether it's send care packages or wondering where they can donate food/money/etc.  It is all greatly appreciated and we are indebted to you.  I am assembling an eBook of writing about Tuscaloosa where people can download it and make a donation.  I have always had a great amount of pride in my town and the people in it, especially the quality of work that is coming forth from it.  It is amazing to witness and I am proud—details forthcoming, but it should be assembled by next week.  I hope that Tuscaloosa folks will contribute and everyone else will give a donation.

For those who want to help, this website has a great list of places where people outside of Tuscaloosa can donate:

http://legislativebarbie.blogspot.com/2011/04/tuscaloosa-tornado-relief-efforts.html

Furthermore, the Red Cross will be taking over operations in the coming weeks, so any help you can provide them will certainly help us down here.

Commonly, I hear “You live in Alabama?  Why?” from folks up north.  The effort that has been put forward during these past few days is why.  Tuscaloosa has given me more than I can ever repay it for, and now that it needs my help, I am trying the best that I can.  One of the jokes I heard a lot when I first moved to Alabama is “You’re studying writing in Alabama?  Do they even know how to write?”  The short answer is yes: they do know how to write.  They know how to do a lot of things.  They know how to come together.  They know how to love.  They know how to rebuild.

All:

My collection of Tuscaloosa Missed Connections on Craigslist, "So You Know It's Me" is available for pre-order from Tiny Hardcore Press.  Furthermore, you can check it out on Goodreads.

Needless to say I am so incredibly thankful and excited about this--my first tangible book, to hold, to turn the pages of, to give to people as gifts.  I can't even express how overjoyed I am about this:  just know that I've had tears in my eyes five different times today and my stomach has been a giant knot of cotton candy and cupcakes and everything queasy and wonderful.

I hope you'll consider pre-ordering the book--many thanks to Roxane Gay for being an amazing editor & person & champion of all things indie, and a special thank you to Betsy Seymour for providing the photograph for the cover.

And thanks to you all, for reading and for your kind words.  I am indebted to all of you.

xo
Brian

Hello!  How have you been?  Busy?  Me too, me too.  Slash Pine/writing/semester/etc!  But things are good!

Apparently I'm not busy enough because I started a new blog about the 2011 New York Mets.  It's called Chairman Met.  It will be for all of your Met needs (if your Met needs include a lot of North Korean propaganda posters refashioned to root on the Mets/damn the Phillies).

Kaboom, etc!

Anyway, here it is.

http://awpliveblog.blogspot.com/

Please share with loved ones/people you dislike/strangers/famous people.

I’m back!

The Conference was wonderful.  I like talking to people.  Everyone was really optimistic and not awkward and in really good moods pretty much the whole time.  It was really pleasant.  I met some internet writer friends which was great, and I got to see some old friends and hang out with them, which is always the highlight of the trip.

I also gave three readings in a span of 4 hours in three different locations.  It was insane.  I was originally only going to give one with the wonderful people at PANK, but I was contacted by my friend Sarah to see if I could read with her press (OH NO Books), and I said ‘Sure!’ and it turned out to be two hours later.  And then, the always lovely and sweet Kate Bernheimer couldn’t make it to AWP because she had the flu so I stood in for her at Sonora Review, which was a huge honor—I read a short piece of hers as well as my piece that was in the last issue of Sonora Review, and I’m pretty sure I gave the reading of my life, mostly because I was exhausted, the room was absolutely packed, and I kind of blacked out when I got up there.  Either way, I got to read with such people as Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Nick Flynn, Michael Martone, D.A. Powell, and others whose names escape me right now and I am so thankful for the opportunity.

Coming along with me were good friends from my Bama days, good friends from home, and good friends from my Loyola days.  It made the whole thing even better.

I get super anxious about all things reading/literary/public persona vs. private persona and having the support of those people really made all of the difference in the world.  I hope that I can take that energy and put it into something beautiful that will make me & others proud.

Until then, it is back to the grind tomorrow.  I hope everyone is wonderful.