November 22, 2022 First Person The Last Furriers By Ann Manov Still from unreleased film courtesy Ann Manov. One of Werner Herzog’s lesser films is about fur trappers in Siberia: big men who sled for eleven months of the year in pursuit of sables, the small and silky martens that live east of the Urals, burrowing in riverbanks and dense woods, emerging at dusk and at dawn. Russian sable—barguzin—is one of the most expensive furs in the world. The trappers make their skis by bending birch with their own hands, the same way trappers have for a thousand years. They see their wives for only a few weeks a year. They seem to have no inner life, neither anxieties nor aspirations: no relationships besides those with their dogs, no goals beyond survival. “They live off the land and are self-reliant, truly free,” Herzog tells us: “No rules, no taxes, no government, no laws, no bureaucracy, no phones, no radio, equipped only with their individual values and standard of conduct.” The film is called Happy People. *** There was a year in which I tried very hard to make a film about the decline of the fur industry in New York City and Connecticut, and all I ended up with was a fox’s foot, a holographic poster for vodka, and a hard drive full of footage that, had I ever finished the film, would have been strung together as an incoherent montage of fragmented memories. Read More
November 2, 2022 First Person Encounters with Ghosts By Sadie Stein Victorian spirit photograph. Preus museum, no restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons. One Monday evening some five years ago, I walked into my first Spiritualist service. In those days, the New York Spiritualist Church held services roughly once a month in a broad-minded white-marble Methodist structure designed to hold some thousand parishioners. But the Spiritualists only filled the first few rows. It was dim, churchy-smelling, and vast. I’d thought about what to wear. It was, after all, a church; it was also seven in the evening in late November. In the end, I changed out of my jeans and wore a high-necked Laura Ashley dress and a tweed jacket and my least ironic glasses. My hair was severely curtailed into a topknot. I suppose, as in many such moments, I was trying to control the one thing I could. As it turned out, I could have worn anything. There were people in jeans, there were people in gowns, there was a Guardian Angel beret—or maybe it was just a red hat. There was one person in a cape. From the moment I walked in, I was approached by other congregants: people introduced themselves and shook my hand and told me how long they’d been attending. Some made unusually intense eye contact; I’d later learn these were the mediums. We were all there to see ghosts; we were all, I suppose, future ghosts. Read More
October 24, 2022 First Person Acte Gratuit By Alice Blackhurst Illustration by Na Kim. 18/04/2022, 14:28, CT Angiogram renal & abdominal No vascular calcification. No renal calculi. The kidneys are symmetrical in size (right = 11.1 cm; left = 11.0 cm) and normal in morphology. Single left renal artery; no early branches. Single preaortic left renal vein. Single right renal artery, branching laterally to the cava. Single right renal vein. No extrarenal abnormality. The plan is for a left nephrectomy. Read More
September 29, 2022 First Person Fairy Tale By Darryl Pinckney “My mother couldn’t believe the Queen’s hats. My mother disliked birds and hats.” Queen Elizabeth II in New Zealand, 1953. Licensed under CC0 2.0. When the Queen of Tuvalu died, I remembered. My parents were pleased that at ten years old I liked Mark Twain. And then they discovered that, as with Cleo the Talking Dog five years earlier, I would not move on from The Prince and the Pauper. I wasn’t interested in any other non-school book. I’d seen the film of Twain’s novel and Errol Flynn had the right to sit in my presence every week when I reread my favorite parts. Tom Sawyer? Any luckily orphaned boy princes? No? Then no thanks. My mother had purchased from a door-to-door salesman in 1958 our 1957 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia. We never owned another set. My knowledge of the world came from our ever more out-of-date encyclopedia. My science is still very Sputnik-era. I let the twenty-four taped, dogged volumes go with much regret in 2009 after my parents died. As I was tiring of Twain’s lookalike boys and their protector, Miles Hendon, I found in the encyclopedia a black-and-white illustration of a painting of two princes in dark clothes. They had light long hair and looked scared. Princes were unlucky. I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. I longed to be unlucky. The two brothers were in a place with a dark staircase called the Tower of London. And, yes, the L volume of our encyclopedia set had so much on London, headed by a drawing of really old London dominated by “S. Pauwls Church.” I studied the narrow houses packed around it. My father couldn’t tell me for sure what “eel ships” were, but they were the largest vessels on the river in the drawing. So that’s where my nursery rhyme jumble of “all fall down” came from. (When did I come across the drawing that had the Globe Theatre marked in it and London Bridge full of houses over the “Thames fluuius”? Much later, when Shakespeare’s history plays were still way over my head.) Read More
September 13, 2022 First Person Other People’s Partings By Peter Orner Fall River, Massachusetts. Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress. So many accounts of Chekhov’s death, many of them exaggerated, some outright bogus. The only indisputable thing is that he died at forty-four. That’s etched in stone in Moscow. I like to read them anyway. I’m not alone. Chekhov death fanatics abound. His last sip of champagne. The whole thing about the popping of the cork, I forget what exactly. The enigmatic words he likely never said: Has the sailor left? But wouldn’t it be wonderful if he had said them? What sailor? Where’d he go? His wife, the actress Olga Knipper, wrote that a huge black moth careened around the room crashing into light bulbs as he took his final breaths. Olga was present in the room, of course, but I don’t think she was above creating myths, either. They had only so little time together, less than five years. In 2018, a team of scientists examined the proteins in the bloodstains on Chekhov’s nightshirt, in an effort to determine the precise cause of death. The shirt had been preserved as a relic. Read More
September 6, 2022 First Person Custody By Constance Debré Constance Debré. Photograph by Adam Peter Johnson. Courtesy of Flammarion. Three years ago. We’re at the Flore, sitting outside, rue Saint-Benoît. It’s summer. I’m dipping my black-pepper potato chips in some ketchup. I’ve ordered a club sandwich, he’s having a croque monsieur. He’s my ex. The first man I was with, and until further notice, the last. We’re actually still married because we never got a divorce. We lasted twenty years, he and I. It’s been three years since I left him. His name is Laurent. With our eight-year-old son, with Paul, we do alternate weeks, all civil, we’ve never had any problems. A few months ago I switched to girls. That’s what I want to tell him. That’s the point of this dinner. I picked the Flore out of habit. We met here when we were twenty, it became one of our haunts. I grew up here, I’ve never really lived anywhere else. But I don’t go to the Flore anymore. I quit my job as a lawyer, I’m writing a book, I’ve got the tax people on my back and no cash to my name. It’s a pain, obviously, but it’s not important. So I spit it out, I say, I’ve started seeing girls. Just in case there was any doubt in his mind, with the new short hair, the new tattoos, the look in general. It’s basically the same as before, obviously just a bit more distinct. It’s not as if he never had his doubts. We had a little chat about it, a good ten years ago. I said, Nope, no idea what you’re talking about. I mean I’m dating girls, I say to him now. Fucking girls would be more accurate. He says, All I want is for you to be happy. This, I don’t reply, sounds like a lie but it suits me fine. He’s barely touched his croque monsieur, he lights a cigarette, calls the waiter over, orders more champagne. That’s what he’s drinking these days, he says it agrees with him, that it makes him feel less shitty in the morning. The check comes, he pays, we leave. Instead of going his own way on le boulevard Saint-Germain, he walks me towards the Seine. When we get to my door, he goes to follow me upstairs, as if we hadn’t been separated for three years, as if I hadn’t just told him what I’d just told him. I say no. He says, Have it your way. Read More