I’m
running through a dense forest—fast. My middle-aged body strong as I soar over
fallen limbs and push aside branches. I hurtle over a mound of dirt and
shrubbery, and crouch down at the edge of a vast, open field as arrows begin
dropping all around me. I see a castle—my destination—in the distance. Off to
the right of it is a small embankment and a familiar figure motioning for me to
join him. He shoots a slew of arrows for cover and I make the run while cannon
fire tears up the earth near me. With my last surge of energy, I leap wildly,
landing next to my nephew who’d been providing protection.
“Glad you could make it, Uncle David,” he says with
a grin.
I’m gasping for air but manage, “Wouldn’t miss this
adventure for the world, Kyle.”
Together we travel on to the base of the fortress. I
shudder at the sheer size of the wall that stretches high into the sky above
us. I look at Kyle, his muscles are corded, flexing for the challenge of the
climb. He’s ready to tackle it head on.
This recurring
dream has a habit of varying in interpretation. At first it represented my
concern with getting Kyle’s work published, in doing it right, to perfection,
trying to avoid a barrage of sharp arrows of criticism, and also in getting his
work out there, trying to climb that impossible castle wall of marketing and
distribution. In spite of my own anxieties, I admired how he was ready for the
challenge. Then, in lucid dreams the castle became death itself, my own human
fear of passing over, and his brave wide-eyed fighter’s stance. He had perished
in a horrific house fire that twisted the steel girders on which the home
stood. Could I face death with as much strength as he showed in my dream?
Dreams.
In March of 2013,
Kyle and I were talking (in one of our last face-to-face conversations) in his
home along Fall Creek in Freeville, New York. He was telling me how he thought
that a human’s nighttime voyages could be more than a breakdown of past events and
a sweeping up of life’s daily debris or more than learning about one’s
character and secret desires. He believed that dreams could be used effectively
to reach one’s inner creativity and, perhaps, to reach the beyond. I listened
politely, careful not to appear overly disapproving of something I felt wasn’t particularly
plausible.
A little
backstory is needed here to appreciate our relationship. It had taken awhile
for Kyle and me to get back to just sitting, relaxing, and enjoying each other’s
company: talking poetry, books, movies, et cetera. He was coming into his own
as a man and a writer, and I was slowing down from globe-trotting for my day
job. During the first seven years of his life we were very close. I was the
zany uncle who would swing him and his younger sister, Kayla, (who’d referred
to me as a human jungle gym) high in the air, upside down, and around and
around. I even got down on his pre-K level to play in our pretend rock band, The
Skeletons. Years later, Kyle would cringe as we’d watch our juvenile
performance on primitive VHS video, and I would laugh. In the home movie, he’s wearing
sunglasses and jamming on guitar, leaping from imaginary heights off his bed to
the stage below and continuing to rock on while I banged away, off beat, on a
tiny toy drum.
Then, at
twenty-three, I entered the Army which was the beginning of a slow separation. As
each year passed, my visits back home became fewer and shorter. We knew each
other less and less as Kyle was growing into an adolescent. At first, we made
idle chitchat, but, eventually, the silence between us filled the all-too-short
visits. Our closeness had become a shadow of the days gone by.
In 2010, fate,
thankfully, managed to wind back the clock’s rusted hands … just a little. It
would never again be how it was, but we did achieve some common ground in books
and writers. Kyle introduced me to the work of Vladimir Nabokov and I turned
him into a Charles Bukowski enthusiast. Some literary-minded folks might say I
got the better deal but not so. Kyle and I were in agreement: a good book was a
good book whether it was what is considered literary, pulp, or in the case of
Buk, dirty realism. We reveled in talking about Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger,
and the Beats. I know we were both relieved that the uncomfortable silences
were filled with gratifying conversation and spirited discussions. As much as I
would like to paint a picture of all sunny days, I can’t because, as with most
families, it was laced with struggles that barred an unfettered rapport. All
considered, in a nutshell, that was our relationship from 1989–2013.
Back to March
2013 and dreams. I listened to Kyle talk about tapping into the undiscovered self
and realms through our unconscious voyages, and while I did concede that I
believed we can manipulate dreams for our own pleasure and use them to learn
more about ourselves, I now know that he gave me a wizened look of, “There’s so
much more,” and we moved on to other subjects.
Sadly, we didn’t
delve into a topic of common ground: dream journals. I had never mentioned to
Kyle that years before I had kept a dream journal, and I didn’t learn until
after his death that he had also kept one on and off. When my sister, Meta
(Kyle’s mother), showed me the large stack of notebooks and papers he had left
at her house, I dug through finding early poems, letters, and different
versions of already published prose as I began preparing his posthumous
release, Celebrations in the Ossuary.
Then, farther down in the box, I came across several battered notebooks. Like an
overexcited child, I yelled, “We have his dreams!” It may have sounded foolish
in the moment, but for me, as someone who had missed out on so many years of
his life, it gave me a chance to discover more about him on a different level—from
the surreal dreamscape cultivated under cover of rapid eye movement.
This beguiling
world where he lived, loved, fought, escaped mazes, and time traveled was
begging to be further explored. Kyle had read the BEAT to a PULP webzine and
books, and he was familiar with the work of each writer involved with this
collection. With his family’s blessing, I called on these friends, asking them
to turn fragments of Kyle’s dreams into short stories. I picked out a handful
of thought-provoking lines (for this first volume: “the lizard’s ardent
uniform,” “the laconic dust,” “celebrated stomach
of copper” and “two blurry rabbits,” “my body was hanging from a conveyer belt meat rack
being pulled into a sky,” “I sold my soul to the devil for drugs,” “a
lonely hitchhiker was walking down the road on a sunny afternoon,” “I went back in time … and tried really hard to warn him it
was the boots that he used to take-off like a space ship”), and I sent
off these prompts to each writer along with a bit of insight into Kyle. The
rest was up to them to create anything they imagined from the dream prompt, and
they all turned in stories I know Kyle would have found positively engaging.
Only after his
death did I find out that, like me, Kyle was a fan of Dr. Who, and in an episode from season three of the new series, when
David Tennant, playing the famous time traveler, says, “Some people live more
in twenty years than others do in eighty. It’s not the time that matters, it’s
the person,” I think of the twenty-three-year-old Kyle Joseph Knapp and the
many lives he lived as a poet, naturalist, musician, son, brother, friend, and
dream voyager.
I hope you
enjoy. He would want you to.
Most of you know my nephew Kyle J. Knapp died nearly three years ago in a fire. A way of coping from the loss was to continue publishing books of his poetry that I had started when he was still alive. Then, after reading his dream journals, another idea came to me in which I asked several writers to compose a short story based on a snippet from one of Kyle’s dreams for The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform.
The seven tales presented are all good ones that push the boundaries in small and big ways. If you like considering the idea that there is far more going on than meets the eye this book is for you. A crime is present in many of the tales, but the tale itself might be fantasy, fiction or something else. The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform & Other Stories: Veridical Dreams Vol. 1. is one of those rare deals where each story is incredible good making the read simply fantastic from start to finish. --Kevin Tipple
I’ve been blessed to be friends with Terrie Farley Moran for
a number of years now and have always been touched by her kindness and steadfast
support she has shown to me and my family. And I’m a big admirer of her work--I read whatever she’s done that I can get my hands on. In her writing,
you won't find cheap thrills or unnecessary violence;
instead, you'll find solid character development within a rich, powerful storyline slowly building to an emotional crescendo
that'll stick with you long past the conclusion.
There will be more on this very personal BEAT to a PULP release in the next week. But for now here is the cover and description.
I'm not sure what initially sparked my interest in reading Charles Bukowski, but once that tap opened, I went on a steady diet of Buk's work for quite some time. I became such a fan, that I got Kyle Knapp hooked on the candid writer when Kyle was searching for some inspiration of his own. I had lent him Women and several others (Post Office, Notes from a Dirty Old Man), and we had lengthy discussions on the raw material.
Also, my niece Kayla recently had this extraordinary piece of art
tattooed on her arm. She chose a favorite shot of her brother, and I can see
why she picked it. It has the essence of who he was, and the tattoo artist captured this to perfection.
I feel like I don't say it enough to her, and so I want to say it now: I’m so proud of my niece in all that she has accomplished and what’s yet to
come.
At BEAT to a PULP this week are three poems from Kyle J. Knapp's Celebrations in the Ossuary and Other Poems. Take a look and then follow the Amazon link to grab your own Kindle eBook for free in celebration of what would have been his twenty-fourth birthday today. Along with Ossuary, BEAT to a PULP: Round Two and The Guns of Vedauwoo featuring Cash Laramie are included in the Labor Day $0.00 holiday special.
