Monday, January 19, 2009

#132 The Wildfires of Davis Schneiderman

Davis Schneiderman is sometimes Henry Mescaline is Henri d’Mescan—in Wilmington and Chicago and Calcutta, all at the same time. The three have a certain understanding regarding where things begin and end. Davis is many triplings. His childhood was made up of playing with toys, considering the problems of modern existence, and slumbering in the sweet and easy repose of innocence. He recalls being warned not to eat snow that may have been produced by acid rain. Davis is Davis and Henry is Henri as a result of a certain emotional scarring. He is an introverted-extrovert, with fine lines running over the curve of his skin. At a certain age, he learned that he was missing part of his spine. Many years ago, at Penn State, Davis got to know Kelly Haramis after they made a bet as to whether she could write a certain amount of stories for the school newspaper. There is some dispute over who won, but Davis paid the check when they went out to dinner, which could be taken as a kind of resolution. Once, Davis took his cold, January turn on a ferris wheel in Nanchang, China. Another time, Davis lied to the actor, Richard Dreyfuss, which made Richard Dreyfuss and Max Bickford happy. Also, it is possible that he has read at least one word from every single work in the English language, through which he has built a disastrous lexicon. At some point, Davis and Kelly got married, got a cat (Cassiopeia, who is mildly telepathic and strongly telekinetic), had a baby (Kallista, 1.25yo), and adopted another baby (Athena (2.50yo). Currently, Davis is the chair of American studies and an associate professor of English at Lake Forest College. He is a multimedia artist, the author of Multifesto: A Henri d'Mescan Reader, and the co-author of Abecedarium. His daughters run like wildfires through his brain.

More Davis Schneiderman

[Note: This postcard life story is part of a series of postcard life stories that will appear in Keyhole #6 (guest edited by William Walsh), where all the contributor bios will be postcard life stories--the idea being to make every possible aspect of the magazine literature.]

1 comment:

Matt Bell said...

I like this one a lot, Michael-- Somehow the smallest details here (the decimal precision of the children's ages, especially) seem really perfect. Good work, as always.