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love in a time of capitalism

the empire builder

i #3

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like everybody, americans. weve lostjobs, quit jobs, moved across the country

for jobs, wandered the country in protestof jobs, kept disciplined'n stayedat jobs, in the recession.we understand the inescapability of it.we know but dont dig that basic andfundamental question of existence in our systemso what do you do?

the definition of a person how they earn a wage.everybody consumed by cover letters, annual reviews,progress reports, pay checks, healthinsurance, coffee breaks, promotions.

its first breathe to death rattle. its capitalism.the 9-5 is life.

(or)the 9-5 is dead.because in the middle of all those soot-black heavy chimneyssmoking greed and material gods, there is love.if who we are is what we do, then love is the binding, the gluethat collects our desires, hopes, dreams, fears, shapes theminto something that is anti-corrosive and illuminant,a form resistant to the forces of capitalism,visciously-opposed to early bedtimes and well thought-outweekends.

ask a diff

erent questionso who do you love?

in this issue we ponder love and capitalism,orange juice and toothpaste,dogs and summer canned car heat,vegans and bahharrbee ques.love now in ca italism. its time.

love

fcapitalism

The Writing

3 Indecisive. Sarah Wurzburg

4Another Family Emergency.Andrew Stras7Saving Daylight.Dary Picken8A Couplet With End Rhyme.Sarah Wurzbu9We Moved.Courtney Ryan10Substance.Sarah Wurzburg11Fred and Abby.Andrew StrasburgPhoto Contributor. Michelle Heitmann

Cover Art and Photography. Andrew Strasbu

the third printing of the empirebuilder, our analysis of the world,our search for community andaudience, a connection basic andwithout noise.

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Indecisive By Sarah Wurzburg

Disposable income

Disposable relationships

Disposable time

Disposable clothes

Disposable food

Disposable friends

Disposable love

I give away a gift

with no second thought,

I can replace anything I own,

basically. Perhaps on the search

for something better we have started

to forget what is here,

now. Everything is consumable. Having so

much makes it harder to be

happy, there is no appreciation

for what one has, whether it be

an antique chest from a grandmother or

another person who wants to sit

next to you for as long as youll let them. Love To Give By Miche!

e Heineman

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Another Family EmergencyByAndrewStrasburg

1It's a Tuesday night and I walk North Ave hunting something to eat. e Indian Summer is over, and I'm underdressednow in the colding darkness for the first time all season. It's windy as hell. It reminds me this morning I watched the sdowntown hold their ties at bay, women's hair styles unkempting in the gusts, flying trash, sad looks and cell phones.I spot a bar and head in. Anything to warm up. e place has a mood: empty, slow. One of the servers sits at the bareating and she orders a beer as I sit down. She wears oversized glasses, clear frames, her hair short and amber in the barglow. She's quiet, self-contained but with a sharpness that's authoritative and I measure her intentions in my peripheravision. She is all that keeps the place alive.See the place is abandoned. e sort of empty that reminds you of your desolation. It makes you eat faster than you wnormally. Order another drink. e place plays music hushed and dull. And I can't make out who's playing. ose liover the cooks glow whiter, invasively illuminating a spotlight on me at the bar. e guy keeps asking if I'll have anothdrink. Come on man, like I need it. In-between questions he dusts liquor bottles. But there she is, humming in key, ncares for any of it. Do you engage with the unknown person? Do you smile? Slip a nod? Say hello?ese moments happen atime. ey are challenges to self-comfort. ey are questions of religion, philosophy, psychology, and economics. ey are timewhen the question is put to us: do we risk rejection?ere can only be rejection when you start to build hopes up.Not tonight. I'll come back later. My lips chapped without saying anything at all.

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2I go back one week later. I go back with the best intentions. I'm committed, self-assured, well-reasoned. I understand fears and accept the risk to my fragile self-trust. She is there as I knew she would be, wearing a black skull and cross bodress. Her hair pulled back. Boots. And I feel the shield I always wield, the armor of self-preservation, of not-talking to,avoiding, the talking to anyone else but the one person I most want to, I feel that shield disappear. Tonight I will cross over fromworld into hers, if only for one moment, to cause things to stir. Something will happen. I stand sipping a pint, using broad hgestures, smiling a lot. Not looking around the room too much. I sit down. I eat. In-between bites I give myself pep tMy stomach churns. e anticipation of my fragile invested hopes. I pay the bill the last defense before my door ofrejection. I walk to the front. I say Hello Again. I ask her.And to my surprise she gives me her number and says Call Me.

3I'm fine until I call her. She doesn't answer. I sent a text earlier this morning but no reply. Now I'm twice waiting. Andgrow anxious. I lose hope. Impending rejection gnaws at me. I think about her. I ponder her intentions. I review positisignals she sent. I cannot quit. ey haven't invented a way to decipher love's signals. We need one. We're used to instanswers. We live in the information age. We can answer everything now now now. But this. People still hold power ovpeople technology doesn't change that.And she does not respond. I wait like a dog that needs putting down. ere's an arsenal of communication forces pacifi

She does not fire. She does not put me down. So I wait. I was fine until I called her.I want everything to happen now.

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4She calls me back and we make plans. When I pick her up she smells of smoke and wears colors in her hair. Her dress long in shards of fabric at her shoes. She's wrapped in a long orange overcoat. I drive us to the bar. One whisky, onepeppermint tea. We talk about music, small businesses, high school jobs, the best place to see a show. We talk about th

city. She gets up and tells me to follow her. Cancel the dinner plans let's walk in the park. She plays music on her iPhoWe dance under an evergreen. And we kiss. She says let's walk back to my place. She puts on my helmet.She's put on my hopes.She asks if I've ever been broken. She wants to know if someone's hurt me.After a while she stops asking me anythingWhen I drop her offshe smells of disinterest. Her hair is dark. I wait five days on an unreturned phone call.Waiting. I move on.

5I call her just one more time.She's just shy. I'm easy to talk to she'll open up.She's scared I don't like her. I'll tell her how I feel let her know my intentions.She really did have a family emergency.at happens she wants to see me again.Twice. No one uses that same excuse twice she must be telling the truth.She's been busy lately. I'll plan something for next week when we're both free.We met at the wrong time but maybe sometime soon. I'll keep chill for awhile then she'll see what shes missing.We had some fun times which means something. Don't give up too early. I better stick it out really show I'm committed.Let's just be friends.As if I could do something the surest outcome comes naturally.So I take a new direction. I emphasize the presence of partnerless. I stop being afraid I can do anything to change it.I begin to focus on what comes naturally. I begin to trust myself.

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When Daylight Savings Time arrived, all the clocks fell back

Save one.

Im keeping my hour, the old man said. Use it when I need it.

Eight minutes were spent watching his dog chase squirrels in January.

Four were spent on the view outside his window facing the lake,

Then he added another four for good measure

The water is only calmer when its frozen

And he missed his wife.

He lost a few minutes in traffic here and there

And, careless one night, he unexpectedly dozed after supper

And wrote off twenty more.

He called his grandson on the birthday they shared

And used fourteen minutes replaying their conversation

Long after the dial tone died.

When he had saved only a few minutes,

He started counting his gains in seconds.

Eleven on a big bite of cheesecake.

Thirty on a passel of beautiful women walking.

He spent the last seconds holding his breath.

Saving Daylight ByDaryPicken

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Akimbo

Azure

Blueblack cold

These are the phrases

that made me

fall in love. 8th grade

English class. We read them

every day during the unit.

It was one of the first times

Id truly contemplated words,

analyzed them, wanted to know more

of them. Its only a good book if

you have to look up a couple

of words, I heard once,

while I think thats probably not

true, there is something thrilling

about it. The realization that you are

like the first person who saw an amoeba

through a microscope. A discoverer.

The only things I will love my whole

life, my family, poetry, the Bears, the

Cubs.

I could never decide what tattoo to get

because I thought I would stopliking it, if my mortal love for the object

did not last forever I would be

dissatisfied.

Not reminded of the time when I did

love that thing, but just generally

annoyed

by its existence, and the naivety of it all.

Perhaps this why its hard to imagine the

timeless

love for a person. Will it be end

rhymeless?

A Couplet with End RhymeBy Sarah Wurzburg

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We Moved By Courtney Ryan

We moved from behind a brown door with a small cabinet standing by for scissors, a screw driver, andenvelopes. We unhinged every drawer and filled boxes with books and dishes. Four doors later, inside thehouse on the corner with a stained red pavement square out front, we unburdened our shoulders and smelledthe floorboards, sniffing for a balance of dust and vinegar. The refrigerator, left uncleaned, hindered our sleep;it was never white nor empty. Nor was every patch of the bathtub floor, glossed over by bleach and a hesitant

heel.

We moved again in Autumn. After dust ran down our noses and burned our eyes. We paired cotton sheets withwool blankets in new trunks and old shopping bags. We eloped to the bungalow across the street with thesmall sun porch that captured late afternoon ashes and street cats on windy days. The one with the basementthat still hung three shelves along its cement walls lined by jars filled with old honey or jam. We imagined wetasted the jam while taking a shower or boiling noodles. Our tongues felt the ancient crust around the rim andwe choked, slightly. From the basement steps we glared at every congealed decanter and pinched ourfingernails deep into their corners. We moved.

In April we settled on the two story at the end of the block. Its three front steps genuflecting to the earth.Inside the second bedroom, we installed a crib with a light blue canopy and silver legs. We stood with our backto the large closet door as its oak panels stretched beyond our reach. Inside hung a curious rope with frayedends and a knotted neck. We draped our coats at the opposite end of the rack as the rope hovered silently inthe corner of our eye. At night we dreamed of the closet's doorknob slipping from its hinge. We woke up withwiry hair and damp palms, the rope still hanging from a nail angled into the yellowed wall.

We moved as the summer stretched into late August. Down a few doors and on the corner next to the postoffice. A cherry tree pined against the dining room window as its thin branches scratched the metal screen. An

outdoor streetlamp reflected in the bedroom mirror, dimly lighting footsteps to the bathroom or the kitchen fora glass of water. One hallway floorboard softly blended into another. We slept evenly and only woke when thepost office door swung too widely and crashed back into its clasp. On a late winter afternoon as we steamedcarrots we noticed a peeling piece of wallpaper. Carefully we pulled it back as a thick, black blot appeared andgrew larger until our hand, arm, and neck were blanketed by ants. We moved.

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SubstanceBySarahWurzburgAtthispointmoneyisfictional,

itstrue.

Thereusedtobegold

tobackupthepapercurrency,nowthereisnothing. Intherecession

mostofwhatpeopleloseistheoretical,

onacomputerscreen, datafiles, digits

changing. Itskindofinteresting

thatsomanypeoplecanbelieve

inthemonetarysystem,

andsofewbelieveinlove.

SometimeswhenImdrunk

Ibuystuffonline, whenImbored.

Wellactuallythatwasyesterday.

Love Greater Than Money By Miche!e Heinemann

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Fred and AbbyBy Andrew Strasburg

She is moving back home to the west and so he decides he'll drive her. He is a man driving west with his girl. ey leave on

coast without thinking too hard. For therst time he lives only now. No nostalgia, no plans. He is taking a long walk on th

beach, collecting the precious stones of their last days together,

lling his pockets up to a weight the signi

cance he won't felater.

One late December day they pack her things in his mom's SUV. All her stuff. He admires that. He admires how she isn't

aached to things. e way she gives most of it up. ere's something to it. Her lack of aachment. Her self-comfort.

ey don't say if they're in love or not. ey talk about careers and dreams. New businesses to start together. ey talk of

places to move. Applications. Interviews. Small business ideas.ey're eager to share. e possible futures exist in their he

ey talk and move closer. When they touch they notice and wonder what else they've missed.

ey cover ground. rough the Midwest they're simple. She walks in front of him in small towns. ey stop and stare. W

open land where a lack of color is its own kind of beauty. And they are not distracted. e two of them together like they'd

waited for. e two of them together they say lile. A Ghost Is Born the only sound. Repeat All like a metaphor for how he

feel later.

Because we all go west someday.

ere are plans and there are strategies. ere are self-beliefs. But know that any of these cannot hold up to the allure of thewest: jobs, gold, fresh vegetables, boots, fog, outlaws, long blonde hair, ranches, a lack of seasons. e magnetic engineering

your tendencies, beliefs, habits, and rituals. One day you will come to it naturally and without effort. You will go west.

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Outside Reno she has one moment. e tree by the roadside holds still like in the movies, enough time to give her time, to

a wisp of doubt, a ash of regret, a deepening of gut, a sharpening of character. She thinks. She thinks that they had a few

good times. He is a man and he is driving her west. He is a man returning alone. We should stop soon he says. Yes we sho

What are dreams about? ey are propositions for a different existence. ey are projections for self discovery, they are blu

prints for a new awareness. ey are acknowledgments that change is important. Disappointments are too much dreams.

Expectations do not help.Expectations do not help.

Expectations do not help.

She asks what he'll do when he gets back east. She thinks out loud about all she has to do. What she'll tell her Oma. He tal

about when he'll come back to visit her. e next time they'll be together. Adventures of the future. Tiny comforts. ese

plans he makes to fortify himself against their parting.

She leans over and touches him. She looks out the window. She counts miles in her mind.ere is a sky

and a sun

and there is nothing else between them

and the coast.

At last he reaches the ocean. He walks in the grass and sits there, the end of things solid, the beginning of the unending

unformed. Listening to the waves go he looks at the black sky. Above him he can't li his chest. Up he can't li his chest. U

he can't light his chest.

He lies there alone awhile. With his hands in his pockets he feels the stones.

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The Empire Builder isSarah WurzburgChester Bennett

and Andrew Strasburg

Visit

empirebuilderzine.wordpress.com