The Rhetoric of Streets

a novel by Juli Kearns

A photographer's fifteen-year-long vigil for her missing sister wears upon her personal, family, and professional life, during which time she struggles with whether the disappearance was intentional. Is her sister dead? Was foul play involved? Did she commit suicide? Did she instead vanish in order to take up another life elsewhere? Might she ever return? An exploration of loss, parenthood, the artistic impulse, the wear and tear of culturally-condoned misogyny, and how the trauma of assault affects individuals similarly yet differently.

The novel begins with Athine waking.

"We are in the death zone, so-called as here the human body fails to regenerate and begins to die, for which reason we must attain our goal quickly and return to safety, or fail and leave but survive," a voice says, which will not be recollected. A residual and telltale grain of its sand briefly troubles the sole of her foot on this side of the threshold over which she has crossed less than an atom's measure of an instant before, the world in which she was disappearing so rapidly, unless her foot finds that stray particle of sand (which it doesn't always) no realization of her departing and crossing the threshold is had.

Published 2016. Paperbound, 660 pages.

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"We are in the death zone, so-called as here the human body fails to regenerate and begins to die, for which reason we must attain our goal quickly and return to safety, or fail and leave but survive," a voice says, which will not be recollected.

A residual and telltale grain of its sand briefly troubles the sole of her foot on this side of the threshold over which she has crossed less than an atom's measure of an instant before, the world in which she was disappearing so rapidly, unless her foot finds that stray particle of sand (which it doesn't always) no realization of her departing and crossing the threshold is had. If her foot accidentally stumbles upon that microscopic grain, the weight of her is enough to shatter its matrix, the energy of the event releasing a brief illumination sometimes akin to the weak and quickly aborted flicker of a flashlight with dying batteries, sometimes the strong beam from a slender column of a lighthouse that briefly blinds the squid ink dark before being swallowed down its abysmal throat. Sometimes, instead, the sparkly fizz of a rainbow pop rock explodes effervescent in her consciousness, stunning and disequilibrating her with the overwhelming sensation of the eye of an all-encompassing boss intelligence briefly opening to her a portion of its field of vision, sharing with her a compassion greater than the knowledge of purpose, the mercy that is forgiveness for all her gross and minor failures, sins of commission and omission that every breath of hers increases exponentially until there looms a Mount Everest wave of loss that, day by day, extends its magnificent and terrifying curl over her, head bowed in threat of an imminent collapse as certain as gravity. But, often enough, not only is the illumination not transcendent, it only admits there is more behind the scenes though she sees little other than the light itself. The capsule of sand, upon opening, destroys its contents. The lunar rock, brought back by dream astronauts, is obliterated but for a faint whiff of its vestigial dust inhaled. Video feed is extinguished before we even know the story's title, much less its plot. Vultures spiral, well-satiated, their job complete. the defleshed bones of what was fall away into the abyss as the feathered guardians of the threshold rise into the sky to wait the next journeyer.

Waking consciousness is the opening of her eyes into the simple continuation of this life; it is almost always this simultaneous.

Once again, she is. Once again, she remembers herself.

"I'm back. Why am I back?"

It is a mystery.

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