Born in San Francisco, Damon Shulenberger has been an astute observer of people much more artistic than himself, for much of his life. He came to writing based on a fundamental belief that the less time he spent within the confines of an office, the better. Growing up in Oakland, Damon Shulenberger had a passion for Hemingway and Hendrix and fulfilled a wanderlust by backpacking throughout Europe after high school. He subsequently had the sobering experience of working a summer on a factory fishing boat in Alaska.
Graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in something suitably hazy, Mr. Shulenberger held a number of odd jobs, from manning a 1950s era grocery store to driving airport limos, before taking a job as English teacher in Japan. He started what ultimately became Arisugawa Park while in that five year job, circa 2005. If he had known it would take a decade to see fruition, he would have given up then and there. But perseverance is a virtue and faith never departed in the value of his own unique style and take on the human comedy.
Mr. Shulenberger holds a degree in Asian Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In late 2013 he achieved distinction as winner of the Guinness Book of World Records’ “Longest Continuous Poker Tournament.” His 500 page mystery-thriller Arisugawa Park is beginning to gain traction among readers who enjoy characters they can inhabit for days, rather than hours.
A unique 2-year collaborative journey between an American poet and a Boracay-based Philippine artist, exploring the fabric of identity during a time of travel, growth, and transition. Hand-stitched, completed on instinct rather than on-demand. The complete set of 15 poems and artworks is available in a limited edition of 100 hardbound copies.
April Jardine Limuran & Damon Shulenberger
Intrepid, crafted of old rags and hand-me-downs,nothing wasted as a slender frame is constructedpiece by laborious piece, and fixed to wingsof pure emotion sightless vision, enormous flightrisking all while risking nothingthere is nothing that the phalanx of drones can dobut witness lift off and wait for the inevitableBirth, life flow down the Girl is a woman and Creating lifeshe binds the feet as best she knows how The weave of the water through the bound feet that cannot latch onto sandand cannot flow with water,the child looks with eyes anew and slowly learns to hide his wings and feathers.
A jester in his own court, he has run out of words. Constricted by the clasp around his neck which he purchased and had wroughtand which attracted Nefertiti and the thousand black ravensand also untold snakes slithering between blades of grass. Words are a labyrinth and sleep no solace,and often neither come as he seeks out nether realms–the hazy black river Styx, oil spill Hades, the streets of Cebuhe creeps around detritus and lets fear overtake him on his daily walk between oases of calm and order,the swelling of the populace, the unrepentant lurkingand flickers of unrest. Ayala Mall, IT Park, Waterfront Hoteland in between the real beauty and pulse,the small alleyways,the hustlers, the shabu usersfamilies of six confined to a single room with one humming fan yet free somehow to roam,the unexpurgated truth of existence in all its hand-to-mouthanguish and glory The King constricted and vexed, and beneath him the humming of life, unrepentant.
Lioness waiting in the veldt, eyes expectant, unencumbered–she looks out of her smoky seat.as the tux man bleats his whisky sound, the piano twines the way her hips move and expand, towards something beyond What opens is her third eye, and it is drinking it all in, the size, the shape,Madness she lets herself sink and then it begins again, pulsing within her and she touches her smooth lipsand takes a sip, taking it all in–the night, the revolving ceiling fan Loneliness a phase, a fixation, replaced bywanton warmth, the keys to the ignitionshe lets herself sigh and sink deeper in her seat The opening of the valves, sucking of airthe vaguely threatening sax rumble,Mysterioso himself rumpled in felt fedora.
Lioness waiting in the veldt, She has seen it all and never missed a beatuntil the knocking comes and now insistentShe demands payment and she opens and thrusts and your arms meet her hip sway,You are gliding with her on the veldt,at the edge of the dance floor with the tacky flowers She hastens you to her lair and unapologetic brushes back your matted hair and now you are into some new waltz boogie, a vignette in her eyes of feline grace and pallor, a twist of the smoky maw.You do the ancient boogie and add triads, scalesand make her come in time, graceful, urgent. Lioness on the veldt, rolling on her tummy and squeezing all those parts that are indescribably swollen, she is wantonAnd you are suddenly detached as the hardness fades and you roll into a tangled ball for her to toy with sharpened claws until she looks away, unsatisfied, and pads silently from the kill.
Protected by pure flames of Thicka,like an insect with its laborious design, the capsule has been designed as a podto cover the quivering, lifeless mess of congealed jelly, life matteroozing like plasma forming, replicatingin the belly of it all We have taken this journey on our own, we have have taken it even without knowing how to carry ourselves across foreign climes Earth fabric is packed here deeply, tightly, in all its DNA spooled genetic state,Which the Earth has birthed in its suicideto keep the lineage strong–
There is no clearing, the jungle is overpoweringwith elephant shriek and trumpet moan,the man, the dream, the cunning childclosed in, convoluted The dreaming world, the beach the screams through the thicketnature, untrammeledpiercing horror and never endingsightless eyes Cries that reverberate and remind us just howinsignificant is our colony, howtransient and unnecessary-we are not moving toward the harbor,we are not shifting with the sun, But if we allow the darkness to run inside usand the labyrinthine shadows to form in our soulthen maybe we are in the clearning, home.
Connected into flow,tummy a universefloating, imprinted with the urgesthat could make or break human bones, destinedto become aware of the good, the bad,the full totality of human judgement,and become onewho judges as well or one who is judged and like so many others,broken,suffocated in the thin, dry airby the reedy chorusand unassailable flowof technology Take time to list in an immersivebrine, to swim out with the fishand hairy hermit crabs,to spend time at the shore breakamong mute friends swimming as the roar of storm and spray envelopes and the crashing wavesare buffeted by the drift–and survival is merely play.
You wonder how the organism works sometimes, that which is hidden and which is agitation, violence.When each butterfly with intrepid dream risesand becomes immersed in an orgy of talent and competition and the colors grow dark with second guessing, regret This is the muscular pulse of butterfly wings working together,unwilling at first, slender frames used to flitting and drinking the nectarof sunshine and smiles passed along the earth’s traverse,the bend of the freely given Now tethered and yoked and somehow realizingthat these beautiful things are powerful things in unison the wings will sing and order, create entropysuch that the forces seeking release inside them have no choice but to obey This is the violence implicit within all beautiful things that have been lifted up, examined, and not paid proper respect, That have seen affection thrown into the cauldron when the price tag was revealed and found that they can imprison prey with their siren’s drone– The lone hamster on his wheel, running himself to deathwhile the wings collect energy and swell into collective organism.
Peace comes when all the the different elements,the violent urges, come together asfabric––the confusion and angernestled within a love song that you murmur to your baby each night before you sleep and try to forgiveall the backstabbing, lying, cheatingimperfections around you and the chaosthat will await your newly born Place all the scars and travails, the nights spent updrunk, puking, downing whisky at the bottom of the bottleand pin them up like butterfly wings, perfectly still– Your sad experiences, and not-so-bad experiences are now maps on the wall, no longer so urgent,but traces of names and trails once taken that seem ever more romantic in the distance and soonbecome proud scars that the baby will look intothrough the moon of your face, like wallpaper to trace a new beginning.
There are times when the fullness of the stomach,the utter sense of encroachment makes her feel like a beached whale At other times she is a mermaid, casting her net in the dreamy sands of Boracay,the deadness receding from her nails,like bleached ribs set out to drypoking out through the sand The utter tiredness, to carry that weight,the utter lack of form and sense of inertia,as if any movement might upset the balance–her skin pulled tightly to her skull and eyes drawn out, not wanting to experience this,or any aspect of tomorrow The power within her is dragging her downand no matter how she sits or squirms the fact will not alter that she is with this for lifeand life will not move to suit her moods or conform to how she feels Pushing dead weight and emptying infinitelyin the vortex of gravity, imminent creation.
The pebbles and stones have receded, and with them outside life and confusion,You are in the drift, pure immersion–life around you is beating within a sunken heart Giving up, letting go–words most common after defeat, when scrambling for a new beginning–why do you keep saying them? Is it because you are afraid to cut yourselfloose from the start, to lose sight of the tether? I have travelled far andif life truly lived is between the sinews,I have lived without fault But unpremeditated creationhas been beyond my grasp, Though I have reached tentatively for the limb– To move without struggling as your feet twine with tiny algae, and the tug is almost imperceptible–but there, at last it comes,pulling you toward the shoreline pebbles and hazards–you are human and cannot avoid.
She allows the two figures into her desertand asks them to be stilland listen through the night, if they want–they bow their heads in calm acquiescencethat masks ages of suffering She cries but cannot seeand does not tremble – it is a warm cry,an errant thread from her nimble fingers, the pricks of bloodflow unabated as she seeks an answerto unwavering questions How do you see, how do you feel?how did you get here inside of meand how does it feel now in the cool desert,where this lingering heat wraps every fingerin its remnants and shivers as the dawn expands on the horizon.
You have had dreams of crispy skin,slightly charred, and the deep warmth inside–pressing the meat down on a fresh bed of riceand letting the fat and marinade saturate the grains that you pinch between your fingers This is Inasal, the art of the grill– How many times I have accepted this gift and eating right down to the bonehad this thought– if you borrow lifeit had best be one lived in fresh sunlight Where the fabric taken and usedcomes from your own span and sight.
100 hardbound limited-edition copies of Earth Fabric have been printed. The cost is $45 + $5 shipping. Both eBook and collectible hardbound versionsdamon74@mac.com can be ordered below.
Set in Tokyo, a pair of seemingly unrelated events – the love hotel murder of a salaryman and the disappearance of an American English teacher, set in play a string of events that put lives at risk and have profound geopolitical implications. With action centered in Tokyo's fast-paced epicenter, we follow Eve, an Eastern European hostess, as she recovers from waking drugged underneath her dead lover. On the run, she searches for clues that will unravel the mystery of how she was set up to take the fall for murder. At the same time, we follow a young female officer Kaori as she fights ingrained sexism in the suburban police force, and seeks out answers to a routine English teacher missing persons’ case that her superiors don’t consider worth pursuing. An aging Japanese police officer Hayao, just months from retirement, joins forces with Kaori in solving a puzzle that has no immediate rhyme or reason, but carries with it grave and immediate consequences. Barring agent intervention, Arisugawa will be released as an eBook in early September. To become an advance reader of this anticipated release, contact the author. Just click on the arrows to start the page-turning! Let’s begin with a glossary of the Japanese lingo used in the novel…
Damon Shulenberger
Readers have mispronounced characters’ names in so many creative ways that I feel obliged to clear the air at the outset. Hayao is a name to be thought of in connection with the exclamation of a martial arts aficionado engaged in a good karate chop. Hai YOW! At least that’s how the good people in Martha Engber’s writing group finally got their heads around it. Kaori is a gentler name, despite its hard K. Pronounced Cowry, I always think of it in connection with the illustrious shell, once a prominent South Seas currency. Jiro, unlike the Gyro, rhymes with Ichiro, and is correspondingly less delicious, though with a higher batting average.
Tuesday, March 18th
Eve had the distinct sensation that her head was separate from her body. A taste of whisky lingered and at first she thought it was the result of a night of too much drinking. Yet there was a profound sense of dislocation that a hangover could not explain – it was as if she had left the earth and was hovering somewhere, without signpost or recollection. She felt a sandpaper itch along her throat as she tried to swallow, a dry rasp to her breathing as the room went in and out of focus. Slowly, in pulse after aching pulse, Eve became aware of a weight pressing heavy against both thighs. She tried to move her legs and got only the faintest response. Feeling to a place below her hips where the numbness began, her fingers brushed up against something heavy and inert. Pushing with both hands, she tried to squirm out from under it. Nothing. She half-twisted her torso, wrenching her hands to roll over what was pinning her down. The weight finally gave and slid off her legs, hitting the floor. There was a finality to the thud that seemed to last an eternity, contradicting the sense of human give she had felt with that last heave. Human and yet – there was no semi-coherent groan, no sense of movement or life. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, willing it all to go away. Had almost convinced herself that this was all a dream when a submerged recollection of last night broke the surface. Ken. The love hotel.
Eve ran cold water in the sink basin, rubbing mechanically at face and arms. She slipped off her dress and rinsed the stiffened fabric over and over. Blood pooled along the hem, invisible against the darkness of the cloth. Wringing out as best she could, she stepped back into the dress, the sensation cold and clammy against thighs and stomach. She kneeled at the toilet basin and heaved without anything coming up. The throbbing in her head would not go away, and through the fog came a fractured awareness – drugged – I’ve got to – she wanted to call the police, to make this right, but something caught in her throat, an instinct – Ken had been killed in cold blood, she had awoken in an unnatural stupor – what was this, if not a set up? Back into the hallway, down four flights of stairs, Eve skirted the main lobby and found a small side door that she cautiously pushed open. She blinked in the sudden sunlight. All around her a Tokyo workaday bustle, at odds with the nighttime scene she had expected. She wandered down the street without knowing exactly where, averting her eyes as she passed salarymen in dark suits. Through Roppongi crossing and past the Hyatt Regency, down a street that grew narrower and quieter, residential – past the reinforced walls of the Chinese Embassy and guards who stood stock-straight, not even glancing at her. To a smaller intersection, a police station and a park. Here she hesitated, glancing around for the first time. She knew this place, it was Ari-–Arisugawa park. Her feet were leading her left, and as she hurried past a tennis club and luxury condominiums it struck her that she knew exactly where she was going.
Hayao Miyamoto looked out the window of the concrete building quietly decaying next to the German Embassy. If he craned his head just so he could glimpse Arisugawa Park, a welcome sight in this bustling metropolis. This was the proverbial window seat, even here at the old branch of Tokyo Metropolitan Investigations they had it. A desk with a view for those no longer of use to the organization. Not that it bothered him – he had chosen this desk, this view, and he’d be gone in a few months. Hayao glanced around the room. Sparsely occupied with a low shuffle of police detectives, almost all middle-aged and older. This is how the vine atrophies and dies. Only a mile away, a gleaming steel and glass building housed a bustling police force with a seemingly unlimited budget and all of the latest anti-terrorist and surveillance equipment – intent on protecting at all costs the embassies, corporations, and government offices that made this one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world. Hayao stopped his hands drumming the desk. His veins, slightly raised, showed the effects of age. So this is how it is to be, patrol-based techniques requiring patience and an ability to pursue leads replaced by – Hayao caught himself. These thoughts were symptoms, he supposed, of age – there were many good officers at headquarters, not a few of whom he had trained himself. But something in the winds had changed, and most police officers these days had neither the patience nor desire to track down the type of criminal really worth catching. As his thoughts circled, going nowhere fast, Emi Hirose passed, an air of competence and an understated beauty about her. Spring was almost here, he should ask her to lunch at the park.
Sprawled on the unmade futon, it was hard for David to imagine having ever basked in a tropical sun. It was still freezing in Tokyo and he was still teaching at the high school he’d promised himself he would quit at first opportunity. He arched his back and stretched, staring at a blank screen that moments ago had been awhirl with airplanes, guns, and explosions. His fingers itched to get back to them, just a click removed from the calming blue of the computer. David closed his eyes, casting his thoughts along the well-worn grooves of the vacation he was at the burnt end of. Snorkeling in the Andaman Sea, fish darting in and out through a dying coral. Thick strums of guitar hovering over a faint lilt of reggae from the bar down the beach. Painful massages in a bamboo hut, his limbs kneaded into some kind of ecstatic submission. The tapping at the door was soft and insistent, just enough to bring David from his supine position on the floor. “Just a sec,” he groaned, looking around for a serviceable pair of jeans. The house was shared accommodation for foreigners, a few longterm expats interspersed among a revolving cast of colorful travelers and castaways – corporate interns, martial arts enthusiasts, airline mechanics. It was not unheard of for someone to knock on his door, even at the ungodly hour of 10:00 am. Could be Julian, the German intern at BMW Tokyo, asking him to join him on another reckless bike ride through the mean streets of Tokyo. Could be the loud-mouthed New Yorker Cynthia, scolding him for hair found in the shower drain, or food left in the refrigerator past its expiration date.Picking up a pair of jeans and pulling it on, David steadied himself with a hand on the doorknob. He opened the door and caught his breath – a bone white face emerged from the shadows of the hallway, furtive and haunted. “Can I help you?” David asked. The woman’s eyes flashed against a blood-drained skin, shoulder-length hair taunting a face in disarray. Her lips parted and went slack. He tried again. “Is there something I can––”
Blonde and vaguely Eastern European in appearance, the woman remained silent, eyes impenetrable like the shadows surrounding. David was tempted to shut the door, pretend this stranger didn’t exist, but something in her eyes caught him short. The sense that if he left, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go. The woman’s gaze steadied, her voice soft and barely audible. “Maria––she lives here.”It took David a moment to catch her phrasing, the slight hitch that made it a question as much as a statement. “Maria... I think I’ve heard that name–when did you last see her?” “I last saw her – I don’t know, it was months.” The woman tugged at the hem of her dress, trying to pull it lower–it clung stubbornly to her stomach, sculpting belly and thighs as if soaked through. In the darkness of the hallway David could not be sure. Avoiding her off-kilter gaze, he shifted his eyes towards the softness, the vulnerability she was trying to hide. He thought back to the several tenants who had moved in and out of the gaijin house since he had been living there. He remembered a couple stray pieces of mail that had arrived with his room number on them – Maria, a name like that. “Your friend must have lived here before me – most don’t stay long.”“Where she is now–- ?”
“No idea, never met her.” They stood facing each other for an awkward eternity. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” David offered, attempting a note of finality. “I hope you have some luck finding your friend.” The woman’s eyes flashed something he didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, her gaze faltering and crashing upon an empty shore. She turned unsteadily down the hall, movements choppy like something spliced out of an old silent-movie reel. David almost went after her, but something held him back. The situation was too strange, too unexpected. David closed the door and sank back onto futon, casting around for some approximation of his usual, lazy self. He picked up his laptop. Immersed in a sudden barrage of gunfire and explosions, still their brief conversation echoed. He set down the computer and reclined his head over the curve of piled-up pillows, staring at a ceiling framed by uprooted tree branches, dangling in blue. Could he have helped her? He didn’t know any Maria, didn’t know anyone in Tokyo really outside of the gaijin house. There were police around, if she needed that. Still, a part of him remained unconvinced. David had a feeling that something, someone, was trying to bring him from complete apathy. A woman with lost eyes, practically begging for salvation. He sighed. Leave it to him to drop the ball on that. It was a combination of things, he supposed – the effect of too many days in the sun, a growing ambivalence about being in Tokyo. Still, he had let her slip away without even pretending to try. David didn’t have the energy to finish that last thought. His eyes grew lidded and heavy, despite the incessant, mechanical whir of catastrophe emanating from the computer screen.
Hayao woke with a start, the staccato tone of the Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet still lodged somewhere near his solar plexus. There was an aching in his bones as he stretched and endured a few out-of-place pops and cracks. Standing up, he pulled his robe tight and shuffled to the kitchen. Hayao ate alone, as was his custom these days. His wife was on one of her ever-more frequent trips, to see an old classmate, she said. It would last a week or two, maybe longer. The visits to Kyoto had started a year ago, sometime around the time their son had stopped returning their calls. Hayao would come down to the dining room table for breakfast and find his wife sitting there, half dressed. He got used to cooking for himself. Sometimes he would cook for her as well and she would eat quietly, refusing all attempts at conversation. Despite her silence, Hayao did not have the sense that Naomi was avoiding him. Quite the opposite. Her attention was directed at him, her question unspoken and insistent. A question that he did not have any answer to.
Hayao had done all the things he should, even going so far as to hire a private detective. According to the report, their son was doing well, living an outwardly normal life in San Francisco. Not dead, drugged, or homeless. Hayao’s instinct told him that it was better to just let things be. If Akihiro wanted to include them in his life, he would. Give him time. He repeated that over and over, when his wife’s silences became unbearable. Still, she did not respond. Neither did she travel to San Francisco. Perhaps on some level Naomi recognized that what he was saying was reasonable. But a part of her could not forgive him for saying it, as if it was an abandonment of sorts. Finally she had done the only thing she could think of. She had left. It was not as if they were formally separated. It was not as if this was a permanent thing. Hayao had gotten used to it in a way. When his wife returned, things would be fairly normal for a few days. Not to the point of intimacy, but bearable. Soon enough though, the empty spaces would creep in. When there was nothing more to be said, she would leave. Hayao half-expected that on one of her trips to Kyoto, Naomi would simply not come back. She would find salvation in another’s arms or perhaps in an aesthetic life. He was trying to prepare himself for that. He wondered if he should travel to San Francisco. Find his son and salvage what was left of his marriage.
A sharp rustle jolted David from his prone position on the futon. He looked around, disoriented. Must have dozed off – the pattern of light on the rice-paper shoji indicated midday. There it was again, more distinct this time. A cat – no, something heavier, more measured – a footstep. The noise had come from the side of the house, a thin strip of bushes and ivy bordering a rough concrete wall. David padded across the tatami floor and slid open the shoji. There was a small outer corridor and another set of sliding doors, set with wood and glass, opening onto the garden. He peered through the glass – clouded and dusty, he couldn’t make out anything except a vague play of light through the trees. Unhinging the ancient lock, he inched the sliding door along old wooden tracks. A glance around, a shock of recognition. The woman was crouched against the low wall, hands clenched tightly against rough edges of stone and concrete. David fought back any reaction, keeping his eyes steady and unblinking – a move he had perfected as a young child, when big dogs approached. He held a hand slowly out to her. The woman bolted without warning and he instinctively stuck out a leg to trip her. Her slender frame was surprisingly heavy on impact, knee boning into his solar plexus. His right leg buckled and landed at an awkward angle, his hand flailing to catch balance and grasping her shoulder through a tangle of hair and sliding through. He spun out as he fell and his hand grasped the edge of her thigh, his fingers hooking and catching her and dragging her down. He pivoted through the axis of his hips and caught her wrist with one hand, holding tight through straining muscles as she tried to break free and run.
Just as quickly as her frantic efforts had begun, she stopped and her body tightened beneath him. There was a slight hesitation and then his hand found hers. His fingers felt the contour of her tightly curled fist, surrounded it without exacting any movement. For a moment they just lay there, the contrasting pitch of their breathing the only sound other than an odd siren in the distance. Her breathing was surprisingly gentle beneath him, the thin cloth of her dress soaked and heavy. Lips pursed, her glare seemed inviolable. He thought for a moment he was going to have to pry each finger loose, synapse by synapse. His eyes met hers and tried to stay with her – finally they fastened and held, and then there was a listing, a sense of ice shifting and a crack appeared. A snap – a thaw – and then her hand went limp. He uncurled her fingers and clasped her palm, feeling it damp with sweat. Careful not to give her any room to break free he guided her up in a prison guard sweep, brushing leaves off her skirt. He led her through the outer corridor, guiding her to the sliding shoji doors. Entering the room, he motioned in the direction of a futon half-hidden by scattered books, laundry, and crumpled sheets. The woman stopped short in the center of the room, fixing her eyes on him with the same unnerving intensity as before.
“My name’s David,” he tried. His usually measured teacher’s voice came out strangely unsure of its footing. “I’m Eve––” she spoke without looking up, almost as if she had woken from a trance. She seemed lost and vulnerable, tugging self-consciously at her still damp dress. A slight discoloration was starting to show through the dark cloth. Somehow, David knew Eve was not going to make a move. “Here we are, where we started––if you want to run again this time, feel free––my knee can’t take any more of what you gave it.” David grimaced and grabbed one of the odd t-shirts still on a hanger, handing her a pair of jeans from the floor. “Probably too large. Here’s a belt––and a towel. The shower room’s down the hallway, just past the kitchen.” “Yes, I know––” Eve edged toward the door and out. David cradled his slightly injured knee for a minute, the dull ache receding, and made sure that that the joints were working properly and nothing was out of place. Even when he was sure he was alone, he remained standing, unsure of whether he could safely sink down onto the futon again. At last the image that had been hovering around the edges of his consciousness took form – the reason Eve had been unable, or unwilling to leave. A lingering chill drifted in through the shoji from the outer doors, and he walked over and slid the wood-and-glass walls shut tight.
Hayao unwrapped the bento he had bought at the convenience store and stuck it in the microwave. It tasted good enough – he didn’t even really miss his wife’s cooking. Washing the rice and curry down with a glass of Kirin lager, his thoughts turned, he hoped not unnaturally, to Ms. Hirose. Her smart, understated smile, the gentle curve of her hips as she passed him in the office. A news report came on NHK that cut these thoughts mercifully short. “This morning the body of an unidentified man was found in a hotel in Roppongi, the victim of a fatal knife attack.” A typically narrow, five-story beige building was shown cordoned off. The sign indicated a love hotel. Two police officers stood guard at the front and another emerged from the door carrying an evidence box. “The victim was stabbed several times in the chest and is thought to have died of his wounds at the scene of the crime. He was discovered by a cleaning lady at 11:00 am, some hours after the time of death. Police are now following up on leads concerning the crime and the whereabouts of a foreign female companion who entered the hotel with him.”
Arisugawa Park will be released as an eBook in early September. The novel earned conference committee selection for a full scholarship to the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference 2014. To become an advance reader of this anticipated release, contact the authordamon74@mac.com.
Right: early cover sketch
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damon74@mac.comContact the Author
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Written a decade ago, the poems collected in this volume reflect a time of transition between Shulenberger’s life as English teacher in Japan and a return to California to attend graduate school. Original, spontaneous, and witty, these poems do not follow current trends in American literature, yet are not uninformed by the imperatives of writing that ultimately lasts through the generations. Damon Shulenberger’s poems vividly convey the anxiety and “starry elation” of being alone in a world of possibilities, set adrift in foreign locales. A quixotic writer, Damon has remained in the literary underbrush, driven by a purpose not tied to the imperatives of academic circles or the commercial marketplace. He describes his life’s work as creating a subtle and imaginative landscape that is at once intensely personal and has relatable, human qualities.
Distress simmers instainless steel potswith peeled garlic and hot peppers,slowly heats to a painful boilthen drops Came up from nothingher cryexploded upon the counterher cryscalding the thiefwho bent to smellsuch pungent spices.
All rise and greet the sun, humble destroyerwho doesn’t much intrude on our lives,filaments we are of a great wave a surging,let the coffee calm our nerves, let the red and green LED blink on and off intermittently, lost in a seaof neckties, rasping coughs, panty-hose seams inured against the charms of nature, and of the skythat peeks through the rooftops, once a great Godto be appeased through festival and beating of drums,now a peek through the curtains, not a ripple on the skin I have lost that loving feeling yes, sperm count lowered,droning about a queen bee, in any case I`m faltering,addled sprawling urban disaster Oh Ariel, goddess of dishwasher detergent andNarcissus, perfume of young ladies of Ginza at dusk,I offer these thoughts and prayers to somehowsee me through, my only connection to the sea and Ionia the thin seaweed wrappingof convenience-store onigiri–blind oar in the deep.
Now my waking hours are populated by the dead and strange skeletons in suitshovering and pressing firm and steadyingthemselves on rattling trains,I no longer wonder to see faces in dreams at once innocent and wraith-like,a deep jutting of souls.
The eggs were lined up and he showed me,at first I couldn`t believe it, the proper wayof pressing down andcracking the shell gentle, then peeling offa persimmon orange layer of gunk, revealing a chick in all its glory, individual and patient,ready for adoption repeating this processI lined them up, though soon I was confrontedwith a chick-monster, oversized, no eyes or mouth I asked my friend for permission to bash it lifelesswith the marble in my hand, he shuddered, but Isaid there was no other way... it was not the chick exemplar the parents had ordered– finally, I flushed it down the toilet, considerately
Here in Japan you can feel pretty good about sprawling, it has it because a sign of business and a generalwillingness to join the rush,whether in deep-jointed deliberations or in swirling crowds above,ensconced in subways and all the warmserviceable places where no car dwell,sadness just a way-product of atunneling bright Nothing changes in the city,forty percent of elementary school studentsthink the sun revolves around the earth,everything seems to be reeling around Tokyothe axis of everything though pointed outward, navel-gazing great mother greyempire a damaged sun.
Such delicate pink mixed withthe green foliage,not overpowering with ruffles and rufflesof wedding festive cloth,no borderline-gaudy popcorn wigsthese cherry blossoms,but icing on the rich cake of a dark shrine anchored by one large, rope-encircledelm, 3 or 4 or five hundred yearsno one knows, this old religious forestsprawling in a way I thought waslost in Tokyo, hidden in the quiet hilly foldsjust a spit from Roppongi crossing and Akasaka short-time hotels–Petals have reached full bloom, already taking flight.
A well mannered girl, - maybe attractive auburn hair but - no beat, not like Jack – breathless - I ran up the stairs of the apartment complex, - looked for his door, and knocking was - greeted with a surly growl -- Opening the door, a surprisingly normal guy - apologetic in his best beat manners, - handsome in a mid-30`s alcoholic way, - and there were two others, - one a cat-like girl, maybe good and close - friend of one or the other - And the other was let`s see, - Dean Moriarity or Gary Snyder– - he wasn`t wild or crazy -- in any obvious crazy way so I`m going to say - Snyder, and they were planning a fishing trip - in the mountains, I sat on the bed - polite and demur, guess I wasn`t any kind of - beat at all -- Slowly I took in Jack - and the honor of meeting him - though now at the onset of his sinking, floating years - when the spark of original rebellion came at odds with - the forces of age and gravity -- Reclining in a deck chair in the kind of old beat - apartment that may exist only in San Francisco, - he asked me semi-serious questions like, - did I think he could keep on writing? - sounded like he was flirting, but also - had things on his mind, - had been drinking - before I arrived, and was now trying to put on - his best collegiate, nice-guy face - so evoking compassion, even pity -- And though I couldn`t have known - he didn`t have much left, - that the last years of his life would be abject - and that indeed he would spend most nights - drunk out of his skull, or worse - I said something I hoped would encourage him - I forget and -- We wound up playing a mad baseball game - in the room with a mop for a bat - and crumpled paper balls, - swinging to the blast of scratchy trumpets.
I want it all without having to pay with sweat extracted in Love`s grinding mill, want the company of young ladies in their dozens, breasts and hips of varying sizes, hair of acorn, chestnut, moss and dew, eyes of fire, coal and emerald dresses long and flowing, or better, tight-ass jeans Lord let me have all these things which I can only dream of on this scorched piece-of-shit earth, divining rod quivering, my brow quivering so far from señoritas and Brownsville cantinas, let this one gush great fountains of rich, black crude I think of my mother, she in her wiry Germanic way broken, I think of father who left a long time ago, I`ll take this sun Lord and throw it back at you, my shadow larger than anything on this plain, where not even the ghosts linger, fishing they are in lakes and streams of Colorado, splashing in the cool, clear water they dreamt of as they passed their time in this shit brown place.
In the stream each morning, in the train speeding towards Tokyo, in the early workday crush, I follow this path to a forested dead end, a mix of new rectangular family granite, all polished and indicative of wealth, crowding the older lichen-spotted buddhas and strange animal-headed divinities, one statue with crocheted hat dark and dank, mottled bright green with moss this nature, so close and unexpected will disappear when I put on my blinders and cross the ticket gate.
Containing more than 40 original poems and artworks, East to West is available for purchase as an eBook.
On December 15, 2013 after nearly 49 hours of continuous play, I was declared winner of the first-ever Asia Poker Tour – Resorts World Manila (APT-RWM) Iron Man Poker Challenge. When all was said and done, I had been engaged in continuous play from 8:30pm Friday night until 9pm Sunday night, with only bathroom breaks away from the table. This uniquely structured tournament, with its accompanying lapses of consciousness and reason, represented one of the most challenging undertakings of my poker career. It was also one of the most satisfying.
Damon Shulenberger
Just ten minutes before my arm was raised by Iron Man Poker Challenge tournament director Lloyd Fontillas in a euphoric moment that I was barely alive enough to enjoy, my opponent of the past four hours Choi Byung Kyoo had announced in raspy, barely audible English, that he was going all-in on every hand from here on out. Forget strategy, in a game where deals were not allowed and the difference between first and second was more than $7,000. My worthy opponent, like many others before him, had a compelling reason for this decision – a business flight to Korea that he was in danger of missing. Moreover, he was in imminent danger of dropping flat on the table, felted by biological necessity after some 20-odd grueling rounds of continuous poker. A little bit about myself - originally from California, I have lived on and off in the Philippines for the past two years. I left the world of online poker following the Full Tilt debacle of 2010 (I was admittedly fighting withdrawal symptoms for quite some time), and have been strictly a brick-and-mortar player since. Poker in the Philippines’ provincial second city is an often vocal affair typically involving locals, Western expats, and Koreans. Life here in the horse latitudes seems a couple decades behind the times, and that is a part of the appeal. A freelance writer by trade, rather than trying to support myself through poker, I have focused on studying players and the way they act in certain situations – with an ultimate goal of becoming a major tournament threat.
The APT events always bring together a few familiar faces from Cebu, as well as a host of Manila grinders, and poker aficionados from throughout Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, and Japan. The competition level is surprisingly intense, with many of the best Asian players exceptionally aggressive – their unrelenting willingness to put it all on the line with nothing but an ice cold stare makes a suck-out (or three) inevitable over the course of any tournament. Prior to the Iron Man, I had never won any of the APT events, but had made the final table in some side tournaments, earning a certain amount of respect among regulars. I came into the Iron Man with not the slightest idea of what the event involved, except that it was nominally about Guinness Book of World Records glory. I was also vaguely aware that it mirrored a worldwide trend in extreme workouts (CrossFit) and obstacle courses (Tough Mudder) and would have a significant quotient of pain involved. I can now report that the structure has its roots in a 2009 tournament designed by sicko Commerce Casino tournament director Matt Savage. The aim was to bring a bit of suffering and privation to today’s coddled players, who can only dream about life as a Road Warrior, traveling the backroads of oil-boom Texas, looking at their cards bleary-eyed down the barrel of a shotgun. If inflicting maximum pain was the intent, I can attest that the 2013 Iron Man exceeded all expectations. Players in the inaugural 2009 event were given a paltry 10,000 chip starting stack, with play lasting a respectable (but less-than-incredible) 19 hours and 21 minutes. In 2012, a new record of 36 hours, 34 minutes was set at the Delaware Park Ironman Poker Challenge. Not to be outdone, the Machiavellian schemers at the APT concocted a structure-to-end-all structures: 100,000 starting chips with 25/50 starting blinds. One hour levels replaced by 1.5 hour levels after the 10th round, and 2 hour levels beyond the 20th round.
If inflicting maximum pain was the intent, I can attest that the 2013 Iron Man exceeded all expectations. Players in the inaugural 2009 event were given a paltry 10,000 chip starting stack, with play lasting a respectable (but less-than-incredible) 19 hours and 21 minutes. In 2012, a new record of 36 hours, 34 minutes was set at the Delaware Park Ironman Poker Challenge. Not to be outdone, the Machiavellian schemers at the APT concocted a structure-to-end-all structures: 100,000 starting chips with 25/50 starting blinds. One hour levels replaced by 1.5 hour levels after the 10th round, and 2 hour levels beyond the 20th round. The event was recorded for posterity and had a number of officials on hand (including mute observers with “witness” signs hanging from their necks) to ensure integrity of the game. Also on hand was a table of paramedics, presumably to ensure rapid response should a player lose consciousness or go into pizza-induced cardiac arrest. I sat down at 8:30pm, about halfway through the first round, having done my best to catch some zzz’s that afternoon. The first shock was the stack size: I had come to the tournament unprepared for a stack and blind structure designed specifically (as it gradually dawned on me) to extend play as long as humanly possible. Play was tentative at first, with players sussing each other out and preemptively yawning, stretching, and grumbling about how late the tournament had started. As the song goes “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” This was the quiet before the storm, with players still not battle-tested at the front lines of sleep deprivation. With 100,000 chips behind, even major hands represented only 5 to 10 percent of any given player’s stack.
As the mornnight (as they call it in the Philippines) wore on, I transferred to a much more active table of mostly locals who seemed intent on bluffing off as many chips as possible. When they inevitably started discussing strategy in the local lingo following every major hand, I asked half-jokingly if I could join the club. Playing tight to the vest, I had 80,000 behind at around 4am when I finally doubled up. Having raised AJ pre-flop and gotten a call from a crafty Singaporean player (who had won a previous APT side-event), I bet out when an ace hit the flop. My opponent’s smooth call alerted me that I was quite possibly behind. I checked the turn and my foe put in a pot-sized bet of 10,000. I talked myself into a marginal call I could not have afforded in a normal tournament. If I failed to hit a jack, I still had 50,000 behind (about 100 big blinds) and an easy fold. When a jack peeled out on the river I shoved all-in. After surprisingly little thinking time, the Singaporean called and showed AK. Thirty minutes later he was out of the tournament, the victim of his own pre-river timidity and post-river overvaluing of AK. In the next couple hours, I brought my stack up to a very respectable 200,000 simply by calling down bets with “bluff catcher” second pairs against my overly aggressive table mates. Moving to another table around 6am, I was fortunate to catch a couple Korean players in the throes all-encompassing fits of rage and tilt. Whatever history underpinned the bad blood at the table, I was glad to play the role of neutral mediator and relieve them of their chips. The cobwebs of the early morning dissipated with a few sets of pushups and energy drinks, and I was humming along with a rather sizable stack when I moved to a new table around noon.
This table had a distinctly British accent and, over the next few hours, there were quite a number of small-stacked players to be pleasantly picked off (sorry, old chap). There was also a major hand in which I had KQ, and flopped KQ on a Q-K-10 board. I called a major raise by my super-aggressive Singaporean opponent and hit a boat with a king on the turn. After the expected pot-sized bet, I pushed all in. My opponent eyed me down for 10 minutes or so before ultimately folding, claiming that he held a Q-10. Whether it was indeed Q-10 or air, I was not surprised to see him fritter away his substantial stack shortly before we got into the money, coming away with nothing to show for 20 some-odd hours on the felt. Take away––super aggressive play may get you far in tournaments where blinds are exerting major pressure, but will kill you within an Iron Man-type structure where (much like cash play) patience is rewarded. Another noteworthy mid-tourney hand involved a little posturing on my part that (literally) put the fear of God into opponents. While I did not sell my soul to the devil, I was not above using underhanded tactics to enhance my image on the felt. When 6-6-6 came out on the flop, I casually commented that the tourney had commenced on Friday the 13th. I may also have let it slip in the same breath that my name is Damon. It is a peculiar happenstance that the American pronunciation of “Damon” corresponds with how Filipinos pronounce “demon,” and I frequently get startled glances from laundry shop clerks and Starbucks baristas in heavily Catholic Manila. Knowing that this would have its desired effect on at least a few of the players at the table, I remember taking a hefty pot with a well-timed raise in this particular pot.
In the hours leading up to the money (top 18), I wound up at an extremely challenging table. Key among my opponents was Samad Razavi, a girthy English fellow who was crowned APT Player of the Year for 2013, his second time to win the coveted award. His charming wife Maria Carmen Esdaile (who was quite pregnant) also played the Iron Man and was Player of the Year runner-up. I had knocked her out a few hours ago after some enjoyable chat, while she nursed a dwindling stack. Anyway, this fellow turned out to have a gladiatorial style and threw chips onto the table with an almost physical force that made each round of betting seem like a throw-down. He and his cohort Howard Ang Lee (affectionately known as “Howard the Duck”) had been at the table together for quite a while and had an effective system of large raises from UTG (with air), designed to take chips from timid players who were afraid of landing outside the money. At first I held back and sussed Mr. Razavi out, and then I began to take stabs at pots, and finally to fight fire with fire. The bubble is no time for meek play and with the blind structure the way it was, anything between the 300,000-700,000 chips I fluctuated within was enough to make a serious run at the money. As it turned out, active play was the correct strategy, as it took us more than an hour to make it down from 19 players to 18. Particularly surprising was the resilience of the short stack at the next table, a rail-thin German guy whom everyone kept expecting to bust out. Sandro Simon somehow hung in there and the next time I encountered him was on the final table, where he was one of the chip leaders.
At around the 30th hour the bubble finally burst and we consolidated to two tables. Stacks were still enormous relative to the blinds, so we would expect to see some tight play to the bitter finish, right? Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. With the next nine payouts ranging from $1320 to $1870, players decided en masse that just a few hundred dollars reward for the equivalent of four days work was about right. I don’t know about other countries, but in the U.S. that kind of money is slightly above minimum wage. Despite an incentive for cool, calculated play, the two tables folded to one in a record 2.5 hours. Player after deep-stacked player succumbed to the rookie mistake of overplaying marginal hands into all-in shoves and calls. It was as if need for sleep convinced people that leaving with just a little money in their pockets was fine, as long as they got some much needed zzz’s. I nearly fell into the same trap, as my head was beginning to feel as if it was swimming in a fishbowl. Money, what is that really compared with a hot shower and a nice warm bed? The wreckage at the other table was far greater, as a young Singaporean Zhang Quaosheng, who had seemed conservative and rational 12 hours ago, went all in repeatedly with marginal hands. His excuse was that he had a flight to catch and work to prepare for, although I chalked it up (as with nearly everything at this befuddling tournament) to lack of sleep. Amazingly, Zhang donked out against three or four players in a row, in the process earning chip leader status. Failing to shift gears, his downfall was just as rapid and he was ultimately sent home packing in 12th place. To his credit, Zhang took it all with a cosmic shrug––which I could not say for Samad Razavi, who nearly knocked everyone’s chips off the table when he was felted in 11th. I could not entirely blame him – when you have invested a full day of your life in a tournament, to land outside of the real money and take home a few hundred dollars feels like a crushing defeat.
Part one and part two of the full article are accessible at PokerFuse. In this in-depth account, Damon Shulenberger highlights some of the hands and psychological warfare that helped him endure and overcome the historic marathon that was the 2013 APT-RWM Iron Man Poker Challenge.
To read his reporting from the 2014 World Series of Poker, visit the WSOP14 blog.
Designing this website has been an intensive collaborative process, with more than 400 screen shots exchanged between Damon and I over a 3 month period. We were both busy with other projects - Damon was at the World Series of Poker in Vegas, blogging on the action, and I was in Quezon City, helping run InTouch Dentistry with my partner Dr. Malou M. Mendoza. (Not coincidentally, Damon met us two years ago as a dental patient requiring two crowns.) The work on the site was intense - refinements were made on an almost daily basis, with an aim of creating something completely original - a site that combined fluid vertical and horizontal design elements, and yet did not confuse or overwhelm the viewer. There was a lot of give and take in this process, as we both had distinct conceptual ideas, but somehow we worked out a middle path that respected individuality and showcased our complementary skills.
Nils Sens
As is so often the case, both Damon and I started out without a clearcut vision. The project grew organically and exponentially - Damon had initially only wanted to create a site that showcased his art-poetry book "EARTH FABRIC." From there, we explored a much broader project that had to do with art and community. Realizing we had overstepped our technical capacities, we finally settled on a personal web site that would give an overview of Damon's written work. On the other hand, we re-used design blocks and elements from the EARTH FABRIC prototype, which were then integrated into Damon's personal web site.
Despite the many conceptual changes, we consistently worked on a functional back bone that puts the user experience first. Damon and I had a clear goal of a very modern, almost app-like site; we wanted: a) the sleekness of a one-page vertical quick scroll page b) a responsive website that adapts to different screen- and browser window sizes We did not prioritize mobile phone layout, because we figured that those people who would have time for and interest in a soulful combination of art and poetry most likely sit in front of a computer or are at least tablet users.
Web design in a way is the simplest form of programming. Things are build up logically, little details count, and careless mistakes happen, especially when writing code 'by hand', which requires working long hours and doing many fast edits. Mistakes like a missing ';' in the end of a line can bring everything down by canceling all code that appears after that statement. Some things only work under specific conditions, which can be easily overlooked, leading to hours of frustrating trouble-shooting - everything appears to be in place, yet it doesn't look or function the way it should. Endless Google- or StackOverflow searches yield no result. The missing '>' finally turns out to be the culprit. Using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)-editor like Adobe Dream Weaver remedies this to some degree, but gives you less control over the minute design details and inflates the website with unnecessary code.
... yet another big concept! Having worked on the framework for the EARTH FABRIC site for a while (a website aimed at simply selling the art-poetry book) Damon and I realized that there was a much bigger picture. We spent hours discussing a possible community gallery site and got very enthusiastic about it. We thought about using the existing design elements of the EF site as a 'splash page' and started designing other elements and components. Then things became too big too fast, and we pulled the brakes on a project that we could not finish in any reasonable time frame. In the meantime, I had read Damon's other poetry and prose, and was especially captivated by his Japan thriller ARISUGAWA PARK. When Damon asked me to 'just' build him a personal website, featuring all his work, I thought “at last, we have a sensible, achievable idea.”
The quick scroll effect required a little web search since Javascript is a language I'm still in the process of familiarization with. But there is always some code to be found online that can be integrated, especially from the JQuery library. This way, I created the smooth horizontal scroll effect. Then trouble started: In order to build a ‘nested’ quick scroll – horizontally arranged content pages inside vertical sections – I added two such scripts. This did not work and it was a major setback. The idea seemed impossible at my current skill-level. I planned to seek professional help on that and put that part of the design aside. Then, when I took a fresh look at the problem, an idea sparked: I took the second, very similar script, extracted its main function, and added it to the vertical scroll script. It worked. It was the exhilarating feeling of succeeding in 'hacking' an existing Javascript function, making things work!
One of my early realizations was that it is very difficult to fit text and images into fixed, designated areas WITHOUT using scrollbars, especially when the layout is supposed to be responsive (adjusting to any given screen or browser window size). I researched intensely to see whether there was any good solution without resorting to the use of Javascript - I couldn't find anything useful. However, I did find a little script that turns em-based-, or pixel-based- into 'rem'-based, fluid font. Still, the prospect of having to push pixels around, while fitting image- and text areas to various types of screen orientation, -size, aspect ratio or browser dimensions gave me a real headache.
As an idea worth exploring, I set up a whole range of min-aspect css files that each contained different layout, depending on the window's aspect ratio. For example, a tall but narrow screen (e.g. 4-by-9) triggers the corresponding css-file and its layout code. When the screen becomes wider, the aspect ratio changes and a different css-file is activated, creating an adaptive layout rearrangement. This whole system took relatively long to set up, but once done, it allowed me to write very screen-specific layouts in a reasonably short timeframe. It took days to adjust all images and font and I am still working on the fine-tuning of this 'engine' (a major update of this website can be expected). Still it works - it adjusts the layout even to the oddest window sizes and I am currently working on creating a clean, basic design template based on this approach.
A rewarding aspect of the project has involved contributing my own artistic vision as the site evolved. The background image for the Earth Fabric section (also accompanying Lioness - Part Two) was created by digitally combining two of April’s artworks. Surprisingly, my rogue hybrid was wholeheartedly approved by the artist. I also created the distorted background photo collage for the Ironman Poker section. It expresses visually what Damon described feeling after sitting at the poker table for 49 hours straight. The idea to use Damon's own artwork and photos for the East to West section came when I stumbled upon his pictures browsing his Facebook profile. Damon let me select poems to feature and accompanying images that I thought went best with each work.
The site you are viewing is hand-coded and can’t be seen anywhere else on the web for two reasons: One, it is not a purchased template, but designed from scratch in a plain text editor, which allowed me to control the smallest details. Two, the website employs a unique method to adjust itself to (m)any different browser window / screen sizes, trying to always maximize layout space. This took two months to conceptualize, build, test, and debug. This ‘responsive backbone’ is now a ‘proof-of-concept’ product, which I will still be seeking improving in the coming weeks and months.
We are already discussing the next evolution of the site. Working on the images Damon provided for Arisugawa Park has given me the idea of creating a work that would include digital manga illustrations of a novel that cries out of artistic interpretation. We are also discussing ways of developing the vertical-horizontal format of this site into an “Earth Fabric” network for artists. Our aim is to enable artists to be discovered, and to display and sell their works within a dynamic, social media-informed digital gallery setting. In a practical vein, we have discussed partnering to create a design/content studio that will offer bespoke attention to clients’ needs and help them stand out from run-of-the-mill template users.
Damon Shulenberger is a freelance writer and tournament poker junkie. Follow him on
Google+ and check his Blog for project updates.
Nils Sens writes CSS for breakfast and builds websites from scratch. With his partner Dr. Malou Mendoza, he is also a dental office manager. If you are looking for quality, affordable dental care in Manila visit the German-Philippine Dental Studio.