Antarctica Matt Greene
I got older and worked jobs that broke me and jobs that didn't. I lived
in a studio in Altadena near the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. Sometimes I'd look
up at night and see strange things—overlapping triangles, blue orbs, a human
silhouette. I knew these things weren't real, and yet, there they were. Jake
sent me a crate from Antarctica. He worked at McMurdo Station, driving
things around. Inside the crate were DVDs and t-shirts he'd found in the
ice. He said Antarctica was not what you'd think. He said everyone was an
alcoholic because there was nothing to do. He worked seven months and had
the rest of the year off, and he said last year he went to Fiji, chartered a
boat and found his own island. He lived there for a week, eating mango and
crab. When the boat came back for him, he saw that on the far side of the
island there was a resort. He said that at McMurdo there was a 24-hour
Subway and a 24-hour pizza joint. The pizza was just alright. He said
Anthony Bourdain interviewed him and they talked about beer and Indonesia
and the lives of prostitutes. In the episode, you can only see Jake for a
moment, playing bass in the background.
Matt Greene teaches writing in Appalachia. Others in this series are in or
coming from Cincinnati Review,
Cleaver, Spillway, Split Lip, and South Dakota
Review.
Read his postcard.
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