Ryan Masters – Technicolor Adventures of an Alternative Writer

by Laura Emerson

Continued...

There is Ryan, the academic who graduated from UC-Santa Cruz with a degree in anthropology, then worked from 1995-96 teaching ESL and serving as the assistant editor of the bilingual journal Fiction & Drama at the National Cheng Kung University. NCKU is located in Tainan City on the southwest coast of Taiwan where the population density on the 100 square mile island is 1849 people per square mile.

“You promise me something, boy.”
I nod, wanting suddenly to please these men very much.
“You get back home you love the sun.”
“And never set foot on a boat again.”

Before I can answer there is a roar in my ears and I am being dragged by my hair back over the rail of the ship by a multitude of hands. When I hit the deck, I hear the sound of voices yelling in alarm as a heavy weight pumps the water from me and the storm continues to rage overhead.

(“Catch and Release”)

There is Ryan, the academic adventurer, who in 1997 catapulted himself from the warm southwest edge of the Pacific to the frigid northeast—landing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where three years later, he was one of ten graduates receiving an MFA in writing. UAF’s campus is located near the center of a state whose flower is the “Forget-Me-Not,” with a student population of approximately 5,500 on a campus of 360 million acres.

Hungover, I taught literature
in lunar tundra, wearing moon boots.

But sometimes in the midst of class I simply
shut my eyes and the world fell away.

Air searing bright around me, I would reenter
the classroom’s atmosphere, find myself bobbing

in a calm sea of bemused and concerned faces,
my SOS signal bleeping quietly its lonely message.

(“In Freefall”)

There is Ryan, the bearer of his own truth, who shared openly with us the brief details of a self-destructive period in his life. He found the courage to confront that demon and destroy it, regaining his passion for life in the process. Along the way, the fiction writer discovered poetry and the strength it gave him to process what he was going through.

Krist's mother would not mourn her son
until the river produced a body.
Instead she sued the Fairbanks sports store
that rented him a canoe without lifejackets.
When they'd shown her a waiver
with his signature lying illegibly
across its bottom, she refused
to believe it was his hand.

I could not tell her that her son
would not have appreciated the lawsuit
in the same way I could not tell her
there would never be a body,
that he was wedged forever
beneath submerged tree and stone,
pinned down by the roar
of a dark and silted river.

I gave her a tour of the cabin
that her son and I shared. Where I still lived.
I showed her photos, some bottles
and bowls he threw in ceramics class.
Even when I played the scratchy demo tape
our band recorded just weeks before
his death, she would not cry.

Instead, she sat on his empty bed
and looked at the door. As if he could walk
in. As if she wanted
to be sure to meet her son
halfway across the room
with a dry towel
for his wet and tousled hair.

(“Habeas Corpus”)

There is Ryan, the writer who returned from the abyss clear-eyed and enthusiastic by the jolt of pending fatherhood, who aspired to settle himself and new family into a more self-respecting life. When the brand new Poet-in-Residence call for applicants caught his eye, he submitted a literary proposal for the position that dazzled the Pacific Grove committee who made him the offer to live in the reduced-rent home in exchange for promoting poetry throughout the community. At www.montereybaypoetry.com you will discover just how active Ryan is in the poetry community—as a poet and an enthusiast for other poets.

There is Ryan the prolific writer—published in over 40 magazines, who continues to be active in the poetry community while teaching creative writing at CSUMB and working for the Monterey County Weekly as a feature writer.

It’s like a portrait from the Pleistocene. Megafauna has returned to Monterey County. First the condors and now bison. I half expect a giant sloth to lumber onto the scene from stage left.

Quiñones gingerly makes her way out toward the buffalo where they’ve taken shelter from the hot sun under the crown of an oak tree and begins singing a hauntingly beautiful Lakota song. It’s a surreal sight. A woman with a Spanish last name singing a Lakota song to buffalo in Monterey County. But I realize this is a perfect portrait of 21st Century ecology. It’s all so jumbled and misplaced, but somehow it seems to work.

(“Time Travelers”, MCW, July 6, 2006)

Finally, there is Ryan the journalist who spoke so fondly and respectfully of Bradley Zeve, executive editor of the Monterey County Weekly. Zebe had made Ryan an offer 2-1/2 years ago when he was writing for the Monterey County Herald to train him and teach him about being a journalist for an independent weekly with a leftist agenda.

When sheriffs brought the plaintiff into the courtroom wearing a prison jumpsuit and handcuffs to meet with his estranged wife, the door was locked behind them. Michael and Lydia Harris greeted each other pleasantly and sat down with their respective lawyers. The unusual meeting was set up so the prisoner and his wife could figure out how to split $107 million.

So began the most heavily armed divorce hearing in Monterey County history, and one of the last chapters of the remarkable tale of Death Row Records, the legendary rap label that boasted a history as violent and flawed as it was brilliant and influential.

(Bling Bang” MCW, 4-27-06)

In his exploration for a good story, Ryan came to the realization that there are many very good stories out there that he will never be able write because of the impact his articles will have on people he writes about. He had no idea of the fallout from his writing until it was too late, and now he takes seriously the responsibility for keeping his readers informed without jeopardizing the safety of those he writes about. “Sometimes when I bite the hook,” he admitted, “the hook bites back.”

Dr. Brian Railsback is on a personal mission of literary retribution. The scholar from Western South Carolina University is determined to correct a major oversight in his field. He is doggedly attempting to realign the relatively newborn ecocritical universe, with the blazing star of John Steinbeck in his rightful place at the center.

Railsback, who will be espousing his theories at the Steinbeck Festival in Salinas this weekend, believes John Steinbeck is the unrecognized father of ecocriticism, introducing many of its principles before the theory was founded just a few short years after his death. (“The First Eco-Writer”, MCW, Aug 5, 2004)

I wonder, too, what Ryan saw that evening when he looked at us. Did his imagination propel him into the future when he would be older and can return, he said, to where he started—writing novels and poetry? In the meantime, we will continue to look forward to reading his feature articles in the Monterey County Weekly and vicariously enjoy his literary adventures.

He ordered the vessel to be turned away from the sharp marine terraces of Big Sur and out to sea, towards the rescue ships that were closing in on his distress signals. Despite his tragic history, he was going to opt for the water landing.

Two years earlier, in 1933, Wiley had been serving aboard the USS Akron when the rigid dirigible had crashed in a storm off the New Jersey coast. The disaster had killed 78 of 81 men, including Admiral William Moffett, the father of Naval aviation. The only surviving officer of the Akron, Wiley was determined to avoid a similar tragedy by performing a controlled crash into the sea.

(“Ghost Ship,” MCW, Aug. 4, 2005)

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