{"id":1660,"date":"2018-09-11T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1660"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:01:00","slug":"r-m-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/r-m-cooper\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 82: R.M. Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-99b67295\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-dd3264a0\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-e0d908e0\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-e0d908e0\">\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/09\/rm-cooper-1.jpg\" alt=\"View More: http:\/\/laurelcscott.pass.us\/ivywedding\" title=\"View More: http:\/\/laurelcscott.pass.us\/ivywedding\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About R. M. Cooper<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>R. M. Cooper&#8217;s writing has appeared in dozens of journals including Adroit, Baltimore Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Denver Quarterly, Fugue, Passages North, Redivider, and Wisconsin Review and has received awards and recognition from UC Berkeley and American Short Fiction. Cooper lives in the Colorado Front Range is the managing editor of Sequestrum (www.sequestrum.org)<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-b621e6a1\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-b621e6a1\">\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\n\t\tA Profile of the Author\n\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notes on &#8220;Emergency Instructions&#8221;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Emergency Instructions&#8221; was inspired by the wonderful Spoon song, &#8220;Mystery Zone.&#8221; (I&#8217;ve been requesting the band play it live for years, unsuccessfully.) It&#8217;s a great song that I won&#8217;t begin to try and interpret; it&#8217;s about the mystery zone, after all. One of the lines that stuck with me was, &#8220;Times that we met, before we met, we&#8217;ll go back there [to the mystery zone].&#8221; The idea of having met someone before they become integral to our lives is fascinating. So is the possibility of taking future\/present knowledge back to those times. But then, time travel has been done to death. My intention was to keep the story from descending into a melodramatic mess or simple plot twist. After realizing that, pairing a character&#8217;s emotional drive with the informational layout was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>m I&#8217;ve been listening to lots of Spoon (obviously), enjoying Colorado breweries (wheats mostly), and spend lots of time with a rescue Maine Coon, Murphy. Maine Coons &#8220;trill&#8221; a lot, which mostly sounds like a hum. So Murphy hums when he jumps and eats and greets my wife at the door and best of all, when I&#8217;m done working at five. He&#8217;s a great coworker. Roger from accounting never hums at 5pm. He&#8217;s a jerk.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-7e6c16e8\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-7e6c16e8\">\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-d47361dc gb-query-loop-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-ed2ade5b gb-query-loop-item post-2908 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-featured-work\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-ed2ade5b\">\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1682\" height=\"2560\" src=\"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"issue 82\" class=\"wp-image-440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-scaled.jpg 1682w, https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-673x1024.jpg 673w, https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-768x1169.jpg 768w, https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-1009x1536.jpg 1009w, https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/05\/Issue-82-Cover-for-email-page-001-1-1345x2048.jpg 1345w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1682px) 100vw, 1682px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-5ba7eb8c gb-headline-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/emergency-instructions-by-r-m-cooper\/\">&#8220;Emergency Instructions&#8221; by R.M. Cooper<\/a><\/h2>\n\n<p class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-196b72c8 gb-headline-text\"><time class=\"entry-date published\" datetime=\"2022-01-02T13:53:29-08:00\">January 2, 2022<\/time><\/p>\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"gb-shapes\"><div class=\"gb-shape gb-shape-1\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 1200 211.2\" preserveAspectRatio=\"none\"><path d=\"M600 188.4C321.1 188.4 84.3 109.5 0 0v211.2h1200V0c-84.3 109.5-321.1 188.4-600 188.4z\"\/><\/svg><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":25234,"featured_media":1661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1660"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38159,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions\/38159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}