Missouri River Writer

Cicada and Hummingbird

2011-12-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Cicada and Hummingbird fell in love

Because their wings made the same sound
each mistook the other for a mate

So they dressed up to the max
and went out to dinner and a movie

They don't speak each others' language
but who needs talk when you're in love

when romantic foreignness and
odd looks and inflections
says it all and they'll always have

that moment when her wings
answered his, song for song

Feedback: Butterfly Woman and Other Tales

2011-12-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

It's only just started to trickle in. First review for the new book. Full disclosure: Annie is a friend of mine, maybe not unbiased, but she isn't given to hyperbole or hubris. At all. When she speaks, I listen.

By Annie Pope (Dec 1, 2011) on the Lulu site for the paperback

Mike Robertson is one of those rare male authors who writes female characters as well as male ones. No one-dimensional foils for the male protagonist here; his female characters are fully realized. This is an author who cares deeply about his characters--about all of humanity, it would seem--and the reader soon finds herself caring deeply as well.

Still, although the stories are character driven, the action generates sufficient momentum even for this very impatient reader. Each tale is woven around a defining or pivotal moment in the lives of a wide array of protagonists at every stage of life, and you find yourself embracing those moments as if they were your own.

But what, above all, makes these stories worth reading is their utter lack of sentimentality, their stoic wisdom--each one set in a landscape of anxiety or menace but ultimately informed by a luminous sense of hope.

Get the book. Read the stories. Once you've read them, you'll find yourself going back to them again and again, to revisit characters for whom, in the briefest glimpse of their lives, you've come to feel a most welcome sort of love.

Butterfly Woman and Other Tales

2011-10-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Available in two e-book formats, each $2.99 or less.

Kindle format. If you don't have a Kindle, try the excellent Kindle Reader, available for PCs, Macs, and mobile phones!

Paperback version and EPUB format, from the Lulu Store. Looks great with the free Adobe Digital Reader. This book is now available for iPad and iPod too.

"A bit of magical realism, a taste or two of natural realism, even a bit of fantastic hilarity. Author Michael Robertson presents a sampler of short stories, the perfect length for a morning's read after breakfast, or an afternoon's relaxation on the deck or beach of your choice.

"'Butterfly Woman', the title story, gives us a glimpse of a woman who turns kisses into insects. Or spend a few moments with a woman in Hawaii who longs for her youth as a surfer beyond the beaches of Waimea. An artist who loses words and gains world fame. A shocking moment in the life of the president of a small coastal country.

"We enter the minds of a drug dealer with a big heart, a former aid to a powerful Russian bureaucrat, a boy hiding in the winter woods of the Ozark hills, and a young man who has lost his past but discovers his future. And more. This little book presents a medley of portraits of real human beings in defining moments.

"Whatever your taste in fiction, this little book will whet your appetite and tease your imagination."

Book Coming Soon

2011-10-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Didn't think so. Okay, I'll do it myself.

You could check back here, but I'll do my best to let you know when it's available.

How My Parents Met

2011-09-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

Mark met Melanie online, through a friend. It wasn't a romance. Not even close. The connection was professional. Or at least creative. Both were writers of fiction. They exchanged some Facebook comments about their work and eventually shared their stories with each other. Their conversations were funny, flippant, sharp and clever, but only mildly flirtatious. Each needed feedback from the other about the craft and effectiveness of his or her work. Each agreed to become beta-readers for the other's new stories.

They lived in different states. All of this was on the Internet. They hadn't met in person. When Melanie came to Mark's town to visit old friends, they agreed to meet in a local coffee shop, finally in person, each with a laptop, each ready to write as well as exchange ideas.

Mark knew what Melanie looked like from her Facebook icon, assuming it was a recent photo and more or less accurate. It was, but Mark was surprised when Melanie walked in, briefcase in one hand, books in the other. It wasn't that he was expecting anything. It's just that, well, she looked great. He knew she was smart--very smart, judging by her stories. He knew she had a great sense of humor. Everything she did and said expressed that. What he hadn't expected was how incredibly sexy she was.

That, of course, was a problem for him. How could he concentrate on writing, on creating a new story on the fly while sitting here next to her? How could he keep his head down and keep his eyes off of her amazing face and body and concentrate on the craft of writing?

He tried. After a bit of chatter and slightly embarrassed smiles, they both sat quietly, eyes on their laptop screens, considering. Listening to the muse that would start their respective short stories. Or so it seemed. Finally Mark looked up at Melanie and was surprised to find she was looking at him too. He waited for her to speak first.

"What?" she said.

"What? What do you mean?"

She said, "I'm sorry, it's almost like you're thinking out loud. Is it your story? What's bothering you?"

"My story. Yeah." He glanced down, considered for an instant. Realized it was not going to be possible, and would be pointless, to try to fool her.

"Okay, yeah," he said, looking back up at her. "Here's the thing. I can't think about my story right now."

"Why?"

"It's, uh, embarrassing. I'm embarrassed to admit why."

"Well, tell me. We're here to write, right? Let's talk through whatever is blocking that, if possible. Then let's write."

"What's blocking that for me is you."

"Me?" she said, brows furrowed. "Why me? I'm not doing anything."

"See, I told you it was embarrassing. I don't mean you really. Me. It's me. I just didn't expect you to be .…" He stopped.

"What?"

"So attractive. So damn good looking. So sexy."

She held his eyes but said nothing for what seemed a long time to Mark. "Okay," she finally said. "Thanks. I get it now. You're distracted." They both glanced away and nursed their coffees for a moment. "Can you just get over it so we can get down to writing?"

Mark said, "Maybe. I don't know. You can. Maybe I can. I know I should be able to anyway. Direct this energy into my story somehow."

"Right," she said. "Okay then."

They each turned their attention to their laptops for a few minutes. After typing a bit, Melanie looked up again. "Hey. For what it's worth, I'm having the same problem."

That's all she said. That's all Mark needed to hear. He pushed his laptop cover down out the way, stood halfway up, leaned forward, and kissed Melanie on the lips. Slowly. Gently. Lingeringly. She didn't pull away, didn't resist.

The rest is history.

Donuts

2011-09-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

The moment I opened the letter, I knew our trouble was only starting. Here we were, Peg and me thinking we were hiding. And now here we are, waiting for Mac to drive up and get out and knock on the door of this cabin in the woods, and I couldn't imagine, right now, what we might do.

It said he had her sister. That she had given him the address. That if we weren't there when he arrived, he'd do something to her. It didn't say what, but it was a mean sounding letter. He said we'd better be ready, have what he wanted ready to hand over, and we might need a little time to fetch it and have it ready. That's why he'd given us time. A letter in the mailbox instead of just a knock on the door.

"I don't believe him," Peg said. She's a tough lady, my Peg, freckles and muscles and a high pitched voice that makes her sound ditzier than she is, by a mile. This whole adventure had been her idea and now look at us, standing here looking out the door at the lake at dusk, listening to loons and whipperwills and wind in the pines. The smell of freshly shed needles at my grandmother's cabin, that's what I'm gonna miss most if we have to run. And maybe Peg.

"Why not?" I ask her. "You know Mac better than I do but he sounds pretty mean to me," I say. "We got to do something, that's for sure."

"I'm calling my sister." She took out her cell phone from the bag she'd packed when we ran.

"I don't think ...."

"Shit," she said. "No bars. You got a telephone in this place?"

There was no phone service this far up in the mountains, and we were too far from any cell tower. I could have told Peg that, but I'd known her just long enough to know she's the kind of girl who has to find out things for herself.

"We need to get to a phone," she said. "So's I can call Dotty. I don't ever call Dotty, that little bitch. But I need to know."

"Town's down the road, there's service there. But Peg, we came up here to get away from Mac. Your idea. It doesn't make sense to me to go back there."

"He's on his way here, you idiot! We can't stay here."

Now, I'm not crazy about being called things like idiot, but it's Peg and I know it's just how she talks, that she doesn't really mean it. So I ignore that. "There's a boat," I say, looking out the door toward the lake. "Grandma's boat. It's mine, really. I fixed it up for her, got it running and all. And I guess when she went in to the old folk's home she probably meant me to take care of it."

"A boat? Where the hell would we go?"

"Down the lake to the channel at the end. Up that, there's Door's End."

"What's that?"

"It's a town. On the big lake."

"What lake?"

"Superior. This lake empties right into Superior. If we needed to go anywhere, there's a ferry there to the other side."

"Okay. Let's go. Wait, you got money for the ferry?"

"Why would we want to take the ferry?"

"Idiot. To get away. From Mac."

"Yeah, maybe. But why are we running from Mac?"

This she had tried to explain, in a hurry, when she came to my place after he showed up at her apartment in town. He had walked up to her door and demanded she give him the box of donuts she had picked up that morning from the bakery where her sister worked. Peg being Peg, she said she didn't have any donuts and told him to fuck off. He looked hurt, she said, and left.

What donuts? I asked. Why would the guy want her donuts? She said she didn't know. Told me she called her sister then and Dottie sounded all nervous and told her not to give the guy the box of donuts she had just given her. She said watch out for that guy, he could be trouble, and maybe Peg should hide those donuts.

Then Peg jumped in her car and did a beeline to my place. Along the way, she said, she stopped at a light and there was this homeless woman wearing pink high-top tennis shoes with rainbow colored laces and bon-bons, and a fake fur coat, with a shopping cart. Peg was so pissed at her sister that she threw the whole box of donuts, unopened, into that woman's cart when the light turned green, and skeedattled over to my place. When she arrived, her phone rang and it was her sister again, who told her to get the hell out of Dodge, that the little guy, Mac was his name, was hunting for her. And he was really pissed.

So I said, let's go up to my Grandma's place by the lake. He'll never find us there. And then the next morning, what do you know. There's this letter from Mac, saying "wherever you stashed the stuff, you better have it ready for me when I get there." Didn't say when he was coming, but I had the feeling I didn't want for us to be around when he did.

"But I don't have them anymore!" she said. "I got rid of them."

"Okay, but he doesn't know that. What's he gonna do when he finds out?" I said. I said I didn't want to find out.

So, driving back to town didn't sound like an option. We grabbed what we'd brought, which wasn't much, and headed out to the dock and into the little aluminum runabout with the forty horse Merc. I checked the fuel and it wasn't full but it would have to do. We cast off and headed out of the cove and into the body of the long lake that led down toward Door's End and Lake Superior.

There was a head wind and pretty good chop, and that wasn't good because it was a cool day and we kept getting spray. Worse, it meant Grandma's little boat heaved and bucked like a cholic foal everytime it fetched up those big waves, and coming down, the engine revved as the prop caught foam. It slowed us down and meant our gas wasn't going to get us very far.

Which it didn't. About three or four miles, maybe three quarters the length of the lake, it ran out and we were dead in the water and a good quarter mile from either shore. I should have anticipated that -- I would have run along one of the shorelines. But I was worried that Mac might be following us along the shore road. Either side, no way to know.

It was then I realized we didn't have any paddles. Now, I was raised with boats and boating. What little I make is mostly from fishing. I should have known better. But the situation, and especially Peg, had me so distracted … anyway, here we were, adrift.

Peg was furious. "Adam, dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. How could you do something this stupid?"

"Me? All I did was try to save your ass. You got us into this!"

Peg pulled out her phone and tried her sister again. "Hey!" she said. "I've got bars! Well, one bar." She dialled Dotty. "Hey big sister. What's going on? We got this stupid letter from a guy named Mac saying he had you as a hostage and I was supposed to give him something." She waited and held the phone up to see the display. "You there? Oh. There you are. Okay, so are you okay?" She held it up again. "No bars! Dammit!" She glared at me, bared her teeth, and said "This just sucks!" as she threw her phone as far out into the lake as she could.

"Well okay," I said. "You sure showed her. Or it."

"Oh crap." She sat down, looking like she was about to cry.

"Look," I said. "The wind's blowing us back toward shore. At least we won't be stranded out here long." I sat down too and started paddling with my hands.

The sun was pretty close to setting when we finally reached the bank. I tied up the boat and we clambered up the muddy slope. As I hoped, the blacktop was only a hundred feet or so away.

"What are we going to do?" Peg asked. This surprised me because Peg rarely asks this question. Usually she's decided what she wants to do well before anyone with her has had a chance to even think about it much. "Hitchhike, I guess," I said, and as if I'd conjured it, down the road, going south toward the channel end of the lake, came an old Volkswagen van. I stuck out my thumb. Peg, not surprisingly, stepped out into the middle of the road, arms waving.

A pair of young hippies, man and woman in their twenties, slowed down and pulled over for us. "Hey," the guy said. "You folks needing a ride or something? You're pretty far out here away from everything." All this with a big grin.

I answered. "Our boat ran out of gas. We could use a ride down to Door's End if you're going that way."

The guy stuck his arm out, holding a joint toward me. A test, I guessed. If we were cool enough not to mind their use of weed, then we were probably cool enough to ride with them. I accepted it and took a nice long toke. "Thanks," I said, voice squeaky because I was trying to hold my breath. The woman across from him stepped into the back of the van and opened the side door. "Yall climb in then," she said. We did.

"Bonnie's my name," she said, settling back into the front passenger seat. "This here's my husband Barry. We're on our way to Bellville, over on the other side of Superior. Taking the ferry. Where yall headed?" She was short, her hair long. Thick coils running down her back, tied with rainbow colored ribbons. Hair ties of colorful wool woven into her hair held beads of various sizes and shapes. She wore a loose blouse that showed off her full breasts.

I climbed in next to Peg in the back seat. As soon as I was seated, she slammed her fist into my arm. "Stop staring," she whispered. "I'm not!" I whispered back. I wasn't staring. I was admiring.

Peg said, "Perfect. We'll ride on down to that ferry with you, if you don't mind."

Back on the road, Barry slipped a cassette into the van's player and cranked it up. 'Friend of the Devil' floated out gradually, the Dead taking their time to build from drums to the familiar rhythms and melody. He passed the joint to Bonnie, who passed it back to me. Peg just ignored it. I stretched my arm up to Barry, who reached over his shoulder with his left hand. Soon I forgot all about our troubles with Mac and just settled back in the seat, tapping my toes in appreciation of all the little pleasures the universe occasionally offered up.

When I opened my eyes, we were nearly through the town of Door's End and approaching the big lake. Peg was on her knees in the little space between the two front seats, chattering away with Bonnie.

We thanked our new friends when we got out. I checked my wallet. I had just enough for two passenger tickets to Bellville, plus a little more, and a credit card I'd been saving for a rainy day.

We walked around the outer rail of the ferry as it headed out into the big water. All that was left of the day was a deep violet glow behind us, to the west. The trip across the lake would be at least two or three hours. "Where are we going," I asked.

"How the hell should I know? You're the one who bought the tickets."

"Bellville then. Anywhere away from Mac and all that trouble back there, I guess."

"And then what?" Peg asked.

I had no idea. Suddenly Peg grabbed my arm and sqeezed tight. "Look!" she whispered. I looked at her, and she was looking to her right, at a short man in a bad fitting suit standing against the rail about ten feet away from us. His pants sagged too low and flopped over his shoes. The arms of his suit jacket were too short. He was dumpy and mostly bald and all I could see of his face was a little meatball of a nose and sqirmy little lips. He turned his head then and looked directly at us. "It's him!" said Peg, with a shudder. "It's Mac!" She pushed up hard next to me. Finally I got the idea that she wanted us to walk away from him. So we walked on down the railing, not quite running, and kept going until he was out of sight.

"What's he doing here?" I asked. "Did he follow us?"

"I don't know," Peg said. "I didn't see anybody following us."

We walked half way around the ferry and stopped. "This is stupid," I said. "We can't get away from him this way. Is he dangerous?"

"Dottie said to watch out for him, that he was trouble. That's all I know," said Peg.

"Hey." It came from behind us. We turned around and sure enough, there he was. I expected from the movies that he'd have us covered with a gun or something. What he had in his hand was a map. "Wait," he said. "Please! Don't run away from me. This is a good thing, running into you here. So do you have the stuff on you?"

"What stuff?" I said.

"You know. The diamonds."

Peg and I looked at each other. "What diamonds?" she asked.

"What diamonds? The ones in the donuts. The donuts your sister gave you at the bakery. I don't know if she was trying to double cross us or what, but she was supposed to give those to me, to deliver to some guy in Bellville. I went in there this morning to do the pick up, you know, that's what they paid me to do - the lady running that place smuggles them in from Canada or something like that, and I'm supposed to take them over to Bellville to the buyer. But your sister says she doesn't have them. She says she gave you the wrong box of donuts and now you have them. You don't have them?"

"Jeez, no!" said Peg. "No, I don't have them. I never did have them. Or maybe I did, but I didn't know it. My sister called me and said you were after my donuts, which I thought was just nuts. So I took 'em out and threw 'em away."

Mac looked stricken. "You threw 'em away? What the fuck am I supposed to tell this guy in Bellville? How could you throw away diamonds?"

"I didn't know there were diamonds in those donuts! Are you stupid? Are you listening to me?"

Mac didn't looks happy about this, but he didn't look dangerous either. He looked defeated. And scared.

"Wait," said Peg. "I didn't exactly throw them away. I threw 'em into a shopping cart being pushed by a homeless woman in the street. I wanted to get rid of them and I figured she was probably hungry."

"Peg," I said. "That's so sweet."

"Shut up." she said.

"Same as throwing them away then," said Mac. They're probably gone by now. We'd never find them." Then, "I can't go to Bellville. That guy already paid your sister's boss for those. He'll be looking for me. I don't have those diamonds, I'm as good as dead." He looked up at us with a pleading look in his eyes.

"Okay," said Peg. "Let's get out of here. Off this boat."

"What?" I said. "Off the boat? In the middle of Lake Superior? I don't see how. We can't swim that far, Peg. It'd be suicide."

"What a wimp. We'll figure something out. How about we find ourselves a lifeboat."

And that's what we did. It was pitch black now, with only running lights on the bow and stern of the ferry. Along each side there were boxes, unlocked, each one containing a small self-inflating rubber dingy. I found a place where we were the least likely to be seen by the crew. "Wait," I said. "Even if this works, we're going to be stranded in this lake. These things have lights and radio signals, and maybe oars, but no motor. We might starve to death here in the middle of the lake."

"Naw, that won't happen," said Peg, and she opened the door of the box and pulled out the raft. "Let's go!"

We climbed over the rail and down to a bumper rail extending over the moving water. "Hold on to this rope running along the side," she yelled over the noise of the wind and water. "Go!" And she jumped. Mac and I jumped with her.

It was wet and cold and strange to suddenly be in the water in our clothes, but we held on. I felt for the pull cord and yanked. Within seconds, the raft unfolded and we clambered up, dripping and shivering, into the bottom. I found an emergency light on a mast and when the ferry lights were gone, set it up and turned it on. It wasn't much light, but at least we could see each other, barely, and if any boats happened to come along in the middle of the night, maybe they would spot us.

For the next hour, we shivered. At least Peg and I were able to share what little warmth we had. Mac had the worst of it, huddled in one end, sitting in a puddle, his suit a wrinkled mess, looking like a good natured bull dog that's been yanked from a hole in the ice.

"What are we doing here!" I finally bleated, just to exercise my vocal chords. I got no answer. "Why did we jump ship?"

"Shut up," Peg said through chattering teeth. "We had to get off. So Mac wouldn't die in a hail of bullets."

"So now we're gonna die from cold and starvation and dehydration!"

Mac reached into a plastic bag attached to the side of the raft, labeled "Survival Gear", and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. "Nestles PureLife Purified Water," he read from the label. "See," he said with a smile, "We have water."

Peg said, "Have either of you noticed we're floating in the middle of a lake? A lake? Fresh water? And I'll bet there's fishing line in that bag too. And maybe food." Mac reached back in the bag and rummaged, emerging with three bars of something wrapped in plastic. "Nature Valley Oat's 'N Honey," he said with a smile.

"Impressive," I said. "Wonderful. Now how about something to warm us up. Maybe some brandy?" Mac rummaged again. "Don't think so," he said. "Unless this will help." He pulled out three small packages about the size of his hand. "Emergency Blanket." He threw two to us and unwrapped the third one, an extremely thin sheet of plastic, dark on one side, reflective on the other, and draped it over himself. "Does that help?" I asked him. "Not much," he replied.

Our conversation was shattered the next moment by the sound of a horn. Extremely loud, one of those compressed air things that you take to football games and burst the eardrums of your neighbors with. It came from behind me. Turning, I saw three lights bobbing up and down. They were faint, a long way off and dimmed by fog rising from the water. I couldn't hear a motor. "Hello!" we all shouted. There was no answer. The lights didn't seem to move.

Gradually they got closer. Finally, like the ghost ship in that story about the guy and the albatross, an outline emerged from the mist. It was a sailboat. A sloop maybe forty feet long. Its sails were up but flapping loosely. There was hardly a breeze in the night air. It drifted up next to us. Two men and two women sat in the cockpit, wearing jackets over bathing suits and sandles and holding martinis. I grabbed the boat's rail when it got close enough. "Hi," said one with the practiced broad grin of a salesman. The skipper, I guessed, because he held the tiller in his non-martini hand. "Could you give us a tow? We seem to have run out of wind."

"We're awfully glad you came along," I said. "We don't seem to have any paddles in this thing."

"Oh. Well then. Fine lot of help you'll be," he said chuckling.

"Chuck!" said the woman next to him. "Invite the poor people aboard! They look colder than we are! Hi, I'm Anna, this is my husband Chuck, and this is Mable and Bob. We're lost out here, I think. Do you know where we are? Or how we might get back to port?"

Peg and I clambered aboard the sailboat. "Thanks," said Peg. "I'm Peggy, this is my boyfriend Adam, and this is Mac," she said, reaching her hand out to help Mac on to the gunwale. Naturally he stepped on the side of the raft first, which went down and backwards under his weight. He ended up in the lake, clinging desparately to Peg's hand. I can't begin to describe how hard it is to lift a sodden mass like him up the side of a boat far enough to slide him under the bottom wire of the rail. Finally he lay stretched out, water running down the deck in multiple runnels, breath heaving. Peg sat watching him while I worked my way back to the cockpit.

"You really lost?" I asked.

"First, you need a drink." announced Anna. Or was it Mable. Chuck said, "Lost may not be the right word under the circumstances. As Bob here keeps pointing out, we're on a lake, the sun will come up eventually, and then we're likely to see which direction land lies. But Bob's an incurable optimist, aren't you, Bob." Chuck lifted his drink in a toast toward the very relaxed Bob. In fact, Bob appeared to be asleep, best I could tell in the boat's running lights.

It occurred to me that I may not be good for much, may not have many skills, but finding my way around a boat, or Lake Superior for that matter, wasn't going to be that big a deal for me. Maybe I could be helpful.

"You have a compass on this thing?"

"Ah. Yes, I believe I do," said Chuck. He pointed to the bulkhead at the front of the cockpit. Built into it, next to the door to the cabin, was a compass. I examined it. "About 160," I said. We're headed about 160 degrees right now. Mostly south. You need to bring it up to starboard - that way," I pointed, "to 275 degrees. That's west, and that's the direction to the closest port. Door's End."

"Door's End!" exclaimed Mable. "Home! Chuck, take us home!"

Chuck swung the tiller to his left. I watched the compass ball gradually turn. It's numbers rose. Chuck didn't say anything, but looked unhappy to have to set his drink down and handle the boat. "You seem to know something about boats," he said to me. "Help me come about. There isn't much wind, but it seems to be mostly southerly right now, so I need to get the boom to the other side. And let out the headsail."

Finally we were on the right heading. The wind picked up a little too. Peg and Mac were below, warming up. I stayed topside because I didn't trust these people to handle this much boat, drunk, in the middle of the night, heading for a tricky inlet like Door's End. Finally we spotted the harbor lights. "There's the inlet. The red and green lights closest to us. It's pretty narrow. You shouldn't try to sail down that. I'd drop sails and motor in if I were you."

"Ah," said Chuck. "That's a problem."

"Why?"

"Well, we motored out, see, and that was okay until we ran out of fuel."

"You're out of gas?"

"Quick. See Bob, I knew this was a bright young man. Glad we stopped to pick you up!"

"You're kidding. No motor? How do you expect to get to your mooring? Where do you moor this thing anyway?"

Chuck stood up and peered into the dark. He raised his arm and pointed vaguely in the direction of the harbor lights. "In there. Somewhere."

"You're going to have to sail it in, then."

"Me! Not me!" said Chuck. "I barely know how to sail. I just got this boat. Actually I sort of won it in a card game. A friggin' money pit if you ask me. I don't know how to sail to speak of."

My heart sank. However he got it, this was a fine vessel, a forty foot sloop, fairly new and in good condition. The sort of boat I had always lusted after. The sort of boat I had spent my summers crewing on. I knew I could handle it, but you don't just commandeer a $75,000 yacht, even in an emergency. "Look, I can get us in safely, pretty sure. But this is your boat. I don't want to be responsible if anything goes wrong."

"Hell son, that's no problem." He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and fished for a pen. "What's your name, son?" I told him and he wrote it down on the paper. Then he signed it with a flourish and handed it to me. "Adam, this is now your boat. Your property. I never wanted the damn thing. Don't need it, don't want it. It's your problem now, good son. Sail us on in so we can go home." Then he gripped my hand and shook it. "Any my thanks to you for showing up when you did!" Then he smiled, retrieved his drink, and sat back down.

I was dumbfounded. What I thought was, Great, I own a yacht I can't afford to maintain, and I've got to get it to its mooring in the middle of the night under sail, and I have no crew. "Peg!" I screamed. "I need you up here right now!"

Now Peg's a handful. She's willful, headstrong, impulsive and doesn't usually take my suggestions. But she's not dumb. She understood our situation. "What do you want me to do?"

I gave her instructions. Drop the headsail completely. Then drop the mainsail about half way. We would need some headway to be able to navigate at all. I looked at the four people in the cockpit. I knew they weren't going to be able to help me. "Chuck, I don't know what to say. I'll get you home. But there's one thing. I need all four of you to stay well out of the way. You can stay where you are, but don't move. Don't shift your weight. Don't say anything. Just stay quiet and let Peg and I work and we'll all get back safely."

I got nods. The next twenty minutes required extreme concentration, careful adjustments to the sails and tiller, and no small amount of luck. Finally, "Got it!" from Peg as she hooked the mooring bouy. We all managed to fit into the dinghy Chuck and friends had used to row out to the boat, which I now decided to rename "The Peg", and we rowed to shore.

Chuck and Anna gave us a ride to the bus station. Whatever else we did, Peg wanted to go home and Mac just wanted to get as far away from this place as he could. I had enough cash to get Peg and me back home, but Mac was pretty much broke.

It was still early morning. The bus station was closed. We waited across the street in a little park with a number of other people, some of them waiting to travel as we were, some just camping out. Peg found and started talking to an old woman with silver hair. She wore older clothes, but clean, with a backpack and a shopping bag. She wore pink high-top tennis shoes with rainbow colored laces and bon-bons, which seemed a whimsical touch on such a weathered vagabond.

"Hungry? Here." She pulled out a box of donuts from her shopping bag. "I brought these thinking I might want them but I don't. Some crazy person threw them into my cart and when I bit into one, it had a stone in it! I nearly broke a tooth! I threw it away. I think it brought me good luck though. When I looked down where I threw that donut, I found four of these. Shhh, don't tell anyone. There are thiefs everywhere!" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small leather bag and shook out a diamond. Small but perfect. "I took one of them to a pawn shop and those guys' eyes got all big and they whispered for a long time and finally they offered me $200 for it. $200! Me, I've been homeless for years now. Can you imagine how much money that is for me? But I was smart. I held out. Finally got $300! So now I'm heading down to Tampa. My daughter's there, 'least she was last time I heard from her. Gonna be good and warm this winter! So I don't want these old donuts anymore. You take 'em."

The old woman handed the box of donuts to Peg, who gave the woman a hug and a grin. "Good luck down there, hon," she said. Then she winked at me, reached out and snagged Mac's sleeve, and started walking away. On the other side of the park, we sat down together. She opened the box of donuts. "Hungry?" she said with a sly smile at us. She broke up the first donut. Out came four perfect diamonds. Ten more donuts yielded a total of fourty four of the gems. Mac's eyes were huge. "Shhhh," said Peg to us. "Don't say a thing. I'm going to divvy this up, then we go our separate ways," she said, looking at Mac. "What's fourty-four divided by three?" None of us could work that out, so Peg started dividing them one at a time to each of us. When she was done, Mac had fifteen, I had fifteen, and she was one short. With a smile, she took one of mine and put it in her pile. "You have a new boat," she said. I couldn't argue.

That was pretty much that. Mac said he was headed off to Vegas. He got up, looking like a homeless person now in his dirty wrinkled shrunken suit, shoes still squeaky with water. He put his loot in his side pocket and shook our hands. "You two are all right. Good luck to you." Without another word, he disappeared.

"Well Peg," I said, looking my girl in the eyes. "What a day."

"Just another day in paradise, darling. Let's not go home. Dottie and her boss will be looking for us there. Let's cash one or two of these, get some clothes and go live on your new boat."

The Accident

2011-09-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

(Based on a true story ... )

Gretta always drove fast. This night she pushed her vintage Aston Martin faster than usual around the hair pin curve on the country blacktop. A few miles down the road from the tavern. A few more miles the other direction from her home. The buzz of bourbon in her veins, foot tapping on the gas pedal in time with the last jukebox tune, thinking about that cowboy hunk who squeezed her tight against his pecks in that last dance. A great looking guy, who knew what might have happened? But there was always tomorrow, and despite her money, despite her free and easy life style and her silver blond hair, styled that day, despite her crooked knowing grin and deep-throat chuckles and muscle car, Gretta wasn't going to be a slut. Not tonight. Who knows about tomorrow. She tap-tap-tapped the memory of that dance and that tune and the wind blowing over the top of her flint gray convertable. Tap-tap-tap, a little harder each time as she remembered the cowboy's chiseled jaw and perfect nose and smouldering dark unreadable eyes boring into her, prising loose her libido, her breath becoming more labored with each beat of the tune's drum, until she reached a moment when she had to either fold into him or cut loose. She recalled that moment, more and more clearly as the blacktop unfolded before her, until both the road and her emotions yanked her out of herself.

The split second before she knew what had happened, that the sleek, stylish body of her automobile had left the road, that it had lifted, all she knew was that she was airborne and it felt perfect, the culmination of all that had happened that night, better than any orgasm she had experienced, and that she had collapsed into that cowboy's maleness, the way she had so desparately wanted to and against which she had fought at the last second, instinctively knowing failing to do so meant loosening her self to god knew what and that she meant to preserve her self, even at the cost of the purest moment of ecstasy....

But then she knew where she was and that she had done it anyway, in the least safe way possible, and that though she floated, what goes up must come down ....

Then that sudden moment when it all stops, everything, even the fear and the pain, and it's over and just for a second, she sees that her car, her beautiful car, is ruined, and probably she is too, wrapped around the base of a highway sign. Looking up, her last look, Gretta saw the words above her, huge, an expanse across her vision, letters the size of her soul, saying "JESUS SAVES".

Story: Coldwater Creek

2011-07-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Well of Wishes, Well of Wonder
1

we found the Well that summer, Karla and me; Joltsy wasn't there, being at his chickadee's wheedling manna for film stock, he being such a cunt for cinema and broke all the time too, for all that his father was like a billionaire, or at least an employed plumber, and Joltsy being the kind of lad nobody could turn away or say no to, because of his boyish size and his silly grin and how it showed off his crooked teeth, and because of his poetry and his enlarged heart; his wishes fulfilled not just because of his scoliosis and oversized head but because of what he gave: his poems, and his films, and even when he spoke, his words and voice, which went through you and left you bleeding in the finest ways, enough to make you want to shout, weeks later perhaps but eventually, inarticulate yelps of ecstasy; so if you had it, you gave him money or food or stash, and were glad, such was our boy Joltsy

2

we called him Joltsy because he was our cameraman and he always added bumps and jolts to his shoots, usually when we asked him something or threw something at him or Karla exposed her breasts suddenly with that grim smirk she practiced so carefully and knowingly with everyone but me, so our movies, which were our lives, no difference when we lay in each others' arms at night watching them, flickered weakly on a sheet hanging in a door frame weeks after because these were the days when he had to use film that had to be developed which meant sending it away with carefully typed instructions which were always ignored to some extent ("this shot in low light so you need to develop it longer than usual please") and we waited weeks to see what we had done the weeks before, and of course we wouldn't remember because we had been high and so we couldn't or didn't want to; each time it was like we were given new lives, and the world shaping itself and shaping us in that celluloid moment spontaneously despite Joltsy's serious insistence that this is art dammit and pay attention please and do what he says because, fuck he's the director

3

so this Well it was maybe undiscovered and unknown to mankind for generations or possibly millennia, and may have been the source, we speculated, of either the world's calamities (could it have spit up Pandora's Box?) or else its grandiloquence, meaning the pool of living language and inspiration upon which our ancestors drank and emerged from darkness to the light of civilized exchanges, though how did we know this except by intuition, by which, insisted Karla, all things are known first and best, a claim I for one had no reason to deny, for Karla was indeed an intuitive member of the species, and a classy little mama to boot, and I for one loved her with all my heart and my body when she would let me, which was sadly rare enough to keep my hunger in the forefront of my mind, and satisfaction, or perhaps I should say satiety, just out of reach long enough to push my psyche, notch by notch, along its inevitable evolutionary path

4

so naturally we wanted to drop down into this apocalyptic Well of Darkness, messy bitter dirt hole in the ground though it was, and once down there, would we have any hope of returning? not a question we wished to ask at that moment as I ran, yes ran, urgent enough was my mission, a mile and a half to Bear's house to ask for rope, and lots of it, so naturally Bear asks why would I possibly need, like, hundreds of feet of rope? and my reply: thousands please

5

Bear came through, not with thousands, but with dozens, but more than one; and this would have to do for a start, as we drove back to the Well, home of all hopes, source of all sustenance, pit of powerful dreams, temple of, well, trouble in all likelihood, but we could hardly be blamed for not thinking that at the time, yet as we approached its yawning maw, Bear asked "Are you going in there? Really?" and to that I had no answer for it was destiny at work here, or predestination, which according to Joltsy was not quite the same thing but close enough

6

yes, I knew we should wait for Hawk to get home from work before descending to the first ring of hell, which is how I thought of it later, because the Well was after all on his property; except we didn't in those days believe in property, property being theft after all, and somehow that little rule, unlike some, has not gone away after lo these many years but gotten more and more true if it's possible for a Truth to gain in Truthness over time, and I suppose it is because, well, it has, but ya know what? I didn't want to ask the question because I couldn't stand it if Hawk said No, or Hell No, or even Wait, because what would we do then, where would our high take us if not down down down the dragon's slope of earthly delights

7

but no matter because Universe, if there is such a thing as Universe, had its own plans and lo and behold Hawk pulled into the drive and around the house and right the fuck up to the edge of that hole where we all stood, all except as I've noted, Joltsy, maybe the most important participant (or participant-in-potential) of all because we knew if this was to happen, it must happen with him, and especially with his camera to witness and document and be the only, by far the only, rational and unbiased eye we would have just then

8

so naturally Hawk says whatja doing and whereya going and who the fuck dug that big hole and all sorts of things we knew he might ask and for which we had only the vaguest answers in any case, and Karla, thank you darling I love you because I was too high to use words just then, said Hawk we're going down this hole that just appeared in your yard all by itself because it's a sign to us all that we're meant to go down it, and by we I mean the whole friggin' human race, but as it happens, we're here so we sort of are acting on behalf of the rest of the friggin' species, right? and because this hole, this big friggin' hole, might hold the secrets of salvation for us all or maybe just us, or anyway something might be down there

9

and Hawk, just as I knew he would, said yeah or maybe the doom for the whole species, or at least for you suckers who are too high to realize what a fucking dangerous thing it is to drop like stones down the middle of a fucking sinkhole, at which I think I must have blacked out or wandered off or maybe there actually was a time slip because next thing I remember we were sitting around a nice very large bonfire and it was dusk if not night and Karla was next to me nearly naked and ripping her slip into tiny pieces and lots of bugs and sparks and bits of cloth floated to the sky when Hawk threw in another log creating a thousand sparks that blended with the diamond stars above us, and that made me gasp at the unbearable beauty of it all; and Bear wasn't there any more nor his ropes but Joltsy was, sitting across from us on the other side of the splendid flames, camera pointed at the fire and then at all of us and I wondered, I wondered, where oh where had the Great Well gone?

10

throughout the night and unto the day Karla wore her smirk and smile and little else and answered not at all when I said whatever I might have said about her art or her role in our little drama, dreamlike, the three of us, and hungry we were and therefore shy of the energy you might expect from people quite so young and bold and ennobled by the spirit of art in our lives, not to mention the influences of the likes of Dali and Cage and Brakhage and Warhol and thc and lsd and mushrooms of magic all of which made for me at least the elevator of life jittery and the up down buttons unpredictable as hell until, much after all this, I prescribed myself unto a regimen of caffeine with a bit of the weed to soften the edge on a daily basis and as the summers wore on, less sugar too, else the tattered bits of my sanity might well have drifted to the sky along with the memories of cottonwood seeds and woolly caterpillar larvae and the remains of Karla's petticoat, torn by hand on this faint midsummer's eve into tiny pieces which she fed both to the night fire and to the midnight wind, which took them with tiny firefly flashes and, to my ears, Tinkerbell-like sneezes

11

into the heat of day when I stood along the bank of the stream as still as the statue of David and as beautiful to behold if you didn't look too close or maybe even squinted, until you saw my arms move together, up and out and my chest expand and head lift and, like life itself, my breath leave my body and then return, all chi with tai chasing the tag end of the dream I had that morning or maybe you had before opening your eyes to see this slow motion ecstatic dance upon the leaves and spores of the new day, this day new with promises of heat and more heat and sweat all of which is beautiful until the flies return, smelling the smell of warm flesh offering itself to perpetuate the genetic pool of the Musca domestica or the much more numerous Drosophila melanogaster, fruit of the Mother, destined to be my late morning breakfast as the breath of life reentered my lungs, drawing the little buggers in with it, which meant my David moment doesn't last at all because I have to lean over and cough my brains out over Coldwater Creek

Part 2: Tower of Tears
12

the Well I can tell had gone nowhere but remained where it seemed to reside at whatever moment we chose to walk over and look down, which we did but not before we rested, rest well earned I might add, after such a night of glee and nocturnal noodling as we had, not for the first time nor the last, as per usual we were determined to prolong our court with the spirits of delight for as often and as long as we might, determined as we were to spend our youth in pursuit of joyful knowledge and gleeful enlightenment, if ever it twer to be so, and we surely meant it to be so for us, comrades in pursuit of the apple of the sun; so we slept and did not weep for the loss of day but dreamed the dreams of the blessedly zonked during sun hours, waking only for food and the necessities of elimination and to feed the cats as they too needed sustenance upon this earth while they whiled away their cycles of birth and death just like we did, and curled up at our feet and throats and purred us back to the land of nod when errantly we stirred

13

until that evening when we rose and bathed our bodies in the waters of Coldwater Creek and then beneath a tepid shower Hawk in his generosity had rigged for us on the side of his house, it consisting of a length of black hose that heated during the day and so gave up its warmth to us as night came and we readied ourselves for the rituals and celebrations of the rising moon; after which, cleansed, dripping and grinning, Joltsy announced to us his intention to instruct us on the details of our next adventure, once we had downed sufficient quantities of java and chocolate chip cookies and home made bread made by Hawk upon rising earlier than Karla or Joltsy or me or even the cats surrounding us, by lighting the oven thence shoving in dough from the Bountiful Pantry in town, along with many other vittles and sundries of sustenance he brought to his (and occasionally our) home

14

Joltsy drew us to our usual meeting place around the smouldering remains of last night's fire, camera in hand, and announced "Forsooth my droods, hear you this: we must build a tower directly over the pit to hell that has opened in yonder garden; it must rise as high as we're able on all sides and center its peak above the center of the hole; this tower we will climb until we're suspended above the Well's center and thereupon will we drop, straight to the center of the earth; all of this will I film for us to document our transition from our daily clay unto that which is our specie's destiny: energy beings of infinite consciousness..." to which I replied "will it hurt?" and Karla replied "but Joltsy that's no good, I'm only just getting to like my current form as it is..." and to which I replied "and an enchanting form it is my darling girlio ...." and to which Joltsy replied "fear not fear my dingo darlings"

15

whether it would hurt or not, we knew where our duty lay, both Karla and I, and it was to art and the higher purposes of things, assuming we lived through it and could continue having sex, as we had only begun to crack the secrets of the Karma Sutra and much exploration remained of that domain; though we reminded Joltsy of this, we also knew in our hearts that he must be right, he being Joltsy and the director and all, so we did our parts as requested and began gathering materials for the construction of the Tower and this we built up from all sides of the Well as Joltsy instructed and which plans we intuited ourselves, being students of the All Knowledge Comes from Within school; all of this as Hawk watched from the sidelines and smirked but helped as best he could, he being a working man and not that available during our best hours, which was when the moon was out and full; and so the Tower rose from our imaginations unto the reaches of the dark sky above

16

so the day came when Joltsy said "Enough!" and we knew this to mean the Tower had reached its pinnacle and peak and its purpose was near to hand and that was when I began to question this movie and our purpose in it because true enough and as I began to suspect, Jolty's next instruction was "build a cage and hang it from the center top of the Tower with sufficient rope to lower us all down to the bottom of the Well where we may receive instructions on the evolution of our immortal souls" all of which sounded wondrous strange and revolutionary even if a shade improbable but we did as he told us we must do and we built this cage of liberation and the next thing I knew we climbed aboard this vessel of transformation and hung like bait above the bottomless pit, at which point I looked Karla straight in the eyes and giggled and shook, yes, shook with fear and trepidation

17

blessedly, Hawk stared hard at our enterprise and at us while, for Joltsy's sake, managing the ropes, meaning he was to lower us into the depths, down beyond that place where abandon ye all hope who enter here, and this he did upon Jolsty's command while, camera in one hand and a bottle of Two-buck Chuck in the other, Joltsy filmed our descent while narrating this adventure with nonstop commentary while Karla and I, speechless, clung to the sides of the cage and more importantly, to each other as our vision darkened due to there being less and less sky to light our way and more and more black earth on all sides absorbing our thoughts as well as speech and light and doubtless our comprehension

18

and in this way, camera pointed up and to the sides and down, Joltsy documented our journey for posterity as we went down and down and finally the bottom came into view, a small funnel shaped flute of earth at which point Joltsy exclaimed "perfect! perfect! now to film the whole thing from beneath" and he and camera and wine jumped out of the cage and onto the small flute of earth and stood there pointing the camera up at us saying "up! up! take it up again and then bring it down again!" and Hawk, obliging and following instructions, did as Joltsy commanded and hauled us back up and up which gave to me at least a fine sense of relief and hope, while looking down at Joltsy and the camera below us, on the bottom, pointing up, capturing this moment too

19

but then I noticed something odd as the form of Joltsy appeared to be getting smaller and smaller not just from the distance between him and us, which was increasing as we rose, but from something else, meaning at first his feet and then his legs and then his body sank slowly lower and lower into the soft silt of the flute of earth that made up the center of the Well so that when we reached the top and then began descending once again and I could see it all more clearly, I saw only his head and his crooked tooth smile and one arm reaching high above him holding the camera pointing up at us, and as we came lower and finally reached where Joltsy was, or had been, all that was left was the camera and nothing else, meaning no Joltsy and no bottle of Two-buck Chuck

20

so I reached down and grabbed the camera lens, all that remained above the earth, even as it began to sink into the center of the funnel of fluid dirt circling and descending and sucking down all that came into its grasp and I yelled out to Hawk "up! up! take us up!" and Hawk heard and obeyed bless his heart and soul and up we went, Karla and the camera and me, in that cage back to the top of the Tower so far above the blackness below where once had been our director the great hearted and highly dedicated filmmaker Joltsy who was, I supposed, somewhere far below us, or, as he had proposed to us in the darkness of the night before while lit by the great fire that warmed us all, somewhere above us all now, gone beyond all of the limitations of his bent and nearly broken body, his enlarged and great heart, his sizable and pronounced head, his angled teeth, his strange but irresistable grin, transcended and transformed and likely occupying one of the many seats that surround the immortal Buddha, singing and possibly sipping cheap wine

Part 3: No Fear But Fear
21

we had his camera and his footage and some of his ideas but without Joltsy we had no movie until Hawk took it all to his friend Buddy who was also a filmmaker because in this time and place being a filmmaker was cooler than being a drug dealer which was cool enough as long as you did it with a kind and generous heart and didn't try to be too much the profiteer and of course didn't get caught, and yes we loved our dealers because without them, what kind of adventures would we have anyway, no all night campfires and endless orgies and dropping into holes in the ground and such, so we tried to take care of our dealer buddies, but this Buddy dealt with art and especially film only and for our purposes this was as good as gold, or nearly, but not quite as good as good old better than gold Joltsy

22

so what he gave us was emotional gold that cheered us and helped us bond and best of all gave us a bit of our lost treasure, the lad with the twisted back and big head and odd teeth who inspired us in so many ways, though more by implication than directly because as we watched the movie that Buddy made of me and Karla and Hawk and a few other of our insane posse, who do you think was behind the camera instead of in front of it? you know who, our very own lost lad of lens land; this movie was about us and our heads, not his, or only indirectly his; this movie was about our journey and our ascent to the heights of self-knowledge and insight, and about our love for each other and our union, physical, yes, it was I admit more than a little pornographic as Joltsy rejoiced in capturing the antics of Man and Woman as Karla and I covorted and wrestled and ranted and fucked and sucked and licked and slicked each other up and down; this movie was about our descent into the Well of hope and loss, the womb of our Mother, the heart of our frail consciousness, all of this while so stoned that we could only laugh and weep and flail and hold each other and dance the dance of samsara

23

this movie was about fear and the end to fear, about longing and loving and asking ourselves unanswerable questions, the answers to which could only be expessed with laughter; this movie was about the unutterably terrible drop into our very own subconscious minds; and that, Joltsy made this clear to us, was the Well, and especially the dangerous and unknowable center of the Well, where he and only he went and dropped into hell, or more likely heaven, it being Joltsy; this movie was about we who remained and had no choice but to go on living in the world, that world which we knew from direct experience was an illusion of itself, though that was good enough and that world was our world where we were born and raised and from which, finally, with Joltsy's and Hawk's help, we were initiated and released and taken to a new level of being, reborn and reraised and realized and where, despite everything, despite all illusions and all death and all loss, we knew finally that this world is where we would live and grow and love each other

24

and so this movie, which we called The Well, made by Joltsy and edited by Buddy and produced by Hawk and starring yours truly and my best other self, the sexy and luscious Karla, this movie taught us who we had been and who we were meant to be, and when all of that was no longer enough, who we are, here, and now

Part 4: Reincarnation Carnival
25

it may come as no surprise then, having been given the lessons we had been given, and awakening to simpler and more fundamental awareness of reality, that lo we woke one morning to the noises of the Eye-Tube, that universal umbilical we share to each other, the Net, and found an article about a book written by a young man from Hungary or Uzbeckastan or Georgia or some far away place we knew nothing of, a novel about a man who drops through the center of the earth and wakes to his life fully grown, and this sounds like a fun story so we click in and click in until finally we come to a photograph of the author and that picture is a slap up the side of our hearts because, yes, you guessed it, the author is none other than Joltsy

26

who is calling himself something other than Joltsy, not a huge surprise, as Joltsy was our nickname for him anyway, our personal name that we'd rather not share with the world, I suppose because this is a different time and place and because we believed Joltsy was gone, and he, Joltsy, is gone, and this person has the name Lazlo Beckenstein and he lives on the other side of the world

27

and our response to this news is, predictably, "wow" and then again, "wow" and finally "Joltsy, you're back!" which we said to each other but there was no one else to hear it so we called Hawk but this is a few years after the Well and Hawk is no where to be found, he being an accidental and irrepressible (and mostly invisible) traveler of the world in any case, so we get out the movie and watch it again, tripping as usual but this time on Turkish coffee and one hit ganj, rubbing each other and hugging and kissing at each scene and especially as we see ourselves going down down down and then up up up again and again and again

28

shall we send him a note, fly e-mail his way, phone his agent? and we get the book and read it and listen to interviews with this new Lazlo-Joltsy and gradually it dawns on us that he means it when he says seriously to an interviewer that he was born, or reborn on the day he walked out of that cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanastan or Tibet or wherever with no memory of his former life, nor any need for it, as life was good and more than good enough and besides, says he, it happens there is only one place, here and only one time, now and as it happens he, Lazlo-Joltsy is exactly here at exactly this moment, and thank you very much, but he has no interest in it being, you know, somewhere else, sometime else.

29

which, when we hear this and think about it, seems exactly right and additionally an important adjunct lesson, sort of an addendum, to The Well, and finally, finally the whole experience clicks into focus for us and we think "thanks Joltsy!" and looking each other in the eyes, we say "yes" and "yes" again and again

Part 5: Refreshments Are Served
30

and in honor of Lazlo and Joltsy and in memory of the Well in its unknowable darkness, we go back to Coldwater Creek and sip its sweet waters and spread our blanket beneath the willow and open our bottle of Two-buck Chuck and hold it to the sky. We tip one each for Joltsy then for ourselves and then we kiss and make love. Over and over and over and over.

Serena's Cape

2011-06-30T09:44:00.001-07:00

This is a story of epic proportions, a mythical historical drama, featuring a powerful evil villian and an heroic female protagonist who thwarts him, with a smile and great attitude, and a single sentence. All of this in 175 words. I hope you enjoy. ~Mike

"Forgive me mistress, but you must know you'll die if he finds out. We all will!"

Serena continued weaving, eyes and hands steady. She looked only at her work and remained silent in the face of her servant's entreaty. Then she said, as she had said the day before and the day before that, "You've distracted me, Melanie. Now I've found a mistake. I must tear out this day's work and start again."

As her mistress began tearing out thread after thread, Melanie ran from the chamber, weeping.

The next day, the lord master of the realm arrived with his vast army. He came immediately to Serena's chamber, accompanied by the still weeping Melanie.

"What? Not finished? When will you deliver me my Impervious Cape?" Rage and impatience flamed up in his eyes. "I return to battle this day. I must have it!"

Serena looked up at him with a grim smile. "You've distracted me, your Lordship. You've caused me to make a mistake. I must tear out this day's work and start again."

Nine Coins

2011-06-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, X crosses a deserted road and loses nine copper coins. On Thursday, Y finds in the road four coins, somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain. On Friday, Z discovers three coins in the road. On Friday morning, X finds two coins in the corridor of his house.

It is absurd, so asserts the heresiarch, to imagine that four of the coins have not existed between Tuesday and Thursday, three between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, two between Tuesday and Friday morning. It is logical to think that they have existed -- at least in some secret way, hidden from the comprehension of men -- at every moment of these three periods.

"I present this demonstration of the principles of material persistence as a notorius example of specious reasoning," said Professor Telorus to his class of first year students. "Now, is there anyone here who would care to argue that the heresiarch's reasoning is indeed sound?"

No hands appeared, as he expected. If he had any true skeptics in his class, it would take time for them to draw sufficient courage to counter him. He truly hoped, for the sake of fending off boredom, that it would not take too long for one to appear.

"Fine," he continued. "Then would anyone here care to venture why his statement is a fallacy?"

Again no hands, but he could see heads down, hands pawing through notes, trying to find something to offer. In his experience, this was the moment when his class would begin to birth both syncophants and doggedly stubborn refusers. The rest would be left in the proverbial dust.

Finally, reluctantly, a hand appeared near the back. Telorus glanced at his seating chart. "Yes, Mr. Chatworth is it?"

"Sir, uh. It's like the sound of a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, isn't it? During those periods when the coins are unobserved, isn't it fair to say they may not exist?"

"Would you care to answer your own questions? Or if not, is there anyone else who might?"

"Well sir," said the same student, "it's a question of epistomology, I believe. Or a perceptual tautology. We can assume the existence of only things we're able to directly observe. And only at the moment of perception. All else is assumption."

"An interesting observation, Mr. Chatworth. You used the word 'tautology'. Would you care to expand on that?"

"Uh, that which is true by definition?"

"Of course. That will have to do for a definition for now. What I meant, though, is how does 'tautology' relate to the question of existence versus non-existence?"

"Sir, I don't think we can say the coins definitely do not exist. But neither can we assert they do exist when unobserved."

"Thank you. I'd say you have managed to at least creatively repeat yourself while at the same time demonstrating your agnosticism." The class chuckled. "No, no, I mean no disrespect by that, Mr. Chatworth. You have glimpsed part of the answer to this puzzle. If you were a pilot of a plane carrying us all, I would say you have sighted the landing strip. The question is, can you land the plane without killing us all?"

The Commentary:

1. Wholly beneath our range of vision lies another vista. It has few reference points we can count on. Instead, it reminds us of a flatland, a two-dimensional realm, which we find repulsive, imagining ourselves to be three, or maybe even four, dimensional beings. Imagine you are flying over the central plains of the Midwestern United States. Or the vast empty expanse of heath and marsh of central Russia. Each look causes you to glance away hastily, to return to your book or your magazine or to admire the head of the person three rows down to the left. That glimpse of flat earth beneath you might, in fact, remind you that you have been experiencing mild nausea throughout this flight, and that you wish only that it end with a drink and a genial, mild forgetfulness.

2. Emerging in the city, you step out to the street to find transport. Looking around, your eye is led up, up to the heights which only a while ago you were unable to imagine could exist. Your nausea, far from diminished, is now more evident to you. This reminds you how much you dislike flying in airplanes. This thought leads to another, a reminder of something else unpleasant in your life, but you can't imagine what it might be.

3. You are wearing a suit. Perhaps you are on your way to an important meeting, one where you must appear normal, respectable, conventional, and most importantly, not distracted. You have yet to reach your destination, and you are surprised to find you have to work to recall what it is, where you are meant to be, and when, and even why. You find it hard to focus your eyes. Your suit, you suddenly realize, fits you badly. It is too small. The sleeves ride up your forearm nearly to the elbow when you raise a hand to hail a cab. The belt seems to cut into your midsection. How can this have happened, you wonder.

4. You give the driver the name of a hotel. Your meeting is there, of course it is. When you arrive, you pull cash from your pocket and spill some into the street below the curb, where you can't reach it without bending over, causing your suit pants to hike up your legs, stretching it hazardously over your butt, and forcing you to once again extend your arm far past the limits of your suit. You pay the driver, and pretend you have not noticed the bills lying in the dirt below you.

5. Before the meeting, a drink. Well, two. No, three is better, you have time. There is an extremely large television screen on behind the bar. You're grateful the sound is low at least. On the screen, which you find you can't completely ignore, many people in evening clothes gyrate their bodies in wild dancing, grasping and whirling and tossing each other. The women show long, beautiful legs; the men charming graceful arches of their elegantly dressed bodies. They smile enormous, brilliant smiles.

6. After three drinks, you feel prepared for your meeting. It matters little now what the meeting is about or what its import might be, though the outcome is easy to guess: it's about money. Going in relaxed is best, at least when adequately prepared. What is adequate? You realize you can't really know the answer to this question. That in fact there can be no answer until it is shaped by the meeting itself.

7. You have forgotten, gratefully, about the money you have lost. You are prepared to lose more if necessary. It doesn't matter, you tell yourself. The gain or loss is illusory in any case. Money, you realize, is no more than an idea. It does not exist until circumstance requires its existence. It is merely that which enables a transaction. What is real, you think, are your thoughts, your desires, your intentions; reality is the pain in your gut, the tightness of your suit, the vision of lovely women being tossed by strangers. This meeting and its outcome do not exist. Not yet. And ultimately? Perhaps the future too is mere illusion.

Mark Twain On Style, and Writing with a Pen versus Typewriter

2011-06-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Mark Twain Autobiography, p. 224

"Within the last eight or ten years I have made several attempts to do the autobiography in one way or another with a pen, but the result was not satisfactory, it was too literary. With the pen in one’s hand, narrative is a difficult art; narrative should flow as flows the brook down through the hills and the leafy woodlands, its course changed by every boulder it comes across and by every grass-clad gravelly spur that projects into its path; its surface broken but its course not stayed by rocks and gravel on the bottom in the shoal places; a brook that never goes straight for a minute, but goes, and goes briskly, sometimes ungrammatically, and sometimes fetching a horseshoe three-quarters of a mile around and at the end of the circuit flowing within a yard of the path it traveled an hour before; but always going, and always following at least one law, always loyal to that law, the law of narrative, which has no law. Nothing to do but make the trip; the how of it is not important so that the trip is made.

"With a pen in the hand the narrative stream is a canal; it moves slowly, decorously, sleepily, it has no blemish except that it is all blemish. It is too literary, too prim, too nice; the gait and style and movement are not suited to narrative. That canal stream is always reflecting; it is its nature, it can’t help it. Its slick shiny surface is interested in everything it passes along the banks, cows, foliage, flowers, everything. And so it wastes a lot of time in reflections."

Juniper Rose

2011-05-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

I remember the moment I met her, Juniper Rose. I had more important things to think about just then, granted, and meeting her was almost the anti-climax of that day. Still, it was like the story of the man who is chased over a cliff by a tiger. He catches a branch and hangs on for his life. Looking up, he sees the tiger above, ready to tear him to pieces if he climbs up. Looking down, he sees another tiger at the bottom of the cliff, ready to eat him if he drops. So he looks into the face of the cliff and what does he see? A perfectly ripe strawberry. He reaches out and plucks it into his mouth and it is absolutely the most delicious moment of his life.

I lived, and then I met Juniper Rose, and everything about my life took new meaning. She changed everything, or I did, or life did. Whatever the cause, I am a new man.

I was a mule for one of Kansas City's biggest importers of heroin. It wasn't heroin I brought in though. It was guns. I kind of hooked up by accident. Out of work, hungry, I had a friend who mentioned he was looking for something for a friend, a hand gun. I had one I'd kept hidden since my Vietnam days, just in case. Just in case of what I didn't know. So I pulled it out and asked if that was what he needed and how much could I get for it. One thing led to another, and I finally met his friend and he asked about getting other things, and I had a friend who I knew imported stuff from Isreal. He showed me his handguns. I started with a Barak and pretty soon this guy, the one buying, wanted more. Jericho's and even Desert Eagles. Then he wanted assault rifles. I was in way over my head but the thing was, there was no getting out at that point. I took money to one guy and brought weapons to the other.

I was making real money by then. It took me a long time to realize there was going to be a high price to pay for what I was doing. I was moving Galils and Tavors and finally Uzis, and then the guy started asking about missles. That I couldn't do. I just didn't have a connection for that level of armament. He was insistent. I danced around as much as I could. The guy stopped buying small stuff and pushed me for bigger and bigger arms. Thing was, he let me know, if I couldn't deliver, then what was I good for? I knew way too much. It finally dawned on me that I was still alive only because I had been able to get stuff for the organization that they needed. If I wasn't useful, I was gonna be dead pretty quick.

My source didn't deal in anything larger than handheld automatic weapons. I pressed him to help me connect to someone who could get me larger stuff. I hated to do it - I'm just not the pushy type and definitely not violent. I made my case. Help me or I'm a dead man. My friend gave me a phone number. No guarantees, my friend told me. These guys might kill me as soon as I came through their door. I needed some insurance. I talked M., the middle man buyer, into sending two of his lieutenents, Bill and John, with me.

It didn't go well. Short version. Neither of the two goons with me wanted to be there. They didn't know me very well and they felt like errand boys. Pissy and uncooperative, they wouldn't keep their traps shut during the meeting, which made the seller nervous and suspicious. When he started bad mouthing me and my "dogs", guns were drawn and shooting started.

I don't know if Bill or John got out alive. I kind of doubt it. Me, I ducked out of the way best I could, through a door and down some stairs and into what turned out to be a basement apartment, and there she was. Juniper Rose. I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed her and hustled her out the door with me to my car. I was thinking she must be a wife or girlfriend to one of the sellers upstairs or something. I'd hold her as hostage for a while, until things cooled down some, then let her go and disappear.

It turned out she wanted out of there as badly as I did and didn't want to return. She led me to a small but very fast boat down at the docks. She said it belonged to the importer and we could use it to get away.

We did, and one thing led to another, and now she and I are living on this island, alone. I don't have much to do except find coconuts and fruit and fish. And watch the horizon, constantly, for trouble to show up. Which is bound to happen sooner or later. Her and me, we get along just fine. In fact, better than fine. I've never known a woman like her, my Juniper Rose. Our life together, that's another story that maybe I'll tell another time.

Mowers and Reapers

2011-04-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Ed Jackson was a real pain in the ass to work with for the first couple of weeks. Arnie and I had met a couple of months before when we both hired on to do lawn maintenance and warehouse work for the new community college. We got on right away. Arnie was streetwise scruff, no college but smart, a little younger and a lot shorter than I am, but focused and calm and handsome in a dark, Italian way. Me, I was the white-bread boy, veteran of three different colleges and four years in the Navy, but forever the beginner at everything I did, newly married, just finding my way. We discovered right away we were both musicians and that eliminated any need for shyness. Musicians, serious ones, share more than an interest. We speak a common language that makes little sense to others. We harbor brotherly feelings toward other musicians, as if we were a subspecies of humans with our own set of challenges and passions. Which, of course, is exactly what we are.

Then Ed hired on and it was Arnie and me working one side of the big garage, and the new guy working the other side for a couple of weeks. He struck me as standoffish, a loner, not interested in conversation, though truthfully Arnie and I made little effort to get to know him.

Then finally we all three ended up on a job together, mowing and hauling clippings and rakings. Arnie and I talked about music, about gigs and instruments and venues we'd known, and groupies. Ed heard us but said nothing. Until lunch, when he surprised us by walking over with his sandwich and sitting down only a little ways from us.

"So you guys play?" he said. "I play too. A little."

"How little?" I asked.

"Been playing guitar for a few years. And writing songs."

Arnie and I looked at each other and grinned. Arnie played guitar, a little, but mostly blew mouth harp. But his real background was sound reinforcement. For me, that meant he was one of the wizards behind the curtain who made it possible for hired-gun bassmen like me to stand on stage and be heard. He, on the other hand, was in awe of musicians with the chops and balls to get up in front of an audience. We shared mutual respect for each other. But we both knew there was another kind of musician who had a kind of natural talent so rare it actually (sometimes) made it possible to make a living at music: the songwriter/singer.

"Really. Arnie, you have a guitar tucked away somewhere here, don't you? How about you sing us something, Ed?"

He did, and we were blown away, and we became a trio after that. We huddled and traded jokes and songs and gig stories. Soon we started skipping out to a local abandoned house that Arnie spotted in order to eat our sandwiches in private and then share a doobie for dessert. Then our conversations would get loud and raucous and silly for the sake of silly. We would have partied together after work too except I had a new wife looking for me to come home each afternoon.

Of course I wanted to start a band. We'd need a drummer, so I called a friend of Arnies he recommended. I got a tentative yes, so I went to Ed. "What do ya think? You, me, Arnie, and Arnie's friend Jesse? We could make a few bucks, drink a few beers, have some fun?"

Ed said no. Didn't even think about it, just nixed the idea on the spot. "Sorry Mike, I don't have the chops for one thing. I've never played with a band." Didn't have the chops didn't fly for me. I'd heard him play. His songs were good, well written, great rhyming and alliteration and, well, they moved me when I heard them. Deeply felt. Authentic. A little sad, most of them, but some were just the opposite, as if he had written them to cheer himself up. And his playing - not the usual three chord blues-based changes. Unusual but appropriate passing chords, closer to jazz than to rock. He may be shy, but the guy was a real natural.

I asked Neese, my wife, if we could use the sun porch of our little house to jam in, or maybe even practice for a gig. She didn't mind, so I invited Ed and Arnie over. Saturday afternoon worked for everybody. I didn't tell 'em, but I'd invited Jesse to bring his drums over too. "It's just a jam," I answered Ed when he saw the drums. "No big deal." I dragged an old guitar amp my brother had given me from the attic and set up an extra microphone so his acoustic guitar could be heard over the drums. It didn't do any favors for his guitar's tone, but it more or less worked. Ed played rhythm guitar and sang, Arnie wailed on harp between verses, Jesse turned out to be better than I'd hoped on drums and kept his volume down, and I played bass through my practice cab. The result? Pretty damn good for a first jam, I thought. Jesse and Arnie did too. They both agreed right away to do it again the next week, same time same place. Ed did too, reluctantly.

Over the next year, the fun factor and the music just got better, to everyone's surprise. Arnie invited an old friend who used to play lead guitar in a blues review band but had quit when he injured his hand in a work accident. Mel was quiet and humble and apologized constantly the first few times, but he had a fine ear for melody, got along well with the rest of us, and grinned with gratitude at the end of each song we played. One of his old band mates owned a club in town. The next thing we knew, we were on stage, wailing and making all kinds of joyful noises. Thus took birth Mowers and Reapers, the town's newest blues/jazz group. We played for three years straight, never made any money to speak of, always had a good time, and, though we dissolved the band finally, remained friends for the rest of our lives.

The Bully

2011-02-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

Every day after school on the way home it was the same thing. I sat quietly at the back of the bus for the twenty minute ride. John - I don't even know his last name - sat somewhere in the middle with two friends. They'd laugh and make fun of someone. It didn't seem to matter who it was. When their target ended up in tears, they shifted their attention to someone else. As often as not, that someone would be me. He kept coming back to me, I think, because I refused to give him the satisfaction of crying or groveling. In fact, I almost never said anything to him. So every day it was more of the same and every day he tried harder, got meaner and more threatening.

Now I'm sitting on my bed, waiting for my dad to get home. I've got to tell him what I did. I think I'm okay, but I can't quite tell with him. He might smile and say well done. Or he might whip me with his belt just to remind me what it feels like. Trouble is, I'm not sure what I did. I might have killed him for all I know.

The bullying had gone on for weeks and recently it had gotten a lot worse. The bus driver could see what was happening. I could see his eyes in the wide mirror above him, glancing back at us. He wasn't afraid of John, of course. He was an adult, much bigger than any of us, and he could have stopped it. But it would mean stopping the bus and making everyone late and he'd have to explain that to someone and maybe it would get him in trouble. He looked troubled, even sad, like he wished he could stop it somehow, but he didn't know how. To his credit, he'd tried yelling at John and Benny and Joe when they got loud and especially when they jumped out into the aisle to get into their victim's faces. But it was no good. It helped for maybe five minutes, then John would start up again.

I complained to my dad about it, once. He didn't hit me but he looked like he wanted to. "Why do you let him do that?" he said. "You can stop him. Are you a coward?" That's when he looked sore at me and I figured I might be in for a whipping. Then he stopped himself and said, "Look. I'm going to tell you how to stop this kid. The next time he does this to you, here's what I want you to do. You listening?" I was, but he must have thought I wasn't because I was looking down. I felt humiliated and a little scared. "Look at me. Look at me!" He hunkered over in front of me. He's a big man, very strong, an ex-green beret who fought in Vietnam. "Son, you need to pick your moment carefully. Let him get in your face. Let him get agitated. Maybe he'll push you - all the better if he does, but you've got to keep your balance and above all, you've got to stay calm. Whatever you do, don't show fear. Just watch him carefully. There's going to come a moment when he thinks he's won, when his guard will be down. He'll probably grin and taunt you even more. He's showing off, see. He may look back at his friends. He'll need their approval. That might be your moment. If he looks away from you, he feels like you can't do anything to him. He's vulnerable then. You got that? You listening?"

I was watching my dad then. I knew he knew what he was talking about, that his advice might be good, might be just what I needed. So I calmed my breathing and held his eyes. "Yes," I said.

"Okay, like I said, you're watching for a certain moment when he's least expecting you to do anything to protect yourself. That moment when he thinks your'e beaten and he can do anything he wants to you. Then, son, you listening? Then you're going to plant your fist right here ..." he pointed to the place right at the top of my nose, just between my eyes. "You're going to aim carefully and plant one with everything you've got right there." He smiled then, showing his teeth. I could see cigarette stains all around the edges of his gum lines and down the sides between them. He did his best to keep them clean but he smoked a lot, my dad. "You can't give him any warning though. Try not to telegraph it, especially with your face. Be the stone at that moment."

"When you do that, if you do it right, here's what's going to happen. He's going to go down. Right on his butt. His legs will just fold and he'll drop. His buddies won't do anything to you. They'll try to get him on his feet and out of your way. Trust me, they won't come after you. They may make threatening noises , but it'll be from a safe distance. See, you will have completely surprised them. Here they thought you were soft as pudding, a sheep. When they find out you're a cobra - fast, cunning, not afraid to hurt them even more than they've been hurting you, son, they will leave you alone after that."

Today I'd had enough of John's bullying and I remembered my dad's training. The way it went down, John had been taunting me for maybe ten minutes, getting louder and meaner and more physical every time he taunted me and I didn't react. He was determined to send me off the bus in tears. I knew I didn't want to stick around afterwards, so I waited until we were almost at my stop. I was like a stone - I said nothing and tried to show no emotion. I made a fist and held it behind my butt and tensed my muscles and aimed very carefully. When I struck, John went down just like my dad said. He dropped instantly without making a sound. He dropped hard on his butt and after a few seconds made a gasping sound. I could tell the pain he was feeling must be so bad he couldn't even take a breath with which to yell. I didn't feel good about that. But I didn't feel bad either. It was like I was suspended over a ravine, and I'd land on my feet, or I'd die. The two boys behind him looked dazed. My hand hurt but I ignored that. I picked up my books and stepped over John and pushed past Benny and Joe. I refused to look to either side and strode straight to the front of the bus. Before he opened the door to let me out, the driver whispered "I saw what was going on back there. I don't blame you one bit. You don't need to worry about anyone complaining." Then he let me out the door.

Now I wait. Maybe there'll be a phone call from John's parents. Maybe the police will show up. I'm ready. Just as long as my dad doesn't beat me.

Literary Fiction: Tastes Good and Good For You!

2011-01-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

Where do story ideas come from? What sparks a story? Obviously, there's no single answer, or even class of answers. One challenge writers of fiction face is the fact that there are infinite possible stories. The trick is to cut down the numbers to something more manageable. That is what a good story spark does: it narrows the possibilities. An image, a few suggestive words or a phrase, a "what if", a name or face of a character, some simple action out of context. Through training and creative openness, any of these may suggest a story line, even if vaguely. The rest is discovery, like mining for gold.

To serious writers, that gold is meaning. I may tell a million stories and none of them be worth the time it takes to type them. Better for everyone if the story that emerges has some significance, some resonance to the reader, some reason for being told. It may instruct or entertain or tickle memories or ideas in ways that leave readers a bit more willing to explore the question of who they are as humans.

Stories about real people, then, are important. Stories about our peculiarities, our habits and culture and the assumptions upon which we try, sometimes feebly, sometimes with confidence, to build our identities.

Drama is a useful tool for this end. Small or large, conflicts which our characters succeed or fail in overcoming always teach us something of ourselves. Vicarious beings that we are, they are also highly entertaining, especially if they are believable. Situations you or I might actually find ourselves in, and the struggles to survive or thrive when our needs are threatened, that's the stuff of good stories.

Literary stories differ from others only in that the drama, while still present, is dampened down to a level closer to our daily reality, while character choices and actions result in multi-level revelations about those characters. Minimal or moderate drama, along with layered truths, often subtle, doth good literature make. None of us are simple creatures, though few of us are blessed (or cursed) with insight to our true natures. The power and importance of a story increases as it reveals more complex truths about us. Literary stories seem to emerge from a great stew of knowledge and experience. They give us glimpses of truths about ourselves we would rarely experience otherwise. They do so, however, at the expense of being less entertaining, at least to most readers. The exceptions are skilled readers who are broadly educated in the liberal arts and psychology, and who are, as a result, erudite, reflective, critically self-aware and philosophical. Such readers, familiar with the work of the world's greatest thinkers, have access to a broad range of values and ideas, and are well equipped to synthesize concepts, see patterns, and see through bullshit. To these readers, great stories are not only deeply meaningful, they are also highly entertaining, in ways that simpler stories cannot be. Great stories not only taste good, they are truly nourishing.

Unfortunately, to less well trained readers, this may seem elitist. No one wants to feel judged for her skill level, especially regarding something which seems trivial and no more than light entertainment. And quite right. Light entertainment has its place in our culture too. It may be useful to remember that skilled readers know better than to judge others, and similarly, deserve no judgment from others. Some love sports, some soaps, some talk shows, some Star Trek or fantasy novels. And some love the chewy intellectual challenge and literary delights of a Nabokov or Dostoevsky or Huxley or Graham Green. And some love both high and low culture equally. It's all good.

The Blessed Gift

2011-01-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

(This story, a work in progress, appeared near the beginning of my flash fiction journey. Slightly rewritten, I offer it again. It still resonates for me. I hope it does for you as well.)

I was born. I'm told I did not cry. Rarely are we aware of the silence between the noises, the dark energy that creates light, filling the universe.

My name is Martin Dalwinnie. A name in all of its fullness is like thunder, a remembrance of light. Yet what is a name? No more than a sound. A low rumble. Or perhaps ink on paper, not even spoken.

A memory: I am a boy of seven standing on a pier, watching the sun sparkle on the waves of a lake. Adults chatter behind me but they're easy to ignore. My senses begin to fill me with what could become my soul. Light on the water and a gentle lapping sound and an odor of rotting fish. All of this, the smells especially, fills me with a longing for something I can't identify. Perhaps for my future self, remembering this day.

There is a splash and I turn to my right. I see a circle of water where something has been thrown in but I don't see the thing. I can see at a glance that none of the adults have done this. As I watch, something appears in the center of the receding circle of waves: hair. Then I can see the arms of a child rising beside it. I jump in next to her. My feet hit rocks and mud on the bottom and I push up. When my head breaks the surface I see her, face still under the water, eyes closed, a calm expression on her tiny face. I grab her arm and pull toward the shore. It's harder than I expect because the water is so deep. I keep pulling. Then there are two other splashes and there are men next to me, one lifting the child from the water and the other my father carrying me to the shore.

The child lives. I am a hero for a moment. I have forgotten during all this that I have not yet learned to swim, but I realize it too late to be afraid. Later, inside our house, a white haired man tells my father that my family is now under his protection. This will not be forgotten. For some reason this news makes my parents quiet for days. My father had a new job after that, and we lived much better.

I felt fully alive for the first time in the moments it took to see the girl and jump and try to pull her to shore. For those moments and for a short while after, I felt expanded, filled with a power and a longing that dazzled my senses and seemed to leave a metallic taste in my mouth. My body was filled with adrenaline (I learned much later) and I felt somehow new and more alive. This data point on my graph blazed, burning a marker into my sense of self.

I was still young when my father died in a hail of bullets. He was not a fallen hero. He was a criminal cut down by other criminals. He fled from his fate, as we all do, not understanding that the deliverers of his destiny had no personal interest in the message. They were merely acting out the data points of their own stories, just as he and I, and you, are doing.

Our memories are fragile and unreliable fractions of the whole of our timeline. But they're all we have. My father's death was one data point on a short curve on an imagined graph. One that intersected and defined part of the arc and scope of my own curve. Memory leaps like stones shaken from the earth in a quake, side to side, forward and back, up and down. Though we pretend to know future from past, this is an illusion. That may be one of the secrets revealed at the end of a story if it is a good one and well told. I don't know yet how my story is to end, as naturally I have not yet ended it. You, of course, face a similar puzzle.

You are no less (and perhaps no more) than life remembering itself and birthing continually the illusion of your form. But your biography (and mine) amounts to little more than a sense of self caught in the muck of partial remembrance, as a child in boots may be caught by a mudslide on a hill during a storm. This is the nature of our perception of reality: that we exist only by deluding ourselves. We are like an animated movie: stop the film and you will see a single blurred image. We are, each moment, no more than the illusion of a persistent self.

An example of this illusion: at a certain moment in every story, events contract to a point. I stand in the doorway of a small airplane, twenty-five hundred feet above the earth, wind whipping my pants into wings that slap my raw lower legs as I cling for my life to the sides of the door. Then a push on the pack on my back. I fall; fear fills my mouth with the taste of gun metal. I am on fire with adrenaline. Somehow my story continues: I pull the rip cord. I land hard, exhilarated. This moment burns its marker into my being. This is my life: moments of terror followed by silences; spring, tuck, roll. I must be satisfied, because it continues. I do not die.

Such moments define us, releasing more of the chemicals of which we are composed and to which we are addicted. Through these means we convince ourselves we must be alive. Our bodies at least. Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps that is life.

So you see. I understand nothing. I can teach nothing. Nothing is my blessed beginning and assuredly my blessed end, and it is from silence that I have learned all that is most important. It is the best and maybe the only thing I have to offer you: nothing. It is a gift I urgently suggest you consider accepting. How will this story end? It ends when this page falls from your hands. As you know it will in the end.

Hi, It's Me!

2010-12-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

I am your first sentence. That's your throwaway. That means you're meant to get rid of it when you've finished writing this and go back to editing. Got that? Don't forget. Get rid of that first sentence or else dude. Yes, I just called you dude, get over it. Oh, by the way, you might want to keep in mind that the farther you get away from that first sentence, the harder it's going to be to remember to get rid of it. Out of sight, out of mind. Okay, that's wasn't very original, but it's approprose, isn't it? Nice word that, "appropropose" except you have no idea how to spell it, so I've got to point out that you have little business using it. You should try to use words you know how to spell, dude. Ha! Got ya again. Not to mention words you know the meaning of. Ow! Ended that sentence with a preposition, didn't you! And you know better, I'm sure. You've trained yourself in how to write properly, haven't you? You're proud of it!! I've heard you say so more than once! But hey, did you ever think that might be the problem, DUDE? That you taught yourself and didn't bother to learn the right rules for writing? But hey, no one, least of all me, is going to tell you how to write!

Okay, so you're tired of that paragraph and want to start something new here. Why not? It's your right. You're the author after all. You can write any damn thing you take a mind to write, and boy, you mean to practice that freedom, don't you!

What? Cutting that off so soon? I'm getting the impression you're trying to get rid of me. But DUDE, there's only one way to get rid of me. And you know what it is, don't you. I don't have to tell you. You stop writing and I'm outta here! But you being you, the author, you're just not gonna be chased off that easily, are you. Not by me anyway.

Okay. So you're still trying, aren't you. To have your cake and eat it too. What do I mean? You know what I mean, you're writing this stuff, aren't you? You want to keep writing but you want me to selflessly get out of the way so you can write ... what? Other junk? Stories? Fiction? Well good luck with that, dude.

Right, I hear ya. You're gonna stop, go pee, go fill your face, go watch TV, go do something else until I just fade away. Well. It might work, but I'm not promising anything. But I want you to promise me something before you go: get rid of that damn opening sentence!

The Writing Game

2010-12-01T07:30:00.000-08:00

"What does it take to win at this writing game?"

Les sat on a folding chair a few feet away from one of his idols, the Great Writer X. X nursed his fourth scotch and squinted at Les.

"Lemme tell ya what I think about that, son. It's a damn shame, is what it is. So many people wanting to write, to tell their great story or whatever the hell it might be, huge egos on the line. So much sadness. So much suffering. It's a shame, is what it is." X closed his eyes and looked as if he might weep. Then his face went neutral again and he brought the scotch to his lips.

"Okay," said Les. "But what does it take? To write a great book, to get it published, to get readers, to make it in the business?"

"Yeah, well it ain't gonna happen. Not anymore." X finished his drink and poured another. The bottle Les had brought was almost empty. "Lemme tell ya why."

"Sure. Why?"

"Need three things to happen, son. One, talent. Ya got to write, and write great. Ya got to have that magic something that takes your story over the top, that makes it dance along the invisible edge, the razor's edge. You, the writer, you have to be able to throw yourself over and over against a wall that will never give. You have to bleed, and you have to be able to give that blood to your readers."

"Shit," said Les.

"And you have to have ambition. Real ambition. You have to want more, you hear me? More than the average person would ever want. I don't mean stuff, son. I mean Truth with a capital T. You have to have it in you to write great, and more than that, to want to write great work, not just trivial fluff. To have to have to do it. And hell, maybe you have to want to suffer too. You listening to me?"

"Yeah," sighed Les, finishing his own drink now.

"One more thing that's got to happen. You got to be lucky. You got to write books that're gonna hit at the right time. It's all in the timing, son. Because those readers ain't always out there, see. They come and go. Sometimes they're there, like they were in the twenties, and again after the second war, and like they really were in the fifties. Hungry for more than what was in front of them. Dying to know secrets. It has to be a time when people believe they can be more, and the culture and the media are telling 'em to read, to think bigger, to actually work at growing their understanding of how life works. During those times, and they're rare, people queue up to devour anything that comes along that might lift them from their dumps and remind them that there's more. You have to publish in a time when people believe it's possible to become fully human."

The old man sighed and put his glass down hard on the table. He looked at Les. "Son, you came at the wrong time, that's all there is to it. I can't help you. Because right now, let me tell you. There's maybe one of those hungry readers left out of the thousands that used to crowd into the book stores. Maybe not even one. Son, the time's out of joint. Truth, especially the hard core subtle truths that used to make our hair stand on end, stuff like Dostoevsky and Waugh and Hesse and Hemingway and maybe even Salinger or Updike used to write. Christ son, that hunger is just gone now. Eat up by triviality and illiteracy and stupid computer games and sports bars and ...."

X poured the last of the scotch into his glass and raised it to his lips once more. This time the tears were real. "Everyone wants the illusion of mystery. Mystery as game or as entertainment. No one cares about the real mysteries anymore. Son, go home. Write your books. Then put 'em somewhere where they can be found in another age. Thirty years, or maybe fifty. Maybe then. Maybe. Or maybe there won't be books or anyone left to read them by then."

Rescue

2010-11-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

"Dad. Dad. Are you there?" Silence was the only response to her knocking. "Dad! Are you okay?" She pushed the door open, knowing he would not have locked it. She found him in the back of the house, in the kitchen, in a camp chair, his legs propped on a step stool, entirely wrapped in his old sleeping bag, the one he had taken every summer on their campouts. She could barely see his head. His eyes were closed. She couldn't tell if he was still breathing.

She pulled down the top flap of the bag enough to expose his head. She put two fingers on his carotid. "Dad," she whispered. "Dad."

He grunted and sighed. "You're letting the cold in, darling. Wrap me back up. That's a good girl. You don't happen to have a stocking cap about, I suppose?"

Darla leaned down until she could see his eyes and grinned. "I'll find something. How long have you been like this? Out of fuel?"

"Don't worry about me," he murmured, closing his eyes.

"Right. Don't worry about you. Here you are alone, near to freezing. As I expected. I would have been here earlier, but I had to wait for Benjamin to finish repairing the electric cart so we both could come back. Come with me back to the village. We have heat there. And food. Come join us, Dad."

"Leave me be, girl. I'm old. You have children to take care of there. There's little enough for any of us now."

"Dad. You know I'm not going to do that. Can you walk?"

"Stubborn girl. Do you get that from your mother or from me? How is your mother? Have you heard from her?"

"She's coming to stay with us. She sent word."

"Well. Good. She's smart and resourceful, that woman. She'll be a real addition to your little survival village."

"Dad, we do a lot better than survive there. You need to come stay with us. You'll see."

Darla knew he was determined to stay in his home of many years, and to die there if necessary. But she was as stubborn as he was, and younger and stronger. It wasn't a question of getting him to come. It came down to whether she would have to tie him up and drag him out like a side of beef. He was tough and stringy and tall, but thin from not eating, and the recent drop in temperature, along with no food left, had frightened him. She gave him water and a small muffin she had in her pocket. She kept talking to him as she watched his eyes take on some of their old glow. Her father, the source of much of her inspiration as she grew into her own. A story teller. Sharp, intelligent. But also a Buddhist philosopher inclined to accept without judging all that he experienced, including the downward spiral to death, which worried her. The up side was he had taught her to question everything, including everything he taught her. She trusted that, in the end, he would fight against the dying of the light. She got him to his feet.

He couldn't walk. His right lower leg was wrapped in a bloody bandage. Darla had learned enough emergency medicine to know it was a serious wound. The bandage looked like it had not been changed since he put it on. "How long ago did this happen, Dad?"

He winced in pain when she touched the leg. "I don't know. Lost track of time. Several days. Maybe a week. Cut it fighting off a looter. Might have been a neighbor. He had knives. He's upstairs. He got rather the worst of it, I'm afraid. You know that saying. "You should see the other guy." I wasn't able to get him out of the house though. Going to stink badly soon."

"Oh Dad. Was he alone?"

"Darling, if he hadn't been, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

She tried to move him using the fireman's carry, laying him across her back and dragging him, but it hurt his leg too much. She sat him on the step stool, which had casters, and tied his legs together with towels to stabilize them. She was then able to drag him backwards to the front door. When she opened it to drag him down the single small step to the walk, she stopped.

"Shit," she whispered. A few feet away, in the drive, a young man stood bent over, back turned to her. He appeared to be studying the wiring of the golf cart Darla had borrowed from Benjamin. She had the key, but it seemed likely that someone determined could find a way to hot wire it. "Hey you! Get away from there!"

He turned to her, startled. He was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and too thin. Desperate. He squinted his eyes and bared his teeth. Ferel looking, she thought. He stared at her for a long time, saying nothing. Finally he said, "Key!"

Darla pursed her lips and said, "Not going to happen. Move away. Now."

"Can't." He continued to stare at Darla, not moving. His right hand came from behind his back. He held a hunting knife. Three inch blade, Darla estimated.

She had hoped this wouldn't be necessary. When she went to Benjamin's shop to borrow the cart, she had asked him to come with her, knowing she might need help to get her father. "Sorry," he had said. "The cart's battery should get you there and back with your father. I've tested its range with different weights, and given the distance you have to go, I estimate you won't be able to carry more than two people. Two out and three back, sorry, it won't make it. Here." He had given her a handgun, a rare and valuable item in their community indeed. A Walther PPK with four rounds. "It's all the ammo I've got. Please bring it back. Unused if at all possible." She had thought about it hard, then kissed him on the cheek and pocketed the gun.

Now she slipped her hand into her right pocket and brought out the pistol. She held it out in front of her with both hands, the way she'd seen it done many times on television before the grid went down, and with it, all forms of artificial entertainment.

"Move away from the cart," she said again. Her hands were steady. She aimed directly for the young man's chest.

"Please," he said, still not moving. "My little sister's hurt. I've got to get her somewhere where she can get help."

Darla held her aim and watched his eyes closely. "You're lying."

"No! Our parents .…they're dead. Some people broke in. Took everything we had. My dad tried to stop them. They had guns too. I was in my room. Lisa ran downstairs when she heard shots. One of them shot her too."

"She's alive? How bad is she hurt?"

"It's her leg. I wrapped it. Stopped the bleeding I think. But she's sick. I've got to get her help."

Shock, Darla thought. Or worse.

"How long ago? How old is she?"

"Five. Just five years old! It happened yesterday."

He could be lying. Probably lying in fact, Darla told herself. But she couldn't dismiss the story.

"Listen to me carefully. I'm taking my father to my community. We have medicine, food, heat. Everything you and your sister would need. You live near here? I want you to go get your sister. Bring her back here. I'll take both of you with me to where I live. You'll do fine there, but only if you cooperate completely. No trouble, no surprises. Understand?"

He stood looking at her as if he hadn't heard. Cunning? Or disbelief? Darla couldn't tell.

"Do you understand me? You have a choice here. How long would it take you to get back here with her? Tell me!"

"Uh, ten minutes?"

"All right. Go. Go! If you're not back here in ten minutes, you lose your chance. No weapons, no other people. Just you and your sister. Any funny business, I shoot. Got that?"

He turned and ran down the street. Darla turned to her father. "Let's get you on this cart." The boy returned about eight minutes later, pulling a little girl wrapped in a heavy blanket in a Radio Flyer wagon. Darla loaded his sister on the back and perched him on the back bumper. She knew they probably wouldn't make it all the way, but she had to take them.

They ran out of juice about half a mile from the village. Benjamin seemed to have expected this for some reason. He was riding in their direction with a fully charged battery strapped to the back of his bicycle. Within minutes he'd switched batteries and rode with them the rest of the way to the village's small clinic.

SoftCopy Anthology: Facts of the Case

2010-11-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

Publisher SoftCopy has just released an anthology of short fiction and art work titled My First Time, available in Kindle and I-Pad versions only (no print).

Included: my short story of love, pain and alienation, "Facts of the Case". Only $7.99, it includes work by 50 authors and artists, and the quality of that work is mad great.

Guan Yin (part 2 of 2)

2010-11-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

Guan Yin sat in lotus position, alone for the moment in her retreat deep in the hills of northern China. She could see the faint glow of morning in the curtains covering the windows on each side. It had been a particularly long night for her. She no longer slept. Instead she entered brief periods of the deepest contemplation. Sometimes when she surfaced and opened her eyes, she found Chin and one or two younger attendants sitting with her, their own meditations deepened by their proximity to her.

She'd known for months now that the end was coming soon. She wasn't ill, but she was increasingly weary, and these last few nights had revealed to her that the moment was very soon. She felt it was time to announce the end of her current cycle.

As the light began to rise, Chin entered, carrying a pot of steaming tea and her cup, both covered with an ornately worked cloth with a woven mandala, a circle enclosing a network of interconnected triangles.

“Chin, I would speak with you,” she announced. Chin, no longer the youthful driver of so many years ago, looked up, surprised. Guan Yin had spoken to no one for close to a fortnight. “Please. Pour my tea and sit with me.”

“How are you feeling, Tara?” he asked, placing the hot cup within her reach. Since they began their journey more than forty years ago, she had insisted that he call her by her favorite Tibetan name and would allow no formalities.

“I am tired, Chin. Or this body is tired. The 'me' that stands beyond and watches is well enough, as always. You know this, of course, we've discussed it enough times.” She allowed herself a small smile as she tweaked her old friend and protector. “Tell me, how are the children?”

“All are well. Your new docent has convinced the headman of the mountain tribes that it's in his interest to provide meat and oil and even wool for the winter for the orphanage in exchange for a reduction in their taxes. How she will keep the local collector from continuing to extort them, I do not know.”

“May Lin is a talented administrator. We are fortunate that she was drawn to us.” They both knew that “fortune” had little to do with it. Guan Yin had developed considerable influence over the district bureaucrats. As she stepped back from running the orphanage she had put word out across the country that a favorable position would soon be available.

“And we have word that four children will soon arrive from the western district to winter with us. We will soon be out of beds again.”

“As we have been every winter. Beds will be found. But I have more important business to talk about now, Chin. My time grows short.”

“My lady,” Chin said, head bowed. They knew each other too well. He knew what was to come.

“None of that now, Chin. I need you to do something for me. Something terribly important.”

“Anything. You know I would die for you, Tara.”

“I'm sorry, Chin. It could come to that. I will be gone by this time tomorrow morning. You will inform May Lin and ask her to come to me later this morning. She will arrange for disposition and conduct the proper ceremonies. Listen to me now,” she said, as Chin moaned and shook his head. “When they are finished, you will quietly leave and travel north. With this.” She removed the thong with the small pouch from her neck and handed it to him. “This is vitally important, Chin. This is more important than your life or mine. You must take this to Tibet to the village of Samdruptse. There you will build a small temple and dedicate it to Avalokitesvara. Before you build it, you must place this jewel safely under it, deeply under it. It must not be found by anyone until I return, and no one must know of its existence. Is this clear, Chin? Will you carry out this task for me?”

Chin looked up at her with surprise in his eyes. “Mistress, you will know the answer to that question better than I.”

Guan Yin smiled at her old friend. “Yes. Please break the news to May Lin for me now. She and I have much to talk about before the end of this day.”

Guan Yin (part 1 of 2)

2010-10-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Avalokitesvara. Padmapa-ni. Loke-avara. Guan Yin. Lord of the world, holder of the sacred lotus. She had many names, she reflected, standing on the terrace before her retreat near the summit of Putuo facing the China sea. And more to follow, she knew, as the years passed and she aged, died, was reborn, and once more remembered who she is and what she's vowed. She knew she was meant to travel again soon, she could feel it in her bones, in the air. She loved this place, and she would doubtless return, whether in this body or in another. But she had loved each place she found herself. Where would her feet take her next, she wondered?

But for now, for this moment, there was the lovely clear air and the scent of the ocean, even this far above, and the odors of the great pines and firs around her. Her friends, truly. But she felt the growing need to rejoin civilization, to practice her healing arts, to help the children as she had done for so many generations now.

Especially now that the Songs had assumed control of China. The new rulers were still enforcing their power in the north and many people were suffering. It's time, Guan Yin told herself. Time to return to work, set up clinics, teach the healing arts, teach the children. The Song dynasty was not friendly to Buddhism, especially in the north, but that was only more reason to be there, to teach there.

She gathered her robes in her hands and stood. She would wash her tea pot and cup after packing her few things. She would find her boots and staff for the long walk down. She turned to the door to her tiny shelter.

He was standing just outside the entrance, hands folded before him. A tall man, dark hair pulled and tied in back, sharp nose on a thin face. A Western face, the kind she has seen only rarely while traveling through the northwestern regions. Not Chinese, not even Asian. And with such eyes! Dark brown and clear with radiating laugh lines. Looking directly at her. Confident. How had he gotten here? She looked sharply at him. She would have seen him make the last climb, the few hundred yin between the tree line and the walls surrounding her home.

“Please pardon this intrusion. I am no threat to you, good lady of Putuo. I am known as Hunter by some. I ask that you hear me.”

Guan Yin stood silently, listening, sensing. Something strange here, very strange. But not dangerous. At least not immediate. But the future, that was another matter. It felt cloudy, not safe, but somehow more important than before.

"I am protected in this place by forces you cannot imagine. If you did mean me harm, I would advise you for your own good to abandon your intent and return whence you came.” But she knew as she spoke that this was unnecessary. She had been surprised, and she was not accustomed to surprises in her life. “Speak then, Hunter. Why are you here?”

"I came to ask you to accept a task most important to the human race. A task which brings with it some risks and dangers for you personally.”

“What is this task?”

Hunter raised his right hand and opened it to reveal a small leather pouch. “I must ask you to safeguard this jewel.”

“Why?”

“This jewel, combined with three others of its like offers all humans on earth the chance to regain knowledge of their true selves, to become whole and pure again. It is the original heritage of your species, lost long ago through an act of vengeance and aggression. By accepting this jewel and safeguarding it until the moment is right, and by coming together with three others of your kind, humans may be finally redeemed.”

“I see. I'm sure you'll not be offended if I say you sound quite insane.” She brushed past the stranger and entered her house. “I'm about to make some tea. Would you care for some?”

“Of course. Thank you,” he said, stepping in behind her. Guan Yin lifted the lid on a box next to her wood stove and removed some small pieces of split cedar. She lifted the fire lid of her stove and dropped the wood into it, peering in long enough to satisfy herself that the fire was sufficiently hot. She then filled a ceramic water pot with water from a wooden bucket and placed it on the stove.

“Please, sit.” She settled herself into a chair opposite, picking up a fat yellow cat, and looked the stranger in the eyes, her brows knitted.

“Now, who are you and how did you get here. I didn't see you approach. There's no other way to this summit except by the trail below my balcony. What purpose could you possibly have for sneaking past my defenses? If you know who I am, you must know I do not receive visitors easily.”

“Avalokitesvara.” He spoke the name gently, but she felt a brief shock to her being that brought her body to full alert. The hair on the back of her head prickled suddenly. Not since her master had spoken that name to her, the moment so long ago that changed her life forever, had she felt this kind of shock, this feeling of recognition. “Who are you!” She breathed quietly.

“Avalokitesvara, you are one of four in this world who have taken the sacred vow to forgo final ascendancy to your true nature until mankind is similarly released from its bonds. I spoke your true name to you to remind you of your destiny and your duty. I have a task for you.”

Guan Yin sat very still, listening to the stranger, to the breeze beyond the door, to the crackling of the fire deep within the ceramic stove, to the gentle purring of her cat. And to the voice within her.

“Master,” she finally breathed. “What would you have me do?”

“Just this,” Hunter replied. “Safeguard this jewel until I come for you again. It will be many years and there may be many dangers along your path. The whole of mankind depends on your faithfulness in this task. And you must at all times remember who you are.” He placed the pouch in her hands. Then he rose and stood before her. He bowed his head and lifted it again, holding her eyes with his. “Until we meet again, Avalokitesvara.” Then he simply disappeared. There was no sound, no disturbance of the air. Her cat did not move and neither did she. Not magic, she knew. Magic is either mistaking illusion for reality, or it is simply a form of truth we do not yet recognize. Hunter's disappearance was no illusion. Finally she lifted the pouch and placed its thong around her neck. She then lifted her cat and nuzzled it to her cheek and set it on the floor and rose to pour the now steaming water into the waiting tea pot.

Descending the mountain took the better part of a day. She stayed that night with one of her friends, the gifted potter Wan Hu, who had built her oven. He offered Tara the use of a small cart and horse, and the services of his son, a young man just coming of age named Chin, as her driver.

“Chin will care for your needs as best he can,” Hu said as he loaded pots with tight lids filled with fresh rice and other provisions. “But he is not much more than a boy still. May the blessings of all of the gods attend you both.”

Six O'Clock News

2010-10-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

Honey Jones, cute female announcer on the six-o'clock news:

"Today scientists announced that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves." Video clip plays. Scientist in white coat standing in laboratory being interviewed.

"Dr. Jonas Sulk heads a team of scientists here at the Quantum Underground Essential Elements Research laboratory in Whiteout, Alaska. Dr. Sulk, what can you tell us about this breakthrough?"

"Our research here has led to conclusive evidence that reality, what we have until now thought of as external, concrete, empirical reality outside of ourselves, simply does not exist. We think. We dream. We shape our reality with our thoughts and desires and fears. Our work here has demonstrated that's the totality of our existence. Make of that what you will."

"What does this mean for us, Doctor? How do you think this will affect people?"

"Beats me. Go ask your philosophers. Better yet, ask your science fiction writers. If anyone has a clue, it might be them. Me, I've got to go shut down a cyclotron and clean up about two hundred slides."

Shot of anonymous university building. Honey Jones: "We found Dr. Hans Whitman at the city university's philosophy department. Conveniently, he was visiting with a colleague, Friar Milt Schwartz, when we asked for an interview."

Shot of academic in tweeds with arm patches and wool tie. "Dr. Whitman, what do you have to say about today's announcement by the QUEER Institute?"

"Well, Honey, we're still looking at the evidence, but it appears cut and dried. Our physicists here tell us it's irrefutable. So Dr. Schwartz and I have been talking over the implications. It's too early to issue any real public announcement about this, but I can tell you we're all pretty rattled by this development. It completely undermines our model of what's real and what's not, and therefore the value systems we are used to working with."

Friar Schwartz broke in. "Hans, wait. I can't agree with that. Look at it this way, Honey. You're sitting in a chair, right? Holding a microphone? Probably just like you did before this announcement?"

Honey: "Uh…yeah."

Friar Schwartz: "Does the chair or the microphone seem different to you now?"

Honey: "Um …I guess not. Not really."

Friar Schwartz: "So there you are. Our reality, or our _sense_ of reality, hasn't changed. Concrete or dream, it's all the same."

Dr. Whitman: "Milt, you're trampling my territory there, don't you think? I mean, that's a philosophical proposition."

Friar Schwartz: "C'mon Hans. Am I wrong?"

Dr. Whitman: "Well …no, I suppose you're right. But it's obvious, isn't it. Almost an apriori statement. A chair is a chair because it's a chair."

Friar Schwartz: "Yes, and …?"

Dr. Whitman: "Nothing. Nothing."

Honey: "Dr. Schwartz? Or is it Friar Schwartz? Or Father?"

Friar Schwartz: "Doctor is okay. I have a doctorate degree, just like Hans here."

Honey: "Okay. So how does this affect your, uh, practice, or teaching, or ... you know, whatever you do?"

Friar Schwartz: "Oh, it doesn't change anything. I teach and write about the human spirit and our relationship with God and ... like that. I can't imagine any of that changing."

Honey: "But …if everything we experience is a dream …I mean, does that mean God is a dream? Or part of our dream?"

Dr. Whitman: "Exactly. See, Milt, that's what I was trying to tell you before these folk showed up. Honey. You put it rather simply, but effectively that was what I was trying to get Milt here to consider."

Friar Schwartz: "Hans. It makes no difference, don't you see?. I mean, how concrete did we think God was before this announcement? He's not a dream, he's not physical the way we are - or were, excuse me - He's way beyond all of those definitions. My work continues as usual."

Cut to new face behind a desk: a haggard, middle aged professional who needs a haircut. Honey: "This is Dr. Larry Littleman, a psychologist at the Center for the Mentally Challenged, located here in our city. Dr. Littleman, would you care to comment on this morning's announcement by the QUEER Institute? About how nothing's really real anymore?"

Camera holds on Littleman's face for a long time as he says nothing and appears to grow more and more distressed. His clenched hands begin to shake. Finally, "Uh. Well. Uh. You know. It's changed some things around here. We're, uh .…We're, uh, considering it. That's all. Some people here are a little, uh, uncomfortable with this. I can't really talk about it."

Honey: "But sir, how is it affecting your patients?"

Littleman (increasingly nervous): "About the same as it's affecting the staff, I guess. We're …surprised. And a little ...." (There is the sound of a long scream in the background. Camera shakes.)

Cut away to Honey at news desk. "There you have it. People may have differences of opinion, but it looks like life goes on pretty much as it has. Some people, it seems, don't seem to be taking it very well. How does this announcement affect you? Drop by our web site and leave us a comment. This is Honey Jones for The News That's New. Now here’s Tom with the weather."

Dizang (Northern China, 798 ACE)

2010-09-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

He is the one, Dizang thought as he gazed at the figure on horseback blocking the trail ahead. He reached out a hand to the shoulder of his driver. “Steady. Keep going.”

“Master, there is no place to go. The trail is too narrow to turn around and even if we could, we could not outrun him.”

“There is no need, Tetzu. He is not here to hurt us.”

“How can you know? Oh never mind. Of course you know. You always know these things.”

The cart and its single small horse slowed and stopped as it neared the stranger on horseback blocking the trail. Dizang stood and faced the stranger. “Blessings to you sir. May all the gods and this day smile upon you.”

The stranger, tall, short dark hair, wearing the horse-hair blanket favored by the local mountain people, lifted his head. Under his broad round hat, Dizang could see a narrow face, small nose, dark complexion. Sharp, alert eyes. The face of a Westerner. Wearing stitched and polished leather boots, which confirmed the impression. Definitely not a common sight here in the northern mountains of China. The corners of the man's lips curled up in a slight smile.

“You may call me Hunter, though it seems this particular hunt has come to a favorable end.”

“My dreams have foretold of your coming, Hunter,” said Dizang. “And the gods smiled as they spoke to me. I must believe you mean us no harm. Please tell us your business.”

“Certainly I mean you no harm, good Father. You are the one called Dizang?”

“It is so, at least in this part of the world.”

“Then far from robbing you, I come bearing a gift for you. But may I speak freely before your driver?”

“Tetzu is more than my driver. He is my trusted servant and my friend. We have traveled farther than I think even you could imagine.”

“We might trade tales someday on that subject, Father. You also might be surprised at how far I have come.” Hunter gently heeled his horse forward until he was in the narrow strip beside the cart. He pushed his hat onto his back so he could look up into Dizang's eyes. “I must ask you to carry something for me. Though it is of immeasurable value and importance, it is no favor I offer you but rather a burden and responsibility that is likely to define and alter the course of your life for many years to come.”

“Are you being deliberately mysterious? What is it you wish me to carry, and why?”

Hunter untied the small rope that secured the front of his robe and allowed it to drop behind him. Dizang was surprised to find Hunter wore not the rough home-spun wrap and sash of the people of this part of the world, but rather the finely woven long-sleeved blouse of the people of another land, the one Dizang himself had come from so many years ago now – the continent far to the south and east called Nippon. Around Hunter's neck hung two small leather bags, each suspended on its own thong. He removed one of these and held it up.

“Great Father, I know who you are. 'Not until the hells are emptied will I become a Buddha; Not until all beings are saved will I certify to Bodhi.' Incarnation after incarnation, you are always aware, you always remember who you are and that your mission is the salvation of the rest of humanity. It is why I have sought you, Father. I have reason to believe this object will aid you in your mission.” He lifted his arm and Dizang accepted the small pouch. “But for this to happen, great Father, you must protect this jewel, and above all, keep its existence secret. When the day comes to make use of its power, you must be present. If it is stolen or lost, or worse, if we were to lose you, then the human race is lost as well, and your vow and your many years of dedication and hard work will be in vain.”

Dizang, who knew something of great significance was to come from this meeting, though he knew none of the details, was speechless, and momentarily grim at the prospect of carrying an object of such power. “I can assure you sir that I will do my best not to disappear along the way. What else, then? What can you tell me of the origin and nature of this jewel? How will it help humanity?”

“I will follow you for a while on your journey, and we will speak more about it as we go. But I can only see you to a safe location.” He lifted the other pouch around his neck. “You are the third of four, great Dizang. I must find and burden one more. For their power to be effective, these fragments must be joined in your presence and the presence of the three other principal long-lived saints of your kind. And only at the right moment, which is as yet generations away in the future. We have time, for now, and much to do to prepare the way for what is to come.”

With these words, Hunter dropped the final pouch back onto his chest, pulled up his outer garment and tied it, and turned his horse. “I will ride ahead to make sure the road is clear, then I will return and join you on your journey. Fare well for now, great Father!”

Dizang watched Hunter ride off until he disappeared around a bend in the mountain trail. Then he put the pouch's lanyard around his head and tucked it deep under his clothing. It felt of Hunter's warmth and, he imagined, had a kind of heat of its own. He took a great sigh and sat back down behind Tetzu, who burred “Whup!” to his horse and snapped his little whip over its back. The pair started off once again. The day was still bright, and warming, but Dizang felt the chill of his years growing on him, and the road ahead now seemed long. Very long indeed. Still, he smiled to himself and whistled a little tune Tetzu had taught him. Despite this new burden, Dizang's mind felt clear and peaceful. The way ahead might be long and perhaps not easy, but it was a good day and a good road. A worthy road.

Analogies and Metaphors

2010-09-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

Future Novelists... These are actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays (sorry, I'm posting without credit because they're source unknown.)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a thigh master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star crossed lovers raced across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resemble Nancy Kerrigan's teeth. (gee, sorry Nancy, wherever you are)

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

"Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a really duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

He was deeply in love when she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightening.

Falling

2010-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Did I put on a parachute? Do I even have a parachute? This, I think, I don't really want to know. To know the answer is to defeat the purpose of the moment, which is to jump. Jump without knowing, and more importantly, if possible, without caring. I'm holding on to something. I look: it's a metal handle welded to a rib that curves around the fuselage of this airplane. It's strong, utilitarian, useful; the opposite of almost everything else in my life. It's one of the reasons I'm here. To find, and to grasp, something irrefutably solid and immovable, the purpose of which is single-minded: to give steadiness to someone like me when he needs it.

Reminded of the airplane, I become aware of the noise and the vibration. I look up and see an open door. Next to it, a man dressed in a brown jumpsuit and bright red helmet and gloves and goggles. And parachute. He is pointing at me and waving his hand to come forward. I realize I've just woken up from a dream - that I fell asleep while the plane climbed to jumping altitude. And I know I must have a parachute on. My hand slaps down over an oval clamp over my belly button; yes, of course I do. Still, the tiniest part of me wonders, how would I know if I'm awake, really? and I get up and stumble forward toward this young man and I stop next to him - waiting for instruction? - and he motions me on forward, into the mouth of the open door. My hands instinctively reach up on each side and grasp the frame and what do I find? Two more of those fine, reassuring metal handles, sized and placed exactly as needed by someone standing in this door, facing outward, ready to die.

I turn my head to the right to see his face and before I can glimpse his eyes, I feel his hand on my back and a push and the metal handles fail me, or I fail them, and I'm out. Falling.

Have I done this before? I seem to remember doing it, yes, or else I remember dreaming that I did. Then I remember that once, on a cold day drinking juniper tea from an incredibly fragile teacup handed me by a small brown woman with no teeth and a bright red scarf hiding her hideous hair, I wrote a little poem in which I floated like this, and remembered floating like this, and down I floated, wind whipping as if punishing me for something, eyes full of tears despite my goggles and unspoken apologies, arms extended in surrender, glimpsing something like the earth and trees and water and sand turning below me, turning slowly, then quickly, tumbling out of sight finally, and my thought at that moment, my final thought, was, I remember remembering a dream that became a poem that became life that became ....

#fridayflash: Gratitude Pill

2010-09-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Herr Docktor Franz Kelling, considered a genius in the pharmaceutical biochemistry world, was anything but when it came to his home life. He lived alone with his fourteen year old daughter Kara. Alone because his wife had left, fed up with both of them. Consumed with work, Franz spent little time with his daughter, and when he did, he found her increasingly angry.

"You're never here and when you are, it's 'Kara do this, Kara do that, Kara do the dishes, Kara take out the trash!' You can't be around me without telling me what to do!"

"But ... but!!" he sputtered. "I'm your father! I feed you and house you! You should be grateful. You must do as I say! You WILL do as I say!"

"OH!!" Kara stomped off to her room and refused to come out.

Being a scientist, Franz naturally started thinking about some technological fix to this drama. "I wonder. What if I make a pill that makes people grateful? I might have to slip it to her in her meal, but ...."

Within a few weeks, he had it. A small pill that lasted for a week or more. The Gratitude Pill. He couldn't resist patenting it and when he did, his institute found out. "Franz, this is brilliant work, but why did you not tell us you were working on something so fantastic? The public will claw down our doors to get this! And of course, since you did the work here, you must share the patent with us."

The institute rushed testing and approval and got the pill on the market in record time. They were right: the world was stunned: a pill to make people feel grateful? Wonderful! It would change the world! It was very possibly humanity's salvation. Who would lie or steal or kill or wage war for that matter, if they felt grateful to their neighbors? It outsold any other pill ever produced.

Then the side effects kicked in. Everyone who took the pill for more than a few weeks (most of the world) began to feel terribly guilty. Guilty for all those years they had failed to be grateful. Guilt, naturally enough, quickly became resentment. Some dealt with it by ignoring their friends and loved ones for as long as they could. When they began to feel guilty about doing this, they once again turned to the Gratitude Pill. And so the circle turned. Others dealt with their guilt by buying and showering their friends and loved ones with presents. This resulted in a world wide spending spree that so pumped up the world economy that when their friends, feeling guilty themselves, returned the gifts, or just dumped them on the doorsteps of local charities, the world economy deflated like a punctured balloon. The national economies spiraled down into recession and unemployment. When things got unbearable for people, they either killed themselves, or spent what little they had to buy Gratitude Pills. And so the circle turned.

Franz, not insensitive to all this, decided to create a solution to this problem. He promptly invented a No-Guilt pill. Predictably, there was instant world-wide demand for this. It was all the factories could do to turn them out by the billions.

Franz's institute was by this time fantastically wealthy. They showered Franz with bonuses in addition to his patent earnings. During this time, Franz learned that wealth was no solution to his problem with his daughter, who had adamantly refused to take any pills of any kind, and who sensibly inspected her meals before eating.

The side effect of the No-Guilt Pill, of course, was a world wide wave of criminality.

Franz was appalled when they came for him and charged him with masterminding and amplifying crime around the world. His institute discharged him and claimed no knowledge of his work or intent, and thus saved itself, however feebly.

Franz's daughter came to visit him in prison. "Hello father. I just wanted to tell you in person that I'm off to see the rest of the world now that you're no longer around to imprison me in our home. And to say thanks for the money I've inherited, and for going away to jail so I can lead my own life. For all of that, I'm just terribly, terribly grateful!"

#fridayflash: Lady of the Marshland

2010-09-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Teddy Keller had a friend. Her name was Alice Mason. He was eight, she was ten. She lived two doors down the shanty row by the tracks. When Teddy wondered why she played with him, that fact, being his neighbor, seemed as good a reason as any. She was, he thought, rather pretty for a girl, though she liked to dress rough and wear her hair under an old watch cap and run hard and be tough like the boys in their school. She even tried to be a bully when she first met Teddy. But he just laughed and refused to play and so she gave that up. It was only an experiment anyway, she told him.

They walked the sedge by the tracks on Saturdays, out toward the marsh opposite the yards, away from town, trading urban scruff for barren sandy flats with mud pits and the odd grove of poplars and willows, where their imagination could stretch and there was room to run. There, she quickly assumed the role of Queen Alice, Lady of the Marshland. This meant Teddy had to be her squire and run imaginary errands for her, which he tried until he tired of being told what to do. From then on, he was The Invader, bent on breaking through her defenses and crushing her armies. He liked doing this and however clever Alice thought she was being in countering his offensives, he always found a way to break through, which usually meant tackling her directly and throwing her into the gorse, which he declared her prison. She would scream in protest and giggle as he tried to pin her shoulders to the ground. Then he would insist she shout "Give!", which she refused to do until, finally, she did. Then the game seemed over and he would release her, with promises of peace in the land, to which she would agree. Then they would play castle, with he the prince and she the princess, with their father, the King, being off waging war on the Persians or perhaps visiting kings in surrounding countries. Alice would then declare her intention to hold grand tea parties for visiting grandees while Teddy spent his time nearby but not quite in the castle, jousting with his cavalry. Then dusk and their stomachs signaled time to walk back home. This too seemed a good time for Teddy, because they could be who they really were, and talk about school and other friends and how things might be when they grew up.

"Mum says I might work in Aunt Fergie's china shop in town next summer," said Alice. Spring was well on them with showers and sprinkles and mists. They sat in the doorway of Teddy's da's tool shed and looked out over the network of steel tracks in the switch yard beyond the rusted steel fence that bordered his parent's property.

"What would you do?"

"Dunno. Dust things probably. I don't want to go. Sounds boring to me," she said.

"We could still play, right?"

"Suppose," she said. Then, "I might just run away though."

Teddy thought about that. "Where to?"

"Dunno. Maybe up to Swansea. Da took me there with him once. There's lots of ships. I could go anywhere."

Teddy looked out over the noisy, smelly train yards. "Can I go too?"

"Do what you like," Alice said, sniffing a little. It was her Queen voice, dismissing the trivial thoughts of a vassal.

"Well I might do anyway," Teddy said, standing up suddenly. "I could take a train, be there before you are, you know."

"As you wish." Alice stood up too, rubbing her knees and brushing dust and cobwebs from her jeans, looking bored and restless. "But what can we do today?"

"We could go over the yard. Look in empty box cars," said Teddy.

"You know we aren't meant to go in the yard," said Alice, but there was a glint in her eyes.

* * *

A year later, plus a little, late spring when school was let out, Teddy and Alice met again at the fence by the train yard. They had played together less this last year. Teddy wondered why. "Mum is making me stay in and do things," Alice said. "She says I have to learn to work, to make money. I don't like it. I don't like it a bit." She said this with a tone Teddy couldn't remember hearing before. Something, a catch in her voice, the pitch a little different from what he was used to, made him feel strange.

"You're out now, right? We can have fun. It's almost summer."

"No. Mum arranged it with my aunt. I'm meant to go work in her shop this summer." Alice dropped to a crouch, arms wrapped around her knees, head on her arms. Teddy could see tears. He'd seen Alice cry before, but it had always been tears of pain from a scrape. This was something else. "I'll have to wear a dress and proper socks and shoes and everything. I'll have to scrub myself and be on time every morning. It's horrible! I don't want to do it!"

Teddy didn't know what to say, so he crouched by her side, silent as a sentinel, waiting for her mood to change. Finally Alice stood up, wiping her nose on her jacket sleeve. "I'm going. Don't follow me, okay? I just want to be by myself for a while."

To Ted's surprise, she didn't turn toward the narrow lane in front of their houses. She turned to the fence and slipped through the hidden gate they had made for themselves long ago. Ted watched her silently as she walked over tracks in the direction of the overpass, away from the switching house. She started to run. He watched, trembling with worry as she finally disappeared behind a line of box cars.

It was the last time he was ever to see Alice.

#fridayflash: My True Profession

2010-09-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

“Be seated,” said the judge, seating himself at the bench. We all sat down. “Mr. Golden, you are accused of being smart but hopelessly pessimistic. In fact, the State has accused you of having no sense of humor at all. How do you plead?”

My attorney nudged me and we both stood back up. “Uh, your Honor, I ... I don’t know what to say. I have a sense of humor. I do. And I’m not a pessimist. So there must be some mistake. I suppose.”

“You suppose? A simple answer please. None of this hedging. Are you guilty of the charges as read, or not?”

“Uh, no. Not guilty, your Honor.”

“So noted. Prosecution may proceed.”

The prosecutor talked for a long time about my personality, how I am disliked by some and ignored by most, about my published works, both fiction and non-fiction. About how the critics, when they bothered to mention my work at all, uniformly complained, not about what I had to say, but about how I chose to say it. “Your Honor, considering that the accused is a writer of some note, even though he’s disliked by most of the critics, and considering that his work directly influences the attitudes and general happiness and welfare of the public, we intend to demonstrate through the evidence that his attitude, and specifically his unwillingness to lighten the tone of his work and to entertain the public, has a deleterious effect on the public welfare. We ask that a judgement be placed against him and that he be duly restricted from further harming the public by publishing his work.”

My lawyer, a young, inexperienced public defender, then rose. “Your Honor, defense pleads nolo contendere. While my client does not admit guilt, I have been unable to discover evidence to counter the prosecution’s arguments.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I thought he liked me at least. Well, not liked, exactly, but would do his best to defend me. I stood up. “I object!”

“Sit down and shut up, Mr. Golden. Attourneys, approach the bench,” said the judge.

So it happened that day that I was fined a hundred bucks for lacking a sense of humor. And then another two hundred when I objected and tried to prove my innocence by telling a joke so bad that the judge declared me in contempt.

In this way did I become, over time, a reasonably competent digger of sewer drain ditches. When my fellow diggers ribbed me and tried to engage me in humorous banter, I politely refused to participate, out of fear of making my situation even worse. Until the day the foreman fired me and had me arrested. The charge: lack of comradeship with my fellow workers, and no sense of humor.

Unemployed, with no useful skills and a demonstrated talent for offending people, I finally found my true profession, at which I am finally successful. I took up the only profession around where no sense of humor is required: literary critic.

#fridayflash: Pema Dorje

2010-08-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

(Based partially on true events...)

Pema Dorje, seven year old shepherd in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, suddenly remembered who he really was. It might have been frightening or confusing. It was neither. It was a moment of pure joy for Pema.

There was no one around to tell except his faithful sheep dog and the sheep crowding before him as they moved down the mountain toward their winter shelter. Pema looked out over the sheep at the slope, at the spread of the Kanjora valley below, at the endlessly varied shapes of stone and grass and earth and sky and clouds, and he remembered. He remembered not just his former life, but many lives before them, and especially the life he had lived in the north of India when, inspired by a great teacher, his incarnations took on a different purpose. It was then he had taken the great vow to forgo the final merging of his consciousness with Atman until all of humanity was ready to achieve similar transcendence. It was then that he was given the name of Avalokitesvara. And later he was to be known as Padmapa-ni and Loke-avara and Guan Yin. Guan Yin. That had been his most recent incarnation. A healer and a teacher. He remembered his life, and he remembered his death at a great age in a tiny village in northern China.

And suddenly he remembered something else. He ran at his sheep, yelling and waving his staff, urging them along as fast as possible. His urgency was not that of need but of excitement. He must find Samdruptse, the village where his servant and protector Chin had planted the jewel.

Later, at home, his charges safely penned and fed, Pema went to his father. “Please, I must go to the village of Samdruptse. I beg you to help me get there safely.”

Pema's father had long felt his son's destiny lay beyond the hills of his birth. “I have not heard of this village, son. Let us consult the governor to find where it may be.”

This required patience, as the regional governor passed through their district only once a year. Pema was patient. If anything, he became a better son to his family and worked hard for the family welfare. At last the day came that his father said, “Let us go to the market today. The governor is coming.”

When they gained audience and posed the question, the governor answered, “Samdruptse. Let me think. Ah yes. A small village in the foothills of the Drolmari as I recall. Or so it was in my youth. That village has grown into a fine city. It is the city of Shigatse that you seek. Six days to the north and the west. Just north of here is a fine road leading to Shigatse!”

After that it was preparations and farewells to his mother and sisters and an arduous journey across mountain ridges west and north. When they reached Shigatse, which was more than a village to be sure, but less of a city than the governor had led them to expect, Pema asked his father to take him to the temple of Avalokitesvara. But no one they asked could tell them where such a temple might be. Finally they were directed to a humble monastery on the edge of the town. “Can you tell us where we can find the temple dedicated to Avalokitesvara?” Pema's father asked the monks. They were led to the abbot, an old monk draped in robes of yellow and deep scarlet. When Pema's father asked the abbot about the shrine to Avalokitesvara, he led them behind the monastery to a small and ancient shrine hidden in the back of a walled garden. Pema immediately sat in the lotus position and began meditation before the shrine.

The abbot asked him, “Pema, you have come from far to the south. Tell me why you have sought this shrine and no other.”

“It is because this is my shrine.” He looked up at the abbot with shining eyes. “I have remembered who I am, grandfather.”

After this, there was great questioning of the youth, and the monks quickly understood this boy was the incarnation of Avalokitesvara. Pema was born in 1391, seven hundred years after the death of Guan Yin and almost two thousand years after the death of Avalokitesvara. His family was invited to live nearby while Pema was instructed in the monastery known as Nartang. As he grew, his knowledge and wisdom and intelligence and compassion impressed all who met him. Eventually he took the name Gendun Drup and established the largest monastery in Shigatse, the Tashilhunpo, and founded the line of spiritual leaders in Tibet known as the Dali Lamas. His influence was so great in that region that he renamed the Drolmari mountains behind Shigatse the Tara mountains, to honor the memory of Guan Yin.

#fridayflash: Great Secrets

2010-08-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mick pulled back the curtain, entered, and sat in a small camp chair across a TV table from a very pretty young woman. "Welcome," she said. "I'm Pam. What's your name?"

"You should probably be able to tell me, right?"

Pam sighed. If she had a buck for every time she'd heard that. "Doesn't work that way."

"Okay, if you say so. My name's Mick. Now you know everything about me." He smirked, trying to cover a slight nervousness. He'd never done this, got a reading or whatever it was supposed to be. And damn if she wasn't great looking.

"Hardly. Everyone has a great secret. Something they wouldn't tell anyone, no matter what."

"What's yours?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? That's way too personal. Besides, let's keep this about you." Pam dropped her eyes to her purse. Stuck her hand in it and rummaged. Pulled out a small tube of lip gloss and applied it. She looked back up into his eyes. "Want to tell me yours?"

Mick laughed. He didn't mean to. It just came out, a short bark. A split second later it occurred to him that, well, it was funny. He followed it with a wide grin. His best feature, he knew. "I don't have any great secret, I can tell you that. What you see is pretty much what you get."

"Right," Pam said with an ironic twist to her now glossy and very full lips. "So, it's five dollars. In advance."

Mick reached into his jeans and pulled out a wrinkled bill and handed it to her. She took it carefully between two perfectly manicured fingers and dropped it into her purse.

"Now give me your hand."

"Which one?"

"Either one. Your right one. You're right handed?"

Mick reached out his right hand, palm up. He felt the feather-soft touch of her fingertips cradling the back of his hand as she stared intently down at the lines and curves of his palm. He was suddenly aware of how long it had been since he had washed it. "Uh, so, can you really see stuff there? It mean anything to you?"

"Of course. Shhh. Let me look." A few seconds later, "You had an accident recently. A bad one." He tried to jerk his hand back but her fingers gripped his wrist and held it in position. She continued to look at his palm. "Oh my, you have a temper, don't you. That had something to do with it, I think." She never looked up at him for confirmation. "Lost something." She twisted her head a bit for a better look. "Something important."

This time Mick pulled his hand back hard and she let go. "Sign says you can tell my future. Didn't say anything about my past." Pam looked up at him with as neutral a look as she could manage. "Okay, sure, if you want me to."

Mick wasn't sure he did. He looked at her, his face a shifting map of anger, fear and confusion. He was from out of state, visiting cousins who for a lark had taken him to this county fair. She couldn't have known about the accident he'd had six months before. No one here did. The accident that resulted from chasing a buddy who had thrown beer on him. The attempt to follow him over a chain link fence, and the rip to his groin when he failed to jump over it. The surgery that followed resulting in the removal of his penis and testicles. Sexless and ashamed, that was his great secret.

He felt the bile of a challenge rise in him. No sex organs didn't mean he wasn't a man anymore. "Sure I want you to. Tell me my future."

Pam gazed at Mick's face carefully. She'd been doing this a long time, ever since her mother taught her as a kid. Something about this guy, though. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him more.

"Your hand," she said, looking down without changing her expression. This time she held his wrist lightly with one hand and gently stroked his palm with the fingers of her other hand, following the splay of lines, letting the image and the feel of them create patterns in her mind. She closed her eyes.

Then, "Tell you what, Mick. I'll refund your money and we'll just call this one a nice try, okay?"

"Why?" His features hardened. "Just tell me what you see."

"Nothing. I'm getting nothing."

"I don't believe you," he snapped. "Okay, you were right about the accident thing. So tell me what else you see!"

Something in Pam rose and hardened in her throat in response to his belligerence. "Are you sure? You may not like what I see."

"Yes. Tell me!"

"Okay Mick. You're going to have a sex change operation. You're going to become a woman. Now go away." With that, she released his hand, rose, and left the tent from the back exit, feeling confused and annoyed with herself. What bothered her was the feeling that flooded her when she realized his fate. A feeling of overwhelming attraction for him, or her, or for who he might become.

#fridayflash: Death by Story

2010-08-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

Jonathan A. was more nervous than he could remember being in years. He was sipping espresso in the lounge behind the small auditorium classroom where he was due to speak in a few minutes. The audience would be a mix of journalism, literature and creative writing students. Undergrads mostly. Jonathan was here at the invitation of Alex, a creative writing faculty member at this private midwest college.

"Thanks for taking this on, Jon. I may call you Jon? Jonathan seems so formal."

"Of course. Thanks for asking me."

"It'll be a mixed bag out there. We announced your lecture and students with a variety of backgrounds are attending. I expect what ties them together is that they're almost all would-be writers. Short stories seem to be the favorite form around here, and short non-fiction pieces. You know how it is, we try to keep up with the times, adapt to the changing literary and journalistic landscape. All of our students post their work on blogs. We require that. We preach short, tight prose. Very few novels-in-progress among this bunch, I'm afraid. It's the Zeitgeist."

"I'm a novelist, you know. It's what I know best. I haven't written short fiction in years." Jonathan put his mug down and loosened his tie. It was warmer than he was used to.

"Of course you are. Two books published and your most recent one ... what was it called? Doing well, I hear."

"Natural Man. It's a story about...."

"Right. I remember now. Marvelous work. Well, are you ready? It's time."

Alex gave Jonathan a brief introduction before the half-full auditorium. "So, I give you the author of The Natural Man, best selling author Jon A. Be sure to subject him to your usual grilling after he speaks." Then Alex disappeared from the auditorium.

He introduced himself and talked briefly about his novels. "I understand that most of you are writers. Could I see a show of hands?" As far as he could see, all hands went up. "Now, how many of you have been published? Paid or not, you've seen yourself in print." After what seemed to be some confusion and hesitation, about half the audience raised their hands.

"Excuse me, Mr. A," said a young man near the front. "Sir, 'Print' has me confused. Does that include self-publishing and posting our work on our blogs?"

"Ah. Well, no, I wouldn't consider self-publishing the same thing as having your work accepted by an actual publication."

"But sir, online newsletters and magazines ...."

"Okay, yes. If they're serious online publications, with some sort of editorial staff using critical judgment." Jonathan paused and looked out over the audience, who seemed uncomfortable, some quietly murmuring to each other. "So, given that definition, how many of you feel your work has been published?"

Only a few hands this time.

"One more question. How many of you are actively working on a novel? I mean with the real intention of getting it published some day?"

Total silence. No hands.

Jonathan was stunned. These were writers? Individuals who love expressing themselves with words? Back when he was in college, that question would have resulted in near-unanimous raised hands.

"I'm puzzled by that," he said at last. "Don't any of you have a story you want to tell the world?"

"Sir," said the same young man, "We write stories all the time."

Jonathan looked intently at the young man. "Please tell me what you think a story is."

What followed was a half-hour of back and forth on the topic of stories, what made one, how it could be best expressed, what were favored mediums and methods, even a bit of personal philosophy about why these people had chosen to major in their fields. Story telling for most of them, it turned out, meant something very different from what it meant to Jonathan. For most, a story almost never amounted to more than a vignette, an incident, a glimpse, a hint. For those few who were published, length was rarely longer than one browser page, maybe 600-800 words. Many were much shorter than that.

"Let me ask you this. Please think about it before you answer. If you were to tell the story of your life to someone you didn't know - I mean the whole story, the real story - how long would it be? How many pages, or words, or how many minutes or hours would it take you to tell the whole thing? If you think you have an estimate, please raise your hand."

Hands soon went up. Jonathan picked one at random.

"Sir, I think I could tell mine in, oh, around a thousand words or so. I could probably trim that down too, once I had the words on the screen."

Another: "A page and a half, maybe two. Three to five paragraphs. That should do it."

Another: "I did this recently when I met this guy at a bar. It took, oh, I don't know, eight or ten minutes. Pretty much covered everything, I think. He did too, in maybe five minutes."

"That's it?" replied Jonathan. "Ten minutes for your whole life? A thousand words? Folks, that's maybe three pages of type script. Are your lives really that empty of content? Not to mention meaning?"

Jonathan dismissed the group. He sought out Alex and apologized for what felt was a failed lecture.

"Don't worry about it, Jon," Alex said. "Those kids, they're just doing what we've been teaching them. To prepare for the real world and a limited job market out there. Fiction or non-fiction, it's all the same. No one wants to read long works anymore. It's all about the short hit, the summary, the sound-bite. I mean, short or long, they're all stories, right?"

Jonathan, a deep sense of despair overwhelming him, shook his head. "Those kids don't know what a real story is. Hell Alex, they don't know their own stories. Their lives are little more than sound-bites now. God help them. God help us all."

#fridayflash: Spider's Song

2010-08-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

our home this bell inner shell curved well of love babies strung beads across center motion clapper sways rocking our children with ringing love as we collect meals sweet meat of flies torn life giving flesh no strife we live short sweet lives our home a shell of warmth and motion and song

we know not of others but as selves as one as food we love the bringers of blood for our children their final moments a chorus song of ecstatic singing agony we hear love with each tug and vibration we thank them-us and sing back their lives to them we feel as they feel as we are all one song life unto death unto life and yet again the vibration of eternal strings

our children stir and pour forth a flood of smallest silent clicks on shell of home we see and almost feel them crawl over and around and past us waves of waves of smallest blessings each one and all turn in alarm at brightness and heat as they reach outer rim and feel air pick them into its arms and carry up and down and all directions are one direction spreading collapsing union separation entangled in so many arms at once

and our mother odor leads them back now to tangled torn web our joy to spin to wholeness as over and again we learn to talk each to the many and our loving food hosts always to each of us feed our dreams the dreams we love we love we love

#fridayflash: Desert Treasure

2010-07-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Diamonds were never her best friend. Too many complications attached, too much greed or bad karma or something floating around them. And you had to keep track of the damn things.

Which was why she was tramping around in sand dunes at dawn in her bare feet. Sandra still couldn’t believe that her asshole boyfriend, obviously high, had grabbed her purse and flung it out the window. Only he hadn’t. He’d pretended to, grinning like a ghoul. By the time he brought his hand back into the car with the purse, she had nearly rolled the Mercedes trying to stop it by stomping on the brakes. When he handed it to her she knew instantly that it was too light. Then she saw the rip in the bottom corner. “Get out get out get out!” She screamed. She started searching the floor of the car.

But they weren’t there. The jewels, worth more than her car, more than her mansion for god’s sake, had worn a hole in the purse and when he jerked it out the window they must have flown out onto the side of the road. Unless they had fallen out earlier. Sandra shuddered at the thought, then she wept.

But only a little. Then she backed up to ... where? Her best guess was maybe a couple hundred feet. Then she tore her flats off and ran to the gravel and sand that bordered the highway. Beyond, endless stretches of dunes and sage and stones. And pain.

#fridayflash: Alpha List

2010-07-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

A
All of my beads are plastic. Their colors are funny but faded and not very pretty, not like Celine's. Hers are the real thing. More than the real thing, they're ancient and from strange places and have qualities that make it hard for me to think of them as just beads. They're artifacts of older and different cultures. They speak of ancient peoples, ancient energies.

My beads reflect my history, my values, my likes and dislikes. They have soaked my being like many small tough sponges and now lay limp each to the other. Though they remind me of good times I've had, resonant of romances, they do not contain beauty. Not like Celine's.

B
“Be splendid”, she whispers in my ear. “Be daring. Be darling. Be that which you cannot find with your eyes”. Her voice in my mind, her touch on my skin.

Morning clouds rush like gray and silver racers in the sky, streaking my perceptions like water poured on watercolors above me, smearing all that I can see or hope to see until I doubt everything. All around me becomes old and ragged and fragile.

“Be splendid in your armor of gilded flesh. Stand fresh in the rain. Spill it to the ground and in and through you. Be washed clean once again.”

C
Celine steps into my room, just inside the door and fresh from her bath and in nothing but a towel. She smiles at me and flashes it open to show me her pyramid of fine brown hair. This makes a light go off in my head that blinds me and makes me want to turn away. She does this almost every time she bathes. It's not that I don't want to look. It's that I want to look too much.

“Celine! Don't do that!” I shout at her, spilling my beads, turning my back to her. “Go away!” I pick up a comic book but the colors all look too strong and garish and somehow hurtful so I throw that under the bed. Stomach aches, head hurts. I don't know what to do with myself.

D
Dust and dreedle, doodles of dread. Donuts define destiny. Dry and dessicated. Don't!

E
Eh? Enough?

F
Fail. Words do.

#fridayflash: Transition Village Columbia

2010-07-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Norman walked into the grocery store at 5 a.m. He was alone. He walked the entire store. There was no food. He had waited that late because of the men with guns who had been by the door earlier. No food. No water either. He was past being hungry but his thirst was a continual ache and a weakness that seemed to start in his joints and spread through his body to his head. His tongue was a thick useless pad in his mouth; his eyes blurry. He climbed up boxes to look in the bins in the back. Empty as he knew they would be. On then a few blocks over to the bridge over the river. Too polluted to drink, he’d been told but no matter. He’d drink from it anyway if he had to. No choice. First he would risk entering the Neighborhood that bordered it on the other side. Word was they had food and good water. Rumor was that it was dangerous to go there. Burnt out cars blocking all streets into it suggested as much. Still.

Armed men at the roadblock entrance. Norman approached with his hands up. “Are you alone?” one man asked. “Yes. Just me. Can you give me some food? I can work.”

To his surprise, they led him to the rear of a building facing the street. A steel door unlatched and he was taken to a room on the second floor. A woman carrying a pistol sat him in a chair in the middle of an empty room, then left. Hours later, it seemed to him, a man finally came in. “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “Everything. Where you’re from and what it’s like there.”

The man asked many questions until Norman had repeated most of his story over and over. He didn’t seem angry or dangerous. Just curious and thorough. Finally the woman returned and whispered to the man. “Okay, come with me,” he said then, and led Norman up another floor to a room with long tables with bins of food. Fresh bread and salad and steamed vegetables. and fresh water. It was the first good food Norman had seen in weeks. “Eat. Then go to that room over there,” pointing to another door at the end. “Take my advice. Don’t eat too much all at once. You’ll be able to get more.”

The man and the woman were there, along with an older man. “Norman, this is Philip. He runs this intake center. Lacy and I have asked him to consider accepting you as a resident.”

“Uh, that’s good. Good. Thanks.”

“Norman,” said Philip, “sit down. Let’s talk. I know Walt and Lacy have screened you, and our street team seems to think you may be what you say you are - a lone walk-in. I know it’s been a long afternoon for you here but at least you’ve been fed, am I right?”

“Yes. Thanks for that.” Then, after a pause, “I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything. I guess I can understand your caution.”

“Right. We’ve had a couple of instances of marauders and one of them was led by a fellow who posed as a walk-in while his companions positioned themselves for an ambush. We were lucky. None of our people were killed. The attackers were not as fortunate.” Philip watched Norman closely for any reaction. There was none.

“Tell me your story. This is the last time, I promise. Then Walt will take you over to the community center and issue you a change of clothes. Are your shoes okay? Good. Then we’ll find you a bed and assign you to a work team.” Walt listened closely for any inconsistencies as Norman repeated the story he’d already told. He came from another part of the city where everything had fallen apart when access to fuel and food collapsed. Wife and infant daughter had disappeared one night. Norman hunted for them for weeks, trying to find food as he went. The whole city and surrounding neighborhoods were deserted. First the electricity went, then water. Certain areas of the city were armed camps. He’d heard stories from some about neighborhoods that were prepared for the collapse though. Self-reliant and resilient areas that had organized to produce their own food and power. He had no where else to go, no one to take him in or help him. It was this or die.

When he was done, Philip made some notes on a sheet of paper and handed it to Walt. He rose. “All right, I appreciate your patience Norman. We do have to be careful who we accept into our community. So far it looks like you’re a good candidate. But everything depends on how hard you work and how well you get along with your neighbors here. You’re not a prisoner here in any sense. You can leave at any time. But while you’re here, you’ll learn the culture of our community and you’ll pull your weight. Your team leaders will be watching you closely for the first few months. Whether you’ll be allowed to stay depends on how well you contribute and integrate.” He extended his hand. “Welcome to Transition Village Columbia.”

#FridayFlash Fiction: The Mountain

2010-07-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

She was reluctant. Fascinated but hesitant, and with good reason. She could die.

"Come on Beth. You can do this." Jack was maybe twenty feet above her, fingers clenching the small stones and outcroppings of the cliff. He made it look so easy. He had just stepped on to the first crevice he found and started climbing. No hesitation. She followed, or tried to. She climbed maybe three times her height but when she looked down, it was like the cliff tilted. Like it stood up straighter, like it was some kind of giant's back they had stepped onto, and it felt her and now it was standing up and it was determined to let them get too high and then shake them off.

Crazy, she knew. But it made no difference, the image wouldn't go away. "Jack, wait. Wait. Wait!" She heard the pitch of her voice go up, heard the panic creep into it as if she were some other person watching this whole thing. Some person thinking, "How tragic. And how stupid. She's going to die, and for what? So she can impress this guy. Beth. What a fool."

"Jack, I ... I can't. I don't want to do this." But he looked down at her, now even farther above her, and was that a look of pity? Of worry? No, not worry. She could tell he couldn't feel the danger. It was like they were on entirely different slopes. His gentle and easy, with no lack of hand and foot holds. A walk in the park, and they were in a park famous for its cliffs, a favorite of local climbers of all skill levels. When she looked up, it was like looking up a sheer wall, featureless, forbidding, unfriendly - no, not even unfriendly. Uncaring. The cliff didn't care if she died. As for looking down ... she didn't dare do that anymore. The last time, she had felt dizzy, then faint. She had had to shake her head and cling tightly, or as tightly as she could, to the face she was on, and there seemed little enough to cling to. Her fingers felt like they must be bleeding as they scrabbled for purchase on the smooth face.

"Jack!" She screamed it this time, real fear in her voice. Jack stopped and looked down at her. "What?" he said, genuine concern in his eyes this time. He cares, she told herself, even if this mountain doesn't. "Help me!" Got to slow my breathing somehow, she told herself, or I will pass out. She tried holding her breath and right away tears filled her eyes. That's no help, she told herself and tried blinking them away. More came and she allowed herself to sob softly.

Finally she heard the soft voice of a man in her left ear. "Beth, try to relax. Don't move. Just stay where you are until you can calm down, okay?" She wanted to turn her head to look. She knew Jack had climbed down next to her and she wanted to turn her head to see him. But she was afraid to move. She felt that if she turned her head it would mean lifting it back just the slightest amount to let her nose clear the rock in front of her, and she knew, knew! that would move her center of gravity just far enough back to cause her to lose her grip and to plunge her to her death.

She closed her eyes and held as still as possible. After a while, she heard Jack's voice in her ear again, very quiet, very gentle. "Now, with your left foot, reach down. I'll guide it to the step below. You'll be fine, Beth, I promise. Just follow my directions, move slowly and gently, and keep breathing."

Later, back at their tent, Beth couldn't speak. She stared down, at the dirt, at her feet, eyes unfocused, a haunted sense of failure filling her mind. She felt weak, insignificant, almost unreal. Jack didn't seem to mind. He fixed their evening meal behind her. They ate in silence. She thanked him, in her mind, for that silence. Later Jack tried to apologize for taking her on the climb, though they both knew it wasn't his fault. Her fear was none of his doing.

She couldn't bring herself to talk about it until much later, back in the city. It all seemed like a bad dream by then, when she allowed herself to think about it at all. Finally the tilting feeling came back to her in a dream, the world lifting relentlessly up until it was on top of her and she knew she would not be able to hold on. But if she fell in the dream, she didn't remember it. Days later she told Jack about the dream as they sipped lattes outside their favorite coffee shop. Then she remembered a similar recurring dream she had had as a child. Many nights the same dream when she was seven or eight. She found herself in a dark featureless place too huge to even imagine. Finally she became aware of a force, ominous but magnificent, without shape or form but present in a way nothing else in her experience had ever been or seemed possible. An immanence, brooding, completely aware of her but uncaring, as the mountain had been. And as it came, she felt herself turning and sliding under this powerful presence which still she could not see or feel. She felt fear, she told Jack, great throat-stopping fear, but also a kind of joy, a release not just from gravity, but from all that she knew, and even in her fear she welcomed this moment that lasted she knew not how long. Seconds perhaps, or hours or days, she had no sense of time in this dream, and she knew she was destined either to die or to be born, or both. Then she woke, unable to breath as she had been unable to breath on the mountain, and with tears in her eyes.

#FridayFlash Fiction: The Day the Grid Failed

2010-07-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

When the grid crashed, it affected almost all of us. We were one of maybe five neighborhoods in the city that had the foresight and the commitment to prepare for oil and natural gas unavailability. We saw it coming and we deliberately bent our backs to the task of changing how we lived. We had reduced our dependence on fossil fuels to almost nothing in ten years. But we hadn't believed electricity would disappear so soon.

Our neighborhood was conveniently bounded by parks and industry and businesses and a river on all four sides. Sixteen blocks deep by twelve blocks wide. Close to twenty five hundred homes and a few small businesses, mom and pop stores mostly. Some machine shop and auto garages. It was a pretty good mix. Close to nine thousand people. On the whole, our lifestyle was better than it had been before committing ourselves to sustainability.

A small park and pavilion in the middle of our neighborhood, along with the church and meeting hall and school nearby, proved to be resources vital to our transition from dependency on fossil fuels to the sustainable, resilient community we were becoming. Those spaces became the focus for our work, the places where we gathered to educate ourselves and hash out our transition plan. Then they became workshops and celebration spaces. It took us close to three years to fully develop our plan. Then when it came time to stop meeting and talking and making to-do lists and to roll up our sleeves and start building our new lives, almost no one shirked. We were by then a true community.

We started with a network of backyard gardens. Of course. Feeding ourselves was our first priority. We worked with the city to allow us to raise small livestock too. Chickens and rabbits and goats. At the same time, we convinced the church to let us turn a room into a food storage and distribution center. Then we learned how to build low-tech, affordable electric vehicles with which to deliver locally manufactured goods and trade with other neighborhoods. Most of our streets became bike and hiking paths; parkways with yet more gardens. Some of us became push cart vendors to our neighbors. We created new, entirely local occupations for ourselves. We began eliminating our one-car per person lifestyles and turned our multi-car garages into workshops to pound out things we needed to get along. Tools. Utensils. Parts we needed for transport and food storage. We recycled everything locally.

At each stage we evaluated our progress, celebrated our successes, and considered our next steps. Leadership emerged as needed and rotated frequently. Everyone had something to offer. Not surprisingly, the children and young adults often took on responsibilities and pushed us to complete our projects.

None of this was really easy. We felt alone, especially the first few years. Our friends and colleagues outside the community looked at us oddly. Most of us maintained outside jobs, at least until we felt we could afford to work full time for the Transition. Change strained us all. But we felt connected, to each other, to the earth, and increasingly to ourselves. We began to see more clearly what our real needs were, as opposed to what we'd been taught all our lives we should want. All things considered, this effort of ten years gave most of us more satisfaction and meaning to our lives than we'd ever known.

Still, when the grid crashed, we all realized suddenly how far we still had to go. Fortunately, Marge Hill and her partner Delores had been making candles for the last few years. Demand for them had been steady but small. They had been considered almost a luxury item on the shelves of locally produced goods. When the electricity stopped, we learned that, anticipating something like this, they had stockpiled their surplus candles. By the end of the second night, they had enough food credits to last them close to a year.

I had taken on the job of drilling wells in the neighborhood to supplement and then replace the city-supplied water, knowing that it, too, could dry up on us. Our transition plan's goal was to make our community resilient, able to weather sudden changes in available resources. To stay flexible and smart and responsive to our environment. But the work that I did, that many of us did, still depended on electricity. Our immediate response was to huddle. Who in the community was working on alternate energy sources? How much progress had they made? How much had we, the community, supported and resourced them?

Not enough, of course. There were so many other things that had to be done first. But when you're dependent on something, and that something suddenly isn't there, it's amazing how fast priorities change.

I was one of several engineers in our community. We quickly zeroed in on a house near the south end of our neighborhood, bounded by the river that runs though the city. A commune of inventive young minds who had had limited interaction with us, older, organizers. Their focus had been on achieving energy self sufficiency. Some of us dropped in on them.

“What do you have?” we asked. “Several things,” was the reply. “Solar panels on the roof. A small wind generator. Human powered generators. And a small water turbine. None of it enough to power the whole neighborhood.”

“Tell us about the turbine.”

It was a prototype, small, essentially a water wheel housed on a floating platform with wires running across the street to their house. It generated only a few watts. But it worked, it was reliable, low-tech and maintainable. Best of all, it was scalable. “We'll help you make larger versions,” we said. “Lots of them.”

The city liked our plans enough to work with us. After about a month, we had a prototype that produced enough power from the river to provide power to a couple dozen homes. By the third month, with the cooperation and resources of the city engineering department, our neighborhood had power again. It became a model for the rest of the city and transition planning for the whole city began. Our lives continued to improve. The young inventors in the communal house found they had all the time they needed to continue innovating. Our neighborhood made sure the rest of their needs were met.

We Are Our Stories

2010-07-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This blog is about writing, or perhaps more accurately, about what stories mean to me, and why I have dedicated myself to learning the art of telling them. Some posts will be essays, original or borrowed. Some will be short stories - generally very short. "Flash" fiction (1,000 words or less) or even shorter. I have written some longer stories. I probably won't post those here though, partly because doing so risks making them unacceptable to print publishers who are willing to pay for first publishing rights.

I hope you will find these posts entertaining, or informative or educational, or worth your time in some way. You, readers of stories and information about the craft of story telling, are why I write. Feel free to let me know how I'm doing.

Respect!