Daniel Clausen's Blog, page 48
November 19, 2016
Connections
He looked over the mountain. It dropped sharply. He could see over it. It was a cliche of crashing waves. To his eyes, though, this cliche was magnificent.
There were many connections to be made. The connection to nature. The connection to himself. Finally, he had escaped the rigors of his life. There were no more spreadsheets to manage. No orders to process. There was just himself and nature.
His cell phone rang.
He thought it odd that he should get service this far out. A call from home. A place far away.
“Yes,” he answered, like a stranger to his own sister.
His brother had died. He’d snorted too much cocaine and now there would be no one to complain about and berate on Christmas holidays. He hung up the phone much more quickly than he should have. Certainly, much more quickly than was polite.
He looked over the side of the mountain and held out his cellphone by his index finger and thumb.
Connections. So easy to make and lose them. All he had to do was wait until his fingers were too slippery to hold on.
There were many connections to be made. The connection to nature. The connection to himself. Finally, he had escaped the rigors of his life. There were no more spreadsheets to manage. No orders to process. There was just himself and nature.
His cell phone rang.
He thought it odd that he should get service this far out. A call from home. A place far away.
“Yes,” he answered, like a stranger to his own sister.
His brother had died. He’d snorted too much cocaine and now there would be no one to complain about and berate on Christmas holidays. He hung up the phone much more quickly than he should have. Certainly, much more quickly than was polite.
He looked over the side of the mountain and held out his cellphone by his index finger and thumb.
Connections. So easy to make and lose them. All he had to do was wait until his fingers were too slippery to hold on.
November 13, 2016
Enter Inoue (The Ghosts of Nagasaki)
The izakaya suddenly goes silent. When I turn around all I can see is a row of salarymen lining the entrance. And there he is. The regional manager casually walks in, wearing full samurai armor, his fat oozing from the sides, his rosy cheeks and smile masking a mind made for cruelty.
“Oh God, who invited this cunt?” the Welshman says out loud.
I see the majority of the people scatter and flee for the door. They hurry to pay their bill and leave, but it soon becomes apparent that no one can leave with Inoue’s large frame blocking the entrance. Inoue lingers there, taking in deep gobs of air and letting them out slowly.
“Hot in here, eh,” he says and gives a short little sputter-laugh.
And it is. The people previously trying to make their way out the door fidget and try to find places to stand and sit. With so many people in the izakaya and none of the jolly merriment of seconds before we all seem to be sweating. I see out of the corner of my eye Kichijiro’s head shoot up from the table and his hands start to tremble with fear. Inoue finally begins to make his way over to our part of the table. He gives a kind of half-sputter laugh, then sits down next to the Welshman.
“You guys are dressed a bit formally for a party, aren’t you?” the Welshman says.
The samurai gives that same sputter-laugh and then calls for beers for him and all of his men. “I just came to congratulate you for a job well done and to wish you farewell on your journey back to your country.”
Kichijiro is shaking all over, and I’m rubbing my eyes, desperately trying to see what is there in front of me. I blink my eyes. When I close my right eye, I can see the same fat man in a full business suit. When I close the left eye and open the right, it’s my foster father Chuck. When I open both my eyes again, there is no mistaking it—it’s Inoue in full samurai armor.
All of us sit still. Our sweat and musk soon fill the room. I look to see where Aussie-Grunge is, and when I see her even she has a look of panic. One of the salarymen comes with a small Japanese folding fan and begins to fan Inoue. While the rest of us remain silent, Inoue and his troupe make off-the-cuff remarks in spattered English about foreigner arrogance, lazy work habits, and a lack of respect. I expect Mikey Welsh to do something—come up with some witty insult, pull down his pants and flash them, something—but all he does is shake his head. I soon realize that I’ve now met the one person who intimidates even the Welshman.
Inoue puts his flabby arm around Mikey. “I will miss you, you little arrogant foreigner—‘arrogant,’ is that the correct word?” He gives another stunted bureaucratic laugh. “My English is so poor. But what do you expect from us Japanese? We are just a simple people with simple ways.” Finally, Inoue and his troupe stand up. They ask for their tab, and I see Kichijiro settle down with a sigh of relief. “It’s okay,” Inoue says. “I did not mean to interrupt your party. Have all the fun you can handle. Everyone knows that the common worker is the soul of Japan. I just came for this one,” he says, pointing to Kichijiro.
“You see, he is my sister’s son. I try to look out for him. I give him a good job and a nice salary, but look what happens. Family, what are you going to do, eh?”
The look of disgust on the Welshman’s face is pronounced. Is he seeing what I’m seeing?
If you want to check out more, read "The Ghosts of Nagasaki"
“Oh God, who invited this cunt?” the Welshman says out loud.
I see the majority of the people scatter and flee for the door. They hurry to pay their bill and leave, but it soon becomes apparent that no one can leave with Inoue’s large frame blocking the entrance. Inoue lingers there, taking in deep gobs of air and letting them out slowly.
“Hot in here, eh,” he says and gives a short little sputter-laugh.
And it is. The people previously trying to make their way out the door fidget and try to find places to stand and sit. With so many people in the izakaya and none of the jolly merriment of seconds before we all seem to be sweating. I see out of the corner of my eye Kichijiro’s head shoot up from the table and his hands start to tremble with fear. Inoue finally begins to make his way over to our part of the table. He gives a kind of half-sputter laugh, then sits down next to the Welshman.
“You guys are dressed a bit formally for a party, aren’t you?” the Welshman says.
The samurai gives that same sputter-laugh and then calls for beers for him and all of his men. “I just came to congratulate you for a job well done and to wish you farewell on your journey back to your country.”
Kichijiro is shaking all over, and I’m rubbing my eyes, desperately trying to see what is there in front of me. I blink my eyes. When I close my right eye, I can see the same fat man in a full business suit. When I close the left eye and open the right, it’s my foster father Chuck. When I open both my eyes again, there is no mistaking it—it’s Inoue in full samurai armor.
All of us sit still. Our sweat and musk soon fill the room. I look to see where Aussie-Grunge is, and when I see her even she has a look of panic. One of the salarymen comes with a small Japanese folding fan and begins to fan Inoue. While the rest of us remain silent, Inoue and his troupe make off-the-cuff remarks in spattered English about foreigner arrogance, lazy work habits, and a lack of respect. I expect Mikey Welsh to do something—come up with some witty insult, pull down his pants and flash them, something—but all he does is shake his head. I soon realize that I’ve now met the one person who intimidates even the Welshman.
Inoue puts his flabby arm around Mikey. “I will miss you, you little arrogant foreigner—‘arrogant,’ is that the correct word?” He gives another stunted bureaucratic laugh. “My English is so poor. But what do you expect from us Japanese? We are just a simple people with simple ways.” Finally, Inoue and his troupe stand up. They ask for their tab, and I see Kichijiro settle down with a sigh of relief. “It’s okay,” Inoue says. “I did not mean to interrupt your party. Have all the fun you can handle. Everyone knows that the common worker is the soul of Japan. I just came for this one,” he says, pointing to Kichijiro.
“You see, he is my sister’s son. I try to look out for him. I give him a good job and a nice salary, but look what happens. Family, what are you going to do, eh?”
The look of disgust on the Welshman’s face is pronounced. Is he seeing what I’m seeing?
If you want to check out more, read "The Ghosts of Nagasaki"
November 4, 2016
Review of Looking for Alaska
I won’t do my usual long review for this book since I’m on vacation. I’ll have to settle for some scattered insights and random musings.
1.
This is the second book I read on a tablet. It's going pretty well so far. A graceful introduction for reading in the 21st century.
2.
I had a choice between reading this and reading “Love in the Time of Cholera” a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book. I chose this one because it was a YA book and would be easier to read on vacation. The funny things is that a Marquez book I quite liked played a pivotal role in this book. I just happened to read this book twice in the past two years. Serendipity. I like the idea that this book will encourage middle schoolers and high schoolers to try to read more difficult books -- like Marquez and Vonnegut.
3.
This was my first John Green book. I’m a fan of his web series on history. It was a very good novel. However, there are reasons I would pause before reading another one of his books. First, the book reminded me too much of high school. He nailed it, all the way down to the hormonal angst and dramatization of everything. It was hard enough to do the first time. Second, he really nailed the voice of hormonal teenager, like there was a 16-year-old hormonal teenager trying to get out of him.
4.
As a connoisseur of youth in distress books -- Catcher in the Rye, Norwegian Wood, Hamlet, Trainspotting, The Bell Jar (see this if you’re really interested - http://www.thegsj.com/essays-springsu...) -- I’m not sure this one is an automatic classic the way others are. I judged it as a YA novel and not necessarily on the grounds of the others. The novel creates a compelling story, memorable characters, and the book reaches points of greatness easily enough -- but something is missing. See next point.
5.
Compare this book with Norwegian Wood and see where this gets you. There is an easy truthfulness that comes out of that story that is missing from this story. Perhaps the difference is that that story is told from the perspective of an adult looking backward.
To be crass -- there is too much high school in this book; the characters go through emotional peaks and troughs and introspective moments without having to earn them. That strikes me as very high school. Perhaps that’s why I won’t read a John Green book for a while. I can’t read his books unless I’m ready for high school.
6.
Lately, I’ve been doing research on Manic Pixie Dream Girls. I believe Green has said at one point that Alaska Young is the anti-MPDG. I didn’t see that all.
I think that tragic thing that happens to her and her background are supposed to overturn the MPDG paradigm. But I don’t see it at all. Because Alaska Young is seen through the eyes and narrated through an adolescent male, she can’t help but be the impetus for a male coming of age story. Even in her tragedy, she leads him on whimsical journey of self-discovery. In order to truly subvert the MPDG paradigm, the second half of the book would have probably need to have been written in Alaska’s voice. Honestly, this isn't something I could do as a writer. Getting into the mind and heart of Alaska Youngs is difficult. (Hence what makes them magical...)
This doesn’t mean that I don’t like how the book is structured. I’m learning to live with the necessity of MPDGs. They serve a narrative function -- one that shouldn't be automatically dismissed. Unfortunately, by the end of the book, to me, Alaska Young is still a (magical) mystery.
November 1, 2016
Embracing the Red Shirt
I was already late. I had always loved Star Trek and that day was the day of the biggest convention. I answered the phone this time in frustration.
“What?” I asked.
“Let’s go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Some prankster has replaced my blue Spock uniform with a red shirt.”
Some prankster, indeed! I knew it was my twin brother who envied the Spock costume and just wanted me to look ridiculous at the convention. He knew that in the old TV show the officers wearing red uniforms were always marked for death.
“Just put on the red uniform. What’s the harm?”
Suddenly, the idea of the red shirt didn’t seem so offensive to me. After all, the “red shirts” had been the bravest of all the Star Trek characters (they had been notoriously stupid, however). I put it on, just to feel what it would be like. As soon as I did, a change in mood occurred.
Sure, there were no Gorn to fight, but as I walked the street on the way to the Star Trek convention, every casual danger seemed like a call to action. A cat in the middle of the street? Save the cat! A motorist texting while driving? Jump in front of their car! Hold motorist! Stop texting! The rush was exhilarating. And more than that, with each new thrill I gained a sense of my own invincibility.
I rushed to the Star Trek convention with a new sense of urgency.
“As many red shirts as you can give me, mister,” I said to one of the vendors.
At the hospital, I left a red shirt beside every hospital bed with a note: Don’t fear the red shirt! Live life unafraid!
“What?” I asked.
“Let’s go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Some prankster has replaced my blue Spock uniform with a red shirt.”
Some prankster, indeed! I knew it was my twin brother who envied the Spock costume and just wanted me to look ridiculous at the convention. He knew that in the old TV show the officers wearing red uniforms were always marked for death.
“Just put on the red uniform. What’s the harm?”
Suddenly, the idea of the red shirt didn’t seem so offensive to me. After all, the “red shirts” had been the bravest of all the Star Trek characters (they had been notoriously stupid, however). I put it on, just to feel what it would be like. As soon as I did, a change in mood occurred.
Sure, there were no Gorn to fight, but as I walked the street on the way to the Star Trek convention, every casual danger seemed like a call to action. A cat in the middle of the street? Save the cat! A motorist texting while driving? Jump in front of their car! Hold motorist! Stop texting! The rush was exhilarating. And more than that, with each new thrill I gained a sense of my own invincibility.
I rushed to the Star Trek convention with a new sense of urgency.
“As many red shirts as you can give me, mister,” I said to one of the vendors.
At the hospital, I left a red shirt beside every hospital bed with a note: Don’t fear the red shirt! Live life unafraid!
October 24, 2016
The Therapist or the Dictator? (Sage and the Scarecrow)
Project Summary: The following is a short passage from Chapter 2 from my 2004 novel The Sage and the Scarecrow.
At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. The book follows Pierce through a journey to find his best friend and the only person he thinks can “cure” him.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 “The Therapist or the Dictator?”
Eventually, the subject of my dad’s funeral came up.
“I didn’t go. I’ve never liked funerals. Besides, he wouldn’t have cared. All the important things I needed to say to him, I said at home. He would’ve thought it was a load of nonsense.”
“Did you cry after he passed?”
“I did enough crying while he was sick.”
He asked me a few more questions, but I wasn’t listening.
I asked him, “Do you ever tell any of your patients, ‘Yes, all your fears and paranoias are completely justified and it’s the world that should change, not you’?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes I’d like to,” he said. “But the truth is it’s easier to change yourself than to change the world. There are things I’d like to change. I guess maybe I’d like someone to tell me that I could change it all. Then again, that person would be a different kind of monster. Someone with a youth mob and guns, instead of advice and medication like me.”
That made me really think. “It’s either the therapist or the dictator then?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
I looked up at Jamie in his nice suit. I suddenly admired this guy. He was listening to me. He knew I was on some wavy ocean steering between the Scylla of apathy, amorality, and neglect and the Charybdis of fascism and totalitarianism.
And that was the crux of it. With his suit and tie, he made me think that perhaps this -- my quest -- wasn’t a complete waste of time.
You can read the entire chapter here:
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. The book follows Pierce through a journey to find his best friend and the only person he thinks can “cure” him.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 “The Therapist or the Dictator?”
Eventually, the subject of my dad’s funeral came up.
“I didn’t go. I’ve never liked funerals. Besides, he wouldn’t have cared. All the important things I needed to say to him, I said at home. He would’ve thought it was a load of nonsense.”
“Did you cry after he passed?”
“I did enough crying while he was sick.”
He asked me a few more questions, but I wasn’t listening.
I asked him, “Do you ever tell any of your patients, ‘Yes, all your fears and paranoias are completely justified and it’s the world that should change, not you’?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes I’d like to,” he said. “But the truth is it’s easier to change yourself than to change the world. There are things I’d like to change. I guess maybe I’d like someone to tell me that I could change it all. Then again, that person would be a different kind of monster. Someone with a youth mob and guns, instead of advice and medication like me.”
That made me really think. “It’s either the therapist or the dictator then?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
I looked up at Jamie in his nice suit. I suddenly admired this guy. He was listening to me. He knew I was on some wavy ocean steering between the Scylla of apathy, amorality, and neglect and the Charybdis of fascism and totalitarianism.
And that was the crux of it. With his suit and tie, he made me think that perhaps this -- my quest -- wasn’t a complete waste of time.
You can read the entire chapter here:
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
October 19, 2016
Earwax (A Short Story)
Sally’s husband had been having trouble with his ears of late. Sally had the sneaking feeling he had allowed the wax in his ears to build up on purpose.
“You see…”
“What?”
“The earwax is a metaphor for our relationship.”
“What?”
“A metaphor.”
“What?”
“For our inability...our unwillingness to facilitate…”
“What?”
“Communication.”
“What?”
“Our unwillingness to listen to each other.”
“What? I can’t hear you. My ears are clogged.”
He seemed committed to this charade, so Sally tested her husband.
“You know I’ve been sleeping with another man.”
Her husband just squinted as if he hadn’t heard anything.
“Three men, in fact. At the same time. One of them a dwarf.”
“What?”
“I guess, I was just getting tired of your small dick.”
“Did you say something about my brother Nick?”
“Yeah, he was there, too. He was holding the camcorder.”
Her husband raised an eyebrow.
She thought about handing him a q-tip and some alcohol like she had the last time. She thought about sending him to a doctor to finally get his ears checked out. She thought about these things, but then she thought better of it.
“You know after I toss the dwarf down the well and murder your brother Nick, I think I’ll sell the sex tape to some off-brand porn production company. Then, when it’s available commercially, I think I’ll invite your mother to watch. Then, I think I’ll throw her down the well, too. She should survive for about a week eating the fleshy remains of the dwarf and your brother. It seems like we haven’t really been making use of the well in the backyard as much as we could. There are so many of your relatives I would like to throw down that well and watch starve to death.”
Her husband smiled as if he had understood her. But she knew he hadn’t. It was that blessed earwax. That glorious, blessed earwax.
“You know darling, after twenty years together, I think this is finally the start of a beautiful marriage.”
He smiled at her, then squinted slightly. “What?”
Looking for more funny writing. Try
Reejecttion
“You see…”
“What?”
“The earwax is a metaphor for our relationship.”
“What?”
“A metaphor.”
“What?”
“For our inability...our unwillingness to facilitate…”
“What?”
“Communication.”
“What?”
“Our unwillingness to listen to each other.”
“What? I can’t hear you. My ears are clogged.”
He seemed committed to this charade, so Sally tested her husband.
“You know I’ve been sleeping with another man.”
Her husband just squinted as if he hadn’t heard anything.
“Three men, in fact. At the same time. One of them a dwarf.”
“What?”
“I guess, I was just getting tired of your small dick.”
“Did you say something about my brother Nick?”
“Yeah, he was there, too. He was holding the camcorder.”
Her husband raised an eyebrow.
She thought about handing him a q-tip and some alcohol like she had the last time. She thought about sending him to a doctor to finally get his ears checked out. She thought about these things, but then she thought better of it.
“You know after I toss the dwarf down the well and murder your brother Nick, I think I’ll sell the sex tape to some off-brand porn production company. Then, when it’s available commercially, I think I’ll invite your mother to watch. Then, I think I’ll throw her down the well, too. She should survive for about a week eating the fleshy remains of the dwarf and your brother. It seems like we haven’t really been making use of the well in the backyard as much as we could. There are so many of your relatives I would like to throw down that well and watch starve to death.”
Her husband smiled as if he had understood her. But she knew he hadn’t. It was that blessed earwax. That glorious, blessed earwax.
“You know darling, after twenty years together, I think this is finally the start of a beautiful marriage.”
He smiled at her, then squinted slightly. “What?”
Looking for more funny writing. Try
Reejecttion
October 15, 2016
Drinking Water (Short Story)
Drinking Water
The follow story comes from the book “Reejecttion”.
Reejecttion
The book is absolutely free. You can download it:
On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/reader/7874...
Or on Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
The only thing he really liked about the man was his name—Lake Finnegan. For some reason, James associated the name with something out of a classic novel or a movie or something. The first time he heard the name mentioned by one of the baggers at the Stop n’ Shop he thought the person was talking about someone else. One of the other baggers had said to him, “Hey, don’t let guys like Lake Finnegan get to you.” James’s first thought was that Lake was one of the mean war vets he was constantly meeting. Then one day another of his fellow baggers, Sampson, said to him as he was wiping down the cash registers, “Man that wrinkled racist motherfucker told me to go get him some dog food. He was yelling at me from his beat up old car like it was last century. Fuck that Finnegan dude.”
Later he would see Lake drive up in his old rusted Cadillac and know exactly who Sampson was talking about. The old man, his many wrinkles, wearing oversized clothes, and sunglasses, looked like hate incarnate. He found Lake one day just lounging around near the front of the store openly gawking at one of the female customers. If it had been any other store, Lake would have been banned. But good ol’ Stop n’ Shop needed Lake and his smoking habit.
Since James started at the Stop n’ Shop as a bagger, as far as he could count, two female clerks and a female bagger had quit. It was hard to know exactly why someone quit, but James thought that Lake’s creepiness must have figured into their decisions somehow. With his leathery skin and slouching gate, he would hang out in front of the supermarket and chain smoke Marlboros. Sampson claimed that Lake knew exactly when the female employees went out on their breaks, knew exactly where they would likely smoke their cigarettes, and then used his eyes to harass them.
The one he really cared about was Kelly Marcus. James, in his twenty-year-old been to college looking to save up to go back to college funk, thought of Kelly as his oasis. She was seventeen when she started working at the cigarette and lottery counter. What was she even doing there in the first place? He remembered the first time he had seen her at his high school—he was a senior, she was a freshman. She was sweet, bubbly, an honors student. What could she possibly get from working the counter at the Stop n’ Shop?
For the most part, James’s approximate year at the Stop n’ Shop had been shit. He worked forty hours a week cleaning up spills, bagging groceries, taking orders. At night, with all of his friends already gone to other places, he would go out to the movies by himself. He would watch film after film. Often he would buy one ticket and sneak into two or three movies. When he had done this with his friends in high school the experience had been exciting. But now, by himself, there was something pathetic about it. James was aware enough to know that this was a manner of escape.
When he saw Kelly working the cigarette and lottery counter, his first thought was that she wouldn’t last a day. She came in her first day wearing the same white-collared polo shirt and dark slacks as the rest of the employees. And she seemed to have done nothing at all with her dirty blond hair except put it into a ponytail with a few bangs hanging off the side. And yet, she was striking. She also seemed impossibly young and optimistic, almost like she was still a freshman in high school. In James’ mind it seemed as if the violence of the real world was all but imminent. It would come upon her all at once. It would happen to her the same way it had happened to him in college. They—whoever they were—would find the cracks, squeeze through them, and turn that same look into something miserable and forlorn.
She might have been safe. That is, if she hadn’t been working at the lotto and cigarette stand. As his manager often said, there would be no store without the lotto and cigarette stand. And it was no accident that a pretty blond girl had been chosen to man the station.
Her first day, though, she was bubbly and cheerful as ever. What shocked James was that Kelly knew his name. Her first day she called to him, “James, remember me? We went to Casselberry High together.”
It didn’t occur to James until afterwards that he had been a little bit well known in high school in his own way. Though implausible at the time, he realized afterwards that Kelly could, in the strange universe of high school, have even had a crush on him. When he was around Kelly, the awfulness of the last year and some odd months of his life seemed to fall away. In the minutes he had between his various tasks he would chat with her about how things were going in high school.
The more he talked, the more he wondered what she was doing there. She never complained about her job. She never followed the other girls outside to smoke. She just stood behind her counter—cute as hell—with quiet dignity and did her job. Little things drove him crazy. The few times he got close enough to smell her, he thought he smelled the scent of oak trees. Not perfume, but oak trees. She smelled like she spent all her time outside in fresh air.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow everything was off. James was sure he was supposed to be there because he was a fuck up. But she should’ve been off at cheerleading or something.
And for a while things continued like this. Kelly showed up to work three days out of the week, sometimes four. And she stood there with her quiet dignity and did her work, and he did his. They occasionally talked. And it seemed perfectly reasonable to think nothing would change.
Then one day Lake showed up in his car, screeched to a halt right in front of James as he was bringing in shopping carts and yelled, “I need some drinking water, boy!”
Though Lake was white and James was white, Lake sounded like a bigot as he said it.
At first James didn’t know what to do. Had he heard the old man correctly? Lake sat in his Cadillac with the engine on. It seemed as if he wanted it hand delivered.
“Are you deaf? I want some drinking water.”
James stood there for a full twenty seconds just looking at Lake, not quite sure how to respond.
The way James remembers it, a voice came from right behind him. It wasn’t necessarily Sampson’s voice, just a voice. He didn’t hear exactly what the voice said, but it must have been something like, “Leave that man alone.”
James just stood there until Sampson came into view. Before he knew it, Lake was out of his car, standing toe to toe with Sampson. The car was left in the middle of the parking lot and Lake was yelling obscenities and racial slurs at the top of his voice even as Sampson towered almost a full foot taller than him.
Sampson stood there for a good five minutes taking each slur in stride, saying “It’s time for you to leave, old man” in intervals.
James, once he had finally come to his senses, tried to get Lake back into his car.
“Bitter old man is what you are,” said Sampson. “Go home, bitter old man.”
Lake got as far as the driver’s side seat. James thought he was going to get into his car and leave. Sampson must have had the same idea because both of their backs were turned. But just as Sampson had turned around a wrench flew in his direction. The wrench probably missed by a few yards. The old man must have had it just lying around in his car. What happened next was what almost everyone else knows. Sampson approached Lake so fast the man didn’t even have a chance to run. As Sampson approached, James remembered the look of fear in Lake’s eyes. And then Sampson slapped Lake so hard that he fell to the ground.
*
Kelly listened in astonishment. James asked her if she had ever met Lake.
“I think I know him. Horny old man. Always pervs on the female staff. We’ve been acquainted.”
James still couldn’t get the image of Sampson slapping Lake across the face out of his head. Afterwards the police had shown up. Someone in the Stop n’ Shop had called the police. The police took everyone’s statement. Lake sat on the sidewalk, mumbling, crying a little bit, and then occasionally yelling something in Sampson’s direction. He held his mouth and mumbled things about a tooth that had gone loose. James mentioned the wrench about three times. Sampson wouldn’t be arrested, but he was fired later that week. After that James hadn’t heard much. Things went back to normal. He stopped seeing Lake. He assumed that Lake had been banned from the store and that the old man was too embarrassed to show his face.
Soon it would be summer. Kelly worked a lot more during the summer. And they found themselves talking more and more. James began to catch up with some of his friends who were back in town from college. After work he would sometimes go out with his friends to drink or smoke weed. Somewhere down the line, it must have been close to the end of the summer when she was about to start her senior year, Kelly broke down in tears at work. When James asked her what was the matter, she told him: her mother and father had gotten a divorce not too long ago. Now her father was remarrying.
James put his arm around her. His year and several odd months of working at the Stop n’ Shop had brought him closer to Kelly. Somehow, they seemed more alike now. He remembered things about himself that he had forgotten his first year of college. It almost seemed possible that he could ask her out. He would find a group of friends to hang out with. Things would be, well, normal again.
Not long after that, Kelly quit her job. It happened suddenly one day right around the time Lake started coming around again. He asked Todd, one of the managers, why Lake had been allowed back in the store. Todd lamely replied that he wasn’t even aware of a ban on Lake, and that if they banned one lousy bigot from the store they would have to ban them all. James had the feeling that the store was on its way downhill anyway. They started cutting back on hours, the clientele was getting shadier, and girls like Kelly, no matter how bad their situation, would eventually stop working there.
A week after Kelly had left, he found himself hanging around the store, hoping she would show up to collect her last check. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Lake that had forced her out. On one of the days not too long before she quit, he had seen him hanging around the lotto and cigarette stand, gawking at her.
James felt like he had to leave anyway. He didn’t know exactly how he would do it, but he would find his way back to where he was supposed to be. He would find his way back to the time when he wasn’t such a loser—if that time still existed.
A month after Kelly had quit, James was pushing carts in when he noticed Lake just sitting there in his car. This time, Lake whistled in James’s general direction. “Hey, boy. Boy. Over here. I remember you. If I give you some money, you go get me some cigarettes?”
James ignored him and went into the store to continue his work.
The day passed by sluggishly as it usually did. How many years could James go on like this? How many months? Eventually, Lake would stop coming or he would pass away. The Stop n’ Shop would probably go out of business at some point in the next few months. The future was hard to see. He had a feeling deep in his stomach that there wouldn’t be any more girls like Kelly in his future, but that it was entirely possible that his next job would be at another dump like the Stop n’ Shop.
Later, he saw Lake leaning on the wall outside the Stop n’ Shop. James was out back collecting carts when he saw him there. He hadn’t bothered going inside. He was just hanging outside the store. “Hey, you got my cigarettes. Boy, I’m talking to you.”
It’s hard to believe that Sampson had been shitcanned for smacking this sack of shit. They should have given him an award, James thought.
James didn’t know exactly how he decided to do it. But he found himself walking into the Stop n’ Shop. He picked up some drinking water from one of the shelves and brought it outside.
Lake looked at him bewildered. “Boy, I didn’t ask for no goddamn drinking water. I asked for some cigarettes.”
James opened the water and began tossing it in the direction of the old man’s crotch. Soon, with the crotch area of his pants soaked with water, Lake was hopping up and down, yelling obscenity. His face turned red as he shouted. He looked like he might go back to his car and find something to throw at him or something to try to beat him with.
James looked the old man in the eyes. “You try anything, and I will smack the shit out of you.”
Something about the way he said it made Lake pause. With his trousers doused in water, James felt just the slightest bit of pity for the old man. Could he really blame Lake for wanting to see the girls for just a little bit everyday? Could he blame him for wanting to remember a time when he was young and women found him attractive?
Today James would quit his job and go see a movie. Things would sort themselves out later or they wouldn’t. He had a strange feeling in his stomach, something that most people would not have described as good, but for James there was no word for that feeling, and instead of stopping to find a name for it he felt it better to hurry before he missed the seven o’ clock showing. After that, he would just have to figure out what came next.
The follow story comes from the book “Reejecttion”.
Reejecttion
The book is absolutely free. You can download it:
On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/reader/7874...
Or on Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
The only thing he really liked about the man was his name—Lake Finnegan. For some reason, James associated the name with something out of a classic novel or a movie or something. The first time he heard the name mentioned by one of the baggers at the Stop n’ Shop he thought the person was talking about someone else. One of the other baggers had said to him, “Hey, don’t let guys like Lake Finnegan get to you.” James’s first thought was that Lake was one of the mean war vets he was constantly meeting. Then one day another of his fellow baggers, Sampson, said to him as he was wiping down the cash registers, “Man that wrinkled racist motherfucker told me to go get him some dog food. He was yelling at me from his beat up old car like it was last century. Fuck that Finnegan dude.”
Later he would see Lake drive up in his old rusted Cadillac and know exactly who Sampson was talking about. The old man, his many wrinkles, wearing oversized clothes, and sunglasses, looked like hate incarnate. He found Lake one day just lounging around near the front of the store openly gawking at one of the female customers. If it had been any other store, Lake would have been banned. But good ol’ Stop n’ Shop needed Lake and his smoking habit.
Since James started at the Stop n’ Shop as a bagger, as far as he could count, two female clerks and a female bagger had quit. It was hard to know exactly why someone quit, but James thought that Lake’s creepiness must have figured into their decisions somehow. With his leathery skin and slouching gate, he would hang out in front of the supermarket and chain smoke Marlboros. Sampson claimed that Lake knew exactly when the female employees went out on their breaks, knew exactly where they would likely smoke their cigarettes, and then used his eyes to harass them.
The one he really cared about was Kelly Marcus. James, in his twenty-year-old been to college looking to save up to go back to college funk, thought of Kelly as his oasis. She was seventeen when she started working at the cigarette and lottery counter. What was she even doing there in the first place? He remembered the first time he had seen her at his high school—he was a senior, she was a freshman. She was sweet, bubbly, an honors student. What could she possibly get from working the counter at the Stop n’ Shop?
For the most part, James’s approximate year at the Stop n’ Shop had been shit. He worked forty hours a week cleaning up spills, bagging groceries, taking orders. At night, with all of his friends already gone to other places, he would go out to the movies by himself. He would watch film after film. Often he would buy one ticket and sneak into two or three movies. When he had done this with his friends in high school the experience had been exciting. But now, by himself, there was something pathetic about it. James was aware enough to know that this was a manner of escape.
When he saw Kelly working the cigarette and lottery counter, his first thought was that she wouldn’t last a day. She came in her first day wearing the same white-collared polo shirt and dark slacks as the rest of the employees. And she seemed to have done nothing at all with her dirty blond hair except put it into a ponytail with a few bangs hanging off the side. And yet, she was striking. She also seemed impossibly young and optimistic, almost like she was still a freshman in high school. In James’ mind it seemed as if the violence of the real world was all but imminent. It would come upon her all at once. It would happen to her the same way it had happened to him in college. They—whoever they were—would find the cracks, squeeze through them, and turn that same look into something miserable and forlorn.
She might have been safe. That is, if she hadn’t been working at the lotto and cigarette stand. As his manager often said, there would be no store without the lotto and cigarette stand. And it was no accident that a pretty blond girl had been chosen to man the station.
Her first day, though, she was bubbly and cheerful as ever. What shocked James was that Kelly knew his name. Her first day she called to him, “James, remember me? We went to Casselberry High together.”
It didn’t occur to James until afterwards that he had been a little bit well known in high school in his own way. Though implausible at the time, he realized afterwards that Kelly could, in the strange universe of high school, have even had a crush on him. When he was around Kelly, the awfulness of the last year and some odd months of his life seemed to fall away. In the minutes he had between his various tasks he would chat with her about how things were going in high school.
The more he talked, the more he wondered what she was doing there. She never complained about her job. She never followed the other girls outside to smoke. She just stood behind her counter—cute as hell—with quiet dignity and did her job. Little things drove him crazy. The few times he got close enough to smell her, he thought he smelled the scent of oak trees. Not perfume, but oak trees. She smelled like she spent all her time outside in fresh air.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow everything was off. James was sure he was supposed to be there because he was a fuck up. But she should’ve been off at cheerleading or something.
And for a while things continued like this. Kelly showed up to work three days out of the week, sometimes four. And she stood there with her quiet dignity and did her work, and he did his. They occasionally talked. And it seemed perfectly reasonable to think nothing would change.
Then one day Lake showed up in his car, screeched to a halt right in front of James as he was bringing in shopping carts and yelled, “I need some drinking water, boy!”
Though Lake was white and James was white, Lake sounded like a bigot as he said it.
At first James didn’t know what to do. Had he heard the old man correctly? Lake sat in his Cadillac with the engine on. It seemed as if he wanted it hand delivered.
“Are you deaf? I want some drinking water.”
James stood there for a full twenty seconds just looking at Lake, not quite sure how to respond.
The way James remembers it, a voice came from right behind him. It wasn’t necessarily Sampson’s voice, just a voice. He didn’t hear exactly what the voice said, but it must have been something like, “Leave that man alone.”
James just stood there until Sampson came into view. Before he knew it, Lake was out of his car, standing toe to toe with Sampson. The car was left in the middle of the parking lot and Lake was yelling obscenities and racial slurs at the top of his voice even as Sampson towered almost a full foot taller than him.
Sampson stood there for a good five minutes taking each slur in stride, saying “It’s time for you to leave, old man” in intervals.
James, once he had finally come to his senses, tried to get Lake back into his car.
“Bitter old man is what you are,” said Sampson. “Go home, bitter old man.”
Lake got as far as the driver’s side seat. James thought he was going to get into his car and leave. Sampson must have had the same idea because both of their backs were turned. But just as Sampson had turned around a wrench flew in his direction. The wrench probably missed by a few yards. The old man must have had it just lying around in his car. What happened next was what almost everyone else knows. Sampson approached Lake so fast the man didn’t even have a chance to run. As Sampson approached, James remembered the look of fear in Lake’s eyes. And then Sampson slapped Lake so hard that he fell to the ground.
*
Kelly listened in astonishment. James asked her if she had ever met Lake.
“I think I know him. Horny old man. Always pervs on the female staff. We’ve been acquainted.”
James still couldn’t get the image of Sampson slapping Lake across the face out of his head. Afterwards the police had shown up. Someone in the Stop n’ Shop had called the police. The police took everyone’s statement. Lake sat on the sidewalk, mumbling, crying a little bit, and then occasionally yelling something in Sampson’s direction. He held his mouth and mumbled things about a tooth that had gone loose. James mentioned the wrench about three times. Sampson wouldn’t be arrested, but he was fired later that week. After that James hadn’t heard much. Things went back to normal. He stopped seeing Lake. He assumed that Lake had been banned from the store and that the old man was too embarrassed to show his face.
Soon it would be summer. Kelly worked a lot more during the summer. And they found themselves talking more and more. James began to catch up with some of his friends who were back in town from college. After work he would sometimes go out with his friends to drink or smoke weed. Somewhere down the line, it must have been close to the end of the summer when she was about to start her senior year, Kelly broke down in tears at work. When James asked her what was the matter, she told him: her mother and father had gotten a divorce not too long ago. Now her father was remarrying.
James put his arm around her. His year and several odd months of working at the Stop n’ Shop had brought him closer to Kelly. Somehow, they seemed more alike now. He remembered things about himself that he had forgotten his first year of college. It almost seemed possible that he could ask her out. He would find a group of friends to hang out with. Things would be, well, normal again.
Not long after that, Kelly quit her job. It happened suddenly one day right around the time Lake started coming around again. He asked Todd, one of the managers, why Lake had been allowed back in the store. Todd lamely replied that he wasn’t even aware of a ban on Lake, and that if they banned one lousy bigot from the store they would have to ban them all. James had the feeling that the store was on its way downhill anyway. They started cutting back on hours, the clientele was getting shadier, and girls like Kelly, no matter how bad their situation, would eventually stop working there.
A week after Kelly had left, he found himself hanging around the store, hoping she would show up to collect her last check. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Lake that had forced her out. On one of the days not too long before she quit, he had seen him hanging around the lotto and cigarette stand, gawking at her.
James felt like he had to leave anyway. He didn’t know exactly how he would do it, but he would find his way back to where he was supposed to be. He would find his way back to the time when he wasn’t such a loser—if that time still existed.
A month after Kelly had quit, James was pushing carts in when he noticed Lake just sitting there in his car. This time, Lake whistled in James’s general direction. “Hey, boy. Boy. Over here. I remember you. If I give you some money, you go get me some cigarettes?”
James ignored him and went into the store to continue his work.
The day passed by sluggishly as it usually did. How many years could James go on like this? How many months? Eventually, Lake would stop coming or he would pass away. The Stop n’ Shop would probably go out of business at some point in the next few months. The future was hard to see. He had a feeling deep in his stomach that there wouldn’t be any more girls like Kelly in his future, but that it was entirely possible that his next job would be at another dump like the Stop n’ Shop.
Later, he saw Lake leaning on the wall outside the Stop n’ Shop. James was out back collecting carts when he saw him there. He hadn’t bothered going inside. He was just hanging outside the store. “Hey, you got my cigarettes. Boy, I’m talking to you.”
It’s hard to believe that Sampson had been shitcanned for smacking this sack of shit. They should have given him an award, James thought.
James didn’t know exactly how he decided to do it. But he found himself walking into the Stop n’ Shop. He picked up some drinking water from one of the shelves and brought it outside.
Lake looked at him bewildered. “Boy, I didn’t ask for no goddamn drinking water. I asked for some cigarettes.”
James opened the water and began tossing it in the direction of the old man’s crotch. Soon, with the crotch area of his pants soaked with water, Lake was hopping up and down, yelling obscenity. His face turned red as he shouted. He looked like he might go back to his car and find something to throw at him or something to try to beat him with.
James looked the old man in the eyes. “You try anything, and I will smack the shit out of you.”
Something about the way he said it made Lake pause. With his trousers doused in water, James felt just the slightest bit of pity for the old man. Could he really blame Lake for wanting to see the girls for just a little bit everyday? Could he blame him for wanting to remember a time when he was young and women found him attractive?
Today James would quit his job and go see a movie. Things would sort themselves out later or they wouldn’t. He had a strange feeling in his stomach, something that most people would not have described as good, but for James there was no word for that feeling, and instead of stopping to find a name for it he felt it better to hurry before he missed the seven o’ clock showing. After that, he would just have to figure out what came next.
October 11, 2016
Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Research Entry # 2): The Research Assistant
Background summary: In an attempt to write a novel about youth and personal discovery, I’m researching the topic of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. My hope is that the research will help me write a more complex female character.
You can look up a basic definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_P...
Since this research is an adventure of self-discovery, it’s only natural that I have a research assistant to guide me. My research assistant has been chosen for political reasons. She’s a slightly depressed goth girl with black lipstick who smokes and swears.
I show her the quote from Zoe Deschanel's “New Girl” show to demonstrate some of the stereotypical habits of the MPDG.
"I brake for birds! I rock a lot of polka dots! I have touched glitter in the past 24 hours! I spent my entire day talking to children! And I find it fundamentally strange that you're not a dessert person; that's just weird and it freaks me out! And I'm sorry I don't talk like Murphy Brown! And I hate your pantsuit. I wish it had ribbons on it or something to make it slightly cuter!"
— New Girl
She scoffs. “I brake for no one. Nothing rocks quite like punk rock. I’ve punched a dude in the last 24 hours. I spent my entire day telling my shit ex-boyfriend to go fuck himself. I find it fundamentally strange that you’re a dude in his mid-30s taking this shit remotely serious. I’m not sorry for shit. Like this other chick, I hate your f***king conformist attire. I wish you weren’t such a douche, and even though I’m fictional the only reason I’m here is because I want to get paid.”
“This is a serious project,” I protest. “This is going to help me write a better novel.”
“I really don’t care.”
Since a research assistant should actually help me find stuff out I’m depressed that there isn’t an actual MPDG around.
You can look up a basic definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_P...
Since this research is an adventure of self-discovery, it’s only natural that I have a research assistant to guide me. My research assistant has been chosen for political reasons. She’s a slightly depressed goth girl with black lipstick who smokes and swears.
I show her the quote from Zoe Deschanel's “New Girl” show to demonstrate some of the stereotypical habits of the MPDG.
"I brake for birds! I rock a lot of polka dots! I have touched glitter in the past 24 hours! I spent my entire day talking to children! And I find it fundamentally strange that you're not a dessert person; that's just weird and it freaks me out! And I'm sorry I don't talk like Murphy Brown! And I hate your pantsuit. I wish it had ribbons on it or something to make it slightly cuter!"
— New Girl
She scoffs. “I brake for no one. Nothing rocks quite like punk rock. I’ve punched a dude in the last 24 hours. I spent my entire day telling my shit ex-boyfriend to go fuck himself. I find it fundamentally strange that you’re a dude in his mid-30s taking this shit remotely serious. I’m not sorry for shit. Like this other chick, I hate your f***king conformist attire. I wish you weren’t such a douche, and even though I’m fictional the only reason I’m here is because I want to get paid.”
“This is a serious project,” I protest. “This is going to help me write a better novel.”
“I really don’t care.”
Since a research assistant should actually help me find stuff out I’m depressed that there isn’t an actual MPDG around.
October 8, 2016
Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Research Log # 1)
What is a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”? That was my question not too long ago.
My working definition comes from this article: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...
“Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life... Have no fear, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is here to give new meaning to the male hero's life! She's stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), often with a touch of wild hair dye. She's inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live freely and love madly.”
Now that we’ve set up the definition of MPDG, we have to set out some basic research questions:
Why bother with this research?
How do we know when we have a MPDG?
Is a MPDG always bad?
Can this research be done narratively?
Let me give you some preliminary answers to this question:
Question 1: Why bother with this research?
As soon as I ask this question, a young girl who may or may not have been my friend for a very long time, looks longingly in my eyes. “You silly hipster, always lacking motivation and impetus. You’re always asking questions that speak of ennui bordering on nihilism. So, I appear and try to rescue you from yourself.”
“Yes,” I say, “But is this strictly necessary?”
“Typically, this is the question that is answered emotionally once your journey is over.”
So, the answer to this first question is -- the research might be necessary to craft a better “soulful and sensitive youth in distress” tale. It seems that there are a lot out there -- most known in movie form -- and that many of them are starting to fall into cliches and tropes that they need to be rescued from.
So perhaps this research is necessary if I don’t want a future reader to think, Oh no, not another one of these characters!
Question 2: How do we know when we have a MPDG?
Question 3: Is a MPDG always bad?
Question 4: Can this research be done narratively?
These three questions I’ll answer as a bundle.
I try to tell the girl with the wide eyes and the dark black hair that at times the MPDG is in the process of being deconstructed -- such as in the movie 500 Days of Summer.
She touches her nose twice and then makes some random motions with her hands. She has only been communicating with me in sign language of late. I make some random hand motions back that, hopefully, express my feeling futility with the entire enterprise.
It’s clear that I can’t answer these question yet. At least not the way they are meant to be answered. It’s also clear to me that I don’t have to play the MPDG’s counterpart -- the sensitive, soulful, ennui-stricken youth. I can be any character I choose. Including the brass-tacks, no-nonsense, square-jawed type.
So, I try this instead: “Now listen missy. I don’t want no trouble from you. We’re going to get to the bottom of this mess, forthwith. If you got any backtalk for me, I think you should bottle it and save it for another sap.”
This gets a new reaction from her. She changes to the submissive damsel in distress. “I do declare, finally a REAL man. A man of action is here, everyone,” she declares to anyone in earshot range. “Do save me from my own cliches, good sir.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do! Now shut ya yap.”
***This research is part of my efforts to re-write parts of my 2004 novel, The Sage and the Scarecrow, as 2-4 page short stories. You can read more right here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
My working definition comes from this article: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...
“Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life... Have no fear, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is here to give new meaning to the male hero's life! She's stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), often with a touch of wild hair dye. She's inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live freely and love madly.”
Now that we’ve set up the definition of MPDG, we have to set out some basic research questions:
Why bother with this research?
How do we know when we have a MPDG?
Is a MPDG always bad?
Can this research be done narratively?
Let me give you some preliminary answers to this question:
Question 1: Why bother with this research?
As soon as I ask this question, a young girl who may or may not have been my friend for a very long time, looks longingly in my eyes. “You silly hipster, always lacking motivation and impetus. You’re always asking questions that speak of ennui bordering on nihilism. So, I appear and try to rescue you from yourself.”
“Yes,” I say, “But is this strictly necessary?”
“Typically, this is the question that is answered emotionally once your journey is over.”
So, the answer to this first question is -- the research might be necessary to craft a better “soulful and sensitive youth in distress” tale. It seems that there are a lot out there -- most known in movie form -- and that many of them are starting to fall into cliches and tropes that they need to be rescued from.
So perhaps this research is necessary if I don’t want a future reader to think, Oh no, not another one of these characters!
Question 2: How do we know when we have a MPDG?
Question 3: Is a MPDG always bad?
Question 4: Can this research be done narratively?
These three questions I’ll answer as a bundle.
I try to tell the girl with the wide eyes and the dark black hair that at times the MPDG is in the process of being deconstructed -- such as in the movie 500 Days of Summer.
She touches her nose twice and then makes some random motions with her hands. She has only been communicating with me in sign language of late. I make some random hand motions back that, hopefully, express my feeling futility with the entire enterprise.
It’s clear that I can’t answer these question yet. At least not the way they are meant to be answered. It’s also clear to me that I don’t have to play the MPDG’s counterpart -- the sensitive, soulful, ennui-stricken youth. I can be any character I choose. Including the brass-tacks, no-nonsense, square-jawed type.
So, I try this instead: “Now listen missy. I don’t want no trouble from you. We’re going to get to the bottom of this mess, forthwith. If you got any backtalk for me, I think you should bottle it and save it for another sap.”
This gets a new reaction from her. She changes to the submissive damsel in distress. “I do declare, finally a REAL man. A man of action is here, everyone,” she declares to anyone in earshot range. “Do save me from my own cliches, good sir.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do! Now shut ya yap.”
***This research is part of my efforts to re-write parts of my 2004 novel, The Sage and the Scarecrow, as 2-4 page short stories. You can read more right here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
October 3, 2016
The Parable of the Statue (Sage and the Scarecrow)
Project Summary:
The following is a short excerpt from my 2004 novel "The Sage and the Scarecrow". At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
Sometimes the hardest part of writing a longer work, like a novel, is deleting parts that don’t quite fit into the book or slow the story down.
The following short story is a part of a chapter that I recently decided to delete from the novel. I’ve left it a little raw, so you get a taste of what my works-in-progress feel like.
The Sage and the Scarecrow
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. The book follows Pierce through a journey to find his best friend and the only person he thinks can "cure" him.
The acrid, nuclear rain had melted parts of the statue into something inhuman.
It has nothing that could be recognized as a face, and the parts that are supposed to look like hands and fingers are molded into stumps.
I try to recall a passage from the Tao Teh Ching. I try to bring something to life from my useless memory. The passage has to do with heaven and earth and their connection.
The statue mumbles to me, “...not live for themselves.”
“That’s right,” I say with an exhausted smile. “They live for each other. Heaven and earth live for each other.”
I look up but don’t recognize any form. Its melted face and hands are something less than human. Only when I turn away does it speak to me.
*
“If heaven lives for earth, and earth lives for heaven, then it must mean there are magical connections between all things.”
I think about Jennifer’s hand in mine, my hand in hers. I feel a sense of completeness. Just out of view, I know my dad will be there too. There are four books now, a few magic mushrooms, and some scattered pages from Plato’s Republic.
*
“Speak to me again,” I say to the statue-creature. “What is the relationship between heaven and earth?”
I make a circle out of my thumb and pointer finger and put it over my eye like a monocle.
“Eye of the beholder,” I say. I look at the statue. “This is monocle I will use to see the beauty of the apocalypse.”
I try to see the world through this monocle, to make sense of all the tangles of thumb-twitching zombies and the acrid smell of death and my own stomach pains, but the tangles stay tangled and the statue remains an unrecognizable something.
And it takes all the wisdom and forbearance I can manage with stomach pains not to call it ugly.
*
“The Sage wants to remain behind…” I mumble.
“But he finds himself ahead of others…” the statue-thing whispers back.
In my younger years, my dad would sing to me songs from the Wizard of Oz. One magic mushroom and I would be back with him, in my bedroom, two mushrooms and I’d be someplace I couldn’t predict. Three and I would obliterate myself completely and this whole world would dissolve like the statue’s face.
“You have to come with me, statue,” I say. “Don’t stay here. I’m so lonely.”
*
“Everything needs its opposite,” I say aloud. “I need Jennifer. What do you need?”
Its mouth begins to open but nothing comes out.
“You need the thing that can listen to you? That can hear your voice? I’m sorry. I can’t hear your voice.”
Its mouth opens again but nothing comes out.
“You need the thing that can recognize your form, but I’m not that thing.”
The rain begins to come down again, and I think, This is how I die. The nuclear rain will melt me into nothing.
*
That night the rain comes down. At first I want to stand next to the statue and let the rain warp me into something that can understand and love it the way it needs to be understood and loved. The first drops burn me horribly. I resist the urge to eat the mushrooms. I draw from a well of courage I had long forgotten. I will die and become a creature that can love.
But then, I find myself in a dark space.
The statue has formed around me, into a tender embrace. What could have been its back or its face or some other part I was no longer fit to recognize protects me from the acrid, nuclear rain.
Finally, I recognize the statue’s form. Its form is love.
The following is a short excerpt from my 2004 novel "The Sage and the Scarecrow". At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
Sometimes the hardest part of writing a longer work, like a novel, is deleting parts that don’t quite fit into the book or slow the story down.
The following short story is a part of a chapter that I recently decided to delete from the novel. I’ve left it a little raw, so you get a taste of what my works-in-progress feel like.
The Sage and the Scarecrow
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. The book follows Pierce through a journey to find his best friend and the only person he thinks can "cure" him.
The acrid, nuclear rain had melted parts of the statue into something inhuman.
It has nothing that could be recognized as a face, and the parts that are supposed to look like hands and fingers are molded into stumps.
I try to recall a passage from the Tao Teh Ching. I try to bring something to life from my useless memory. The passage has to do with heaven and earth and their connection.
The statue mumbles to me, “...not live for themselves.”
“That’s right,” I say with an exhausted smile. “They live for each other. Heaven and earth live for each other.”
I look up but don’t recognize any form. Its melted face and hands are something less than human. Only when I turn away does it speak to me.
*
“If heaven lives for earth, and earth lives for heaven, then it must mean there are magical connections between all things.”
I think about Jennifer’s hand in mine, my hand in hers. I feel a sense of completeness. Just out of view, I know my dad will be there too. There are four books now, a few magic mushrooms, and some scattered pages from Plato’s Republic.
*
“Speak to me again,” I say to the statue-creature. “What is the relationship between heaven and earth?”
I make a circle out of my thumb and pointer finger and put it over my eye like a monocle.
“Eye of the beholder,” I say. I look at the statue. “This is monocle I will use to see the beauty of the apocalypse.”
I try to see the world through this monocle, to make sense of all the tangles of thumb-twitching zombies and the acrid smell of death and my own stomach pains, but the tangles stay tangled and the statue remains an unrecognizable something.
And it takes all the wisdom and forbearance I can manage with stomach pains not to call it ugly.
*
“The Sage wants to remain behind…” I mumble.
“But he finds himself ahead of others…” the statue-thing whispers back.
In my younger years, my dad would sing to me songs from the Wizard of Oz. One magic mushroom and I would be back with him, in my bedroom, two mushrooms and I’d be someplace I couldn’t predict. Three and I would obliterate myself completely and this whole world would dissolve like the statue’s face.
“You have to come with me, statue,” I say. “Don’t stay here. I’m so lonely.”
*
“Everything needs its opposite,” I say aloud. “I need Jennifer. What do you need?”
Its mouth begins to open but nothing comes out.
“You need the thing that can listen to you? That can hear your voice? I’m sorry. I can’t hear your voice.”
Its mouth opens again but nothing comes out.
“You need the thing that can recognize your form, but I’m not that thing.”
The rain begins to come down again, and I think, This is how I die. The nuclear rain will melt me into nothing.
*
That night the rain comes down. At first I want to stand next to the statue and let the rain warp me into something that can understand and love it the way it needs to be understood and loved. The first drops burn me horribly. I resist the urge to eat the mushrooms. I draw from a well of courage I had long forgotten. I will die and become a creature that can love.
But then, I find myself in a dark space.
The statue has formed around me, into a tender embrace. What could have been its back or its face or some other part I was no longer fit to recognize protects me from the acrid, nuclear rain.
Finally, I recognize the statue’s form. Its form is love.
