Brian Kindall's Blog, page 4

Lucky

No American town was ever more quaint and unassuming than the one in which I grew up – Middleton. It had been a railroad stopover in the old days, and had been so named because it was but a minor stop at the point between two major stops in bigger towns. I never learned what those other towns were, and never cared. They were unimportant to me – nebulous metropolises on the hinter regions of my daily boyhood existence. But if I had to come up with symbolic names for them in a novel, I might be

The Hidden Sea

To celebrate our first anniversary, my wife and I have decided to fight. It’s stupid. It’s inappropriate. And yet neither one of us is able to stop. We are in Greece, waiting for a ferry to arrive and carry us away from this one dry splotch of sea-surrounded earth to the next. There is always the hope that some other island will be more pleasant, more in keeping with my dreams of what this place should be. The day is hot as hell.             What are we fighting about? The color of the sky. Lack

Alien Creatures

As God blessed Mary and Joseph, so, too, did he bless Kristin and Brian. And not just once, but three times miraculously. As blasphemous as that might sound, it’s true. Divine intervention is the only explanation for our family. Either that or covert alien invaders.             Kristin and I were determined never to reproduce. That was part of our secret nuptial agreement. “A family is death to the artist. Let the breeders people this already well-peopled planet. Our paintings and books will be

The Delusional Effects of a Bluebird Day

Kristin and I had been married for five months when, one night in February, it snowed. That wasn’t so unusual. Central Idaho is often referred to as Snow Country. But this time the storm dropped two feet of downy feathers, and then, after well whitening our mile high corner of the world, the clouds blew on to Wyoming. The next morning was chill and clear and quintessential, what winter in the mountains is supposed to be, what snow lovers call a Bluebird Day.             We were penniless artists

Supernormal Stimulus and Fish

Everyone has associations with certain words or sounds or smells. Sometimes we keep these to ourselves, as they’re too personal to share. At other times, when under the influence of such stimuli, we can’t help but blurt something like – “Whenever I let my socks go too long, I am reminded of my grandmother’s elk and mushroom pizza.” Or – “Whenever I’m surprised by a sneeze, I am carried back to that rainy day when I had my first kiss.” I have dozens of these triggers in my own psyche, some long

Word Head

The problem with writing all the time is that it takes over your brain. After sitting at my computer for long hours, I become a sort of schizophrenic computer myself. I might walk away from whatever I’m working on, but it’s still there, moving in a perpetual loop of sentences before my eyes…before my eyes…before my eyes... It’s like I have a thumb drive plugged into the back of my head, one feeding data onto my internal screen, complete with a maniacally blinking cursor.             Sometimes I

A Seminal Moment at the Edge of the World

The plan was for me to go ahead of the others up to Bull Creek. I would take a pair of mules loaded with the food needed for the six days of the hunt. Once there, I’d meet up with the other packer, and then he’d hurry and take the empty mules back down before dark, leaving me to get things ready at high camp. I’d split wood, fix the corral, and clean up the cook tent. The guides would come up the following day with the hunters and the rest of the supplies.             But that night a storm blew

My Naughty Red Canoe

        Any writer worthy of his metaphors must have a vivid imagination. I started developing mine early on, at risk to my mortal soul, from the seat of my trusty red canoe. That I have never actually owned a red canoe in real life is irrelevant. Even imagined adventures are potentially sinful, and should be aired from time to time to relieve the pressure of any accumulated corruption that might be coloring one’s otherwise squeaky-clean life and prose. Writers are notorious for such imaginative

Why I Can't Listen to Country Music

     Summers in high school I worked on a farm. I moved sprinkler lines, bucked hay, dug ditch, and drove a swather. Hot dirty work. Sundays I got the afternoon off, but the other six days I worked fourteen-hour days. Farm work is never done; you’re always behind. Sometimes, in the evening, just as I was about to call it a day, I’d see the farmer’s son driving out along the ditch bank. He’d get out of his truck and walk over with a cold bottle of Coke. I always knew what that offering meant, but

Loons in the Cosmos

  A pair of loons has been cruising back and forth in front of the cabin this week, diving for fish, making love, or just bobbing in the waves while contemplating their place in the cosmos. One imagines them out there at night, drifting beneath the cold stars, savvy to a mystery the rest of us can only guess at. Surely they know the gods better than we ever will. Sometimes they let out one of their weird ululations. It’s like all of Nature is laughing. It’s like the tremulous voice of some