“I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men’s bones. ”
― Liam O’Flaherty
Though I am partially of Irish heritage (and Scottish and German and Native American and ???) I know nothing of Irish history. This short story is set in the Battle of Dublin in June of 1922 and it an arresting testament to the horrors of war and the particular horrors of civil war. I think it might get me to do some research and reading. Another rabbit hole.
““The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”
― George R.R. Martin
Are we always responsible for our actions?
From Lightspeed
“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”
― Marilyn Monroe
Sometimes the internet is a time machine – a melancholy and distorted one.
“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”
― Charles Bukowski
There is a certain kind of long-term despair….
“Time is the enemy of lovers. Worse even than the frank light of day.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, A Fair Maiden
Joyce Carol Oates is such a genius – it is scary. Her stories never turn out how you think they will and… most importantly… she is not afraid to go there.
“With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.”
― Tim Parks
Keys, a dream, canoes, and the latest squeeze.
From the New Yorker.
“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes
A short piece about hope – and the idea that maybe we aren’t as stupid as we seem.
“This is what I say: I’ve got good news and bad news.
The good news is, you don’t have to worry, you can’t change the past.
The bad news is, you don’t have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can’t change the past.
The universe just doesn’t put up with that. We aren’t important enough. No one is. Even in our own lives. We’re not strong enough, willful enough, skilled enough in chronodiegetic manipulation to be able to just accidentally change the entire course of anything, even ourselves.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
If you could go into the future – maybe only a few hours – can you have your cake and eat it too?
from Flash Fiction Online
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
We all wake up in the middle of the night or maybe even five minutes before the alarm goes off and hear them walking around. Hear who? I don’t know.
“His mother, long dead, always told him: your father will outlive us all, but not before he makes us suffer as much as he wants to, and more..”
― Flavia Company, Father and Son
One of the things in my life that I am ashamed of is that my Spanish is so bad. After all, I lived a few of my formative years in Spanish speaking countries – you would think I would be fluent. There is no excuse for that, but there are a few explanations (people have difficulty understanding the difference between excuse and explanation – it is a critical distinction).
Most people in my high school were completely fluent in both languages. It was fascinating to listen to them switch back and forth. When discussing something concrete – like giving directions or instructions – they would use English. However, if there were emotions involved, or relationships, or food – then Spanish was the language of choice. For example, there were a dozen different terms that translated as “girlfriend” in English (like the myriad Inuit words for snow) and I was always using the wrong one – to my constant embarrassment.
The difference between literature written in Spanish and English is fascinating. The most obvious one is the success of “magic realism” – which works in Spanish (and even in translation) but feels odd and disjointed in English.
Today’s story is a translation – both languages are at the link. It’s an interesting comparison.
Bill Chance 