Here, in the Pink Zone, we are safe, but we are sad. Once a week carts arrive with provisions: rice, beans, tea. Sometimes there are fruits. Mangoes, apples, persimmons. The youngest of us rush at them as if to quench a longing for our fathers’ arrival.
—-Susan Carol, Partition
Ravens Drug Store, Oak Cliff
I keep reading about dystopia, refugees, or the end of the world. Should read about something happy – but it doesn’t read realistic right now.
from Reflex Fiction
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka
St. Vincent’s Guest House, New Orleans
Tough days – tired days – days where you are not sure what day it is or where you are or where you’re going or why you’re going you don’t know where. Franz Kafka days.
There are several translations of Give It Up! scattered in many places across the web. It’s so short, though, instead of a link I’ll past the whole thing in here – one abbreviated paragraph of despair.
It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was walking to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me unsure of the way, I did not yet know my way very well in this town; luckily, a policeman was nearby, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: “From me you want to know the way?” “Yes,” I said, “since I cannot find it myself.” “Give it up! Give it up,” he said, and turned away with a sudden jerk, like people who want to be alone with their laughter.
For he had no typewriter ribbon left and only fifty sheets of paper and he counted on the stabbing imprint of the keys to make an impression like a branding, and when he had used the fifty sheets, front and back, he would start again, typing over what he had already impressed upon the page.
—- Jeff VanderMeer, The Strange Bird
Bird, Scavenging along an Interstate Highway in Texas
Back in the olden days, the days when we did things, I would go to a book club in a bookstore on the other side of town and join a group that would read the same book and discuss it. It seems so long ago.
One book we read was Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts. I really can’t say I enjoyed the book – it was too, too difficult to read. I looked forward to the discussion. I was curious about what everybody thought – but the thoughts were jumbled. I asked, at the end of the evening, “Would anyone here have finished this book on their own – without the pressure of having book club?” The answer was a resounding NO.
Though I won’t say the book was enjoyable, it was interesting… and it was… haunting is the best I can come up with.
And when I came across an online short story written by VanderMeer – The Situation – I read it and wrote about it. It was another fabulous story but told in a more conventional way – not too difficult to get through.
And then… well, there’s this thing I do. I always like to have some short books laying around – something to read when I don’t have very much time, energy, or patience. What I do is I walk down the aisles of the library in the fiction section simply looking at the physical books. Then I pull the small and slim volumes out and see if they are something I might be interested in. This, again, was back in the olden days when there were libraries.
The last book like that I checked out – I looked at it and, surprise, it was another by Jeff VanderMeer – a short novel, novela really, called The Strange Bird.
And it, again was in a different style. It was a straightforward (though bizarre) tale told as a hero’s journey – like The Odyssey, or The Alchemist, or The Hobbit, or something like that. The protagonist is the eponymous “Strange Bird” – a creature that may have started out as a bird but had been manipulated in a horrific futuristic bio-tech lab – bits added from many different animals… and humans… fantastic properties and abilities… until what was left was an intelligent, damaged, powerful, fearful, beautiful, hurt and most of all – unique thing – the Strange Bird:
In the lab, so many of the scientists had said, “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it. Even a Strange Bird perched on a palm tree on an artificial island with a moat full of hungry crocodiles below could understand the problem with that logic.
—- Jeff VanderMeer, The Strange Bird
Even though the styles are varied – the Strange Bird is a “Borne” novel and The Situation is a “Borne” novela and The Dead Astronauts is another “Borne” novel. They are set in a fantastic world established in the linchpin novel Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. This is a dystopian earth destroyed by the experiments conducted by The Company – a giant biotech conglomerate. The blasted world is left with the few remaining humans battling for survival with the genetic monsters created by The Company – now escaped and running amok.
There are characters and locations shared (though often at different times – different stages of their lives) – Charlie X, Rachel and her lover Wick (who sells drugs in the form of customized beetles that produce memories when shoved in one’s ear), the Balcony Cliffs, and especially the giant flying killer bear, Mord. Borne himself(herself? itself?) is mentioned briefly in The Strange Bird.
So, now, what choice do I have? I picked up a copy of Borne – will read it next.
During all my drinking days, I listened for that music and thought it might be worth continuing to drink just to hear it once more. But, of course, it wasn’t.
—-Robert Garner McBrearty, A Trace of Music
Music at Ciclovia Dallas
Working my knee back with ice, rest and ibuprofen. Yesterday, I rode my spin bike on very light resistance for an hour and today, one week after I slipped coming out of the shower and twisted my knee, I rode my road bike for the first time – five miles around the ‘hood. It was fine – not entirely pain-free, but bearable. Maybe ten miles tomorrow after work (I have to work, I am essential). The nice thing about the road bike is that with my feet clipped in they are held rigid with no lateral flex in my leg or knee. That helps. It’s a bitch getting my shoes on, however.
A day at a time – small improvements – each day a little better than the day before.
Like in today’s story….
Read it here:
from Heart of Flesh Literary Journal
Robert Garner McBrearty Homepage
‘Photons are bouncing around all the time,’ he’d said. ‘They’re landing on you. They’re disturbed by your smile and they gather in your eyes.’
—-Debbi Voisey, The Repurposing of Harold Foster
George Herold, Dallas Contemporary
There is physics and there is life and death. They must be related in ways too subtle and complex for us to comprehend – but they must be the same. Even though your soul must be in there somewhere – your consciousness strung out along fields of electrical energy – every atom in your body obeys the same rules as the atoms in a high school demonstration laboratory experiment. The little spring cannon shoots a steel sphere across a big sheet of paper – you measure the distance, write it down in a spiral notebook… your thoughts flutter between writing up the assignment and the girl in the next group (why couldn’t she be in yours… she never is). But I digress.
I have been thinking a lot about the brain of a dilapidated decrepit old man and how it compares to the brain of a vibrant vigorous young one. There is no difference.
A nice, wistful little piece of short fiction today. Read it here:
From Reflex Fiction
He was old, thin and wasted. The space suit lay in the dust at his feet, white and shiny, a US flag on its chest.
“How much?” I asked.
“$1,500,” he said. “Cash.”
—-Dawn Lowe, Weight
(click to enlarge)
Mural, Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
We all see them, people by the side of the road, selling stuff. Some folks never look and always drive by. Some folks have an irresistible hoarder urge and look for bargains.
Are there things you can buy that will really change your life? For the better? For sure?
Maybe they will change someone else.
A very short story about someone that decides to stop. Not looking for a bargain, they willingly overpay.
Read it here:
from issue 1 of Brilliant Flash Fiction
My mother spends all her wages on cigarettes. My mother, a waitress at a café in the center of a suburban residential area at the edge of the world. In the afternoon, the café is filled with ladies. They are housewives coming from elegant houses at the edge of the world, killing time.
—–Hiromi Suzuki, A Longer Trip Back Home
Stray Christmas Ball in the Trinity River, Dallas, Texas
Does a story have to have a classical plot? Does the protagonist have to want something? Is the story always about if they get it or not?
I didn’t know that a French word for mock strawberries was Fraisier de Duchesne. That sounds like a good name for a character – maybe an evil aristocrat or a kindly old neighbor, Fraisier de Duchesne.
Read it here:
from 3AM Magazine
There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.
—-Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat
Poppies, by W. Stanley Proctor
Liberty Plaza
Farmer’s Branch, Texas
(click to enlarge)
Yesterday, I wrote about George Saunders and his story – The Red Bow
I included this Youtube video of George Saunders and some writing tips.
The first question is “What is your favorite short story?” and he answered “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol. He said, “It’s funny and sad and I think it’s the way that God actually thinks of us if he in fact does.”
I have had the story “The Nose” by Gogol as one of my short stories before.
Like “The Nose” – “The Overcoat” is written in an older style – more telling than showing – but it is as genius, funny, and shattering as Saunders says it is. I had read “The Overcoat” before – long ago – but didn’t remember all the details… only the sadness and feeling of helplessness. Reading it again it was even more heartbreaking, knowing what was going to happen to the hopeless protagonist.
Read it here:
from East Of the Web
The next question on the interview is “Best piece of writing advice?”.
He replies that a mentor Tobias Wolff told him, “Don’t lose the magic.” Great advice.
I am a huge fan of Tobias Wolff – if you ask me Wolff’s story “In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs” is my favorite short story (or at least one of them) and one of the best ever written.
I’ve used a couple of online Tobias Wolff stories for my stories of the day before:
On both of those entries I wrote about my favorite Tobias Wolff story:
I remember one time, years ago, he was giving a talk at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of the Arts & Letters Live series. Well, I’m poor and can’t afford the full price ticket to these lectures, but, for a lower price, you can attend and sit in an auditorium off to the side where the lecture is beamed in on a screen. I was sitting there, waiting with a few other people (the main room was packed) when I looked up and there was Tobias Wolff, walking between the rows talking to us. He said he didn’t think it was fair that we had to sit in the other room and had arranged for an extra row of seats to be installed down across the front. We all marched into the big room and saw the live lecture, right up on the first row, thanks to the author.
It was really cool and thoughtful of him – and I’ll never forget it.
Don’t like that man, Uncle Matt said as we left the Rectory. Never have and never will.
And I knew that. They had gone to high school together and there had been something about a girl, some last-minute prom-date type of situation that had not gone in Uncle Matt’s favor, and I think some shoving on a ball field, some name-calling, but all of this was years ago, during like say the Kennedy administration.
—-George Saunders, The Red Bow
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Cathey MIller, Cathedonia
(click to enlarge)
As I’ve said before, I’m watching Youtube videos that contain fiction writing tips and such while I ride my spin bike for exercise. Some of my favorite clips are interviews with the writer, George Saunders.
I have written about and linked to George Saunders short stories several times already:
A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room
Today’s story is particularly dark, awful to contemplate, and appropriate to the disaster coursing around the world today. How do you respond to a tragedy? Do you respond with a sense of honoring the dead or with preventing it from happening again? Or both? How do you define mercy in uncertain times? Where do you stop? When does the cure become worse than the disease? How do you get through the day when you know it is going to get worse before it gets better? How sure are you that it will get better?
Read it here:
From Esquire
I shrank back to the corner of the bed, shouting desperately, “I’m not a philistine—and I’ve got the books to prove it.”
—-Yu Hua, As the North Wind Howled
The Sweepers
Wang Shugang
Cast Iron (2012)
Crow Collection of Asian Art
I have been collecting playlists of writing related YouTube (hints and interviews) videos and watching them while I ride my spin bike. An hour a day. One video was a (long) list of things that distinguish an amateur, begining writer. I remember one was, “Don’t start your story out with your main character waking up in bed.” Well, Kafka would disagree.
So would Yu Hua – that’s how today’s bit of flash fiction begins.
Read it here:
From the New Yorker
Bill Chance 