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.
‘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:
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.
Obscurity or fame. Everyone here craved one or the other.
—-Gail Anderson – Intersection, Transit and Rose
Decaying wall, Ladonia, Texas
I had plans for today. It’s the last nice day before a cold front barrels through. So I mapped out a long bike ride into a part of town I rarely ride now – but remember well from decades ago. Also, I have some ideas and itch to write some fiction so I was going to re-start my old “Sunday Snippets” – and squeeze out something new, original, and crappy.
But getting out of the shower and going to put my cycling clothes on I stepped with wet feet on the cheap imitation wood flooring, which is like snot on ice when damp, and went down in a naked heap. I did save the coffee cup I (for some unknown reason) had in my hand – throwing it into the hamper while I spun to the floor. A clumsy lifetime has taught me how to fall. I’m okay but this getting old shit is not for the faint of heart. My knee is twitchy and my hip is sore and I don’t think I should go very far in this state. The sheet of pain (again, I’m fine but it really hurt for a while) wiped my mind and now I can’t really come up with the lies I need for fiction right now – maybe next week. I’m essential, so it’s another week of work starting tomorrow, too.
So, at any rate, here’s a tasty piece of flash fiction (literally flash fiction) that won the Best of Winter 2019 award from Reflex Fiction. Mystery of its own and action inspired by Hitchcock – what else can you want?
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.
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.”
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.
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:
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?
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.
The city at night sounded like his ribs when they broke, his body as it caved in on itself and snapped in half so loudly they heard it downstairs and thought it was a gunshot, another bullet hitting its mark, eating into the flesh of another broken soul, unwanted — unwanted, yes, disowned, in a room no warmer than the frigid air outside, shivering under layers, skin stretched too tight across bones.
—-Monica Robinson, “anatomy of a burning thing”
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive
Point of View – Stream of Consciousness – Reliability of Narration
You can play with this stuff… if you have the chops.
Back home, we’d be treated for space sickness and starlust, our brains scanned and studied for signs that our grey matter had deteriorated in the vacuum. We’d be swaddled in hospitals, kept barefoot and away from the night sky until we stopped dreaming of plumed nebulas and stopped thinking we could hear the music of the spheres in C minor.
—-Lina Rather, Last Long Night
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl
I’m picking streaming movies out – looking for clickbait web articles like “Ten Netflix Movies You Never Thought of Watching” and carefully copying names, reviews, and synopsis into text files for safekeeping. Then I watch them while I ride my spin bike. Candy and a friend were drinking wine a couple months ago and ordered new big flat-screen TV’s on a whim. When it arrived I took the old big flat screen and mounted it in front of my spin bike – filling my view. It’s a way to watch stuff and still get exercise.
Last night I watched High Life – an odd science fiction movie with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche directed by Claire Denis.
I’m of mixed feelings about the movie. It is a unique vision – done with a lot of talent. It undoubtedly has amazing moments (Willow growing up, for example) and offers up a lot to think about. Ultimately… I don’t know… worth a watch but not completely satisfying.
Today’s flash fiction is very similar in setting and theme to the movie. Reading it made me think of the movie right away. I think I like the story better… partially for the fact that it has a similar reaction for a much smaller investment (in money and time). It is distilled.
Bill Chance 