--THOUGH WE LIVE ON THE AMERICAN DOLLAR, YOU AND ME WE’VE GOT OUR OWN SENSE OF TIME

…It’s a brisk but beautiful day here.  Are you staying warm?  Happy about the weekend?

…I’m heading off to play some shuffleboard in a couple of hours.  Love that game and could play it all day.

…Here are the first two stories I ever had published, both a little creepy, which appeared in a lit zine appropriately called Micro Horror:

           Darling

            She called me that, curling the word around her lips the way a fox unfurls its tail.  I kept my eyes on her; afraid she’d disappear or leave me for good.  It felt old-fashioned and real the way our love broke through the nasty crust of this world.

            She said, “Can you get me a drink?”

            When I returned from the kitchen with an exquisite mojito featuring crushed peppermint leaves she was gone.

            I spent the day awaiting her return.  I read every magazine on the coffee table, even her pornographic copy of last year’s Cosmopolitan.

            I fell asleep on the couch, rubbing the spot her ass had sat on.  The fabric was no longer warm, but still.

            I couldn’t force myself to leave, even when the urge to urinate overwhelmed me.  What if she came back to retrieve some inconsequential article? 

I might have dreamt of her.  At around three in the morning I started having visions.  The phone rang several times but there was only dead air on the other end.

I waited until noon to call the police, which is harder than you think, getting a living breathing human on the phone.  I suppose I could have dialed 911 but as I said, I wasn’t thinking too clearly.

I told them I needed to file a missing person report but they said I’d have to come down to the station.  “There’s a protocol.  We take that kind of thing very seriously.”

“So do I!  Why the hell do you think I’m calling?”

“Sir,” the female officer said.

She went missing last Tuesday.  The press started showing up yesterday when someone leaked the fact that Stacey’s blood was found in the trunk of my car.  What kind of idiot do they think I am?  That I’d kill the woman I can’t live without and then stage her disappearance?

My lawyer says it’s all circumstantial and our case is strong, but he tells me to start taking better care of myself, grooming and bathing.  He says the press is portraying it as a ploy, a stunt so that I come across as burdened and tragic.  The gamesmanship involved in this kind of ordeal is extraordinary.  If I wasn’t living it I wouldn’t believe it.

So, Stacey, she was the love of my life.  You’re probably wondering why I said “was”, aren’t you? 

An expression I hate is when people ask you a question and then they answer, “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”  It’s trite and overused but in this case it fits.  I’ve done it once, I could do it again.

Now you’re wondering, “What first time?” aren’t you?  My lawyer’s advice is to keep mum.  He says if I play my cards right there could be a book here, or a movie deal.  Maybe Stacey isn’t around anymore, but I’ve got some ideas for who’ll play her.  She thought she could leave me.  Stupid bitch, she should have known better.

               

                                                                      Rerun

A rumor went around that Holly threw her fetus into a waste basket on prom night.  The kids at Jefferson H.S. recognized similarities between what they’d heard about Holly and a news story that had really happened, like, four years ago, but rumors have a way of imbedding themselves, surpassing all else.

            After Homecoming, Holly got heavy overnight and gossip named it post baby fat.  Her acne doubled, which seemed impossible unless you considered less conspicuous areas such as her torso and legs.  In the halls no one even bothered hiding their stares, their scorn and identity-butchering.  “Wait it out,” Holly’s mother advised.  “It’ll all blow over.”

            Holly had seen something comparable happen the year before with Emily Rosedale.  Gossip had Emily making love to her own thoroughbred.  Things got so ugly that Emily quit school midway through and the Rosedale’s moved to Montana, which is half a continent away.

            Holly had never been popular to begin with.  She had always seen high school as a burden to get through, coincidentally, much the same as she imagined the brutality of childbirth.  Now the make-believe fetus-in-the-garbage-bin story bloomed and tagged her as irretrievably damaged goods, so it was nothing for Holly to burn down the school one night and do what she did to her mother the same evening, her mother being the one that had started all this by giving birth to Holly in the first place.

You might even say she was bored, waiting for the police to show up, because Holly had seen this movie before and she knew how it would end.

--I HOPE YOU’RE OKAY

…There’s a patch of frozen ice on the lake this morning; a little crescent to my left.  There’s frost on things.  I’m not partial to cold weather, though I doubt many people are.

..Last night I watched “The Kids Are All Right” for the second time.  It’s a great little film with outstanding performances by Annette Benning and Julianna Moore.  See if you can.

And I watched the first two episodes of “The Following.”  Talk about creepy.  Eeeee.

…Here are some funny and fun things my Facebook friends shared last week:

-sister just facetimed me to ask if i'm 'gay'

-Deepak Chopra is the Church Lady with no sense of humor. New age has no sense of humor. I would prefer old age.

-I would love to be a foodie, I'm just poor is all.

-"Mommy, Kevin is real." A theological debate. Lucia thinks "heaven" is pronounced "Kevin."

-Wonder if the guy I'm going on a date with tonight will mind stopping by the free mental health clinic I left my favorite sweater there

-if i don't fuck today i'll die

-I panicked and told the drunk guy at the bar I was a writer. Ugh. His eyes got all gooey and I thought, fuck.

-Girl next to me in bed after car crash begging for meds. Guy visiting sick mom being told to wait by the evil nurse in an emotionless voice. The smell of absolute body. Me waiting three hours for a urine analysis. FUCK THIS COUNTRY.

-I bought some pork chops and told the butcher to make them lean. He said, 'Which way?'

-Fuck Snow. Fuck Shoveling. Fuck Winter. Fuck Cold. Fuck Polar fucking Vortex.

-I can be such a bitch

  

--IN BETWEEN THE MOON AND YOU THE ANGELS GET A BETTER VIEW OF THE CRUMBLING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRONG AND RIGHT

…I have a story, “Juked” published at Vivid Squid:

http://www.lividsquid.com/len-kuntz

--My son’s favorite weather is when the sun is shining while it’s raining.  I think I agree.  It was that way yesterday for quite a while.  The sun burned my cheek as I looked out the window while a light drizzle speckled the lake’s surface.

It was really very lovely.

--For weeks, and especially the last week, it was been impossible to get away from The Super Bowl.  The game dominated talk radio, even non-sports talk radio.  Katie Couric did a whole show on it.  People politicized the rugged nature of the sport.  It was everywhere and unavoidable.

Too much hype, for sure, but it was an extremely  entertaining game if you’re a Seahawk fan and from the Seattle are like me.  I’m even hoarse today from screaming.

..Here are a just a few facts about the Super Bowl you may or may not be aware of:

-110 Americans were expected to have watched.

-Ad spots (just for the air time, not including production) cost $4 million for a 30 second commercial.  Pretty hard to believe.

-Tickets at the 50-yard line cost $10,000.

-A 20-ounce cup of beer cost $14.

-Last year pizza sales rose 27% from the 2012 Super Bowl and sales of wings rose a whopping 113%

…Here are a couple of other non-related facts about miscellaneous:

-this is how bad it’s gotten for the music business:  last week Bruce Springsteen’s new album was #1 selling 99,000 copies.  When NSYNC’s album came out a decade ago, it sold 2.3 million copies in one week.

-The 22^nd bestselling album sold 14,000 units.  A guy could almost buy his own into the top 40.

--I’M A BROKEN TOY

                   Acts of Love   

            The sky cracks open, sooty and loud and wet.  Marty, our wiener dog, goes nuts, spins in circles and the only means of stopping him is to tackle the critter and hold him tight, like a vest bomb. 

“You’ll crush him that way,” my wife says.  Marty is panting and his moist black eyes bug out, but then, I tell myself, they’re always bulging.

            We’re supposed to be talking about us.  That was the plan before so much thunder and lightning ripped through our spackled city.

            I got my wife this condo because she wanted a place with lots of windows.  She claimed she had nothing to hide.  Now, there’s violence outside every pane.

            When I ask if she wants to start first, she counters by saying, “I thought men didn’t like to share their feelings?”

            “I guess I’m different.”

            “I guess you are,” my wife says.

            A twisted branch of lightning strikes the window, glowing radioactive through a sheer blind.  I remember my wife’s negligee being that see-through, the outfit she wore a few months after our honeymoon when she said she’d be sure to keep things interesting, when she promised we’d never grow bored.

            Glass clanks over at the cupboard above the sink.  My wife’s become an efficient drinker, takes her scotch neat, no ice.  Only needs a tumbler.  If I weren’t around, she might not even use that.

            Marty’s gum-colored tongue laps my chin.  It’s like that time a friend sent me a YouTube video of a beheading overseas, and an anxious wave of nausea rippled through my gut and I spewed a wild, toxic stream but had the wits to turn the video off and hit delete before the sword was lifted.

            She raises her glass to her chin and it seems I can see vapors like heat shimmers from the pavement misting her skin, but that’s impossible and I know it’s just the effects of nervousness I’m feeling, that and this rattling storm.

            I can hear the choppy gulps as she swallows even though she’s trying to be subtle and make herself out to be a judicious drinker.  I could point out that it’s only 11 am on a Saturday morning, but I don’t.  Push my wife just a little, and she becomes a runaway.

            “Okay,” she says, slumping down in the egg-shaped chair opposite me, “what do you want to know?”

            It’s a gut punch to find us here, in this gutter, playing games after so many years.

            “Maybe you could start by telling me when you first fell in love with him.”

            She snorts a twig of laughter through her nose.  “Don’t be an idiot,” she says.  “It was an affair.  I’ve never loved him.”

            Lightning nests my wife’s hair in the window, forming an electrified crown of thorns.  Wind smears the glass with rain tears.  “If you want to end it,” my wife tells me, “just say so.”

            Now who’s being an idiot?  Everything I am and everything I’ve ever cared about is stitched into that woman, and I knew from the beginning that I’d have to teach her how to love completely and selflessly.  I knew there’d be crashes and destruction.

            She flaps her hand.  “You can keep Marty,” she says.  She lets the last topaz pearl splash onto her tongue.  “I think I’m becoming allergic anyway.”

            I lean forward.  I take in oxygen so it falls all the way in. 

I tell her she’s a coward.  I say my words softly, without nuance or inflection.  I tell her she always wants the painless route out.  I say, “If you think I’m letting you off this easy, you’ve got another thing coming.”

            She’s up and across the room in a flash.  I hear the drawers screeching open, clothes hangers clanging off a metal rod as she packs.

            I put Marty in the closet and lock the door because he’s seen enough.

            Under the sink, by the cleaning solvents is where I put the rope and duct tape and Taser I bought for this occasion.  I know I’m about to cross a line, yet I tell myself it’s worth it, that this is unavoidable, just another act of love, necessary but not at all desperate.

--SOMETIMES IT’S A LITTLE BIT SCARY

…I did a podcast interview/reading on Bud Smith’s Unknown Radio Show yesterday.  Bud is a great guy and hails from Brooklyn.  I’ll finally be meeting him next month at AWP, which is held here in Seattle this year.  AWP is a big writer’s conference (10,000 writers attend), mostly indie writers and poets.

Anyway, the podcast did not go so well.  I was terrible.  Got nervous.  Don’t know why.  It was over the phone.  Maybe I need to read to actual faces.  I have to get a lot better.

…I did the shameless plug for my upcoming story collection on Facebook yesterday.  A few people said I shouldn’t be worried about promoting myself, but it does feel rather self-indulgent.  I’m going to do it here, however, so maybe it won’t be such a worry after I’ve done it a few times.

The book is 120 pages, 54 stories, 90 percent of them less than 500 words.  I thought I’d sell a lot more copies than I’m currently selling.

Today I have to complete an interview for Connotation Press, the publishers of my book who are kind enough to have me as their featured writer for their online magazine this month.  I’m really lucky to know Meg and Ken.  They’re great people.

Oh, and here’s the pre-order link for my book, if you’re interested, and thanks so much if you are!

http://www.connotationpress.com/books/2175-the-dark-sunshine-by-len-kuntz

--SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, BUT AT LEAST I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE

…It’s Monday and it definitely feels like it.

…Did you watch the Grammy’s?  I did, for the first time in years.  It’s certainly more interesting having lots of performances and cutting down the time for acceptance speeches.  Still, it seems like there’s a lot of mediocre music out there.

…I’m reading “Tell The Wolves I’m Home.”  It’s quite good.  I’m learning some things.

…Some inspirations I like to start the week are these:

-“Some days I feel like my shadow’s casting me.”  Warren Zevon

-“Laughter is the language of the Gods.” - Buddhist saying

-The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why at age 90 he continued to practice, to which he said, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

-“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” E.B. White

-“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”- Beverly Sills

-"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."- Leo C. Rosten

-"Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's the dealing with it."- Randall 'Tex' Cobb

-“The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.” - Janet Erskine Stuart

-The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”  - Sarah Ban Breathnack

-"Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.” –Adrienne Rich

-“It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.” -Euripides

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry David Thoreau

"I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?" Georgia O'Keefe

--YOU ARE SO PHOTOGENIC

I Call Your Name

I search for you

in garden soil

the color of coffee beans,

where it’s sandy in places,

clay-like in others.

I use my bare hands,

careful not to cut you with a spade or hoe.

I free worms from their squiggly fetal positions.

There are rocks and bigger rocks,

a swath of petrified electrical tape,

the arm of a G.I. Joe,

something that might once have been a wrist watch.

I dig for hours

until my scalp is scalded and my shirt is a damp sheet that reeks.

I hum your favorite Dylan tune as I scrape and carve away clumps of dirt,

my fingernails cracked and bleeding.

I call your name.

I sing it.

I use your name and tell you how wonderful you are and always will be.

I use your name and say it’s not your fault about what happened.

I use your name the way some people use pillows, baths or comfort food,

and I use it selfishly, just as the broken must when medicating in mourning.

By nightfall

I’m sore and too exhausted to move anymore.

Breathing hurts.

A headache burrows through my right ear

while my bones scream at me for my foolishness,

because I knew I wouldn’t find you here,

not here

or even in a casket somewhere.

When they brought you back from the war

you were only medals and army gear,

a bundle of the photographs you’d taken along

 and a few well-read letters.

They said the explosion was massive,

that the fire engulfing you had been a monster to put out.

They said how sorry they were for my loss.

Now I weep for you under a milk-blue moon.

I call your name,

then I don’t.

Instead I shout a father’s cry, “Son!  Son, I miss you so much!”

I yell it over and over,

praying you can hear me and

that heaven is real after all.