--THERE’S JOY IN THE SADNESS

…It’s Monday but it doesn't feel like it.

How does it feel to you?

…Here are some things I like to start a new week:

-"It's much better to attempt to trust people until they prove you wrong."

-“After fifty years of living, it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work, whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody's teeth." Thomas McGuane

-"Build gaps in your life.  Pauses.  Propper pauses.
-"I can't imagine twenty years ahead because I'm sort of here right now." - Thom Yorke"

-Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.
Edmund Lee

-"We live in a world where it is more dramatic to lose your phone than your virginity." Megan Fox

"You get whichever accomplishment you are willing to declare." Georgia O'Keeffe

"The people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this you keep them alive." Kacia Domay

"Don't worry.  Everything is going to be amazing."

"My motto was to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging." Hank Aaron

"... I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears ..."
-- Frank O'Hara

"The trouble is, you think you have time." Buddha

"To get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with." Mark Twain

"I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade." James Stockdale Commenting on his 8 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, during which he was tortured over 20 times.

"We write to say there is no them. There is only us." Luis Alberto Urrea

"The greatest virtue in the world is action." Nick McDonell, "The Third Brother"

“I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”  Phillip Roth (I think he was being sarcastic.  I hope he was anyway.)

--LET’S START OVER

…It’s Friday and it’s Valentine’s Day.  I hope you’re spending it with someone special.  I don’t feel all that romantic right now.  So let’s keep things light.

Here are some of my favorite musings from Facebook friends last week:

-Uncle Ben has died. No more Mr. Rice Guy.”

-I learned yesterday that some women shave their faces because of the light peach fuzz we have because, well, we're mammals and we grow hair.
I never knew any women shaved their faces. Am I just some kind of old out of touch relic? I mean, well, I have to say, WTF?
Yeah, WTF?

-If prisons let prisoners take their own mug shots, are they "cellfies?"

-Most frank license plate ever, seen today in Bellevue, WA: IH8 PPL

-Dear five year old kid who just called and asked to swap naked pictures with me: Don't.

-Can't stop thinking about pancakes.

-Daughter 2: Mom! I'm becoming a real person!
Me: how is that?
D2: I spilled some granola on the floor and I am actually sweeping it up.
Me: wow! You ARE becoming a real person.
D2: But I only swept it underneath the refrigerator, so the journey is not yet complete.

-I just peed continuously for 2.5 minutes. I timed it.

-I hate seeing white people have fun.

-Just got to say this to someone: "10 inches of snow is pussy snow"

-I am 24. You are unimpressed.

--WE COULD KEEP EACH OTHER COMPANY IF YOU HAVE THE TIME

…We’re supposed to be getting some big wind storms here, beginning tonight.  When I was a young boy I used to love to go out to the woods behind our trailer where we lived.  I had a favorite spot; it was a hill that flattened out on top and there were wild blackberry plants that rimmed it.  On windy days, I’d lie down on the ground and listen to the breeze moving through all the Evergreen trees.  It was almost like being on drugs.

While I still enjoy the frenetic sound of the wind on stormy days, I worry about trees falling onto the house because a few have toppled across the lawn in the last couple years.

But I guess you’re going to go when you’re going to go.

…Anyway, here are some things I like on a Wednesday:

-"Gentlemen, why don't you laugh?  With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die."  Abraham Lincoln

-"Sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent." Dalai Lama

-“What good are insights? They only make things worse.”  Raymond Carver

-"Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible." Charles Caleb Colton

-“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”- Walter Bagehot

-"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to  know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." Ralph Waldo Emerson

-"The world is a hellish place and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering." Tom Waits

-“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau

-"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T. S. Eliot

-"You get whichever accomplishment you are willing to declare." Georgia O'Keeffe

‎-"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard." —Anne Sexton

 -“The true mystery of the world is the visible.” Oscar Wilde

-“I don’t do drugs.  I am drugs.”  Salvador Dali

-“I have always loved too much, or not enough.” Dorianne Laux

-"The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." Helen Keller

-"Whatever job I'm doing I try to do the best I can with it and enjoy it for what it is and what it entails. I passed the time in the shoe shop by trying to be the best damn shoe salesman in the whole of New Jersey.  The fact that I didn't succeed and ended up washing the coffee cups in the kitchen didn't really matter. I just tried to get those coffee cups the cleanest they'd ever been. Playing in the band was another job.  The only difference was, I was finally doing the one thing that I had any aptitude for." Jon Bon Jovi,

--LIFE IS MOSTLY EDGES

…We had snow over the weekend.  I wish you could see how beautiful it looks dusted across the frozen surface of the lake with a few randy ducks either swimming on the edges or strutting across the ice.

It’s nice to be able to enjoy the beauty of a good snowfall.  When I was in the corporate world, snow equated to disaster for business and thus I always feel into a funk when it would snow.  I also used to pray for rain on the weekends because that was best for business.  It’s perverse, but true.

Now it’s nice to be a normal human.

…Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day writing poetry, much of it about what I was looking at outside my window, and all of it, of course, a little sad:

Fighting The Monster

I am trying to write the voices down

but they caterwaul in spirals,

in echoes rimmed with barbwire,

boomeranging back to me the way your small arms never do.

Yesterday I found one of your socks.

It was striped, purple and green,

the heal nearly worn through

and I recalled how much you loved to skip.

Your mother was out,

but it didn’t matter.

All the same I knelt down in the closet,

weeping, shipwrecked and gutted again,

and that’s when the voices began anew,

taunting,

screaming accusations,

shouting, “You should have been there!”

asking, “What kind of parent leaves their six year old alone

with a monster?”

I never have answers.

My only defense is retreat up here,

to your room

where I used to read you stories each night.

I sit on the edge of your bed,

pen in hand,

paper on my lap.

I write and I write.

I tell you how sorry I am

and how much I will always miss you.

Ghost Girls

Your shadow fell upon my window

late last night

and I could tell from the outlines that you were wearing

the same dress you had on when you fell,

the one with red polka dots that made you look like a six year old lady bug.

I was afraid to rise because you always flea when I do,

so I watched your ghost shimmy across the glass like a pair of gray wings.

I watched you hover and shudder,

thinking maybe ghosts get cold, too.

Branches scraped across the panes

and it was if you were trying to tell me something,

that life loses its mystery if you’re standing on the edge and only looking down.

Your mother said I could have caught you if I believed in magic,

and that being fifty and breathing is hardly enough to save a soul,

let alone a marriage.

Still I try to convince myself

that you had to fly,

that being airborne and free

is the only option

for the women I love.

Dystopia

We have been waking up to walking.

Yes, I know how odd that sounds,

but it’s true.

Each morning when our eyes open we are already mobile,

moving down empty streets or traipsing through the barren foothills

that skirt the edges of existence.

We might be the sole survivors,

actors in another dystopian film,

and yet there must be answers somewhere,

concrete reasons why we failed the planet who

gave us so much.

  

Young Fugitives

We walked across the lake,

not worried about the thickness of the ice,

moving at an urgent pace,

like thieves on the run.

It felt as if nothing mattered but a way out.

You said, “There are people who will love us somewhere,”

and I wanted to believe you but we were so young then.

As we reached the other side,

a deer watched us scrabble to the shore

and I recall admiring how calm and brave

the animal appeared,

alone in a world so cold.

You were two years older

so you took my hand and I let you this one time.

I was certain we were lost,

but you pulled out a map and said,

“It’s just miles, is all.  Miles til we find love.”

  

Stilted Beauty

In the morning I find the lake frozen,

encrusted with a jagged gray lid,

a few randy ducks floating near the edges,

some tottering over the ice

like drunken drifters on the moon.

I search from end to end

using binoculars to scan the farthest stretches.

In a yard on the north side, a snowman leans forward as if fainting.

Outside children toss rocks trying to puncture the shelf.

Smoke slithers from chimneys,

while tree branches sag and mope under the strain of so much snow.

Years ago I would have been captivated by all this stilted beauty,

but today it’s just another reminder of how lonely life is

without you.

--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.