--DID I MISS ANTHING?

…I hope you have a fabulous weekend.  Watch out for that Fiscal Cliff and try not to fall over it.

 …The good folks at SOLARCIDE published three of my flash pieces this week:

http://solarcide.com/special-guest-content/guest-stories/guest-stories-2012/len-kuntz-flash-fiction-week-at-solarcide-continues/

…Here are some thoughts from Andre Dubus III about writing or life or anything:

...“Gustave Flaubert was known to writhe on the floor in search of the perfect word to complete whatever it was he was writing. When’s the last time you writhed on the floor, other than during sex?”

“I believe when you write a story you are pregnant with that story the way a woman can be pregnant with a child. Similarly, she can eat right and not drink, and she can exercise and make all the correct choices but still miscarry.”

“There’s a certain stupidity writers can hardly do without--it’s called waiting. Not waiting for inspiration to write--because only amateurs do that-- but writing it as best you can and then waiting, waiting and sending out again, waiting, waiting and sending out again for the hundredth, second-hundredth time to see if someone likes it.”

“If you think you’re thinking when you’re writing, think again. Dreaming is closer to writing than thinking is to writing.”

“Imagine it, don’t make it up. There’s a huge difference.”

“This thing we do is mysterious because writers are the kind of people who want to enter the mystery of things.”

“You want to get yourself in the frame of mind where you accept any idea that comes your way.”

 

 

--I'M A LOT STRONGER THAN YOU THINK

…I have two new stories up at Solarcide and one more Friday:

…I saw “Argo” yesterday and it was about as I’d anticipated: a strong movie with great acting.  B+.  Ben Affleck has turned into a quite a director and he pulls off an appropriately restrained acting effort.  See it.

My guess is it’ll be up for an Academy Award but that Lincoln will win Best Pic and Best Actor.

…I watched a disturbing program about child/teen abductions.

One girl was taken inside her home and no one knows how or who and it’s been years.
Another was a college-aged girl who went missing after bar-hopping and seeing some friends.  The last people to see her have lawyered up and refuse to talk any more than they legally have to.
Perhaps the most disturbing was about a girl, twenty-something, who’s been missing for a few years now.  The girl’s parents get all kinds of prank phone calls.  One person called and just kept repeating, “Mom?  Mom?”  Who does that?  Why?  Other times, people called up and just screamed or said, “I killed her!”  It’s hard to fathom how any human could do such a thing to another person.

…A friend sent me an article about this man with cancer who was only supposed to have six months to live.  He moved to some Greek island to be with his family in his last days.
But his cancer disappeared and it’s now been 30 plus years since his fatal diagnosis.  I borrowed the idea and the article’s title and wrote this:
 

                                          The Island Where People Forget To Die

 

            She wanted to be forever young and so she moved to The Island Where People Forget To Die.  It was in the tropics with brightly flocked macaws and squirrely little monkeys that laughed at you for no reason whatsoever.

            Before this the cancer inside her felt like a large bowl of steel, invisible yet heavy filling her gut, making walking difficult, causing her to rasp if she spoke.

            But on the island paradise melted the cancer.  She knew this because she felt spry and light.  For a few weeks her urine was dark, coffee-colored yet she did not become frightened because she understood that she was merely, and literally, pissing the cancer out of her system.

            There was no electricity on the island and the last call she made with her cell phone before the battery died was to her family back in the states.  They’d been worried about her, but became elated when they heard the news of her recovery.  They called it a miracle, and she agreed.

            In time, boats arrived, stuffed with all sort of maligned and diseased people.  Each of them—the blind and lame and infected—were cured.  After a while, perfectly healthy folks showed up, greedy to live beyond their allotted years.  Condominiums and Hotels were erected.  Roads were paved.  Shops built.  A localized regime was established with a constitution.

            In a short span, The Island Where People Forget To Die became so massively congested that new inhabitants were turned away dismissively.  Then a fleet of warships arrived, looming shore-side like large walls of steel, blocking both sky and sun.  

            Using homemade catapults and roughhewn spears, the island’s tenants fought back.  But it was no use because the enemy was the Federal Government.  Naval vessels fired missiles and bombs, so many that the island at once went up in flames and those who did not burn to death were forced into the ocean where the current caught them, if not many of the menacing sharks.

            In the water the woman floated on her back.  She drowned out the cacophony of bonfire noises and screams, drowned out the shrieking pleas for help and violent cursing.

            It’s better this way, she thought.  The end of something means all that came before is real and of value.

 

--AND SO, THIS IS HOW THE STORY GOES

…It’s morning and the sun is struggling to find a place for itself.  Across the lake a few houses are lit up, others dark and sealed as if the world is all too much for them to take.

The water this morning is a muddy green-gray, the color of an antique army tank maybe, or a chalk board faded by the sun.

There’s not a single living thing in sight.  No ducks or eagles or leaping fish.

The surface of the water is rippled, resembling an old person’s skin.  It floats persistently to the west, like salmon on the way to spawn.

I’ve seen many things in my life, as we all have, but the lake never fails to mystify and stun.  It changes every day.  There are always new things to see, find, discover.

I love it.

…I hope this week is wonderful for you.

…"It is wonderful to be in on the creation of something, see it used, and then walk away and smile at it." Lady Bird Johnson

"We look in every store window to see if we look better than we did in the last store window." Barbara Sher

“A man without a smiling face must not open up shop.” Chinese Proverb

“The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.” Daniel Day Lewis

“Age is strictly a case of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Jack Benny

“The secret to life is making your vocation your vacation.” Mark Twain

"We are all the same, underneath the sycamore." Death Cab For Cutie

"Poetry is as exact a science as geometry." Flaubert

 

--IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

…I hope you’re having a great weekend.  A stellar weekend, in fact.  I know it’s been a hard week for you.

…I had my reading Friday night in Ballard.

The weather was a nightmare and traffic a real bitch, so I expected there to be about 10 people tops, especially since there were only four of us reading.  Yet there were probably upwards of 100 people there.
It was a very fun evening.  
I went third. 
The first two readers read stories that were jovial.  The first was hilarious.
Then came me with my dark, gut-punch stuff.  Looking out at the crowd, they seemed quite attentive, but the applause was somewhat stymied.
Still, it was my best reading ever.  I was hardly even nervous.

…Here’s one of the stories I read, that someone labeled (and rightly so) a “crippling piece”:

 

                                                      Triplets

 We are three that are one that will always be linked: brothers--Ron, Rex and me.

Rex is home this week for saying to a junior, “Only fags wrestle,” and then dismantling the stunned guy after practice.  Rex is large and surly, and so the kid’s family is suing.

Ron is writing new songs and trying out the lyrics on his Taylor guitar.  When I press my ear to the wall that separates our bedrooms, the words from the other side lift and break apart and the cadence catches me off guard so that I have to put a hand over my mouth in order to hide my sobbing.

I keep the lights off in my room, let the lava lamp run while watching the glowing worms reshape and seek new identities. 

I was the first one of us out of the womb but I am third.  I am both the fag and the girlfriend in a song.  I am someone’s choke hold and a broken guitar string making the wrong music.

After tonight, though, I’ll be the first one gone from this world and I’ll leave it up to them to decide whether that makes them twins then.

--I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I EVER SAID

….I think Costco is kind of evil.

I went there yesterday to buy a new phone and ended up spending $600 that I hadn’t planned on.  There’s too much stuff piled high in all those rows that makes you want to check it out, even if a lot of it is tacky reindeer sweaters and hideous wool socks.  (Also, they had stack of men’s pants on pallets that were pleated, which should be illegal, because most men don’t follow fashion and they’ll just assume that pleats are in style.)  By the way, my new phone is a Samsung Galaxy and it’s pretty cool, better, I think, than the iPhone.

…Friday night I’m reading with three other writers at the Grand Opening of Tony’s Bar in Seattle.  I only know one of the writers, but it should be fun.

…I made some Cyber Monday purchases for the first time (“Homeland” for my brothers, “Breaking Bad” for my brother in-law.)  I really did save a lot of money.

…Speaking of money, The Powerball lottery (in which 42 states participate) could go as high as $1 billion.  Odds of winning are 1 in 175 million. 

You’re 33 times more likely to get attacked by killer bees than to win.  55 times more likely to get struck by lightning.

…Americans spent $59.1 billion on Black Friday weekend, up from $52.4 billion last year.  The average amount spent was $423 and 89 million shoppers braved the crowds.

…Speaking of money again, baseball player Evan Longoria signed a six year contract extension with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for an added $100 million. 

…That’s enough money talk.  I like these things:

“Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: the least of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl

"The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense importance of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time." W.J. Davison

“It takes so little to make people happy.  Just a touch, if know how to give it, just a word fitly spoken, a slight readjustment of some bolt or pin or bearing in the delicate machinery of a soul.” Frank Crane

“To be able to enjoy one’s past life is to live twice.” James Montgomery

“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.” Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.” O.W. Holmes

--IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I LAID EYES ON YOU

 

…I hope your weekend was fabulous.
Here are some things to get us kick-started for a new week:

“The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you figure out why.” Mark Twain

"The life of man is like a game with dice; if you don’t get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you get." Terence

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming." Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Beauty, truth, friendship, love, creation – these are the great values of life. We can’t prove them, or explain them, yet they are the most stable things in our lives." Jesse Herman Holmes

"The secret of intelligence is asking questions." Ryan Meeks

"Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man." Nabokov

-"Silence gives you time to think."

-"Human beings have a tendency to be off-balance."
-"tantum quantum.  It stands for: So much, how much.  So much you need, that's how much you should get." Jerry Brown

-“Destiny is something we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.”

-“Above all, be the heroine in your life, not the victim.”
-“I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” (‘When Harry Met Sally’)
-“Never marry a man you wouldn’t want a divorce from.” Nora Ephron

-“And if you want a woman to love you, then you’re going to have to dance.  And if you don’t want to dance, then you’re going to have to work extra-hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.”

-“It’s not oil that runs the world, it’s shame.”
-“Mothers are almost always better men than men are.”
-“I would always feel closest to the man who had disappointed me.” Sherman Alexie

--COME ON, LET’S GO

…I hope you had a swell Thanksgiving.  This was the first time I didn’t overeat and I’m happy about that today.

…Watching “Homeland” has really made me aware of PTS Syndrome and I wrote this the other day:

 

                                                                    Untitled

 

            He frightened me now.

            Mother worked evenings and so it was just the two of us.  If I’d had friends or more activities I could have made an excuse to be away from him, but even so Dad always told me to sit and watch TV with him.

            Once in a while he might ask a question—“Did I have a boyfriend?”  “How did the little girl I remember ever turn sixteen?”—though usually we sat on opposites sides of the room, me leafing through magazines, him brooding, knocking back bottle after bottle of Schnapps.  After only an hour, he’d start to growl, the noise a wounded bear might make, something guttural and evil-sounding.  At first I thought he was complaining about the referee’s calls on Sports Center, but his eyes were always closed, or worse--fluttering half-open.

            And he sleep-walked.  One night I caught him rummaging through the cupboards in his underwear and black socks.  When he turned around, it was like seeing a blurry-eyed corpse, drool sliding down his mouth, his irises swirling and out of focus.

            I knew he had killed some men.  He just came out with it one night while we were ending pizza.  It was as if he was merely announcing that he’d washed the car or read the newspaper.

            I didn’t ask how.  I didn’t know what to say or do, and he seemed to want to let it die then and there.

            War changes a man, that’s pretty clear, but I didn’t know it could destroy him.

            He got creeper, started flailing at the air, pounding his fists into the sofa, beat his hands on the coffee table.  I figured it was just a matter of time before it was me he’d be bashing.

            One time I faked a movie night just to be away from Dad.  The film I saw was an inane comedy.  After it was over, I watched all the people trundle out.  I sat there in the dark for an hour.  I prayed God would forgive me for fearing my Dad.  I prayed God would change my Dad back to the way he was before he went over there.

            When I got home, Dad wasn’t in the living room.  I searched the house and found nothing.  The next morning I took my usual path through the backyard on the way to catch the school bus and that was when I saw his body hanging from the tree that used to have my swing.

            After the funeral, the world conspired to keep me in fear, keep me deflated and my heart shattered.  But I won’t let it.  I’ve learned guitar and most nights I play at the Veteran’s Meeting Hall.  I play all different kinds of songs, yet everyone carries a message of hope.  I’m not afraid to give the soldiers a hug or pat their hands.  There’s no bringing Dad back, but seeing those men smile, hearing them laugh, well, it seems to be worth it.