--PEOPLE BREAK DOWN SO FAST

 

…I went to two readings this week.  One was to hear a writer friend from Michigan and the other, on Saturday night, was to hear a writer friend from Chicago.

Prior to the reading we met at another friend’s house in Ballard and did a podcast together for about an hour where we basically had a conversation about writing, my book, careers, families and motivation.  My friend led the conversation, and he’s good at it, a regular Jimmy Fallon.  I assume most people would enjoy being interviewed, but me, well, not so much.  Anyway, it was kind of him to do it, and I am grateful that he would think of me.

…A few bombs went off this week regarding stuff unrelated to writing and so that’s stifled my creativity.  I also got a very nice yet firm rejection from an agent I met at the last conference regarding my novel.  Out of the seven I sent the manuscript to, she was my first choice, her rejection was a bit of a bummer.

…Here are some very random facts I learned last week that you may or may not already know:

-In 2014 there were 20 veteran suicides every single day, most between the ages of 18-29 (heartbreaking)

-Over 70 million Americans are dealing with debt collectors

-A snail can sleep for up to 3 years

-Last year Warner Bros. Music collected over $2million in royalties from the song “Happy Birthday”

-There are more sheep than people in New Zealand and more moose than people in Maine

-Gunpowder was invented when the Chinese tried making gold

-81% of people would rather travel with their mobile device than a loved one (yikes)

-The most shoplifted food in Europe is cheese

-Vincent Van Gough made over 900 paintings during his lifetime but sold only one while he was alive

 

 

 

--YESTERDAY’S A CLOSING DOOR.  YOU DON’T LIVE THERE ANYMORE

 

 

      Thoroughly Modern Families

 

            Mother has other children she keeps in a cave beneath our house.  They make sandy, shuffling sounds from time to time.  When I tell Mother I’d like to play in the dungeon, she says it’s too dark.  She says there are rats.  “Then what’ll happen to the kids?” I ask.  “Won’t they be bitten, eaten?”  She looks at me with her maladjusted face, her wall-eyed gape and says, “...”

            My brother suggests we try a game.  “Take a breath,” he tells me.  “Don’t you smell it?”

“No.”

He beats his chest and yodels and when he’s finally worn himself out he comes over and burps on me.

“What’s wrong with us?” I ask.

“We’re having fun.  We’re a modern family.”

“But, really, what’s wrong with us?” I ask again, and he answers saying, “…”

            My sister slips into my bedroom at midnight and tugs my earlobe to awaken me.  I rise from the bed and tiptoe down the hall down the steps down the other stairs and open the lid to the hatch to the cave.  The air sizzles with sparks of formaldehyde.   Sister has a light that she shines down into the hole, the earthen cage.  The radiance is butter yellow but grainy and gritty.  It cuts cones of light from the glut of darkness.

First I see a dirty foot and the foot’s toe nails curled long like Fritos.  Then there are ankles attached to that foot, and then legs and torso and a full body but there is no head, just a stump, as if it’s been uprooted recently around the neck where beet-purple tendons hang limp and lanky.

The body draws knees to chest and rocks itself.  Next to the headless body is another and next to that several more.

They stand together, animated now.  They hold hands and step clockwise in a circle, Ring-Around-the-Rosie.  Their movements are rhythmic, audibly hypnotic.

“Psst,” my sister calls to them.  “I’ll toss down a rope so you can escape.”

The headless captives carry on, making the same continuous loop, their footfalls raising bearded tufts of dust.  They do not hesitate or stop.

“Didn’t you hear me?” my sister calls.

“Stupid,” I say, louder than I should.  “They don’t have heads.  That means they don’t have ears either.”

            My sister falls first.  I reach out, catch a clump of hair and hear it ripped savagely from her scalp mid-tumble.  Then I am kicked from behind and I drop.  I land in the middle of the ring of the headless children, land on top of my sister.  “I think my neck is broken,” she says.

            It doesn’t matter.  Mother peers down at us.  The headless children move closer.  Their fingernails are jagged and sharp.  They start to work on our throats, prying the skin apart like a rusted can opener, drawing gushers.  In a moment we will be headless, too.  We will be one with them, part of a bigger plan, part of a real family after all.

 

 

--WE LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL WORLD

 

…When did the barbershop tell me I had thick, wavy hair, start telling me my hair is fine and straight?
I guess I’m getting on in years.
But at least I’m happy.

…What are your plans for the week?

…I got my copy of Cirque in the mail and I have this poem in it on page 80:

 

Silence Is A Yes

Today I apprentice in a tunnel so dark

I can only feel the rats
Scurry across my feet
You told me silence is a yes
But I didn’t believe you
In Paris we counted blue cars
And pigeons liked your perfume
Your mother hated me
But she still called
To give me the news
So I apprentice in a sink hole
Quiet enough to hear the tree roots whisper
“He must have really loved her.”

 

…Here are a few things I like for the middle of the week:

-“Thank you for a lovely weekend.  They tell me it rained.” Kay Jamison

-
“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.” Michelle Obama

-“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” E.M. Forrester

-Oscar Wilde: "Do you mind if I smoke?"
Sarah Bernhardt: "I don't care if you burn."
 
-"I have noticed that folks are generally about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Abraham Lincoln

-"My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart." Maya Angelou

 

 

 

--SCOOT CLOSER

 

…I’m back from the writer’s conference here in Seattle.  Felt like I was gone forever.

I’m not sure how valuable it was.  Best part, of course, was pitching to agents.  What a scary endeavor that is.
They herd a couple hundred of us into a waiting room.  Then at the appropriate time, there’s a mad rush to another room and it’s a bit like waiting outside Walmart on Black Friday.
Next you find an agent, stand in line behind a string of blue tape that’s stuck on the floor. 
You get four minutes to pitch your book.  If they like it, they say send 10 or 50 or all pages.  You hop up when the alarm goes off and get into another line.
I got seven “Sends” so it wasn’t a total waste.  In years past, I’ve had a lot more “Sends” than seven and nothing ever came of it.
So we’ll see.  Fingers crossed.

...While I was gone a copy of Common Ground Review came in the mail with my poem in it:

 

Men on New Year’s Eve

On our rural lake in the woods,

houses are huddled close
the way men are cramped
around a dim fire next door,
out on the lawn shore-side,
tarry smoke lifting off damp planks of winter wood,
hardly enough heat for anyone on a sub-freezing night.
Yet they are drunk and laughing,
launching fireworks from a homemade tripod,
explosives that sound more like overseas warfare,
making the ground convulse, the waves tremble,
our windowpanes shudder.
After each rocket soars, the group titters and swears,
gazing up at the after-smears of charcoal,
catcalling so that their voices echo around the western cove,
birdless and barren now.
These are men my father would take to quickly,
hunters, fishers, mechanics,
roughhewn fellows who can fix things,
rip an engine apart and put it back together blindfolded,
men with calloused hands and dirty fingernails
the same as him.
I think about the patients I have,
the one who committed suicide under my watch,
the one who dreams of strangling his mother,
the one who scratches secret code into her wrist,
and I wonder what it is I can fix, wonder if my father was correct
when he called me soft and useless,
labeled me a hippie, a Flower Child.
Under the bed
our dog mewls and claws as
another rocket goes scheeeeerrzz outside the window,
exploding in a limp bouquet of scarlet and plum.
On the mattress my wife
rolls over for the fifth or sixth time.
“Those idiots,” she says, chuckling.
Then, taking my hand and pulling:
“Come here and spoon me. 
Closer. Scoot closer.”

 

--WORDS FALL SHORT AT TIMES LIKE THIS

 

…Tomorrow I go into the city for the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference.  To be honest, it’s my least favorite conference.  There’ll be nearly 8,000 writers there and I won’t know anyone.  The conference specializes in niche fiction—Romance, Historical Romance, Memoir, Young Adult, Sci Fi, Cookbooks, Children’s books, etc. 

They don’t even mention the word poetry and short stories get a breeze by.

But what’s good about it is the speed pitching which is like speed dating whereby you get three minutes to pitch your project to a string of 25 agents all lined up, nearly shoulder to shoulder in a room.

I’m going to pitch The Hailstorm, the novel I wrote last year.

Fingers crossed.

 

…I’ll be back here Sunday or most likely Monday.  Until then, here are some things I like midweek:

 

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk,...it's all a miracle." Arthur Rubinstein

"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do." Helen Keller

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming more interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you." Dale Carnegie

"Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." Oscar Wilde

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." Thomas Jefferson

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them."  Benjamin Jowett

"Judgement comes from experience, and great judgement comes from bad experience."  Robert Packwood

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."  Thomas Jefferson

"We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving." Carlos P. Romulo

"The best portion of a good man's life is the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." William Wordsworth

"You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose." Abraham Lincoln

"Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is hard to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline." William L. Shirer

"Never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be -- usually is, in fact -- a false alarm that leads to nothing, but it may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance."  Sir Alexander Fleming

"I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it. I think if you are determined enough and willing to pay the price, you can get it done."  Mike Ditka

"Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not." Henry Fielding

"As long as a person doesn't admit he is defeated, he is not defeated -- he's just a little behind and isn't through fighting."  Darrell Royal

"In the final analysis there is no solution to man's progress but the day's honest work, the day's honest decisions, the day's generous utterances and the day's good deed."   Clare Booth Luce

 

--I WANT TO BELIEVE LOVE IS BIG ENOUGH TO BEAT AWAY ALL THE BAD NEWS

 

…Hey hi, happy Monday.

Lots of horrible news of late.  It makes you go numb to it, which is really sad and disgusting in and of itself.
Yesterday alone a suicide bomber in a Germany killed 10.  It was the number four story online in Google news.
Three stories down from that was an article about a Syrian refugee who used a machete, in Germany also (Munich) to kill a pregnant woman and wound two others.
Ten stories down from that was a brief article about a suicide bombing at a security checkpoint in Baghdad that killed 20.
That was all in one day, on top of everything else that has happened.

…So I thought I’d find a few good news stories to make us realize the world isn’t entirely horrible, that lots of good things happen all the time but sometimes we don’t see them, or get to hear about them.

Here are a few I like:
 

Mystery Man Hides Tons Of $100 Bills In Diapers And Toilet Paper

One mystery man is giving a whole new meaning to the term “giving back” — and it’s all about the Benjamins.

For the past three years, an anonymous person called “Benny” has been hiding hundreds of crisp $100 bills around Salem, Oregon. Each “Benny bill” is marked with the mystery man’s signature, scrawled on the side.
Since the bills started turning up all over the city, The Statesman Journal, a Salem-based newspaper, has been keeping track of self-reported Benny bill finds. On July 12, the newspaper announced that the number of bills reported totaled an incredible $50,000.
The $100 bills are commonly found in grocery stores, markets and superstores, tucked away into products such as baby supplies, food boxes and children’s toys. More Benny bills have been found in diaper packages than any other store item, with toilet paper following close behind, the Journal reported. 
 

The Unexpected Effect ‘Pokémon Go’ Had On A Boy With Autism

“Something is suddenly happening, and whatever it is, it is MAGIC.”

One boy with autism is catching ‘em all ― and discovering a new side of himself in the process. 

For Ralphie Koppelman, a 6-year-old who was diagnosed with autism, socializing can be uncomfortable. He has difficulty making eye contact and engaging in conversation. But the day he started playing Pokémon Go, the boy began opening up to other kids, making new connections, and finding common ground with his peers as a result of the game. 
His mother, Lenore Koppelman, who was overjoyed by the unexpected consequence from playing the game, shared her son’s experience on Facebook.
“MY AUTISTIC CHILD IS SOCIALIZING,” she wrote in the emotional post. “[He’s] looking up at them. Sometimes even in the eye. Laughing with them. Sharing something in common.”
The mom explained to the Huffington Post in an e-mail that her son has trouble with pragmatic speech. He also struggles with communicating his thoughts. 
“If a kid walks up to him and says ‘Hey! Want to play a game with me?’ he might squeal and flap his hands and shriek, and then want to run around in circles around them, laughing with excitement,” Koppelman said. 
Additionally, Koppelman said Ralphie has autism-related OCD and because of that, he has difficulty breaking routines. 
The day he started playing Pokemon Go, however, Koppelman immediately noticed some differences in her son. After catching some Pokéman at a bakery, the boy ran outside where another boy saw what he was doing and a connection was made. The two even high-fived over the game. 
Later on that night, Ralphie even chatted with his neighbor Jenny Lando about the game. When she informed him that there were more Pokemon for the taking at the playground, he begged his mother to go visit ― unusual for the boy since his routine doesn’t include going to the playground at night. While there, he further surprised his parents by hunting Pokemon with other kids and interacting with adults, who offered him some advice on the game. 
When she noticed the changes, the mom and her husband, Steve, had a myriad of thoughts going through their heads. 
“We were looking at each other with shocked and delighted expressions, sharing the same thought: something is suddenly happening, and whatever it is, it is magic,” she said.
It’s been a bit over a week and the proud mom says her son has continued to be more social and more comfortable 
“He seems far more relaxed about breaking his usual routines. He seems happier. He’s laughing more. He seems more confident. He struts around proudly when he catches a Pokemon, and brags about it to people in the cutest way,” she said. “His father and I are both proud of him and how far he has come in only a week’s time!”
 

Elderly Stranger Pays For Man’s Groceries In Beautiful Moment Of Solidarity

“Love does exist in the world.”

This is one moment that we all need to check out.

Comedian Sampson McCormick took to Facebook on Wednesday to share a story about an elderly man he met in a grocery store. The two became acquainted in the checkout line when the older man, whom McCormick calls Mr. Samuel, struck up a conversation about race relations in America and even offered to pay for McCormick’s groceries.
The comedian, who is black, was so touched by the experience that he snapped a photo of himself with Mr. Samuel, who is white, and shared it on the social network.
“[It was] just a random moment of solidarity and love that made my day,” the comedian wrote.
"I was at the grocery store today and this old, white man (Mr. Samuel) walked up to me in line, apologized for racism & police brutality in this country and paid for my groceries.. I was standing there like 👀 .. He handed me the receipt, gave me a fist bump and said "Black Lives Do Matter."
Just a random moment of solidarity and love that made my day.. Some white folks out here are "woke" too. 💜
“He handed me the receipt, gave me a fist bump and said ‘black lives do matter,’” McCormick, who lives in Oakland, California, also wrote.

The photo went viral this week, and McCormick said that he hopes it’ll compel others to stand united, especially following the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attacks in Dallas and Baton Rouge. 

“Love does exist in the world,” he said. “It’s really important for us to come together and, however we can, extend acts of love toward one another because we really do need more love in the world.” 
Describing their conversation, McCormick addressed the importance of unity, which led to the generous act.
“He was like, ‘If we all came together I think we would live in a better world and ... I realize that I’m white and I realize I don’t have to deal with things that people of color have to deal with,’” McCormick recalled. “He put his hand on mine and said, ‘Let me do you a favor, just an act of love, and let me pay for your groceries.’” 
While the simple interaction made McCormick feel more positive, the comedian said that we all should make an effort to understand racial issues in our communities. 
“Sometimes it’s as simple as showing up at town hall meetings and really having concern for equality and love and justice,” he said. “Being present as human beings and holding each other accountable for love, I think, is most important.”
Later he jokingly added, “And if you want to buy somebody groceries and pay off their student loans ― whatever you want to do ― you can.” 

 

 

--I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAVE ANYONE FROM THIS

 

…Friday, they said you were going to be a sunny one, but all you’re doing is crying rain.  Maybe you’ll feel differently tomorrow.  I hope so.

…Here are some things I like for the weekend:

“I really think everything is achievable in life.” Novak Djokovic

"There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to." Jean Toomer

“Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don’t write fiction.”
–Mary Gaitskill

“Allow yourself to go and do it wrong.  Don’t always expect to do it right.  It will prevent you from doing anything.” Darren Hardy

"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything." Haruki Murakami

“If we think we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light of an oncoming train.” Robert Lowell
 

…And here’s one of my favorite stories of the 1,400 I’ve written up at Jellyfish Review today:

 

July 22, 2016July 22, 2016

The Resiliency of Epidermis by Len Kuntz

The Resiliency of Epidermis

We don’t touch, we never do anymore.

The mattress might as well be an island, a continent, a sea where it’s only safe to float, because the air — spiced and hot — is what holds us in place, what condenses us.

After the accident and so many surgeries, we can still breathe, but the fire left our skin too tender. Even the slightest breeze against our flesh can feel threatening. Doctors said, “The epidermis is only so resilient.” They said, “The healing process will take some time.”

And now, look — your eyes flutter open, pupils the color of hot coffee — and it’s as if each of our irises is threaded together with invisible yarn, unable to look away, to disengage.

“Good morning, Peach Pie,” I say.

“Morning.”

Your face is the color of raw hamburger, yet you’ve never looked more beautiful, and so I tell you this.

“I feel like a bag of wax,” you say.

“Not even close. You’re stunning.”

Your lips try twisting into a smile. “Stop with your lies. I look hideous.”

“We look the same.”

“You weren’t burnt as badly.”

“Ah, but you were, and so I was doubly.”

When you swallow air, I can see how difficult such a simple act is for you, how the air burns going down.

“I can’t even touch you,” you say.

“Sure you can.”

“The doctors said —“

“Shhh.”

Our eyes are what matters. I tell you this without speaking and so we set aside words.

Our eyes become hands, fingertips, lips, and curious tongues. It’s a clumsy, blind man’s game, a search party in utter darkness, yet we work past what reality tells us.

When I enter you, there’s a gasp of foul morning air.

“Oh my god.”

“You can feel me?”

You nod. You say my name. You tell me not to stop. You say, “It’s been such a very long time.”

 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU out now from Unknown Press. You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com