sparklefart

. . . And who was Kate?

2011-07-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

I've not been here for some time, but suddenly inspired by the tresses of a Montana (no, colorado) lass . . . or is it just the thrill of competition.

Well, it's words and I've put down a few since my last visit.

I can't believe that I didn't record on the pages of sparklefart that I finally finished and "won" at NANOWRIMO. Did it just this past november and now . . . don't have to write another word, although the urge has suddenly found its way into me.

My book title for Nanowrimo was/is, "Pieces of String to short to throw Away" and after failiing the first time around with trying to "prose out" my script, "Johnny Lucky" . . . the dad idea went very well.

I just picked fifty moments and or memories and squeezed a thousand words out of each of them. Actiually, some I only maybe got six hundred and others I got two thousand, but I did eventually get to fifty-thousand at like, four in the morning with about 24 hours left.

Anyway, onward . . .

Dear Kate

2009-04-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

Hope you find these pages and my comings and goings . . . hope to one day get on with it. bob.

Digging a deeper hole

2008-11-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

Just like my credit card, the amount keeps rising. Looks like, with my lack of writing, I am up to, or need to do just about two-thousand words a day from here on out.

Luckily for me, I've told too many people that I am doing this, so it has to get done. Only wish I could find a decent place to write––no good at the house. My favorite cafe, here on Clement street, full of a rough, smoking, group of Asian men out front, but always empty in the back, closed the back, off. Bummer.

One place has internet, but it's too noisy. the other, no internet and no wall plugs for the laptop. the other––just too many poeple coming and going and too much sun shine, creating glare.

I need a closet with a bare light bulb.

when the writing gets tough, the tough get cleaning

2008-11-02T17:20:00.000-08:00

Could have nailed another thousand words today, and it better happen, but all I really did today was clean and sort––vacuumed the house and purged myself of much paper. I'm really going to have to make this up.

Daylight savings time, but no time, or too much.

2008-11-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

almost two-thousand words into nanowrimi––more words than I've written in a long time. I just wish I was working on something absolutely original––as in fresh––as in, I am basically trying to turn one of my film scripts into a novel.

THe down-side to this is that I keep referring to the script and worse, I keep writing in a screen format, leaving out most of the description, or being very vague. And not that I want to use them as filler, but I tend to not say, he said, she said . . . whatever they are called––identifiers?? this would certainly boost my word count. Hell, even the sparse, mr. carver, said, "he said, she said."

And I need a better place to write. house is too easy, with my messy desk and internet access. thinking of going out the to the shed. Wish I could find a coffee shop with no internet access and no noise. I went to my favorite old Chinese joint––the smoker––but they closed off the back room. bummer. write on.

NaNoWriMo begins and here I go

2008-10-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

I've done nothing in the name of fiction. I've not used my computer, nor one of my many manual typewriters, or even the collected army of sharpened pencils, that stand at attention, almost.

Luckily National Novel Writing Month has come around just at the right time, to rescue me, and I aim to make the cut––fiction forward––here I come.

In the spirit of write more, edit less, or, quantity over quality, I am eating an entire quart of Dreyers Slow churned ice cream, with Splenda, no less. Wonderful way to start the first thousand words.

Go Means Go

2007-01-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

They went out the door and never came back. They got in the car and drove away. I didn’t think they would or could but they did.
They didn’t look back until they both got in the car, but by then they were not looking back, but forward really. I could see them and they didn’t even glance at me, or wave. Dad just turned around to look down the driveway, putting his arm out across the back of mom’s seat but he didn’t even touch her. I didn’t see their lips move or their eyes comment. They just backed out of the driveway without pausing.
I kept thinking they would stop to look at me or the house or the lawn sprinkler, arcing slowly in the noon heat, but nothing. Mom never let the water run when she was gone, afraid something might go wrong. I thought at least she might ask me to turn the sprinklers off.
They bought the house twenty-six years ago just before I was born and then I was born, but they didn’t look at either of us.
Dad always noticed small things wrong with the house––small as maybe a nail head rusting in the shingles and my mom, she had a thing about my bras or maybe my lack of one as she was always staring at my boobs. Maybe that was it––she was tired or jealous of my boobs because in that last moment it occurred to me that she wasn’t looking at me––wasn’t looking to correct anything about me and I was very happy for just a second, but then I wanted her to stare at me even if the only emotion I could get was nothing.
But I was a stranger or not even there as though they were driving down a street that they’d been down a thousand times before and there was no need to stare at the brown shingled houses or the girl standing in the doorway, so they didn’t.
They drove off. And in my memory, I could see my dad, shifting through the gears and stopping at the stop sign where he always counted to three or had me do it when I was a little girl. He had a thing about stop signs, or maybe just words. They all meant something and sometimes more. He would always say, stop means stop and I would always say then, go means go. And this time I could see that he was saying it too because he did not stop.
I pictured him running all the stop signs and red lights in town, even though there was only one traffic light and he was buddies with the sheriff, so he could probably get away with it.
Maybe he warned the sheriff, who always responded with, ‘Yeah, uh-huh, sure,’ to anything you said. Maybe he warned him that when the day came, he wasn’t going to stop to think or wait for red lights. He wasn’t going to think about stop means stop but just go means go and he wasn’t going to let my mother think about anything like that either.
It’d just be go means go unless of course, the sheriff, his good buddy, was off work, out of town or dead or something, because it could be a long time before my dad would decide to do something, anything, but he was, so I just assumed they wouldn’t be stopping anywhere too soon and that stop sign was just the start.
I walked out onto the lawn, ticklish grass under my feet and the sprinkler casually arced across me, as though nothing were wrong, and I didn’t move. It was so hot anyway, so why. I just watched for any signs of them looking back, reconsidering me as a daughter or the house as maybe needing new shingles, but nothing––not a brake light in sight and the car just kept getting smaller and smaller as my disbelief grew larger, but didn’t really hurt or want to explode. I couldn’t even think to cry on the wet lawn.
Was that really my parents vanishing down that road? Did they both, after a quiet life of disagreeing, decide to agree and just go.
I couldn’t tell. They were farther than a whisper even farther than a scream, so I did neither, but just watched until they were less than nothing in the distance. I stood there, noticing the gathering of goose bumps on my sweaty, hot skin.
I saw everything for once and yet nothing at all because it all seemed to be happening but not happening. They were gone and I didn’t know it or feel it just then, but they were gone for good and I stepped onto the sun-baked concrete with my wet feet and I looked backwards while I went forward, staring at my wet foot-prints, each one fading as the next one appeared. I walked this way into the house that was theirs that they didn’t want anymore. I walked forward, looking back, saying, go means go.

Failure to Thrive

2007-01-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

He was feeling old now and harassed by both his wife and his body. He hated that not only could he not pee straight or heavy anymore, but that his wife constantly badgered him to sit on the toilet, rather than stand and “pee all over her fucking floor, like a dog,” as she put it.
“Marla,” he called out in a not too demanding voice, standing with this thing called manhood dangling in his fingers.
She yelled from down the hall, as she waded through her walk-in closet that had little room left for walking anymore and would one day collapse and kill her.
Meantime she searched not for something that she needed, but just something that nagged, giving her a chance to talk, if only to herself. “Fuck, where is it?
She stepped back from the dark chasm; it’s one light bulb, long burnt out. “Fuck.”

Roger couldn’t pee. Instead he zipped up, flushed for effect and stared at the mirror. He turned on the vanity lights, his gaze wandering, looking for his reflection, but the mirror, over the years had become Marla’s shrine to optimism and dreams. Pasted with quotes of greeting card inspiration, New Yorker cartoons and cut-out pictures of women with beautiful hair.
Marla always wanted this movie star look but couldn’t stand the smell of hair care products and so her hair, although long with possibility, hung limp as drool to her waist.

“Marla,” he yelled.
“What?” she yelled back. Twenty-five years in this rented place and they’d spent most of their time trying to hear one another from room to room.
He stared a moment longer at the mirror, at the brittle papered promise of greatness, and then he closed the door, stepping into the dusty, dark, hallway.
He could hear her now. The same thing she’d always asked. “Did you pee?”
“Did you hear me flush?”
“Is my floor clean?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you Roger.”
He stared at the front door, then grabbed his coat and dug through the change bowl, trying to be quiet.
“Use the pennies,” she yelled from somewhere. She could hear, smell, sense, anything to do with their money.
“I’m going out,” he said, not loudly, but only enough that she might hear something, so that he could at least defend himself without guilt when he got home.
She always asked where he’d been, but she didn’t really care; in fact she waited for the day when he’d come back and tell her he’d been having an affair or maybe he’d been drinking. Something, but he never did.
She trusted his ineptness at anything; she called it failure to thrive, a term of doctor-speak that she’d picked up at her job in the medical records department at the hospital.
Roger collected ten pennies and change from the bowl, and stuck his notebook and a pencil in his pocket in case any thoughts flowered in his mind. His day was filled with notes to self––post-it notes were his vice.
He opened the door and stepped out, unsure of his footing as though he were landing on the moon for the first time, then, as he pulled the door closed, he remembered.
“I love you, “ barely escaped his lips and hurried through the closing door, up the stairs and dissipated in the warm air of three portable heaters, going full blast.

“Roger, Roger?” She knew he was gone. “Fuck.”
She even knew that he said he was going and she knew that she didn’t hear him, that he said, ‘I love you,’ as he closed the door. She knew all of this but it didn’t matter. She was still pissed. It gave her something to do.
She closed the closet door, putting her shoulder to it to get the latch to catch. “Where the fuck could it be,” she said as shuffled down the hall in her dirty brown slippers.
She stopped at the bathroom, tilting her head just so to catch the light around the toilet, noticing to her satisfaction, a clean floor.
Roger glanced, furtively, behind him as he walked. Smudgy farts propelling him down the block towards the gas-n-go.
The bathroom door was cold and locked, so he went inside the station to face the mechanic who knew he didn’t have a car.
The mechanic’s name changed with his shirts. “Phil,” with his dirty fingers and yellow teeth looked at Roger.
“Large coffee.”
“Thanks.” Roger laid out the change––ninety-eight cents to the penny, putting the extras in the tray next to the register.
The air in the shop smelled of oil, rubber and dying cars, hoisted towards the heavens. Phil scraped the change off the counter, tossed it into the register, slammed the door shut and stepped outside.
There was just ninety-eight cents worth of coffee in the pot, which barely warmed his hand when he picked it up, but he poured it into the styro cup and took the same slow cautious sip he’d always taken, only to have the warm liquid pass almost unnoticed down his throat.
He turned and watched Phil outside, exhaling, his head a cloud of smoke as it seemed to come from every orifice.
He’d watched Phil smoke a cigarette so many times before and never had the urge, but almost sensing the frail man of fifty-two watching him, Phil turned around and looked through the window as Roger said, in that weak voice of his, “Got a smoke?”
Phil thought he heard what he heard, but he opened the door. “Do you need something else?” Roger had second thoughts but blurted it out, pointing at the pack of Marlboros he knew to be in Phil’s shirt pocket. “Could I get s smoke?”
Phil looked at Roger and then his eyes swept over behind the counter and he pointed to the packs of cigarettes on the rack. “ four-eighty-five, plus tax.”
Roger shrank into himself at this denial and then suddenly, with a big smile Phil pulled out the pack, “Just fuckin’ with you. Sorry man.” He held out the pack.
“Sorry man, but it’s a reaction, like instinctual or something, ‘cause so many stooges come up here and see me smoking and it’s like I gotta think, you’re a pimp, you’re driving a hot car and you got a stylin’ cell phone. Buy your own fucking smokes.”
Roger pulled a cigarette out of the pack and said, “But I don’t drive a car.” Phil looked at Roger, “Yeah, but you pimpin’ drinking my great coffee.” And with that, Phil pulled out his lighter, laughed, and extended its flame to Roger, who inhaled and coughed and the two of them laughed.
Roger took a chance asked “Phil,” what his name was and Phil looked down at the name knitted in his shirt and said, “Lihp, no Phil . . . Phil today, gone tomorrow. Gonna be Johnny tomorrow.” And Roger put out his small hand to Phil, “Roger,” he said.
“Alright, alright Roger, my real name is Theodore but there aren’t too many gas pumping black dudes named Theodore, so I get to be the white dude, Phil.”
“Can I call you Theo?”
“Sure, just as long as you don’t act like my mom.” Theo Smiled at the thought.
“Actually, if I was in trouble it’d be Theodore, hard on the T-H, hard on the dore and hard on me, like your mom calling out, Roger, get in here. Didn’t you know you was in a hurt when she called you by your whole damn proper every syllable pronounced name?”
“I still know that.”
Theo looked past Roger, through the glass, towards the bathroom. “You came here to use the bathroom didn’t you Roger, ‘cause it’s open now.” A short fat bald man with a newspaper waddled across the weedy parking lot to his car.
“Don’t worry, I got everybody’s number. Dude there had the cup just before you and a refill.”
“Roger turned towards the bathroom. “We like good coffee,”
“I’ll make a fresh one, on the house for you.”
“Thanks.”
All that talking had made him forget he had to pee but it came at him as soon as he saw and smelled the bathroom with its lovely trough urinal––no chance of a miss-hit.
His gritted his teeth and his knees almost buckled and fingers fumbled and then, angels floated above his head and the graffiti on the wall came into focus and the stench increased and everything was good and elevated, but relaxed and he thought of Marla, back home doing something to keep going in the circles she liked to go in and then he thought he’d like to have another smoke, maybe even buy a pack.

He felt tall again, in spite of being only five four and thin as a straw. He stared at his reflection in the empty towel dispenser, then stepped outside and walked into the gas station office.
“Alright, the man Roger is looking good, feeling good, needs a coffee and a cigarette.”
“Can I buy a pack of Marlboros?”
Theodore smiled. “Is that a question, or . . .”
“Okay, give me a pack of Marlboro, please.”

Theo slapped the pack of smokes on the counter as Roger pulled out and opened his wallet, but instead of taking a bill out of the fold, as Theo noticed a lack of green in there, Roger emptied one of the card slots and searched out a finely folded ten dollar bill.
“That’s some origami you got there, Roger.”
He placed the multi-folded bill on the counter, “Thank you Theo.”

Roger nervously picked up the first pack of smokes he’d ever bought as Theo rang through the register.
“Tax man says it’s an even five dollars leaving and coming back at you.” He placed the bill on the counter and slid it towards Roger, who wrestled the cellophane off the package then looked at him. “Cigarette?”
Theo came around the counter and pointed to the two cups of hot brewed coffee.
“Been working hard, so yeah, I think I need another break.”

Dead Life

2007-01-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

One day while doing nothing more important than walking nowhere, he crumpled to the sidewalk and died. He didn’t notice.
No one else did either as he turned to see a stranger slumped sadly on the sidewalk.
He’d seen many of these unknown husks–––but they concerned him no more than the leaves that blew around his feet, always silent, gathering, then moving on and sometimes, strangely beckoning him to catch them in their tornado of energy and spirit of which he could not conceive and so did not enjoy.
Nothing gave him pleasure or made him question the origin of his next breath. No one spoke to him, or he to anyone else. Why? He didn’t even ask this question.
And so it was that he kept going, wandering the same blocks of life-less houses, past people who did not see him and sounds he could not hear until one day his spirit tripped over itself and he found his foot lodged inside this husk of a man, cigarette dangling from his swollen lips, arms spread out as if welcoming him home.
The spirit got down on his knees, strangely comfortable in this skin. He smelled, like piss, cigarettes and dirt, tasted blood on his chapped lips. He could hear the passing of footsteps and cars. The sun touched his face and he felt the warm urge growing in him and then let go.

Billy's fists

2007-01-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

Billy’s fists were rockets, ready to launch from his pockets. But there they stayed, aware that they were only trouble. They were a document to his anger, scuffed and bruised at the knuckles from too many times spent punching walls, cars, people and mostly her, Gina.
But Gina didn’t care so much as the bruises he left on her skin reminded her that she was someone. They seemed to her to take away her invisibility in this world and she liked to show them off as though they were medals won in various campaigns.
She enjoyed the looks she got and passed off the comments of sympathy as merely envy that she could endure so much. Life was tough and she could take it.
Billy Didn’t like what he had become but for him, there was no stopping his anger.
She was wearing a tank top and shuffling around in her drunk mama’s kitchen like she had nowhere to be, but Billy had an eye to take her away from the house for a while and give her some attention out back at parker’s quarry. She knew it, really and considered her shuffling and meandering across the dirty kitchen to be a primary source of foreplay, seeing as how Billy really wasn’t too much for anything close to what she might have imagined foreplay to be.
Billy considered getting his hand in her pants foreplay enough, and so here he was angry at the world and mostly angry with the shuffle noise that her dirty pink slippers made and he wanted to be there in that moment soon enough, rather than standing in the kitchen of some mean old bitch of a mom, even though he’d already had her one really drunk night. He was Gina’s now, or more importantly and without never a second thought, she was his and he wanted some star light and love back up behind Parker’s Quarry.

Door in the Desert***

2006-03-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

The bartender pulled out his trusty bar bat, giving the slumping figure a tap on the shoulder.
“You can’t stay here mister, it’s time to close.” He pushed him again.
“I ain’t got to go get Eddy do I?.
The slumping figure jolted up. “I’m Jack and I’m back.”
“Well all right Jack, but you gotta go.”
“What time is it?” as though he were actually late for something.
“ It’s time to go Jack and that’s all we got to say.”
Jack, the drunk smart ass lifted his head, smiling at the bartender. “Would that be the ‘Royal “we?” he asked. The bartender put both elbows on the bar and pointed a stubby, bleached finger, holding the bat, at Jack.
“That’d just be you Jack, said the bartender.
Jack’s feet dangled from the barstool, like some curious octopus, tentatively searching for the floor as his knees expressed a certain need to buckle under him. But he stood up in one of those sober moments, smiling at the bartender and held his hands out as if to surrender.
“I’m going.”
The bartender stepped back, tapping the bat against his palm.
“Good, ‘cause Eddy don’t like to get up if don’t have to.”
Jack grabbed at his own throbbing skull as he turned for the door.
“Who’s this Eddy?”
The bartender let the bat hang loose by his side.
“Eddy Bartlett. His Daddy owns this town. Family been here almost a hundred years come this New Years.”
Jack looked around at the ancient black & whites and the dated color pictures on the walls.
“So he owns this bar too?”
“Every inch.”

Jack put his shoulder into the door and mumbled.
“Must be a fuckin’ jerk.”
The bartender stepped forward, cupping one incredulous ear, bat in hand, unsatisfied.
“ What’d you say?”
Jack rubbed his face and burped. “ I said, it must be a lot of work.” Jack winked him, Stepped out into the cold and let the noisy, spring loaded door slap back at the bartender.

Jack stumbled in the street, fumbling for his keys. Driving was out of the question he thought, but there was nothing but desert at this end of town, and no one to ask any questions, and so he’d drive, he decided. Nothing but rough roads to nowhere and and he’d already been stuck there too many times.
He looked back at the bar, dark now, and thought of the mysterious Eddy, sleeping soundly and perhaps dreaming about crushing some poor souls head with a baseball bat.
Jack rolled down The window thinking he might be hurling soon and then in a fit of drunken bravery he yelled in his best red-neck-yokel-ese, “I’ll be back you sons-a-bitches.” But then he hurriedly pumped the gas and rocked back and forth as he turned the key. He’d forgotten the golden rule of bravery, which was to engage the clutch before opening up the mouth.
He pleaded with the old jeep. “Come on guzzler, don’t let me down,” and the ignition groaned as if to ask, where the hell we going at this hour?
Jack prayed up into the starry night then glanced at the dark shadows of the bar, just in case old Eddy was into sleep walking. The ignition caught.
The jeep lurched through first and second whining into the night before he thought about hitting third. Stars opened up the darkness, bringing a hint, just a hint though, of clarity to Jack’s mind. He was a moonlight drivin’ fool and then just as he realized the edge of the road was near, he thought to turn on the headlight. Singular. Just one, and that was the right one, which caused him for no great reason to lean heavily to the right as he drove, or was that the booze, or perhaps a slightly magnetically northern favor that his body proposed. He turned off the main road and stirred up some moonlight dust, lugged the transmission in fourth, stalled, and fell out into the dirt, heaving bud, bourbon and a slightly used cheeseburger.
He was a magnet all right. A magnet for love and trouble and all the trouble of love, but without all the trimmings; He was a man of the one-night-stand, or no stand at all. and now he was a man lost in a mystery. And forget standing for the moment.

*** can you help me with a title?

I Loaf You

2006-03-29T19:36:00.000-08:00

Her table was waiting, but that’s another story. The other guests had already arrived and seated themselves comfortably as Carole threaded her way through the maze of fine diners, her Pugliese tucked safely, but for all to see, under her arm, snug almost, up there in her pit.

“Thank you,” she said, as the waiter pulled out one chair into which she put the loaf of bread. The waiter scooted the loaf up against the edge of the table, until just its finely dusted crust looked over the edge.
The waiter smiled, pulling out another chair for Carole. “A fine Pugliese,” he said, as Carole brushed speckles of flour from her arm and looked warmly at her fresh baked loaf.
“With olives,” she reminded him as her finely clothed figure tucked and bent just as the waiter gave her chair a gentle push.
“Of course, “ replied the waiter.

One of the diners--an as not yet introduced guest-- flagged the waiter as he backed away from the table. “Could we get some bread,” he asked.
The table froze, all eyes on the uninitiated guest. The waiter looked at him and said, “But there is bread at the table sir. A fine Pugliese.” and just then he caught a glance from Carole and he added, “With olives,” and with that the waiter left the table guests to stare at one another.

Inasmuch as he could, the Pugliese with olives said nothing, but instead, looked across the table, admiring, from his point of view, the underside edge of the fine china before him, and the hungry eyes upon him.

Carole dabbed at a precious crumb from the Pugliese, studying it for a second before letting her tongue take it away.
She of all people knew her Pugliese had olives and she reveled for a moment in it’s delectable fine place in the world of breads.
The guests stared at Carole’s Pugliese, each slowly grasping their butter knives as Carole’s attention slipped inwards to other loafs lost.
Her last loaf nagged at her. He was a carelessly attained multi-grain that should have been factory sealed in shrink wrap and freshness-dated for three years, but instead pulled off a fresh baked look, by somehow ending up in a tastefully designed and somewhat tailored brown bag.

She was prone to falling for a well designed package and that multi-grain player had her going for a while.
He took her for the lumpy cold hump of dough that she could sometimes be. She needed him and he kneaded her and he had her right in the palm of his seedy hand, or so he wished, because he was a loaf of bread after all. And a low-life loaf at that, having almost ended up just plain wheat and sliced (or “serrated,” as he preferred to call it) and shelved next to the lowliest of lows -- the white breads.
Yes, the white breads, with their smooshy, preservative laden smiles and deceptively thin heels. But a heel was a heel in his book of bread and this multi-grain who showed such disdain, even for his own heels, wasn’t about to spend his career loafing around on some tempered steel bread rack, getting cozy with some sliced up ditzy in an opaque and grossly patriotic wrapper of red white and blue. He wanted the bag and the basket and a chance to be held and sniffed and carefully placed next to the fresh bouquet of table flowers and the over-priced bottle of extra-virgin olive oil.
He knew that being anywhere near the white bread could end him up smothered in peanut butter and jelly or facing another belch while pressuring a cold bologna and mayo into the gastric path of a bread neophyte.

But Carole wasn’t asleep at the cart. She could see right through his filmy wrap and she caught onto his game and his machine perfect sliced edges. She wanted her bread to have a few rough ones. To know how to take a knife. How to be strong on the outside and yet warm and sweet on the inside, or sour, as she sometimes preferred them, and that multi-grain wasn’t what she wanted. She left him at the check-out stand and never looked back.

This Pugliese had a name worth pronouncing in mixed company. Eyes lit up at the sight of the two of them. And he had olives. What more could she ask for?
A fine Italian loaf, round, flat, dusted just right and hot out of the oven. Heat was a factor for her and for others.
She could hear the talk as they walked by. “He’s hot,” they’d say. Or “He looks so hot I could eat him. I just want a little nibble, just a tease. He could bake my bread any day. Oh would I like to smother him in some of mama’s garlic spread.”
The comments were endless, coming from the back stabbing bread lusting aficionados and the common dinner role heathens alike. They all wanted Pugliese or one of his lusty, tasty, good with olive oil, brothers.

Carole’s mind snapped back to the present and to the table of dull bladed, hungry -eyed diners.
She could feel the tension and snapped at them “ No one’s gonna cut my loaf but me,” she said.
“I could use a good loaf like that,” murmured one of the guests.
“How much for the precious Pugliese, said another. “I’ll fill him full of cheese and see how he likes it.”
“You realize he’s not even old enough to be a sandwich yet,” said another guest.
Carole flashed her butter knife at the table of hungry eyes. “It’s a Pugliese, “ she hissed, as she stared them down, “ He doesn’t need cheese or meats or condiments.”
She snatched the Pugliese up and held it close, squeezing so tightly that a puff of white cloud burst forth then settled on her nerved features. “This loaf is the love of my life,” she hissed. Everyone recoiled slightly, wincing in shared pain with the tightly squeezed loaf.
The guests couldn’t argue and settled back in their chairs, content to choose other appetizers and to want other things, less desirable, such as each other.
The Pugliese said nothing.

Love For Sale

2006-03-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

“Ray, are you there?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” he said, his words echoing in the phone, bursting, pursing and pushing with little palpitations of anxiety, each melting into the collective ambient hum of the telephone line.
And as his lips grazed the receiver, he thought of all those other words, oozing through the countless tiny holes, like garlic through a press, or some other excruciating metaphor.
“Where are you,” she asked?
“I think I’m in love.”
“What’s it like?” she asked.
“Oh I’m kind of lost in it at the moment.”
“You’re not lost, you’re there aren’t you?
“Yeah.”
“Well, tell me about it, tell me about love.”
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t articulate anything.”
“Then don’t articulate,” she said, “Just talk.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Ray. “I’m running out of words.”
“Then you must not be in love.”
“No, I’m in love,” Ray Said. “As far as I can see, as far as I can tell.”
“Then what does it look like to you?” she asked.
Ray squinted at the last traces of sunset miles and mountains and deserts away, while his mindless finger traced doodles in the dusty glass. Ray said nothing.
She, after a long silence said, “When you find it let me know, and save a few words for me.”
“I will,” said Ray.
“And let me know what love looks like, and maybe I’ll meet you there."

Ray cradled the phone against his ear, the comfort of her voice lingering in the receiver, then fading into soft static. He’d never been good at saving anything--least of all words.
He felt the weight of the phone, thinking for a moment of all the voices, all the anger, despair and happiness that had passed through its mass of plastic and circuitry, and he wondered if all that emotion got stuck in there, giving the phone its bit of heft. Perhaps, he thought, he should unscrew the mouthpiece, and let the phone dangle, to spin and spill the words out.

Outside the phone booth, a naked buzzing light bulb illuminated what there was of love. Ray felt reluctant to move, but stepped out, staring at the glowing booth, and the dangling receiver, swinging in the wind, its wired guts, unscrewed, exposed, spilling.

There was no life at all in this place where he now stood gazing at the moon, the dark buildings, the gravel road ahead and behind. Love seemed to be unpaved and empty.

Suddenly there was a hum, and a crackle, and a buzz. Ray looked back at the booth, its light fading in the darkness. Panic.
He turned towards the noise, first walking then skipping, then running until he almost passed it by but then he skidded, turned and stood transfixed before the neon sign, that burst into all its neon glory, as the dust settled at his feet.
The cursive words hummed and flickered on and off, in their static display: Words & More . . . More, words, Words, More, Words & More . . . So much more.
He stepped into the warm orange radiance, feeling alive in its glow.

In the window below, blocky letters on white butcher paper advertised the specials of the moment: “Bastard & Bitch!! A scream of a deal and great when bruised or mixed with booze: “Bills, Bills, Bills, cheaper by the dozen!!!” But he didn’t want those words. “Lonesome” and “Depressed” were at a super value blue sticker price -- “buy one and get the other for free!" But he didn’t want those either.

He pressed his face to the glass. Here I am, he thought, all the things I need to say, all the emotions I could ever hope to find . . . and he pushed with all he could but the door was locked.
The lights in the store shut down in a wave of darkness that came towards him and he slapped at the glass.
“Hey, Hello, can you let me in.”
He yanked on the door again, but this time it opened easily, flinging him backwards, almost tripping in the street until he caught himself. He stood there, looking at the open door, which began to slowly shut, and he ran forward, slipping in just as it closed behind him.
The store bustled with a growing energy as though the words were alive with some sort of friction and certainly he could reach out and rub them against one another.
The aisles overflowed with them: Big words and small words and sentences and incomplete thoughts and dangling bits of participle and an abundance of innuendo and run-on sentences and . . .
He reached out touching “Friendship.” In big warm letters the sign below it read, “Never on sale but always a deal.”
Down the aisle words popped out at him. He stared at “Lust” and poked at “Desire,” then looked back at “Friendship.”
He stood there, realizing that something was missing and then, as though it had fallen off the shelf in front of him (but it hadn’t) he thought of love.
After all, love was what he craved. He’d been in love, felt love, made love -- but he still didn’t quite know what love was. And lately he’d just been feeling no love. Now here he was, in love, and he could buy all the love he wanted.
But he couldn’t find it. He raced up and down the aisles and the words became a blur, but still no love. He yelled out.
“Love, love, love, where’s the love?”
“Can I help you?” A voice said.
He turned to see a man standing there, dressed like any grocery clerk, but holding the word “ME” in his arms.
“Do you work here?”
“Only in your imagination. Can I help you with anything?”
Ray paused.“I’m looking for love.”
The clerk sang out, "In all the wrong places!”
“What?” Ray asked, moving towards the clerk
who turned and laughed.
“Never mind, sorry, it was just a joke. What’s your name," the clerk asked?
“Ray,” said Ray.
“Oh, like, ray of light, or truth, or sunshine, or doe Ray Me, or-”
“No, just Ray”
“Well, Ray, what was it you want?”
“I’d like to buy a little love, but I can’t find it.”
“Then we must be out.”
The clerk turned and walked away. “Sorry,” he said, “All out of love.”
“Out of love,” moaned Ray, “come on.”
“How about a nice case of anger,” said the clerk as he stepped away.
Ray’s shoes squealed down the aisle and he slipped on the word “lost” as he turned the corner. He stopped to shake it off the bottom of his shoe.
“Figures,” He said. “Sell me something I don’t already know.”
The clerk yelled from the next aisle, “Be careful!”
Ray looked around for the clerk. “Look, I just need some help finding love, and it would be really, really, really, wonderful if you could help me out.”
The clerk yelled back, “Oh really. Sorry but somebody came in here and bought up the entire supply.”
Exasperation filled Ray’s voice. “You let somebody come in here and buy out the entire God damn supply!”
The clerk sliced open a box of sarcasm and reached inside. “I really wish I could help you.”
Ray frowned. “Look, I get all excited to come in here and buy, buy, buy, and you’re telling me you’re out of Love?”
The clerk put sarcasm on the shelf. “Do you want it that bad?”
Ray clenched his fists. “Yes, yes, I do. I want it bad. I was thinking of taking some home tonight and maybe sharing it.”
Ray turned around to find the clerk behind him. “Follow me then,” he said as he sauntered down the aisle singing, “Cookin’ up a little lovin’ throw it all into the oven, easy bake and 1,2,3 . . .that’s the kind of . . . ”He stopped singing and turned to Ray.
“Ray, Do you know what love looks like, how it feels, what it’s made of. Is it squishy or soft or sharp?” He looked into Ray’s frowning face.
“How can I poss--” The clerk jumped on the end of his sentence.
“Then how can you possibly find it?” He stepped forward and shook his finger in Ray’s face. “You--are standing in the middle of hell-knows-where, which just happens to be the center of aisle #6 of WORDS & MORE, are you not?”
“Yeah, I guess so, I mean . . .”
The clerk put a stop to Ray’s indecision cutting him off with a wave of his hand and leaning forward, whispered in a
conspiratorial tone, “So you must know something of love.”
The two of them stood there, silent until a spark set the clerk off in a mad speech.
“Take your time. Check out our other aisles. Specials on more damaged goods, parables of thought, allegorical insights, litanies, empty rhetoric, super redundancies, etc.”
Ray’s face twisted in confusion. “What the hell is all that stuff?”
The clerk looked indifferently at him. “No idea really.”
Ray looked up into the endless white of the ceiling and at his empty reflection in the mirrors, feeling hopeless.
“When’s it going to get here?”
He turned around, and was again startled to find the clerk standing right behind him. The clerk smiled and motioned Ray forward with a wave of his hand.
“Here you go.”
Ray looked at the shelves, then back at the clerk.
“Yeah, so?”
The clerk snapped at him.
“You don’t want this do you, this love.”
“No, I mean, yes, yes I do,” pleaded Ray, “Really.”
“This then,” the clerk indicated with another long sweep of his hand, “Is all the stuff that goes into love. It’s all right here.”
Ray picked up the first word he found.
“Admiration,” glowed like a smile, “commitment” felt heavy and solid and “patience” waited on the shelf, but even so, Ray could not pick either of them up.
“Look, I just want love, L-O-V-E--one word.”
The clerk hissed, “Listen, you want to know why you can’t find love--it’s because you can’t describe it, you
don’t even know what goes into it--what it’s made of, which, in here, means you ain’t goin’ to find it. So I’m telling you now, I’ll help you find everything that goes into love, but you’ve got to make it yourself, then maybe you’ll never forget.”
Ray stood there. “Okay, I can do this.”
“Good,” said the clerk, “watch this.”
The clerk picked up respect, commitment, fidelity, then jumped to the other side of the aisle and caught passion, romance, affection, devotion, adoration, dote, and stacked them on top of one another and said, “These ought to do for now.”
He pushed the words together, smooshing passion into devotion, dribbling desire down the sides to trickle into dote. The words began to look less and less like themselves and more and more like one big ball, and then he worked it
into the palm of his hand until finally he closed it, shook it, and opened it. There, in the palm of his hand, was “Love.”
Ray stared at love. “I don’t believe it.”
“You must, you’re here,” said the clerk, “And like I said, you don’t get in here without believing, even if it’s only a little bit.”
Ray reached out, grabbing at love, snatching it from the clerk’s hand. The weight of it almost made him lose his balance and the nimble clerk snatched it back and with the deftness of a taffy-twister, pulled the words apart and put them back again.
“So, if you want this,” The clerk held love in his hand and tossed it over his shoulder, catching it behind his back, then pulling it out into a string of words. “From this, well, it’s up to you.”
They stood silently, each waiting for the other, until finally Ray spoke.
“I think,” But before he could say anything more, the clerk raised his hands in exclamation and said, “Excellent,
great, right on, let’s get to it!”
Quicker than words could hurt, the clerk shoved a basket into Ray’s hands.
“Catch,” he yelled, throwing the first word at Ray and then the next and then another.
“A little of this and a little of that,” but suddenly he stopped and looked at Ray. “I get a little carried away some times. You should be doing this.”
Ray hesitated. “I can’t do this on my own.”
“Oh, but you can if you want, or else.”
The clerk spun around and walked away,chattering.
“I’m busy, busy, busy.”
Ray yelled, “But how do I pay?”
“Oh, you’ve been paying all along,” said the clerk.
“What,” shouted Ray.
“You can’t buy love,” said the clerk, “But did you check out the cliché section?”
Ray suddenly felt like one of those mad, happy shoppers, grabbing up all they could in a matter of minutes to win the contest.
Everything fit into his basket and finally he stopped, his basket full, yet his basket felt light, as though he might have only grabbed up one word.
Ray walked out the door and turned to look back at the store. He felt so good and thought not to leave, that this good feeling might not last.
But nothing happened and he walked farther and farther down the road ahead and the store was a beacon of warmth, radiating out into the night, bringing love to the desert of life.

She Just Lay There

2006-03-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

“Is that you?” he yells from the bedroom. She closes the door, tosses her purse on the floor.
“Who else is it gonna be after all these years”
“Can’t hear you,” he says. “Can’t hear me, what page are you on?” she asks.
“Thirteen, your unlucky number.” He says. She stares at whiteness all around her.
“Do I still get killed?”
“Same old story.” He says.
You seem to like that part of the story, a lot.”
“What,” he says, “be out in a minute.”
“Sure, fine, bring me with you, will you.” She glances down to her feet and looks up her entire length. “Courier, fuck”
He comes into the room, lays himself out on the page, “kinda drab looking, can I take a guess? “
“Go for it,” she says. “Pulp?” he says, wincing.
“Begins with a “P,” rhymes with scorn and don’t get any ideas.”
“Porn.” I knew it. You get all the good stuff.
“I’d say, fuck you, but I heard it enough today.”
“So it wasn’t that good.” He asks.
“No, “she says, “I just laid there on the page.”
“Back tomorrow?”
“No, it was a quick read. I did a lot of moaning and very little development. “
He looks at her, smiles. “ Kind of nice to be just turned eighteen though, isn’t it?”
“Hardly,” she says. What about you?”
He sits up, in all his times new roman glory. “I got to be Uncle Sam and spread lies about American history.”
“Boring,” she says, and goes to the kitchen. He rolls onto his side. ”What’s for dinner, he asks.
“I don’t know, why didn’t you bring a nice fresh label home with you?
He thinks to himself, she’ll never let that one go.
“It’s not those labels I’m into, it’s the list of ingredients.”
She closes the door of the bathroom.
“Labels, lists, ingredients, all the same. You’re a fuck and you know it.”
“Honey, I said I was sorry.”
She bangs on the door, “ And what about that little italicized number?
“I couldn’t help that, you look good in italics too baby.”
“Even courier?”
He leans into the door, san serif, banging gently. Searching for the words to save himself.
“You make courier Italics look like . . .”
She opens the door. Smiles at him. “Okay Uncle Sam, give me a minute.”
He feels good. Maybe this will be a nice night after all.
“Dinner’s in the next chapter.” He says.
“But I’m dead already.”
“yeah, but they’re gonna talk about you.”
“No thanks, you go. I’m gonna watch my P’s and Q’s.

The Girls Waited

2006-03-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

The girls stood across the road from the Sierra Mountain Gas & Tackle, situated at the very east end of the lake.
A clean, blue, cloudless sky swayed the tall trees, but otherwise a roll of hot valley air perspired against my skin.
Across the lake, the two-lane highway looped around, unnoticed in the trees except for the effort of the occasional car whining its way up the steep grade.
A motorboat burbled somewhere on the lake, and the gas pump churned and ticked, and if not for the call of an occasional bird, the world stood quietly, and innocent.
The girls’ laughter sparkled and broke the moment, like glints on the water, then passed. Secrets on a summer’s day at the edge of the lake. Something funny, soon forgotten. Something said that only young girls could understand.
They marched across the road, chirping, sandals clomping, all skin and sunburn. Blonde, ageless faces, uninspired by the world’s woes. They dragged their beach towels and pink backpacks, yet were burdened by nothing more than innocence.
I watched through the truck window, invisible, as they passed, knowing that nothing could get in the way of their being young girls on a summer’s day. They owned everything as they marched before me and through the creaky door into the air-conditioned, neon world of the Gas & Tackle shop.

Butch came round from behind the store and wrestled his plaid girth into the truck cab just as the girls came back outside.
They straggled back across the road, each of them handling a large, melting, ice cream cone.
The truck rocked as Butch waddled in the seat, situating the necessities––cigarettes from the pocket, lighter on the dash and lastly, he pulled from the bag at his feet, a beer.
“Cold one,” he said. “Nah, thanks,” I said and instead reached for his pack of cigarettes. “Maybe later.”
Butch, as though driving with a can of beer was a natural and law-abiding thing to do, took a long guzzle, then paused to stare at the cold sweating can before him. “You don’t want a beer?”
“No,”
“Good stuff, gonna get warm if we don’t drink it.”
I think he just didn’t want to drink alone, but he took another swig and nestled the beer between his legs.
“Suits me,” he said, pawing for his cigarettes. “Suits me just fine.” And with that he reached in and had another one popped before it left the bag.

We sat in silence, in no hurry to get back to driving the two hours up and into the mountains.
We smoked the cigarettes and stared blankly at the girls across the road. They dropped their towels and backpacks, engrossed in their messy, melting cones, hands, tongues, lips, laughter, they dripped vanilla and chocolate, pushed one another as though they were boys, and then, just then, a dusty Volvo pulled off, just past them and they began to cheer, loudly.
Butch tossed his cigarette to the floor and cranked the key before grabbing another smoke. Outside, the girls whirled and thrashed, each of them working with one hand, while they hurried to finish their cones and toss their things into the back of the car. The mother paced back and forth, arms in motion, cell phone at her ear. She stopped her conversation for a moment. “Finish those before you get in the car.” She said.
We watched as they made quick work of the cones and then one of them, the first, jumped up and down, “I won,” she said. “Second,” shouted the next girl and then mom chimed in, “let’s go,” and without fanfare the other girls either finished their cones or dropped them at the side of the road.

Butch pulled out of the station and we watched as the last of them got into the car. “Not too many ice cream summers left there” he said and I didn’t know quite what he meant, but I did, and with that notion floating around, I reached down and pulled out one of the beers.

President’s Day, Oh Joy

2006-03-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

With a sudden inhale, fear and logistics converge, gripping me as I thrash my way out of bed, heart racing, darkness, fingers struggling, forever re-learning how to shut off the cell phone alarm clock function, as my eyes open, conjuring up the myth of another day and the only real reason to get up, street cleaning.
Naked, my feet barely on the floor, my entire world catches up, surging down through me, impeding my forward movement, as it settles in an ache of confusion and angst. My mind hits the preview button, super-speed; my lack of cash, my relationship, lost dreams, the costly engine repairs, rewriting the resume, dishes in the sink, how cold it is outside, why does my gut feel still feel the bulge of last nights feeding frenzy at the Chinese joint . . . all of it, everything that could, would and will, conspires against me––packing itself into one constipated urge of despair. I’m awake.
In the focusing of this dread, yesterday’s underwear doesn’t seem like much and it’s right there––I try slipping into them, but it turns into something less graceful, sort of a rubics cube of contortion and decision, but after that, the learning curve steepens, leaving my pants, shoes and so on, to go on, in a much easier fashion.
Endless training has prepared me for these moments of quick decision––glasses, wallet, cell phone, keys and I am out the door, double time, sunrise at my back.

All across the city flaccid civil servants still sleep soundly, pondering far-off dreams of retirement. Banks with your imaginary money jingling in their vaults keep their doors closed. Only a few are out, roaming in the sunrise, earning your tax dollars: the bus drivers, the police and on this morning, expected between the ever vague hours of eight and ten a.m., the street cleaners.
They come with a rumble and a hum, spraying, brushing, and vanishing around another corner, gone for another week, into the void, a quantum leap of physics, soon to reappear in another time zone––probably the one you will park in next.
But before them, the pariah, the leeches, the blood sucking, expletive inducing, parking control officers, putter up and down the blocks, three wheeled raiders, preying on the slow, the sleeping, the forgetful, the arrogant . . . the soon to be booted.
You can hear them coming. Little stubby Cushman’s sputtering neatly, like flies to shit, turning, stopping, scooting (did I forget, writing) on in bee-like fashion; their occupants dull, slumping, smoking, quota minding clerks of the city, aiming to please, to exercise their bloated sense of power and to take your verbal ravages with nothing more than a patronizing, “Sorry but I can’t do anything once the ticket is written,” which of course translates to fuck you sucker, I get all my tickets fixed.
I’m hustling but there’s always time for coffee. The donut shop girl smiles the smile that never changes or seems to acknowledge me, in spite of the fact that I tip her a quarter every morning, sometimes twice a day. I imagine my tips going for all the fuzzy pink, pastel trinkets decorating the dashboard of her spotless Honda.
“How are you today, I say, plunking that quarter in the jar before she’s said a word. Audible as it is, she must be used to the sound of change hitting the bottom. I’m afraid to give her anything less that a quarter for fear of scorn, even though she will make more than me today, just in tips.
“How are you today,” she repeats, in her square structured response and I have long given up hope of her ever replying with, “I’m fine,” or some other colloquialism of donut shop banter.
She knows her donuts though––tongs a the ready while
I, in turn, struggle to remember, “maple old-fashioned.”
She descends, comes up, an old-fashioned in her grip.
We both confirm its authenticity. I suppose she does know me, as we agree again, in unison, “large coffee.” I shoot her a ramble of dialogue that paralyzes her expression. She’s lost in my short babble, barely able to say thanks to my thanks as she surrenders my donut.
I turn for the door, taking that cautionary slurp of coffee––the one that’s supposed to create that safety zone, but instead always manages to spill and dribble and I just have to thank the gods that I am not dressed down in some Khaki formation, about to jump a bus with my crotch spotted in French roast.
I’m sipping, spewing expletives, vaguely aware that someone is near by. I spit out another burst, like
buck-shot, to let them know that I mean business. I’m pissed, I swear, and never mind the dribble.

My car is blocks away, in an almost unbroken line of parked cars, like a trail of Morse code that runs off over the horizon. I can just make it out as a black dash, but more importantly, no sign of the Cushman brigade, and no one racing grand prix style, across the road to get to their cars.
I relax my gait to account for the fact that it is a crisp blue day and a crisp blue president’s day at that and the irony that I should celebrate in a way, the fuck ups of past leaders and most certainly the fuck-up that presently leads us along. I’ll enjoy the day, if only to laugh at him and think that somewhere, that idiot is being congratulated.
But first, and far more important than any president, my very used 1987 guzzler awaits and I pray to all the gods possible that it starts up; that I did not leave the lights or the heater or anything else on; that my tires are not flat, no windows are broken and nothing is missing that I would not miss anyway and lastly I pray that no middle east gold is leaking from below.
Because the key lock is long broken, I open my door via the small window. Snake my hand in and down, nudging the lever, extracting my hand, always waiting, holding my breath for someone to call me on this––to question my ownership––especially if they should be spy enough to see that no key is required to start the engine.
I climb into the familiar smell of old car dust and worn seats, a menagerie of lonely gear: ski poles, tire tubes, bike helmets and tools for something to do with car repair.
I settle into the guzzlers world, checking the buttons, switches, nothing on. Relief. As I flip the wiper switch, I think of a space ship, long abandoned and floating in some far off galaxy.
The empty hulk gets boarded by a bunch of ragtag heroes in training and after so many, maybe hundreds of years in stale space, all systems down, someone flips a switch and the sleeping giant yawns, buzzes, screens light up and the ship awakens to cheers. I feel this way whenever I start my car.
The wipers, front and back push away a weeks worth of dirt, leaves and bird shit, softened to a sludge by the cold morning dew.
I contemplate turning on the engine but decide to sit in silence, waiting for the drone of terror.
Suddenly it occurs to me that this is a holiday of sorts and being presidents day, I think, damn, this should be the most important day in America. Certainly the street sweepers will be paying their respects by staying home, and then I remember who they are––not the street sweepers, but the rodents in the little chariots. They are probably at the bedside of every street sweeper in town, tugging them out of bed, urging them to climb out of bed and up into their lumbering steeds and follow them, ‘cause there’s tickets to write and we got ‘em off guard. Presidents day is just another, thankfully, vague holiday, not worthy of getting out of bed, except for this.

Knot the Not (also known as Deleting “And” an editing exercise)

2006-03-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

Something eluded him like he didn’t know. Nothing made any sense or was in its place but he still felt there was something to find or figure out, if only he could find it.

Just then the doorbell warbled and he realized that there was sunshine outside and traffic going by and radios playing and maybe even someone at the door, but who knows, or who knew.
He didn’t and so he let the bell ring again and then it rang no more and he thought that was sort of poetry in a real urban sense; it had a beginning ,middle and an end., or maybe not so much of an end because as they say somewhere out there in the land of sayings, every end is really a beginning and he ran that through his cerebral cortex a few times and marveled at the word, cerebral cortex. Was it just a syllable heavy gobble of words for brain?

He didn’t know and there was certainly not a dictionary handy, at least not one that would require him to get up from his less than comfortable but what were his options anyway, kind of horizontal stance. He had to pee for one thing, but no amount of blistering sunshine was going to get him up just at this moment. He was content to lay there, or lie there. He could not decide if he was laying or lying and then he could not decide if all of this was a lie.

What was this anyway, that he now found himself back at. He was looking for something but he felt like he was being tied in an intricate knot. No, not an intricate knot, not a logical knot, not a sailor’s knot or any knot that someone could talk him through, like how to land a jumbo jet once all the crew had been killed off or something, but more like a twisted, stupid knot that comes from throwing a pile of rope or that extension cord that you need in a hurry and the fucking thing got all screwed up in a knot––that kind of knot––and he’s slithering and choking his way through that knot and getting no where except tighter and tighter and more confused about where he started and where he might stop, but as I said, he was already on his way, the knot and metaphor were already losing him and he had to catch up.
He had to get out in front and be there to yell at whatever it was that he was catching up to and he had to say, “Stop” and he had to do it in a way that meant something. That he could see and the thought could see and the two of them could come to some sort of agreement and recognize and then and only then might the knot stop and he might see whatever it was that he could not see in the beginning of all this and that would be the beginning and he’d be right back where he started which was just as confusing to begin with since whatever it was eluded him and he didn’t know.

Please Hold on as Sudden Stops are Some Times necessary

2006-03-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

He shot himself in the fiction section, being careful, he thought, not to soil any of the books, including his own.
But a last glance at his name on the spine of that light volume that took place just as his mind raced through his childhood memories caused him to swerve, ever so slightly, splattering and scattering the validated names of several of his fellow writers, now resting on the shelves.
He too was now resting, albeit, on the floor, under cover of several volumes of again, various authors.
His face, blackened slightly from the gunpowder, had that certain look that all newly dead people have a sort of confused look. Especially by those that commit suicide, for it is at that very last tiny particle of infinite and yet oh so finite time that a certain realization comes over them.
For him it was knowing that as he fell back, bullet through the palate, the brain, the skull and then his finely coiffed head of hair, that all his efforts might have been in vain.
He should have just stayed home and placed his thin volume of self-published fame on the nightstand, then laid down and put the bullet to work, but no.
Or he could have ever so casually pulled out his pistol while reading to a crowd and then, think of the fame, he thought. All of them first cowering in fright but then, once he made use of all 9mm of lead, they would gather round, wondering at the power that his book might contain.
But here he was, in the fictions section. He was a writer of fictions after all. And he'd longed to have his name up there straddling the greats, so if being amongst them just meant sitting on a shelf, then that would have to do. This would be his tombstone.
But that look on his face said it all, if one could say anything––that was the look of a man, watching as his last will and testament, his life's work, fell not backwards, to rest upon him with all the others, but instead, fell forward, into the dark abyss behind the shelf, the collector of all volumes too small to stand amongst the greats.