“Dirty Bird,” A Thousand and One Stories

Illustration by Martin Shongauer, 15th century painter and engraver

My quirky story “Dirty Bird” is up at A Thousand and One Stories. Give it a read! Happy Tuesday.

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Episode 272: Henry Hughes!

Thank you, John King, for your wonderful interviews, and this great resource. I loved hearing all about fish and fishing which reminds me of my girlhood. I look forward to reading this author.

The Drunken Odyssey

Episode 272 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to the poet and memoirist Henry Hughes about how to get over rejection, poetry, the freedom of ekphrastic work, memoirs, and fishing,

Plus Todd Boss reads his poem, “One of the Joys of Dry Fly Fishing.”

TEXTS DISCUSSED

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Episode 272 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

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Hidden Strengths | by GJ Hart

If I start thinking, “I have to restore my historical consciousness!” or “My life depends on reknitting the past and future into my experience of the present!” I will feel overwhelmed and probably implode into depression. But maybe changing my experience of time can start with more simple decisions.

via Make it New: New Every Morning — Rock & Sling

September 15: “Children of the New World” by Alexander Weinstein

If you love the short story as much as I do, you will likely be interested in what’s happening in the world of short stories. As  Michael Czyzniejewski, professor at Missouri State and editor at Moon City Press notes, the National Book Award has not recognized a story collection this year. Provided in this post is a list of fresh off the press collections to suit your story appetite. Michael’s blog also covers at least one short story a day or more from a collection. Insight into one collection a day for a year: That’s a lot of collections! Maybe one day, stories will get their due. In the meantime, enjoy, and check out Michael’s blog.

Story366

Way to be, Story366! Today is an interesting day in that Karen is headed east right now, visiting her mom in Ohio. That means it’s me and the boys for the next four. Check back often to see how that’s going. Should be fun.

In other news, the long lists for the National Book Award came out today, and in the fiction category, there is a list of ten novels. My friend Amber Sparks was the first person I saw speak up about this on FB, noting that short stories are vital, there were a lot of great books released this year, the novel is so etc., etc., etc. I couldn’t agree more, because if you couldn’t tell, I kinda like short stories. Taking Amber’s lead, I put together a list of the story collections released in 2016 that I’ve covered so far on this blog, plus a bunch…

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lost container

Black and White Portrait of a Friend by Mirko Chessari, flickr

 

My inability is a lost container I cannot find in my house.

My love is a plant in a basket I abandoned in the flower bed. Though the basket rots and I do not water it anymore, the plant lives on, fading in the sun, spreading, blooming.

My uncertainty is a walking stick. I do not know for certain if I will live, or, if living, for how long. A stick is more reliable than a person. People fly away when they want to, even when you might die. A stick can defend while people are shutting their windows, going to bed for the night.

My eyes are what are left after I have seen everything. I see lies coming at me now, aiming for the kill. I avert my gaze, in hopes they miss.

A pen is better than a stick or a sword and frees the weave of my heart. At some point, every friend is an enemy, but even if my life is counted for nothing, a pen is more loyal.

all true

 

I haven’t dreamt in a long time, I haven’t slept well in months. This afternoon, an inspiration came over me to slip into my purple grey room and tuck myself under the soft white comforter borrowed from my son’s room while he hikes the Blue Ridge.  It has been so long since I’ve dreamed, I’ve been in mourning for it. Grief, anxiety, the chemical pall of chemo and medications, the despair for things I have lost seems to have shrouded my mind, at least temporarily, taking my concentration and the release needed to let go of conscious thought.

I dreamt of a street I have driven down many times which runs through the heart of my Florida town. I am driving my SUV and a car driving slightly behind me to my right swerves into the lane of a motorcyclist. The man on the motorcycle is not hit and he doesn’t fall but when I look out of my rearview mirror, I see both the driver of the car and the cyclist have stopped and pulled over to the side of the road into the entry of a parking garage. The cyclist, his sunglasses flying off, is beating the driver through the open window of the car. My heart racing, I do a U-turn, speeding the wrong way on a one-way but otherwise deserted street, back to the scene of the violence, unsure of what I will do when I arrive. I awoke abruptly, my heart racing, relieved it was only a dream.

I haven’t dreamt for three years. I’m not sure what it means to be reintroduced to dreaming through terrifying visions, but dreams are as unpredictable as people and all must be accepted eventually.

This past spring after my son played baseball at a field close to the beach, I said good bye to him for the night. He was going with his father and stepmom to join the team for a post game dinner. They turned inland and I turned toward the coast down A1A. If I had to spend the night alone, I may as well be spending it on the beach at sunset, and in particular at a beach where my high school friend’s family owned a condo. We are no longer friends. After I married and moved to various cities with my ex, coming back into town only briefly for holidays, my friend told me if I didn’t see her more often when I was home, I could forget about our friendship. I chose to spend time with my family rather than more time with her. Now, ironically, I have lost both. Except my child still calls me his mother. And I have a sister, a mother, a father.

My friend and I used to spend the night on the balcony of her condo, listening to the waves crash on the sand.

As I am driving to the beach, an old VW van swerves into my lane, right in front of me, forcing me to slam on my brakes. The motorcycles behind me – two – slam on their brakes. Through my rearview mirror, I see, to my horror, a bike skidding along the pavement and a body flipping up through the air and landing on the shoulder of the road. I pull over to the median and put on my hazards, grabbing my jacket, running with my middle aged body, my weight jiggling from my frame, to the place where this cycling couple cry out to each other, the man in tact physically but falling apart with disbelief and panic, hovering over his wife, the woman lying face down and moaning, crying out in a way I had not heard before, blood matting her blond hair. The man turns her onto her back. I give him my white coat to protect the back of her head from the asphalt.

I never found out what happened to her. I stayed to answer questions, stayed until the ambulance took the couple away. Oddly, I took my coat back. An emergency technician put it in a bag. I would throw it away the next day. It would never come clean. I never made it to the beach, wouldn’t try again for months. My sister answered when I called her as I drove back to our town. She talked me through the ordeal of getting back to our city after I had experienced an unanticipated calamity.

A few months before this incident, my son and I went to California and I wore my white coat then. A few hours before the dream this afternoon, I posted a picture of my child and I on social media. We are smiling on the beach at Sausalito, me in my white coat I was wearing before we headed into the deep heart of Muir Woods to reach sunset on the other side.

gift

green tip kafir lilly by K M via flickr

She talked him into this, everything so new between them. She wanted to go to the beach, an easy trip for a Saturday evening, a drive to the east coast, a place of her growing up years, a place familiar. He had warned her, in their planning, of rain as predicted on the weather channel, warned her of the heat. But here is what she knew: There was a difference between the middle section of the state and the beach. She knew the rhythms, when rain was likely in summer and how long it would last, what temperatures were like by water, how beautiful sunsets were and of course she hoped they might walk and she hoped, if they did so, he might hold her hand. She saw it in her mind, but she coached herself: Let him do it. In a previous broken relationship that crushed her heart, that other man could not be counted on. This was a chance to test this new one’s feeling.

She felt a little deflated, upon their arrival at the public beach pavilion, to see a young woman with hair like a mop, each strand a worn color of a flag. She felt irritated. Why did so many people insist on calling so much attention to themselves? She went to Venice Beach to see the freaks, but now not even her childhood beach was sacred. She felt guilty because she knew this new man would not share her attitude. He was a much more generous spirit than her previous one and would not indulge the ugliness she felt inside at this moment. And it might turn him turn him away. Of course she would not show her true self, at least not at this moment.

The woman wore huge pants that ballooned outward though she was skinny, had a nice figure evident from the flat tummy between the midriff. What was going to happen? A woman like that does not show up at the beach just to hang out in the sand and watch the waves. She was there to compete with all of that. A young man was with her. But he was hardly noticeable by comparison.

As she and this new man put their shoes in a pile and blanket on the sand, the woman with the hair and the pants starting working a huge hula hoop, wrapped with strips of tattered cloth, her hips undulating in a slow, seductive gyration.

What the — ?

She couldn’t take it any more.

“Some people like to be seen,” she said.

“Oh, haven’t you been to the drum circle in town?” said this new man.

She knew of drum circles, what a lot of people did, what they looked like. She had stumbled across a huge drum circle when she was with her child and husband in Asheville, her husband now her ex and who would not have hung out among drum circles.

She felt a little pressure. Would she be expected to go to drum circles?

She had to confess, beneath all the layers of her identities that had come with each relationship, she didn’t know who she was any more.  She was a pleaser. The only time she seemed to feel her true chosen identity coming through was when she was a senior in college and finally free of all relationships that would bind her to a course. Her dream was to work for a nonprofit and help people with AIDS. The horizon had been ever before her in that moment, a span that lasted several months but then disappeared again under the weight of expectation.

(Perhaps this is why she sought so vehemently the horizon of the shore at the break of this new relationship, perhaps, she thinks, as she writes this. She sought it to the point of arguing her way to it even as she was concerned about making a good impression. The horizon over the ocean: an ever visible inspiration when you are standing before it. Walls are false pretenses. Water is stronger. The sky is forever.)

This new man brought with him a set of new beliefs. She felt pressure. But not too much pressure. She only felt anxious she would disappoint him as she had the men before. Maybe in a different way perhaps, but wasn’t it all the same when you could boil it down to one word? Disappointment.

They walked on. He held her hand.

What if she can’t believe what he believes? What if she can’t be as nice as he expects, as open and free? What if she can’t be open to his teaching? He seems to want to teach her things. (In fact, as she is now recalling as she writes this, all of them had.) She didn’t want to be lonely again. Her heart ached with the possibility of it but she knew, deep down, she would have to be true to herself. Was it the woman’s burden always to bend? Sometimes she had bent to the point of almost being broken: don’t write; don’t write this; you’re not political enough; you’re not intellectual enough; you’re not organized; you’re too fat; your face is round; your butt is big; you talk too much; you talk too little; I like women in dresses; I like women in heels; women should not wear pants suits; a real woman doesn’t wear her hair short; I like a woman who keeps up with her nails, sometimes the glitter art helps her express her creativity; I think your hair should be blond like it used to be when I knew you years ago; if you bought a platinum blond wig and wore a white dress you would look a lot like Marilyn Monroe; I would like to read your stories at some point (An ever receding point, she thinks as she writes this, fading off into the distance like the sun setting over the Gulf.)

No one knows you really, no. No one wants to know. They want to imagine, something. And when you show them who you are, their dream is gone and so are you.

When they return from their walk, the woman with the ragamuffin hair has taken the hair off for as it turns out it is a wig and she is sitting in the sand, in her hoop, looking slightly deflated.

She and her new man spread the blanket out. He says he has something for her he wants her to smell. He pulled something from the bag but told her to close her eyes. She did so. She hoped she would be up for it. There was fear she would not be. It was an oil he said while her eyes were closed. She knew the meaning some people attributed to oils. It smelled like a rose perfume she used to wear until she reacted to a comment that it was something for old ladies. She had thought, up until that point, it was wonderful to always don the scent of her favorite flower. She said it was rose bergamot. He said it was not. He said he didn’t know for sure but he knew that much. He said “This is intention.” Here it comes, she thought. “You breathe it in.”

She thought of something she intended. She wanted a good, long relationship with him though she never would have said that. She intended to lose weight and so she turned to him to say that but he was facing the water, eyes closed, as if in meditation. She hadn’t done the right thing. Was this what you were supposed to do when you smelled oils?

For that moment, she felt no harm in the man sitting on the blanket with her.

When he opened his eyes she spoke clumsily of her intention. She looked at the sand. She knew she was dependent. There was even a term for it, not co-dependent, but something else, a term her therapist used to describe her and her clingy woman self, though she could be other things too, she was mainly this way in relationship, dependent upon the opinion of men, particularly the man she was with.

She looked at the sand. thinking of the oil and the many things he had said already, and she thought of his look in profile as they sat there on the blanket and what she decided for that moment was this: He was good. She knew this. And that was all for now. And for now she would keep her secret belief to herself, except, dear reader, what you are reading here now. She would play along with these notions for a while because they seemed important to him and frankly, she liked him. And he seemed ready to care about her and so what he showed her was something meaningful and that in and of itself would be the gift and she would allow herself to receive it though she had no idea of what it was, only that it had been given. In and of itself, she realized, that was enough for the moment in which she found herself and it seemed to be something different from what had happened to her before and so what if she had secret unbelief? A nice man sat on a blanket with her.

Five Flashes from DEAR PETROV by Susan Tepper

Five Flashes from DEAR PETROV by Susan Tepper  (Some serious genius by my friend Susan Tepper)

under no circumstances conform

North Rhine affair

Tags

love, love story, unrequited love

I want to meet you this Christmas under a new sky, not Florida’s, not like the night we watched the Christmas parade and the snow made of soap bubbles and the trombone your son never played because the one that worked was somewhere else.

I want to meet you on a snowy city street: I, dressed in white, a long white coat, and you in dark wool.

I want you to smile at me as if I’m the only woman you will ever want. I want to know you love me and are concerned about me. I want to hear you say the words. I want to hear you say my name Margaret. I want you to kiss my lashes.

You don’t know how much I have been yearning for an arm that fits neatly over my shoulder, a laugh that embraces me, care that could be lavished on a queen. So many lonely nights, terrified of my dreams, longing.

I have wanted to make you into this, this dream fulfillment and it has been unfair. A person isn’t what they’re not meant to be. How I have craved gentleness and attention. You are so handsome, yet it has been unfair – my dreams – an imposition.

You were meant for another, one who wants for nothing, at least not too many words or undue attention, one who understands a certain approach. Or maybe she will be the one to receive your attention because she is the one for you.

After I acknowledge you have only been a dream, I will walk away into the snow and leave the ghost of your body. There will be bells from another man’s sleigh and when he thinks – this woman should not be allowed to walk like this nor should she feel hunger or any kind – he will lift me up and ask me if I am ok and I will begin a journey.

a personal note

Tags

American Horror Story, Emily Dickinson, ghost story, Holidays, morality tale, tale, tale of unease, tell it slant, Victorian Christmas

Happy Holidays. I hope you do not mind me speaking directly. Maybe you can indulge me, please, though I usually “tell it slant,” minding this principle of Emily Dickinson.

I thank you for reading my blog this year. Last year, I published a flash fiction “Christmas in Florida” journal and hope to return to it next year. I received some great submissions. This year, however, I want to complete my tale of unease, among shopping for Christmas, planning a trip, wrapping up year end things. I have the perfect cocoa ready and waiting for  a good writing session, which usually takes place sitting on my bed though I have set up “writing stations” throughout the house. All for naught. I write where I dream.

I don’t have much to say, unslant. I have been watching American Horror Story and have been quite unsettled, but the unsettling has good effect: It causes me to re-evaluate, take stock. Maybe that is why those Victorians loved a ghost tale at Christmas. Being unsettled is a precursor to finding beauty in one’s life, finding rest, and if the story comes with a bit of a morality tale which many great tales of unease do, there is the added benefit of having the chance to see, and maybe, as a response, “do.”

Drink your eggnog, now, my good friends – writers, readers, editors, artists extraordinaire – and may visions dance in your heads.

Margaret

A Holiday Suprise – Elan Mudrow’s Santa #4270 – Enjoy

my note to the world

Tags

aging, aging motherhood, mother, mother son, mother son relationship, mothering

I do not mind living for you. You are my note to the world. Foolishly, I have believed, at times, I should write other notes. As it turns out you are the biggest, most important note there is.

If life contained a million lifetimes, I would: hold your hand in each one, run my finger through your hair in every day of each, kiss your forehead whether you are sick or well, take you to a million lifetimes of soccer practices, watch a million lifetimes of your games, drop you off for a million lifetimes of first dates, drive you to a million lifetimes of first days of school, take you to a million lifetimes of movies and buy you buckets and buckets of popcorn.

My role is dwindling now my young one, just in time for me to fully appreciate what I am about, the raison d’etre of my magnum opus to the world. You said you would drive your friends when you got a license, you speak openly of missing the friends who have moved away, you speak appreciatively of the friends you have now. How my tears run silently down my face when I think of what you are.

The majority of my life has passed before me. You are now your own best work. I speak into the air and if you wish to catch a falling leaf of a word of mine, you put your hand out, but you do not need leaves. What usage, leaves, but for the fire?

May God forgive me, but I am proud. May your song never end.

Bless my mother on this, the day of her late son’s birthday.

 

fledermaus

I started a new blog for women who want to speak their mind, anonymously, about anything. The blog may very well become a journal. You can keep up with the progress of the project here: fledermaus.  Consider the quotes below concerning our freedom and the freedom of others around the world. Women are especially vulnerable in exercising their right to free speech, even in writing fiction and work that is not intended to be taken literally. Fledermaus will be for all works of fiction or nonfiction, regardless of genre as long as the writing sings. Speak to us and let us hear your voice. Women from all over the globe are invited to submit their work. More details will be posted soon. Thank you for your interest. Here are the promised quotes:

“A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.”
― Nick Harkaway, The Blind Giant    

“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
― Catherine of Siena

“This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.”
― Euripides, The Phoenician Women    

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

[The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author’s Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]”
― William O. Douglas

“Imagination sees the complete reality, – it is where past, present and future meet… Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent – nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects … Imagination does not uplift: we don’t want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.”
― Khalil Gibran

The 35 Writers Who Run the Literary Internet

Flavorwire

The debate as to whether the Internet is good or bad for literature doesn’t seem any closer to resolution now than when it began, years ago, but the fact remains that some people in the literary world are excellent at using Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and even Instagram or Pinterest to communicate with readers and get people interested in what they’re writing. These aren’t the writers who have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers but only tweet when they have a book come out, or the ones who write a guest blog post every year to get their names back into the conversation.

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welcome

Welcome to my new blog, “In a Forest Dark.” Please read my “about” page. I look forward to meeting you here frequently! Please grab a cup of hot chocolate, a cappuccino, or chocolate that is at least 70% cocoa.