personal literary writing literature poetry short stories essays

lv personal literary writing literature poetry short stories essays

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Reflections at night when the dark is good and we see farther. A short meditation.
"A silent conjunction between what one thinks and what has been thought."

Brief Tales on a Whim.
There is nothing more pitiful than the storyteller without his stories.

Meditations on the 60th Anniversary of Hiroshima What would the end of the world entail? Do we boast that we can imagine such a thing?

3 short stories. $3

In the apprenticeship period hopes are high.
"But then, who will save us from our own crimes?"

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AH CHILDHOOD

So it was over, he had moved into a new phase of life. He didn't reflect on the fourteen years that had passed, he was hardly conscious of them. Certain events in his childhood raced effortlessly by and was left hanging on an emotion of some sort. It all floated by as in a movie, the kind the adults used to shoot trying to capture their kids on film but then it all gets lost in the shuffle and no one knows where those movies go. The humiliations, the games, the classrooms and their teachers, all women but one, his favorite, all Xmas's and Halloweens and Easter's when his aunts would show up with Easter baskets for all the kids and he'd take a big bite out of the candied bunny, all the times he got into trouble, now with his parents, now with his brothers, now with the parents of his friends, now with his teachers, now with his peers. All those times with the Scouts and the teams he was on and family get togethers on the patio. They all glided like a big sky dotted with memory pushing from east to west like the sun. All the times in the plane, looking down at the streets and houses cross latched in geometric precision while he asked himself, "why am I up here?" And the thrill he felt in his body as the plane left the runway and began its assent. "This is what angels must feel," he thought one time.

It was over as he watched his little world crumble after the killing of the President. "Everyone is upset!" he thought to himself. He heard no glib reasons, no confident explanation for why things felt so chaotic. The world was devastated by a single event. He knew the President through television along and his wife and brother. They were always there speaking in their odd dialect. The boy's aunt had bought the satirical LP about the family. They were like black people and Vietnam, words without context, images on the screen, nations and peoples a million miles away. He had started his novel about the wheelchair coach and nothing of the world showed up in his scratching but imagined games. He wrote in pencil and crossed out words he wanted to change and print the new word to the side or above the cross-out. He described games in full paragraphs, visualizing the action, writing as if Bill King were announcing the game. He loved the games he imagined and would think about them while in school. It was his secret project. Why did anyone have to know? He would expose it when it was perfect.

The next year would put him in high school, where his older brother had gained a reputation. The adored brother who could do no wrong! And suddenly he was gone after fighting with the old man, gone to the Navy for six years with a few short visits along the way. He had no concept of high school. "You're in there with older kids," someone had said. "And they treat the younger kids like dirt."

He'd hung out with the tough guys for a time in 8th grade. Monte, Greg, and Andy, large and dark fellows with hair all over, who took him under wing because they knew his older brother and respected him. "Your brother can fight." They talked against his friends. "He can't fight. He's soft, a girl." And the old friends drifted away a bit and let him know he was running with a different group. He didn't understand their criticisms, even the parents told him to be wary of those guys. And he'd always talk up for them. "Oh no, they are ok, they treat me like I'm one of them. Don't worry about it." And he never let his previous associations stray too far. But then his new friends tired of the boy and he felt it and didn't want to hang around Monte, Greg, and Andy any more. They physically looked different than all the other kids he knew. Tough and muscled with quick, scornful laughs and strange eyes. He tried to find out where they lived but never found out. Did they even live there? What did their parents do? Then when the year ended they slipped away, he never saw them again.

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