STEVE

Steve has arrived… of sorts. 

I feel the most confident I have been about this story in a while. Yes, I sent it into Palooka: The journal of Underdog Excellence but while re-reading Steve a week ago (and catching several spelling errors and grammatical infractions) I decided to go through it once again. So yes, it’s a few hundred words longer, and feels more polished. Of course I could work on it some more but what artist doesn’t feel that way about their creations. 

So in this light I really want to resubmit my work to Palooka but seeing how the dead line is about 3 days away… I don’t know. I think I’ll just take my chances. 

That being said, I’ve run a small amount of hard copies (cover page and everything) of Steve. I want to sell them for $5.00 each cause the print shop isn’t free. I know five bucks can seem like a lot for 30 some pages of fiction writing but here’s my reasoning for charging.

A)     A) I’m hella broke. No the profit on the books won’t account for much other than covering the cost of printing.

B)      B) I need to get my name out there and I want to be taken seriously. In our economy, if a monetary value is attributed it is worth something. So there is that fun piece.

C)      That’s basically it.

Shoot me an e-mail or text or call me it you want a copy. I would love to share my work with you and in turn help spread your creative works as well.

How the North Wind Lost

The north wind came into town one day just before the autumnal equinox. A Shepard boy leading the flock out of the pens into the crisping pasture saw her come down the road in a small chariot pulled by two woolly goats; their hard and ridged horns were adorned with bells of silver.

The Sheppard boy heard the bells and the clip-chopping of hooves from some distance down the road. It was from there that he could see the shadowy figure traveling its way down the road. He thought it queer that someone would be coming down the path so early in the morning. The mountain passes would have been more than cold at night by this time in the year and the next place of refuge was at least a day’s walk from his stables and pens.

But there she came, all billowing and with snapping fabrics. She traveled at a brisk pace, the goats tromping gallantly on the gravel path. The sound of the silver bells rang clear above the gentle breeze which moved tall grasses and over the clapping of hooves which roughed the rocked ground. The boy stood there, transfixed. Even a few sheep with their black and white faces, lifted their heads to see what the strange sound was. Certainly travelers and tradesmen used the mountain passes but none were ever decked in bells like these goats were. They rang high and clear, like metal over a lake.

The boy looked up from his tending to see the goat duo striding down the trail and witnessed the women all wrapped in heavy, dull colored cloaks. A conical hat sat atop her head and was strapped securely beneath her chin. The wind she brought with her threatened to pull it from her head at any minute; its point stretched out behind her along with the ends of her shawls. The fabric whipped and sapped in the space behind her causing consternation in the young boy.

He had heard stories of her from all the grandmothers and grandfathers. These were children’s tales of course and were told every year as the sunlight waned and the best apples became ripe. Oh to hear to hear the tales of The North Wind in the air surly meant that autumn had arrived and the time of winter squashes, sweet apples, and the best preserving spices---cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg--- would be added to every dish imaginable certainly was upon them. The shaggy goats were a commonality in all tales. Once he had been told it was a team of horses with long tusks whose whinnies and bays were said to sound like the winter winds crashing against panes of glass. But this was told by a passer-by who was given shelter for the night and was clearly from other parts of the world. His accent was thick and muddy and was hard to understand. But the man worked for his stay and in the orchard the boy was picking apples along side the him. He got most of the story right except for the sled was pulled by horses instead of the usual goats.

Heat Lightning

I have lightning, if the stars dry up, to guild me
~I Missed the Point, Neko Case

Long shadows crawls the floor/the path so poorly lit/there’s moths flying away from it

~Prison Girls, Neko Case

The Cinnamon Buffalo was filled with the usual on the second Friday in July. Blue and white plaid sleeves lifted like the arms in a grain elevator to gray haired mouths. The pale ales and brown lagers were poured not into frosted mugs but filled plastic cups stamped with the logos of several breweries. Though the bar was not spacious by any means, it provided enough room for a stage and small runway which almost extend into the middle of the bar. Two men sat at the end of this runway. One glanced with boozed eyes and his tiny mouth hung open; a man transfixed. The other sat three cracked linoleum seats over. She could not see his eyes for the brim of a black cap covered them. But she did need eye contact to work and she preferred it that way. Though the stoic and silent ones generally tipped the most--- or nothing at all--- it was better than a pack of college kids up from the city. They tended to drink to much, be overtly loud, and there tips were worth shit---always singles, never a five or a ten to make their patronage and patronizing worth it. And when they slid their one dollar bills into what ever strap was at their disposal, they would often consider themselves the new owners of more than just a dance. Hands would deliberately slap and fingers would press into her flesh; parts covered and revealed.

The older men weren’t so grabby. But when it did, the gesture was retracted with in the moment and a soft apology was offered ---sometimes accompanied by another bill.

No. Don’t think like that she thought as she spun around, attempting to hurl the thought from her head and out the tips of her split ends I’m not a beggar. I’m giving them what they want and they give me what I want… what I need.

Though no college men were in the bar tonight. There were the regulars and those who were new. The new men would rarely come from neighboring towns. The newbies would drive up from city forty minutes to the south. That was her city too and she commuted along with them. Her car out back, theirs scattered out front. 

(a real possiblity for a story to expand upon)

The Love that Created the Universe

“Sue, do you remember the story about how the world came into being?” she said. The weight of the words traveled damply in the nearly black room.

“Of course,” she said harshly, “but why the hell would that matter now. How is the explosion of everything into being at once going help us.”

“Trust me when I say it’s not going to get us out of here but it will help. And if nothing else, it will occupy us for the last few minutes of our time together.

“In the beginning there was nothing. No wolves, no stars, no spears, no words or patterns or water or anything. Especially no mud padded huts with sweet smelling smoke quaffing into the night sky. Because all of these things need love to be put together and in the beginning was only Love and it circled and spiraled around itself in the nothingness of the universe. And Love saw the nothingness and loved it, cause that’s all that love knows how to do, to love is its only choice. And Love reached out into the nothingness, which is so unlike itself it had to fill up all that empty space. So love spun of out of itself and out of space and out of time, the stars and the sun and night and day everything that ever existed and everything was held together with love. And that’s why magic works. When we chose love the earth and the seeds, they in turn love the earth and sun and grow and give back to us. And when we chose love the lamb and it feels that love it gets better. But we even have to choose love death, for some times people are not meant to get over an illness and they are meant to follow that current of love into something new and just as lovely.”

And Susan feels that weight on her heart again. She could see tears beginning to form in the corner of her sister’s eyes and her trembling words.

“We can’t be afraid to let all that love come in and we can’t horde it with jealousy or greed. We have to chose to be a channel for love and give it form but not be attached to that form. It is the biggest and hardest thing we have to do. ”

And then Susan collapsed into her sisters outspread arms. She knew then the truth of it all. The power of love and the choice to let it all come in and extend back out. A weight around her heart which she thought was always there fell away like so many tapestries and drapes. She opened up to the power of love, which is the whole of universe, which is in every cell no matter how small or how dark. She chose to let go the weight that kept the magic, the love, at bay; at a constant speed. She let it come in and out, without fear of it filling her up and losing the parts of her which she knew were essential and without resentment for it leaving to whom and what ever it may go. Her sisters ever extended arms and open hands. It was the same as the wheat seeds pushing their way through the dark and into the sunlight. And was exactly the same as the elder women sending the sun below the horizon and with the same grace, going gently into that long black night. And it was exactly the same as her heart valves opening, her mouth opening, her legs opening. It was all opening and receiving and giving.

They were both now crying deeply into each others ruined shoulders. The burses, all purple and brown and blue, pressed against each other with a deep aching numbness. It was in that moment, in the pressing together of their bodies that she gave up all the expectations, all the jealousy and all the anger that caused her so much grief. She never felt as free, as light, as she did then in that cold dark cell. Their weeping reverberated off the stone walls and rattled the wrot iron bars.

Susan felt her sister’s fingers shift along her back, spreading, elongating and becoming cooler. They grew and flattened until the draped across the entirety of her and trialed to the floor. They were softer and stronger. In fact, the whole of her body shifted this way. Her neck starched out from her shoulders and became thinner. Her body became fuller and covered in a downy white feather coat. She could feel something hard and warm, like a stones in a hot spring, press against her neck. It was pleasant against the scared flesh, where not too long a go a rope burned its way through several layers of skin leaving a ring of tissues like a bunch of fabric scrunched around her neck.

Susan withdrew from her sister’s embrace to find a great sawn before her. Its wings outstretched and encircled her. Her head resting upon her shoulders.

Lord of Shallot

A grasshopper bounces against the road side curb, attempting to reach the tall grasses and the waist high weeds. A cigarette butt is thrown from a red truck and it smolders in the ditch. The tobacco gives of the last puffs of sweet smoke into the breeze, never to a light a single blade of grass. And a young man sits in an apartment attempting to write a story about a fantastical universe. He looks up and sees a small field. Button tansy blossoms wave next rusty brown yarrow dead heads. He remembers they use to be so white when they were first in bloom. He crossed the road and picked a few to add some wild life to his studio. But that was months ago and where the summer had its numerous stories told, his pages remain blank, blank as snow.

Across from the field is a small stand of trees. Pines, beach, bitch and maple so densely grown together they give the illusion that a real forest stretches out from behind them. But the storyteller knows better. Beyond the field and the trees are not more trees and more fields but a subdivision. And behind that, a church, a mall, two gas stations and yet another subdivision.

He contemplates this as a vanilla scented incent stick burns away. Smoke twists and dissipates in front of him and the blinking cursor on the screen, but he is lost in thought and pays no attention to either smoke or computer.  He wants so much more than this repetitious stench of urban, suburban sprawl. And so he attempts to write in the words of his favorite author “I want it all to be true because the world really does need griffins and monopods and unicorns and fire-breathing dinosaurs and rivers of stone and impossible and beautiful stories in it. And so she wrote a book”. And so did he. Or at least he attempted to.

When not writing or attempting to write or thinking of amazing and awful things to write about, he tried to make his world as impossible and beautiful as they are in the fairy tales. He grew his hair long and got an apartment on the top story of a six floor building. Surly with his hair bushing his belt loops and with his desk by the window, this would attract a prince or two to come along and rescue him from the monotony of twenty-first century living. And really, it doesn’t even need to be a prince. The floor length mirror and tapestry would certainly be reminiscent of The Lady of Shallot. Gazing at the city in the distance, his Camelot, the stream two blocks over, the wild flowers and grasses with the amber seed heads. All of these reflected in the pages in books of poetry and prose upon his bookshelf.

And so he works by night and day, weaving stories and sending them to publishers to pay rent and student loan debt. Slowly altering his world to include all the wondrous thing which the pages in his books project into the theater of his mind. Perhaps one day, he will get up from his desk, break his mirror and leave the apartment. He will get a canoe and paddle down the stream, to the river and to a place where the world is new and fresh and renewing. Away from his Camelot and his high towers. If he can over come the curse the lady or all those princess who sleep forever and are incased in glass coffins. He will shatter all the glass and tear up all the pages and truly write something new.

He might find himself in the middle of a wooded glen, alive and not dead. Build a hut and raise chickens and a hog. A summer sun will shine through the canopy and autumnal leaves will church breath feet, cloven or otherwise and he will be happy; the baba yaga before she grew old and wicked. And perhaps he will give shelter to a hunter and will repay him with a stag and with his happily-ever-after love. And ivy will climb up the chimney and he will cut his hair and grow pumpkins, as big and as round as the moon.

Writers Block or Something Like It

This is the thing about writers block: it sucks! Although I’m not even sure if I necessary have writers block but perhaps its tortured cousin to it. Perhaps one would call it writers-back up.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas to write about, cause I do. I have several ideas for novels and just as many seeds of short stories tumbling inside my head. What happens is I will write about 200 some words of it and then… poop. Nothing. I’ve lost the spark. I can’t make plot point A connect to plot point B. It’s sad really cause I would love to see this stories and narratives complete themselves. 

I’ve gone back in my hard-drive to a folder entitled STORIES, which is where many a story goes rest for a while. I call it the cryogenic portion of its life. They are there, exactly how I left them. Here is a girl walks to the edge of a forest in search of a pumpkin. A man gives shelter to a sea-faring traveler and is attempting to dock the boat named Selkie. His arms have been pulling on that rope for over a year now. In another, a whale has invited a man to touch her slick skin under the light of a full moon. In another story a woman has been attempting to change her villages’ bigoted attitudes towards the family of satyrs who are her neighbors for quite some time now. 

And these are just the stories I started last year. Never mind the tales I’ve spun over this summer. The crow people and the woman with her cherries may never have the rest of their stories told. The boy who began to study under the wise-woman might never become a fully actualized individual. Who is the Queen of Crustaceans and will she ever reconcile with her sister the Duchess of Cephalopods? Two churches stand in the middle of an post-apocalyptic town and the people are learning to live in harmony with nature again. This is a solute to the Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.

How many other pages will be born and laid to rest in this corner of my hard-drive till I liberate them from their slumber? When will I release them from the task I’ve left them with and find resolution? 

Perhaps, I just need an inspiration and a muse.