Monthly Archives: November 2012

Quotations and attributions

Dylan I

“…I’ll know my song well before I start singing…”

Now, I know there are more than one Dylan. Not the Brit, Thomas, but the American, Zimmerman. You must admit, if you’ve ever listened to him, he has far more quotable phrases than should be allowed one human being.

My wife has told me I should have been writing sooner but I always think of the above Dylan line as a response to such suggestions. Don’t get me wrong, I write. I actually write often, just not fiction. I have spent hours crafting fine, multi-paragraphed, liturgies on topics of politics, religion, sociology, and death. A little about sex. Not a favorite of mine for public consumption though, that last. To paraphrase Yeats, any conversation not about sex or death is inconsequential.

But for the writing, I practice. I think about stories and how they would work out. I lay them out in my head. I have spent many years trying to find my voice, as they say. There are so many things that come along with the writing that I thought it best to bone up on these other skills before setting out.

What’s amazing to me is that there are people such as Bob Dylan who know what they want to do and know how to work their craft from such a young age. I once told someone that Bob Dylan is more like Bob Dylan than I am like myself. What I mean is that there are those who hear their own voice so clearly and follow it so completely that they become what they were truly meant to be. Bob Dylan is a shining example of that person in my eyes.

Here are some of what I consider to be his gems:

“and the national bank, for a profit, sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college.”

“The commander-in-chief says with a sigh, ‘death to all those who would whimper and cry’ and dropping a barbell, points to the sky saying, ‘the sun’s not yellow it’s chicken.”

“If I had the stars from the darkest night and the diamonds from the deepest ocean, I’d trade them all for your sweet kiss ‘for that’s all I’m wishing to be owning.”

“Grandpa died last week and now he’s buried in the rocks. Everybody still talks about how badly they are shocked. But me, I expected it to happen. I knew he’d lost control when he built a fire on main street and shot it full of holes.”

“God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’. Abe said, ‘man, you must be puttin’ me on.’ God said, ‘no’. Abe said, ‘what?’ God said, ‘you can do what you want Abe but the next time you see me coming, you’d better run.’ Abe said, ‘where d’you want this killin’ done?’ God said, ‘out on highway 61’.”

“If you’re looking to get silly, man you’d better go back to where you came from because the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same.”

“They’re selling postcards of the hanging. They’re painting their passports brown. The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors: the circus is in town.”

“now I didn’t mean to be nosy but I went into a bank to get some bail for Arab and all the boys back in the tank. They asked me for some collateral and I pulled down my pants”

“But I mean no harm, nor put fault, in anyone who lives in a vault but it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.”

 

 

 

SciFi short stories

The Secret Keeper

My second published work is now viewable on the science fiction website Nth Degree. Follow the link below if you’d like to read it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I liked writing it.

Click here to read The Secret Keeper.

 

Flash Fiction

Irony and Humor

This piece of flash fiction was published in Conceit magazine in 2010. Unfortunately, they do not have a website with a link and so I have posted it here for you.

 

Irony and Humor

 

Irony and Humor interacted. There had never been anything else that either could recall other than their individual state followed by their interaction. Their constant cycle was of infinite amusement to both and they could imagine nothing better; in fact, nothing at all; that they should think to do with themselves. When they interacted, the result was ecstatic Sublimity and resumption of Attitude.

Being as there was nothing except Irony and Humor, and they being Attitudes, there was no need for else in Existence. Irony and Humor interacted and then resumed Attitude. Things being as they were obviously meant that things were and had always been thus. There was nothing that either could remember except the joy of interaction and resumption of status quo ante. Endlessly.

Neither knew how they had come to be. Neither could imagine what else may have preceded them since it was evident that they were all that had ever been.  Tracing back to the first interaction, there was nothing but they two. Only Attitudes. Then Sublimity. Then Attitudes again, followed by Sublimity. What had set them interacting was a mystery. And Mystery they labeled their Father, as only Mystery lay before them in precedence and awareness.

It was while pondering Mystery that one Attitude; some claim Irony, others Humor; missed interacting fully. We will probably never know which one missed but from this loss of perfect interaction resulted Imbalance and an imperfect resumption of status quo ante: there was residual. This residual lay there but a moment, but then moments were born. It was but a tiny piece, but then substance followed. Space and Time came into existence.

This was new. The Attitudes were worried and curious. This broke with all known experience. In the instant of its occurrence, the instant of observation of what Irony and Humor had wrought, they ceased interaction and resumption. Here is where Time passed and Space expanded.  In alarm, Irony and Humor attempted to interact again, to remedy the error. From this interaction came Cause. And Effect.

Cause and Effect existed within Space and Time, swam through it, drank it in. They could not see Irony nor Humor, who were without. They could see only each other within SpaceTime and they tumbled through It one after the next in sheer ecstasy. Neither could remember a previous moment, nor who may have preceded whom. Theirs became an endless cycle, the one spawning the other over and again. Tumbling over each other from unfolding moment to unfolding moment into the ever expanding Universe; across Space and through Time. An orgiastic freneticism engulfed and enveloped and expanded them until they encompassed all SpaceTime.

Neither could imagine what else there was in Existence since it was evident that they were all that was or had ever been. What had set them in motion was a mystery. They noted the Mystery which lay before them in precedence and awareness and called it their Father.