I'm back in the house in Georgia.  This is strange, as I haven't thought of it for many years.  The light is fantastic, as always, in the office at the back where my grandfather used to work.  His eyesight was excellent, but due to the nature of his work, he needed… Read full post »

The food here has never been too good, and very hard to find.  To get a sandwich, in the Land of the Dead, that's the thing.  To find anyone or any source at all of more than a measly, two-sided crust of bread, with an equally awful slice of something basically… Read full post »

My brother Mort is there.  We're sitting in the kitchen, in the old house, talking over coffee.  Mother is upstairs.  This is right after dad died, when I came home for a year to "settle the affairs."

Mort has been telling me about a business in town he's thinking of buying… Read full post »

I've decided not to post another serial here.  I am going elsewhere.  Adieu. Read full post »

Tommy and I landed in Algiers about half past four...No, wait, that's either much too late or much too early...Goddamn, I never took that way across...There's too much rubbish in here to get out all at once, look in the fridge for it...there must be something in there, waaaay in back,… Read full post »

She came with the rains

She came in the summer when it had

not yet rained. And wet

though she be she didn't interest

me. She was too young, too green.

She came with the rains

and when she'd gone

I sang a sad peasant psalm. And

never set foot on a… Read full post »

What we are going through

each of us

in our own damn way

is something like water going down the drain

What we are witnessing

is the fact printed in big BOLD letters

in indelible ink on all our chests:

"Life's a Killer"

Now, let me tell you, get over it,… Read full post »

1. Never claim to be timeless.  Tiresome is what people really mean when they call something timeless.

2. Do not tell a story if it sounds familiar. Unless it's being told as a story that everyone has heard before, and altered in the self-consciousness of that moment.

3. Leave the "big issu… Read full post »

I think  not

therefore

I am

unbothered by  all

that.

That's watching television.

I think

a whole helluva

LOT

Therefore

I think I must be

onto something.

But perhaps not...

That's reading newspapers.

I think

and then

I wait a while

(one or two years, sometimes)

To see what another

thinks,… Read full post »

3.

West came back over on Sunday.  Everything was quiet, he said, and he couldn't figure out where everyone had gone.  Maybe it's up in this town, I suggested, that happens from time to time.  Places dry up, have to recharge.  No, he insisted, it's there, it's just not coming to… Read full post »

(abridged version of a novella-in-the-making) 

1. 

Mirrors should reflect a bit more before sending back images. -Cocteau

West was in trouble.  Of course, he was always in trouble.  He said he knew the guy, but that didn't mean anything, and anyway the police were waiting right ou… Read full post »

Think it's time we see something longer here on OS in terms of writing than the usual one-off rant or hypersensitive "critique" of whatever has your tampons in a bind.

Will be putting up the first take of a novella I'm working on here soon.

Feel free to put up some… Read full post »

After the video, Naas didn't know what to do.  Dr. Vasich had left them with their own thoughts.  They sat for a while in silence in the big empty lecture hall, and finally Andrea spoke.

"It's not going to be hard to find a parking space at least."

Naas took a… Read full post »

Naas was in the Soup.

There were a group of nuns and they were whispering to each other.  At first Naas thought they might be DUO's, but their robes, billowing in the chill wind of an overcast day, were the heavy black raimant of regular Church clergy, not the dark blue… Read full post »

"There.  That should feel better."

The doctor, having finished adjusting the mesh cap with electrodes stretched across Naas's head, stepped back, and the light flashed directly in his eyes again.  He blinked but didn't look away.  He couldn't have done so… Read full post »

"Perhaps you two should spend some time together.  Get to know one another.  There are, after all, some more human requirements involved..."

They were standing in the hall outside the dining area.

"There's Club Noxx," Andrea said, and Naas and the doctor looked at her in mild surprise. … Read full post »

"Please, come in."

For a moment Naas didn't move.  He had the feeling that something threatening lay just beyond the threshold of the door, something hard to define.

"Please," the voice repeated, nearer, more insistent.  "Here, I'll get the lights..."

A square of deep blue illumination appe… Read full post »

"Would you look at me?"

No "sir" after the question.  Naas looked up at the man.  It wasn't that he was taller, or that Naas was so short--he was well over six feet, thin, muscular--but the man was standing on a higher level.  The area on the other side of the… Read full post »

"The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of.  We can do with the past exactly what we wish.  What we can't do is to change its consequences."

-John Berger, Ways of Seeing 

There was nothing.

And then they were through.

The descent in the… Read full post »

Richy was an asshole and lived in a convent sixty stories high.  He thought he knew everything.

One day Tom came to town--and "old" friend--and said, "Richy, I bet you never seen this City.  I mean close up, real close up."

And Richy said, swirling the perfect cubes in his glass, "Well… Read full post »

Derek was fine and Derek had to be there by seven or eight or maybe it was later but he didn't think it was important now he was on his way and once you're on your way you don't care anymore how late you'll be it becomes kind of part of… Read full post »

(automatic writing exercise, with minimal corrections -- For Sam B.) 

There were forty-seven steps.  He'd counted them.  He'd counted them going up, and he'd counted them going down.  The seventeenth and twenty-third ones were uneven.  The rest were stur… Read full post »

And a very Happy New Year (if we don't all starve to death).

Then there was this old woman, and they wouldn't leave this old woman alone.   First  they hacked away at some bush she had beside the driveway, and they left pieces in the road.  Then they tied ripped strips of cloth--God knows what they used--to the eaves of her garage, right wh… Read full post »

In a jar in the garage

there was a mouse.

And in a corner by the window

there was a spider.

The mouse had been forgotten,

the spider slept soundly.

The mouse, upon its capture,

had been given fine lettuce and leaves

and wood chips. (I don't know why

they put in wood… Read full post »