"May You Be Held"

Sumac, "May You Be Held"

Maybe heavy experimental music doesn't scream Christmas.  Maybe it does.  But I walked at least 100 miles to this over the past year and saw many deer and raptors and wore out at least two perfectly good pairs of shoes.

I braved Costo so tomorrow for Christmas lunch me and my Dad are having some smoked ham, stuffing, gravy, and salad.  My sister turned us both on to the ginormous apple pies they have too.  My Dad has sheepishly been asking me if he can have a piece for breakfast, as if I'd ever say no to pie before lunch for me or anybody else.  What am I, Hitler?

One year ago I was finishing my final teaching contract in South Korea, in lurvely Daegu, and preparing to move back here to America and sleepy Bellingham.  I had no idea what this year held in store for me, what with moving in with my Dad as his full-time caretaker.  I've been getting up at 6 a.m. every morning for almost a year now (which if you knew me in real life would probably shock you more than anything), reading a hell of a lot, writing short stories, and working part-time at the local Humane Society.

Living in the woods north of Bellingham is my life now -- for now -- for the foreseeable future.  None of this was particularly easy, but I hope the worst fights and arguments are over.  Nobody wants to get old, and nobody wants to admit they've grown old, and nobody ever gets too old to realize that they've become old.

That's all crystal clear, I'm sure.

I've got Christmas day off to enjoy the holiday with my Dad, and I'm filling in next week for my co-worker.

I'm not sure where any of this is headed, but I'm trying to make the most of it.  I hope you and your family and your friends find yourself in a good place in 2022, and if that's too much to ask well, May You Be Held.

Writerly Stuff

I have two short stories in the new edition of a local, online literary journal (it's free!).  This quarter's theme is "Golden Age," and my two stories are: "Water Meat" about a date in South Korea, and "The Third Loneliest Woman in All of Whatcom County," about working in a kayak factory.

I've been enjoying the other stories as well.

And Happy Thanksgiving!

Money Always Wins -- A Halloween Story

For your Halloween reading pleasure and delectation, a story from me (cw: gore).  Happy Halloween!

Money Always Wins

The plan for Halloween was simple.  Stranded at that frustrating age between enjoying a night collecting free candy and a night of hard drinking and dancing in as little clothing and as much body paint as possible, the potential hook-up and all, Sasha, Sasha, and Joaquin decided to make their own fun.  They were all students at the local high school way up and out of town to the north, practically Canada but not quite.  Fall had already moved in – not the crisp, bright autumns you see in movies set in New England where people pick apples in over-priced fleece vests, but the rainy, dank fall of Bellingham, Washington.  The leaves didn't crunch under your feet as much as they turned to mush, and fat, confused slugs wondered where the sunshine was hiding before being pancaked by truck tires.  Battered pairs of jeans and leather jackets, each a size or two too small, were their uniforms now – like shivering little Ramones for the next five months.  Only tourists or old people would be caught wearing weather appropriate gear out here.  Sasha G., rarely acknowledged as pack leader but leader all the same, had made plans for the Saturday night before Sunday, Halloween day.  They were going to break in and search through the abandoned tribal casino just off the highway towards Mount Baker.

Sasha G. came from even further up the highway, where a few generations back a local Orthodox church had payed to bring entire families of fellow believers over from Russia.  There hadn't been too much thought put into just what these families would do once they were settled in the wilds north of the town proper, but construction jobs were usually plentiful.  People liked to retire out here – buy a piece of land with more trees than they knew what to do with, then cut them all down to make lawns, almost out of fright at so much wild nature being allowed to remain in place.  So a snowball of plumbers, electricians, and general workers who knew how to use a chain saw (or pretended to) could make something of a living out here along with the retirees from California and their pensions.  That's what Sasha G.'s own father did, close to retirement now himself, as well as Sasha B.'s father before the heart attack.  Joaquin's dad was a dentist in town but liked living out here with the deer and the squirrels and the rabbits, who actually seemed to love the isolation and quiet despite the fact that his wife and son very much did not.

Programming Notes

I've really appreciated the feedback and encouragement on what's shaping up to be -- gasp! -- my first novel, The Give and The Take.  I've been writing a lot, much more than I expected, since I got out here in February to take care of my Dad.  The subject matter is, of course, pretty damn obvious.  But I do feel as if the project has arrived at an important point -- a good point -- where it would be best to keep my first drafts more private, less public.  For a while though it really felt good to get something out there, even if this blog doesn't get a whole lot of readers (Quality over Quantity!).  It's funny living in the middle of nowhere -- on the one hand I'm surprised, daily, by something, something the Old Man says or does, or talking to a neighbor.  But it is lonely out here -- there's no other word for it -- and the gates of my memory are more greased-up than usual, and have been for months.  There's no telling what ghosts, friendly or otherwise, will walk out and start yapping at me at any given time.

I was keeping notebooks in South Korea but rarely taking the time to go back and give that material the editorial muscle it really needed to be shaped into something worth sharing.  A few good bits of it have made their way into The Give and The Take, and will continue to do so.  But while I'm going to keep that stuff "private" for now, I am going to start posting some of my short stories on this here blog.  At some point I'll even polish them up and send them out for potential publication, but I know from experience that that whole dance takes work, and you can't half-ass it the way you can popping up an eight page short story online.

For what it's worth, I wrote poetry for many years but basically stopped around the half-way mark of my time in Korea, around 2013 or so.  There were a number of reasons, but none more important than the fact that I haven't really read much poetry since then either, and don't miss it all that much.

So my longer work is going into the garage and I'm lowering the doors for now, but hopefully you'll be entertained by some of my recent efforts in writing stories.  And, for better or worse, they aren't all about my ten years living in South Korea!