Elephants and Starfish

And we're in the bay, strolling on the boardwalk that juts into the bay, the haphazard jumble of townhouses and shabby greenspace and rusted wharf buildings that overhang the bay barely giving us a glance. A disinterested late summer afternoon.

The water below us is clear, hubcap-sized starfish the colour of aubergines and mandarins splayed on dark rocks. 

"There was never a moment when I believed it," you say. "But never mind, tell me something kind."

I've forgotten what we were talking about, although I love the rhythmic husk of your voice and its easy rhymes. To our left a statue of a dancer, or perhaps a yogi in one of the warrior asanas, seems to move. From the corner of my eye I see you blink, distracted. A herring gull literally screams. Loneliness steals in like a silent comet through Neptune's frigid orbit. The quiet of the air is like the sudden removal of the air and we stare at each other, contemplating panic.

Did you know elephants cry salt tears? That life is so tenacious that there are electric bacteria that eat electrons? That tigers cannot purr? That sleeping on your stomach is more likely to make you dream of sex? That there are more stars in the known universe than all the grains of sand on every beach on earth? That there is a town named Okay, OK?

"I can't breathe," I say.

Your eyes are huge. Galactic centres. Amoebas. Your terror of tsunamis, I think, randomly, is almost phobic. Suddenly, more than anything else, I want to love you.  

Then there's the roar. Local airport, I think, has to be. It's a plane taking off; sometimes they catch the air currents in such a way that it sounds like the coming apocalypse, and with this head-on angle appear like rockets seeking to escape the grip of this teeming globe.

But all the other baywalkers and tourists, weedlovers and West Coast saunterers, they've all stopped in their tracks while the roar only roars more, howls more, filling up the whole dome of the world that used to have air, and we follow everyone's gaze northward. No airplane with rocket dreams. No, we see the roiling infected stems and boiled brain heads of three mushroom clouds where presumably Vancouver once stood, that new-ruined jewel, that universe of memories, that charnel city calling me blindly home while moaning its futile requiem.

Still not able to speak—for what is left to speak about?—we embrace, look out upon the water, read each other's thoughts, and together climb the railing. O starfish. I hope you're okay with unexpected company and more salt tears.

Presence

More three minute flash fiction, and thanks again to Dan Mader and his blog for the inspiration, the motivation and the opportunity to inflict more words on people. For want of a better title, this one is called Presence. Like the Led Zeppelin album, not the things you unwrap at Christmas. Or, actually, whatever you want it to be—now it's left the confines of my skull, it's fair game. These tiny pieces come from somewhere buried; no planning, no editing. Just words bubbling from the subconscious like dreams.

It followed me. Soon as I found the trailhead and set one hiking booted foot on the damp mulch and root-strewn path, I felt its presence. An animal? I don't know, I never saw it. Whatever followed me was crafty smart, blending into the fractured barcode woods, melding with banners of mist, chuckling alongside creek beds. No doubt it enjoyed my pain as I struggled up the mountain, raw with lung burst, heart hammer and quadricep quiver. I could feel its glee, its grin of triumph, knowing each step took me closer to its awful stretched maw. And when I became lost, its eagerness was rapid warm gusts on the back of my neck. But I found my way, and next time I'll be stronger and will know more. It sits here now, in the darkest corner of my basement, pouting, sulking, knowing it cannot lose but nevertheless will have to wait.

The Lonely Room

Every Friday, JD "Dan" Mader opens his blog, Unemployed Imagination, to impromptu flash fiction writing, a generous gift to his fellow writers. Whether you participate or lurk outside admiring the entries, it's always a fun playground. This week, I started a piece and it kind of took over and, embarrassingly, it went way beyond the two minutes of allotted time. But it said something slightly different about something frightening and sad, in a way I hadn't captured before, so I thought I'd better reproduce it here, edited slightly, on this poor neglected blog of mine. So, here's "The Lonely Room":

It's like being trapped inside a dirty white room with only one door: the glare of the fluorescents scratches your corneas; the random, rhythmless drip of a tap somewhere keeps you from sleeping or even relaxing. The lights make dying electric sounds. There are things in the dim corners; terrible things. You wonder if the room will run out of oxygen. Your heart rate picks up, tethering itself to this new anxiety. But then it in turn goes away; you forget to be scared and wonder instead whether you're already dead. Then, there are the scenes on the stained walls, projected by a pitiless torturer known as nostalgia: happy scenes that feel like they could sever your aorta; once-shining things now like shards. They cut and you bleed. You are in this room every day. For weeks. Months. Bleeding, in appalling pain or feeling nothing at all. You must be dead, you think. Then, one day, of no particular calendrical significance, you stand and look through the single dirty pane of glass and see a small boy walking by and another child on a bicycle is riding like a neutrino in a collider toward the first child and you think some terrible cosmic catastrophe will occur, but the boy spies the bike and sidesteps it, and…. that is all. The threat is past, has passed. You once knew how to do that and now you know again; you know to ready yourself for the assaults, that they will be coming—of that you can be sure—but you can roll away, use their momentum, sidestep them, remove their sting, deflect the worst. At which point, astonished, you realize the door had never even been locked.

Writers Helping Writers Helping Others

Yes, I know. It's been a while. Quiet down. I'm here now, aren't I? Anyway, I have a couple of pimping promotional duties to attend to, awkwardly constructed blog post title notwithstanding.

First off, the indefatigable Morgen Bailey featured me in her latest author spotlight, and for her pains received a volley of flagrant, barefaced lies. I really shouldn't be allowed out. You don't have to read it. Not only do you get a very shady bio, but you get my muddled, opinionated drivel about genre versus literary, a completely inessential way to pass this Fourth of July.

Coincidentally, I am (we are) also featured on the website RABMAD, which is a handy acronym for Read A Book, Make A Difference. The site showcases writers whose books contribute in some way to a cause or charity, which is why they graciously chose to feature Seasons. Since there are four authors, none of whom is predominant (even the order on the book's cover is not only chronological but also alphabetical, whether you use first or last names), RABMAD will feature each one individually when they collate all the info.

Well, that's it, I think. Leaves me with a last big shoutout to everyone (like Morgen Bailey and Rob Guthrie) who selflessly promotes writers on their websites. Your tireless work is appreciated even during those fraught moments we forget to say thank you.

Seasons Now Published

If there were such a thing as a Writer Genie, I'd only have one wish to ask of it: please make me more prolific. Actually, that's not true. Since childhood, I've urged every character in every tale to ever feature the standard three wishes to simply ask for an infinite number of wishes, but to no avail. Why doesn't anyone ever think of that?

Ha. But anyway, where was I? Oh right. Prolific. You've heard the phrase "verbal diarrhea," right? Well, I suffer from the polar opposite. Consonantal constipation. In short, I need a lexicographic laxative.

But today, thanks to the efforts of some fine colleagues, I and those very same compadres have (to mercifully change the metaphor) added a few more blocks of ice to the glacially expanding edifice of our written output. The story behind Seasons is as serendipitous as the stories within Seasons, if that makes sense. At some point last September, a story about a troubled young woman wrestling with self-destructive impulses appeared to me almost unbidden. No doubt it emerged from a subconscious filled with the real life horror stories of young people who are so often dealt a cruel and arbitrary hand before they're even born. "Summer Long" is a difficult character study, dark and anxious and fearful. But I think it said what I'd needed to say. Then a chance exchange in the comments section (you can read how it all unfolded here) resulted in a chain reaction in which Edward Lorn, JD Mader and Jo-Anne Teal each began to add a new, related story, a season at a time, until we ended up with this delicately balanced quartet of tales poised between oblivion and redemption.

And now, you can buy the collected stories for an insanely low price, and better yet, know that 100 percent of the royalties will go to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Yeah, the four of us won't see a single penny. (Which is good, as half the authors here are Canadian and pennies are now outlawed in Canada. It's true.)