My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

The book I reviewed yesterday kind of inspired me toward something. Cesar Torres challenged himself to write a story a day at a thousand words each, for twelve days. When it was all over, he ended up with a book. I’m not quite so ambitious, not yet anyway, I don’t think I have that much fiction in me. I can, however, blog. I can always blog. So, I’m going to blog at least five hundred words per day during May. Maybe I’ll fail miserably, we’ll see…

So, I recently read The 12 Burning Wheels, a collection of twelve “micro stories” by Cesar Torres. 12 Burning Wheels is sort of a concept book, not a typical collection of short stories. It’s a book that started as a not-so-simple simple challenge. Torres challenged himself to write twelve stories, stories around a thousand words each, in twelve days. The result of this personal challenge ended up being a rather solid collection of micro fiction.

The 12 Burning Wheels equates to eighty-two pages of engaging fiction. I consider it a collection of magic realism, stories in which people drive cars, slurp Big Gulps, ride L trains, then pop into local pawn shops to pick up magical scrying devices. Stories in which magicians are dubbed “aura technologists” and featured in People Magazine. Stories in which an iPhone app can interpret dreams and foretell one’s future. Magic is a part of every-day life in these stories, it’s just a fact. I always love fiction in which typical human experience is infused with magic, where working love potions can be purchased alongside Mountain Dew. The 12 Burning Wheels tells these sorts of stories.

A few of the tales in The 12 Burning Wheels don’t feel like standalone pieces of micro fiction, they’re more like reading excerpts from much larger pieces of work. I found their abrupt endings to be a little jarring. I’m of the thought that micro fiction or flash fiction, no matter how short, should still tell a complete story. I felt this in only three of Torres’ twelve stories, and even so, I enjoyed the three stories quite a lot. Tores’ prose are lush and delightful to read, 12 Burning Wheels is a collection I definitely recommend.

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City.

I’ll be honest, this tattoo isn’t the easiest to explain, or maybe it’s actually really simple. I mean, as I think about it, writing this just before dawn, it’s really not a very elaborate story…

I’m in the hospital, weekend number one, not really doing much of anything but listening to music, and thinking about someone. She’s nowhere, and I’m thinking about her, and this Nirvana song comes up in my shuffle. It’s a song from Bleach, Big Cheese. So, I’m listening, feeding pretty melancholy about everything, and Kurt sings, “She is glue… How are you?” The line strikes me as one of the truest things I ever heard, about her being glue. People do stick, sometimes it’s amazing, sometimes not, but they’re stuck in your head, and in your heart, and that’s that, they’re with you. I decide that when I get out of that room, when I don’t have a needle in my neck, I’ll get my thirty-fourth tattoo.

(I got this tattoo from a fellow by the name of Fish. Colt, who I really thought would do the rest of my tattoos, isn’t around just now, and it isn’t certain when that might change. So, I thought about it, and I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to drop dead with unfinished tattoo ideas.)

So, last month Amazon released their test version of Kindle for Mac, allowing Kindle eBooks to be read on Mac desktops and laptops. I’ve been reading eBooks since the beginning, and Kindle for Mac is definitely the nicest eBook software I’ve ever used. It’s not even feature-complete, yet the current feature-set is totally enough to crush other eBook formats. For example, the Kindle app is tied to a user’s Amazon account. If one purchases a book on say, Kindle for iPad, that book gets synced to Kindle for Mac. So, one can have their entire eBook library on-hand on any device running Kindle software. I have multiple Macs, so it’s really nice being able to have my library whether I’m on my home Mac or my travel Mac. The Kindle apps also have a feature called, WhisperSync, which allows one to start reading a book on one device, then pick up exactly where they left off on another. I love being able to read a book out on the town, then pick it up on my home Mac without losing my place.

The biggest attraction to Kindle, however, is the book selection. I’ve been able to find just about every book I ever wanted. Just about… Michael Cisco isn’t published in Kindle-form, which was quite a let-down, but he’s the only author I haven’t been able to find. Maybe one day, I hope.

At any rate, until Apple releases an iBooks app for Mac OS X, I’m all about Kindle for Mac.

Okay, so, I no longer particularly feel like hot garbage, which is a nice change. I don’t feel exactly spectacular, but I don’t feel all sickly and ill either. I don’t feel as exhausted, and generally ill at ease. I’m kind of forcing myself to write this nothing, trying to get back to some kind of “normalcy.” I haven’t felt like writing in so long, but the words are starting to dance around in my head again.

I feel well enough for another tattoo… I’m really excited about this one, my thirty-fourth, I can’t stop thinking about it. My artist, Colt, has been out of town since January, so I haven’t gotten a tattoo since. I promised Colt that he’d be the only person to give me tattoos until I run out of room, or one of us drops dead, and I meant it. So, now that he’s back, we have more words to dig into my skin.

That’s it for now…

So, I’m just getting back after two weeks in the hospital with a ridiculous sinus infection. I had to have nasal surgery. My spectacular anesthesiologist, Dr. Mangar, kept me asleep, and alive, for over an hour during the procedure. I’m out now, trying to get back into things, but it’s slow. I’m tired, I’m a kind of uneasy, sometimes really uneasy. I’m just not myself yet. I’m a little frayed, a little fucked up.

Bear with me, while I dig my way out of this mess.

So, Monday night my friends, Jimmy and Danielle, voiced four of my pieces at Sacred Grounds‘ open mic night…

Telling a story, The world outside is burning, One passing dusk, and He came with her.

He’s sitting there on the kitchen floor, shitty, white linoleum. He’s sitting there, back against a cold steel fridge, a half a bottle of Percocet crushed and dissolved in a tumbler of vodka nestled in his right hand, a carving knife in his left. He’s set to tell a story, beginning, to middle, to end. He could be in the bathroom right now, lying in a warm bubble bath, clutching a bottle of red wine mixed with Xanax in one hand, and a straight-razor in the other, but that wouldn’t be the right setting for telling this particular story. It’d be too soft, too expected, it wouldn’t speak in the right tone. No, the kitchen with a tumbler of vodcacet, and a carving knife, that, well, that will really grab readers, really pull them close. He wants someone close.

So, he’s sitting there, it’s 3:00 AM, dull moonlight pours in through a large skylight. He likes this room because of that skylight, sipping hot coffee in the morning sun, sitting here right now, under a clear night sky. He likes feeling outside, yet not.  He looks toward his vodkacet, knows he’s about to feel so good, so warm. It’ll feel cold in his mouth, burn as he swallows. He’ll be wrapped in a cozy blanket of false contentment. That feeling will be the off-brand version of a lover’s touch, or kiss, or the decadent oblivion found inside the right woman, lying on tousled silk sheets. The off-brand version of how it feels to wake in the morning and see her face. He sighs and takes a sip, decides not to stop until the glass is empty. It feels just like he imagined it would, maybe better. Just now, Goddamn fuckin’ zombies could shamble into the room to keep his company piece by piece, he wouldn’t care. He’s floating around, and hanging out on clouds.

With that warm feeling washing over him, floating on clouds, he takes the carving knife, runs it down both wrists, left and right, slow and vertical. It doesn’t hurt, the vodkacet makes a whisper of all the pain he’s ever felt. His arms feel warm and wet, life pooling all around him, telling a story. He’s bleeding letters, letters forming words, forming sentences, forming paragraphs. It’s a story of loneliness, and tedium, frustration, and loss, and failure. A story spreading out all over that shitty linoleum floor, for anyone to read. A story that goes and then, and then, and then, falling toward resolution.

He closes his eyes, begins to feel sleepy. He thinks about this story that’s spilling out around him, slow and quiet-like, wonders how exactly it will end. He’s writing a stream of consciousness, and he doesn’t know where it might stop.

He climbs onto her back, all slow-like and deliberate. Sabrina feels his shell against hers, pinning her against the cold earth. She feels heat inside her, washing away all the befores until all she can feel is the blinding heat of right now. She arches her shell against his, taking him in deeper, closes her eyes, shutting out the world while keeping him in, a feeling almost too decadent to stand. She wants it to last, but it won’t. She wants it to last, but she knows it can’t. He invited her to follow, to go to this place of white-hot ecstasy, he invited her, and with a sigh, Sabrina came.

So, if I don’t die during my trache change later today, I vow two things.

First, I plan to devote more of my time toward writing unicorn, and turtle focused erotica. 1xbet شرح موقع  I figure, erotica is very erotic, and unicorns are astonishingly beautiful, so putting the two together, well, I don’t think people will be able to sleep at night. At least, not without going heels to Jesus. موقع رياضي As for the turtles, just think about it.

The second something involves a woman, but that’s between me, and her, and the lamppost. Maybe one day this blog will know, but not today. الكازينو