Bathroom Monologue: Hollow Tree

We laughed at prophecies that we'd be devoured by hollow trees. We didn't know "hollow tree" is arbor-speak for "house." Not until the ceilings caved.

Finding Buddha in the Road - #fridayflash

This is a re-post from a few years ago. As I type this on Thursday night I am sick as a dog and not sure if I'll even get up tomorrow. Please excuse the redux, and if you can, giggle at it.

My teacher always said, “You’re not supposed to have teachers. The truth is already in you.”

But I kept visiting him, so he wound up saying other things. On that day, the thing that came to mind was, “If you find Buddha in the road, help dig him out.”

It came to mind because I saw a rotund man in an orange robe flailing his arms. He was buried up to his navel in gravel. I took him by the hands and jerked with all my might, but he would not budge. I thought him too hefty to pull free, but he explained.

“A nasty old philosopher stuck me in here. Said the only way out was the way that could not be known.”

“I didn’t think you were the sort to get into fights,” I said. “Or call people nasty.”

He folded his hands together. “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.”

“Oh, I don’t!” This was the first impression I wanted to make. “I mean, I think you are what you are, not what I think you are.”

“Then you think I am what I think I am. I am still bound within what you think of me.”

“But I only think you are what you think you are.”

“Do you think you know what I think I am?”

“No. That can’t be known.”

“Then why do you think I am whatever I think I am?”

“You shouldn’t be bound by other people’s conceptions. It’s your internal existence.”

I don’t think the Buddhism I’d picked up from a master who wanted me out of his house impressed this man very much. He started playing with rocks.

“What if I think I am whatever a third person thinks I am? If I then invest my identity in another, am I any longer what you think I am?”

“I swear, I don’t think I know who you are. You’re just the Buddha.”

“Now I believe you don’t know who I am, regardless of what you think. My name’s Qi Wei, not Buddha.” He scratched next to his eye, perhaps idle motion, perhaps drawing attention to his distinctly Asian features. “You know, he was Indian.”

It makes you feel very guilty, when you want to punch a man who is buried to his navel in gravel. I curled a fist, then released it and turned to walk away. Qi Wei let me get five paces before imparting something.

“But if I am the Buddha internally, and not Qi Wei as I espouse externally, then I am what you admire without you thinking it, and you would have met Buddha in the road and done nothing more than walk away. Can you live with that?”

“You said you weren’t him!”

“I also said not to believe in anything simply because you have heard it.” He picked a stone out of his belly button. “I’ve said that one more than once, over the years.”

A year later I read some Chinese philosopher commanding that if you found Buddha in the road, “kill him.” He must have met this guy, too.

Manly?: Examining Paul S. Kemp's Criteria for "Masculine" Characters

I lied when I wrote that I hadn’t been reading anything while writing We Don’t Always Drown. One of the most interesting things on the web in the last couple weeks was Paul S. Kemp’s attempt to explain why he writes “masculine fiction,” which promptly exploded in a feminist fireball. Kemp is not an author I read frequently, which made his explanations more interesting because they were purely theoretical. They were also grossly gender-prescriptive and problematic.

My idea of a manly character.

Kemp has been taken to task by many writers, including Teresa Frohock and Sam Sykes. Most responses have either been contrasting his ideology with their own fiction, or yelling “Screw you.” Both are understandable responses. But I’d like to break down one specific paragraph from his post, in which Kemp listed criteria for what makes a character “traditionally masculine.” 

So brace yourself for some meat-headedness and follow me to the bold quotes.

 “They answer violence with violence.”

-That sounds like boring storytelling, but is hardly exclusively masculine. I know plenty of women who both respond with and instigate violence. What’s worrisome about this being the first criteria is the possible inference that women have another default – particularly that they may cower and be passive in the face of violence. If that’s your inference, you instantly resent Kemp. I hope, naively, that he means women have a broad range of reactions to violence rather than always punching back, so that some characters in his world are dynamic. But we doubt that’s what he means, right?

“They’re courageous in the face of danger.”

-No feminist is listening to you after this point. If courage in the face of danger is masculine and not human, then some other response is feminine. Even if he didn’t intend it, holy shit does it sound like he means that traditionally women are meek and need saving in the face of danger. Is it true? I don’t know, nor do most of the people who are mad at him right now. Most don’t care because the misogynist inferences are too easy, especially after…

“They’re stoic in the face of challenges/pain.”

-A marginally less offensive version of the highly offensive previous item. This one I’ve also never considered masculine because I’ve known so many women who are stoic in the face of challenges. And not to downplay the misogyny of his claim, but it’s also incredibly harmful to a young male reader’s psyche depict men’s default response to pain as stoicism. More of that in the next item.

“They have their emotions mostly in check.”

-This one speaks to me. For my whole life I’ve felt like American culture was telling me to bottle up or strangle my emotions, and that feeling and sharing were privileges for girls and women. “Be a man” means shut off your heart and serve. It’s messaging that screwed me up and several men who have been dear friends of mine, not all of whom are still alive. And thus this is the most troubling item on the list, because it suggests Kemp writes stories endorsing this psychologically scarring horse shit.

“And they act in accordance with a code of honor of some kind.”

-Hey, most of us like codes of honor, at least safely removed from our world and cemented in fiction where it never revenge-kills our families. This is the one where I’d need to be a Kemp reader to know what the heck he’s talking about. I hope that he’s not writing stories in which men are the only ones with honor or morality. However, I don’t know a tradition in which women have none of this. Systems that seek to strip it from them, yes, but that’s something grotesque that also deserves ripping apart.

"Thematic elements in a lot of my work that square with this involve the obligations of fatherhood, the depths of friendship between men who’ve faced death together, the bonds of brotherhood (figuratively)."

-If this is what he led with and emphasized, I’d be down. Who would blame any one author for being interested in these themes? That’s half The Iliad right there. But it’s hard to read it as just “my interests” after so much hard gender-prescription in front of it, and Kemp later tries to justify it by saying he believes men should die on ships before women and children, and if that doesn’t convince you, also offers the credentials of being irreligious and a Democrat.

There’s the temptation to yell at Kemp, but there are two sides to this. It’s a great service to see a man name off the things he thinks are expected of him, and Kemp makes it plain in the comments that he feels these sorts of behaviors are expected of a man. The aggravating element is that he’s also endorsing these things, and endorsing them as gendered. Saying women “can” do these things but they are still more masculine is so frustrating that… well, the internet might yell at you for doing it.

“Apparently there's a Narcoleptic Vampires series...” – Colin F. Barnes

DeMarcus has always possessed an alarming tolerance to alcohol and pain killers, which is why he dropped out of college. It's also why he's custodian here, of all places, though being custodian of any busy cemetery requires tolerance for people's discomfort and oddities. Because his mother is a head trauma specialist who married the president of a Fantasy Football League, he has a high tolerance for the absurd. That last serves him well this Wednesday morning as he discovers another mound of ash in front of one of the doors to one of the crypts.

DeMarcus squints from the ash, to the authentic faux-gothic crypt, to the sun. That last makes him wince; he’s never been good at not looking the sky in the eye, and it's always too bright in the mornings. Must have to do with Global Warming. Jerking away causes his neck to ache, and he rubs at the bandage. The twin punctures beneath sting familiarly. He wishes he could take something for it. Maybe holy water?

Any non-holiday Wednesday morning is a slow one; the dew before every grave is undisturbed. He collects his broom and dust pan, then notices the keys jutting from the crypt door's lock. He steps over the ashes, pushing the door with the broom handle. It jostles against its bolts; it's still locked.

"Passed out that close to home, eh?"

DeMarcus rubs his bandage again. He's also grown a high tolerance to irony, he thinks, as he pulls out his cell and dials Kristopher. He always gets voice mail. For all his tolerances, DeMarcus hates that Kristopher always lets him go to voicemail, and so DeMarcus just says it.

"Another one bites the dust. Also bit me - third one this season, so I'll be keeping eighty percent of his deposit this time. You can put out another open space ad. Got to tell me how you keep finding the narcoleptic ones." He chuckles, which causes the muscles in his neck to lock up in protest until he squats against the crypt for support. This hurts like hell, even for eighty percent. It's in the throes of the ache that he adds, "You're lucky I've got a high tolerance to vampirism, asshole. See you before dusk, unless you want to handle a night shift for once."

BM: Was Lincoln's Depression the Fuel for Greatness?

Joshua Shenk wrote a book called Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. I read an article by him about it, not the book itself, but the title spurred something in me. The following is what it spurred.

The gnome was puzzled as soon as he departed the esophagus. His fellow gnomes were shoveling what looked like solid sadness into great ovens that burned around the president's stomach.

A slightly taller than average gnome approached him with a clipboard.

"You one of the new men?"

"Sir, yes, sir." The new gnome straightened his posture. "Reporting for duty in service of my country, sir."

"Good, good," said the superior gnome. "Fetch a shovel and get to burning that depression."

"Sir, is it constitutional to damage the emotions of the commander in chief, sir?"

The superior gnome frowned over his clipboard.

"That's why we're here, private."

"Sir, I read that depression was the cause of his greatness, sir."

"No, no. The fuel." The superior gnome came closer. "It's the fuel of his greatness. And what do you do with fuel?"

The new gnome kept his eyes forward.

"Sir, store it in something safe, sir?"

"You're a cute one. What do you do with gasoline? Burn it. What do you do with coal? Burn it."

"Sir, so what you're saying is..."

"What I'm saying is that if we want this president to get anything done we've got to find all his depression and set it on fire. Now come on. He's got to emancipate the slaves and win the biggest war this country's ever seen! It's going to take a lot of depression."

"And cause it, I'd assume.” And then he remembered to add, “Sir!"

The superior gnome pointed to the nearest oven, which billowed with a smoky melancholy.

"That is not our problem! Now fetch a shovel or start cleaning the stoves. The grease that builds up in there is figuratively and literally bad for morale."

Bathroom Monologue: You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies.

You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies. They promote violence. 87% of viewers were found more likely to commit a misdemeanor. 35% were found to have committed a felony within ten days of watching one. 11% of viewers disappear. Someone somewhere high up puts you on a list.

I've heard that when you leave the movie theatre, you never leave alone. A man nine inches taller than you, wearing a coat a shade of black seen nowhere else on earth, follows you back to your car. He lurks in your shadow for three days. Then you lurk in his for the rest of your days.

Really, you shouldn't watch those movies because they're haunted. I've heard about viewers getting obscene phone calls and being dragged into mirrors and television sets. Dark-haired little girls manifest and maul them.

Viewers keep dozing off and then waking up on the sun, with no stars out to guide them home. I hear they're touching movies, but surely you can find a more terrestrial way to enjoy yourself.

They eat your soul.

They don't eat your soul. They chew until they are bored.

You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies.

Bathroom Monologue: Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. You're not even a nice person – you're nice relative to other social climbers in the company, but you've stepped on my forehead at least three times climbing the ladder. Nicer guys are rungs in a ladder that you are ascending effortlessly, and I might say, often callously. An even remotely nicer could not cut pensions that way. The stuff you've put on the company expense account? These charges suggest an absence of moral compass that, if possessed, would make your series of promotions wholly implausible. I can only hope that you are a nice enough guy to not destroy the blue collar level of the company now that you've escaped it. The workforce is worried. Many have been jilted before. It's happened to nicer guys."

The Last Eight Books I Abandoned and The Psychology of Abandonment

Recently an interesting infographic has been circulating from Goodreads. Elizabeth K. Chandler tried to sort out why readers continue reading or give up on a book, peppered with interesting quotes from a few of the participants. It caused me to reflect on the books I've given up this year.

Bathroom Monologue: Shredded Viagra for Andreas Sundgren

Andreas Sundgren asked for a flash based on this image.
Who was I to deny him?

Andri spotted the little boy half an hour before anyone else. He slid down the slope to the foundation of the dike and water splashed beneath his shoes. There was a leak. Andri recognized the boy's chubby face – Hans Something, one of the skater kids from in town. Now the boy shivered, jamming his hand into a cleft in the stone. Water spurted around his little fist, and his arm was turning a deeper shade of blue than Andri had known possible.

"Help! Help!" Hans called through chattering teeth. "It's leaking!"

Damn, and he'd been on his way to a date. He'd been looking forward to this for weeks, too. Telma did not open her doors easily.

Andri slid up behind the boy, nudging his shoulders. The boy jerked his blue hand free, water gushing from the hole and threatening to tearing more stone with it. Immediately Andri leaned in, jamming an index finger inside, but water streamed around the digit and soaked his sleeve. He tried pushing his middle finger in as well, but while they were tall enough, they weren't thick enough to plug the hole. Too small for his fist, too big for his fingers, and now he felt the water's chill rising up to his heels.

Hans, or whatever the kid's name was, rubbed his numb little fingers and commiserated, "Mine weren't big enough either, sir."

Andri clenched his teeth, thinking of the bottle of wine and the too-small sweater Telma had promised to bring. He muttered, "God damn it."

"Should I go get someone?"

"You know Telma Søvndal?" he asked, unzipping his fly. He wasn't sure if the name or the action made little Hans look so excited, but the boy certainly perked up.

"The dancer?"

"Yeah," he said, opening his jacket and retrieving a cardboard package. He bit the top of the package open, feeling two pills pop loose. He swallowed them dry, then scratched the rest of the packet open. "Tell her our date's postponed another week depending on the pruning, but somebody had to plug this thing."

It was twenty-three minutes before he was relieved of duty, and two days before the swelling subsided, and really three weeks before feeling came back. He opted for physical therapy instead of surgery. On the upside, Andri never had trouble getting laid again. Not with this story.

Bathroom Monologue: Zombie Parakeets for Adriana

Mrs. Merrick knew she was going to die. She was a Lapsed Catholic, but even as lapsed as she was, she recognized an apocalypse when it ate everyone in sight. Pet owners pounded on the glass of her shop for sanctuary, but she dared not open up and risk the zombies getting in with them. She had work to do.

Zombieism was an exotic strain of bird flu. Scientists knew it because they had isolated the virus. Mrs. Merrick knew it because all of her parakeets had it, and set about devouring her canaries. She only managed to save ten pigeons and her most obnoxious parrot, forcing the flock of zombie-keets into a glass cage. They only ate their own for now, and that meant working fast.

The parrot went first after it repeated her weight. She found the zombie-keets preferred their parrot raw, and so she put out feathers and bits of wing to start, only letting a zombie-keet bite if it first picked up its string and rod.

By Day 3, they only ate if they carried the rod and string appropriately, and if they visually saw her eat.

By Day 6, the zombie parakeets brought her a bagel in return for some pigeon. No matter what she did, she could not condition them to butter it.

By Day 8, she tied the dozens of strings to her arms and had her first successful takeoff. The zombie-keets didn't even attack their prey until she'd had her bagel.

On Day 11, the inevitable happened. A couple of star-crossed lovers smashed in her front window looking for supplies, and pedestrian zombies followed them in. Mrs. Merrick was bitten before she even got out of bed, and she died with a surprising poise. She'd known this was coming. As the infection overtook her, she slipped on her strings and loosed the flock of parakeets.

You can still see Mrs. Merrick. She planned well, and now she's the terror of downtown. She's the only zombie in the known world that can fly, and her minions never rest until she catches her man.

Bathroom Monologue: The Produceds

"My partner and I began our careers with a plan destined for failure. We would hire the worst playwright, to write about the most offensive material, performed by the least competent singers and dancers on Broadway. It was a bombastic production for which everyone in town presumed we had to have a good reason, and so everyone in town bought shares. I believe we sold over two thousand and five hundred percent of the holding interest in our production. When it flopped, we'd keep all the money they gave us, that we'd spent almost none of on the awful show, and walk away rich. Maybe go see Turn Out the Night.

"The calamity was that we hit it big. A musical comedy about Hitler was exactly what the scene wanted – the avant-garde, the nouveau richesse, and the pre-hipsters all ate it up. Our box-office overflowed such that we wound up owing ungodly amounts of money to ungodly amounts of investors.

"My partner tried to blow up the theatre. I wasn't part of that, no matter what he says. I was upset, but upset to misdemeanors, not felonies. My spirits lifted after I got a call from New York.

"Actually, I got nineteen calls before nine in the A-M. See, when you get the single biggest hit in the musical world, everyone wants to work with you. By Thursday I was co-producer on three projects for which I'd never have to visit a building. I was signing my name in exchange for checks, and my new friends wouldn't let me go to jail because they needed me. They squeezed out fat checks, and bags of money as door prizes, and some sums coming pre-laundered.

"You see, I thought bankruptcy was the only option. But there's another option. There's not returning investors' calls, and when people corner you on the street, saying another investor they hate took too deep a slice and needs to be consulted, and forwarding people to lawyers who only tenuously exist, until you've got another play out. And another. And another, until something you didn't really help build is a smashing success that will forever have your name in the playbill.

"According to the blogs, I'm a genius. They're begging me to direct next year. I had a producer burn me a smoke signal using hundred dollar bills. It's a play about Native Americans. It's about as tasteful as broken glass.

"So I'm thinking about directing. I'm also thinking about how many shares I'll sell."

Bathroom Monologue: Strange Drugs

Photo by Stephen Shore.

   This one removes all your fears. It's said they're replaced with a smoky nothingness and a faintly yellow flavor.

   This one replaces all your fears with the fears your parents have for you.

   This one replaces all your fears with identical fears in different orders. Said to be very useful for schizophrenics seeking introspection.

   This one makes you admire clouds more often.

   This one makes clouds admire you more often.

   This one has no clinically proven effect, yet many customers claim to find rainstorms friendlier.

   This one allows you to read, comprehend and discuss philosophy with absolute acumen. You'll go through Kant in an evening. It, however, provides no satisfaction.

   This one provides absolute satisfaction with no application. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly alright with it until the drug passes.

   This one lets you read, comprehend and discuss the shortcomings of others with absolute acumen. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly passionate regardless until the drug passes.

   This one makes you taller.

   This one makes you smaller.

   This one stops up rabbit holes.

   This one fills you with the fear of God.

   This one makes you realize you have always been full of the fear of God.

   This one gives you a radically incomplete and yet hardy appreciation for what God fears.

   This one unlocks your full mental and emotional potential.

   This one dulls any anxiety from having realized how meager certain potentials are.

   This one makes you feel exactly like you think you used to feel before all those unfortunate revelations that come with time. You never actually felt this way, but the drug doesn't know better.

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment, right?” –Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment. The four of us share a fold-out bed, tucked underneath cheap sofa cushions, and when it's a sofa, at least one of us has to sit an arm-rest. I've gotten good at balancing up there. This is an oven-is-also-a-space-heater apartment, whether you want it or not, winter or summer. This is a the-only-window-is-our-air-conditioner apartment. We don't have wifi, we don't have cable, and our musical selection is whatever the guy upstairs plays too loud, a station that broadcasts all night. He loves Thrash Metal and we're trying to learn to appreciate it. We love it here. If you pity our bathtub in the kitchen apartment, then you must not know where we came from."

Bathroom Monologue: “Nothing to write home about”

“Nothing to write home about” had been a joke in his father’s time, when all soldiers wanted was to write home or receive mail from loved ones. It had mutated since then, into a dismissal of events that the needy would have cherish. No one wrote home enough these days. No one called their mothers enough, or had heart-to-hearts with Dad, or took five minutes to simply make sure everyone was okay and lunch went well. It was a dismissed world.

The cell phone didn’t change things the way he wanted it to. Somehow the ease of dialing, or having a number auto-dialed, and having a brief conversation amounted to an effort that left people rationalizing to keep their minutes. The postal service was on the verge of demise, and e-mail was outmoded. Nothing was simple enough for the stupid mind to write home and keep those micro-contacts firing in the shape of a real life.

He’d change all that once he invented the text message.

Bathroom Monologue: “Those who can’t do, teach.” -Anonymous

“I’ve never understood that phrase. William Shakespeare. Niels Bohr. Bruce Lee. James D. Watson. Michael Faraday. Stephen King. Bill Clinton. All of them teachers who were famous for work in their respective fields.

“But beyond that: isn’t the music teacher who picks up a cello and shows her pupil who to tune the strings doing? Doesn’t the very act of her playing the music as example, and being able to bring others into competence with the technical proficiency, demonstrate her ability to ‘do?’

“But beyond them: Jesus Christ was a teacher. He was, so I’ve read, also God. If teachers can’t ‘do,’ and God is omnipotent, and ‘omnipotence’ is the ability to do anything to the utmost– isn’t there a grievous flaw in someone’s claim?

“Since adolescence, ‘Those who can’t do, teach’ has struck me as the refrain of the student who can’t do. Usually, it’s of the student who can’t ‘do’ up to a teacher’s standards. You hate this authority figure, and so they must fail at what they’re passionate about, not based on evidence, but based on your disdain. Invention of someone else’s flaws to make ourselves feel better is something we can all do.”

Bathroom Monologue: Virtues Bug, OR, It’s What’s Inside That Counts

As dusk whisked over their cave, Mummy Nine-Legs ascended to the ceiling and unfastened a few spools of humans for supper. Little Bug had never had his own human yet, being so young, and danced on all nine of his legs in anticipation. Yet when Mummy Nine-Legs handed him his bundle, and as he split it open, he dropped the fermented cadaver to the floor.

“Mummy, I want a good human,” he whined. “This one is covered in warts and moles, and she’s got an overbite like she’s all teeth.”

“No one is all teeth,” said Mummy Nine-Legs, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

She took Little Bug’s prey and slit it down the belly for the babe to see. And indeed, inside the cadaver was as lined with lipids as any thin girl, and her liver was ripe and swollen. Her lungs popped in his mouth. By the end of their meal, he even found he relished the way her teeth settled in his gullet, and he realized how foolish he’d been. It really was what lay inside people that counted, and particularly when they lay digesting inside him.

Bathroom Monologue: “But when we look around us at the state of literacy – and in particular at all those signs for “BOBS’ MOTORS”….” –Lynn Truss, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”

But Carmen couldn’t wait, not with that sign in the window. Her mother was an English teacher, damn it. She told Samuel that she’d pay and stormed into the gas station. She saw the clerk and was fixing him with her stare before she was even at the counter.

“I want to speak to the owner,” she said.

“I’m one of them,” he said, taking off his hat. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re Bob, then?” she said, glancing at the “BOBS’ MOTORS” sign in the window.

He nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Like I said, I’m one of them.”

“One of them?” She gawked. “How illiterate are you?”

Another man came in from the back, this one taller, his overalls stained with oil.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Bob answered. “I think the lady wants to speak to us about literacy.”

The other man rubbed his hands on his overalls and looked at Carmen.

“There’s a rack of paperbacks by the door if that’s what you’re after.”

“No,” Carmen said, almost stamping her foot. “The sign on your store is incorrectly punctuated. If the store belongs to Bob,” she pointed at the man behind the counter, “then the apostrophe goes before the ‘s,’ not after.”

“Well, yeah,” said the guy in overalls. “But it doesn’t. It belongs to all of us Bobs.”

Carmen took a moment on this.

“You’re Bob?”

“Yeah. Bob McClane.” He gestured to the Bob behind the counter. “That’s Bobby Green. His dad’s Bobby Green Sr. I’ve got a cousin, Bob Jaffey. All four of us have a stake in the place.”

“In Bobs’ Motors?” she asked, regretting having not let her husband come in to pay.

“Yeah,” said both Bobs.

She looked down into her purse.

“Twenty dollars of unleaded, please.”

Bathroom Monologue: “Love is in the air.” –Anonymous

“Wrong. Nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide are in the air.”

“No, you’re wrong. That is the air. I’m in the air, from ground level up five feet and fewer inches than I’d like, and several cubic feet around for that elevation. I’m as in the air as I’m ever in the water of a swimming pool.”

“No, those elements are what makes up air. It’s like you having a heart and lungs inside you.”

“Yes, but it’s poor grammar to say I’ve got a heart in me, even though most living humans have one. A heart is a part of me; it is me. I’ve got half a fish taco in me. It’ll be part of me later, and part of the septic.”

“That is not the same as pretending ‘love’ is in the air.”

“So pheromones don’t count?”

“They’re a stimulant, not love.”

“So love isn’t a chemical?”

“All brain reactions are chemicals. That’s all love is.”

“So I’m in the air, and I’ve got brain chemicals in me, and love is a brain chemical. Therefore love is in the air. Find my wife around here and stimulate me a bit, and there’ll be an excess of love running rampant.”

“That is definitely not the same as pretending love is floating around.”

“What if someone skywrites the letters L-O-V-E in the sky?”

“Then you could say it. But nobody does that, and you know that. You’re just saying that to annoy me.”

“Sure, but I love doing it. It’s in the air.”

Bathroom Monologue: “How do you put out a fire with a can of gasoline?” –a friend

“Make sure the can is dry,
then use the flat bottom to blot out the flames.

Like a human being,
even if it’s filled up with something useless or dangerous,

it can still be put to good use.”

What Stories Scared You?

Daguerrotype of Andrew Jackson

What book scared you the worst? And what did it? Was it the voice? Was it a particular scene? Was it the premise of a monster coming after you in your dreams, a killer lurking until you took a shower, or just a hero rendered vulnerable in a way you’d never seen before?

It doesn’t have to be Horror. For some, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft were the masters. But Brave New World’s vision of the future might have disturbed you more than any story about mummies and werewolves, and Tom Robinson’s situation in To Kill a Mockingbird sent shivers through plenty of people. I’m saving mine for later this month, but I guarantee it’s an unusual pick, even though it's the only book to ever drive me to try to hide under a bed.

With luck, we’ll gather a whole list of unusual ones and share them on All Hallow’s Eve. You have until October 29^th to write up a brief explanation of whatever book or short story scared you the worst (or the best), and I’ll post them on the 30^th. That way anyone looking for one last scary read in October can hit the library on Halloween with a healthy list.