Category Archives: Uncategorized

November 26, 2016 · 1:18 am

The Explanation

“How long did you live?”

“I died when I was eighty-seven. You?”

“Sixty-five. Heart attack.”

“Lucky, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So, the other day, you heard the explanation, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Made sense.”

There was a long pause.

“Not really.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Its interesting, when we were alive, people would say stuff like, ‘Well, someday we’ll understand.'”

“I suppose there is something to that. I now get it that much of what mattered so much didn’t and what didn’t, it did.”

“That’s for sure, but the explanation of war, disease and natural disaster, did you follow that?”

“What, did he cover that?”

“You weren’t paying attention?”

“Were you?”

“I was, but, well, to be quite honest, I still don’t get it.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well, this might be heaven, but I’m still not God?”

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June 25, 2016 · 2:00 am

The Gift

Once a great wizard had a son, who grew up with every benefit, and yet was ungrateful and unhappy.

Willing the son’s good, the wizard removed him from his grand estate, and set him on a lonely road in a foreign land. But as things went, the son wandered off the road, got lost in the dark and fell in a pit some hunters had dug for beasts.

He suffered there. He grew hungry, afraid, hopeless. Just when all seemed lost, the great wizard came to his rescue and lifted his son to safety.

Seeing his son’s miserable condition, the wizard magically healed his injuries, gave him food, dressed him in fine new clothes, and loaded his bags with gold.

Thus equipped, the son again set on his way, and coming to the next city, using the gold he had been given, invested in land, married well, prospered and forgot his near-death encounter.

He became a great man in the community. And yet, and yet, over time, as before, he again became unhappy.

All he could think of was his work, his possessions and his fear of losing all he had gained.

Then one day, the wizard came again to his son, in disguise, and finding him on his estate asked, “How is it that you have come by such a vast and beautiful home, and such a wonderful family?”

And then the son answered, “I worked hard, and invested wisely.”

The wizard sighed, the looking keenly on his son, he noted his continuing deep unhappiness, and again having great compassion on the him, the wizard stuck the estate with a spell and it disappeared in an instant.

The son was again on a remote road, again he was poor, and alone, and again he wandered from the path and again he fell into a covered pit and again the wizard came to him, again as his father, and lifted him out.

But this time, willing his son’s happiness more than anything, the wizard did not give him clothes, or food or gold. Instead the wizard, out of great love for his son, gave him the gift of a powerful memory.

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July 12, 2015 · 3:43 am

Two Men

Once there were two men, living at the same time, doing the same thing, thinking the same way and having the same result. It was a shocking similarity of a very different kind.

The first man grew up with a father who collected houses, and the time came when he too began to collect buildings of various kinds. Following his father, and using what he got from his father, he began collecting hotels, offices, casinos and malls. In short order, he owned a beautiful mess of loans, properties, bankruptcies, wives, divorces and children.

The second man grew up with a father who was a alcoholic, and the time came when the son too began to drink in excess. Following his father, and using what he got from his father, he became homeless and he began collecting shopping carts and wagons, stuffing them with trash of various kinds, covering them at night with tarps and blankets. In short order he owned a veritable wagon train, a massive amount of goods, a traveling entourage excluding several homeless companions.

The men never met, although they lived in the same city, and the first drove by the second on several occasions. Once they were even in the same store together and bought similar items.

Then one day, on the same day, at the same hour, the very same minute and the exact same second they both died.

Their relatives were informed, and when they came together to deal with the end, both families had the exact same problem — what to do with the stuff.

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June 28, 2014 · 4:16 pm

The Jack Pole Fisherman and The Sea

Upon the throw and the yank, a huge, bright tuna flew out of the sea.

In the air, it said, “Really now, is this necessary?”

Then the jack pole tuna man said, “Really now, it is — for me it is.”

The man was far from where he had been born.

So,” said the sea, “You live, begin and end in me.”

Then the sea swelled and washed in over the stern of the boat, over the racks the man was standing in and over the man, up to his chest, over his cane pole, bent over the tuna, and it washed out again.

The tuna flipped in the wave and sprang onto the boat.

Sixty years passed.

A fishing boat came again to this place in the sea, just as the sun was setting, not with poles but with ashes, and with family and friends. It was a calm summer evening.

And standing in the stern of the boat, the son of a fisherman, out of a small box, threw his father’s ashes into the great, sloshing sea. And then the sons of the son of a fisherman of the sea threw flowers out of other small boxes onto the smooth water, the setting sun above, the white flower petals floating in a line out behind the boat.

For a moment the flowers were seen on the water, among the ashes, and then there was a flash of bright color as a calico bass took a minnow on the surface.

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September 26, 2013 · 1:55 pm

Consigned

Once, in the wooing season, a wise and beautiful girl fell in love with a handsome and foolish young man.

She pursued him; he pursued games. She asked if he would cavort with her and also sort with her, but all he wanted was sport, port, and snort, with toys, noise, and other fun boys.

“Let’s go out,” she said, “for coffee and talk.”

“Talk, squawk, ” he said. “Come gaming with me!”

“And there you have it,” she said to herself. “What does one do with silly boys who don’t know how to talk, feel, reel or deal, with life and wife and every emotion twice and thrice — or not.”

And then, with a pained heart, she consigned him to disobedience.

“What the hell is that?” He asked her. “What did you ever give to me that you could make rules about or take anything away from me? Who do you think you are, my mother?”

“I’m your brother!” she said.

“Your weird,” he said, “for a pretty girl.”

“I’ve given you everything,” she replied, “but you have given me nothing that you should expect anything in return.”

He quit calling her.

“Consigned,” she said.

“An odd girl,” he told his friends.

Then, over the next year, he got seriously bossed, crossed, lost and tossed. He called her.

“What have you got for me?” She asked over the phone.

“I’ve got nothin’,” he said and there was a long silence.

“Come see me,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

“What can come from nothing?” He asked.

“Actually,” she said, “Something, something can come of nothing.”

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August 27, 2013 · 3:32 am

The Lie

Once there was a lie with a wry eye.

It went spy, spy, spy and vie, vie, vie and trapped its fly with glittered eye and pretend sigh and had a cry that was — well, spry.

That’s the thing about lies — they have great clarity of mind, method and madness, and they are very effective at luring, webbing and enmeshing their victims.

“I am just like you,” the lie said to what it wanted. It wasn’t.

“I’m just right for you,” said the lie. It wasn’t.

“I believe what you do,” said the lie. It didn’t.

And then, it was celebration time.

And that’s the other thing about lies — they are really, really good at getting everyone to celebrate, to high-five the lie with lots of pie and every guy in suit and tie.

And so this lie flounced, pronounced and announced and after that, the partying began. At home, and in odd pairs here and there, everyone said they knew it wasn’t true, and they didn’t like it.

But out in public, when they gathered around food everyone smiled and acted like this was the best thing since sliced dice. And that settled that, and so the lie drove off with its fly baked in its pie.

Time passed, until one day the lie decided it wanted something else.

Then it told the truth.

No party followed.

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July 16, 2013 · 12:06 am

The Proverbist

When he was little he went to preschool. It was fun. It was A, B, C and Z, and 1, 2, 3 and free. It was short, sort and zippy snort.  It was “cat” and “rat” and “Mr. Dingly Bat.”

But then, things changed. He went to first. There he was introduced to second, uped to third and ushered into fourth, and on and on until he got it. His thinking extendified, his talking verbulated, his writing complimated. He mastered the art of expandification, the rhetoric of elaboronomy and the skill of eloquefusion.

He got a certificate, and could say pretty much anything — in a lengthy fashion.

He would have been left this way, prolix bollixed, but stuff happened.

He ran smack into a situation; it unnouned him. He had surgery; it deverbed him. His friend stabbed him in the back; it exlocuted him. For a time he was asyllabic, unworded and detongued.

And then, one day, with an “and” and an “or” he said  less which was more.

He delonged, delinged and delanged. He became a proverbist.

He went short on cats. He waxed brief on rats; he elaborated just a bit on a bat and spat, and he wrote a proverb about that:

A verbal hoot is a root-a-short-toot.

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July 4, 2013 · 4:00 pm

The Sun and The Mountain Stream

The morning sun, blazing in a clear, blue sky, pieced the mountain stream, all the way to the rocky bottom. It shone its white, wavery lines into the cold, silver water.

The water in the mountain stream rushed away, down the mountain slope, crashed over the rocks and disappeared around a corner, running deep along the edge of a rocky cliff where the sun didn’t shine.

“What?” said the sun. “Did I say something wrong?”

The water ran dark and strong, saying nothing.

“I was just trying to help with a little advice,” said the sun.

“It didn’t help,” murmured the stream.

“It’s been ten years!” said the sun angrily, “Don’t you think it’s time to get over it. You have tributaries now, and you need to calm down, take life seriously, do what you need to do, for them.”

The water ran deeper now, dark and grey, along a stretch of the stream where both sides of the canyon rose up steeply and cast a dark shade over the whole of it.

The sun threw up his hands in frustration.

The water ran deeper now, within herself.

“It was good advice!” said the sun, “If she could just understand it.”

“It is a deep hurt!” said the water, “If he could just feel it.”

A cloud passed in front of the sun. The rays disappeared from the stream, even where it ran out into the open.

The sun darkened. The water darkened. Dark cried out to dark, and deep cried out to deep.

Then the sun, without a word, wrapped dark arms around the dark stream, and the stream reached up and hugged the sun, and then there was deep and quiet calm.

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