quajoff asked you:I just realized that this whole Kickstarter was a political ploy to decrease Cabbage’s dungeon term by making you put out more updates in a shorter amount of time. I wonder what the citizens of Caketown will think of that scoop?
Cabbage for President 2012
This week’s This American Life featured a story about meeting famous people and the awkwardness of such an event, which is as good a prompt as any to tell this little story of my own experience with that situation. It’s also a nice bit of coincidence that Ira’s intro story involves the same group…
Hopefully I’ll have another story done in the next few weeks, shortly after finals.
Layover at Scheria
The passenger lay across three chairs, his hat pulled down over his face to hide it from the overbearing lights of the entrance to gate B3. He used his gray tweed jacket as a blanket, but his right arm fell lazily out from under it and hung heavily above the dark, well-trodden carpet. He had scattered his luggage about himself like a fortress, two large suitcases sitting on the chairs on both sides of him, and a piece of rolling luggage on the floor in front of him, a newspaper rolled up on top of it. Janet sat down quietly in the chair opposite him so as not to disturb his sleep. She looked back towards the entrance. Try as she might she could not see it, but she began to picture it in her mind and wonder if the man she had left was still standing there, dejected and cold. She wondered if he was sad, she wondered if he was hurt. No, she thought and stopped herself, no she mustn’t think of him.
It was 4:00 AM and the terminal was quiet, a summer’s silence full of bustling background noises and conversations that all seemed to blend together and fade away in a mute chorus. Scattered about the gate entrance were small pockets of other passengers waiting to board the 5:00 AM flight to La Guardia. Several men in dark suits sat reading newspapers or checking their messages or making last minute changes to the morning’s reports. A few tired looking couples stared listlessly at the walls while their children slept on their shoulders or, failing that, cried for want of sleep, breakfast, or simply to be anywhere but there. A few late-comers stood in line at the front desk arguing with the airport employees about last minute flight changes or possible refunds, like prisoners digging away at an immense stone wall with only a spoon and misplaced hope. Every so often employees in small carts drove past, humming like insects on the night air. Yet all of this seemed to disappear as Janet sat in her economically cushioned chair, sipping her coffee and watching the man in the hat.
Once, many years ago, I almost drowned while swimming out to a sandbar one afternoon while on vacation. Apparently someone on the beach saw me struggling and alerted my step-father who pulled me out shortly after I went under. Since that time I seem to keep coming back to drowning every so often and the idea of it. It’s romantic, in a way. What is love but complete surrender, that plunge into the deep and unknown. Drowning, I think, speaks to us on an unconscious level, tying into the concept of the collective unconscious, specifically. The idea of the loss of self. I strive to capture, in everything I write, a dreamlike quality, which is probably why I keep coming back to drowning as an image. This story comes from that, and from some reading I was doing of Thomas Keightley’s The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves, and Other Little People. It’s a much shorter piece than the last one, which is probably why I feel comfortable giving it this introduction. But enough of that, let’s have a story.
Jenny, in Cool Waters
You Were Jenny Greenteeth’s Once
The lake is beautiful, but mother warns you to stay away. Deep in the woods, secluded, alone, it shimmers beneath the moonlight, an endless midnight dance performed for an audience of none. In the depths, invisible dancers pirouette and prance about so gently, so delicately as to be imperceptible; the only evidence of their footfalls, the ripples on the quiet surface.
“You watch out by that lake, and don’t you dare sneak into those woods at night,” mother lectures as she tucks you into bed, “Mark my words young man, Jenny Greenteeth is out there, waiting for you to wander off.”
Cold air fills your lungs and for a moment you think about turning back, but you press on. Autumn is here and soon the lake will freeze over. You have to see it just one last time.
She calls to you. Amidst the trees and bushes, in the rustling of dead leaves, in the chirping of the insects and the squeaking of the mice in the underbrush, she calls to you. The barn owl hoots, the toad croaks, the audience has gathered for the emerald ballet and she calls to you.
”Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”
A story that I wrote that perhaps you might enjoy.
Just wanted to get a story up here before I fall of the grid for a few weeks due to studying. After that I’ll have another, hopefully shorter, one done.
Bob Perkins is Just Fine
“Bob? Bob Perkins! Is that you?”
It was a warm day in mid-July and a large crowd of people was drifting back and forth in huddled waves, throngs of confused tourists fresh off the plane, looking for the quickest route to the beaches. There was shouting and jostling, and Bob had a hell of a time just hearing himself think, not that he had much to think about, but that voice rang out like a gunshot. Sharp, piercing, a voice full of confidence and thunder. Bob stopped and turned around.
“My God, it is you! How the heck are you buddy? Gosh, it’s been what 3 years? Where did we last see each other? Ocala? I’ll be…I just,” the man stopped for a moment and just looked at Bob, took him in, and then he smiled, a completely genuine smile, and said again, “How the hell are you buddy?”
It was Greg Munson. They had been neighbors for several years before he had moved further south. Their wives had become good friends quickly, and so the two became frequent guests at each other’s’ holiday parties, birthdays, and game nights. They had gotten along well enough, Bob supposed, but that did not mean he had any particular interest in catching up.
He answered Greg’s question the way he always answered. “I’m doing just fine, thank you.” And he was. He was doing just fine. He was utterly OK.
“Well I’ll tell you, I’m doing just great! Just great!” Bob had not asked, and frankly did not want to know how Greg was doing. He wondered for a moment whether he had simply misheard his “thank you” as a question, misinterpreted his gratitude for interest, or simply did not care one way or another and always intended to tell him how he was feeling regardless of what was said.
“Oh. That’s good to hear Greg. But I-”
Greg inhaled deeply and loudly through his nose and let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Boy it sure is a great day! But I tell you, every day is a great day when you feel this good!
Greg was wearing a freshly pressed dark suit and a very sharp tie. On his head was a classic black fedora and on his feet was a pair of perfectly shined leather shoes. He looked…good. He looked good. “Good.” Bob was not sure if he had ever looked “good”. People had, on several occasions, noted that he was “looking good” or that he had “done good for himself”, but at no point had he felt the description particularly apt. No, even on his best days he never felt “good”, not like this anyway. He was fine, mostly. He was perfectly and contently fine. Absolutely average. He was not particularly good, certainly not great, but he was not bad. No he was just fine. He had a fine job that paid decently, a moderately sized cubicle with just the right amount of inoffensively humorous comic strips pinned to the walls, and a coffee mug that was, as agreed upon by several coworkers, “funny”. He had a fine house, not too big, not too small. He had a fine family, each member absolutely fine in their own right. If he were to open his wallet, a standard brown leather wallet nothing flashy, he would see an acceptable number of photos of a happily, but not too happily, standard family and one magnificently normal-looking dog. Occasionally, Bob thought about what it would be like to be “good”. He did not malign people like Greg though, he was not bitter about his place in the shape of things. More often than not, he thought being “good” probably was not for him. But looking at Greg now, all smiles and hearty handshakes, all boisterous laughter and genuine pleasantness, a man who made the sun seem like a spotlight, following him as he took center stage on the world, Bob could not help but wonder. “Good,” he thought, “what does it take to be good?”
—
So here I sit, in the final weeks of my college career. I feel myself deep in a period of transition in my life, as I’m sure many of my friends here at school do as well. I spent the weekend visiting the campus where I’ll be spending the next two years of my life pursuing my MFA and I left feeling very excited. I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked around and met students and faculty. I feel like it will be a good fit and that while I am there, my writing is going to transform and really grow…at least I hope. After my Friday morning at Chatham, I spent the better part of the weekend just wasting away at home. The area doesn’t lose its familiarity, but it seems to bleed its own nostalgia.
The feeling carried as I returned to Elmira, the purple bubble’s hold on me ticking away with the seconds on the clock. In a few months I’ll leave both locales behind and move on to another new part of my life. For this I am grateful and excited, but it all seems strange. I feel like I missed the moment of reckoning, or the peak of the action and skipped right on over to the denouement. But I suppose that’s just how it all plays out, you know? Things rarely live up to all the hype. I won’t graduate to fireworks and American flags. No one will blast Hulk Hogan’s theme song (Paul please come blast Hulk Hogan’s theme song).
But that’s okay. The true great moments; those that move us or make us reflect with awe, always tend to be those ones that are not expected or planned. What comes to mind for me are moments spent watching a movie and feeling a deep connection, or listening to a song and walking an empty campus, or sitting on a dorm room bed with three of the best people you know and reflecting on the life of a mutual hero. (RIP MK) These moments, these beautiful flares in the night sky, those are the ones that really get me. The “milestones” come and go, pages on the calendar fall away and we all keep moving. But love; of friends, of peers, and of family is what holds it all together. My time here may seem to dwindle away quietly, but my heart sings loudly as it reflects. And that’s perfect for me.
-Luke
(via wethecompass)
I wrote a story, and you can read it!
Here is a story I originally intended to have done for Valentine’s Day. Obviously that didn’t pan out. Better late than never right?
The Heart Worm
ONE WEEK ONLY!
Professor Bucephalus Biliss Invites You To Visit His
MAGNIFICENT MUSEUM OF THE MACABRE
Marvel At Sights Heretofore Unseen In The Civilized World
Shriek At Horrors Out Of Your Worst Nightmares
Gaze Upon Curiosities Beyond Your Strangest Dreams
Witness A Spectacle More Stupendous Than Imagination
NOT MEANT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!
WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND MEN OF WEAK CONSTITUTION
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
DRAW BACK THE CANVAS CURTAIN!
ABANDON REASON!
INDULGE FASCINATION!
EMBRACE WONDERMENT!
