Tag Archives: stories

Meeting the New Kid

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Did you know that there are creatures you didn’t know you knew? Of course you knew it. After all, there’s the whole race of super-characters, multiple species like the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster, Dracula and Tinkerbell, Wonder Woman and Wolverine peopling our universe, or at least some parallel ones, so we’re pretty well surrounded by fantastic fellow creatures if we’re willing and able to recognize them.
Digital illustration: Bumblesaurus

I think that perhaps part of the reason I’ve so long loved living so deeply in my imagination is that, having the social anxiety I’ve always dealt with when it comes to human-type people, I find I’m fond of fictional company and its many quirks and quizzical qualities. Not that I would necessarily be more masterful or even less shy in the midst of make-believe characters: I’m perfectly capable of being intimidated by the magnificence of pretend persons or frightened by the nastiness of the wicked ones just as easily as by real folk.

So you’ll forgive me if, despite his appearance of being slow-moving, benign, and perhaps a touch dim-witted yet perfectly friendly, I take my time getting to know the Bumblesaurus. He just wandered into the backyard when I wasn’t looking and made himself at home under a mulberry seedling. Yes, you got that right: he’s four centimeters long. Did I mention that I’m a nervous type? I mean, you only have to be the size of a flea to spread the plague all over Europe and kill off hordes of humans, right? I really do have to remind myself to give everyone, not least of all the Bumblesaurus, the benefit of the doubt. As they probably all do me.

The Bones of the Beach

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I grew up pretty near the Pacific Ocean. It was a matter of a couple of hours to get to its shores from home, and mere minutes’ drive to Puget Sound, and I have always loved any chance to spend time along the water. At home in Texas, it’s not so easy: there are a few man-made lakes within a short drive, with a few public beach spots along the edges of each, most of the time too hot for strolling, and that’s about it. So that recent trip to Puerto Rico was a brief but lovely reminder of what pleasure I find in wandering the beach when I can, absorbing not only a bit of salt water through my happy bare feet and the tangy air through my expanding lungs but also the great sense of history and adventure inherent in all of the findings strewn along the tidal brink.Digital collage: Beachcomber's Trove

Despite being so much a water-baby at heart, I’ve never so much loved open water swimming—after all, my people are the pale, easily fried folk of Norway who transplanted to the familiarly brisk spank of the coastal waters to fish and farm and forest-hunt as they’d done back in the old country. But I’m drawn all the same to explore the tide-pools and comb through the heaps of hidden-and-revealed treasure that line the beach, sucking deep breaths of sea breeze happily right down to my soul. I love to see all of the bits of shell and bone and stone piled up and intermingled with molted feathers, ship detritus and the petrified lace of corals and seaweed. Every tiny piece seems to hold such a storied past that I can stare and sift and dream endlessly.Photos: Beach Bones

What caused that lone shoe to wash up here from unknown shores? Why are those pieces of sea-soaked driftwood burnt but not in the fire pit, rather appearing like a dragon-singed skeleton in a distant heap down the shore? How did so many colors of ghostly and sandblasted beach glass come to bejewel the line of the tide together? Who were the creatures that fished the shore and left bleached fish bones here, a crab shell there? When did the storms kick up such a foment of foam that the inland side of mean high tide has a gloss of it lacquered firmly across the surface of its sand? Where are the children whose sandcastle ruins are still tucked behind the biggest boulders on the beach, waving flags of leaf and kelp from their stunted battlements? And most importantly, when can I return to the beach to stroll and dream of such things again?

Let’s Just Hug It Out

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The Cuddlesome Kraken

You think that I’m all hands, my love,

Controlling, holding tightly so?

Don’t wriggle, struggle, push and shove;

This is the only way I know!Digital illustration: Cool Kraken

I love you, darling, s’truth I do,

So let’s just cut right to the chase—

Let me wrap all my arms ’round you—

Embrace, embrace, embrace, embrace!Digital illustration: Kraken is Warm for Your Form

Fear Not, I’m Entirely as Silly as I Seem

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Digital illustrationMission Soon Accomplished

If I should seem suspicious or you think me too reserved

To let my hair down and relax; if I make you unnerved,

Don’t get all nervous and afraid–don’t fall apart and cry–

It’s not your fault that I’m this way: I’m not a super-spy.

There’s nothing wrong or worrisome that you should fear from me;

No problem, nor is there a thing that’s not as it should be–

Unless, of course, you would include on such a list of crimes

That I lie here in wait for you, reciting silly rhymes.

My mission, I confess to you, is simply to drive mad

Each person passing near enough to hear, however bad,

Each silly and ridiculous and impish bit of verse

I can dream up and spout at you; they go from bad to worse.

The only point in all of it, and you can rest assured,

Is that my secret will get out: I’m totally absurd.

 

A Mythical Beast

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I love James Thurber’s deviously funny little modern fable The Unicorn in the Garden. His way of being so blandly subversive gets me every time. But I also admire the tale, as I always have, primarily because in it, the dreamer wins out over the hard-nosed pragmatist who thinks she can crush his foolishness and browbeat the fantasy out of him. I would far rather be the silly imaginative kid, the one who remains boldly hopeful when all signs point to apocalypse, than live in a grim real world. In fact, if I had my druthers, I might just be not only the frivolous guy seeing the unicorn in the garden but the unicorn itself.

What’s Fact, after all, when faced with the Fantastic?

digital illustration

Would-be debunkers can chase me around all they want, but they’ll find I am galloping ahead of them on the track more steadily than they think!

The Runaround

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Rascality

That rapid rabbit Rupert runs and rollicks right apace,

though he requires but rarely rest—despite his rosy face

and rampant racing ’round, his rayed and ruffled wriggling nose,

his rife ripostes, his reeling roll—well, really, you’d suppose

he’d relish full retirement, retreat into some room,

reposing long, but wrong! He longs to ramp up and re-zoom.digital illustration

The Character in the Sharkskin Suit

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Intriguing, isn’t it, how what we admire in one we might fear in another; how sometimes a single characteristic becomes so entwined with our perception of the whole being that we are unable (or at least unwilling) to see the subject except through that distinctive filter.digital illustration from a photo

Take the shark, for example. We anthropomorphize its curved, elegant mouth and its very pointy dental array as a wicked grin because they form so ironically (we think) bloodless a ‘smile’ for an ideally designed killing machine, and subsequently we are content to identify those people whom we find wicked, bloodless, or murderous as Sharks. Never mind that the shark itself is simply being what it is naturally meant to be and doing what it is created to do. Never mind that, often enough, the person we are happy to affiliate with that same stereotyped vision may also be doing what s/he is naturally inclined, expected, and/or paid to do. If the person in question is good at carrying out dispassionate or relentless action, we’re likely to find a convenient metaphor in the shark.digital illustration

I have long thought, myself, that the mere mention of a character as being dressed in a sharkskin ensemble gave him an air of sangfroid that I suppose must have been similarly associated with the archetype of the coolly relentless shark. I, too, am apparently guilty of stereotyping the creature, and very likely in turn, the person. So it is: we are always looking for shorthand ways to describe and understand those around us.digital painting from a photo

But I would hope that I can also remain cognizant of those positive and laudable qualities that might also be anthropomorphically applied to a shark, and credit similar ones to my fellow bipedal creatures as well: swiftness, strength, tenacity, fearlessness, and a driving desire to move forward at all times. These are characteristics to which I can only aspire for the most part, never mind being as handsome and sleek as a shark can be in appearance. While I doubt anyone will tend to equate me with the supposedly shark-like attributes of cruel indifference or cold-bloodedness, perhaps I would do well to pursue association with those better ones and see if I can’t be identified with such admirable aspirations after all.

Richly Deserved. Or Not

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Hot Flash Fiction 11: Undocumented Alien

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digital illustrationThough we all saw our third grade teacher as a pretty lady and wonderfully good-natured, she was also quietly self-effacing and exceedingly proper, so when she was summarily carted off as an unregistered and presumably dangerous foreigner, everyone in the school, nay, in the entire town, was mightily surprised. Of course, when the government interrogation of her was deep in progress and her skin suddenly began to luminesce and the shoulders of her nice dress ripped at the seams as her wings unfurled from underneath, it turned out that nobody could be more surprised than the feds.digital illustration

A Little Bull Session

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digital illustrationHow Beauty Contributes to Survival of the Species

A longhorn with a handsome set of horns as curly as they get

Was slightly cowed by what he saw when shown the Long Arm of the Law;

He’d had some hope he was exempt from need to keep his long horns kempt

And polished to a shiny sheen like pearl, his hooves polished to keen,

Dark, perfect handsomeness, the ring hooked in his nose, and everything

In fashion, grand in every way; turns out, he’d missed his class the day

The rules were set out in his youth, and so he lacked this simple truth.

So he was startled when the fuzz pulled him aside and said because

He’d failed to keep in such fine style, he’d have to go to jail awhile.

You, also, may not know these rules, if you too missed time in your school’s

Important seminars, so here I share them with you; do not fear

That cops will catch you; do not dread, but spiff your hooves and horns instead,

And you’ll be free to roam and graze in any pasture, all your days.

Why do I share this? Cattle, kine, or beeves all ought to look as fine

As stud bulls, just in case they meet random policemen on the street,

For at the least—or, maybe, most—they won’t then end up as a roast.digital illustration