IDLE HILL: A NEW STORY BY DAVID H WEINBERGER

On December 15, 2024 my short story Idle Hill will appear in the magazine Synkroniciti! The issue focuses on the theme ‘Haunting’ and I love how that theme overlaps the struggles and thoughts of my main character. When I wrote the story I was exploring toxic masculinity, specifically its generational aspects, and its devastating outcomes. Extreme thanks to all at Synkroniciti for reading my story and valuing it enough to share it in their next issue. I will announce when it is available.

Backstory: The New Normal

            The New Normal is primarily fiction. The autobiography part of it is that I really did have a worm crawl into my ear and after a few terrifying moments my father removed it with tweezers. That vignette sat around for decades until around 2016 when Trump began campaigning and eventually was elected as the president of the United States. There was something about his abrasive manner, the toxicity of his words, which made me think of that worm from so long ago. I have nothing in common with Trump, instead, he is everything I fight against, everything I dislike in another person, the posterchild for what is wrong with masculinity, maleness, interpersonal relationships. There is nothing about him which speaks to what it means to be a good and decent human being. I began to see him, and mostly his words and the feelings that choked them, as a worm burrowing inside the public’s head, lodging somewhere deep inside and refusing to leave. I came to believe that we hear things throughout our lives, and they get buried deep within us. Sadly, those thoughts and feelings nestle there and are ready to be expressed at the most surprising times.

            I remember an extended family situation where a very sweet grandma, gentle in everything she did, in every interaction she participated in, became very sick and incapacitated. Through her suffering, her children listened to her spout endless racist judgements. She had never spoken that way throughout her life. But in her final moments it was like the flood gates were opened and those words and thoughts cascaded outwards. A burrowed worm waiting its chance to appear and direct its host’s behaviour.

            With Trump and the actions of grandma, I began to see that worm which crawled into my ear as something a lot more sinister and thought it might make a good story. However, I got some things wrong. One thing I did wrong in that story is that I did not portray successfully the incipient nature of the worm: how it could enter the brain, burrow deep inside, and impact how we view the world. I was wrong in my premise that the worm finally left. It stays there eating and defecating looking for a viable method of expressing its existence. It may be dormant but it remains even still.

            The other thing I got wrong is that I do not believe I portrayed my metaphor of the worm successfully. And to be blunt now so as not to miss the point, at the time I saw the worm as the hateful, racist, misogynistic, and criminal verbiage coming from Trump’s mouth, as well as his stooges who stood by him and allowed his diatribes to run unfettered. I believe that people for the most part disregard what he says and somehow justify that he is still a good presidential candidate despite his incendiary words. (Though it is also true that there is a large part of the population who support the man and every word he says. They believe the same as he does and would love to see him follow through on his promises.) But in supporting the man’s economy or border control, or whatever lets them sleep at night, I believe people have also supported the worst of him. That niggling worm he implanted years ago lived on with all its hatred and bitterness, and destruction and selfishness and negativity. And we will now pay the price.

            I don’t blame the worm. I believe it is possible to reject its destructive goal. There are plenty of people who have heard the same message coming from Trump & Co. who have not sunk to his level. But sadly, over half the nation has embraced the man and his message. The worm worked his destruction in their brains and they acted no different than the man himself.

            That’s the back story for The New Normal. I would title it differently today but I don’t have the energy to create a better name and certainly not to rewrite the story to  be more fitting for the 2024 fiasco. It will have to stand as my defiance, weak and insufficient as it may be. I hope you enjoy it.

The New Normal

by David H Weinberger

It’s rotting inside my head. The remaining part. Lived there over six years, the life expectancy of a night crawler. Burrowing through my brain. I could feel it that whole time. Tunnelling and exploring. And then it just stopped.

I was seven when the first worm slithered its way inside my ear. I was caressed by the grass as I relaxed on my side in the front yard, listening for sounds deep within Earth. I felt a slight tremor, which tickled more than startled, as something seemed to move from the dirt beneath the grass into my ear. It was pleasant enough that I did not move. But whatever it was continued on its journey into my ear, and then actually dangled from the depths, free from the confines of the soil. The pleasant feeling quickly turned to a sharp pain and I jumped from the ground and ran screaming around the yard. I could feel the thing penetrating, wriggling deeper into my ear canal. My father ran out of the house, grabbed me by the shoulders, and looked me over to assess the damage. He asked me how in God’s name I managed to get a worm in my ear and I started crying. He told me to hold still as he grasped the worm between two fingers and gently pulled. The worm stretched taut and I was afraid half the worm would remain in my ear forever, left to burrow into my brain, causing lifelong damage. But the worm finally released its grip inside the ear and sort of popped right out, like a cork released from a champagne bottle. My father held the worm up in front of my face and I vomited.

I slept fitfully that night, staying on my back out of fear of putting my ear against the bed. I knew there was no way a worm would rise up out of the pillow but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I dreamed of a major worm attack in our city, where millions of worms attacked and ate people and left their droppings to fertilize a new city. Each time I woke up covered in sweat and short of breath, I could see giant worms crawling on my bed, laughing hideous laughs, and crawling towards my ears. I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling with my hands covering my ears. Early morning, I started worrying about worms entering my nostrils and my mouth. Lacking enough hands to cover all my holes, I got up early for breakfast.

            I told my friends about the worm incident. No one believed me. How could a worm move from the ground and up into a person’s ear? Just not possible. Even though I swore it was true and promised that my dad saw it and actually pulled the worm out, they ridiculed me and called me a liar. My teacher, who gently patted my hand and told me she was glad I was okay, seemed sceptical. But I continued in the telling because I had the lingering, disturbing sensation of a slim, slimy object entering my ear.

            The nightmares and worries faded quickly but my fear of the grass and what lies below it did not. I saw it as the representation of the hell we learned about in Sunday school, where everything bad and evil exists. I could walk in grass but I would never linger. When my family picnicked, I sat in the car and ate my food and read. I didn’t play in our yard any longer for fear of the pervasive creatures capable of invading bodies.

            Eight years later, when the second worm slithered its way inside my ear, I was lying in wild grass and dandelions with my first girlfriend, Anne. Her allure clouded my young, hormone addled mind and I forgot the frightful memory of laying in the grass with my ear against the ground. This time, I was holding Anne’s hands, our knees touching, and staring into her eyes. I was experiencing a lot of new feelings right then so I did not perceive the slight tickle in my ear as different from the rest of the tingling going on in other body parts. But when the worm had reached a one inch entry into my ear, I knew it wasn’t love or desire I was feeling. Once again, I screamed, jumped up, and ran around the field. Anne watched me, and when I approached her in tears, she stared aghast at a four-inch piece of worm sticking out of my ear. I could feel the worm inching deeper inside of me as I squeezed Anne’s hands and begged her to do something. But Anne was not as adept at removing worms from ears as my father was, so she hesitated and actually took a step back before I fell on my knees and beseeched her to pull out the worm. I watched her hesitant reach for the worm and the look of disgust on her face as her hand neared the worm, just before she turned and ran.

            I closed my eyes and searched for the worm sticking out of my ear. I felt its coldness before I touched its wet, messy body. I grasped the worm and slowly pulled, once again fearing that half of it would remain in my ear. Just like when I was seven, the worm stretched taut and I grit my teeth waiting for the pop. But there was no pop. No release of pressure in my ear. No dangling worm. I held in front of me half a worm. I quickly stuck a finger in my ear and searched for the missing worm half. I felt nothing, but I still had the sense of an invader in my skull. I could feel the incessant wriggling of the worm half that was burrowing into my ear.

            I ran home and my mom immediately took me to emergency, frantically speeding through red lights and stop signs, ignoring the irritated blare of other drivers’ horns. A nurse took me to a bed right away and a doctor was attending to me shortly. I explained what happened, but in spite of his powerful little light and nifty tweezers, he was unable to find any worm half. With a cynical chuckle, he explained how a worm would have to get past the middle ear, move into the Eustachian tube, and then the nasopharynx, before it had any possibility of reaching the brain, which was short of impossible. He claimed he had never seen an earthworm enter a human ear, and definitely not travel past the middle ear. He saw no need for further tests. In spite of his assurances of non-travel potential and my mom’s subsequent relief, I could still feel the worm moving deeper into my head. The doctor suggested that I was experiencing a psychosomatic reaction to a traumatic event and prescribed Xanax to calm me down and help me sleep. All would be better in the morning.

            But it wasn’t better. I woke with a scream, forced awake by a constant vibration behind my nose. The worm was alive and moving in my nasal cavity, right at the top of my throat. I violently blew my nose over the side of the bed, trying to extract the creature. Nothing but a bit of snot blew to the ground and the internal rumbling continued. My mom suggested I take some Xanax, but I refused because I knew it was not just nerves. The worm was active in my head and moving upward. Regardless of my pleas for help, my mom trusted the doctor’s diagnosis and did her best to push the drugs and calm me down.

Once again, people did not believe that an actual earthworm lived inside me. They automatically thought of tapeworms, those parasitic, spaghetti-like fiends associated more with the intestines than the brain. I assured them that it was, indeed, an earthworm, but they just laughed at me. I’m sure people called me crazy. Like the crazy man I knew as a kid who always told me at the bus stop that he had a plate in his head protecting his brain from extra-terrestrial radiation. I didn’t believe him. Why would anyone believe me?

            The worm continued to move. It came as a slight sensation in my skull, like a breeze blowing over a bird’s feathers. I felt a new freedom in my nasal cavity with a concomitant squeezing in my cranium as the worm moved upward. I could feel my brain contracting, both in size and structure, making room for the worm. Like an untreated wound, the worm festered in my head. If it wasn’t crawling around, it was busy defecating or nibbling away at my brain, digesting microscopic bits of me at a snail-like pace. I imagined it would take decades for it to work its way through my brain, if I survived that long, but I worried about what would happen to me as it removed critical neurological matter.

            Later, in my high school biology class, my teacher presented a glistening tray of earthworms, ready for us to study and dissect. A feeling of sweet revenge cascaded over me as I thought of the retribution I would exact over my personal invasion. But as the tray was passed around, and finally arrived in my hands, I was revolted, both by the sight of the wriggling worms, and my feelings towards my comeuppance. I no more wanted to touch those worms than to dissect them to understand how they operate. Their evilness was abhorrent to me, but I lacked the willpower for personal revenge. This disgusted me as much as the worm in my head did.

            Over the coming months and years, I contemplated seeking alternative diagnoses and help. Maybe a CAT scan or an MRI would reveal something to someone who would operate to remove the invasive creature. Perhaps there was a drug I could take which would eat away at the worm but leave me intact. I never really believed in these possibilities though and so I never pursued them. Seeing no alternative, I reluctantly accepted the existence of my uninvited resident and went about my life as best I could, even though thoughts of labyrinthine wormholes in my brain and putrid worm shit scattered throughout my skull left me melancholy and agitated. It became my new normal, part and parcel with the perceptible changes in my personality and worldview. I seemed to lose the ability to decipher truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and a deep fog engulfed the subtle similarities between different people. But no physical manifestations of a flesh-eating earthworm.

            So now the end of my worm, or at least its life. Six years is a long time to live with another life inside of you. Although disgusted by it, I grew used to having it around: the slow niggling in my brain as it was under way, the slight burning as it deposited its waste. My ability to accommodate such a hideous creature is abominable. What I could have done differently is still unclear to me, but I feel less of a person for having habituated the worm’s activity. As it decays my body might expel its remains. But I fear the carcass will be forever, a slow degradation lasting longer than me.

END

Bluebird: My Newest Published Short Story

Over at twelvewinters.com my newest story, Bluebird, is live. Actually, it’s rather an old story but I continued to rework it over the years until Twelve Winters picked it up. A great big thank you to the Twelve Winters team! This story was inspired by a cruel school bus driver I had back in grade school. She was one of the many bullies I had to deal with growing up. I reimagined her with a troubling past and some redeeming qualities. I would be quite pleased if you read the story, and I hope you enjoy it. And on September 10 my story The Remove will be available in The Cost of Our Baggage. Looking forward to seeing that!

Jenny Erpenbeck: Kairos

I am so glad I spent time with this novel. It is beautifully written in all its bleakness and squalor. A doomed love affair with the backdrop of a failing state and Erpenbeck does a great job of pairing the two and showing the similarities. There were two themes which stood out to me. One is the presence of Kairos, the god of fortunate moments, and how difficult it is to grasp and hold onto those moments, and the absence or opposite of Kairos and how those moments seem more prevalent than the fortunate. The other theme that I felt was handled exceptionally well was the spinning of the truth, our own or the one presented to us. Running throughout the text is the line “The truth must be properly engineered for it to be believed” and later morphed into “Even a lie must be properly engineered for it to be believed.” Helpful in understanding the era she writes about but also applicable to what we are seeing on a daily basis. Wonderful book and highly recommended.

The Remove: My Newest Published Short Story

My short story The Remove will be published in September. Gnashing Teeth Publishing has put together an anthology of literature with the theme The Cost of Our Baggage and has included my story which addresses the ongoing cost paid by an individual ostracised and bullied as a young child. It was an emotionally fraught story to write but also fun thinking about the man’s connection and comfort with die cast vehicles as an outlet for his pain. I will provide further information about availability when the anthology drops next month. I would like to extend my immense gratification to Gnashing Teeth Publishing for including my story.

Brothers in LP's

It was so much more than a Jackson Browne album. So much more, I imagine, than a Derek and the Dominoes album. Undoubtedly, it was those albums: to hold the sleeves in our hands, to spy upon the vinyl before placing them upon the turntable, was to unveil the history behind every LP sitting in his collection.

The framed picture of Chuck Mangione in the background is telling. I remember sitting outside the door of my older brother’s room listening as he spun Mangione records: in awe of the artistry but also of my brother’s appreciation for such beautiful music. I relived that experience as I sat with my younger brother, sharing history through song, drowning in the perfection of two sides of an album. Was it Browne or Clapton? The nostalgia of a needle on vinyl? The lyrics which seemed to speak to the hardships we were both facing? More likely, it was the uncanny ability of artists to express the love and appreciation I have for my brother, for the man he is, for the father and husband he is, for the lover of music and the keeper of LP’s that he is.

The Last Sunrise

My last sunrise in Lisbon, Portugal…for now. My mom did not see this one. Nor any other in Portugal. But she did enjoy many in Bountiful, Utah. From her front porch, sitting on a bench my dad made for her many years ago, she loved to watch the sunset over the Great Salt Lake. And from the back porch she enjoyed the sunrise over the Wasatch Mountains. Her simple routine of watching the rise and fall of each of her days. A natural process that at times is overwhelmingly beautiful and at others, with the final sunrise, heralds a period of melancholy and loss. I hope she enjoyed the last sunrise.

Jean Agnes Weinberger

Within Reach: My Short Story Published Fall 2018

Borrowed Solace published my story back in 2018 and has since closed. They do not maintain an archive of stories so I am making Within Reach available here. I hope you enjoy it.

WITHIN REACH

 by David H Weinberger

Simone was frantically shaking all over, stepping back and forth in the same space, and jerking her head in all directions trying to find where the dragon had gone. She had never seen a dragon this close before. This one was so close she could see its individual metallic-colored scales, its bat-like wings flapping in the air, its serpent’s tongue jutting from its mouth, saliva dripping from sharp, yellowed teeth. She could smell the damp, earthiness of its cave from which it came and the lingering briny scent of ocean water still on its body. She was overcome with happiness at this unexpected visitor.

 “Did you see that? Tell me you saw that awesome dragon. It flew by just inches from us! He was so close I could smell him.”

 “Simone. I didn’t see any dragon. Perhaps it was a hallucination. Please. Try to calm down.”

“Calm down? With a real live dragon buzzing us? You’re kidding me!”

“You know I didn’t see the dragon. Come on Simone. Let’s keep walking and then get some lunch.”

“I don’t want any lunch. I want to see the dragon again. Let’s just wait and it will come back. I’m sure of it.”

Simone’s visions and her insistence on their reality were symptoms of her schizophrenia. The symptoms, hallucinations and hearing voices, started just two years ago, right after Simone started college. Simone’s mother and father had been seeking help since then and were assured that with the right combination of drugs and therapy, she could lead a fruitful and productive life. But Simone’s doctor told them it might take some time to zero in on the right combinations. She had recently started new medication but the symptoms continued.

Simone’s hallucinations consisted of dragons and their environments. The doctors had informed Simone and her parents that hallucinations usually revolved around aliens or government spies intruding into people’s lives. However, there was no telling exactly with individual hallucinations. Upon waking, walking with her parents, or sitting on the porch drinking coffee, Simone often saw dragons in the distance. Sometimes, there was a verdant forest, with sunlight filtered through the dense foliage giving the setting a subdued, ethereal feel to it. Other times it was a dark forest surrounded by imposing mountains. Most common were seaside cliffs, high above the water with dragons flying along the cliffs and wallowing in the sea foam.

More recently, Simone had been hearing voices telling her that the dragons were there to show her where she really belonged. That she was to return to them. ‘Please come home’ and ‘We are waiting for you’ were constant refrains Simone heard the past six months.

Since the onset of symptoms, Simone had dropped out of college and her mother had quit her job as a lawyer. Simone’s father continued to work in finance but with reduced hours so he could help out with Simone. They moved from Portland to Netarts, a small town on the Oregon coast, where they had a vacation cottage. They visited the cottage a few times a year, but Simone’s mother and father both felt the scenery and serenity were better for Simone than the bustle of Portland. Her parents had improved the cottage before they moved in to make it more comfortable and roomy for the three of them. They had installed a new, wide open kitchen where the three of them could cook meals and talk. They removed a wall into the dining room so whoever was not cooking could sit and still enjoy the company of the others. Her room was repainted and filled with all new furnishings. They had painted it together, shopped together, and now Simone had a private place of her own.

Simone and her mother went out together on a regular basis, the doctors recommending keeping Simone busy to lessen the impact of the hallucinations, delusions, and apathy that go along with schizophrenia. Today they were visiting Oceanside to walk around the town and do a bit of window shopping, two activities Simone found enjoyable.

“Simone. We’ll have lunch just here on the corner. If the dragon appears, we’ll be sure to see it. Does that work for you?”

“Alright. But I swear, if that dragon returns, I’m hopping a ride.”

They sat down at Brewer’s Corner and began to read the menu. The small Oregon beach town had a handful of restaurants, but Simone always liked this one and could enjoy an hour of peace as she ate her meal. Today, however, after having seen the dragon, she could not calm down enough to get any kind of pleasure from her meal.

Simone ordered a salad but simply moved it around on her plate with her fork. She had no desire to eat in spite of being quite hungry. The effort to lift the lettuce and tomatoes seemed too great.

“Mom, I don’t really feel like eating. I think I’m done.”

“But you haven’t eaten anything yet Simone. What’s wrong?”

“It’s just, I don’t know, I feel like I don’t belong here. Like something is missing. You guys have been great, but I’m just not comfortable.”

Simone pulled her knees up to her chest and looked sullenly at the horizon. She wanted the dragon to reappear. She wanted to show her mother that she was not hallucinating but was being visited by a dragon, a creature from her home. If she could show her mother, prove that there really was a dragon, then she would be saved from the constant misguided interference: the pills, the ongoing visits to doctors and shrinks, the insistence on saying hallucinations and delusions. But there was nothing but undulating waves, blue sky, and a few downy clouds.

 “I want to go.” Simone declared. “Can we go, please? Let’s go.”

Simone’s mother packed up their few things, put money on the table, and they left the restaurant. This was a common occurrence: Simone suddenly changing her mind and demanding a different activity.

“Where do you want to go Simone?”

“Home. I want to go home.”

Once inside the Audi, Simone’s mother headed down the coast towards the cottage.

“You’re heading for the cottage.”

“Yes, baby, we are.”

“Not the home I meant. I meant my real home.”

“Simone, I’ve tried to understand, but I just can’t. This is your home. Mine too.”

“My home is different.”

“You already have a very nice home and we keep quite busy. We go on outings almost every day. On the weekends the three of us go hiking or boating. Last weekend we were canoeing at the lake. Your dad and I love you very much and would do anything for you. You have everything you need. But we need to stick together to deal with your illness. Does that make sense to you Simone?”

Simone lowered the window and stuck her head out into the warm air. With her hair billowing in the breeze, she was excited to see the dragon following along with the Audi. He was not as close this time but he was still quite clear to Simone. She smiled as she watched him cruise along above them with his large wings effortlessly gliding through the air keeping pace with the car.

Simone saw this dragon as a sign that she was going home, that this dragon was here for her. It made sense to her with the voices and their messages that this was true. And she looked forward to this return. Simone had come to love the dragons: whether evil, friendly, or shy and withdrawn. They were godlike creatures to her and she longed to run among them, to watch them battle, jet through the air and rampage through the forests, and to have one of her own. They were more real to her than the cottage, the towns she visited, the restaurants she ate in.

The only thing keeping her from this home of hers were her parents. She knew they meant her no harm, that they were looking out for her and wanted to help her. But they didn’t understand that this all kept her from returning. Simone knew she should be grateful and appreciate the life her parents were trying to create for her. But all the same, it was not home for Simone.

Worse still, they insisted that they could not see what she could see. Regardless of how clear things were to her, her parents and her doctors continued to call them hallucinations, simple sensory perceptions that only she was privy to.

“Come inside the car Simone, that’s dangerous.”

Simone did what her mother asked after taking a long last look at the dragon. She still wore her smile as she entered the car and closed the window.

“Listen,” Simone’s mother said, “I know you think you belong somewhere else. But you are home here with us. You’ve nowhere else to go. You remember, don’t you, your doctors told you that the things you see and hear are not real. You have to accept that only you can see them. No one else can. It’s not your life, it’s like a fantasy.”

Simone did not answer. She stared out the window and thought how frustrating it was that her parents could not see what she saw. She was saddened to know that her home was inaccessible to them. Simone had a such a clear vision of her place in the world. Her parents and her doctors could not change that. Medication could not change that. Simone knew she belonged among the dragons and she was just waiting for the right time to return.

Once they were at the cottage, they both sat on the porch swing drinking lemonades. Simone closed her eyes and began to doze off thinking of the dragons that were visiting her and thinking how lucky she was that they were now approaching her. She fell asleep listening to the voices only she could hear.

“That looks refreshing,” Simone’s father exclaimed as he came home from his early Friday workday. “How’d things go today?”

Simone awoke with a start.

“I saw a dragon today, Dad. But mom didn’t. She thinks it was a hallucination.”

“It probably was Simone. Your new meds will kick in soon and the dragons will be gone,” her father tried to comfort.

“You’re just like mom. I don’t want dragons to be gone. You know I love dragons and finally one actually tries to meet me and you two tell me to forget about it. I wish you could just believe me.”

Simone’s father leaned over to kiss his wife and whispered in her ear, “Tough day again?”

“It’s just getting worse.”

“I can hear you,” Simone interrupted. “And it’s getting better, not worse.” She stormed off to her room and her father took her seat.

“What happened today? She seems upset.”

“We were up at Oceanside. That’s where she saw the dragon. We were walking by Maxwell Point before lunch and apparently, a dragon appeared in the sky right in front of her. She’s been like this ever since.”

“Is she still taking her medication?”

“Of course. I give them to her every morning.”

“I thought the new meds would get rid of her symptoms; obviously, that’s not happening. We’ll talk to the doctors and get their opinion. Maybe they can adjust the meds again.”

“OK. But I still don’t get it. I mean, she could smell the dragon. That’s not normal, is it? When she was little, she was never interested in these things. Why now? I don’t understand this disease.”

“That’s just it. It’s the disease. There is no rational reason for her hallucinations. The doctors all said it would be difficult on Simone and on us. Lord knows that part is true. How ‘bout we take her for a walk tomorrow up at Cape Meares. The walks and the woods always seem to calm her down.”

“I don’t know if I want to go back up there.”

“But we’ve been to Cape Meares lots of times. She’s never seen a dragon there.”

“It’s different now Paul.”

“Sure it is, but I still think we should head up north with her. We have to keep her busy, get her out of the house. If she sees dragons, that’s fine. We’ll just let it go.”

Simone didn’t leave her room that evening. She ignored her parents’ calls and their gentle knocks on her door. She wanted to be left in peace. Simone sat at her desk looking out the window. She was surprised to see a small, dark blue dragon, no bigger than a crow, sitting on a tree branch. The dragon was looking back at Simone, gently flapping its wings and bobbing its crested head. Simone fell asleep at her desk staring at the dragon.

The following afternoon, Simone and her parents went for a walk on the cliffs at Cape Meares. It was a place of magical beauty for Simone, reminding her of the home she longed for, with pinion pines, Sitka spruce, and cedar surrounding the trail to the cliffs. At the end of the trail, the cliffs overlooked the Pacific Ocean. The cliff top was so far from the water though that it was like watching a silent movie. One could see the waves in the ocean and crashing upon the shore but hear nothing. It was as if it were another world down below that the family was lucky enough to spy upon.

Simone always liked these walks and would often hold her mother’s or father’s hand while strolling through the pine-needled pathways. Regardless of her age, she never outgrew the warm feeling of this forgotten childhood gesture. This Saturday afternoon was just as wonderful as always, with the greenery and the pine scent tickling her senses. When they left the all-consuming crowdedness of the forest and approached the expansive ocean, all blue water and blue sky, the same magnificent and powerful dragon which she had seen the previous morning came cruising up from the cliffs. His mystical eyes locked onto Simone’s as he swooped past the family and turned around in mid-air for another pass.

“He’s coming back!” Simone yelled.

The dragon flew along the edge of the precipice and approached the family again. Simone dropped her mother’s hand and ran towards the cliff’s edge as the dragon approached.

“Simone!”

With her toes perched on the pebbly edge, Simone stretched out her arms towards the dragon and jumped for home. 

End

Reading Inventory 2023

Here is a wrap-up of my reading activity in 2023. In another post I will list my favorite reads of the year. For now, just the stats.

92 books read ; 23229 pages

shortest book 63 pages, longest 720 pages

47 books in English translation; 45 written in English

79 different authors: 47 male, 31 female, 1 team

45 different translators: 14 male, 28 female, 3 mixed team

27 different countries represented: 32 from USA, next highest was 12 from Argentina

14 different languages represented: English the most at 45 books, Spanish next with 24

58 publishers: Charco Press best represented with 9 books

oldest book written in 1577 and most recent in 2023

49 novels, 24 short story collections, 13 nonfiction, 6 poetry

62 physical copies, 30 ebooks

The Antipodal Point of Fear: My Newest Published Story

The online journal The Normal School published my short story The Antipodal Point of Fear. It is available to read here. This is a story in my childhood series exploring the lives of American children. This story explores the ever-present and overwhelming fears a child has throughout his day and the extreme measure he takes to escape that which overwhelms him. Thanks to the folks at The Normal School for the editing of this piece and their willingness to publish it. I hope you enjoy it.

The Normal School blog post of The Antipodal Point of Fear