MAY 14 – I feel about stories the way George Burns felt about coffee. He said every cup was the best coffee he ever had. I write these stories quickly, early, and I post them before the doubt comes, while I still think they’re the best stories I’ve ever written, before I want to edit the ending or add commas or question the weird bit in the middle which surely I would rethink if I gave myself more time. There is a possibility, a probability, that I would polish this little story out of existence, and it barely exists now. I record in one take as you can tell, while brave/delirious as you can also tell. So here, in its raw and final form, your new LITBIT.
Speck
You can never tell the size of a bird in an empty sky.
And you never know its velocity but I think it’s an infinite acceleration, birds must have some dangling matter that says when or they’d go straight into space or like Icarus.
It would have put the world into a spin if the newspaper picture Bobby altered ever went further than Fairmount elementary, he put a speck in the space above Neil Armstrong’s shoulder and don’t ask me how he did it but he loaned intention and personality to his speck, nobody once said what’s that it was so clearly a bird in the moonsky and it’s impossible to tell the direction of a speck but this little squish was definitely on its way to the nearest shoulder.
Nobody knew what to do with Bobby.
I learned to tell when he was cooking something up, he had a way of tilting his head like he was listening to far flung directions, my mother was confused and shocked at the artwork he came up with and she limited his alone time. She encouraged television and gave him a tray upon which to balance his dinner but he was watching those sitcoms without watching and I knew by the increasing tilt what stage he was at. Her plans backfired, his plans grew in scope and required extensive execution, he’d stay up all night in his room across the hall from mine, I’d get up sometimes and see the line beneath his door and although I was the one who burst through he burst bigger, his electric presence when he was in the process of making something, anything, it was the way they depict birth on those stupid shows, part agony and part something I could not determine.
I think now it contained a sort of indifference – a vibrant and saturated indifference – like deep space where nothing is everything.
My brother was the only true artist I’ve ever known, he tread so softly between normalcy and deviancy, lightly lightly, just enough, he joked when we were older, to keep him out of jail.
Not many kids slip by with their selves in tact, but Bobby sailed through the school system nobody said anything was wrong exactly. One spark at a time my parents without understanding accepted and supported him, my father finished the basement with surfaces all around the perimeter for him to work, and I don’t think Bobby ever slept in his bedroom again, it eventually became an extension of mine, I blinged it out and danced with my girlfriends, they were always going on about Bobby, I could feel their heartthrobs, an entire generation of small town girls dreamed of being in Bobby’s arms, content to be mildly ignored forever.
He was never one of those savants who can’t relate to others, Bobby was a popular kid, he was smart and athletic and funny and surprising, one night he turned not only my bedroom door upside down but my parents’ as well, my mother was famous for always waiting until the last minute to go to the bathroom, on trips she made my father pull over and she ran full speed into the bushes, she’d never had an accident until the morning her door handle was on the wrong side, she said you never knew what was what at our house.
His imagination –
I don’t know. Whatever space we have for imagination –
I don’t know if he had more space in his brain for the wild imagination it housed, or if less because it squirmed out and touched everyone.
You couldn’t unsee the things Bobby showed you, or unfeel the things he made you feel – nor did you want to – being with him was like swallowing lopsided gemstones I can still feel the sharp edges, other edges so soft they seeped. He was never angry and seldom disappointed. Later in life he lived in a sort of intentional poverty. During his sculpting years, and those were mighty prosperous years, he gave his work away, one piece alone could fund charities for a long time, my doctor recently revealed she had received a scholarship and was educated on my brother’s dime. He lived on couches and in slow-moving trains, he visited me once a year or so and stayed until he left, I know how that sounds but that’s how it felt, he was mine again for x and then so very not mine.
I didn’t start this piece with an analogy in mind, I am not one for such opportunities, the bird thing simply came to me when I woke up this morning, it was in my head when I made coffee how you could never tell the size of a bird in an empty sky, that’s all.
MAY 9
Do you think we can treat the time since my last post the way they do in the movies, you know, without explanation or excuse?
Okay great. Let’s do that then. And we’ll round down.
ONE YEAR LATER…
You know me, you know I’ve been chasing my cursor for a very long time – earnestly and in good faith, with gusto, consistency, humour, not enough commas except for here, optimism, curiosity, good intentions, persistence.
I WRITE MORE THAN I SLEEP FFS
Way more.
The page is where my me goes – that sounds nicely Spanish doesn’t it? – it’s where my ideas go and I think ideas are what make us us and when those ideas shift into words that hit the page just right, well, there’s nothing like it.
ALTHOUGH rECENTLY I DISCOVERED THAT Limoncello mascarpone cake comes pretty close
Why do I spend so much time at it you don’t ask?
I’m in full swing with legendary cellist Pablo Casals who said, when asked why he continued to practice at the age of 90:
Because I think I’m making progress
Welcome to Litbit. It’s about literature, mostly, and in small doses, mostly.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever.*
Take a look around – lightly, lightly – scroll to the top of the page and click on the pink LITBIT (you don’t want to know what spellcheck does with that).
Lots to read here – click on the bird and I’ll read you a story – and I’ve included links to some of my favourite short stories of all time, one of which my grade two teacher read aloud and it really got my 7-year-old heart pumping. Years later, like forty years later I think, I picked up a thin blue hardcover at a used book store, it was called How To Write Fiction, and I opened it right to that very story if you can believe it, The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant. And there’s one by Love in the Time of Cholera’s Gabriel García Márquez (swoon), another one I lifted straight from The New Yorker podcast, The Children’s Grandmother by Sylvia Townsend Warner will take your breath away, and a beautiful-in-a-longing-way story called Here I Stand Ironing by Tillie Olsen I can’t remember how or where I came across it but glad that I did…. these are totally gifts and you’re totally welcome.
I’ll change them up once in a while to give you some fresh nourishment.
You can read first chapters/intros of my three novels and the first bits of each of the NEXT DOOR series, and you can buy short story collections, individual short stories, novellas, plays – some are up now and some not yet . I just re-read A Carnival Ago and holy shit – did I write that? – it’s a tightly woven rather indescribable story, you’ll want to read that one, think I will serialize it, stay tuned. For now the novels are not for sale, they are to impress publishers mostly, I’ve made the first chapters available and I hope you give them a whirl. I’m a sucker for first chapters, they’re the reason I can spend forever in book stores especially when it’s raining out and also why I have so many books.
Did I mention I finally – and it’s taken oodles and gobs and scads of practice – but I have crafted the perfect comeback for rejection letters:
I’M SORRY but if your rejection letter does not hook me in the first sentence, I am simply not compelled to read on
But please, do read on. Read on and on and on.
and subscribe!
I won’t be using my old mailing list again so unless you’ve already done so, you gotta subscribe to Litbit now.
Look for the splat – it’s good luck! – and let me hit you up when there’s something new. Also you’ll be helping me look like I have a huge following or at least more than eight.
Used to be all you had to do to get published was write a really good book
Thank you!
*It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly… Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them… throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you… trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly… on tiptoes and no luggage… completely unencumbered.
– Aldous Huxley, from Island
okay I was gonna end it right there…
I’ve had this site ready to launch since Monday but I don’t know, something doesn’t feel right so I am going to make it right, I certainly don’t want you to think I’ve matured or anything, so perfect example it just occurred to me out of the blue that aliens might communicate in fart.
okay. that’s it.
I feel better now, as the alien said.
