"Eliza, in the Event of a Hurricane"

"Eliza, in the Event of a Hurricane" is now up on the website at Precipitate Journal. (Re-established & renamed in 2012 as NEWFOUND JOURNAL).

"On this particular night we get weathermen, talking and talking.  And when El pulls the ottoman up to the television, it becomes evident that you’re in this for the long haul.  She looks at you and winks and cracks the same joke she told five minutes before.  Something about a girl walking into a warehouse where nobody works and nothing is sold.  Smile, but don’t laugh."

Read more at: 

"Eliza, in the Event of a Hurricane" - Precipitate - Journal of of the New Environmental Imagination - PRECIPITATE is now NEWFOUND JOURNAL. 

Rewrite

- by Paul Simon

I've been working on my rewrite, that's right
I'm gonna change the ending
Gonna throw away my title
And toss it in the trash
Every minute after midnight
All the time I'm spending
It's just for working on my rewrite
Gonna turn it into cash

I've been working at the carwash
I consider it my day job
'Cause it's really not a pay job
But that's where I am
Everybody says the old guy working at the carwash
Hasn't got a brain cell left since Vietnam

But I say help me, help me, help me, help me
Thank you!
I'd no idea
That you were there
When I said help me, help me, help me, help me
Whoa! Thank you, for listening to my prayer

I've been working on my rewrite, that's right

I'm gonna change the ending

Gonna throw away my title

And toss it in the trash

Every minute after midnight

All the time I'm spending

It's just for working on my rewrite, that's right

Gonna turn it into cash

I'll eliminate the pages

Where the father has a breakdown

And he has to leave the family

But he really meant no harm

I'm gonna substitute a car chase

And a race across the rooftops

When the father saves the children

And he holds them in his arms

And I say help me, help me, help me, help me

Thank you!

I'd no idea

That you were there

When I said help me, help me, help me, help me

Whoa! Thank you, for listening to my prayer

- from The New Yorker - February 28, 2011

So True

How to go forward with writing in the gray new days of winter?  Who guessed the answer would appear on the home page of Narrative Magazine?  Four straightforward, simple, direct instructions.  And all of them so true: "Write simple sentences. Report. Don't moralize. No pretensions."

For more of Gail Godwin's early thoughts on writing:

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winter-2011/making-writer

The Pretty Days

from a novel in progress

In Chu Lai the base was spread out in a fan of tents, once white, turned a rusty color.  Sand and wind.  Wind and sand.  South China Beach.  That wasn’t your first visual, though.  The first was the mountains.  The green of the hills.  The vast flats of rice fields.  And the river like a long blue-black snake.  All the places where you carried your guns, radios, half-empty canteens.  All of the places where you expected to die.

The best part about Chu Lai was the beach.  The sun, the crabs you caught and cooked, the bottles of tepid beer you drank, the hours you slept.  Until you woke up to the sirens.  And to the bright flares overhead, gold and red waves of light against the sky as you beat your way past the weight of sleep into the long, insistent sound of the sirens, of sergeants, of shouts that stretched out of the bunkers into the sand where, still, there lay the corpses of the crabs, their shells cracking under your boots, under your massive black boots.

And eventually the morning would come, more gold for your faces, your eyes like gashes against the early cloth of daylight.  And the fighting would dismiss itself like something only the dark was allowed to know and discuss.  Somehow there was breakfast and then more sleep, for some of you sooner than others.  An eventual swim in the dark waters beside darker fishing nets.  Another day, another blue sky.  You didn’t ask your purpose; you knew your purpose.  And yet it wasn’t that simple; it was clouded by the red dust of too many trails; it was complicated and out of control.  Still, you cleaned your weapon, packed your gear, and got ready for the next camping trip.  You knew you’d smell more than the sharp green scent of trees, you’d make your way through more than elephant grass, you’d flatten yourself into the days and then the nights and make it through.   

But for the moment the view through the rip in your tent was the beach and the sky and a thin line of horizon.  Those were the pretty days.  The days in Chu Lai. 

ASH

On reading the story "ASH" 

by

Roddy Doyle

Take an ordinary circumstance that’s life-changing, like a wife leaving a husband.  Pair this with an extraordinary event, like a volcano erupting in Iceland.  Have the two sit together and chat perhaps.  Or better yet, just have them sit quietly.  The result will be phenomenal.  The wife will return to her husband, though the heat of her leaving will still remain.  Then will arrive “one of those brilliant moments” – the television will reveal the smoke and ash of the eruption, and one of their daughters will ask, “What’s ash?”  And while the volcano makes itself important, its internal temperature rising in the same way the world’s attention will, ash will fall.

the story

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/05/24/100524fi_fiction_doyle

the volcano

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/photographing-icelands-fiery-volcano/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tSheLN3oBE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4VULM3gmOc&feature=related