Memoirous

June 30, 1974 for Jane and Joe Hazan Let me tell you that this weekend Sunday morning in the country fills my soul with tranquil joy: the dunes beyond the pond beyond the humps of bayberry – my favorite shrub (today, at least) – are silent as a mountain range: such a subtle profile against a sky that goes from dawn to blue. The roses stir, the grapevine at one end of the deck shakes and turns its youngest leaves so they show pale and flower-like. A redwing blackbird pecks at the grass; another perches on a bush. Another way, a millionaire’s white chateau turns its flank to catch the risen sun. No other houses, except this charming one, alive with paintings, plants and quiet. I haven’t said a word. I like to be alone with friends. To get up to this morning view and eat poached eggs and extra toast with Tiptree Goosberry Preserve (green) -and coffee, milk, no sugar. Jane said she heard the freeze-dried kind is healthier when we went shopping yesterday and she and John bought crude blu...

Wanted to let my faithful readers, both of you, aware of an opportunity. New Flash Fiction Review is accepting submissions . New Flash Fiction Review  was founded in 2014 by Meg Pokrass. They are an online magazine devoted to flash fiction. They even have a feature called Micro Interviews. New Flash Fiction Review hosts an annual award honoring a master short-short storyteller Anton Chekhov:   The Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction --reading through July 15th.

I’ve posted here before about Kyle White, a hybrid poet fromWisconsin . I know this is already such a lame intro to someone who’s work I really appreciate. Sometimes too many words can ruin a moment meant to be sublime. That’s Kyle, he underwrites and leaves white space for the reader. His latest book: Bear. With Me. {A Field Journal} "bear. with me." is nine mysterious bear illustrations interwoven with a story of wonder, told through forty haiku: "Follow rabbit trail. You meet Bear in a fur coat. You find Bear is you." "bear. with me." is to be read slowly and in one sitting, out-of-doors. I shared with him my chapbook: Bright Invisible about a week spent at Great Spruce Head Island in Maine. Through essays, journal entries, persona letters where I attempt to channel James Schuyler and experience the island through his eyes.   Bright Invisible: Words Sketches of Great Spruce Head Island These are the kinds projects no one has a ...

I'm missing mid-summer in Sweden. A year ago I spent one of the most magical evenings I can remember amongst friends and strangers in the hinterlands of Sweden dancing around a "pole" and yapping like a frog (I have no idea) in celebration of the longest day of the year. Summer in Chicago can suck and it certainly isn't getting off to a good start: temps in the low 60s and drizzly rain. We've had weeks of rain now. I really miss riding my bike way into what should be night, into what is normally sunset--yet the sun is high and bright. I miss cleaning up at the water's edge and sleeping in the cool dusk--falling asleep before the sun goes down. I long for long summer days in Sweden.

When They See Us Ava DuVernay, director, screenplay When I say “Central Park 5” you know what I mean. When I cryptically mention “wilding”, you get it. Same thing if I say southside or westside. Code words for African Americans. POC, people of color. In mid- to late-April there was a news story about groups of roving black kids downtown. A warm April night (a rarity this past spring, not even goin’ to get into the fact it’s June and we’ve barely broken into the 70s yet) add social media and the mayor and the police chief were calling an emergency. According to the Chicago Tribune: What happened? About 500 teenagers  gathered downtown  early Wednesday evening. Police were ready for them because of social media posts, strategically staging patrols and calling for transport vans. The teenagers spread out across Millennium Park and near the Lake and Grand Red Line stops, passing packed restaurant patios. Some teens got in fights among themselves. In one case, po...

The Friend By Sigrid Nunez Riverhead Books, 2018 Let me start this review on a completely random note: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lament. Lament is such a brilliant expression for the times we live in. It beats giving up. Yet there are so many who have done just that—giving up. Giving up also takes many different forms. Such as turning off your Smartphone and living in a cabin off the grid. I know people who are doing just that: isolating. I can no longer reach them and when I do they do not want to engage. It feels like a death. Then there are those who have chosen death. Every day we hear of someone who has taken their life. News media tells us it is an epidemic. A current of hopelessness permeates the air, to the point that sometimes I have to escape. Disengage. What a vicious cycle. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. One way I choose to escape is through long-distance cycling trips. In fact, I’m planning one right now. Even just the planning...

The Blue hour put out a call for submissions and I responded. Ten minutes later in my inbox I got an acceptance. That was fast, I wrote. The editor simply said when we see it, we know it. Apparently it was just the right piece for that issue. Untitled by Jane Hertenstein Turning fifty is no big deal. It’s like forty-nine plus. Like size 1 is hardly different than a size 0. As if I knew. Those numbers are so far in my past as to be irrelevant. In fact I’ve never been a 1 or a 0. More to the fact, the closest I’ve ever come to a small was when I was a 11 junior—before the fashion charts got a make-over, adjusted for the new American woman, before an eleven was deemed a nine and a true eight became archaic. Fifty is a state of mind. A half-way point—if one were to live to a hundred. Current statistics proclaim women will outlive men by seven years. The average woman today will probably make seventy-eight. In that case I am more than half-way there. Three quarters. Only I might hav...

Here's another one from the archives: “It has come to our attention that certain residents are not curbing their dog.” I don’t have a dog, but I do have a parakeet. So I wondered if this message was for me. After affixing my galoshes and screwing on my thermal gloves, I pushed out through the revolving doors. What does it mean to curb? At the web design startup where I work, Carrie had a fit because someone (again) ate something out of her plastic tub in the lunchroom fridge. Not that her rant referred to me. I was curious, so I asked her what she was missing. She glared at me. More like a scowl. Not sure the difference — only that I brushed crumbs out of my mustache and scurried back to my cubicle. When I returned home after a long day at the office — okay, not that long, only about ten hours, but it had been arduous — I found another note in the lobby of my building. I set down my bags and pushed my glasses further up on my nose until it nudged into that snug place. ...

Here is a link to a story that came out a few years ago: In Her Garden by Jane Hertenstein When the regional rail line was extended north, Carol Ann and her husband Bob decided it was time to move out of the city and their second-floor walk-up and out to the unincorporated hinterlands where new suburbs were being planned. They were tired of thin walls and hearing their downstairs’ neighbors squabble. They wanted more space, room to spread out, especially as Carol Ann was pregnant with their second child. She surveyed the back acreage of the lot-and-a-half upon which their new house sat. The surrounding land was open, for the time being. It was an area once impacted by the Ice Age. Receding glaciers had left fields of moraine and mostly flat treeless prairie. She imagined what it must have been like for the early settlers. A tabula rasa   upon which they worked from sun up to sun down draining the sloughs and farming the land. She thought about how all things must eventually...

Last week I went back to my roots: backpacking. Also my parents used to live in Tennessee and I have spent a lot of time in the park. When they moved back to Ohio around 2007/8 I thought my time in the Smokies was finished. On top of that my hiking partner moved to Minnesota, so that seemed to seal the deal. Until I got a hankering--and my feet fixed ( see post) . I contacted my friend to see if she was available and when the stars aligned I cooked up a plan. It's always good in the dead of winter to have a spring plan! After picking her up at the airport we drove almost to the park and camped one night in the Daniel Boone National Forest (Holly Bay campground). I always find tent camping most exciting when there are bear boxes and Bear warnings. We did not spy any bears--we only heard birds in the mornings. We knew we were below the Mason Dixon line because it suddenly was no longer cold. Upon arriving at the park we cycled the 11 mile loop of Cades Cove and trekked to t...

This will be a very personal post. When we write, even fiction, we are revealing a little part of ourselves. Indeed, this may be why I write: to crack open the soul. So then . . . after I've done my part, written and cracked, ached and revised, what next? I'm not a hobbyist, so I put it out there--for the world to read. Or at least I hope so. I send out my flashes and short stories and essays and generally after a lot of coming and going and wrestling, they are published. The novels take much, much longer. If I can't get an agent for the work then I try for smaller presses which are still reading manuscripts. Sometimes I go the self-publish route. Either way eventually these also get published. After all this then I help market and publicize the work. I begin to intentionally engage with readers. And, this is where I have hit the wall. I can't make people read my book, just like you can lead a horse to water but can't make them drink. I asked friends t...