Another long time friend of the site has been bludgeoned into telling us his innermost secrets. Oh well, maybe not that but he’s answered our silly questions. Ladies and Gentlemen Mr James McEwan:
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Tag: literally stories
Week 508:Inspiring Words From the Past; New Inspiring Words and Remembering a Friend
Inside Information Inspiration
At the start of his career Hunter S. Thompson typed copies of famous novels in effort to gain a “muscle memory” of greatness–Gatsby for instance; the whole thing, seeking the inspiration; how it felt to write the powerful words. I have never gone that far, but I do surround myself with what I think are great words and images. These are pasted to my walls along with what I consider fine art. Visually, I have (among many others) Van Gough, Picasso, Dali and Giger prints as well as a large Shakespeare poster (whose accusatory eyes tend to follow me for some reason) on my walls. But it is not all highbrow, because I also have stuff like Elliott the Pigeon (of this wrap’s header), “Dogs Playing Poker” and a poster for Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster on the same walls
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Being Billy Olsen by Gerald Coleman
“One’s real life is often the life one does not lead.”
—Oscar Wilde
Billy Olsen didn’t remember the moment he started to grow into the image everyone had of him. Nor whether other people’s “Billy Olsen” was anything like the real one, if there was one. Self-awareness was not a strength. Perhaps that’s why he confided in me.
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Rence in Repose by J.H. Siegal
John Rence, the cobbled-up person you thought you knew, now lies here charming and cold.
His voice will endure, on those many recordings, and many of you will claim, hearing them again someday in a department store or in a television commercial, to have known him. But he was not the sloppy socialite you thought you met in bright apartments and dingy clubs. He was in fact a marionette holding his own strings.
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Joker by Kaela Li
Our love language is card games.
Idiot expresses our affection and respect, BS is our way of checking in with each other. War to express our shared frustrations. Spit and Blackjack to say hello and goodbye. A jack secretly gifted in the hallways between class is an inside joke. A queen is empowerment, when the hours get too long. A two is permission to rock the boat and get wild.
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What Can Anyone Say by Matt Liebowitz
“This didn’t happen when we were in school.”
“That’s true, honey, it didn’t.”
“I just don’t get why now all of a sudden – wait, why do you? – you don’t have to sound so patronizing.”
“I’m just listening, honestly.” She changes from her robe into scrubs, loose fitting and dark purple as an eggplant. Her phone rings. She answers it on speaker. “Say hi to your father,” she says.
“Hi dad,” Lily says. “How’s the year so far?”
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Sin Eater by Tarri Driver
I once was a young woman who, for some years, didn’t eat animals in any shape or form. I felt irresponsible and cruel eating them. That’s not the whole story, but that’s the relevant truth. I was troubled knowing that there were animals living in suffering on gridded farms overflowing with flies and shit as far as the eye could see. I didn’t want to ingest all of that pain, brutality and filth. That was too much for me to eat.
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The Three Fishermen by Tom Sheehan
There were three of them. There were four of us, and April lay on the campsite and on the river, a mixture of dawn at a damp extreme and the sun in the leaves at cajole. This was Deer Lodge on the Pine River in Ossipee, New Hampshire. The lodge was naught but a foundation remnant in the earth. Brother Bentley’s father, Oren, had found this place sometime after the First World War, a foreign affair that had seriously done him no good. But he found solitude abounding here. Now we were here, post-World War II, post-Korean War, Vietnam War on the brink. So much learned, so much yet to learn.
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Warmth by J.H. Siegal
Asatta fussed over her warmth-membrane and scanned the flat horizon of the little planet, searching for a spark of orange light. Blue wisps of ice and dust curled about the skyline. Anjett was late returning. Soon she would have to enter the dwelling and close it off, leaving him to the intractable cold of the planet’s night.
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The Ghost of Van Gogh by Dale Williams Barrigar
An Empty Family Cabin
I arrived after midnight. I found the key on the peg in the unused barn using the flashlight on my phone.
There was a blanket of stars so thick I stood in the barn door staring upward at the swirling white masses for a long time after I found the key. The shadows in the old, haunted barn had made me think of the birth of Christ story as I remembered all the departed members of my family.
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literally stories 