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The Sorry Legend of the Great Bootsock

The Legend of the Great Bootsock is a sorry homily for the rest of us who have talent, but zero gumption to keep fighting the hard fight against time and condition and geography.

The Great Bootsock got his name as the star of his small-town high school football team.  As the true freshman quarterback of his team, he won the first game he ever played by diving over a goal line scrum — even though one of the opposing players had grabbed his sock and was pulling him back from the score.

When the sock pulled away from the aggressor’s grasp, it wrapped around the heel of the great Bootsock’s cleats, sticking there like a flag of immediate infamy and respect, and the Legend of the Great Bootsock was born.

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The Woman Who Married Her Brother and Became Her Mother

Ella was born rich — if you consider a revocable living trust an exploitable financial asset — into a family of a self-made lawyer father, who was rumored to be a Midwestern consigliere for the East Coast mafia, and a mother who bred racing horses in the backyard of their remote, and expansive, farm.  Her mediating older brother was a template of his harsh father.  Ella was a meek mimeo of her mother.

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The Rats’ Maneuver of MV Lyubov Orlova

Morning fog, cool and thick, hovered just above the churning peaks of the water that enveloped the grey Kerry Coast. The spot was hundreds of miles away from land, and despite its loud, sloshing waves, the word that a witness would use to describe the scene would probably be “dead.”

The wind was at a standstill, and there were no sea hawks or gulls unleashing proud squawks, nor any eager creatures jumping out of the sea for a gulp of air. The spot seemed frozen and untouched, and when a dark, looming shape began to emerge from the east, its presence was so startling that it seemed to crash loudly through the fog.

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Call Me Bramble

They call me Bramble.  I have been living rough for several months since my friend died. Before that, I used to live in her house with four like me — all of whom have now disappeared along with the five large dogs that used to live outside. I was very afraid of them, they did not like us and used to hunt us in packs.  I hid inside a lot.

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Thoughts on the Year that Was 2012: Ten Sentence Story #172

As Jerald and his wife Matilda watched the New Year’s Eve countdown on television, they talked about the year that had just passed and how happy they were to have each other.

Jerald recalled how happy he was to have an office to go to in the morning, even if it meant that sometimes he would have to have less than pleasant encounters on the train — but it was these encounters that sometimes reminded him of how lucky he was in life.

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Songs Telling Stories: Music of the Fiery Furnaces

It’s great when things go full circle in life. As an example, I enjoy frequenting a site called NYC Taper, a site created by a gentleman known by the same moniker, who goes to concerts and (with the permission of the artists) records their set, releasing it into the wild as it were on his site. He does not ask for money for this endeavor however he requests that if you download a high quality audio recording of a band that you try to visit the band’s site and support them by buying their albums or merchandise.

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This Other Eden Review

I received a review copy of This Other Eden from Dybbuk Press recently and read it over the Passover holiday. I wasn’t really sure what to expect as I was going more on the name of the book than anything else. I was surprised by the six stories in this collection — five of which were printed elsewhere previously. Though each of the stories is grim in nature, they all have glimmers of hope within them — somewhat reflective of how life itself can be.

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