Figures

Since it’s been a minute or two I figured I’d let ya know that I’m not dead yet. I’ve been fairly sparse around here for a multitude of reasons that I still don’t fully understand, but I’m going with it. That’s why you haven’t seen much from me, but here are the few things that have happened so far this year.

The dudes over at ENDLESS STATIC were nice enough to put out my story, Pint For Sale back in February. It’s about a guy carrying his brain around in a pint glass and he’s not sure what to do with it.

I was pretty tickled the next month when BRUISER let me know that they had published my short fiction piece, Escape to Oases. It’s weird and rural and a little magic? My first piece that’s been published online outside of Substack. Trying to let myself be proud of that.

And finally, the boys over at Bad Clown Books put out a sneak peek of my short story, Barbed Wire Fence Blues the other day in promotion of the June 13 release of the short story collection it is included in, Masculine. I’m honoured to have been a part of this project and super proud of this story, so go and get yourself a copy. In fact, you can buy one right here. Praise be to Christian Ham for his editing and Trey Hinkle for everything else.

I’ve been plunking away too, when I feel the wind pick up and it flares the embers left at the bottom of the pit. A little unpredictable, but it’s coming along. I’ve been working closely with my pal F. Mono, and we have a project that may be coming out here in the near future. Call it a zine, a collection, b-sides and rarities, possible trash, call it whatever you like, but we’ve had some fun putting some little ditties together and we’ve plans for more of it too. Stick around for whatever the hell that might turn into.

In the meantime, here’s a little guy that I’ve been keeping warm in a shoebox in the porch. Heat lamps and little bottles of milk. I’ve been wiping it’s eyes with an old sock and I think he’s gonna pull through.

Dig in.

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I’ve been lost in space for a while. Lost right here, in the dust, that is to say. I’ve been trying to figure it out. I’m starting to think that there’s nothing to figure out. The only thing that I’ve definitely figured out for sure is that whatever John Fahey was saying with that guitar, that’s how I feel. Does that help? I’ve been eating olives regularly for the first time in my life and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It feels like an acceptance of some kind. I’ve started getting up earlier in the morning so I have time to do fifty push-ups, fifty sit-ups, eight minutes of meditation, and to write one page of stream of consciousness by hand, and then I have a reasonable breakfast, but I don’t think I’m going to tell my wife because I’m afraid she’ll leave me if she doesn’t think I’m a dirtbag anymore. One time I was riding home on my bike when I was a kid and took the corner too fast down our gravel driveway that had a slight drop off on one side, and I shot off it and flew over the handlebars and into the freshly mowed, evening dewy green grass.

I remembered another thing I figured out for sure. My baby boy is far and away the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I reckon I could be reincarnated one thousand times as gnats and muskrats and monks and skunks and trees and rocks and prairie grass and mozzarella and garlic and cows and dogs and aunts and uncles and suns and moons and gods, and I am one hundred percent certain that I wouldn’t come across one single being in the entire universe that was half as beautiful as my baby boy. He’s not so much a baby anymore though, so I sure as hell don’t know what that could possibly make me.

I have been self-medicating with baseball, and I need to up the dosage. One more streaming service won’t hurt, right? I’ve been thinking about Mennonites I grew up with and Hutterites I’ve worked with and I’ve been thinking about how much of the Earth knows about these groups of people and what other kinds of microcultural ethnicities exist out there that I don’t know about? Wikipedia tells me that the correct terminology there is Ethnoreligous, which is definitely a better word than what I used, but still, I feel like I wasn’t far off. Besides, words are just made up anyways. Is it true that I’m really always going to be ignorant of everything? Of course it is. I’ve been avoiding as much as possible, myself most of all. I don’t think it works anymore. I haven’t been shaving enough. My dad always said that anyone who can’t shave before work is lazy or useless or something like that. But everytime I shave I feel less shitty about myself so maybe he was right. I wonder often what he thinks when he sees me on day five stubble for the seventy-second day five in a row.

I’ve been trying to find salvation in Hank Hill. I’ve been looking up at the sky more than usual. I’m not sure if I’ll ever find anything. I can’t wait for May to be over because I have this theory that everyone dies in May. There were way too many Mays in way too short a timespan and there was always someone checking out in May: family, more family, neighbours, family again, and so far this May it’s been a lady who used to drive bus at our school forever. I didn’t know her very well, or at all, except for in some version of myself that’s always ten years old, but it does kind of feel the same as when it’s family or someone you really love, even if I didn’t know her. It all ends up feeling the same at some point. So I’m ready for May to be done, so nobody has to die for a little while. I guess that’s what I figured out since I’ve been gone. Or tried to figure out.

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