About “A Brief Attempt at the Absurd”

First, I’ve written “A Brief Attempt at the Absurd” because I’ve never written anything deliberately humorous. Second, I wanted to try to create the absurdity based upon the language to describe the scene and the activities taking place. Quite a bit of this made me laugh, and I think it came from the timbre of the words I was typing being disassociated from the images in my mind that were driving the story. I especially like “…and he promptly turned and tripped her.” I don’t know why, I just do. Well, maybe it’s because of the set-up, his seemingly genuine concern for her well-being. The story itself arose from a memory with my former wife, Annice. We were walking down some outdoor stairs at Kent State University and I nudged her into a fairly deep snow-drift. And she said, no kidding: “Oh no, not again!” Here’s the ShortLink to the story: http://wp.me/P11mP2-8J

 

About “An Outcome in Faith” and “…Revised”

As my original post described, ”An Outcome in Faith” was written as an demonstration of my capacity to write about Faith from day-to-day experiences for a web startup looking for writers and editors. The site’s editor’s reply to “An Outcome in Faith” was brief and I’ve pasted here:

“Can you write shorter, making one clear, crisp point in 500 words?”

Here is what I saw:

god you suck give “Can you write shorter, making one clear, crisp point in 500 words?” up this ridiculous delusion

“An Outcome in Faith Revised” is the result. Once I was able to acknowledge that I had been given the same suggestion a couple times before, the editor’s words bit less.  So I went ahead and edited it down to 500 words, refined my point and sent it in. I realized afterwards that it was indeed a better essay, and the editor might actually hold postive regard for my effort, eslewise it would have been easier to simply not respond.

Now, my revised effort may sink the final nail in the coffin of my ambition to write for this new website. But, “the results business is handled Elsewhere.”

About “The Tree”

I wrote “The Tree” shortly after being comitted to a psychiactric intensive care unit for an attempted suicide in January 2011. I was close to being discharged and thinking about  those things that always seem to be in the background of my life. Those things that encourage destructive behaviors, those negative influences that are so easy to focus upon. But there was one particular postive influence and it is that influence that inspired this story. The Tree is a work of fiction, but the sentiment is completly auto-biographical. 

About “Exiting the City’s Opposite Gate”

“Exiting the City’s Opposite Gate” is an experiment in writing about the story’s environment and the character’s interaction with it, or in Bobby’s case, his inability to interact. For the context of this inability, it may be useful to know that Bobby’s “maladies” are combat-related PTSD, schizo-affective disorder and chemical dependency. This vignette describes is a one of Bobby’s many “crack runs.” The gate Bobby will ultimatly exit, like approximatly 1.5 million other veterans, will be chronic homelessness and in the worst cases, as 6570 veterans will resort to this year alone, suicide.

About “Once He Was…”

 

I wrote “Once He Was…” shortly after reading David Irving‘s “The Trail of the Fox,” a biography of Irwin Rommel. In it there was mentioned a superb Afrika Korps battalion commander: Hauptmann Wilhelm Georg Bach of Infanterie-Regiment 104, a Lutheran minister. I wondered at his service in the Wehrmacht, and then what might call a man-of-the-cloth to war.  Shortlink to “Once He Was…”: http://wp.me/P11mP2-5x