Of God and Butterflies
Drinking beer last night.
Willing to do anything in my damn fool endeavour to improve the state of literature in the world, I entered a beer mat contest. The prize in the contest was to have your short story printed on a beer mat. Oh, there was also money and gift coupons involved, but my main desire was to get printed on a beer mat. Alas, it did not happen. But here is the story anyway. Have a brew while you read it.
drink a lot
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Flash Flash Flash
Green flash – nine dash – dark green in dark room, four flash – minus dash – three flash – six dash – eight then tight then eight. The operator shoves his chair back in fear, things happen too quickly to be surprised. Red left light followed by yellow left light glow beside the numbers, reflect the band of a wristwatch. Eight flash two…
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Halifax is significant to the Titanic, and vice versa. It is the port where 209 of the victims from the Titanic were brought after being retrieved. 150 of these bodies were eventually buried in Halifax. I live a short city bus ride from one graveyard where many Titanic victims are buried. I am also a longer bus trip to another graveyard where more of the dead are buried. I usually visit each once a year.
When cruise ships come to Halifax, one of the ‘tours’ offered the passengers is a visit to the Titanic graveyard. I assume the irony of this is lost, but I do wonder about the ‘tempting fate’ aspect of such an excursion.
One year I went to a Titanic “parade” down on the waterfront. The event started one hour late. The horse-drawn “hearse” was really a waggon from a local farm. The candles were fake electric…
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Much is made – again and again – about Kafka’s famous request to his friend, Max Brod, that all his manuscripts be burned unread. That included all his fiction, all his letters, and all his diaries. Consigned to the flames and removed from the earth.
Had this been done, most of the work for which Kafka is famous would never be known, for little was published during his life. His skewed yet realistic outlook on life, now famously known as Kafkaesque, would not be classed in every dictionary. A touchstone, known the world over, would have been lost. Kafka might, at best, been remembered as the man who wrote about the bug.
I will point out that Brod gets a bum rap about defying Kafka’s direction to burn all his manuscripts. Yes, Kafka did indeed make this request of Brod. He apparently made it a few times, both verbally and…
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spuning out of control
When In Rome
There was an Abyssinian (I made her),
an Albanian,
a Bolshevik,
a Bratislavian (he was worst),
a Brazilian,
a Canadian,
a cannibal (uh-oh),
a Colombian (smoking),
a cynic (she didn’t believe the Canadian),
a Dominican,
a Druid (he prayed for the Dominican),
a Druze,
an Etonian,
an Estonian,
a fool (ha ha),
a Frieslandian
a Gazaian (she stripped),
a graduate (he smoked),
a Haligonian,
a Helgolandian (he was gone),
an Israeli,
an Iranian,
an Iraqi {they three went into a bar},
a Jamaican,
a Japanese,
a Kazakhstanian,
a Kurd,
a Lithuanian,
a lush (one in every crowd),
a Mongolian,
a monster (them’s the odds),
a Nederlander,
a Norwegian,
an Olympian (I liked her),
an opportunist (coulda been me),
a Pole (he vaulted over the rest – *joke*),
a Québécoise (I’ll never forget her),
a Russian (great dancer – he had the steps),
a…
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Coming to auction next week is Franz Kafka’s signed Czechoslovak passport. The author was born in Prague in 1883. This 32-page booklet with various manuscr
Source: Kafka’s Passport at Auction
Here I can be heard giving a brief reading from my book of short stories, “The Elephant Talks To God”.
http://www.authorsaloud.com/prose/estey.html
The book itself:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephant-Talks-Dale-Estey/dp/0864924593
DE
It was such a summer day.
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