Six Sentence Stories

November 13th, 2008

2008-11-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

The extraterrestrials landed today. Washington has not put out an immediate statement. All flights have departed on schedule. Stocks are just as low as they were before. The forecast for the week is consistently high seventies with mostly clear skies. The Lakers are 7-0. Overall, it seems like everything is going to be all right.

November 12th, 2008

2008-11-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

It was late this afternoon, while gathering the boxes in his attic, when Carson Brightley realized how much more he favored his older son Derrick to his younger Trevan. Derrick worked fewer hours than Trevan yet made more money. Trevan read all the wrong playwrights and avoided dark beer at all costs. Carson's wife had died this past Christmas and everyone decided an apartment would be better suited towards Carson's needs. A deep depression had since set in on Trevan, who seemed to have taken his mother's death harder than anyone else in the family. Derrick enjoyed the taste of dark beer though, which was really important.

November 11th, 2008

2008-11-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

Charles Bukowski is angry. Charles Bukowski is disgusted in the unfairness of it all, the way Charles Bukowski can never get it just the way its supposed to be on the page. Charles Bukowski loves his wine, loves the incubation of smoke in Charles Bukowski's lungs from a stale cigar. Charles Bukowski hates the way he always falls in love with the wrong slut. In a moment of absent-mindedness Charles Bukowski gives a homeless man two dollars more than Charles Bukowski meant to. Charles Bukowski now has four dollars.

November 10th, 2008

2008-11-11T19:47:00.001-08:00

For my birthday a friend got me a book entitled 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. The unfortunate title makes me think more of death than of music. I agree with some of the choices but disagree with most. I know a lot of the ones that start with the letter "B" but almost none of the ones starting with "X." I wonder if this says more about me or the letters. I wonder if this says anything at all.

November 9th, 2008

2008-11-11T19:44:00.001-08:00

I am standing on the ninth floor of a large research library in which there are ten floors and many staircases. I am looking for a book on Schroedinger's Cat. This is a theory which states that a cat can be simultaneously alive without an observer because in the world of quantum physics all possibilities coexist simultaneously and all realities hold true. Recently I have been interested in the subjectivity of things. This library is quite peculiar in the sense that the elevator only goes to the fourth floor. Floors five through ten must be reached through climbing one of the many staircases.

November 8th, 2008

2008-11-11T19:37:00.001-08:00

Upon waking at noon next to a body I know far too well I declare that this week has not met my expectations. Once our morning silence has been broken I stare at her naked back as I wait for her condolences. I admire the shape of it, how it slims at the stomach only to widen again at the waist.

Slowly she turns her torso towards me and whispers, "Get over it. Not every week is supposed to be good."

Another lesson learned far too late for it to be of any value.

November 7th, 2008

2008-11-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

"There is a room in Santa Cruz where the laws of gravity do not fully apply," she says as we walk past the doodlings of dead men. Meanwhile tourists (curiously, all of the same ethnicity) freely take snapshots of their children standing next to Rauschenberg's combines. Quickly the pass from one combine to the next. Soon they will move on to Ernst, then Dali, then Matisse, then their homes, then their beds.

"It all seems a bit unfair," I say.

"What, gravity?"

"No, art."