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The Dive
January 4, 2007 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Suicide, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Accident, Crime, Epiphany, Guilt, Justice, Performance | by davidbdale | 8 comments
It was an admirable dive, technically haphazard but stylish, like good slam verse, and confident, despite daunting conditions, including absence-of-a-swimming-pool. The diver who launched himself from the concrete median was not in olympic shape. In a formless black coat and boots, he crafted a smooth arc of surprising fluency (and at the top of this architectural wonder he was scribing with his body—is that the apogee?—he caught my eye with a look so direct it lashed me to the mast of my inadequacy like a judgment) but slammed headlong into the tangential but irrefutable momentum of my not theoretical car. He hadn’t stumbled; he had dived. He hit my car hard. What had I done? I had observed. Because, really, what truth is served by saying I hit him? My safe path was predetermined to collide with his suicidal one, is all. The inevitable occurred. It’s ironic. You spend your life gaming the language and one day you realize—all right, it rear-ends you—that your game is not the essential game. The court calls celebratory toasts intoxicants. Juvenile follies cluster into constellations cops call Priors. The sketch on the police report shows the intersection of our fates, but the district attorney is using bigger paper in all directions. Her diagram includes neighborhoods of my youth, a shot grouping of misdemeanors and minor felonies, and marginal warnings of mayhem should I return to the highways undeterred. I asked about character witnesses, but my lawyer says Forget it, nobody’s witnessed any character. She’s hilarious. Of course I don’t blame the diver; once he launched his body carward, only I had brakes. I failed to undo the future before it could happen. That’s on me. But I ask you, didn’t destiny make two victims when it suicided us both?
Copyright © January 04, 2007
Cluck Like Chickens
January 1, 2007 in 299 Words, Books, Family, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | by davidbdale | 5 comments
How I love the silence of the consulting room when my patients are in their deep sleep and my fees are being paid. For me it’s like a lunch-hour nap I can be awake to enjoy. Two minutes ago, the confetti of their grievances was everywhere, and then—snap! I haven’t seen them this relaxed since, well, since last week. Concerned observers might ask why I don’t cure them. The answer is: I don’t cure, and there is no cure for riding a dead horse. Their problems are solved in advice columns every day. Mom, Dad, you’re sexually incompatible. That was clear when you were dating, but the fact that she liked to give you something “for special occasions” seemed charming. She’s unfulfilled, but not by you; for fulfillment she’d need a goal, and for that she’d need an imagination. No “occasion” will ever again be “special” enough. Why can you not see this? The kids see it. They “act out” because their personal family sitcom is all situation and no comedy, plus detention is cool in their circle. It’s no wonder I prefer the whole lot of them hypnotized. They dress well. If I propped their heads up, they could be posing for a catalogue. My diagnostic training is wasted on the bland. What I wouldn’t give for just one pungent psychosis that would flavor every family enmeshment, or a deviant strain of parentification over generations. I had a vocation for that, I thought; instead, I’m solving riddles of why girls eat, or why they don’t. Or why daddy here thinks his pothole under repair of a wife is unsexy. Maybe that’s the deepest plumbing of the heart; maybe my problems are as obvious as theirs; maybe I’m the one who’s being cheated when I put them down.
Copyright © January 1, 2007
Very Short Novels 