005

The gel jar is gone.  So is the okra.  I can only suspect my ex-girlfriend.  

004

One weekend, a tear forms in the envelope.  The tear is small, nearly imperceptible, except of course, I can see it.  My fiancée and I have a small candlelit ceremony to open the envelope.

mega super-sized published fiction recap

(most recent first) (with excerpts)

The Glass Stranger

They say they’ve almost solved The Anomalous Buoyancy Problem. They say we might float to the surface soon. They also say we might sink to the bottom. I’m not sure which I’d prefer.

Bee Boy

Bee Boy was neither a bee nor a boy but something new entirely. If you looked at Bee Boy and knew his name, you would think to yourself, “Yeah, okay, I get it.”

Golden Brown

As I make them, I imagine I’m the greatest grilled cheese cook in the world.  I imagine there’s an award given out every year in somewhere like Zurich or Bern.  Connoisseurs from around the globe arrive to celebrate the beauty of melted cheese on bread.

The Exploding Sun

I once bought one of the hairballs just to see how she shipped them. It was packaged so nicely. I could only think Where does she get the boxes? And Is she using my tape? I hid under the bed and waited for her. I know she likes to nap down there.

.

Unremembering the Tragedy of an Indoor Succulent

(The Catalonian Review site seems to be down, so I’ll just post this whole thing here) (originally published by The Catalonian Review)

My girlfriend collects cactuses or something.  They’re all over the apartment.  I work at night and in the morning I feel like I find a couple that I’ve never seen before.  Every morning.  I wonder if she even knows how many she has.  I decide to get rid of a few and see if she notices.

            Every day I take one or two out.  I hide them in my backpack or if they’re small enough, in the pocket of my winter jacket.  Some are so tiny that I slip them into my shoes or hold them in my palm on the inside of a glove.  I grow my hair out long and tuck them under the eaves.  If I forget about them, I find them on the floor of the tub after I shower.  She never notices but the cacti still keep multiplying.  A week or two later I break up with her.

            I’m on the street and I see a man selling a cactus.  He keeps them inside of his cart.  They’re planted on the inside in a foot of sand.  The lid of his cart has a sunlamp shining on them.  He tells me the cacti think they’re in the Gobi, but I don’t realize what he says until later since he whispers in a forgotten language.

            I describe my girlfriend to the man.  He knows her.  I start to cry.  I cry uncontrollably.  I sob into his shoulder.  He smells like an oasis.  He pushes me away.  He tells me I’m trying to kill his plants.  He yells at me for wanting to over-water them.  I buy a little one from him anyway.  I point at a greenish blur through my tears.

            I buy five bags of sand on the way home.  I fill the floor of my bedroom and bury my new friend’s roots there.  I call him Wan and learn Mandarin online.

            Years later, I meet my former girlfriend on the streets of Urumqi.  I’m wanted by the local government for stirring up some rebels.  She has a doctorate in Asian literature.  We speak in hushed Chinese through the night in the back room of a teahouse. She flies back to Kunming in the morning.  At precisely noon, I ride into the desert and vanish in a storm.

I wrote a story about grilled cheese sandwiches that was in a recent kill author.

Here it is.

Everything I Read in 2010

Mostly for myself, I’ve figured out everything I read last year.

I guess mostly just the fiction.

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Novels:

Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Shoot the Kids, Nip the Buds by Kenzaburo Oe

Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin

The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima

The Tenth Planet by Edmund Cooper

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

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Novels in stories:

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Life in the Cul-de-Sac by Senji Kuroi

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Short story collections:

Beyond the Curve by Kobo Abe

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar

The Crackling Mountain and Other Stories by Osamu Dazai

The Glass Slipper and Other Stories by Shotaro Yasuoka

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon

Today The Sky is Blue and White with
Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale
Moon and I Will Destroy Our
Relationship Today by Tao Lin

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Book-length essay:

In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

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Book of Poetry:

Strong in the Rain by Kenji Miyazawa

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Books I started but haven’t/didn’t finish:

City by Clifford D Simak

The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu

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I also read a number of comics/graphic novels, these being the most exceptional:

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD by Dash Shaw

Acme Novelty Library #20 by Chris Ware

The Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason

Almost Silent by Jason

The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola

Gogo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto

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What I’ve started to read this year:

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

[that’s kind of funny; just realized]

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

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I already have a list as long for this year. I’d better get busy. This was a little Japanese heavy, so that’s one thing that’ll change. I think Lord of Light was my favorite of anything.  I should make a top 10 of short stories or everything combined…

Catalonia

A new issue of The Catalonian Review has just been posted, and I have a story in it.  It might be one of my favorite things that I’ve written.  It’s like 400 words, so don’t hesitate.

Go forth and read.