candle girl
15 Wednesday May 2024
Posted Books, Fairy tales, Fiction, Short story, Stories from underground, Universe, Writing
in15 Wednesday May 2024
Posted Books, Fairy tales, Fiction, Short story, Stories from underground, Universe, Writing
in08 Wednesday May 2024
Posted Authors, Books, Dreams, Fairy tales, Fiction, flash fiction, Short story, Stories from underground, Writing
inTags
amazon, book, book launch, candle girl and other fantasies, creative writing, ebook, fantasy, hans christian andersen, kindle, short stories, short story collection, slipstream, speculative fiction
Dear Readers:
Recently, I self-published a collection of short stories entitled Candle Girl and Other Fantasies. A few of these stories have appeared in their earliest forms on this blog; the rest are brand new. There are eight tales in all, including light fantasies, dark fantasies, and a mix of the two. Thank you to all who may be interested in buying the book. I’d also like to mention here a few stories by others that have seeped into my imagination and have no doubt influenced my writing. I’ve read some of these stories more times than I can say and their magic has never failed to captivate and inspire me. Here are links to these stories:
Silent Snow, Secret Snow (Conrad Aiken): https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/silent-snow-secret-snow
By the Waters of Babylon (Stephen Vincent Benet): https://archive.org/details/bythewatersofbabylon_202001
Green Tea (J. Sheridan Le Fanu): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11635/pg11635-images.html
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Gabriel García Márquez): https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MarquezManwithWings.htm
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/512/512-h/512-h.htm#chap04
Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal (Robert Aickman): https://bristolgothic.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pages-from-a-young-girls-journal-aickman-1975.pdf
Happy reading!
A. L. Anzalone
17 Thursday Aug 2023
Tags
I think of this sometimes, I’m not sure why: a news item about a lost dog and a young man who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. I saw a brief newspaper story about them while scrolling through an old newspaper reel looking for something else entirely. Why my eyes fell on this irrelevant story, irrelevant to my purpose at the time, I don’t know. But I stopped to read it and the story has stayed with me to this day. It’s a sad story. I will state that clearly here for those who probably know I tend to write about sad, depressing things, but so be it. You can stop reading at this point, if you wish. But for me the story has such resonance and meaning and poignancy beyond its simple narrative. The boy was 18. He had lost his dog. He was new in town. Had probably come to L.A. to start his life. Nothing was said about where he came from. It was an acquaintance who related the story. The person said, the boy looked all over town for his dog. It was his best friend. When he couldn’t find the dog, he committed suicide. So the report was about the boy’s suicide and the supposed reason behind it. As I said, the story was very brief. Just the facts, no mention of other problems that may have been factors. What stood out for me were the basic elements: the lost dog, someone saying “it was his best friend,” and the frantic searching that ended in the boy’s suicide. It hit me hard, and it still does to this day. For only a few years later, I lost both of my dogs, one after the other, through unfortunate circumstances (a botched fatal dental cleaning and the subsequent decline in her little pup’s health), and my memory reached back to this story, to the feeling that dogs can literally be your best friend, that a suicide can result from their loss. I’m not being dramatic here, and I’m well aware that such a confession may be pathetic to some. But in all honesty, I understood this boy. And I think a few others will as well. That is not to say that I am thinking of suicide. Don’t get me wrong. What I mean to say is that a dog and any companion animal can be so linked to a person’s sense of self and well-being that the loss can be that overwhelming. In other words, an animal-human bond can be as deep as any purely human bond. Scoff, if you will, those who think this is pathetic (read here a close relative of mine). But as I said, I believe some will understand.
07 Monday Aug 2023
Posted Dreams, Short story, Spirit, Stories from underground, Story poem, Writing
inTags
creative writing, dream, flash fiction, microfiction, poem, poems, poetry, story
i didn’t know what to bring and only started to think about packing a few items just after learning about the journey. it was all very confusing and so my mind bounced from one idea to the next without committing to any of them. the small suitcase i had flung onto the carpeted floor remained open throughout my dithering with nothing thrown in it. i mean, what do you bring for the next world? and why is it you have to bring anything at all?
in the meantime, i was trying to ascertain the journey details and the means of conveyance. you could say, in short, i was in a precarious and nebulous situation. moreover, i didn’t remain in one place while fretting over all of this. i somehow made it to an airport only to find out that no planes were arriving for me. and yet i also knew a deadline was fast approaching.
my anxiety, of course, was at an all-time high, and to make matters worse, i still didn’t know what this was all about, this journey, this deadline, this ultimate destination. when i finally awoke, with some relief, i realized i didn’t have to worry anymore. there was no need to pack, make decisions, do anything at all. and yet i remained awake long after, sorting through the details and rearranging them like flowers on a tomb.
29 Saturday Apr 2023
Posted Knowledge, Poetry, Stories from underground, Writing
inlong after you have been played
or wronged in some serious way
through no obvious fault of your own
a certain quietude may come over you
call it forgiveness
call it wisdom
call it a lesson learned
call it anything you want
but when this stillness falls upon you
and settles into your thoughts
or seeps into your center of being
well
that is the perfect time to start
plotting your revenge
03 Tuesday Jan 2023
Posted Children, Knowledge, Love, Short story, Stories from underground, Writing
inTags
Alzheimer disease, Alzheimer's disease, creative writing, daughter, dementia, diary, journal, mother, prayer, writing
Today my mom hid her face behind a sheet of paper. It happened as we were lying side by side on her bed at her new residence. What had we been talking about as we both gazed up at the ceiling? I don’t remember now. Something about the past, I suspect, but then suddenly I turned my head and saw her hiding behind the sheet music given to her earlier, which contained the words to Amazing Grace. The sheet was from the sing-along we had attended earlier in the community room. I thought she might be crying, hiding her tears from me. But when I asked her, are you okay? she lowered the sheet a bit, like a child playing peak-a-boo, and said, I thought I’d hide behind here to pray.
I didn’t know what to say to this, so unexpected it was. I felt I had desecrated the sanctuary she’d been trying to protect.
What a strange world I do my best to navigate: the world of my mother’s stop-and-go mind, so lucid, so confused, so caring, and then so blank, in an ever-changing cycle. And those slowly dimming looks she gives me—they’re of an animal nature, like the uncomprehending gaze of my dogs, desperate for communication. My mom has become another species. With this crude understanding, I try to accept her new way of being and the many surprises—like her secretive childlike attempt to create a sanctuary, a space inviolate, away from everything and everyone. Including me.
All the while, there is a stream, a constant stream of everyday life going on: the morning wake up, the challenge to get started in the morning, the need to walk the dogs, get coffee, and all the other choices and chores that crowd one’s mind. And then there are those other streams, like subterranean estuaries, that nevertheless are the streams of a life, that if you give them too much thought will engulf you utterly.
So it is with thoughts of my mother. I drive to work beneath the bright summer sun, thinking about the day ahead, looking forward to this, dreading that, when suddenly I’m struck by the realization that my mother is dying. Both mind and body are dying, even as she struggles as she has always struggled in life. But my mother is now small and frail, and her bones will surely shatter like glass around the rods already in place, if she falls one more time, and as I drive down the 405 freeway I’m almost woozy with this knowledge, beneath the summer sun, with tall palms swaying on either side, alongside other cars whose occupants are swept along no doubt by their own hidden streams. And I feel these streams converging inside and out, until I wonder how it is we don’t all crash.
04 Monday Oct 2021
Posted Knowledge, Poetry, Spirit, Stories from underground, Writing
inTags
creative writing, knowledge, poem, poems, poetry, purpose, self, self-knowledge, spirit, writing
who am i he asked
as he stared at his reflection
in the storefront window
and tried to extricate his image
from the many chandeliers on display
but he had no answer to give
other than thinking i am someone
who wishes to know
his purpose in life but instead
finds his unsteady shifting self
lost within the bright charade
15 Monday Jun 2020
Posted Knowledge, Mythology, Stories from underground, Work, Writing
inThe last librarian sat behind the information desk and wondered aloud, “Now what?” with no idea where to begin. She wasn’t frightened, though, or even very angry. Mostly, she was just tired of waiting.
All her professional decisions in the past had been matters of momentary importance. Where’s this? What’s that? The why and the how of reference questions. It had been a job based on happenstance, with little romance. Yet now that no one came to the desk to ask for her informed opinion, she felt jilted – like someone left standing (or, in her case, sitting) alone at the altar.
For a while she watched a white moth flitting about down the history aisle. In the light sifting through the high windows it danced its hypnotic dance past shelf after shelf, eventually landing somewhere near the end of the aisle. Seeing this as a sign, the last librarian wandered over to the area where she thought the moth had alighted. The moth was nowhere to be found, but taking a guess as to which book it may have last settled on, she chose a thick volume from the top shelf. It happened to be a book about Mesopotamia. She opened it to a page at random: a photograph of a clay tablet with dense cuneiform writing. The caption read: “Sacred tablets like the one seen in this photo were kept in a special room, with each tablet bearing a classification symbol along its edge, much like the catalog numbers librarians now place on book spines.”
She closed the book, closed her eyes, and visualized a wide room within a temple. From every direction light streamed in through high, narrow windows. In the center of the room stood a slim, erect man (or was it a woman?) delicately running an index finger over a stack of tablets, leaving a long smooth trail in the dust which lay upon the surface.
When the last librarian in the world opened her eyes again, she was jolted by surprise to see where she was standing: not in a Mesopotamian temple but in the same dim aisle of the same dim library she had worked in for years. And the looming shelves all around, filled to capacity with books barely touched, let alone read, sent a shiver not unlike terror through her limbs. At one time she had looked upon this space as a kind of temple, awed by the thoughts and ideas these books contained. All that intellectual striving! All that roving curiosity! But now as her eyes fell upon the faded, brittle spines, some of whose titles and call numbers she could barely make out, she had a visceral understanding of something she had long known. These books, however cherished, were simply vessels. And like all vessels throughout time, they were destined to be replaced by something less cumbersome.
As were their keepers.
At this thought, the last librarian couldn’t help but smile. Finally, she knew exactly where to begin. It was now her time to walk away but not without leaving a personal statement. Her statement, however, would be different from her predecessor’s. It would be an homage of sorts, an homage, one might say, in reverse. It would hearken back to the dawn of time, when knowledge was new, when only light and darkness reigned and the forces of creation and destruction battled for supremacy. And when she closed the old building that night – a building so cathedral-like in its majesty – at the end of a long, sinuous aisle, she would be wielding the torch.
27 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted Dreams, Fiction, flash fiction, Love, Stories from underground, Uncategorized, Writing
inTags
creative writing, dream, fantasy, fiction, freud, freudian, humor, love, queen mob's teahouse, short stories, short story, subconscious
A short story of mine, titled The Machine: A Dream in One Act, is now live on Queen Mob’s Teahouse. (This story has never appeared on my WordPress blog.) If you have a chance, please take a look and let me know what you think.
It’s a little different from my usual stories as it is based on a dream I had one night. So, blame the strangeness of it on my subconscious–and perhaps also on the fact that I once worked at a psychoanalytic institute…
15 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted Memory, Poetry, Stories from underground, Writing, Youth
inI was thinking about Roland Young,
a childhood acquaintance who
was mutilated by a serial killer.
I was thinking that if this killer
had been charged when he was
arrested years earlier when
first under suspicion, if judicial
incompetence had not allowed him
to roam free like a hungry wolf –
no, not like a wolf, wolves kill
only in defense or to feed,
more like a hungry demon lurking
in the deepest regions of hell –
Roland might still be alive.
I was thinking about this, god knows
why, maybe from an impulse
to honor him in some meager way,
to remember him as a sweet-faced boy
with shaggy brown hair and shy brown eyes
who sat next to me in Art who loved
Led Zeppelin and surfed at Huntington
Beach…well, I was thinking about him,
when you suddenly started telling me
about your trip to Disneyland, and when
my thoughts merged with this allusion
to such cravings for joy, a chill
shot through my very core.