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
in14 Tuesday May 2024
Posted Books, Fairy tales, Fiction, Short story, 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
25 Thursday Apr 2024
Tags
afterlife, family, fantasy, science, short stories, short story, smile, smiles
My uncle has lived an extraordinary life. He is 90 years old now and says that when he dies he will die with a smile on his face, which I take to mean he is pleased with the life he has led, and when it reaches its natural end, there will be no raging “against the dying of the light.” He talks about his future death-bed smile so often, however, that like anything someone repeats over and over again, I’ve grown a bit tired of it, though this may be unkind of me to say. But something else genuinely bothers me about this claim of his: I simply can’t relate.
My uncle was a geologist or, more precisely, a mining engineer for most of his life, which required that he travel across the world (for the entire world is full of things to mine, obviously). As a young man, he had wanted to be an archeologist, but he quickly realized archeology wasn’t lucrative and working for corporations that mine the earth for profit would be. And during the heyday of such things, mining corporations made a mint (I know, bad pun) and so did he, for such companies (even greedy ones) during the fifties and sixties had generous pension plans, profit sharing, and the like. Of course, in later years, when profits started to wind down and employee benefits were scaled back in these and other corporations, the company owners he worked for tried to claw back the money they had promised the professional staff upon retirement. Fortunately, the staff sued and the wise judge ruled in the employees’ favor. As a result, my uncle became a millionaire overnight.
For most of my life, I wasn’t in touch with my Uncle Sal. It was only a few years ago that he contacted me, just prior to his wife passing away. They had no children. He is my father’s younger brother, the youngest in their branch of the family. The rest have passed on to wherever we all pass on to. My uncle, being a geologist, doesn’t believe in an afterlife. He says that if you have studied geology or any other science extensively, you will eventually come to that understanding yourself. At best, we will dissolve into the landscape or seascape, or, as the saying goes, push up daisies. Anyway, such are his beliefs. And such is how we came to reconnect.
Getting to know a new old relative is strange. He resembles my dear departed father in some ways, such as in mid-range tone of voice, easy-going temper, and watchful, intelligent eyes, but in most ways he is far different from anyone on my side. We are poor; he is rich. We struggle with paying rent (me), addiction (my brother), and planning ahead (most of us); he golfs and watches over his holdings. We live in the bowels of Los Angeles, in run-down apartments and (in one case) on the street; he lives encircled by the forested beauty of Eugene, Oregon, in a lovely home, bought with cash, located in a lovely neighborhood. So when he says he will die with a smile on his face, his accomplishments and his present circumstances help to explain why, but they don’t explain everything. And exactly what kind of smile is he talking about?
So when an interesting new museum opened up near my home recently, I seized upon the opportunity to visit. This was one of those serendipitous coincidences that usually don’t occur in my life, but here was a museum nearby that might provide some answers.
My uncle happened to be visiting me the weekend of the museum’s opening. I made a suggestion over lunch at a little café a few blocks from my apartment. I said, “Uncle Sal. Let’s go see what this place is all about.” He had just finished telling me about the dinosaur discoveries he had made in a Moroccan mine (a story he had told me before, though it was so fascinating it was worth hearing on repeat). I explained that the museum probably wouldn’t have relics quite like his own discoveries, but it might have unusual relics of its own to make the visit worthwhile.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, affably.
I had read about the museum a few days before. The space and its collection were described as “eclectic” and “innovative,” unlike anything ever attempted. And as we entered the former bank building of rust-colored red brick, I understood why. We found ourselves in a lobby blazing with wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor projected images of the most psychedelic color combinations you can imagine: egg-yolk yellow was the predominant color, mixed with fire-engine red, sapphire blue, moss green, drenched purple, and all of it swirling around us like a Van Gogh painting of a starry, starry night on another planet. For several moments, we stood stock still, my uncle leaning on his cane to maintain his balance, me clutching his arm to maintain mine. The place definitely took a moment for us to get our bearings. Given the discombobulation we felt, it was hard to see how many people were inside, but it didn’t seem like many. At least, when someone who I took to be a guide approached us and offered to lead us into the next room (this was only the lobby, apparently), we didn’t seem to have any competition. This someone was a young man with shoulder-length blond hair and an altogether surfer vibe who seemed to fit with the theme of crashing waves of color, despite being dressed in a tailored black suit. He had a bored expression on his face, which made me think he had led one too many startled visitors into another room. At any rate, as soon as he had led my uncle and me through two tall double doors out of the lobby, he turned from us with the same lack of interest and headed back through the doors.
Now we were in a room that was the complete opposite of the other. It was white, blindingly so, and resembled a gallery found in a typical museum. Also typical were the glass display cases, waist high, also white, that filled the room, about eight long horizontal rows of them. On the back wall, in fat, bold, off-white letters, was the gallery’s name: A Roomful of Smiles.
There were at least six other visitors in the room, scattered about, gazing into various cases, lingering here, moving on there. From where my uncle and I stood, near the entrance where the guide had left us, the cases showed little variation in what they contained. All displayed plaster-like casts of some sort, all white and all of the same size, more or less, each bathed in a soft warm light provided by small individual lamps. We walked up to the nearest case to look more closely.
This case contained five casts of the lower portion of a face. At first glance, the casts seemed identical. Upon closer inspection, however, we saw that each displayed a distinct smile. A small plaque in soft yellow beneath each cast provided an explanation written in a graceful handwritten light blue script. My uncle smiled at the sight. I wasn’t sure, but I figured he now guessed what my secret plan or intention had been all along.
“No, none of these are what I meant,” he said, as he surveyed the case.
In my mind, this case contained what I considered gentle smiles. The plaques read: Kind Smile, Friendly Smile, Accepting Smile, Understanding Smile, and Mona Lisa Smile. My uncle just shook his head and continued on to the next case.
This case had a truly eclectic mix of examples. Here were Crazed Smile, Lackluster Smile, Beatific Smile, Frozen Smile, and Ironic Smile. My uncle paused at the last one. He said, “This one is close, but not exactly the kind of smile I think I’ll have.”
“Why ironic,” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, my family was very poor, my mother couldn’t even read, and yet I dreamed big, I excelled in school, went to Columbia University, became a globetrotting mining engineer, married a beautiful redhead, and became a millionaire. Everything just seemed to happen without a hitch.”
I didn’t think this was irony, exactly, but I kept that thought to myself. I was just glad that he seemed as interested as I in finding the smile that would match the one he envisioned.
We continued down the row, and down the next one and the next. So many smiles, so many opportunities for my uncle to view the varied examples and perhaps happen upon the one he supposed might form gently on his face as he left this plane of existence.
We were nearing the end of the exhibit, making our way down the very last row, when my uncle stopped short before one of the smiling casts. He stared down at the glowing smile, beaming under its little lamp, for several moments, longer than at any other smile. I read the plaque: Brave Smile. My uncle himself was looking down at this smile with a frown. Why a frown, I thought. I waited for him to explain.
But he never did. He just looked over at me and nodded, grinning briefly, as if touched by the humor of it all, then nodded again, as if to say, this is the one.
Then he moved on to the last of the cases, never saying a word, never launching into an old memory, only moving through the rest of the exhibit until we arrived at the end.
Finally, he said, “Well, that was interesting. Let’s go.”
And so we left, again passing through the phantasmagorical assault of the lobby, and exiting through the museum doors to the harsh brightness of a Los Angeles afternoon.
As I drove us back to my apartment, he was again quiet. He stared out at the street ahead, at all the traffic in front of us, at the lackluster low-rent storefronts, some boarded up, but he made no comment. At last, when I parked my car in front of the apartment, he said, “Well, that was interesting, but I don’t think that exhibit will ever be adequate. Geologists know the uniqueness of creation, the uniqueness of mankind. Some of those smiles came close, but not one will ever come close enough. My smile will be completely my own. And yours will be, too.”
“But Uncle Sal,” I said, “I don’t think I’ll be smiling when I leave this place. Unless it’s a smile of gratitude to be done with it all.”
“Well, I hope that won’t be so,” he replied. “If there’s one thing we both learned today is that we should all smile more. Look how many smiles that museum displayed. Pick your favorite one. Practice it every day. Make it your own. Who knows, maybe that smile will be your saving grace, now and forever (even if I don’t believe in a hereafter). Maybe by choosing a smile, your life will fall into place.”
And so, upon my new old uncle’s advice, I have tried to smile more. To arrive at the smile that fits best and make it my own. So that when I leave this crazy world, my final smile will be a true reflection, a happy reflection, of how I chose to live.
(Rest in Happiness, Uncle Sal!)
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…
07 Saturday Feb 2015
Posted Authors, Books, Fiction, Short story, Writing
inSometimes, when I read a short story in one of the latest literary journals, my mind wanders. I find myself appreciating the storyteller’s craft and control but the story itself leaves me cold. The characters seem enslaved by the story’s design and, as a result, unconvincing. Or the beautiful use of language overwhelms the narrative as a whole and takes away from the movement of the story. It may be that these types of stories just weren’t written for the likes of me. In any case, whenever this happens, I often go over to my bookshelves containing books I can truthfully say I cherish, and I open one at random. Today, I selected Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and read the short story, “A Train is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result.” The story begins:
“Broom, dustpan, sweep, trash can,” Samuel Builds-the-Fire chanted as he showered and shaved, combed his hair into braids. Samuel was a maid at a motel on Third Avenue.”
At least for me, in so few words, so much is said, and yet hidden, and I at once trust this voice. I trust it will reveal in good time what I need to know—what I must know. And by the story’s end, I do know this character and feel for him. Even though I’m no Indian/native american (well, I guess I’m partly, if that means anything), this tale nevertheless makes me experience for deep moments at a time the journey of one Indian – the journey of one human being. So I say, thank you, Sherman Alexie, for restoring my faith in the magic of storytelling.