Who or What to blame this time?  I have to have something to turn to for my slack-ass reading.

Shit look at how long it took me to read this volume. 

6 months 13 days

or

28 weeks

or

196 days

or

0.54 years

I have to figure that it's a record.

20 stories

That works out to one story read and written about every 9.8 days.

11 stories by men – 9 by women authors.

ONLY 3 from The New Yorker! – The Atlantic is represented the same number of times.

In terms of motivation, I will say that I was not at all motivated to read the stories in this collection. 

I can easily lean on Helprin and say that his distaste for the minimalist turned me off...I can blame my work schedule...

There is no one to blame though - just me. 

There really is only one thing to do.  Keep reading.  1989 is up.

Helping - Robert Stone

It's tough out there. Life is tough.

I wonder if there is anyone who lives there life without a struggle of some sort.

Sure, our struggles are relative to our existence and I think that my struggles/problems/issues/challenges are nothing compared to those faced by someone someplace else.

It's almost embarrassing to even think of my life and associate the word tough with it.

But - it's all relative.

I am so very lucky in my life.

I have a job (two actually) that I enjoy.

I have a wife that loves me.

I have a beautiful wonderful son. We have plenty of food to eat. We are all healthy -physically and emotionally.

I do not sit in a cubicle, in a job that I detest.

I do not have coworkers that I loathe.

I do not suffer from PTSD or substance abuse.

I do not self-medicate through food or drink.

I do not fight with my wife.

I am not envious of my neighbors.



I am so fortunate.



I read the news, and it seems that people are so troubled - that they are so unhappy.

There seems to be millions in our society that are challenged with problems that make their lives so difficult. They hate their job, they fight with their spouse, their children are in trouble, they wrestle with mental illness (their own or another's), their finances are shot, they struggle with substances - they want to be better than the Jones'.



There are petty little things that we (M and I) would like to change in our life (house vs. apartment), no student loans...and some stability in my parent's lives. But honestly…this is nothing.

This story – Helping, it’s about love and need and companionship – I have all those and more –

Victoria - Hilding Johnson

I'll turn once again to my thoughts on me and writing - and yes, they are still thoughts and they are just that – nothing more.

Perhaps I'm a volcano and I'll erupt - or one day, I'll get hit on the head, and my world will tilt just enough to get me to actually write something - meaningful.

Hilding Johnson, in her contributor's notes, reminds the reader that an author has the luxury of creating a world through their writing...sometimes a world that they have never physically visited.

I've been doing a lot of world creating and it's remained in my head - there have been efforts in the past to get them on paper but that perfect stone has not fallen from the sky causing those worlds to be transferred to paper.

I am afraid at times that the stone will be too big and crush me under its weight. It needs to be just the right size - and come at just the right time.

Could I possibly set up any more barriers for myself?

Still Life- Marjorie Sandor

I still find pleasure in flipping through old photo albums.

The yellow tinted photos of the 70s, the overly color saturated photos of the 80s and the glossy deep rich photos of the 90s. The near perfect processed hard copy photos of the digitally manipulated shots that I tuned before sending off to the drugstore – existent - but a noticeable smaller collection as most live in hard drives.

The photo albums that W will be able to glance through will be so different that what his mother and I once thumbed through in our younger years.

In my albums, no doubt, he will find old hard copy photos of M and I dutifully ordered by our parents many years ago swiped from their albums to fill our own. He will be able to look back through old photos of M and I – and recreate our lives in his mind before he was born.

He'll be able to see us before our marriage, before we met each other, before I left home and traveled to that town in southeastern Europe He'll be able to fill in the gaps with his imagination and over time piece together stories from the stories we tell him...someday relying on his own memory of our fractured memories.

He will see himself in my baby pictures, as a boy of 2. He'll see me as a scared and awkward boy of 10, and then a teenager struggling with teenage problems. He'll see me in photos with girls that aren't his mother. He'll see me with friends that he'll never meet. He’ll see me with my parents - grandparents that he may recognize in their physical form but who are something different in who they present themselves as today. He'll see me in a uniform. He'll see me with a beard and long hair. He'll see me in distant countries, with strange looking people. He'll see me living in his mother's village...but in photos without her.

And then he'll begin to see her appear in my photos. He'll see us as friends, co-workers and then the shots of our marriage. Celebrations with a family so far away.

He'll see two young people boarding an airplane looking brave, hiding their fears and insecurities about their future together. He'll see their lives develop together over the years, trips with family and friends...and then with the turn of a page, he'll appear.

If he finds his mother’s small book of photos, flipping through the pages, he’ll see his eyes in his mother's eyes as she stands in her little "young pioneer's" kindergarten uniform. Photos of her playing with her two brothers. Black and white images not taken not in the 40s...but the 80s...poor Romania.

He'll see her as a student with friends and boys that aren't his father. He'll see her happy at family gatherings and at dances. And then he'll see the two books become one as he begins to recognize images from my photo albums.



I have seen a few...5 or 6 at the most, photos of my mother and father when they were young. I don't ever remember seeing photos of them starting school, attending dances, graduating from high school or college. There are a couple of the two of them before I was born...but the real photos start flooding into the pages of albums once I arrived. As a child, I viewed the photos, I placed myself at the center of my focus. I've since shifted that focus to what surrounds me in those photos in an effort to understand the two of them a bit more.

Their relationship intrigues me and I have a long term assignment to learn from it. I no longer trust either of their memories - obviously not my father’s due to his disease, but my mother's memory has started to shift towards invention. She also has tainted her memories with those leaning towards only the good aspects of their time together - forgiving him for what he did, and not holding him accountable for the life he gave us after he left.



I will teach W to look at these photos without placing himself our M or me in the center of the focus. I'll ask him to look at our surroundings - the pictures on the walls, the leaves on the trees, the food on the tables. I'll ask him if he thinks that the people in the photos were happy when the photos were taken. Were they wearing false masks? What does he think is really going on in the photo - does the photo represent that instant accurately?

I'll do this to stimulate his imagination and to fill in the holes of our history. I'll tell him stories of those photos and give him details of my life, our life before and after they were taken.

It will be a wonderful experience for him to see our lives as individuals...so far apart...joined...and told in a story that he'll soon tire of hearing...but one that he'll repeat one day.

And he'll also look at his life someday, collected in photos...almost a photo a day - and not see the changes that one can only recognize in photos taken at monthly intervals- will he notice the changes?