Health – Joy Williams

“Williams's fiction often portrays life as a downward spiral, and the failure of life in America, from a spiritual as well as economic perspective, as a virtual certainty. Her characters, generally from the Middle Class, frequently fall from it, at times in bizarre fashion, in a form of cultural dispossession. Characters are usually divorced, children are abandoned, and their lives are consumed with fear, often irrational…”

Yup – I say the above pretty much nails the overall feeling in Health.

It is a bit creepy to read about the pre-teen main character going into, and being briefly spied on during a tanning session.

Mid-80s teens tanning?

I can’t seem to remember any girls that were in the 8^th or 9^th grade with me going to tanning sessions. Sure, I think they spent time at the pool…or in their back yards working on a tan – but not at tanning salons.

Williams does a great job dropping hints of the future “youth-worship” society we live in today.

The kids are working too hard to look older and the adults are working too hard at looking like kids, and there is this weird mid-point where the two ages intersect.

The downward spiral of America…spiritually and economically and you might as well throw in culturally, academically and morally…yup I think we are well enough seeing that now.

Lawns – Mona Simpson

This was a hell of a read.

First, researching the author and finding her connection to Steve Jobs (Apple) and one of the writers for the Simpsons was pretty interesting. Look her up if you’ve got a moment.

Carver picked a winner with this one. Once again he chooses an author that turns over a rock that has too often been left undisturbed and shows us, whether we want to see it or not, the nasty creepy crawly things that dwell in those places of our world/society.

Simpson writes a disturbing story, a story where you are pulled through the scenes and become quite comfortable living in that story only to find yourself really not wanting to be there. You feel pretty uncomfortable about what you are reading. Disturbed, and sad, sorry for the character and sorry for those who have been through what she has.

Then you place the book aside and think about the story, and realize that there’s a good chance that Simpson has written about something that you have thought to be pretty rare…like one in a million rare, but is actually more common than you realize.

You then start to think back to past friends, girlfriends and their behaviors. Could their behaviors have been attributed to something similar to what happens to the main character?

Abuse weather it be physical, sexual or psychological surely must shape the personality of the child/individual being abused. There can be no doubt that there has to be a pretty significant “rub off”.

Too often, I forget to look at the background of a person that I am dealing with. I need to remember to take into account their history. Professionally and if the relationship develops…personally.

That of course takes time and a great deal of communication – which is something that I have long been a huge proponent for many years.

Great story – tough to read, but a great read, one that I won’t soon forget.

Telling – Grace Paley

Here we come across another story by Grace Paley. My first encounter with her can be found here.

This was a difficult story for me to get through. Not for the general story itself… but more for the style of writing.

The story forced me to slow down and read the dialogue…and honestly, it’s been difficult for me to read slowly these days.

Life has me catching up with these stories on a very infrequent schedule and…that sucks.

I miss the reading I was able to do.

And the next question from you should be…

“was…?” “well now Nokaj, that implies that there has been some sort of disruption that is preventing you from doing the reading you were doing.”

Yes, the birth of the boy really has thrown our lives into reconstruction.

We/I are discovering what is important in the world now and I just need to realign my priorities and blocks of time.

I was able to get running back into my schedule…now I just need to do the right thing and get this reading and writing there too.

“Problem…well, I’m pretty wiped out by the end of the day.”

Bullshit…reading one of these stories should take at the most 25 minutes.

Paley in her story gave me the speed bump that I needed to determine that I need a new pace, to slow down and focus on what is important. Reading these stories are important and something I need to spend more time on.

I’ve got a shitload of books in this series to get through and at the rate I’m going, I’ll never catch up.

It doesn’t help that I’ve added volumes to my collection on the back end of the series and that if I ever make it to the present year, I hope to include stories from those volumes.

Ahhh…Nokaj…dreaming again.

Invisible Life – Kent Nelson

It’s funny – well, funny in a strange way.

This is just the type of story that M would use as an example if we had a little quarrel over the “type” of story I found pleasure in reading.

Yup – it’s depressing as hell, and as Carver promised, he included a story that shows us what it is like out there in real the world.

This was a great story, one that I could relate to on some levels. One that pissed me off, frightened me and generally aroused a whole set of deep emotions.

And that’s precisely what a good short story should do.

1986 – just past the midpoint of the decade. I was in high school by this time.

As I read the story, I thought back to what my life was like in ’85 and ’86.

A major turning point in my life. A point where I really started to pay attention to – my life.

Things mattered, friends mattered, girls mattered…life was new and fresh.

The story fits the period.

And interestingly enough, it seems to fit nicely into today’s world.

I think there are a great many of us out there attempting to find out where we belong. It’s not like years ago where you were 30 and pretty much knew where our lives were headed for the next 35 years. Today, young people are waiting to get married until they are older, waiting to have children or not have children at all, going back to school for a second or third degree, and changing jobs. Layoffs are happening and folks who are 55 are discovering that they have to transition into a whole new line of work to pay for their kids who are just entering college.

The young people who are waiting are perhaps smart in what they are doing. The big decisions, the big moves right or left are done without the burden of being in a “traditional family” situation. Maybe this is a good thing, a safe thing – at least for “the family”

Of course, when my father decided that he wanted to devote his life to work, and make family secondary, the calendar had just flipped over to 1980. He had a wife and a couple of kids, a house, car, decent career.

Dropped it all and moved into a one bedroom row house in a suburb of Philly.

It’s the selfishness in this story that pisses me off. It reminds me that it exists out there and the act of being selfish causes great ripples in the pond of life.

What frightens me in this story? I suppose it’s the instability and lack of the typical family structure is the most. It’s scary because the events in this story can happen, and they happen every day. What happens when a person’s mind just switches…as if their mind jumps the tracks but rather than tumbling over the cliff into a massive pile of crushed iron and steel, the train continues forward slowly causing damage while also almost unknowingly damaging itself.

Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux – Alice Munro

In his introduction, Carver let the reader know that he intended to include stories in this anthology that reflected “what it was like out there.”

He does just that by placing this piece by Munro in the anthology.

I feel kinda bad. I just can’t get excited by a Munro story. It took me a couple of days to get through this one. It was longish, and there just wasn’t anything to pull me through. I know Munro’s reputation as an author…she just doesn’t do much for me.

And because I feel this way about the story, I cannot expend anymore energy on it.

NEXT!

Skin Angels – Jessica Neely

As far as I know now, we were pretty lucky. I mean it could have turned out so much worse. We weren’t saddled with an abusive step-father or a wacked out step-mother, and neither of them brought step-siblings into the picture that harmed us in any way.

I hear horror stories about combined families.

Yup – my sister and I were pretty lucky.

My sister and I are both grown now and came out of the whole experience relatively unscathed.

I suppose I can’t knock either of my parents for getting remarried. They got lonely. They fell out of love with each other and they found love and stability on someone else.

Each parent is now dealing with problems that are too personal and too medical to really share here.

It is strange how things work out.

All My Relations – Christopher McIlroy

Back in one of my other lives, I worked in a restaurant.

Before I began my work at the restaurant, I worked in a liquor store. I restocked the shelves, hauled cases of beer to cars, and from time to time, towards the end of my shift, I’d pound a couple of beers and do a couple quick shots of vodka from the airplane bottles we sold.

I wasn’t worried about getting caught because everything smelled like booze, and the work was mindless…so if I was a little buzzed…no one could tell.

We’d close the store around 11 and I’d peddle my bike home.

So, the restaurant.

I saw the help wanted sign hanging in the window one day as I was once again doing something mindless for the liquor store.

I wandered over during a break and inquired about the position.

Dishwasher.

Cool – another mindless job that could net me some extra cash. I applied and was hired.

A bit over qualified…but…well…whatever.

I worked out a schedule with the liquor store and the restaurant so I could have hours at both places.

I was tired at the end of the day, but I was working off some demons.

The dishes came back in bus-boy bins stacked high with slop. I’d scrape off the remaining food…at least the big chunks, and give the dishes a quick shot with the shower hose before loading them into the automatic dishwasher. I’d fall into a trance and became very efficient.

The owner of the restaurant saw that I had the potential of handling something a bit more challenging than dishwashing so he allowed me to train as a waiter.

His vision was flawed because I sucked as a waiter and I hated it.

Back to the dishwashing. My comfort zone.

An added bonus to being a dishwasher is that there was plenty of half empty bottles of wine that made their way back to my station. There was no way I was going to let some fine wine be poured down the drain! I developed quite the palate for grapes.

After working for several months, the restaurant changed ownership and with the new owners came a new chef and new ideas. The staff was pretty fortunate and a good percentage of us were asked to stay on as help. Once again, the owner/chef saw that there may be some potential in me and he moved me out of the dishwashing station and into the kitchen proper.

In my new position as a pastry chef/baker/cold app. Prep cook, I finally found success.

There was a new interest in the culinary world, and the whole “fusion cuisine” movement was hot. I was making homemade Burnt Sugar ice cream, Jagermeister ice cream, Ginger Thyme Crème-Brule, chocolate mousses, sugar cages, savory breads…it was quite the experience and I was very successful…as was the restaurant.

Moving me away from the dishwashing station left a hole. The chef hired a guy to fill my space. His name was Mike and because we already had a Mike (line chef), this second Mike became known as “Black Mike”.

Anything goes in the kitchen.

Black Mike has the cloudy bloodshot eyes of a crack smoker and hard-core drinker. He was small of frame and his body lacked any sort of muscle definition. He had a soft voice and wore a constant smile. He held a pack of Newport’s firmly in his hand.

I watched Black Mike as he worked, and I saw him develop a taste for the grape as I once did.

I respected that. In a demented sort of way.

I liked Black Mike. He was…what you saw. All he wanted to do was wash dishes and get buzzed. Again, I respected that. The honesty.

Friday and Saturday nights were long shifts in the restaurant.

Around 1030 as the last tables were being seated, I’d give $4 to Black Mike and tell him to head over to my old liquor store to buy some “two-fors”. For one dollar you could buy two 16 oz. cans of Natural Light Ice. So for $4 you could get 8 – 16 oz cans.

I’d give Black Mike 4 of those cans for his shipping and handling charges and because…well…he was a nice guy and just wanted to get a buzz.

I really enjoyed working at the restaurant and I learned so much there. I learned about life, and the thought that many people have, where they believe that everyone should spend part of their life working in a restaurant, is true.

It’s hard-core and will transform your so many of your thoughts on so many of your dearly held opinions.

I left the restaurant one afternoon after I caught the chef shooting heroin in the kitchen.

That was a bit much for me.

I left my stack of CD’s and my recipe book (one of the worst mistakes I ever made…leaving the recipe book).

I don’t know what ever happened to Black Mike. I can’t image anything good. The booze or crack probably caught up with him. He was just another shadow passing through my life.

I remember the last night I worked with Black Mike and it’s a nice image that I’ll hold onto of him.

He had just returned from the beer run. He dropped four beers off at my station, he then scampered over to his station, and we both cracked our beers at the same time, lifting them towards each other and nodding our heads, saluting the buzz we were about to mutually slip into.