When it rains, it pours, and then you get a head cold.
Calling it a sick day, but here's a quick update and a short story of mine that was published 22 years ago.
Dear readers,
I hope you were able to use last week's holiday break to enjoy the company of friends and family, contemplate the things you're grateful for, and keep pointless political arguments with recalcitrant relatives to a bare minimum. Me? Although I could have driven to Los Angeles to spend the day with dear friends, I chose to hunker down alone with some restaurant leftovers in my room at a Residence Inn in San Bernardino. I wasn't lonely at all. I was filled with a sense of buoyant satisfaction and relief after many hard days of crises and solutions--and I needed the solitude.
This was not my plan when I flew out here on November 15, the same day you received Part 1 of "An atheist gins up some Grace." I was planning a short trip to fix a problem with my mother's checking account at Citibank and to spend just a little time with her at the assisted living community she has called home for about 12 years. I thought I'd be home for Thanksgiving with my son and the Amiable Ex.
Instead, I have been stuck here to address dire financial and medical problems day after day, mini-crises arriving at a pace and with an insistence that feels almost fated. I will tell you more about them when I return next week (I hope) to complete "An atheist..." with Part 3 of 3. Here's what is fascinating. The cascade of unexpected hard circumstances has kept me here for 13 days now and will likely do so for another 2 full weeks. These events have offered up some brand-new information about my mother and some new opportunities to see myself in action as a more genuinely peaceful person than the last time I was out here. In doing so, they have given me an unexpected way to wrap up this story with a nice 3-act structure (although some of the story's broader scientific and intellectual implications I'll have to explore in later posts).
In other words, real life has taken over the storytelling task; I put the premise out there and now I'm just sitting back and watching it unfold. (You can read this last sentence with as big or as small of a wink as you want.) The premise, you may recall, was this: On Sunday, November 6, 10-11 am, during an hour-long therapy session, I essentially shouted away an intense burden of built-up rage and emerged a few days later feeling released, peaceful, and full of love.
I would have liked to wrap everything up today in a video, but after the stress and sleeplessness of the past two weeks, I've caught a cold and need to rest.
Meanwhile, please consider the following linked piece of short autobiographical fiction, Sheath, a form of "deep background" on all of the things I've said and written here about my family. It was published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Issue 40, May 2020. It can be found on page 17. It's a brief little thing, a true remembrance fictionalized. Some of you fellow GenXers may recognize aspects of the time and place. I hope you enjoy it. Have a good week.