a short short story collection

Where It's At
I knew where Jenn would be, and when. I stepped off the 17 at 3rd & Pine, crossed the street and leered at her.
The bus stop at 3rd & Pike is not the most comforting of places... I don't really understand how the ghetto can be smaller than a city block, but it is, and it's at this bus stop. It didn't surprise me that Jenn didn't make eye contact, and it didn't surprise me that she ignored me when I tapped her shoulder. I was, however, surprised she didn't kill me outright when I yelled, "Hey!"
I told her my rent was on the shelf at home, and I was going to a show.

I walked a mile up the Hill and discovered I'd arrived an hour and a half early. So I looked around at this previously unexplored part of town. I heard music--good music--being played. It sounded live, but didn't seem to be coming from inside Neumos. It seemed to be coming from an abandoned building, in fact. I crossed the street and look in an open window, to discover a bar. Not much of one--there were three tables, and a bar, period--but they hosted good music at least. I don't know who they were, but they sounded like Over the Rhine.
After they wrapped up, I crossed the street again, and this time heard a violin. A short girl with a shaved head was playing, and quite well. The box next to her shook, and I assumed there must be some pet inside. Until I saw the eye through an airhole. And then the finger.

A knife penetrated the cardboard from within, and soon a new, larger airhole was created. And then another, still larger. An arm came out of one, a leg through another, and I wondered for a moment if I weren't watching a live production of Svankmajer's Alice.
The music stopped, and the girl pushed the limbs back into the box, and started playing again. Three pieces later, and the box was done for. The man inside put it into recycling, and then the duo were approached by Jason Webley, whom I was there to see. And then I heard music again from the bar with no name. This time it was a song I'd heard three times earlier in the day, but never before. It was something about watching television on a Saturday night, as well as I could gather, and I wondered at its significance. But I was snapped back to the world around me as Anna arrived and introduced me to the enormous and lumberjacinal Peter, John (whom I recognized instantly, just as I did James Funderburk when I had never met him before), and Webley.
As I heard stories of Jason Webley's amazing travels and adventures, and as the duo started another performance (this time a puppet dance, which became a puppet sex-scene, again to the girl's violin), Anna explained that this particular intersection was just like Burning Man.

Inside, my I.D. was in question. It didn't help that I got the ID just a few weeks before I left J140, and therefore didn't remember which address I'd put on it. Yes, I've lost wieght. Yes, I have facial hair now. Yes, I'm a long way from "home." I need a new I.D.
I finally made it in, and paid way too much for a drink ($4 for a cup of Blue Moon, later $8 for a large Red Stripe), and sat down to read Walden Two while the opening band played. Peter read Choke, and a passing guy stopped and told Peter what a genius Chuck was. I'd taken him for some frattish guy, but encouraged be Peter's, "Yeah?" he stayed long enough to really engage us with a description of Chuck's subtlety and style.
Downstairs, Jason Webley engaged us as well, having the audience emulate trombones and eventually tickle each other. There were two girls who seemed really out of place, and didn't look like they were having fun. I wondered why they would be at what was, for the most part, a Sleepytime Gorilla Museum show (and they didn't seem to appreciate Webley, either), but I didn't care, once SGM was on. It was loud and strange and hot by that point, and I was falling asleep.

The 4th of July
Independence day is an interesting holiday to work retail. I remember working it at Blockbuster in Dickson, TN, when nobody would come in past sunset. We were able to relax, goof off (not that much stood in the way of that most days, there). I remember standing outside, washing the windows, and hearing fireworks but not seeing any.
This year I'm working BN in Issaquah, WA, and it was nice. Everybody through the day was pleasant, and we closed early. I'd mentioned to my boss that I was thinking of going to Gas Works Park to see the fireworks. She told me she'd lived across Lake Union from there, and she and her neighbors used to get together on the 4th and watch the people as the park filled--people coming in as early as 8AM to get a good spot.
I got home and had a couple beers & supper, and wondered if I really wanted to walk to the park just to be crowded in and probably not get a good view. As soon as I realized the alternative was to sit around the house, I was out the door.
I had not been able to imagine so many people filling this park, so I was pretty amazed when I arrived. Since the sun sets so freaking late here, I decided to see how high up Kite Hill I could make it before the show started, and it turned out I could make it all the way to the top. I had plenty of personal space, and a great view of the lake. I realized then that I was surrounded by thousands of people, and that I'd have to get out of the park. Fortunately, after the best fireworks I've seen in the default world, I found that getting out was no trouble.
Once I realized that I wasn't going to be standing still for an hour as the mob exited the park, I set myself a goal of never slowing down. Of finding the simplest, most efficient way home. This was fun--I ended up climbing the rails from one level of sidewalk to the next, climbing on a boat trailer, and hopping a couple fences, and following heavy boat traffic. I actually ended up passing my house and having to backtrack.
And I was alseep in my bed by 11:30.

The Pirate Festival
I woke up Saturday and felt lazy. I knew I had to go to the Seafair Pirates' Landing, but really I just felt like laying in bed and watching "Heroes" on DVD. I texted Anna (who I may have come to reply on too much for adventure supply), but got no reply. I asked Jenn & Josh if they'd like to go, but they were looking forward to spending a day at home. So yeah, I watched "Heroes."
I finally did hear from Anna, who was on her way there, so I got off my butt & hit the road. I got there a bit before her and looked around... at how lame it was. There was some kind of pole vault event taking place--not very Piratey, but the most interesting thing going on. There was also a massive inflated pirate ship being taken down by a massive inflated octopus... which was really just a big, inflated slide--even better than the one at Rachel's halloween party in 2006 (but no, Scott, not because of the Asian girl factor, alas). And there were maybe four people dressed up in anything I'd call nearly-authentic pirate costumes.
So we left, and found food across the street. The sign on the building suggested they served soup, salad, and Pegasus, but the last turned out to be pizza. And they didn't even serve pizza with horse meat, which would at least have been (I'm supposing) a close approximation of Pegasus... Ah well, it was darn fine pizza anyway.
And then it started to rain. So we left, planning to invite Mark & Maitreya to join us at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. We didn't get ahold of them, and Jenn was alseep on the couch when I came back to the house, but we went anyway. Here's a great thing to know: the museum is free on the first Saturday of each month. Se we didn't have to pay, which is good considering they closed 20 minutes after we arrived.
From there we crossed the park to the water tower, which was awesome. It's your average metal silo of a water tower, but it's surrounded by two spiralling stairs and a brick wall, so you can walk safely and legally to the top of the tower and look out all over Seattle. It's gorgeous, basically.

The Amber Guard
Coming down the stairs, I stopped to look out windows and when I came out at the bottom, rather than finding Anna, I found ninjas. I was surrounded!
I ducked around them and spied some people in really breezy, comfortable looking hazmat suits, with gas masks. So we sat back and watched what we later learned was a short film being made, featuring costumes from lastwear.com (the link is to the deviant.art page, since the website's mostly undeveloped just yet).

The Bookstore That Read My Mind
Walking in to Capitol Hill's Half Price Books, I was troubled. Just two days earlier, I'd found a book at work that I thought I'd like to have, but thought also was overpriced. But now that I was at the store, I couldn't think of which book it was. At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and saw a copy of Dr No. Ah, yes! That reminded me, I was looking for one of the 007 books--but not that one. When I lifted Dr No from the shelf, the store seemed to say, "Oh, no? Well maybe... this one?" And behold! There, waiting for me, was For Your Eyes Only, the book I'd hoped for. A few minutes later, thought to look for Jonathan Carroll's books, but didn't know whether they'd be found in Fiction or Sci-Fi. I was in the sci-fi and turned to look where fiction would be, and there, between the two sections, was a display featuring a JC book I'd never heard of. Sadly, that's where the mind-reading stopped being useful, as I was looking for The Land of Laughs, which the bookstore did not have.
They did have a British edition of The Time Traveler's Wife on hand, which had a quote at the beginning that's not in the American edition. It wasn't a particularly wonderful quote, however. It did have sand in the bind, though, and I was pleased to know someone read it at the beach.

The Worst Statue in Seattle
"What do you think this statue means?"
Nothing good: four small men support a globe while one enormous man (all in top hats and tail coats) stands atop it, holding as much money as can fit in his arms. He seems to be taking a giant penny from a tiny woman.
"You don't think he's giving it to her?"
It's a penny, so I don't that perspective lends anything much better to the statue's suggestion.

To the man at the door of Seattle's Grand Hyatt (in front of which the statue stands): "Excuse me--do you know what the statue means?"
"Means?" This is not something he's asked every day, of course. "Capitalism," he guesses.
Another man appears behind him. "Interpretation," he says. "Any work of art is open to interpretation, and it means whatever you see in it. But," he adds, "the name is The Miser."
"It's been called the Worst Statue in Seattle," adds the first man.

An Unoriginal Novel
Walking up Pike Street in Capital Hill, I was stopped by a guy at a table. He handed me a piece of paper with a quote on it, and told me if I liked it, he'd tell me more. (Anna got a different quote.) I like quotes in general, so agreed to hear what he had to say.
His name is Brett Dean McGibbon, and he's written a book called Lucifer's Redemption. He's a character, and he has a sales pitch. He also makes his living, selling his book on the streets. In the past seven years, he's sold 11,000 copies. (He's written two other books. "I've stopped selling them, though, because people buy them," he said. He prefers to sell only this book, which he prints and binds himself.) He sells his paperback for $5 (or donation; I got my copy for $2), his color paperback for $10, and leather-bound copies for $20 or $30, depending on the quality of leather. It's not at all a bad-looking book, and the leather-bounds are really quite soft.
So here's the premise of the book (straight from his pitch): "So the devil is born on Earth, but this time he's human. Which means he has a human heart. Which means he can love. And he learns to love God--in a woman!"
And here's the description of the book (from the back cover): "...born on earth but with one weakness: a human heart. Riding a motorcycle to Alaska he finally falls in love with God-in a woman..."
Did I mention this book is self-published? Mr McGibbon seemed that I should be impressed with this novel idea, along with the mind-blowing revelation that there are "lots of different stories about the devil."

The next day, Scott and I created other stories that could benefit from Mr McGibbon's sales pitch. My favorites:
"Dolph Lundgren is a robot, but he has a human heart, and in that heart, there's a cybernetic implant that allows him to love. Finally, he learns to love Steven Segal--as a woman."
"An eskimo, ice-fishing at the North Pole, raises his line to discover... a human heart, which allows him to love. With this new ability, he comes to love God--in a polar bear."

But as laughable as the sales pitch was, I actually am interested in the book. The premise may not be original, but it's not necessarily common. And goodness knows I'm fascinated by stories what involve redemption and [self-]discovery.
And actually, I was grabbed by the quote he handed me originally: "Apparently, like a seed, for the stubborn like me, the hard shell of the heart must crack, be broken before anything worthwhile can bloom." After all, I'm out to break the hard shell off anyone's heart that I encounter... and I seem to have developed one of my own.
He said he wants to get this book out into as many hands as he can (he admitted, even before I gave him my $2, that he'd sell it for a nickel, if it meant it would be in the hands of someone who might get it). He believes the world needs compassion very much right now and (this would be one of the big reasons I bought the book) he believes his book can help.

If you like either his sales pitch or this one, check him out at Different Fish Publishing.

Kubota Garden
This isn't really a story. I just thought it would be a shame to talk about this past weekend and not mention the Kubota Garden. I heard about it on NPR the other day, and decided to check it out. It's just south of Seattle (technically, I believe it's in Tukwila, but really it was only a fifteen minute drive (if that) from the heart of downtown Seattle. It's a twenty-acre Japanese garden, with bridges and ponds and streams and hidden paths galore. And it's open every day (except specified holidays like Christmas), during all daylight hours (and have I mentioned that the sun is up by five, and down around ten?). Oh yeah, and it's free. Suck it, Cheekwood.