Dave and Stan! get Slammed

Another story night at A Guide to Visitors at the Rendezvous, this time a slam as opposed to a curated show. The slams are smaller operations, lack as much planning – those who want to tell stories show up, their names are pulled from a hat, and they have five minutes to tell their tales. Tiny cash prize for the winners. The subject for the evening was Excess. Both Dave and Stan! felt they had tales for consideration. I got there early, and spent about a half-hour writing longhand – I have a logic conflict in a short story I am working on, and a change in venue helped sort it out.

Dave’s story was another story of his youth – drinking and shooting and being penalized by helping his mom work in a Parochial school, under the watchful eyes of the nuns (He’s never looked at Penguins the same way). Stan!’s was of his boss in Japan, who had his entire life written down in a voluminous day-planner, working out to the graduations and marriages of his children, and his eventual date for an affair (ten years in the future). Stan!’s delivery was top-notch, and for a heavy man with long graying hair under his cowboy hat, he captured the feel and flavor of Japanese society.

Neither one won, nor did my favorite, a young woman who lost the groom’s ring at a wedding, getting it caught in her pantyhose and forcing her to publicly retrieve it during the ceremony. The winner went to a tale of a young man who built a model of Rhett Butler for a school book float parade, and then pressed the manikin into service as a silent partner in gathering candy.

Time Change

Daylight Savings Time flipped this weekend, with the result of the sun going down later (relative time). This is a nasty time of year this far north, because folk are suddenly leaving their jobs in the dark. That, and the growing cloud cover (standing in the way of aurora borealis prompted by massive solar flares) contribute to a dreary, sad feeling up to the area.

There are exceptions to the grey darkness. Yesterday in particular, the westering sun dropped into the slot between leaden clouds and Olympics and cast the entire area in shades of red. The fallen leaves became an inferno sea of choppy water, and the pines themselves deep crimson pillars in the dying light. It had an otherworldly feel, for about a half-hour, until the clouds rolled in further, the sun dropped beneath the cascades, and greyness returned.

More later