Sherman, miss your readings. I probably heard just about every one. Miss you.
Today I saw a car with an official Spokane Tribe of Indians license plate - seriously!- going down Madison. A young Indian was driving...I think you could tell they were Indians for sure, they were going ten miles an hour below the speed limit. I smiled.
Just read The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, may FAV author since college. Your memoir was on her list of favorite books in indigenous life. Also one of my faves.
We both wrote about laundry this week! Now I’m going to think of this couple when I pass the laundromat in Madrona. I love the good work a flash fiction can do. Thank you.
I didn’t know that! That’s a wonderful anecdote. I’ll have to look it up. I read a few weeks ago that Dolly can travel completely incognito through the world when she takes off her make up and stage wear. Then she is just a very small anonymous elderly woman in a nice dress out to dinner with her anonymous husband, Carl.
I imagined a radio just always playing. Hmmmm. A radio plugged into the wall that has always been playing in that laundromat. Nobody even remembers who plugged it in it. Might have been a previous owner. Might have been a customer who brought the radio, left it begin, and was forget they’d even brought it at all. Maybe the radio had been there since radios were first invented. Maybe the laundromat was built up around the radio. The eternal radio—the one that always knows when to play the song you most need in any given moment.
Very very nice, But you say you were alone in the elevator. Who was playing the laundromat radio? Was an attendant present? Or perhaps it was some Bat-Muse-Music you were imagining. It's possible. I myself have spent many nights in laundromats, singing Auld Lang in my sleep. That way, no one will bother you, unless they come to rob the quarter machine.
I love this--the beauty and drama of the mundane! The texture and eloquence of the most humble and intimate of experiences beautifully expressed in the origami of folding sheets together and the sensual delight of the warmed towel placed on the women's shoulder. There is so much romance and reminiscence in this super short story.
So beautifully expresses the beauty of the everyday- so much we ignore when routine steps in and blinds us to our reality. Only getting out of those comfort zones helps us pay attention!
"Our shoes slid across the detergent powder that had been spilled that day and had only been partially swept away." That's the poetry that is missing from my own writing and that keeps me coming back to Sherman Alexie.
It’s a beautiful story, yes. Thank you for the happy undertones.
I hesitate to say something about sad art, but in fact I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. These are difficult times. So many of us are sad, artists and non-artists alike. I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite characters in literature, the doctor in Camus’ The Plague. I’ve always loved the way he stood by the bedside of dying people, knowing that he could not save them, and still sitting by their side because he knew that, as a doctor, that was his role in life. I’ve often thought lately that writers might do the same, once in awhile, now when so many of us are hurting. Artists are the doctors of our souls. Stories are the magic that can lift our spirits, even when (especially when) they don’t pretend that all is right with the world, yet still find a way to lift us up.
Sherman, miss your readings. I probably heard just about every one. Miss you.
Today I saw a car with an official Spokane Tribe of Indians license plate - seriously!- going down Madison. A young Indian was driving...I think you could tell they were Indians for sure, they were going ten miles an hour below the speed limit. I smiled.
Love this one,sweet🍭
Very sweet story. Such love.
Thanks, Steve.
Relationships truly are the most important things in life. Thanks Sherman
Just read The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, may FAV author since college. Your memoir was on her list of favorite books in indigenous life. Also one of my faves.
We both wrote about laundry this week! Now I’m going to think of this couple when I pass the laundromat in Madrona. I love the good work a flash fiction can do. Thank you.
I didn’t know that! That’s a wonderful anecdote. I’ll have to look it up. I read a few weeks ago that Dolly can travel completely incognito through the world when she takes off her make up and stage wear. Then she is just a very small anonymous elderly woman in a nice dress out to dinner with her anonymous husband, Carl.
Having just met Diane in ‘You don't have to say you love me’,
this vignette is the cherry, apricot and a bunch of blackberries on top.
I imagined a radio just always playing. Hmmmm. A radio plugged into the wall that has always been playing in that laundromat. Nobody even remembers who plugged it in it. Might have been a previous owner. Might have been a customer who brought the radio, left it begin, and was forget they’d even brought it at all. Maybe the radio had been there since radios were first invented. Maybe the laundromat was built up around the radio. The eternal radio—the one that always knows when to play the song you most need in any given moment.
Very very nice, But you say you were alone in the elevator. Who was playing the laundromat radio? Was an attendant present? Or perhaps it was some Bat-Muse-Music you were imagining. It's possible. I myself have spent many nights in laundromats, singing Auld Lang in my sleep. That way, no one will bother you, unless they come to rob the quarter machine.
I love this--the beauty and drama of the mundane! The texture and eloquence of the most humble and intimate of experiences beautifully expressed in the origami of folding sheets together and the sensual delight of the warmed towel placed on the women's shoulder. There is so much romance and reminiscence in this super short story.
So beautifully expresses the beauty of the everyday- so much we ignore when routine steps in and blinds us to our reality. Only getting out of those comfort zones helps us pay attention!
"Our shoes slid across the detergent powder that had been spilled that day and had only been partially swept away." That's the poetry that is missing from my own writing and that keeps me coming back to Sherman Alexie.
It’s a happy one and yet it made me cry
It’s a beautiful story, yes. Thank you for the happy undertones.
I hesitate to say something about sad art, but in fact I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. These are difficult times. So many of us are sad, artists and non-artists alike. I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite characters in literature, the doctor in Camus’ The Plague. I’ve always loved the way he stood by the bedside of dying people, knowing that he could not save them, and still sitting by their side because he knew that, as a doctor, that was his role in life. I’ve often thought lately that writers might do the same, once in awhile, now when so many of us are hurting. Artists are the doctors of our souls. Stories are the magic that can lift our spirits, even when (especially when) they don’t pretend that all is right with the world, yet still find a way to lift us up.