For those of you that read this blog, and follow me on Twitter/X (all two of you), then you know that I had an announcement yesterday, which was that Rejection Letters published a piece of mine – “Memorably Forgettable.” I have been a fan of this journal for a while, and I really appreciate that they included me in their publication; very cool.
And as such, I checked off a box on my list of goals for this year – Get One Story Accepted.
I was prepared to get deep in rejections for this year, as I have received 50 of them so far. I do prescribe to the “100 No’s Before 1 Yes” theory, and as such still feel like there is a lot of rejection out there for me to receive yet. (My Submittable cup runneth over…)
But, more importantly, I gotta get back to work. I still got a blog to write, a journal to fill up, and a corner in my apartment to sit in and try to make some stories work. And I should be reading more, to be honest.
As a kid who grew up in the 90’s, I am a sucker for slacker lit. You know, meandering stories, aloof narrators, whacky characters, and a general revelry for nothing happening… you know, whatever… Perhaps Kerouac created this genre of fiction with On the Road and Dharma Bums. And it’s a tough genre to execute. The form appears antithetical to the general format of short fiction and novels, as slacker lit just wants to stay mellow and float on down the road, but to work effectively, it still needs a climax. And it pains me to say this about “I Am Pizza Rat” by Han Ong, which is a charming and enjoyable short story, but lacks an effective climax, and leaves the end of the piece feeling flat.
And I liked this story and the writing. The narrator is a fifty-one year old struggling writer who lives in New York City, but is out in San Mateo, California taking care of his seventy-six father who recently had a fall and is recovering. The writing has just the right tone of sadness and depression in it, but also a touch of irony and humor which never lets the story go too far in the dark corners. We meet the instructor of a FALLING NATURALLY class, and his pot selling brother, Bun (pronounced “Boon”) the African nurse, members of a Gilbert and Sullivan Group, and the idiosyncratic routine of an elderly father. And there are animal videos. But at its core is a father and son story, and slowly the life of the father is revealed, and the trauma he experienced, and how he made imperfect efforts not to pass that along to his son. And the son is aware that his father tried, and mostly succeed, at ending this cycle of trauma.
This is all great stuff, which makes the climax all the more disappointing. I read the story twice, and decided that the climax is the last paragraph of the second to last section. See, the father asks the son where he goes when the nurse comes to the house, and the son replies that he goes to the university library and has started writing again, thus gaining his confidence back. Then the narrator goes on to say in the same paragraph, “In stories, books, I’m a sucker for the moment when the dormant character awakens.” As if this ironic “wink and a nudge” of a line is to suffice as the “realization moment” in the “Hero Cycle” where the hero has changed from the events of the story, thus leading to the resolution. Unfortunately, this lands hollow as the action is told to us, and not shown. This choice feels lazy in an otherwise active slacker story.
Look, endings are hard, and I don’t believe this ending “ruins” the story. It’s just more like a record scratch in an otherwise very good song. There are moments and observations in here that Han Ong shows a deft hand with. Especially with the father/son relationship, which is the core reason I would recommend reading this story.
There is an annual Autumn/Halloween event that my family takes part in, which is The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Croton-on-Hudson. My wife was the one who found out about it, and when my parents came to visit back in 2017, she got tickets for all of us. It was perfect for everyone, as we were new parents with a one year old, and the pumpkins were just flashing lights to our daughter, and that captivated her attention. And for my folks, it was just enough walking, and also something rather unique that they didn’t have in Texas. After walking through the Blaze, we drove down to Tarrytown for dinner, and then showed my parents the real Sleepy Hollow, along with the bridge and the Old Dutch Church of Headless Horseman fame. Since then, we try to make it out to The Blaze every year.
This year was no different. Got tickets, and made plans with another family to all go together. Like most years, things happened and we left late. Traffic was awful getting out of the city. We were all late getting to the restaurant, and had to eat quickly. Luckily, the kids were all in a good mood – no melt downs.
And it was worth it. The kid is getting old enough now that none of the jack o’lantens are scary to her, and even some of the joke carved pumpkins she gets and finds funny. There is still enough innocent excitement with her there that makes the experience special, and also transforms Halloween into more than one night of fun, but a season of events. (We apple pick, and visit a pumpkin patch as part of our Halloween traditions as well.)
For me, I enjoy this night of being close to Sleepy Hollow, and the historic location where The Blaze takes place. Something about driving home through the woods of Westchester county, knowing that somewhere out there the Horseman is supposed to ride, and like clockwork every year, the kid asks from the backseat if Ichabod was a real person who escaped from that ghost. And then there is the connection of The Blaze being an event my mom was able to do with my family. We only got three years with her, to do grandma things, and let her shower her youngest granddaughter with attention. The kid has virtually no memories left with her Mim, but I have this one. And though my daughter doesn’t remember doing it, she was one after all, but she knows that it happened. We just continue on the tradition.
Last night I was having drinks with a friend, and old friend from high school, so we have known each other forever. We got on the topic of parental roles, as she feels that as a mother, she inevitably always gets blamed by her kid for everything. (Our kids are pretty close in age.) I don’t think she’s wrong, mom’s do take the brunt of blame, at least that’s what my mom claimed all the time. But, I wondered if one’s parental role plays a factor? My friend and her husband both work, and split equally parenting their kid; both cook, clean, do laundry, do homework, go to playdates, and dance classes…etc. While in our household, my wife works, and I take care of the kid and home. So, I feel like I take the brunt of blame from the kid, which I attribute to spending the most time being with the kid on a given day. As such, our discussion fell along those lines; is parental blame due to gender roles, or quantity of time spent with the kid? I don’t think there is a clear answer to this other than when our kids do something right, the first person they thank is always mom.
I have to buy khaki pants soon. The pants have seen better days, as I purchased them right before Covid. (Because Covid is a designation of time, and not just an event.) I used to never own khaki pants. Like, went out of my way not to own any. I think it was due to those stupid GAP swing dancing commercials in the 90’s. (I wonder how many of those people in that commercial are now teaching dance classes?) Then I job a job, and I started wearing a tie, and a sports coat, and I got khaki pants to go along with the whole thing. Now, I have the same number of khaki pants as I do jeans. Funny how life changes you.
Speaking of which…
I can admit now that I was wrong about a couple of things:
Sometimes I get ahead on my blog writing, and can put a couple of posts “in the can” and schedule them to go up on my site later in the week. Most of the time, I write a blog post on the fly. An idea will come into my head in the morning, and when I get a minute later in the day, I hammer it out and put it up. This might be obvious to most of you due to the amount of type-o’s and awful uses of grammar.
Today, I lacked an idea in the morning, and went through the normal routine of trying to come up with something. I read the news, checked out social media, and talked to the wife, but nothing was sticking. My last-ditch effort was to go on Wikipedia and see if something was there.
And it all reminded me of taking the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco, which runs by Angel Island, Alcatraz and Treasure Island. I mean, the ferry doesn’t get that close to Alcatraz, but close enough to know what it is, and see the prison buildings.
It was a great ferry trip on the water, and I made the trip four times, once at night, which was pretty amazing; The lights of San Francisco, and the whole Bay area; The stars, and the sound of the waves. I will probably never ride the Larkspur ferry again, though it is there in my memory as one of the happier moments in my life, while also being one of the worst years of my life.
It had only been six months since my mother’s passing, and I was in the Bay area trying to live my life, even though there was this huge hole in my soul that just left me feeling sad all the time. But I kept trying to push forward, to keep living and experiencing life. And I knew while it was happening, being on that ferry and watching/feeling the fog begin to roll in, that this was something unique; a moment worth experiencing; Seeing and doing something new. And it was special. But tinged with the melancholy of knowing that I was doing it all alone.
