Flash fiction International

Reviewed by Ray Zimmerman

I usually compare the novel to a mammal, be it wild as a tiger or tame as a cow; the short story to a bird or a fish; the microstory to an insect (iridescent in the best cases). - Louisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenuzeula’s statement has a certain charm as she compares the very short fiction form, now known as flash fiction, to iridescent insects, but I prefer to liken them to gems, lustrous with beauty and hard as the truths they reveal. The editors of Flash Fiction International selected eighty-six of the best of the best stories in this form. The editors included stories from locations as diverse as The United States, Iraq, Bangladesh, Argentina and Zimbabwe.

A review of all eighty-six stories is not possible, but a sampling serves to illustrate the diversity of voices in this collection drawn from world wide sources:

In “The Waterfall,” Alberto Chimal of Mexico describes a ritual which combines christening and baptism, in which the drops of consecrated water are likened to the souls of the dead, each hoping that his (or her) name will be preserved, that their name will be the one given to the young child.  Will the selected name be Guglielmo, Terencio, Jason, Emil, or some other

In “Prisoner of War,” by Mune Fadhill of Iraq, a man returns home after eighteen years in an Iranian prison to see his now deceased wife’s likeness in the face of a grown daughter. He withdraws into his own world of repairing technology. He is changed and the world around him is changed.

In “Eating Bone” by Shabian Nadiya of Bangladesh describes a wife threated with divorce after ten years of a childless marriage. She asserts herself in a surprising way. Meanwhile, Natalie Diaz of the United States portrays a legless veteran who takes to his wheelchair and cruises the dancefloor of “The Injun Who Could,” intoxicated female tourists.

Although many of the stories are new works by contemporary writers, some very short classics have made their way into this collection. “The Young Widow,” by the Roman author Petronius joins “Appointment in Samarra” (W. Sommerset Maugham) and “An Imperial Message” (Franz Kaufka).

These brief narratives range from one to three pages, and each is a complete story in itself. This collection is as bright as a star field on a dark winter night.

MUSIC AND STORYTELLING FOR ALL AGES

November 7 & 8

Cloudland Canyon State Park

Ray Zimmerman Master of Ceremonies

For information on other aspects of this event see http://mountainartsandcraftcelebration.com/... or https://www.facebook.com/FOCCSP

Saturday - November 7

ê 10:35 to 11:35 (Music) No Till Drillers

ê 12:00 to 1:00 (Music) Scarlett Stitch

ê 1:30 to 1:55 Amber Lanier Nagel

ê 2:00 to 2:25 Finn Bille

ê 2:45 to 3:45 (Music) Rising Fawn Social Club

Sunday  - November 8

ê 10:00 to 11:00 (Music) Brian Henry

ê 11:15 to 12:15 (Music) Scarlett Stitch

ê 12:45 to 1:10  Ray Zimmerman

ê 1:15 to 1:40 Michael Gray

ê 2:15 to 3:00 (Music) Jerome Arnold

ê 3:30 to 4:30 (Music) Organized Kaos

Place Based Writing

This piece previously appeared in the Dade County Sentinel and the Chattanoogan.com.

As I sit at a picnic table overlooking the Tennessee River, just below the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant, the ripples of the river exude power. The ridge on the far side is marked by two cliffs, one above the other, which run most of the length. Each is tall and clearly visible above the trees. The river is quite deep here, with Nickajack dam not far below, but this flooded valley was once home to a much shallower river with rapids and shoals.

I cannot write much of that flooded valley, short of a time machine to go back and visit it. I know that boats leaving Chattanooga encountered “The Suck,” a place where the river narrowed and objects, sometimes even people, were pulled into the water below.  Submerged objects came to the surface further downstream at “The Pot,” where water bubbled up to the surface from those deeps. Further down, an obstacle known as “The Frying Pan,” caused more havoc for river traffic. To tell the full story of this section of river though, I would have to have visited it.

Years ago, Kentucky author Wendell Berry fully explored a place before writing of it. He hiked, canoed, and waded the Red River Gorge, and wrote a book titled The Unforeseen Wilderness.

The Army Corps of Engineers planned to flood this gorge, displacing a few scattered farmers and ending its natural state. Ironically, the dam which would flood the valley was proposed in the name of “Flood Control.”

Berry visited a farm only accessible by foot path or tractor during high water, and recorded the people’s connection to the land. He also recorded the beauty of the landscape with the insight and acumen his readers have come to expect in his writings about his rural homeland. He spent five years on the project, and may have originated the term “place based writing.” His words, and the photographs by Gene Meatyard, tell a story of incredible beauty.

I may someday visit the Red River Gorge, which remains without submersion, thanks to its designated status under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Protection of the gorge was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Even if I visit, I cannot write its story, for this land is not mine. I would write as a man who viewed the gorge as scenery, or photograph it as one who stops at a scenic overlook and takes a snapshot. Berry warns of the dangers of scenery in his book.

My own experience of place based writing came about with a poem titled “Glen Falls Trail.” Glen Falls is near my current residence on the side of Lookout Mountain. I have lived in this area for years, and hiked the trail numerous times. One day I noticed the graffiti, “George Loves Lisa,” painted on the rock face in an archway above the falls. I wrote my poem about the beauty of this place, but included a speculation on the various possibilities of that relationship:

I wonder, did he ever tell her?

Did she know or think of him at all,

raise a brood of screaming children?

Did they kiss near wild ginger

above the stony apse?

The poem won a prize from the Tennessee Writers Alliance, including a substantial (to me at least) cash award. It was later included in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume VI, Tennessee (University of Texas Press).

I am convinced to this day that the success of this particular poem resulted from my association with the place where it is based. I am no Wendell Berry, nowhere near his phenomenal success of more than fifty books in print, but I agree with his belief that the best writing is placed based.

Ray Zimmerman is the Senior Editor of the anthology Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets, and author of the Poetry Chapbook, First Days. His poetry, nonfiction, and photography have appeared in regional and national publications. He has appeared as a storyteller and a performance poet in numerous Chattanooga area events. He is particularly pleased that his poem “Glen Falls Trail” received an award from the Tennessee Writers Alliance and appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume VI, Tennessee (University of Texas Press).

The full text of the poem “Glen Falls Trail” appears At http://rayzimmerman.weebly.com

A Fish Tale

When Aldo Leopold included a chapter on fishing in his book A Sand County Almanac, he spoke to generations of conservationists and sportsmen on the beauty of small places. “The Alder Fork” described in his July chapter was not big in volume or rapids or in the size of the trout it yielded. It was big in its unique beauty and in the chance that it yielded fish on a hot July day. Leopold admitted that none of the trout had to be folded double or beheaded to fit the creel.

The story brought to mind an event from my college days, spent in my home town as a commuter student. I knew trout were nowhere to be found in the Ohio waters I fished, but I remembered stories of Todd’s Fork, a branch of the Little Miami River, and reputed home to smallmouth bass. I also remembered a sign which read “Fishing, but no Hunting or Camping.” It proclaimed its message where a back road passed near the fabled creek.

I had caught Largemouth Bass before in the nearby lakes, but it was only from photos that I knew the look of one of those “bronze backs.” Wishing to experience them for myself, I picked up a friend with his fishing gear and we headed for the spot. When we arrived, the pull off accommodated our car and left room for one more, though that second spot was never taken. We hiked a dirt road through a cornfield, and we were at a bridge overlooking Todd’s Fork. 

My friend unhooked his spinning rod and eyed the creek with disdain. It was narrow, but looked to my eye as though it held deep pools with some promise. As he complained about time spent on a “Wild Goose Chase,” I pulled out a few feet of level fly line and attached a leader and a red and white deer hair fly. Not exactly a Royal Coachman, but close.

On my second upstream cast a fish hit and I landed it after a short fight.  I noticed the dark bronze color, checked the size of the mouth, and discovered it did not extend behind the eye. Smallmouth Bass!  My friend looked at the fish and watched me release it, only slightly the worse for wear. I usually ate the fish I caught, but this one was too small for the frying pan.

Three more casts and I had another, slightly larger fish, but my friend was unimpressed. He didn’t see any fish that would make the pages of an angler’s newspaper, and was now anxious to leave. I don’t believe he ever cast a line.

I haven’t spoken to that friend in years, and don’t know if his opinion of our fishing adventure has changed. As for myself, I left with my heart full of a pleasant morning fishing a creek I had never before explored. For me, the morning’s adventure was not in the fish, but the fishing.

The events I describe here took place in the mid 1970’s. I later learned that the really good fishing was further downstream, and that I was actually fishing a small branch of Todd’s Fork. The main stream has since become noteworthy as a canoeing destination and continues to be known as a great spot to fish for Smallmouth Bass.

Snow Melt, February 26, 2015

Last night I saw snow, enough to remind me of years spent in more northern lands. It fell so hard and fast that my photos showed white streaks crossing the field of vision. The grassy yard and nearby trees, usually alight with cardinals, chickadees, titmice and wrens were strangely silent the next morning.

A colleague said she had salted her driveway before the snowstorm, but it didn’t work. My neighborhood roads got no treatment whatsoever, and no vehicles left all day.

Salt is great for removing ice, but not so good for eight inches of snow. Although I am hopeful of the roads being cleared so I can get out with my vehicle, I love to see the snow on the ground. Unbidden, the thought comes that I am an old man with a bad heart and this could be the last time I see the snow. It’s not likely, but possible.

Salt lowers the melting point of ice, gets it off the roadways, and it allows tires to get traction, especially when it is mixed with light gravel. When I leave my apartment overlooking the Tennessee River valley below, I hope for no ice on the roadway. I hope for days when salt is unnecessary.

Forty degree weather will melt snow fast, but eight inches is a lot of snow. Even with a layer of salt beneath it, there will be plenty left over for night time temperatures to refreeze. I will walk to work on Friday morning.

In his magnificent book, The Forest Unseen, David George Haskell recorded his observations of a square meter of virgin forest, never cut. It was on the property of the University of the South. He observed this square meter over the course of a year, and the winter portions include stories of snow, ice, cold temperatures, and the sometimes surprisingly warm days of winter months. He called the location “the Mandala”

Most of Haskell’s observations were biological, but he made forays into the realm of physical sciences. He examined ice and snow, and commented on the six sided snowflake. Haskell described how Johannes Kepler, discover of night sky wonders, took a break from astronomy and examined snowflakes. Kepler rejected the theory of the atom, regaining popularity in his day. He examined the pomegranate and the wax cells in bee hives, commented on the repeating six sided structure in each.

Haskell says that Kepler might have had more luck had he accepted the existence of atoms. I am not so certain that this would have led to the discovery of the six-sided ring formed by six water molecules. Kepler would also have to have known about the weak bond between the hydrogen atoms of one molecule and the oxygen atom of an adjoining molecule, credited with the hexagonal structure.

Some purveyors of health food have recently discovered this fact about water, and begun marketing “hexagonal water.” Caveat Emptor, all water is hexagonal or not, depending on temperature. Any consumer can have hexagonal water in quantities equal to the capacity of their ice maker.  Lest some defender of the faith take this as an attack on health foods generally, let me state, for the record, it is not. Some health food claims are certainly legitimate, but every form of business has practitioners both honest and otherwise. Some are mere hucksters, P.T. Barnums, looking for those proverbial suckers, one of which is born every minute.

The hexagonal ring structure makes ice expand as it freezes and cools. This is why ice floats on top of the water. I have seen fish trapped in ice and apparently frozen solid. When the ice thaws they may revive and skid about on their fins on top of the ice until they find a hole and return to the pond from whence they came. The sight of fish swimming in puddles atop the ice astonished me.

On this particular day though, I observed the clouds at sunset, saw a pink wash from a setting sun. Of course, the sunset itself is never visible here on the east side of the mountain. Each time I came inside to work on a project, I looked out the window and was back outside. I did not want to miss one minute of the fading pink light on snow.

Nature’s Bookshelf

By Ray Zimmerman

Edward Abbey

            “Let us throw metaphysics to the dogs. I never heard a Mountain Lion bawling about the fate of his soul.” Edward Abbey wrote those words in the introduction to the final (1986) edition of his classic book Desert Solitaire. These words are an appropriate introduction to the author. His books are set in the world of sandstone under foot, a cowboy on his horse, a raft on a wild river, and the embrace of two lovers in the night.

            Abbey was born January 29, 1927 near the town of Home, Pennsylvania. He died March 14, 1989 in Tucson, Arizona. Between those two dates he served in World War II, received a master’s degree in philosophy, authored twenty books, and married five times. Three marriages ended in divorce. His third marriage, to Judy Pepper, ended when she died of leukemia. Her death inspired the book Black Sun.  His final marriage, to Clarke Cartwright, ended with his death in 1989.

Abbey worked as a park ranger, a fire tower lookout, a journalist, a newspaper editor, a bus driver, and finally as a university professor. The years with the Park Service and the Forest Service provided much of his source material. The land itself not only provides the setting for his works, but emerges as a major character. Abbey loved the red rock sandstone mesas and canyons, and especially the rivers. His connection to the rivers is perhaps best stated in “Down the River,” a chapter of Desert Solitaire. In this chapter he traveled down the Glen Canyon portion of the Colorado with his friend Ralph Newsome. That trip was just before completion of the Glen Canyon Dam, nemesis of all that Abbey held sacred in nature, and the creation of Lake Powell, termed a sewage lagoon in Abbey’s writings.

The phrase Down the River emerged again a few years later as the title of a book. In this work Abbey employed several meanings of the phrase, including rivers as symbolic of the passage of time, descriptions of float trips physically going down several rivers, and a statement that both man and nature have been sold down the river.

This last sentiment is reiterated in his novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, in which he is said to have initiated the term eco-defense. It may have inspired environmental activism through direct action. It certainly gave us the monkey wrench as a symbol for direct intervention. Some of Abbey’s detractors claim that it is a fictionalized account of actions that the author encouraged if not actually participated in. Although Abbey was known to remove a few survey stakes from development projects, he himself maintained that The Monkey Wrench Gang was a strictly fictional work written solely for the entertainment of his readers.

This statement has since been supported by Ingrid Eisenstadt. She was the real life woman whom the character Mizz (sic) Bonnie Abbzug “not related to the senator” was almost certainly modeled after. Her verbal portrait of Abbey and their sometime life together was published in “Abbey’s Picnic,” Sierra magazine, 2002.

Abbey’s work is often cited as forecasting a future where wilderness continues to be eroded by the work of man. His most prophetic passage however was perhaps the final paragraph in a chapter of Desert Solitaire titled “The Dead Man at Grandview Point.” In this chapter, Abbey joined a search party to find an elderly man missing in the desert for two days. Coming home from this job he records his feelings of identifying with the dead man. The passage prefigures his own illegal burial in an unmarked grave in the desert by sympathetic friends carrying out his last request, years later:

“I feel myself sinking into the landscape, fixed in place like a stone, like a tree, a small motionless shape of vague outline, desert colored, and with the wings of imagination look down at myself with the eyes of the bird, watching a human figure that becomes smaller, smaller in the receding landscape as the bird rises into the evening – a man at a table near a twinkling campfire, surrounded by a rolling wasteland of stone and dune and sandstone monuments, the wasteland surrounded by dark canyons and the course of rivers and mountain ranges on a vast plateau stretching across Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, and beyond this plateau more deserts and greater mountains, the Rockies in dusk, the Sierra Nevadas shining in their late afternoon, and farther and farther yet, the darkened East, the gleaming Pacific, the curving margins of the great earth itself, and beyond earth that ultimate world of sun and stars whose bounds we cannot discover.”

A few books by and about Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire (Final Edition)

Edward Abbey

University of Arizona Press, 1986

Desert Solitaire was drawn from the author’s journal entries written during two years when he served as a park ranger at Arches National Monument. It was first published by McGraw-Hill, 1968. Previous editions went through several printings.

Down the River

Edward Abbey

E.P. Dutton, New York, 1982

This book includes four sets of journal entries written while running rivers on white water rafts. It also includes essays on natural history, politics, people and places he has known, and two book reviews.

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Edward Abbey

Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2000

Four environmental activists meet on a rafting trip on the Colorado River. They hatch a plot to sabotage projects they deem to be environmentally harmful.  Avon Books, 1976        

Black Sun

Edward Abbey

Simon and Shuster, 1971

In this book a park ranger falls in love with a beautiful woman.

Slumgullion Stew, an Edward Abbey Reader

Edward Abbey

E.P. Dutton, New York, 1984

This work contains excerpts from several of Abbey’s books.

Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist:

The Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey

James Bishop, Jr.

Athenium, New York, 1994

This work is a biography. The author had access to Abbey’s personal papers.

Edward Abbey, a Life

James M. Cahalan

The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2001

This is a biography.

Fiery Gizzard: Voices from the Wilderness

Mary Patten Priestly

This unique book blends history and natural history to tell the story of the Fiery Gizzard, now a part of South Cumberland State Park. The Author edits The Plant Press, newsletter of the Sewanee

Herbarium, so the emphasis on native plants and botanical rarities is not surprising.

She also reveals the geologic history of “the Giz” and speaks somewhat of the fauna, but her real story is one of people. From Bartrum and other early explorers, to modern day naturalists, artists, and citizens, Priestly explains why these people found the Fiery Gizzard an important place, and sought to live nearby and, eventually, to preserve it as a park for future generations.

This short book is an easy read, but fascinating for anyone interested in conservation or the outdoors.