#44 Necessary Update

Hey guys!

A new story of mine is forthcoming in Necessary Fiction.

It should be up in a couple of weeks.  Make sure to check in, and record your response...here's one suggestion for how to do that:

-Make an audio recording of yourself reading the piece, capturing all sighs, sniffling, gasps, whimpering, chewing (of either food or fingernails), interjections of passing friends/enemies, laughter at favorite parts or quirky grammatical mistakes, etc.

-Save the file as an .mp3 or upload it on to soundcloud.com.

-Share the link for all to hear...

Entry #43 The Open Studios Reading Series

So one of you may remember the event Alexis Buryk and I hosted on November 5th.  I now present you with footage, proof that said event occurred and was bigger/better than any of us could have dreamed.  Individually posted below are the readers/performers, in order of performance.  Have some fun with these.

Very special thanks to the girl in the adjacent studio, whose sound piece is the structural tape worm of this star-studded event.











Michael K Meyers reading "Kindling" and "What We Have Learned So Far" from Colin Winnette on Vimeo.





























Thanks to everyone involved! Feel free to clutter the comments section with your thoughts on this wealth of work.

Entry #42 The Big One

If you're the editor of an online publication that features flash fiction or poetry, you've probably already read this...it's the new flood item.  For the rest of you, though - a new story:

Me and D by Colin Winnette

            I decided to ask That Desert Island Question if she saw our open relationship going anywhere less open than just ‘open.’  She said I could tie her up, and then she couldn’t go anywhere.  She said I could cast her in cement and stare at her all day long and read books with my back propped against her.  That Desert Island Question said I would have to come up with some way of keeping the pigeons off, or else some way of cleaning her that wouldn’t wear away at the cement.  That Desert Island Question said I could wrap her in barbed wire and put a sneeze guard around her head like a visor.  I would need to keep her inside, she said, elevated on a milk crate to keep the insects at bay.  She said I should trace an oval around the base of the crate or pedestal or wooden box, in diatomaceous earth.  She said she would help me go and get it, but then she might escape. 

            “Oh,” I realized, “you’re making fun of me.”

            “I’m not,” That Desert Island Question told me, “but, really, what are you thinking, asking a silly thing like that?”

            Then we had phone sex and I felt so false afterward that I said,

            “You should dream of me because I’m going to dream of you.”  It was somehow easier to sleep then, knowing I could have thought of nothing sillier, or less amenable, to say.

***

I've been thinking about the author series I wrote a little while ago (stories from which will be featured this January at ), and a conversation Damon and I had about the authors we might not want to be left alone with.  There are many, I'm sure, but Bernhard just occurred to me.  He often writes about groups of three, in which he is somehow always in the middle talent/intelligence-wise.  The Loser, Wittgenstein's Nephew, Old Masters, The Cheap Eaters (if you count the whole of the The Cheap Eaters as a singular entity, which they more or less are for the first two-thirds of the book).  So, if I were left alone with Bernhard, I think it likely that he would cast me in the role of inferior, whereas if there was a third, I might have a shot at winding up on top...depending, of course, on who the third was.  I'm writing this because I haven't the faintest clue where to start as far as writing a story about it goes...so maybe I'll leave it at this...and curse it's always being Sunday when it occurs to me to mail these belated packages/gifts.

Entry #41 To supplement irrelevant for irreverant before people finish talking is to be too hard on one's self...for my use of "one" in place of a self-implicating pronoun, I blame Harold Bloom.

This.

This, then this, supplement with this.

Does anyone have Christine Montalbetti's email address?  I've got some questions.

And here's an example of what I mean by question:

Do anyone's parents know where this came from and how he knows me just so damn well?
I mean, that's the exact dance I do...exactly.

#41 10 Minute Deer Skinner

Samuel Cook made this from a story he found:

 

This is Part 1.  If you'd like to see more, email him and insist he make Part 2.  I'd like to avoid giving out his email, though.  So email me - cwinnette@gmail.com  and I'll forward it.  

This is a thing, but when I saw the sign, I thought it was a person.  

I claim no false intimacy with Sebald, but if he were still writing, I would feel I had something extra to look forward to.

Short shorts.

Ingar Zach while I write this.

I heart Gabriel Boyer.

Gabe reading from "The Puppet and The Puppeteer" out of "Survey of my Failures This Far" in Chicago, October, 2010.

***

Check back soon for footage from last Wednesday's reading.

#40 A Suit for the Eyes

Quick.

This poem all morning.

Might be filming here, with Lou Mallozzi! 

This poem, just now.

And a little story then:

F’ed III

            My Father’s Approval runs a bike shop on Martha’s Vineyard.  I’m pretty sure he lives there too.  I went in one summer - I was staying with my grandmother - and I asked if I could rent a bike, in order to go looking for jobs.  My Father’s Approval offered to pay me hourly to clean bikes in the back, and when I was done with that, I could sweep the place up.  He showed me around.  He showed me how to lather the bikes, and where I should avoid doing so, so as not to strip the grease.  Then he showed me the broom and demonstrated a topnotch sweeping of the stairs.

            “It’s the attempt,” he told me.  “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

            So I took the job.

            One night I went back after hours, having left my bag behind.  I came in the back door and discovered him masturbating in the privacy of his own home/office.  He heard me coming in the back and was up, getting his affairs in order.  He laughed and gave me the bag.  He’d brought it in from outside.  He said he’d see me tomorrow. 

            I thought I’d caught him in something, so I asked him to bring a few beers to work the next day.

            “We’ll see,” he said, and looked at me like he wasn’t exactly sure who I was or why I was asking that, but he was damn well not going to bring me any beers the next day. 

            A week or so later, he invited me up to a shack near the clay cliffs on the western-most part of the island.  He introduced me to his friends, fed me, gave me plenty to drink, then finally brought me over to a girl, roughly my age, who he wanted me to meet.  She was a fire-dancer, and she began to dance and talk to me about this and that and I was too drunk or scared or shocked at the sight of those spherical fires gravitating round her wrists and ankles and waist, dangling from her neck, that I could only smile and nod until she told me that all her life she had only wanted to be “a happy little coconut” and I couldn’t hold it in any longer.  I broke, and began to laugh and laugh and laugh the most regrettable and vulnerable and terrified laugh.

***

 

Entry #39 Pick It Up, Pick It Up, Pick It Up

For those of you in Chicago this week, stop by Sharp Studios 107 (1st floor of Sharp Building, 37 S Wabash, Chicago, IL) on Friday, November 5th.  Friday is open studios night at SAIC and the doors to every building on campus housing at-work students will be propped open, granting access to the public, other students, and anyone else drifting by

I'll be hosting a reading/performance series in my studio from 7:30 - 8:15.  That's the full length of time Sharp will be open to the public, so come as quickly as you can and stay as long as you'd like.  There will be 14 performers/readers/lecturers and each segment will last 3 minutes. 

Here's a list of featured artists:

Michael Meyers (michaelkmeyers.com)
Dorian Mckaie
Ben Chaffee (benjaminchaffee.com)
Lesley Dixon
Edmund Sandoval
Colin Winnette (allofthisbeforeeleven.blogspot.com)

Alexis Buryk Thania Rios Jillian Schiavi Ben Clark Nick Fraccaro Joni Murphy and Becky Grajeda

It should be a great night through and through, so come one come all.

***

I'm rounding the corner on a first draft of a short collection.  For those of you who attended the last Tex Gallery, you were privy to some of the work featured in the collection.  For those of you who didn't, where were you?

Here's an excerpt of something from the collection:

F’ed by CW

            I fucked a fire truck.  More than once.  Didn’t realize how busy it was, leaving at all hours of the night without a word. 

            I wanted my fire truck to be happy, but this was all a bit much.  So I kept it up late one night, my fire truck.  I refused to let it sleep, though it was tired. 

            “You’re a cold fire truck,” I scolded.  “Cold cold cold cold cold cold cold…”

***

I've been reading the Review of Contemporary Fiction's newest issue all morning, Slovak Fiction, and it's definitely worth checking out.  If you haven't already, and you're interested in reading short fiction in your free time, get a subscription to these guys.  It's an offshoot of Dalkey Archive Press and they're consistently publishing engaging work, from all over the place.  They offer a good range of great work being written right now, all around the world, that's not otherwise getting the attention it deserves here in the states.