Six Short Stories About Different States of Mind

Title: The Balloon of William Fuerst
Author: Lowell B. Komie
Where I Read It: Legal Fictions

A short, funny story but one with a familiar pang in it, the feeling of life getting wasted on triviality. The main character is an attorney who starts to hear air escaping from his ears - "a hiss of all the useless acts." He imagines his head is a balloon, with air leaking out. How does he think he can fix the problem, without leaving a job he feels trapped in? Maybe helium is the answer! If nothing else, at least he'll sound like a new person...

Title: Bitter Grounds
Author: Neil Gaiman
Where I Read It: Fragile Things

Before reading "Bitter Grounds," I hadn't come across any zombie fic that interested me. But this story is further proof that it's never the subject matter that's the problem, but the way it's handled. Any topic can be written about in an interesting way.

This isn't a typical zombie fic. There are no rotting corpses staggering around - no brain-eating, post-apocalyptic monsters. It's more a confusing and fascinating story of escape and loss of identity, of blurred boundaries between people and between the living and the dead. It begins with a man who can't deal with his life anymore:

"In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the face and lips and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smiled and kept moving."

One day, he drives and just keeps on driving, with no particular destination or purpose. And then starts to move between different identities. Through circumstances described in the story, he steps into the shoes of an anthropology professor invited to give a talk in New Orleans about tales of undead Haitian coffee girls. Nothing in this story is as it seems, and by the end, you have to wonder who is this man, and who has he met along the way? Not sure if this is a nightmare, or if he's ripped through the fragile tissues that life's made of.

Please Give (2010): What do these characters really want to give? What can they give?

Title: Please Give
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Language: English
Rating: R

In Please Give, the characters struggle with emptiness or guilt, and often latch onto superficial relief for their problems; they may be bored with themselves and looking for quick fixes to make them feel important and needed. For instance, let's look at Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), a middle-aged couple who own a furniture store where they sell mid-20th century pieces. The way they acquire their goods is by showing up at the homes of people who've recently passed away and buying the furniture at a bargain price; they then resell at thousands of dollars in profit, because their customers think that ugly 1950s end tables are trendy. Recently, they've also purchased the apartment of their cantankerous next-door neighbor, Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert); she's over 90, and they're waiting for her to die so that they can break down the walls between the apartments and renovate.

Week in Seven Words #163

dotted
Getting speckled with snow as I take a long walk.

embitter
As everyone is celebrating, I taste the undercurrents in the room. Along with genuine warmth, there's a strong flavor of condescension and cynicism. People are smirking instead of smiling.

gloomy
People in shambles in a green-carpeted parlor.

openness
The conversation goes much better than I expected it would. More listening, calmness, and humor than I would have imagined possible. Acceptance is still a long way off, and maybe it will never come. Regardless, I have to do as I see fit.

potentate
My opinion of him (which isn't definitive, not least because I'm acting as an armchair psychologist), is that he's deeply self-absorbed. Occasionally he turns away from his work or personal interests and notices someone else. He might even be moved to do a kindness for them. Then he'll forget about them and become irritated and puzzled when they contact him.

stimulant
Jolted out of a quiet Friday afternoon by some really good news.

threshold
We stand outside talking in the damp. Occasionally the front door opens, disclosing golden light and a roar of voices.