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Better than Fiction (non fiction)

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this month's offering is experimental fiction...

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I’m putting down words

 

one after another not having any idea where I’m going trying to hold on, the problem is I want to write the truth and the truth I wish to write about are those moments of luck that drop from the blue and turn your life around, I know these moments have happened in my life and in your life and we should celebrate although at the moment nothing is coming, although there have been many such blessed moments, like the time I was too tired to remember which way to turn at the stop sign and how in the moment that I normally didn’t wait a car ran the light and if I hadn’t been totally exhausted and slightly confused I would have been hit by that car, I am thankful for that moment and you are thankful for such moments but that is not what I’m trying to write about, I’m trying to write about the dues ex machina without the dues, the god who ascends from the earth and waves a wand and undoes the painful kinks and saves your life, sends the life on a perfect flight to happiness, that’s what I want to write about, what I want to give you a true example from my life or from the life of someone I dearly know, and it could be that I haven’t attuned my grey cells right, haven’t adjusted my spirit and learned to see what is there, yes I am waiting for the muse instead of using my own initiative, let’s see, I was at a party, this woman I didn’t know walked up to me, she said you look like a man who needs a job, I didn’t have a job, I was broke and had been dumped by the woman I loved, and the lady said come to my office tomorrow, I went to her office and got a job, was driving down to Galveston the next day to sleep on the beach and dance in the clubs and be a poet in schools for the Galveston Arts Council six months, in 1979, yes, I slept on the beach in a camper truck, read Nietzsche, that fool, and taught poetry to kids in the schools, and now I could go on as the examples come to me of the random mercies, I was living on the street once, I would stand in front of Whole Foods and when people came out I’d say, “Do you like poetry?” and a few would say yes and I’d sell them a photocopy of one of my poems for a dollar, I could feed myself but not make enough to pay the rent on a place so I slept in some woods in a jungle hammock I brought back from my tour as a grunt in Vietnam, you just zipped it up and you were in mosquito netting, and one day a woman stopped to talk as I sold my poems and she had a garage made into a small apartment and she let me stay there while I wrote my last book, Danger Brings the Angels, and I dedicated it to her. I would have fallen in love with her but she had a husband in Spain she called Blue and I had to leave when she went to Spain to see him, and I know her life was good as my life was good and I hope your life is good or getting better.

Chuck Taylor lives in the hill country of Texas and spends time canoeing spring fed rivers and hiking limestone trails. He’s published two memoirs, two novels, and eight poetry books. Two books of micro fiction –a form that he deeply loves due to his science background -- seek a publisher.

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