STORY TIME OKAY

Maaaaaaan I am so bad at this. Why can I not update more often?

I'd say it's because I'm busy, but I'm not sure that's right. Maybe I'm just not a good person?

Anyway, here's what's happening:

Vonnegut class is finished. It went well. As for writing the thesis: how the fuck will that work? What should it be about? These things are unknown.

All my other classes are okay. I have too many. Next semester is going to be great. I think. I've got a history class, Foreign Relations, which should be fascinating (depressing). Then there's a philosophy seminar, Civilization and Violence. Between the two of those, don't expect me to get any more optimistic about life. Also, Advanced Fiction Writing with Joe Pici. Only two students in that one, Holly Snyder and I. I will have the Hold Steady stuck in my head constantly when that class meets. You know why. Last, Spanish Conversation II. Add a one-hour Spanish service learning credit and a one-hour Berry Scholars capstone joke, and there you have it. Fourteen hours. The Promised Land.

Also I'll be tutoring, like now. And that's it.

BUT FIRST!

Joe Buemer's play is next week, the day before and the day after Christmas on Campus. I'm looking forward to it. I play an old Jew and a young Jew-convert-to-Christianity. It's going to be cool.

Then after that, there's Christmas break, which I will spend half in Ohio and half in Texas, meeting Teresa's Norwegian relatives. Hahahaha those people are from Norway.

Want to catch up on my Flyer News articles? Go to their web site and search my name. Recent articles include ones about police violence and Donald Rumsfeld. Woohoo.

And let me keep you entertained by starting something new. It's something I like to call "THIS IS A STORY I WROTE NOW WON'T YOU READ IT???" I will present stories from my ENG 284 class! It's like your'e there, except you don't know Neal Craft.

Here is the first one. It's short. Please remember this is fiction. Do not assume I am depressed because you read this story. Assume I am depressed because you assume everyone is depressed.

GOODBYE!

Love,

Steve


White Snow

She always arrived at six. James stood at the window, gazing beyond the corner store to the valley and the bridge. This was always his favorite view of the valley. After the first snow around Thanksgiving, leafless black branches crisscrossed the white valley like a Pollock painting. Snow coated the few rooftops below. The sun blazed, reflected brilliantly from the snow, brighter than sunlight.

Fifty-two minutes now. He paced, he tied and re-tied his shoes. He checked his hair in the mirror. His eye traveled along the streets, the snow-covered rooftops, the power lines silhouetted by snow. Later would come piles of snow, and ice, and slush from cars, but now his valley was clean and shining and beautiful.

Forty-four minutes. A bird perched on the window ledge.

Once they had seen seagulls on the beach. He knew seagulls soared and swooped but when he thought of them he remembered a day of strong, powerful wind, the ludicrous sight of two or three seagulls fighting valiantly, flapping and struggling and moving nowhere against the gusts. Isabel had laughed at the birds, but he wanted badly to grab them and carry them up the beach himself, wherever they were going.

Now six floors below a heavy woman with a hat hurried along the sidewalk. She passed under the streetlamp. Forty minutes, thirty-nine. He and Isabel had danced, not on these streets but others, him counting loudly to be heard over her giggles. One. Two. Three. Four-and. Their shadows had twisted, spinning, under the streetlamps. Isabel adored dancing. He was hesitant, uncertain.

Thirty-two minutes. The bird flew away, dropped, settled on a parked car. Thirty-two minutes, still.

Her books were always strewn across the back seat. Once he had tried to clean up for her, and she had scolded him. “Don’t mess with those,” she had told him, frowning. “I’ve got them in perfect order.” Thirty minutes. He had believed her for a few days. Then he shuffled them around once while he waited in the car. Nothing happened. Later he admitted he had tested her, and she screamed with laughter. As always, her happiness was childlike.

Twenty-three minutes. She always arrived at six. She always walked in with her bag, and her coat, and her umbrella, and her car keys jangling in the bowl by the door. She had been late sometimes before and then once she never came but now it was always at six. He knew she would arrive at six. Seventeen minutes. If you wait long enough, James thought. If you wait long enough and you flap furiously. She always she always always always came in at six with jangling keys and a smile like the sun. Her smile shone bright, blazing. It was the sun reflected by fresh snow.

But it got dimmer. Every light gets dimmer but not sunlight but her light dimmed and a cancer was inside of her and it grew and grew. Now her light was gone. The streetlamp below flickered on and it was the brightest light in his view.

James looked out the window at the valley and the clock ticked and ticked in the empty room.