Blog Post for 2/18/15

I began reading the fiction story packet from "Micro-fiction An Anthology of Really Short Stories". The first one I read was "Survivors" by Kim Addonizio. I instantly knew what the story was about by the starting words: "He and his lover..." This short story was very eye-opening to me. A lot of my closest friends are of a homosexual orientation, and I have personally seen them go through just as much pain and heartbreak as somebody of a heterosexual orientation would. It is absolutely absurd, in my personal opinion, for anybody to discount the value of love someone has for another individual, no matter what their gender. I especially loved the line about one of the characters fathers "(tried) to beat his son's sexual orientation out of him with a belt on several occasions during adolescence".

"Dear God, let me die first, don't let me survive him."

Throughout the packet, the next story to instantaneously catch my eye was the one titled "Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store".  I loved how the title pulled me in as a reader without giving me much of a choice: with a title like that, I had to see what it was about. "This morning she's Cleopatra and the liquor store is Rome." I have a difficult time understanding exactly what this one is about -- but I like the context in which it is written. I feel like I am reading a letter that was sent specifically to me from the author, telling me what he is feeling and thinking about his child and his social role as a father.

"....watching the fireflies coming on and going out again in the long grass like so many sparks flying off the anvil of the world."

The "mystery stories" by Sharon Krinsky were really mind-boggling to me. It bothers me when I read something and cannot interpret what the point they are trying to get at -- it can be a big fault for somebody who loves reading as much as I do and is well aware that most writers don't have a big picture anyhow. I'm figuring that it is all based on personal interpretation, but it still stresses me out that I don't know what they were thinking when they wrote it. The only short story of hers I remotely understood was the "Poetry": I believe she made the china cup reference to metaphorically describe how delicate her poems she had written for her crush were, and this makes me think of how heart-breaking it would be for me to profess my feelings for somebody and have them think it is plastic-cup material.