A bit heavy today, all in the middle, after three pints of Guinness last night. This is where I say something wise about getting older. But all I can think about is going to the pool last weekend, floating on flutter boards with C, while she described the noise of the shapes around us (no glasses, I couldn't see), these gangs of little girls who jumped and screamed and looked, when in the water, like octopuses made of hair. They had no middle, these girls, no bodies, no torsos -- just blurred ribbons of limbs, all looping arms and legs. Then the power failed, and for a few seconds it was wonderful darkness, before the lifeguards rounded us up at the edge of the pool.
People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m
what a wonderful story... really.
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