Below is my 2002/2003 Christmas/New Years card text. I reprint it because I was just offered a deal if i can write a short story about it for a literary magazine. Best news in many years for Itburns!!!
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2002 was a very odd year for me. I was trapped inside a light house for most of the year. A big white one out on a rock island in the middle of a salt water sea.
It all started when I was reading Oscar Wilde's fairy tales (No not those knids of fairy tales, ones about fairies with wings and magic dust). After reading several, I decided that perhaps other good writers wrote fairy tales as well. So I started doing research on Yeats, since I like him. At the library I got into some books about Yeats and fairy tales and such. I was sitting in the back of the library with books spread out around me, one of which had a picture of "Yeats Tower" (a light house on a flood plain in Ireland), and I was reading a spell out loud when POOF I found myself in a light house, not the library.
You can imagine my disconsternation. I mean I'd parked my car at a meter and everything. So I go up and down the stairs a few times, which practically kills me because I'm not in the best shape and had been eating alot of junk food at the library. I find no phones, no fax machines, no computers, nothing. There's a light of course, (it being a light house and all), and some weird slide things that I apparently could use for code. But of course I don't actually know any light house codes and there weren't any books on them either. So I figured I was pretty much screwed.
There was, however, a whole set of Anthony Trollope's books ( and I mean a whole set, all 83). I know, I know he gets a bad rap for the detail in his stories, thin plots, same characters, etc. But I like him and since I was stuck, I figured I'd read them. That took about ten months. Luckily, in one of the books about boats, there was a pretty long passage (like any of his are short) on morse code, so I began to try to use the story to try to figure out how to do the code. This took another month, and then I went back up to the light to see if I could use the slide things, send a signal and get rescued. (Because I was pretty sick of soup, which is all that was in the kitchen-about 15,000 cans of it).
And wouldn't you know it.....apparently while I was reading the Trollope and learning the code, the water had gone away. Apparently it was a light house in a flood plain just like Yeats, and while I was busy the drought came. So I just walked into town, got a ride to the airport and flew home. My car, of course, had been impounded.
So if I wasn't in touch with you last year DON'T BE MAD AT ME, I was trapped in a light house.
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I'll let you know what I can do with it.
***************************************************
2002 was a very odd year for me. I was trapped inside a light house for most of the year. A big white one out on a rock island in the middle of a salt water sea.
It all started when I was reading Oscar Wilde's fairy tales (No not those knids of fairy tales, ones about fairies with wings and magic dust). After reading several, I decided that perhaps other good writers wrote fairy tales as well. So I started doing research on Yeats, since I like him. At the library I got into some books about Yeats and fairy tales and such. I was sitting in the back of the library with books spread out around me, one of which had a picture of "Yeats Tower" (a light house on a flood plain in Ireland), and I was reading a spell out loud when POOF I found myself in a light house, not the library.
You can imagine my disconsternation. I mean I'd parked my car at a meter and everything. So I go up and down the stairs a few times, which practically kills me because I'm not in the best shape and had been eating alot of junk food at the library. I find no phones, no fax machines, no computers, nothing. There's a light of course, (it being a light house and all), and some weird slide things that I apparently could use for code. But of course I don't actually know any light house codes and there weren't any books on them either. So I figured I was pretty much screwed.
There was, however, a whole set of Anthony Trollope's books ( and I mean a whole set, all 83). I know, I know he gets a bad rap for the detail in his stories, thin plots, same characters, etc. But I like him and since I was stuck, I figured I'd read them. That took about ten months. Luckily, in one of the books about boats, there was a pretty long passage (like any of his are short) on morse code, so I began to try to use the story to try to figure out how to do the code. This took another month, and then I went back up to the light to see if I could use the slide things, send a signal and get rescued. (Because I was pretty sick of soup, which is all that was in the kitchen-about 15,000 cans of it).
And wouldn't you know it.....apparently while I was reading the Trollope and learning the code, the water had gone away. Apparently it was a light house in a flood plain just like Yeats, and while I was busy the drought came. So I just walked into town, got a ride to the airport and flew home. My car, of course, had been impounded.
So if I wasn't in touch with you last year DON'T BE MAD AT ME, I was trapped in a light house.
***************************************************
I'll let you know what I can do with it.
VIEW 25 of 50 COMMENTS
thanks for the two great recommendations. i don't have a tv and i don't really pay attention to mass media (other than magazines) so i rarely know which movies are out and worth seeing.
lawrence is good. i am flying to california tomorrow. totally stoked. are you staying in chi-town for the holidays?