One day last week I came home from grocery shopping and when I pulled into the driveway I was greeted by a brilliant white flash that left me completely dumbfounded. Outside, in broad daylight. But the brilliant white flash was confined to the inside of my house and garage. The daylight outside did not change at all. My mother and I just sat in the car, unable to comprehend what had just happened here.
I thought it was a power surge or something in the garage or the house but that would have damaged a lot of electronic gizmos that don't have surge protection. And none of the electric or electronic small appliances were damaged. The light bulbs in the house couldn't have momentarily changed in their intensity or brightness because only two fluorescent lights were on in the entire house (the kitchen counter top) and a power surge powerful enough to be a white flash would have knocked out all the light bulbs, for sure. Especially a white flash so bright that it was a blinding white light seen from outside in the middle of a sunny day. After my mother and I exchanged several
What the hell? responses
and wide-eyed looks, I got out of the car to unlock the house and check the damage.
Everything looked perfectly normal downstairs and in the basement. Our house has circuit breakers and none of them were tripped. And no clocks lost their time display, as with a power interruption. So, it wasn't a power surge or some weird power interruption and restoration of service. I was stumped but I let it pass. I went back outside to help my mother into the house.
Later that day I strolled into the den and, once again, a blinding white flash filled the room. It was so brilliant that it disoriented me for a moment. When I asked my mother if she saw it in the living room, she said she saw a bright white flash coming from the den only. She said it was so bright that it even lit up the living room. But none of the light bulbs flared, no clocks lost their time, no breakers were tripped, just like with the earlier flash. It was as if the
air inside the house had suddenly become charged with an
otherworldly power, just for a second.
Well, I'm not the least bit impressed by this "Amityville Horor" display. Years ago I would have been fascinated by this kind of crap. But now I'm just annoyed. Who needs this nonsense in their lives? I know there are a lot of people who don't believe this. Like my mother and I would even bother to make any of this stuff up. Anyway, people can scoff all they want. I don't give a shit.
Going to a bricks-and-mortar bookstore is like hooking yourself up to one of these babies. It may seem like you're tuned in to the best and the brightest and that you're getting every conceivable option. But it's just a marketing trick.
Lately, I've been wondering what it would be like to go back in time, say 50 years, to an era when writers used a typewriter to create their works of fiction. Of course, there are certain drawbacks to being in that historical time frame.
In 16 days I'll officially be a senior citizen, according to one measure of what constitutes a senior citizen. That's the age at which a person can get a senior citizen discount in most stores and restaurants in this part of the country. Age 55.
For the record, my fiction is not autobiographical or even semi-autobiographical. I created more important characters to write about and have never had any interest in writing about myself or my life, per se. Here are the only exceptions I can think of:
That sentence is my signature line and that's what I write about. Unmasking the everyday world and seeing what lies beneath it, challenging the lie that is our day-to-day existence and exposing the awesome truths awaiting those who dare to look beyond the obvious.
