Artwork – Circles and Wheels

SHORT STORY #1 Chapter Heading Pic – This is an oil painting by Jose Ivan Ibarra (Woman with Umbrella) – seeing it made me want to write a story of how that woman arrived at sitting under that umbrella on that beach on that day – and that’s how Jolene’s story (the woman of the Woman With Yellow Umbrella – short story #1) got told.

SHORT STORY #2 Chapter Heading Pic – The sun, the stars, a whole lot of ginormous fruit, and a minuscule skateboard – that basically gives you the intro/entree to story #2 Still Life With Skateboard.

SHORT STORY #3 Chapter Heading Pic – An exercise in anonymous, shocking white on white on white (on white on white…) – perhaps a way of showing protagonist Lady Chick-A-Dee-Dee’s absolute refusal to be labelled and at the same time her absolute determination to be seen and to stand out in a crowd, in any crowd, in any place, in any “when”, in any “how” (and not forgetting any “what” – you can’t ever forget the “what” you know), well, maybe this shows her unswervable determination to pretty much BE the situation in any situation whatsoever that might or may manifest in front of her and in front of whomever’s eyes she may be happening to be doing all that manifesting in front of stuff (in all her Dee-Dee fabulousness), so yes, this is the pic from short story #3 Untitled #27.

SHORT STORY #4 Chapter Heading Pic – From short story #4 Persian Miniature, A small Persian painting floating on a sea of light and used oxygen canisters.

SHORT STORY #5 Chapter Heading Pic – From short story #5 Night Streets, Rainy, urban streets seen through a drunken, desperate haze.

SHORT STORY #6 Chapter Heading Pic – A blurry, indistinct view of life and a bus stop, showing that bus stops CANNOT always be trusted (in fact they mostly SHOULD be suspect, very suspect – think: SUS), anyways… this from short story #6 called (unsurprisingly) Bus Stop.

SHORT STORY #7 Chapter Heading Pic – The archangel Michael (and his nostril) surveying the world on a stormy, unhappy evening, from high above an uncomfortable, wind-beaten, slippery mountain of sea-engirdled rock, overhanging an equally uncomfortable rain-whipped surf – from the short story The Nostril of the Archangel.

SHORT STORY #8 Chapter Heading Pic – from Snow On Sagebrush, Splintered memories of a snow-covered meadow from splintered decades before.

SHORT STORY #9 Chapter Heading Pic – from the short story Two Meadows, A spring meadow – the kind with fairies.

SHORT STORY #10 Chapter Heading Pic – from the story New Moon. Ghosts and bowling and a full moon. You know… the usual.

SHORT STORY #11 Chapter Heading Pic – From Babushkas, short story #11, The painful opening of a series of matryoshkas – the Russian nesting dolls – but I call them Babushkas (Russian for grandma) – since it’s a kind of grandmother we’re opening up (repeatedly) in this story.

SHORT STORY #12 Chapter Heading Pic – The (eponymous) short story that is the story of this short story book that is the story of this short story book that is the story of this… well… you get the picture! A book that is all circles – vicious circles actually, a kind of viciously circular sort of moebius strip of a narrative – and yup, the symbol on the book’s cover in this chapter heading pic IS (you guessed it!) the ouroboros – that famous snake-biting-its-own-tail sign and symbol of INFINITY (and maybe of vicious, infinite circles?) – so, there you have it! – all this from the short story and last story (and best story) (or, at the very least the most CIRCULAR story) of this short story collection, in other words short story #12 – Circles and Wheels.