Winning Entries: All Stars Gala, Nov 14th, 2007

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First Prize and Richard V. Bailey Award for Humor: Tom Neiger

Members may obtain a copy by request: Click Here to E-mail Tom

Second Prize

© copyright Joseph E. Guion, All rights reserved.

 

A WEIRD MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING, TO WASTE

by Joseph Guion

With apologies to the United Negro College Fund for using part of their advertising.

 

When your children finally grow to be smarter and you don’t, is it time to panic? Not really.

To make my point about weird minds I will present examples and finally an incident in my life that was quite puzzling, but true. Telling you is a risk.

My late wife and I were blessed, most of the time, with four wonderful daughters, who try to replace their mother in many ways. Unfortunately, with age they have become more outspoken. One says that I am disorganized. So? Another has said, more often than I’d prefer, and I quote, “You have a weird mind, Dad.” I thanked her for the astute observation and continued with my fantasies.

A few weird examples include my dentist. I’ve told him about my writing and how odd ideas leap into it, triggered by situations, experiences, and settings. I told him that I had visited Waller Mill Park in Williamsburg to walk around and enjoy nature. Much earlier, I had taken the cover picture of my poetry book, Love Songs on the Journey in that park. The lake is beautiful, wonderful for relaxation. Instead of commenting on its serenity I said to myself then, and repeated it in the doctor’s office, “Gee, what a place to hide a body.”

He frowned and replied, “Your mind works differently than the rest of us.”

      Months later I was getting fitted for a partial upper and I said. “That’s a fine way to kill somebody, Doc. Pack a guy’s mouth with that plaster stuff and you choke him to death.”

He gave me a knowing look, perhaps a threatening one, and said, “We have a lot of ways to kill someone in a dentist’s office.” After that, I haven’t mentioned murder in his office.

Am I alone in my weird brain activity? Am I missing some neurons? Have some of them been short-circuited? I really do not know. What I do know is that this thing in my head keeps suggesting strange ideas, often not part of reality. Is that a common factor in the brain of creative people? Are all artists’ nuts?

      At the Christopher Newport Writers Conference last spring, I was on a panel with Pete Freas, presenting material on marketing your writing. I sketched out a psychological make-up of creative people. A writer slash artist: 1. is PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTURBED, 2. is A  PSYCHOLOGICAL MISFIT, 3. has a COMPULSION TO WRITE/PAINT, DANCE, SING, PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, 4. ENJOYS REJECTION AND 5. BELIEVES IN THE TOOTH FAIRY

      We must love rejection. Why? Because we slave over our work for hours, days, months and send it to agents, publishers and the like. Most of the time it is refused, usually without  comment. What do we do? We send it elsewhere to continue the cycle. I sent a query letter on my novel to one of the largest agencies in the world, the William Morris Agency. Why not? What did I get in return? A very short e-mail answer sent by and I quote, “A New York Trainee.” I really felt rejected after that. What did she/he know about my choice prose?

      Combined with rejection, we have a high tolerance for pain. To use a forbidden cliché, we keep banging our heads against the wall. Finally, we believe in the tooth fairy. Why? Figuratively, we slip our work under the pillow at night and expect to see a contract there the next morning.

      As I stated earlier, I will tell you a true incident that demonstrates my weird mind. I have told a mere handful of people and it concerns a beautiful woman. Look around here. I haven’t been in the presence of so many gorgeous women, since the Sixties in Inchon, Korea, when I entered a house of some repute. I went to that establishment only for the purpose of immersing myself in their culture. And they taught me how to do that dance craze, The Twist. I never explained to my dear wife how I happened to achieve that skill, since she was home with the kids for thirteen months without me.

      Now for the incident. I was working hard on the novel that I’m revising for the fortieth time to submit it to an agent as soon as possible. The plot is an attempt to steal an election. Not that it would ever happen. I’m hoping to cash in on the weird goings on that have been entertaining and boring us too many months for the upcoming presidential election next year.

      I tell you this with every ounce of honesty that I can muster, often pounded into my head in twelve years of Catholic School. As sure as I am standing here in your presence, as sure as you can see me here, this event happened. I said earlier, I am willing to risk telling you.

      Before I completed my first draft years ago, I leaned back from my Trash 80 Word Processor, which shows how long ago I started that novel. Suddenly, a tiny woman, approximately six inches high, in a black, sequined dress, sat on my keyboard. She crossed her lovely legs and said, “I’m going to be in your book.”

      Now I used to drink a lot more in those days than I do now, but I hadn’t had one that day. I glanced around hoping to see if a family member could verify my find. No, I was alone with this gorgeous female. I shook my head in disbelief and she disappeared. However, she has reappeared in my book as Whitney Carlton, five feet taller with auburn hair. When she enters a room, she captures the eyes of men and women. Whitney plays an important part in the story, especially at the end, because she is the mistress of the Evil Antagonist.

So call me crazy if you wish. But I’d much rather have a weird mind that generates new ideas, new possibilities. What would happen if such people were in the White House, The State House, The Senatorial House and Congressional House? A lot of people in those positions ought to be in the outhouse. Why? Too many of them stink!

We need to celebrate the weird minds that many of us possess. For they create characters, events, images, that begin to make up a story, a picture, a photograph, a dance, an instrumental riff. This is where it begins, in the mind of a creative person. And I am grateful and happy to be among some of the best weird minds. Right here.

Thank you.

Third Prize

© copyright Paul Stimson, All rights reserved.

Stronger Than the Material Mended

by Paul Stimson

For it was fitting that [God], for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)

In my youth, I was fascinated with hardware stores. My weekly allowance in those Great-Depression years was one dime and one penny, so I wished a lot but bought little. Stronger than the material mended, proclaimed one brand of glue. I thought and thought about that claim: what a concept!

Decades later, I fractured a bone in my hand. As the doctor encased it in plaster, I wondered out loud how the bone could be aware that it was broken, how the new growth could ‘know’ where to reconstruct, cell upon cell. He had no answer, of course, but noted that if that bone ever takes another heavy hit, it probably will fail anywhere except at the site of this fracture. Stronger than the material mended!

The soft tissues of the hand were severely swollen by the injury, so it was not possible to set the bone straight. The doctor explained that bones are living tissue; over the years, new growth will concentrate on the inside of the bend, while old cells on the outside die off and are carried away. Thus, the bone will gradually straighten itself! Hard to believe, but that is just what has happened: the bend is much less pronounced than it was at first—and stronger to boot.

In the Spartan economy that Nature applies to all living things, that which bears stress is reinforced and that which is idle atrophies. Some years ago I noticed that my ability to come up with the right word at the needed moment was slowing. I took up crossword puzzles, and firmly believe that it helped. ‘Use it or lose it,’ says the adage. We lap-of-luxury Americans still remember how to walk, but mostly because we have not yet devised an easier way to get to the garage. Athletes gain both muscle mass and muscle tone, and their bones grow stronger, too. Conversely, the first astronauts lost bone density at a prodigious rate in their weightless world. Strenuous exercise was mandated on later flights.

So let it be with the human psyche which, like the physical body, was designed to withstand a wide range of ‘normal’ stresses, but can be overwhelmed by crisis. Here, too, the basic tools and materials of healing are built-in. For body, mind and spirit alike, this internal first-aid kit is sometimes sufficient; in other cases the healing is faster and more complete if outside help is available.

Those of us old enough to remember the years of World War II can think back on the hardship of getting along on three gallons of gasoline per week, and debating whether to use a red ration coupon on meat or butter. But too rarely did we think of those in war-torn Europe, for whom a half-spoiled leaf of lettuce would be luxury.

Suffering, much as we dread the thought, is the BowFlex®1 of the human spirit. Even a modest regimen of self discipline and self-deprivation can build the moral fiber essential to survival in hard times—which can take us by surprise, individually or en masse. Former senator Max Cleland, severely wounded in the Vietnam War, wrote a book titled Strong at the Broken Places,2 which jogged my memory of the glue bottle. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning,3 Viktor Frankl described first-hand the almost unimaginable suffering of the victims of the Holocaust, in which the hard-wired will-to-live was tested to its limits. Frankl emerged with the self-defining conclusion of his life: That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

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