Thursday, October 3, 2013

Post Season II

Mariano walked to the back of the empty locker room.  Their season was over, early.  No playoffs this time. 
 
He entered a seven-digit code into the keypad and waited while his eyes were scanned.  The door hissed, made popping sounds as cylinders retracted, and slid open.  He stepped over the shallow bulkhead into the chamber of arms.
 
There were seven of them on the wall, each plugged into power and diagnostic cables.  Three of the hands were twitching their way through preset limbering routines;  they would be used on the practice range in the morning.  By other pitchers, though.  Or perhaps just technicians probing the outer envelope – a hundred and twenty miles per hour fastballs, metachaotic knuckleballs, recursive sliders . . . things that couldn't be used in League play.  They were beautiful to watch, though.    
 
He stepped onto the platform before the empty space where the eighth arm should hang.  He unbuttoned his shirt, marveling at how his fingertips – not really "his" at all – could feel each thread in the weave of the cloth.  He disconnected the fluid hoses and sensory cables, feeling the arm go progressively more and more numb.  Finally he pulled it from the stump, sickened a bit as he always was by the wet sound of broken suction when it finally came off.  The orifices in the arm and stump retracted their frills and fronds in reluctant farewells, finally clenching shut. 
 
One last time he hung the arm on the wall.  The fist opened wide and relaxed, the calloused palm still dusty from the last few pitches.  Somewhere in the dugout there was a baseball that was still a bit warm from it. 

"Goodbye," he said.  

--Steve Kilian

Post-Season

Listening to Sunn O)))

 


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Summer's Gone (Program)




It’s a well known fact that the second half of the hourglass runs through twice as fast as the first. Hourglass sands come from beaches, and that is why our shorelines are receding. Not only does it bring the ocean rushing in, but it also lowers the sky, which is why the sun sets earlier. This leads to depression and seasonal sickness. I recommend fish oil and vitamin  C. They work for me, though I’m also a believer in the power of placebos. I also believe in the power of gazebos, though like gravity, it is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. I’ve got to say, for such a weak force, it can have a doozy of an effect on a body. The four undemental forces are placebos, gazebos, prayers and promises. None can stave off Autumn.


Beach sand is made from broken down baby's teeth, which is why time bites. These are the facts people, and it’s a known fact that facts are 60% fat. You can try to burn it off, but it still goes to your hips. They  call them love handles but you can’t handle love, though you can candle it, though the fat in the candle wax burns an oily black. Once again I recommend vitamin C and fish oil. The C stands for candle and the fish oil is for oily black, which would be the name of a sailer in a book I’m never going to write. I’ve got a library full. Oily Black is the opposite of Ahab; he refuses to share his fire or search for whales. It turns out he can’t swim, or sail for that matter, and his name isn’t Oily Black it’s Sandy Beaches, but his time is running out.

You see how I tied it all together? You see how I  didn’t? I don’t tie knots I tangle threads and sometimes I tangle yarns and sometimes kittens run out and play with it, but I haven’t seen the kittens in a while. Perhaps they’ve turned to cats or perhaps they’ve turned to unicorns. Impossible you say? What, you didn’t say that? Well I heard someone say something, at some point. My point is that you can’t spell can’t without cat. n’ the n’ is all that remains. Of course n’ is always bringing along a friend, which is a nice way to go, if you don’t mind company. Which is why I always keep live dynamite strapped to my chest. I lit it one time, and it turned out only to be love candles, lit from both ends. There was a lot of oily smoke (A gambler character from a series of books I never wrote) and melted wax that left me with second degree burns, though it felt a lot warmer than that. Must have been measured in Celsius. Far n’ height is how I measure the weather, and it’s a tall storm a few miles away.

--Dan Kilian

Note: This was the program from my show at Fat Baby 9/29/13. I think like six people showed, leading me to my decision that it is time to retire from live performance. 

Here’s What I Was Thinking At 5:30 Today When I Should Have Been Sleeping

Listening to Sunn O)))