SEPTEMBER HOMEWORK — flashing, scribophile.com

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Rent or lease?

— how much for a rental?

— one gaz. smillewcoins.

— a day?

— an hour.

— scheisse. way over my budget.

— 1,5 miliminutes. ten smillewcoins. you in or out? there are others waiting.

— can i have room 3?

— room three of the holodeck is slash, carlos santana, eric clapton, jeff beck.

— yes, i know.

— no, you can’t have room three for only ten smillewcoins. are you nutz?

— room 12?

— meditation and levitation with katsuo and georgiana. not happening.

— what room can i have for ten smillewcoins and 1,5 miliminutes?

— room 5.

— the room for people addicted to costco shopping?

— yes. this does not include viewing of the flat-screen tv’s, food samples, bakery, produce, tires —

— what aisles can i teleport to?

— t.p., prescriptions, and clothes.

— when I was there two years ago, some one was taking a foto of the t.p. it was piled almost to the ceiling. vintage 2020 t.p. i bought my quota and shipped it to smillew.

— lady, I don’t have time for your nostalgia. you in or out?

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and now a word from my publisher, the one, the lonely, smiley rawchef, aka, miles chauffer:

“Smillew is a Medium artiste who writes backstories to extend the reading time of his articles and enjoys piggybacking on other writers to promote his brand. Find him selling referral links to Medium on a street corner near you. With the money collected, he plans on sending postcards to his favorite writer, Anna Niedziela.”

ann: anna needs-a-zeela. what’s a zeela?

anna: “niedziela, means ‘sabbath’.” he’s pandering. again.

smillew: twój polski jest bardzo dobry. your polish is very good.

anna: si, por supuesto. (yes, of course. en español.) this is one of my favorite things on medium.com. i write in several languages. all at the same time. a good-looking writer in quebec, Philip Mann-Montreal, said about my writing, “i don’t think she has a native language. it’s part area 51, part scots and español, definitely not french.”

smiley: it’s easy when you are a misunderstood genius. (a post by smillew)

ann: i wasn’t talking about you, smelly. i was referring to Genius Turner, (one of the most popular writers on medium.) he’s has an almost cult-like following.

smillew: but my followers build shrines to me.

ann: only me. no one else has time. they have real life jobs, smelly. you are (living in your grandma’s basement) (married to a beautiful, blond americana with seven lovely children you refer to as sh*tbricks) (living in Michaël Wertenberg’s flat) . . .

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free fall: stream of consciousness

soy de san diego, california. i grew up there. i nearly grew old there. but i escape to calzoncillos.

en san diego, there is no fall, no otoño. no change. the palm tree fronds do not change from verde to rojo, to naranja, to oro. they do not fall to the ground in noviembre. es muy aburido.

en calzoncillos, aka, no coast, nevada, at 4800' above the sea, there is a change of season. a veces, fall and winter happen during summer. the sierras used to be snow-capped all year long. not anymore. in summer, often there is ‘smoke on the water’ over lake tahoe, drifting down the brown side of las montañas to the high desert, across el estado, to utah, colorado, kansas, to misery, where the tornadoes sweep up the smoke and leave it in a hurricane churning en nola, o florida.

last year en septiembre, i escape to acapulco para una semana. en calzoncillos, the air estaba muy sucio.

this summer, there is no escape. estoy triste. sólo una vez a lake tahoe.

now the smoke is here again. so i hibernate. stay indoors except for early morning.

dos semanas pasadas, a bear cub was in my back yard. the dogs chased it away.

he was perdido from his mama.

they found each other. they left.

i hope they are en las montañas. espero they are safe from the wildfires.

i hope it snows and never stops. cover the poor, tired earth en nieve. quiet, cold, snow, icycles clinging to the gutters. snow days, snowed in, falling into the snow, making snow angels.

mama tell me, cuando ella vive en alaska, she like the snow. “it covers up the trash.”

but first, it is fall in 10 days. 9, 8, 7 . . .

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my favorite writer on scribophile:

steve day, of course. (not to be confused with Don Drewniak;). he has a trunk novel he started when he was but a wee lad in breeches. it’s titled “georgian conundrum”. i pester him about it once in a while. go ahead ask him about it. he likes to play strip poker with his reputation numbers, too. right now, he has zilch. i have a pair of zeros. i wasn’t playing with a full deck until just a week ago. steve can most often be found lurking around the greek forums, dressed in his toga, offering his profound wisdom to novices.

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new to me favorites:

fadia elia, https://www.scribophile.com/authors/fadia-elia/

she, too, hangs out in the forums, “the-cool-hang-out-chill-zone” and plays ‘songs in alphabetical order,’ and ‘word association’. her poignant novel is nearly complete. in her own words:

This is a love story between two people who, on the surface, have nothing in common. She is a middle-aged lawyer from the upper crust of Beiruti society. He is a destitute young Syrian working in Beirut to support his family back in war torn Syria. The two have an illicit relationship against a Beirut background.

randy duke, https://www.scribophile.com/authors/randy-duke/

and https://medium.com/of-pisco-and-peru

definitely recommended reading for ‘the deluded custodians’. randy is skillfully channeling hunter s. “gonzo” thompkins.

charlie vasquez, https://www.scribophile.com/authors/charlie-vasquez/

This remarkable young man left his home in El Salvador at the age of 15. he lives in los angeles. his poetry and prose remind me of garcia marquez, pablo neruda, and our own, Pablo Pereyra.

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i never knew i would be an (un)official, (self-appointed) liaison between scribophile.com and medium.com — little bear

“Queen/King of the Hill” was conceived on scribophile eight years ago. it has 572 pages of responses — about 15 responses per page — and it’s wicked fun.

from Caitlin Hamilton’s first post: “This is a thinking game. It’s pretty simple. I start with “I find a hill, my hill,” then someone responds by taking over my hill in any way possible. The only thing you can’t do is destroy reality or create alternate dimensions/parallel universes.”

not destroying reality lasted for about half a page, unless, of course, you consider reincarnation as a radioactive Barbie doll a reality.

opponents have been thrown from the hill, rolled, mugged, slipped in horse apples. i was crushed on thursday under my own 250-foot tall flagpole raised on mt. kilimanjaro, aka, “my hill” by shetlandcats.

You plant your flag, water it with plenty of super-phosphates and it soon grows into a magnificent 250-foot tall flag with lots of tiny green pennants flapping away in the breeze. Marvellous.

Then it topples over and crushes you.

Never mind. We held an inquest and decided on a Narrative Verdict … because it was such a novel way to die.

I saw the whole thing from a safe distance here on top of My Hill

please help!