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is dedicated to the enjoyment of audio and visual stimuli. Please visit our archives where we have uncovered the true importance of nearly everything. Should you want to reach us, e-mail alex dot carnevale at gmail dot com, but don't tell the spam robots. Consider contacting us if you wish to use This Recording in your classroom or club setting. We have given several talks at local Rotarys that we feel went really well.

Pretty used to being with Gwyneth

Regrets that her mother did not smoke

Frank in all directions

Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais

Simply cannot go back to them

Roll your eyes at Samuel Beckett

John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion

Metaphors with eyes

Life of Mary MacLane

Circle what it is you want

Not really talking about women, just Diane

Felicity's disguise

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Entries in fiction (63)

Saturday
Nov172012

In Which We Tell The Story Of Something Inside Us

Enjoy the depths of our Saturday fiction series here.

Inspiration

by LINDA EDDINGS

She began the story with a coda, thinking that when it was over she could put the coda wherever it was you placed such things, right before the end.

The idea for the story was a woman housesitting for her boss, a certain Mr. Williams. In the tale's opening minutes a strange man came to Mr. Williams' home, but the woman opened the door anyway. The man offered her fish he had recently caught from a river. She accepted and cooked them. Before she could thank him something had frightened him away.

It was later revealed, in this version of her story, that the thing that frightened the fisherman away was the woman herself later on in the story, perched on the roof of the house. She had subsequently traveled back in time to protect herself.

This had, upon her departure from the Starbucks near the mall, felt like a stroke of genius. When she reappraised it the next morning on her way to work the twist was verifiably the stupidest thing in the world.

Next the housesitter received a phone call from Mr. Williams that shortly followed the cooking of the fish. He asked his employee to find an ancient helmet in the upstairs closet. On her way there, the housesitter became lost. She mused on the metaphorical development of saving your own self from danger. Was it possible to hint at this in a more subtle way?

In the bathroom at work, getting up from the toilet, her iPhone dropped into the bowl. She tried to put it in a bag of rice but, hours later, it would not turn on. She wondered what she had done to deserve this and decided on nothing. Making this happen to the housesitter of her imagination was an easy step, and she found that the woman suffered more easily, surprising herself as quickly as her author.

Her dream the next night involved being returned to her high school. The corridors whipped around the classrooms like cars racing around a track. She arrived late for the next class, and everyone had a copy of The Great Gatsby. The classrooms swept about her like a train on rails, and now when she looked out into the hallway the world there was a cold and frosty London. Each member of the class told her to get a handful of pebbles. She did, and a blonde man loaded them into a handgun. He shot a man in a top hat approaching from the street, and she woke up.

Mr. Williams transitioned from being a slightly effete, if well-intentioned superior to a man stressed by forces beyond his control.

While working out that morning, she saw the running of the bulls on the news. Those absconding showed a requisite amount of fear and in some cases, exhilaration. The bulls, to her mind, were absolutely terrified. The housesitter found the helmet, somewhere deep in a closet preserved from the onset of the years. The headgear allowed her to see things as they truly were.

Linda Eddings is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here.

"Twirled With Slight Fingers" - Sam Willis (mp3)

"Weird Science" - Sam Willis (mp3)

Saturday
Nov102012

In Which We Were Not Expecting That

At the Lodge

by KATE NURSAS

At the lodge it is something of a competition to act as playfully as we think we should feel.

"Do a cartwheel," Helga says. "But close your eyes first." Bob presses a napkin to his face and looks worried.

"It gives me vertigo," Jane's boyfriend says.

"You're only upside down for a second," Helga says.

"It feels a lot longer," he tells her. Everyone else is going down the mountain or up the mountain. The snow machines work overtime because it's unexpectly balmy for February.

"I'd like to see it," I say. Jane's boyfriend tosses his blonde hair back and resolutely takes a position. He pours the rest of his drink into a nearby plant and looks at each of us in turn. Before he does it, he says, "It's not just cartwheels. It's all gymnastics. But I'll try because you asked me."

He falls over, and I say, "Try to rest your eyes in the distance on something, an object not nearby."

Bob's "honestly not feeling well." I tell him I'm going to ski and he refuses to go back to his room. I ask him if he should be drinking. He shrugs and says, "I don't even know if it affects me anymore."

I get ready. He says, "I see Jane on the north slope. She's raising her arms."

"I want to get out there," I say. "Are you coming or not?" He steeples his fingers.

"No," he says, "you're right. I'm going to go upstairs and read The Silence of Lambs." He reclines back on the chaise and covers his eyes.

"Oh come on," I say. It's something about how his eyes are glancing over to the window.

"I don't want to hold you back," he says. I touch his knee and he gives a reaction halfway between a shudder and a convulsion. He sits up.

"Sorry," he says, "I wasn't expecting that."

Helga comes in with Jane, who wonders if we have seen her boyfriend. "No," I said, "and he's not much of a gymnast either." A solid woman in a bright smock serves us what I think is grenadine and vodka which we all sip out of straws. A person can hardly expect to ski in such conditions.

"How is it out there?" I ask Jane. "I saw you raising your arms."

"Sometimes I like the fake snow better," she says. "It makes me feel like my mind is generating the climate."

"Global warming is something we can all embrace," Helga says, taking off her jacket and doing an inspired rendition of the macarena.

Now that Jane's going back out, Bob can't feign illness any longer, if that's what he's doing. He's more competitive with her than anyone except her boyfriend. The blonde viking never joins her, and when we come in for dinner, he's nowhere to be found.

"Maybe he did have vertigo," Helga says. There's a nurse on duty with long brown hair and she tells us she gave a man fitting the description of Jane's boyfriend a tylenol and a ham sandwich. Under his breath Bob says, "That's service."

The next morning is our last at the lodge. We all want to go out together. In my jacket I find a little red rose and a note that says, "Come in before the others." I show it to Helga on the lift.

"It's not Bob," she says. "He told me he didn't want to hurt you again." I don't know why, but I laugh. Maybe it was because I was hearing something I already knew but had never consciously accepted.

"The rose is kind of crumpled."

Instead of going in first, I wait until everyone else is complaining that there is no drink service on the lifts. We start to lose the light, but it's something about me, probably. I find I never get cold. Jane is the second to last, and I admit I get great pleasure from watching her as well. She looks like a lion slipping through plain as she moves back and forth.

Helga's the first one to meet me. "Did you have fun?" she says.

"Yes," I told her.

"I figured out who it was," Helga says. "It was Jane's boyfriend. The rose wasn't fresh."

"So?"

"He must have put that in there yesterday. That's why he left. He felt rejected."

"When you write about this," I say, "Take pity on us all." She hands me a margarita.

Kate Nursas is a writer living in Chicago.

"Moi Quand Je Pleure" - Celine Dion (mp3)

"Qui Peut Vivre Mon Amour" - Celine Dion (mp3)

Saturday
Nov032012

In Which We Vow To Stop This Immediately

You can find an archive of our Saturday fiction series here.

Red Portrait no. 2, Adam Neate

Things I Will Never Do In My Writing Again

by LOIS EHRENREICH

Finish in the place that I started.

Have a protagonist reassure another, even in jest.

Create a victim of any accident, unless it is the breaking of a fingernail or burning of a house.

Ring a doorbell.

Reveal a detailed background on how anything received its name except a boat.

Use water as a metaphor for rebirth; e.g. feeling better after a hot shower.

Force one character to respond to another by saying, "Yes."

Imply a married woman is tormented by an abusive or compelling relationship from her past.

Someone is a moment too late flipping off the safety of a gun.

End with a man opening or closing his arms.

Pray.

Unveil sex that concludes when someone leaves without saying a word.

Suggest stairs that only last for one flight.

Let my people imagine they cannot leave the world in which they live.

Have anything hinge on the gesture of someone giving away their money, whether it be a nickel or a billion dollars.

Pretend e-mail and cell phones never existed.

Speak to the dead.

Give a personal history of a character that includes the sentence, "After graduating from Columbia..."

Detail the appearance of the ocean or the power of the weather.

Describe disgust as if it were not also a kind of pleasure.

Play with the ring on her finger.

Divine any political point more complicated than hinting that poverty is degrading.

Give a blessing.

Sing a song.

Make any reference, no matter how oblique, to him.

Lois Ehrenreich is a writer living in New York.

Paintings by Adam Neate.

"Hunting For You" - Robbie Williams (mp3)

"Different" - Robbie Williams (mp3)