Two Suns
Thoughts on new story
A few days ago, I had a short story, “A Sun Barely Risen, a Sun Nearly Set,” go live in the Thirty West’s literary journal/substack Afterimages. The story is inspired by a mishmash of different experiences of mine, so I thought I’d share a few for this week’s post. And as for whatever drove me to write it in the first place, that—for me, for now—is like God: mysterious, impossible to prove, impossible to disprove. Any conclusion is more a belief of the heart than a result of the machinations of that lumpy cabbage brain we rely on. Nothing against beliefs of the heart. Or brains and their machinations. Or lumpy cabbages.
I think I’ll write on inspiration in more detail when I’m inspired. Dad joke.
One of the characters in this story suffers from dementia, a disease I’m familiar with because someone close to me suffered from it for years before passing away. My memories of her gradual fade played a part in this piece. But coinciding with that familiarity with dementia is an anecdote from Jack Kornfield’s book BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY, which briefly details a man suffering from dementia who momentarily, at a critical time, becomes lucid for a few minutes after years of being lost.
The setting also has some roots in my experience. My wife and I took a recent trip to a small town in the North Cascades, Twisp, and the long, remote, mountainous drive there struck me as dangerous, not because of fears of crashing, but of being cut off from home and loved ones should a natural disaster occur. I think earthquakes are always on the mind of Seattle-area folks, because the scary, could-arrive-at-any-time BIG ONE enters the public discussion here often, reminding us that, in the near future, with relative certainty, we will likely be in need of help from FEMA, and that’s if we survive the massive earthquake at all. I’ve been in one serious earthquake—the Nisqually in 2001—and it was enough to get the gist. Incidentally, on a lighter note, I was a college student at the time, and the earthquake occurred at around 11 a.m., so naturally, when it hit, I was asleep in bed.
I hope you enjoy the story and my meanderings. More soon!
Yours,
Ross