Tiny black birds everywhere. Flitting here and there, each on separate sorties but all of a collective mind. Always perched overhead. Watching. And dark clouds above them. Rolling and morphing, occasional sunlight breaching through to paint the dirty concrete or maybe an empty and boarded up store or restaurant. There are always strange figures in [...]

Behind me to the west the thunderstorm is drying out. I came through it two hours ago. Now there is wind between us and the sun is pale, reaching through the rain and then the dust and so diffused I can stare right into it. Mountains rise up on either side like the broken molars of some [...]

If you have seen one then they are always more easy to identify in the future. And if you haven’t, you may still be able to spot one but the more subtle characteristics may be lost to you. Knowing or having known the man would certainly help distinguish a Zeke Tree from any other tree. [...]

I cannot speak publicly about most of my recent experiences. So instead I will tell you about the things I see, even now, when I close my eyes. Things I will probably always see.   Chapter Five – Bering Dreams The sodium vapor lights only reach into the night, 20 or 30 yards beyond the [...]

So this one is for my Mom. She gets impressed by this stuff. I stopped into the Academy of Country music yesterday for some brief business and as soon as I walked in it was, “Show Ben, show Ben!” Someone pulled out their (The ACM’s) magazine, highlighting the show I helped em with a few [...]

I’ve been rolling around a post about some of the very cool websites I read. Maybe soon. But for now, I just stumbled upon THIS and it’s awesome. Staley Out Tweet

The task of the narrator is not an easy one, he said. He appears to be required to choose his tale from among the many that are possible. But of course that is not the case. The case is rather to make many of the one. Always the teller must be at pains to devise [...]

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve told the story. I’ve never written about it. I don’t even think about it that much. Except lately. The events have dislodged from my subconscious and can now be found most every day bobbing at the forefront of my random waking brain activity. And [...]

I wrote this several years ago and performed it as a monologue in an acting class… It was so much fun to write that I decided to do a series of very short stories about my past, growing up in Alaska. This is the first of those stories. Many of them (including this one) will [...]