We'll Meet Again

I will be back in Cebu in four weeks and will be meeting up with Jeff Lassen for a few soft drinks and a bite of lunch. It has been nearly a decade since we last met and some 4 or 5 years almost since he asked me to be his Literary Executor. So much has happened in that time. Yet so much hasn't happened, either. Both of us are still here. His writing is out there but without any active promotion it hasn't 'sold' a great deal although it has been downloaded and read. In fact, I point to Jeff's work when I teach classes on writing to illustrate how you can be a very good writer yet never make the 'big time'. I guess it is all about getting the right breaks. Or making them happen. It certainly has nothing, or very little to do with actual talent.

The Third And Final Lassen Book Is Published

At last! 'Icicles And A Warm Breeze' makes it into print. This great collection of short stories and some other items also includes 'Desert Creek', making ti a 'must have' for any Jeff Lassen Legacy Collection.

Desert Creek Out Now!

Last year I published Jeff's novella, 'Desert Creek'. It is available for sale via www.lulu.com and also on Amazon.com as a Kindle download where it has sold two copies! At $0.99 each that isn't going to provide Jeff with a retirement nest egg but at least two people liked the cover and blurb enough to buy it and that is a start.

I found publishing this book even more of a learning curve than publishing 'This Poor Collection', Jeff's collection of poems. Formatting the book and working the font and point size proved interesting. There were also a couple of books printed with the 'barking dogs' in them that were edited out of the final edition. I also changed the font from a typewrite like Courier to a Times New Roman and saved a few dozen pages also.

One vital lesson not so much learned as underlined was that without marketing and publicity, even the greatest stories will go unread, unbought and unknown about. The distribution and sales end is the bit the publishing houses bring to the collaboration and they can turn a loser into a best seller or without them, a work of literature into a book int he two buck bargain bin.

Jeff Lassen Now A Published Poet

Jeff Lassen's anthology of verse, "This Poor Collection" has been collated and edited by me, then uploaded to www.lulu.com and published as a complete printed volume. It is on sale at only US$9.50 (cost plus $1) so everyone should be able to afford to buy a copy. The $1 royalty will go to his wife, Leonita. So that everyone can enjoy Jeff's poems, I have purposely made the downloadable eBook version Free Of Charge.

It is hoped, however, that as many people as possible invest those few dollars and receive something very special in return. A man's life... in verse.

Fairytale -The Magic House

This is a very interesting piece of writing. As well as the work itself, I have included the Notes Jeff gave me to go with the finished story. I have decided to publish both the story and the Notes so that people can enjoy both. As a fellow writer I am always interested in seeing how other writer's work. The Notes give a lot of insight into how well planned Jeff's stories are. I have to confess I usually get half an idea, start writing and go on from there. It is only with my non-fiction 'commercial' writing that I use a fairly comprehensive template and writing plan.

Read the story, then study the Notes and then read the story again. It will prove insightful as well as offering a pleasant interlude while you read the story.


FAIRYTALE
(The Magic House)

Once there was a man named Olen, who was traveling to a far land. He was a poor man, having only a small purse with barely enough for his journey. And he was alone.

Olen had left his own land to search for something, but he wasn't sure what it was that he sought. In Mare he had never felt comfortable. The things which were important to his countrymen did not seem of very great importance to Olen. Perhaps in Icafar he would find a way of life which appealed to him.

But the new land was strange to him. Everything was unfamiliar, he could barely understand the language of the people, and things were constantly happening which he couldn't explain. There was a sense of expectancy in the air, as if something important was about to occur.

Olen came to a large river, which was uncrossable without a boat of some kind. On the bank was an old woman, gazing across the waters and wringing her hands in anguish. Summoning the few words of Knaa which he had learned, and trying for pronunciation which would be understandable, he approached her and spoke.

"Fine morning, Mother! What is the trouble which has you so upset?"

As the form turned toward him, Olen was unable to clearly see the woman's face, for she was wrapped in a robe with a cowl-like hood. But his impression was that she was very old, being bent and stooped.

"I must cross this river, and the ferry is coming now. But I haven't the money for the fare.", she answered in a wavering, cracking voice. "What am I to do? There is no one to help me."

Looking across the water himself, he saw a small boat - a raft, actually - which was pulled across the turbulent river by ropes. As it neared the shore, the ferryman called out.

"Begone, crone! I have told you these last three trips: change yourself into a crow and fly across, but you'll not ride my ferry without paying me two deci for the fare. Your magic does not scare me at all, old one!"

With that, the raft ground to the shore where the old woman and Olen stood.

"Ah! A paying customer, perhaps. Here, Gentleman, let me help you aboard. Away, hag! Leave the gentleman alone."

"The lady is my guest, ferryman. Please assist her." Olen had not even thought before uttering these words. The despair of the old woman had touched him, and the ferryman's harsh words to her had brought forth his defense. Reaching into his purse he brought forth his last coin. "Will this cover our fares, boatman?"

The ferryman took Olen's coin, bit it, weighed the unfamiliar foreign piece in his hand, and pronounced "Just the right amount, it seems. Aboard! Aboard!"

Both men helped load the few baskets and bags that the old woman had standing on the ground with her. And then the barge began its journey back across the river, pulled by the muscular arms of the ferryman. The trip was not long, but the river was deep and fast. It took all the strength and concentration of the boatman to manage his craft and he said not a word on the traverse. Olen and the old woman likewise maintained silence until the other side was reached.

After they disembarked the old woman thanked Olen for her fare. She sat on the ground surrounded by small parcels. Laboriously she slung a bag over each sloped shoulder, and grasped the two baskets. Struggling to gain her feet, wheezing with effort, she finally stood after a fashion.

"Are you traveling this road ahead, Mother? Perhaps I can help you with your load." Olen had lifted the packages from the barge, and their weight was considerable. How the woman could have managed them alone was beyond his understanding, but many things here in Icafar were strange.

She handed him a heavy basket. With his own small pack on his back, there was enough of a load for him. But the woman asked him to put one of her bags into the basket he carried. When he did so, the load became lighter by half. Then the other bag, which further lightened the whole. Finally, the last basket fit inside the first, and the accumulated baggage of the old woman was of no more weight than his purse, which now was totally empty. Even his own pack seemed lighter. And so they progressed along the road toward what destination Olen only barely knew.

"I don't know very much about magic," Olen stated, "for in my land of Mare there is no such thing. But you certainly seem to have some uncanny ability. Why did you not simply lighten your load? It is clear that you were struggling under it."

Still from under the hood, with wavering tones, the old woman answered. "It is not permitted to me to perform magic for my own benefit. But when it was to lighten your load, which you took upon yourself, then it was permitted. You have a good heart, Olen, to assist me so."

He marvelled that she knew his name. Olen was sure that he had not spoken it in her presence. This was truly a different and strange land.

They continued down the road, with little conversation. It was almost fully dark when finally they reached the side of a small stream where they stopped to rest.

"And where will you go now, Olen? It is late, but there is a village ahead about an hour's walk. There you may find a place to spend the night.

"But I have nothing with which to pay, for I gave my last coin to the ferryman. I shall stay here tonight, and in the light of a new day I will seek out some form of work in this new land. For now I will stay by the streamside and sleep. What of you, Mother?"

"I must go on. But you are a very kind man, Olen, to have spent your last coin on my fare across the river. But perhaps you are mistaken, and it was not your last. I think there may be another in your purse."

Olen felt the purse around his neck, and showed a look of surprise as he felt the coin within. He loosened the drawstring, and took out an identical coin to the one he had given the ferryman - completely alike, even to the tooth marks. "How is this here, Mother?" he asked.

The greedy man must have taken it out to admire how he robbed you on the way back across the river. That coin is worth at least 10 deci, but he told you it was just enough to cover our two fares. He must have dropped it into the river, I would think. He will not suspect that his greed made it fly back to you."



And here are the Notes:

NOTES - Fairytale - The Magic House

Target length: 1500 - 2000 words

Action:
* Olen helps witch; what does he want most?
* Given hut to live in instead
* Finds small pot of gold
* Finds wife; house grows for Olen, shrinks for Orme
* Hires helper for wife - Ovel
* Wife takes back the wages of Ovel
* Hut too small for Orme
* Orme leaves; Olen gives her what remains of gold
* Can't pay Ovel
* Ovel stays anyway
* House grows
* Ovel finds pot of gold
* Witch returns?


Names:
* Lone - olen; ealon; aelon
* Solo - loos; ools; sloo; olos; osol
* Love - evol; ovel; olve; elvo; vorel; rovel
* Heart - thear; thare; ather; athre; ethar; retha; rathe; erath; arthe
* Africa - Icafar
* Akan - Knaa
* Amer - Mare
* Cedi - deci
* More - Orme; erom; remo
* Greed - dreeg; drege; gedre
* Life - Laef; lief; leif; fael; feal; fale; fela; lafe; efla; afel

Point of view:
* Omniscient narrator; past tense

Characters:
* Old woman (witch?)
* Olen - old man, poor, good heart, loving, lonely, generous
* Orme - Olen's wife, greedy, selfish, never satisfied
* Vole - Servant girl, giver

Ideas:
* pots of gold in yard
* bequest? w/mystery
* analogy: growing hut/Olen's heart
* magic house/hut - expands/contracts w/ love within



I like the 'voice' of the story, it really is a fairytale style of narrative. You know the moral issues being pushed and you can guess the outcome will be a positive one for the hero, but all the same it flows along and keeps you reading to make sure all's well that ends well. The mark of a gifted story teller, methinks.

Green Eyes

Jeff wrote this essay several times over, I have five versions on file as well as the one he labeled 'final'. Be warned, there is sexually explicit prose in the narrative, almost soft porn like. There is a 'Lolita' like angle to the story also, as he describes the girl as 'twelve or thirteen'. Don't judge the writer, judge the story if you have to judge anything at all. Read it and think about it.

What struck me as I read all of the versions, was how similar they were. I have actually changed one word in the last paragraph but that was a word Jeff had included in one of the other versions and I did this merely to keep the rating for this blog site no worse than MA. I don't find the prose obscene or even profane but it is erotic writing. It is also descriptive, romantic, sensual and seductive and if one were to be honest, I find it very real.

Many men reading this will have similar memories of females who have hit all our hot buttons but for whatever reason we never pursued a more definite outcome. In the case of one so young, that is a proper and healthy road to follow. But just because the subject of the story is so young does not, to my mind, make this sick or pornographic. It makes it honest. Decide for yourselves and feel free to post comments.



Green-Eyes
by
Kwadwo

I remember a young, part-black girl with green eyes on a bus in Kingston, Jamaica, back in 1966. She made such an impression on me that the memory is still vivid. I have carried the vision of her all these years, and the dream of what we might have experienced together.

She was of a dark cinnamon colour, and of very comely features. Her hair was sort of blonde with some red highlights, but her lips were pleasingly thick, and her nose acceptably broad. She was only a budding woman, probably no more than twelve or thirteen. But the look in those startlingly beautiful green eyes said that she was ready to learn of love, and I was more than ready to teach her.

She kept gazing at me for the entire trip into town. When I boarded the bus and walked back to an empty seat I couldn't miss her youthful beauty nor her steady stare. Those green eyes, shining out from her beautiful brown face, seemed to smile of their own accord. I chose a seat directly across from her, and drank in her beauty with thirsty eyes.

Her breasts were the size of small, hard tangerines, and through her simple shift of thin cloth her nipples poked out erect - from the heat of my gaze, I like to think, and in anticipation of my mouth gently closing over them.

Her legs protruding from the bottom of her skirt were of the same fine colouring as her face - thin, little-girl legs. But as much as I could see of her exposed thighs told me that she was beginning - just beginning - to fill out into a sensual young woman. And I was certain that between those delightful young-woman thighs I would find a delicious morsel, covered with the first downy growth of pubescence.

Aware of my interest, and not the least embarrassed by it, she shifted in her seat and recrossed her legs, exposing a bit more tempting thigh and causing her enticing young breasts to jut out to their best advantage. She continued to gaze at me, green eyes smiling brightly, with a mixture of girlish coquetry and womanly invitation.

I was too dumbstruck by her youthful sensuality, and too busy with my hands in my lap trying to cover the evidence of her effect upon me, to correctly read the invitation there until it was too late. She arose from her seat with a toss of her pert, round bottom - Ah! Such delights to be experienced there! An impatient glance at me, a final glance with the smiling green eyes, and she left the bus before my destination. I was on my way to an important appointment and did not follow her as I should have.

Over the years since I have forgotten what was so important about that appointment. But I have never forgotten that sweet, young, green-eyed girl who was so ready to give herself to me. I still dream of being the first to part her tender lips with my tongue and drink deep of the first-fruit juices of her newly awakened womanhood, to eat that special meal from her virgin pussy. I still wish I had left the bus with her, and undertaken the beautiful and sacred honor of being her teacher in the arts of love - to initiate her to the ecstasy of release for the first time with my thick hard manhood thrusting inside her, bringing her to the heights of passion and spurting the juices of love deep within her, satisfying her completely in her initial sexual encounter.

Oh God! Why didn't I? I wonder if she ever thinks of me.

Mother, Charmin and Dr. Kevorkian

Editor's Note: This is a poignant and very moving short story. It gives dignity to the characters along with respect and clearly... love.


Copyright 2004 by Jeff Lassen


It was like every day. The help-line phone rang constantly. One call after another, claimants wanting to know where their benefit checks were. Look up their account in the computer. Give them the answers they didn’t want to hear. Their claim card was not received, not signed, no benefits left in their account. Their check had been mailed on the usual day. Each expected that his call would magically cause his check to issue from his phone right then. Eight hours of unhappy callers one after another.

“Jason, you have a call on Connie’s line.”

I almost never got personal calls at work. But I knew what this one must be. I went into the boss’s office.

“Jason?”

“Yes, Creigh, it’s me.”

“Jason. Mom died this morning, about an hour ago. They just called me from the nursing home a little while ago. They said she just went quietly in her sleep after breakfast. She’s at peace now, Jase!”

“Thanks, Creigh. Bye.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. It was not unexpected. She had been starving herself to death for the past three weeks, refusing to take any food at all. She had been tired of fighting.

I quietly returned to my desk. I stared at and through my computer screen. The phone continued to ring unheard, the calls answered by my many co-workers.

She’d had fifteen good years after she had first been diagnosed. She’d had a double radical mastectomy, radiation and chemo-therapy, and had remained cancer-free for fifteen years.

Then the cancer had returned. She had fought valiantly for about five years. Then she had given up. At the end her body was riddled with cancer. She had just had her seventieth birthday a month and a half ago.

I was sitting quietly at my desk with tears streaming down my face.

“Jason, are you alright?” asked my supervisor, Bob. “Was it your mother?”

“Yes. I’ll be alright.”

“Why don’t you go home, Jason?”

“No! I think I need to be here right now. I just need a little time, Bob. Life goes on.”

We had both lived in Carson City, Nevada. I visited her often, especially on Friday nights. She was still working, in Reno, and drove the 30 miles each way. On Friday she would do her food shopping on the way home from work. But she was too exhausted to carry her few bags of groceries upstairs to her apartment. She would bring the frozen stuff, leaving the rest in the trunk of her car. No matter how many times I offered, she would not call me for help. Fiercely independent to the end! So I just showed up on Friday evenings, took her keys and checked her trunk, bringing up whatever remained.

About four months ago on a Friday night we were playing Yahtze. Mother and I had always played games. She was a ruthless competitor. But not very good at most of the games she had taught me. I was beating her at gin rummy by the time I was eight years old. Still, she enjoyed our games.

But she couldn’t seem to concentrate that night. I asked her what was the matter. She told me that she had had an accident on the way home that night. She had run over a curb and bent the rim of her tire, deflating it. She had to wait for AAA to come fix it so she could come home. I talked to her a bit about the circumstance and she couldn’t remember how it happened.

This was the third little accident in the past couple of months. I had been increasingly worried by her driving. I told her that it wasn’t good for her to be driving anymore if she couldn’t remember things. It wasn’t safe. She said what did it matter, she was going to die soon anyway. But there are other people to consider. You can’t endanger everyone else on the road just because you are going to die soon. Oh yeah, she responded.

I called my brother in Reno. I told him what had happened, that I was going to take Mother’s car keys, and he should come down the next day and we should all talk it over.

She was furious! How was she going to get to work? I told her that we would get things worked out between all of us.


Mother moved in with Creigh and his family that weekend. We all had a few visits with her various doctors in the next week. We hadn’t realized just how bad things really were. She had so many little tumors in her brain that it was amazing that she functioned as well as she did. Most of her organs were involved. But, strangely enough, nothing in her lungs. A heavy smoker for fifty years, and no cancer in the lungs.

A week later she quit her job. Her doctors had advised her to give up work six months before. She said it was just too much of a problem for Creigh and Emma to drive her there and back.

I saw more of my brother in the next few months than I had in the past several years. I visited one day every weekend. Mother and I continued to play games, when she was able to concentrate. But that became less and less possible to her. I watched her steadily decline.

One day we were playing Uno. She kept putting the wrong cards down. When I corrected her, she looked ashamed of herself. Mother, it’s alright. We don’t have to play. But she wanted to continue. And she concentrated fiercely. You could see the strain on her face through the wrinkles.

Let me have a puff of your pipe, she asked. She loved the smell of my pipe. But you’re not supposed to be smoking, I said. What’s the difference, she replied. I’ll be dead of the brain tumors before the tobacco can get me. Oh how she savored that single puff of smoke!

A few weeks before her birthday I was there when my brother and his wife returned from the shopping. He walked in with a huge package of toilet tissue.

Mother looked pleadingly at my brother. Please can't I have Charmin in my bathroom? Her body seemed to sag nearer to her impending death when he said that he'd just bought 24 rolls of toilet tissue at a wonderful bargain. The creases and folds around her eyes seemed to deepen until she seemed almost to disappear within them. With a deep sigh - either of despair or resignation - she croaked But that is so rough! Waiting to die, having to live in her son's home for her final days, could she not have one part of her body which was not painful? Slowly turning to gaze at me her eyes rolled upwards and I feared she was going to die at that instant.


Mother, I said, if you want Charmin you shall have it. Glaring defiantly at my overly frugal brother, I added If you won't buy it for her, I shall!

Mother's eyes slowly rolled down again, and the creases and folds of her face smoothed somewhat as she beamed at me with a broad smile, vacant of teeth but no less bright, and her eyes sparkled with glee.

The week of her birthday she was too ill to accompany me to dinner. I had always taken my mother out for a lobster dinner to celebrate her birthday, and for mine a week before. We had both been looking forward to it. But she had been getting more chemo and was not able to eat anything. We already had reservations, so my brother went with me. When we returned, Mother demanded to sniff my beard and mustache as that was as close as she was ever going to get to lobster again. She sniffed and smiled with joy as she nuzzled into my beard.

A few weeks later she had to be hospitalized to stabilize some of her medication. I think this was the point at which she really gave up. She had a living will which forbid any extraordinary measures. She made sure everybody knew it. Now she refused to take any medication except that for relieving pain. My brother, his wife - who was a nurse - and I were all there in her room with her major attending physician and her cancer doctor. They were trying to explain why it was important that she should continue to take her medication. She said that she didn’t want any more medication. She was going to die, and they couldn’t stop it. They said that they would have to administer it through the IV if she wouldn’t take it willingly. At this mother ripped the IV feed from her arm and told them she wanted her other doctor. What other doctor was that, they wanted to know. She had so many different doctors. Dr. Kevorkian, she replied. I had to laugh in spite of the situation.

Since she wouldn’t take medication they couldn’t justify keeping her in the hospital. She was moved to a nursing home, an intensive care sort of terminal facility. She went downhill very fast. She refused to eat. She took only water and a little fruit juice.

I visited every other day for the month she was there. At first she would ask me to not let them force her to eat. I talked with the staff, and they did bring her a tray three times a day, but nobody forced her to do anything. As if anyone could! She was not getting any medication except for pain. And she was in more and more pain as time went on.

Gradually she communicated less and less. When she did speak, it was often garbled, but sometimes an extremely forceful and lucid sentence would ensue. I tended to communicate more with her. I would hold her feeble hand and tell her that I loved her. I would assure her that her wishes were being followed. And I gradually came to accept that she had a right to die rather than to continue to fight this terrible battle.

Mother had long made known her wishes that she have no funeral, no memorial, nothing like that. She didn’t want anybody visiting her grave or keeping her ashes on their mantle. She had donated her body to the local medical college. She had often said there was so much wrong with her that the good medical students could make better use of her body than any undertaker. And it would save us the cost of a trash bag. Her words!

Two days before I had sat at her bedside holding her hand. She had not responded at all in the half hour I was there. At first she appeared asleep. Then her eyes opened, but still she didn’t move or try to speak. As I was prating on about nothing she suddenly squeezed my hand strongly. She said very clearly, No funeral! She looked at me with the clearest eyes I had seen in her face for months. No, Mother, no funeral. Just as you have always wished. With that she smiled, and closed her eyes again. She slept, and I left.

Goodbye, mother! May God bless you.

The help-line phone was ringing. Automatically, I reached for it. “Benefits. May I help you?”