Thursday, November 20, 2014

Release the Kraken

“Release the Kraken"
By Kim Michael

I’m nine years old.  It’s Tuesday night.  "Bible Study Night" at church.  My dad is the teacher.  The White Chapel Bible Study is a small, but faithful group of followers who diligently meet downstairs in the basement every Tuesday night to read the bible—every chapter—every passage-every word-- diligently, if not painfully.   Like I said I’m nine.  I had a hard time sitting still.  I had a harder time even reading when it came to my turn.  There were not a lot of other kids, just me and one other boy, and I really didn’t know him all that well, just the look of misery on his face as he sat across the table from me.

Our church was small; out in the middle of nowhere.  There was an old farm house on one side and a corn field butted up to the back of the property.  There were no bathrooms, just an outhouse behind the church next to the back fence, with a Sears catalogue hanging inside (not for reading).  People joke about it now, but that’s the way it was back then.

Mom knew Tuesday nights were hard on me.  She would often fix something I liked for supper before we went.  The night of the “incident” she fixed one of my favorites.  “Beans and Weenies”.  Now for this part of the story you need to understand that I have a sensitive digestive system.  Strange things happen when I eat certain foods.  Now that I’m an adult I have come to know these foods over the years and to avoid them, however at nine, I was still very much in the discovery stage.  The food, or culprit in question here—BEANS.

I ate two helpings that night.  Beans and weenies with buttered bread.  There is nothing better.  

At seven o’clock we were at the church, down in the basement.  Just heading into the book of Exodus.  Somewhere between the first and second plague that hit Egypt something started rumbling in my stomach.  When the angel of death showed up in Egypt, I could feel his presence.  Unknown things were happening to me; pressure  building.  I began sweating.  Then I thought about that outhouse in the dark.  By myself.  In the cold.  That scared me even more. I tried to stay calm hoping it would go away, but it didn’t.  I was determined to hang in there --I would do anything not to have to go to that outhouse, but it was not to be.  

The storm of beens and weenies continued to churn, and by the time we got to the part when Moses said, "Let My People Go", it was if a voice on some distant shore of rotten eggs and sulfur cried out, “Release The Kraken”.

It started out as a low rumble.  Everyone looked up and directly at me.  No smiles or laughter.  Their eyes wide, in disbelief.  I tried to clinch, but that only made the pitch go higher.  I covered almost three octaves that ended in some kind of whistle that was still going.  I could do nothing to stop it.   

When it was finally over everyone just stared at me.  I was terrified.  My dad turned to me red-faced and embarrassed; looked me in the eye and said, “What do you say?"

My face went blank.  I had no idea.  What do you say after you’ve bombed the Tuesdays Night Bible Study group with deadly beans and weenie gas?  I was petrified.  All I could think to say was... “Thank you?"

My dad just stared at me.  Finally, his face eased up.  He looked to the others, “Give me a minute, I’ll take him out to the outhouse."  

We walked to the back door and out into the dark.  He had his flashlight.  By the time we’d gotten there I no longer had to go.  I tried, but I couldn’t.  Dad said nothing.  As we walked back toward the door, I began to cry.  I didn't want to go back inside.  I didn’t want to face all those people again.  Dad knelt down and hugged me.  

“It’s OK,” he said finally.  “Go on to the car, turn the heater on and you can listen to the radio until we come out.  Those days we had a couple of riders we took home.    

It was probably not the best decision on my dad’s part.  The beans and weenies would strike again before they all came out and piled in the car.  We had to drive home in twenty degree weather, with the windows down...my dad glancing up at me in the mirror in disbelief.  

Sometimes there are just not enough “Thank Yous” to say.   




Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Rejection Letters to God? by Kim Michael

NewImage
             Rejection Letters
      ...to God?
              By Kim Michael


      A number of years ago, shortly after I finished my first novel, a curious thing happened. At a family reunion I mentioned to a favorite relative of mine that I had finally finished the novel that took more than ten years to complete. Actually, he’s my wife’s mother’s sister’s son so I have no idea what that makes him as far as being a relative, but he is also a good friend.
     He’s a professor at a prominent university out east as well as being a writer himself, having published several books, the kind of books that only a handful of people in the world can read and understand. For years the government flew him around the country to help set up “think” tanks, or at least that’s what I think he did, I’m still not sure.
     So, at this family reunion, I mentioned to him that I had finished my first novel and of course his first question was, “What’s it about?” The one question, if you’re smart, you never ask another writer, particularly a new author.  Like baby rattlesnakes we tend to be the most dangerous because we don’t know how to control the poison. And for the next three hours he sat patiently listening. A few days later, I get a book from him in the mail entitled, “Rotten Reviews and Rejections” by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard.
     If you’ve never seen the book, it is a compilation of rejections and bad reviews of some of the most famous authors and famous books in history, and yes, even the greatest authors have had their work rejected. Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Fitzgerald, the list is endless. It is said that Fitzgerald got so many rejection letters that he wallpapered an entire room in his house with them.
    And so, my well-intentioned friend--my wife’s mother’s sister’s son, was not being malicious or negative about my first foray into the world of authorship, which I suppose I could have read into his sending me that book. No... I believe, in his own way, he was preparing me for what he knew would be the “inevitable”, and yes, my first attempt at getting my book published ended with a very tall stack of rejection letters. But I have to say, that experience was as much an education on the world of publishing as writing the book itself.
     I learned a number of valuable lessons from that almost overwhelming experience of total rejection. Some of the letters made me a better writer, some made me mad enough to want to prove them wrong, and some led me to understand one of the most important things you can know as a writer... and that is--when dealing with agents and critics and publishers--they’re not always right. In fact, every great book that has ever been written has, in some way, been rejected, and many far more than you would imagine.
    And so I wondered, turn back the hands of time, what if publishers and agents of today were to get inquiry letters for what has become the greatest selling book of all time—the Bible?
     And so I present for your consideration Rejection Letters To…God?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Almighty,
Thank you for your recent submission. Although we feel that it shows promise we also think it’s too long, jumps around too much and will be hard for readers to follow. Try to get it under 300 pages.

Dear G,
Please resubmit using standard manuscript format. We do not accept scroll submissions.

Dear Mr. Jehovah.
Maybe if you worked from an outline it would work better.  Also some of the names sound made-up.

Dear G,
After reviewing your “Old Testament” submission, we would suggest if you decide to write a “New Testament” that you use more American sounding names like--Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John –it will read better.

Dear G,
Is this fiction or non-fiction?

Dear G in Heaven,
We asked you to send a synopsis and you sent over the Ten Commandments. The guy you had deliver them, Mosses--I think his name was, dropped them on the way over. We just wanted you to know they are now in pieces and totally unreadable. Please resubmit and this time use something other than stone tablets.

Mr. G-
Well I don’t see people putting it in every hotel room in the country, but thanks anyway.  

Dear G,
If you hope to sell the movie rights on this a chase scene that lasts forty years in the desert is not going to work.

Mr. G,
Not interested. In the future check the websites before you send your submissions. We only consider religious or inspirational books.

G, 
Well it’s certainly not the greatest story ever told, but if you work on it more, it may be worth considering on some level.

Hey God…...

Thank you for your submission.  I read your book ...loved it. I suspect like all authors you are probably getting a lot of push back right now particularly from people who haven’t really read it, or taken time to understand it.

Don’t be discouraged. There is a message here, an important message for everyone, and one day I believe the world will see it for what it is. 



Saturday, November 8, 2014

Joseph and the Gentle Giant

 

Joseph and the Gentle Giant

 By Kim Michael                                                                                           

He was late.  Jim had been in meetings all morning and his last meeting at the main campus of the hospital ran over, putting him on a dead run back to his office six blocks away.      
 
Now I have to preface this story by telling you that the Jim in this story is a friend of mine, a gentle giant. Maybe six five.  When I first met him, he probably weighed close to three hundred pounds and not an “obese” three hundred pounds, but a “big” three hundred pounds--like a line-backer.  Add to that that he’d once been a state trooper in Maine until he got the highest grade on a civil service exam in Massachusetts which landed him a job in hospital administration, which he freely admits he had absolutely no background in.  And yet, in a few short years, he had become one of the most highly respected patient accounts directors in the state-- and now he is terribly late for his next meeting--an important meeting that he can’t miss.
 
It was almost noon when he finally parked his car in the parking deck, rushed down the stairs to the sidewalk below, and then across the street to the ten story office complex where his office was located.    
 
That’s when Jim sees the homeless man sitting on the curb.  He glances at him for only a second as he passes, but before he pushes through the office building door, he pauses to see his own reflection in the glass...and then the reflection of the homeless man sitting on the curb in the distance.  
 
Then he looks down at his watch.  He’s terribly late, but instead of going in, he slowly turns back to the sidewalk, walks across the street to a restaurant and buys two sandwiches.  And then on a warm summer afternoon, in his suite and tie, Jim comes back to where the homeless man is sitting, sits down on the curb beside him, and hands him one of the sandwiches.      
 
The homeless man’s name was Joseph.  Jim never told me his last name, and I suspect he didn’t know it himself.  He didn’t have to.  He knew everything he needed to know.  They sat there on the curb and watched the cars pass by, people streaming around them as they went to lunch and came back from lunch. 
 
And I suspect in all the time they sat there, Joseph never knew that the man who had bought him a sandwich, was also a Catholic Priest.   It was’t important for Jim to tell him and it wasn’t important for Joseph to know.  Sometimes the only thing that is really important is just sitting on a curb and eating a sandwich with someone...even when you’re late.