Memories Are Hard to Lose. And That’s Good

The past never leaves us is a cliché that can be useful to a writer. That applies to my story, “Silver Screen Saver,” just published by The Corner Club Press. (You can read it at http://www.thecornerclubpress.com/uploads/6/0/5/3/6053731/the_corner_club_press_issue_5.pdf. That’s Issue #5, pp. 26-31.) Shamelessly, let me add that this is my fourth story The CCP has published in its first five issues.

“Silver Screen Saver” came to me because as a post-pubescent kid I never forgot seeing Marta Toren on TV. This relatively unknown actress played in a 1948 remake of Algiers. There's are almost no filmography references to Marta (she died at age 31), which allowed me to recreate her as the actress who never grew old. Play that against a romantic nostalgist so wrapped in the past that he can't move forward and you end up with — excuse the left-handed pun — "Silver Screen Saver." In her way, she could have been as iconic as Veronica Lake.

Okay, moving right along with revising the past, “Carnival’s Last Show” was also published this month by The Jersey Devil Press. That’s up at http://www.jerseydevilpress.com/?page_id=1792. The piece is a reimagining of the day in the eighth grade that I played hooky. I hitched in to Portland, Oregon with my friend Frank Dunham to see Clyde Beatty’s Circus. That incident was anaturally matched pairing with Bruce Springsteen’s “The Last Carnival.” I ask, “Where does the magic go when the carnival train leaves and the carousel music ends? Where does a roustabout kid go when a legend walks into the desert to die?” It’s a short bit of fiction that’ll take just a minute to read…and dredge up some of your own memories.

Hitching to see Clyde Beatty was earlier revisited in “Louise from the Bar.” The story recalls that life can be thrilling, dangerous and filled with stuff you’ll never forget when you’re 14. It was published May 11, 2009 by Paradigm Journal at
http://www.paradigmjournal.com/sagan/Giersbach_Louise%20from%20the%20Bar.html. Sadly, Paradigm has closed its doors. R.I.P.

See, the past never leaves us. And that’s good. (Sometimes.)