Off on a Dream and Other Magical Realities

OFF ON A DREAM AND OTHER MAGICAL REALITIES

by

BRUCE TAYLOR

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Bruce Taylor:

The Infinite Tears of Pablo Azul

Kafka's Uncle and Other Strange Tales

Kafka's Uncle: The Unfortunate Sequel

Kafka's Uncle: The Ghastly Prequel

Tales from the Good Ship Kafkabury

Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity

Alleymanderous and Other Magical Realities

Magic of Wild Places

Mountains of the Night

© 2018 by Bruce Taylor. All rights reserved.

https://ReAnimus.com/store?author=brucetaylor

Cover Art by Mark Ferrari; final graphic design and rendition, Richard Swift

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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To three amazing friends and artists: Carl Sloan, whose fabulous photo-magic realism images have graced many a cover of my books (the last one being Tales from the Good Ship KafkaBury) and whose friendship has spanned so many years—thank you!

To Richard Swift, who has done the graphic designs for some of my books and whose art has also graced them as well (the last one being The Infinite Tears of Pablo Azul and Other Lamentations of the Human Condition—such a wonderful cover!). But more—a fine fellow, and very good friend indeed. I am fortunate as I am grateful. Thank you!

And last, but not least, Mark Ferrari who many years ago suggested this art (on this book) might work as cover art for an earlier book. The book for which it was being considered, Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity, well, that didn’t work out. But now I see why: it was meant for this book. And what a handsome fit it is! Thank you!

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Author's Preface

Lunacy Toons

Car Party

You Wonder

Final Exam

Patterns

Juan and the Darkness at Noon

Knowing Where You're At

Sweat

Auntie Avocado

Dead Daddy Dirge

Sklood Stop

Knowing You

In the Museum of Dead Memories

To The Children: The Victorious

Canvas

A Story Not About Chopin

The Tale of Mr. Ice

The Trail and Mr. M.

A History Written In Stone

Gotcha

The Mistake

Mars John

The Return of Annabelle Lee

Ember Blues

Not So Bad

Gifts

Pablo and the Stone

Friendly Voices

About the Author

Acknowledgements

In early versions of my work, including some stories here, much of the editing, computer work and formatting fell to the fine and capable hands of Pippin Sardo and Nancy Lou Polk. It was a lot of work but the results were well worth it and deeply appreciated.

Thank you to my partner Roberta Gregory, fine artist and writer, for going through these manuscripts and doing a superb job not only in catching goofs but fine line editing as well. Very fine work indeed and greatly appreciated. Thank you!

And of course, thanks to the past and present members of my wonderful critique group who have seen these stories over many a year and whose feedback have always made them better: Joel Davis, Brian Herbert, Phyllis Hiefield, Faith Szafranski (and in memoriam, Marie Landis Edwards, Cal Clawson) and to the present members, Linda Shepherd, Sarah Blum, Art Gomez, Jim Bartlett and Roberta Gregory.

Thanks to former agent and now fine friend, Ben Bova, for his representation and his unwavering support of my writing. I can’t even begin to tell you what that means to me! I am deeply honored and I thank you!

Many, many thanks to my editor/publisher Andrew Burt of ReAnimus Press who, with infinite patience at my chronic tribulations and angst with computers, must be the Buddha in disguise!

Author’s Preface

Many of these stories were written from the mid-1980’s through the late '90s. They represent a wide array of style and content, but most of them I consider good examples of the blending of magic realist writing techniques and perspectives with science fiction. Not all these stories are magic realism; some are just plain hard-edged science fiction (To The Children: The Victorious) or fictional stories on the craft of writing, (for example, Sweat)—these were included in this collection to show that not only was I writing in the magic realist style but I was experimenting with other styles as well. Much of my writing with the magic realism orientation did not see print in large circulation magazines simply because to some, such content wasn’t exactly entertaining (the nasty male POV of Knowing would not win over many readers who were reading solely for enjoyment). And some of it simply defied conventional publications although plus/minus 250 stories have made it into print, largely with publications that were specifically oriented to magic realism, for example, a fine little magazine published by C. Darren Butler, Magic Realism, published in the '90s, with work by myself, and Jeff VanderMeer among others. Other smaller circulation magazines that were more open to experimentation and taking risks published my work as well. So many of these stories from this time, over some twenty years, resulted in about 500 written and many, in retrospect, were primarily exploration of the imagination—not having to make a living by writing is a double-edged sword: at the same time I could go where my imagination led me, sometimes writing up to five stories a day and using concepts and ideas coming from working as a therapist/Stress Management Specialist on a locked, inpatient psychiatric unit in Seattle.

Such work gave me a wealth of concepts and information that was as profound as it was enlightening and felt at times like I was being paid to observe first-hand the proverbial human condition! Much of what I learned of psychological (as well as psychopathological) concepts became the basis of many stories set in a Kafkian universe (Kafka was actually one of the first writers writing in the style now known as magic realism). From looking at issues of abuse, to the nature of sociopathy and schizophrenia to psychosis and PTSD, some of my stories probably did indeed seem as if dusted by a bit of madness.

After working on the psychiatric floor for 25 years, I was able to take an early retirement at age 55, to just focus on full time writing. I had incredible information, material to draw on and to write about forever it seemed and I could do with it as I so pleased and the result were the stories that were written, many suffused with the insights of Carl Jung (as well as Freud, particularly the concept of Introjection)—but while interesting and fascinating to me—while many a genre editor respected what I wrote about, the stories were not exactly, as one editor delicately put it, entertaining.

That’s exactly right. I was writing work that I was writing because I had something to say.

And naively? Perhaps? Thought that science fiction/fantasy, given the nature of the genre would be open to the idea of Imagination Unlimited—well, up to a point. That point being that to make it, work, if to appear in large circulation magazines, must be seen as being marketable, and making money for the magazine. Stories about characters being psychotic? A little nuts? Sociopathic characters? Issues of abuse?

Hard sells. Very hard sells.

So I had to make the decision to write basically work that I loved to read and wanted to write. That has not changed. The end result over four decades of writing, from 1972 to the present has been the writing of about 1000 short stories and all written because  of the enthusiasm of writing  what I wanted to write not because someone wanted me to write that story or because paying my electric bill depended on marketing a story literally crafted for a particular audience.

I just could not do that and still—cannot.

So how does magic realism really fit with all of this?

Perhaps it was because of this stance that magic realism caught my attention, especially after reading Eye of the Heart edited by Barbara Howes, in the early 1980s. After reading the book, which I later understood was considered magic realism and a well-respected vanguard of that South American literary movement, it gave me a perspective on the works of Bradbury, Serling and Kafka, (later I realized just how many works of said authors  had that magical realist perspective) but it turned out to be the perfect mode of expression for blending my work experience and science fiction. And after reading a lot more magic realism, I realized not only that’s exactly what I was doing but had been doing all along. My work experience had simply put my work on steroids.

What I have been writing all these years is a strange confluence of a very fortunate work experience, my interest in science fiction and then discovering magic realism, the mode of expression that was an unconscious catalyst yet fuel for my love of writing and how it has presented itself.

So what is it about magic realism that worked for me? In so much of my work and other magic realist works, the writing is done as if writing about one’s dreams where the context may feel as if reality-based but is suffused by the weird, the strange but, as in a dream, it’s not seen that way to the dreamer. It’s seen as normal consensual reality. It’s only after one awakens, that the dream is seen as strange. And as I’ve written about this and thought about this, it has finally come to me that I think that magic realism may be code (or the literature) of the dream state as the dream state would then be code for the true description of the nature of consensual reality. Just because the sky is blue, and plants pop up out of the ground, and we have these creatures in our lives, cats, dogs, parakeets, doesn’t mean it isn’t strange—it is. Matter of fact, it’s truly bizarre but we don’t see it that way because we’ve all come to agree that the bizarre is normal. Of course it isn’t. What reality is—is incomprehensible and the dream state is an absolute necessary function of integrating this weirdness of existence into our normal day-to-day lives with absolutely no answers about how or why the Universe and Earth and life came to be except that maybe somehow life just enjoys replicating itself in all these forms whose sole purpose apparently is to have a good time in whatever form life finds or defines itself—well, maybe magic realism is a great artistic form in which to remind us all how wonderfully bizarre and truly weird reality really is.

And maybe that’s where all those stories finally came and come from: life is incomprehensible but let’s not let that get in the way of loving it, loving our fellow creatures who inhabit this world with us, loving this planet from whence we came and looking up to the stars and letting ourselves be bedazzled again and again and yet again by—wonder!

Lunacy Toons

Last time you saw Daffy Duck was in a cartoon in 19—. It was a long cartoon starring the famous duck and his errant rantings about his life done in the great voice of Mel Blanc and directed by Chuck Jones. And there is one scene where Daffy was playing with the audience as if talking directly to them, trying to engage them and you think he is saying something like, "Get it right, folks, just get it right. Being a duck is hard work! and then he passes to the extreme right of the frame. It is then that you notice on the extreme far left—a white duck. It slips right in and you think, intended to back out—when it stops and looks directly at you. You are the only one in the theatre and had it not been so, you would have never noticed anything peculiar at all. But the white duck sees you. The rest of the ‘toon becomes static and the white duck steps out of the cartoon, walks quickly, almost furtively across the stage and comes to sit by you. He considers you in the darkness and he looks just like his famous counterpart except, he is white. Bra-ther, he says, braaa-ther. You don’t know what it’s like having a brother as famous as Daffy."

You don’t quite know what to say so you say, Not as ducky as you’d like?

He looks at you. Oh, mister, he says, oh, misss-ter. You don’t know the half of it. Or the third of it. Or even the sixteenth of it. You just don’t know. He then reaches out a delicate, four fingered hand. Diffy. The name is Diffy Duck.

Pleased to meet you, you say, somewhat hesitant, not sure if anyone who sees you talking to cartoon ducks would think you a bit odd.

You look back up to the screen where Daffy stands frozen, looking out at the audience, finger pointing as if making an accusation, asserting his Daffy Duckiness to the unseen object of his mallard rage.

It’s terrible, says Diffy, "just terrrr-iible. He emphasizes greatly the terr" in terrible.

Somehow lamely you say, I didn’t know Daffy had a brother.

Well, snorts Diffy, sounding an awful lot like Daffy, it’s true. It’s true. Bra-ther, it’s true.

I take it you two aren’t on good relations, you say.

Not at all, says Diffy. "Not at all. He treats me like a kid brother. ‘Diffy do this. Diffy do that. Call my agent Diffy. Take my De Lux Tux duck suit out to be dry cleaned. Fix dinner’. Why is