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tHe, my first novel and fifth book, needs “test audience” readers at this proofreading/copyediting stage.

If you’re a willing reader, you can be part of polishing a book for publication–just by reading and giving your honest reactions!

If you’re interested, let me know.

Thanks 🙂

Chapter 1

tHe

Right.

Right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right rightrightrightright.

Ridiculousness meaninglessness. One word in a forest of itself is meaningless. In a row, all in a row is nothing, really.

Gently.

Merrily.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. This most profound, meaningful statement any human mind has ever expressed is embedded in a song we instantly “know” to be meaningless ridiculousness….

Each twenty-year cycle on our planet, within our human species, is a generation, responsible for all innovation, style, and new things—like each spring’s leaves—triumphantly oblivious of the humus of countless decomposed forbearers beneath them.

This moment of periodicity is perceived as a self-evident reality by the newly-arrived swimmers in their part of this stream’s current, to utilize another metaphor. A species of beings with a much longer or much shorter generational period would appear correspondingly “different” from us and our often unexamined generational pattern, which we “know” to be what is, and, is simply—real.

Sanity is a fickle rat with a fixed view of events inside itself and without—without which, nothing Is. Who is sane? Please—point; no, it’s not rude…. An automatic answer is: a sane person does no harm to themselves or to others.

How can I know what you mean by that? I don’t … I can’t. Can you know what I mean? Can you say something without comparing what you say to something else? Is reality only relativity? Is relativity all there is? Largely… yes. How “right” are you? Actually? Can this be discovered? By anyone? If you are right, what does right mean to anyone else? To someone not right? What is your reality compared to a thousand-year-old, somehow still standing, dead tree on another planet in another galaxy or to one of uncounted myriad fossilized dinosaurs in New Mexico’s desert?

“Right,” you nod, sagely.

The boy had some time before the two adults in the house he lived in awoke. He had selected a handful of cold rocks from the side of the road as birds flapped overhead, feet tucked into their belly fathers, bodies streamlined, necks outstretched. His long morning shadow eased slowly ahead of him. His breath steamed. The boy’s left hand gripped a single rock.

He walked on the cracked sidewalk past houses with cars in driveways, bikes on their sides in yards, with portable basketball nets and scooters left leaning against bushes. After two intersections and more than twenty houses, he came to the old worn-out single-wide trailer. A faded, algae-covered red car perched precariously on four jack stands in the sloped asphalt drive. The fourteen-year-old boy crouched to peer under the car. All the wheels were still on, surprisingly, and rusted parts, just lumps under leaves, really, were lined up on the edge of the asphalt driveway, partially concealed by tall, unmowed grass growing there. He felt certain that the car would fall easily over if he pushed it slightly in the downhill direction.

Examination over, he stood and resumed walking. After the trailer’s overgrown yard, a tall leaning tree stood twenty feet in, past the wide, deep drainage ditch. He jumped over the ditch, which was free from water for now, though the grass was dewy and almost frozen. His footprints followed him into shin-high frost-covered grass. The pale, dark-haired boy looked up at a large branch where a mottled grey elongated globe, almost hidden by leaves, loomed. Lingering predawn stillness was giving way to a slight breeze as the sun crept higher over the horizon. The uppermost leaves in the tree were already bathed in the morning light; those around the hornet’s nest were still in darkness. He didn’t see any flying hornets, but that probably wouldn’t last.

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Situations Of I

Situations Of I has been here for eight years! That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been here…. Lots of water under that old bridge.

You may obtain a copy of this book, as well as three others I’ve published, on Amazon, or from any bookseller. There are Kindle versions of all my books, too.

Happy reading.

Here is a book description from the publisher:

     A time-traveling salamander; a UFO abducting a vintage covered bridge; an autobiography of light; musings on dinosaur religion and explorations of life, meaning and existence are among the subjects of Weimer’s fourth published work.

     Profane and profound, “Situations Of I” is, in the author’s words, “centered on the unique free-floating magic reality I take completely for granted—individual awareness.”

     This collection of philosophic essays, speculative short stories and prose poetry emerged from the author’s life and observations while living in the village of Flushing, Ohio.

     Each chapter is a stand-alone vignette with arguably more question marks per page than nearly any other work of its size.  With titles such as, “Home is Where I Live,” “Gasoline Planet,” “A Blade Hanging, Overhead,” “Eternal Burgers” and “Hollow Houses,” each piece challenges the reader, as well as the author, to delve within and to question intently what we all “know for sure.”

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Just finished a project that turns out to have taken about eight years. My first novel and fifth “book,” is in readable manuscript format. I might post some excerpts here at times, but right now my test readers are checking it out for the first time it’s been out in the world and out of solely my head.

Here’s the front and back cover:

the-coverDownload

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I’m working on a novel-length story.  Its title is THe.  

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter One of the working manuscript:

THe

The nest was too high for him to throw a stick accurately at it, he thought.  Rocks would be better.

The boy thinks briefly about those he left sleeping in the house.  He thinks about the hornets inside the nest above his head.  And how now doesn’t really feel like a family, and how the hornets scare him.  He couldn’t explain if you asked why he wanted to throw rocks at the nest.  He was careful enough to do it in the morning, though, so he wouldn’t be stung by hornets looking for the source of the destruction of their carefully-constructed suspended home.

He’d had other destructive impulses like this.  Stomping on the ice of some deep ruts in a dirt road, where ice had formed and a wide, hollow gap between the ice and the water below was hollow and reminded him of breaking glass when he broke through the ice.  Throwing rocks at an old abandoned car in the woods, stones clanking metallically as he struck the rusted passenger side door.  Kicking a football as high as he could in the backyard of a foster family he’d been with before.

He threw the rock.  It missed left, and too high.  He’d thrown it as high as he could.  He goes back to the ditch along the road and searches for more rocks of the right size.  He finds gravel there, and fills his hands, walking back to his throwing distance place. He makes a small pile there.  He throws up another, smaller, rock, missing low this time, although right on target.  A third rock has a good feeling. Its weight is right.  It’s the one.

He cocks his arm, rock held behind his head, and looks at the spherical paper nest.  This is the last time he would see it intact.  He looks down at a second rock held in his right hand.  Destruction is the way of everything, he knew.  Things were permanent, then they change.

Undoing permanence was why he was here.  Exactly the reason.  Give in. Throw.  Or hold off… and let something else do the throwing—a boy, the wind, a branch, rain… time.  He didn’t think any of this, but he knew it through and through.

 

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All four of my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

You can read all of them, including Situations of I, as an eBook on your Kindle or smart phone.  There is nothing like a well-lighted book in bed.  (This admission is made, unflinchingly, head held high, by a devoted lifelong “actual” book reader.)

My next project in the works is a novel with a… novel name.

Maybe when you’re on the road, heading to a distant vacation spot, you can read something new while you’re being spelled.  Just a thought 😉

Happy 4th of July,

D.

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To all “real” book enthusiasts: reading can be hands-free!

First and foremost, I’m a reader. Before there was light, there was the word.  “Real” books are great.  I must say, however, that I like a book I can read at night that is self-lighting!  My Kindle battery lasts forever and over the past year I’ve grown accustomed to being able to buy or check out from libraries books directly onto my device no matter where I am… in under a minute.  And no, I don’t work for Kindle (yet).

So.  I am proud to announce that each of my four published books is now available in electronic format—specifically, Kindle.  Go to my books’ pages on Amazon and select the Kindle option.  Free Kindle apps are available for you to read my books on your PC, phone, tablet, Kindle, iPad, iPod, etc.  All of them, instantly downloaded.  And significantly less expensive than print versions of my books (zero printing costs).

If you still insist on buying the print version of one or more of my books, here’s a deal: with your purchase of each of my titles, you will get a Kindle version thrown in for an additional $1.99.  Now, you can read my book on the go and leave your (hopefully signed) print copy on a shelf at home.  Just sayin’….  Of course, I recommend you pick up both 🙂

Here are my published books (so far):

Situations Of I (2015)

Ben and the Dragon (2013)

A Handyman’s Common Sense Guide to Spiritual Seeking (2013)

Portrait of a Seeker (2012)

I really enjoyed writing Situations and seeing it published this spring.  I’m also very glad to be able to offer my titles in both print and electronic formats.

BTW: I’m currently working on a novel—a long, sprawling, good-feeling story of adventure and mostly joy.

Best wishes,

David

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Situations Of I

A fourth published book by David Weimer

If you know me, buy a copy!

If you order it from oneandonlybooks on Amazon (that’s me, my day job name), I’ll sign your book.

This new book is a collection of short stories and philosophic essays.  I hope you like it.  I’m glad to finally have it out in the world.  Visit its Amazon listing and read preview selections of the book using the “Search Inside” feature.

You can also see my other titles here.  All four of my books are available in print form and Kindle or eBook.

Take care,

David

Were their congregations outdoors, under the solemn Banyan trees?

Did their pastors make impassioned pleas to each individual listener’s more charitable instincts (to drop donations in the collection basket)?

What, exactly, did the dinosaurs believe?

 

Were the dinosaur popes and Martin Luthers bucking the system of thought and control?

Did dinosaur fortune tellers sense deeply and did their prophets foresee the future? Like the family on the beach before a tsunami, did they notice with a small part of themselves smaller, flying dinosaurs leaving in the moments before an asteroid came roiling down? Will we notice the harbingers of our own ceasing? Culturally? Nationally? Personally?

In the tens of millions of years that dinosaurs spread out to cover their planet with their lives, did they evolve more practically? Pragmatically? Cynically? —than we have so far managed to become?

Were dinosaurs Taoists? Did they develop nature religions? Did they practice Yoga and insight meditation? Did they chant sutras and pay for a personal mantra? In what form were their collection baskets woven? A ceremonial half-egg? We believe they were illiterate because none of their books or bibles survived the sweeping cataclysm that ushered in their destruction. Their obliging ending was the harbinger of our own salvation from marginalized extinction.

What did the dinosaurs tell their children about God? What did their god look like? Isn’t that obvious? Did their Jesus walk on water or fly with wings?

It is safe to assume that they had many more Gods, isn’t it? We ourselves, members of just one speckled species, have thousands of Gods. And there were thousands of species of dinosaur, tens of thousands. So that’s a lot of prayers to go around to a lot of deity forms.

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Bacon cheddar burgers grilling on aluminum foil in their own juices.

Sitting on a blue fabric chair, the kind that folds up and goes into a carrying case, I lean back and cross my left leg over my right knee. My non-smart prepaid Tracfone has a clock that I check. I have five minutes before I flip these six burgers. The lid is down.

Smoke pours from under the edges of the grill when the grease on the foil runs through a hole or out the corner of the foil to drip onto the coals below. This smell is heaven. My ancestors from a million years ago nod silently in agreement from around their own fires.

I’m sitting on the concrete driveway at the corner of my front porch where the grill sits. It’s summer.

A full glass of inexpensive Merlot sits on top of the rusted left side, metal-lidded burner pad, next to a wire brush that I don’t use anymore since I started using this aluminum foil. I take a sip, then a second. I lean this lawn chair back on two legs and inhale deeply through my nose and let it out with an Aaaaah.

I’ve backed our Pontiac Montana van ten feet closer to the road end of the driveway so that I have more room to sit in front of the grill. I’ve dragged the grill a foot or two away from the white vinyl siding-covered lower edge of this side of our open front porch.

Two Christmases ago, I hung those big bulb colored lights up there where they’re attached to the gutter along the front of our wide front porch, as well as along the guttered narrower sides of this covered porch.

Balanced on the back chair legs, I enjoy the humid night air and the smells—especially the smells—and I look at the faded colored bulbs. Some of them, most, are showing more white light than colored because the color has worn off and flaked away and dried away in the heat and cold and sunlight over these past two years. They’re still very nice. It’s a very, very nice feeling, right here.

Mike, our large and hairy white English Labrador, with the shape of a polar bear and the heart of a sensitive kitten, lies on the concrete in front of my feet, right in front of the grill. He’s always nearest the source of food smells.

Two minutes.

Smoke is really rolling out now from the edges and holes in the closed grill that we inherited when we bought this place. The thermostat is edging upward from “med” to “med-high.” I lean forward to turn the dials on both burners down.

This is the life. You’ll never hear me say differently.