Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© August 7, 2015

I built this fire pit out of stone and bricks in my Wisconsin back yard. Not a large yard, but encircled by tall pine trees. If the wind is calm, I can smell the leaking pinesap.

Also, I have three older dogs—my last dogs—a laid back black/tan/white coated Beagle with fragile hips, Betsy; an annoying and irritable miniature black Shih tzu named Chewy because with its hair hanging over its black eyes it resembles a miniature Chewbacca; and Jasmine, a tall skinny mixed breed Labrador-Spaniel, with reddish-brown hair, inquiring wolfish eyes and a desire to be on the same level you are when you are speaking to her. She is the youngest and dominant. Betsy, at fifteen will be the first to go, and Chewy, an inherited creature, daily tests my intent to always be compassionate with animals. They all sleep on our bed, separately.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© February 3, 2014

The phone rang in the dark hours of the morning.

Asleep, I wasn’t fast enough to get to before it stopped.

I fell back in bed, irritated, but too sleepy to deal with random calls before dawn.

Then, a few minutes later, it rang again. I stared at the phone for a moment, then leaped up to capture the beast before it escaped, whomever that it was calling me so stupidly, and twice. I listened to the voice on the phone. It was mechanically human. The call was from the Compulsive Drug Corporation, or the CDC. The voice wanted to know:

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© January 5, 2014

Letter to a faraway friend:

I’ve been snowbound for three days now and thinking about how muted life can be when you stay home all day. Been cooking a lot, we have ample supplies and going to restaurants without any income seems irrational. My cooking is getting very good. Since I have a very limited choice of what to eat because of my  numerous and confusing allergies, finding interesting ways to vary what is on the approved list makes it intellectually challenging as well.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355 

© June 20, 2013

My relentless surgeries

Nearly three dozen

An incomprehensible number

Akin to counting stars

Accepting and knowing

There is no conclusion to it

So many scars

Like an unprotected moon

Pelted by

Jagged asteroids

The thin red lines

Tell their stories

From my head to toe

Randomly in between

Have

Given me insight

Into

 What’s important

Between these

Sharp-edged assaults

  (Read on …)

    by Robert M. Katzman © January 18, 2013

***

6 am

Cold wet black nose

Resting on my cheek

I don’t need an alarm

Not when you sleep with Lassie

Or in my case, Betsy

***

She wants out

No discussion

I stagger up

Wrap a blanket ’round

My chilly bare skin

Find the door

Then the kitchen door

And she’s gone

***

I slip on my jeans

Open the fridge

Grab the eggs

A clear glass bowl

Break all the eggs

Toss out the shells

The three yellow eyes

Staring up at me

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© June 26, 2012

This is a curious story about control, written at a time in America when few of us have control over anything. But also defiance, self-determination, art, science, isolation and confrontation.  When I was nine years old.

It is also about killing wasps. The kind of wasps with six legs, not that other kind. Why would anyone think that?

The time of this story is summer, 1959. The place, southern Wisconsin.

I was nine years old. I was not afraid of flying stinging wasps. And that made all the difference.

When I was nine, my parents packed me off to an overnight camp for the first time ever.  For two months. Maybe they thought I’d wander off in the woods and get eaten by something bigger than me. Most things were bigger than me. But I don’t think any experienced bear would find my skinny little body worth the trouble.

I was sick all the time from whatever weeds grew in the rural part of southern Wisconsin. There were no drugs in 1959. I want to think enduring the ragweed misery helped build my character, but there’s no evidence of that.

I didn’t want to be at that large camp with its mob of screaming children racing around and its tall athletic counselors who told us what to do, every-single-minute-of-the-day. Like my grammar school but worse. Around the clock supervision.

Two months to a nine-year-old was an eternity and just like that famous book about lethal children by William Golding, Lord of the Flies, published five years earlier, some situations bring out unexpected aspects of children’s personalities, like savagery or other characteristics. He was right.

(Read on …)