I wrote this one as an undergrad at Pitt. 

I didn’t care what it said as much as how it sounded; I was obsessed with how it sounded.  Besides conveying images from my wistful life—time smoking on the roof at night as a kid, hearing arguments outside our apartment window in Pittsburgh or memories of a dream of flying over an island like Peter Pan—I wanted this one to be read aloud.  It’s a performance piece, to be read standing up in front of an audience...

King Bacchus

A New Story

by David W. Weimer

The ghost walked through a wall between the kitchen and living room.  Not walked.  Just moved.  Not moved.  Just was.  The ghost was, and it manifested in vagueness over here, then over there.  It was, as the man sitting in a wooden chair leaning back on two legs liked to think of it, out of phase with this reality, which, to the ghost, was as unreal and vague, dream-like actually, as the ghost normally was to those who sensed it to varying degrees.  It was, of course, possible for one member of one reality to notice the other, vaguely.  It was still possible, yet highly unlikely, for both members of respective realities to view one another at the same time.

But it happened naturally, Dawood knew.  In a certain instance, it happened every time. 

My Own Private Tsunami, 2004

So I remember thinking about this tsunami working on my wife’s van in the parking lot.  In the five years since then, up until now, I'd forgotten that moment--I'd even forgotten about the tsunami that killed 230,000 people.

And then last week I was looking for something unfinished to work on.  A friend and I regularly attend a philosophic discussion group called M&M Philosophy in Wheeling and we made a 2010 New Year’s pact.  He is a visual artist and I want to write, so we decided to bring something new every Tuesday evening to show each other.  An accountability arrangement.  

This artificial deadline has allowed me to finish some things that may not have been touched again—things that I'd begun while self-employed contracting for a living.  I put them on my desktop, and then put them aside.  Years pass.  Not returning to things; it’s a constant threat and theme.  

Well, here: 

Strawman, starman

Strawman, starman was another result of having to write poetry for a graduate poetry class in Memphis, TN in 1999.  I lived in an apartment alone with my two longtime companions, Grizelda and Emerald, my cats, left over from my first marriage.  I had a green broom in the closet and I imagined doing just what I wrote.  I was sitting in my chair at my computer corner in the bare living room of my apartment, looking out the front window.  I opened the door to let the cats check out the second floor concrete walkway.  I imagined the broom hitting the dirt road I used to live on, on Jewell Road, in Howell, Michigan, in 1977.  The thing about going perpendicular to the level of the solar system and galaxy, etc., was my notion that there’s got to be another way, a better way.  Some way to get at the first cause, the source, directly.  Some other way than usual.

An excerpt from my upcoming book, Born to Wonder

I’ve taken some leaves of absence from the world.

In '93 I went without food for a week in a remote cabin and stared the entire time at a candle, willing my mind and attention to that singular task—it was a self-crafted spiritual retreat that I haven’t repeated; In '96 I camped in the woods for a week—and woke into a motionless world the first morning, where the reflexive 'me' was out of the picture and yet 'I' remained.  After a couple days of motionless soundlessness, I suspected that I'd broken my brain.  In '97 I removed myself from the world and lived in a remote West Virginia cabin and saw only the animals and my self from warm July ‘til the frost of October.

This story is about the life of a part-time hermit and full-time dreamer.  I think that there must be others out there.  This happened.  This is why I did it.  This is what I got out of it.  This is what I thought before, during and after—and this is what I think now.

My brain seems to have been formed in the shape of a question: Why?  This book is about my life eventually becoming dedicated to finding an answer.

People mention the meaning of life, briefly, on piers at sunset, in bars late at night or in someone’s back yard during unexpected bouts of nostalgia.  The sane guy is the one who says, ‘I’m here, so I might as well figure this life out.’ I never met him.  I thought I was unique in this place where people chase things that I knew they don't believe in.  I always believed that they were going through the motions, only.  I often wondered when I'd be let in on the big secret.  It just kept going, like a car with no driver.  Why?

I'm going to make a photocopy of myself in this book and draw a picture in the air with a pencil.

When I was 25, I made a commitment to find the meaning of my life and the meaning of everything.  I was accidentally successful.