The Art of Tetman Callis

“You’re abandoning a lot of ideas when you are too into comfort.” — Christian Louboutin (from “Sole Mate,” by Lauren Collins)

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“Casserole Man” was a story I wrote in the mid-90s.  It took me the rest of that decade to get it right, and once I had, it was published in the now-defunct Chiron Review.  That would have been around the same time (spring of 2002) I met the woman I’m now married to–or, to whom […]

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“Countries may fall, but their rivers and mountains remain.  When spring comes to the ruined castle, the grass is green again.” — Basho (from “Aftershocks,” by Evan Osnos)

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“Girls and young women return from the market.  Some have serious and regular eyebrows and walk looking sternly from under them, slim and glum–angels with basketfuls of vegetables and meat.  Sometimes they stop in front of shops and look at their reflections in the shop window.  Then they walk away turning their heads, casting a […]

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“Everyone is stuck within himself, within the day to which he wakes up, the hour which belongs to him, or the moment.  Somewhere in the semidarkness of a kitchen coffee is brewing, the cook is not there, the dirty glare of a flame dances on the floor.  Time deceived by silence flows backward for a […]

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“We all know that time, this undisciplined element, holds itself within bounds but precariously, thanks to unceasing cultivation, meticulous care, and a continuous regulation and correction of its excesses.  Free of this vigilance, it immediately begins to do tricks, run wild, play irresponsible practical jokes, and indulge in crazy clowning.” – Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the […]

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Colorado is one of the places where God kissed Mother Earth.  Susanne and I spent the past few days there, in and around the Conejos River valley. When we arrived at our lodge, the first thing management wanted us to know was that a bear had been through the compound the night before, thoroughly inspecting […]

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“Parenting is hard.  As any one who has gone through the process and had enough leisure (and still functioning brain cells) to reflect on it knows, a lot of it is a crapshoot.  Things go wrong that you have no control over, and, on occasion, things also go right, and you have no control over […]

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“Suffering that is limitless, suffering that is stubbornly enclosed within the circle of its own mania, suffering to the point of distraction, of self-mutilation, becomes in the end unbearable for the helpless witnesses of misfortune.” – Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (trans. Wieniewska)

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“Autumn is a great touring show, poetically deceptive, an enormous purple-skinned onion disclosing ever new panoramas under each of its skins.  No center can ever be reached.  Behind each wing that is moved and stored away new and radiant scenes open up, true and alive for a moment, until you realize that they are made […]

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“Regimes change, as do customs and cathedrals, but crimes are ever the same.  And envy, the prime though oft-forgotten mover of crime, doesn’t fade away but grows ever blacker.” — Ismail Kadare, The Successor (trans. Papavrami & Bellos)

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As a house that is solidly built ultimately falls into decay, so too are people subject to age and death. The night that has passed  does not return, and the bountiful river flows on. The passing days and nights quickly consume the lifetimes of every living thing, just as in the summer the rays of […]

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“Who knows the length of time when night lowers the curtain on what is happening in its depth?  That short interval is enough, however, to shift the scenery, to liquidate the great enterprise of the night and all its dark fantastic pomp.  You wake up frightened, with the feeling of having overslept, and you see […]

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This week I’m posting “Saved” to the Stories menu of this blog.  It’s a story I wrote in the late 90s and was never quite happy with.  I wrote it in first-person and sent it out, it got rejected, that’s okay, I rewrote it in third-person.  I sent it out in third-person, it got rejected, […]

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“A night in July!  The secret fluid of dusk, the living, watchful, and mobile matter of darkness, ceaselessly shaping something out of chaos and immediately rejecting every shape.  Black timber out of which caves, vaults, nooks, and niches along the path of a sleepy wanderer are constructed.  Like an insistent talker, the night accompanies a […]

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“The US government’s disregard for human rights in fighting terrorism in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks diminished the US’ moral standing, set a negative example for other governments, and undermined US government efforts to reduce anti-American militancy around the world.  In particular, the CIA’s use of torture, enforced disappearance, and secret prisons […]

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“A night in July!  What can be likened to it?  How can one describe it?  Shall I compare it to the core of an enormous black rose, covering us with the dreams of hundreds of velvety petals?  The night winds blow open its fluffy center, and in its scented depth we can see the stars […]

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“Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.” — Josh Billings

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“Ordinary books are like meteors.  Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame.  For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes.  With bitter resignation we sometimes wander late at night through the extinct pages that tell […]

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“The exegetes of The Book maintain that all books aim at being authentic.  That they live only a borrowed life, which at the moment of inspiration returns to its ancient source.” – Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (trans. Wieniewska)

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There was a literary magazine called Happy.  I can find no evidence it still exists as an active endeavor.  When it did, it published one of my very short stories from the late 90s, called “Shelving.”  That’s the story I posted this week.

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“The Book is a myth in which we believe when we are young, but which we cease to take seriously as we get older.” – Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (trans. Wieniewska)

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“The CDOs manufactured in 2006 and 2007 were in large part a direct manifestation of their ingredients–pools of tainted assets precariously situated atop a wave of home-price appreciation.  As investors became addicted to the higher yields of investment-grade CDOs, their rose-colored glasses focused on the AAA rating rather than the pool of shoddy subprime mortgages […]

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“Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character.” — Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles (trans. Wieniewska)

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“A prince should deliver the citizens from the sufferings brought upon themselves but should not bring suffering to the people for his own cause.” — Valmiki Ramayan, Ayodhyakanda Sarga 46

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“There’s a difference between an old-fashioned financial panic and what had happened on Wall Street in 2008.  In an old-fashioned panic, perception creates its own reality: Someone shouts ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater and the audience crushes each other to death in its rush for the exits.  On Wall Street in 2008 the reality finally […]

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“No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.” — Samuel Johnson

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Just about every weekend since I started this blog four months ago I have posted a copy of one of my published stories.  Posting my previously published work is at the center of what this blog is about, though I have posted and will post again pieces previously unpublished. The other and almost-daily posts I […]

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You know what a “blue moon” is, and if you don’t, you can look it up, but you don’t have to because I’ll tell you right here and right now–a conjunctive spatio-temporal indicator, by the way, which is both fixed and flexible in, not only the virtual world of the internet, but the virtual world […]

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