B. K. Smith
Список книг автора B. K. SmithThe Holding Pen
A Modern Day Romance – if you can call it that. The quintessential Baby Boomer story of mid-life dating. <br><br>HE lives in Connecticut, runs a high end home furnishings company, works in his garden, has his kids on the weekends, and attends law school at night in order to quell his boredom and loneliness. Oh, and he has a gaggle of women friends.<br><br>SHE lives in a high-rise in NYC, trades stocks and bonds, has one child who spends a lot of time with his father, SHE attends literature classes at night to encourage her to read something other than financial news. There are snippets of the books she is reading and then a poem that she had to write and submit for the class. It is classic. <br><br>SHE would like to find someone to love and possibly settle down with. They meet in a restaurant bar in New Canaan and begin a short interlude. Their dialogue is very real and one can only wonder how people do get together, commit, and marry. Never mind stay loyal.<br>If you are out there looking for love, you will clearly see yourself.
Horseneck â The Meaning of Ordeal
"I finally detached with the understanding that people cannot give to you what they don't have. I am not feeling the love because… And because of what was probably this unsatisfied need for affection, I have a history of trusting complete strangers, some of whom have, to their credit, risen to the occasion by displaying the kindness thus expected of others at the eleventh hour. I made friends easily. One day, impelled by mutual attraction, or curiosity, you strike up a conversation and discover shared interests and a new friendship is born. You try to live the same hopes and dreams, feeling at ease, even happy, and this friendship becomes part of your life, a little bit like family. Then treachery strikes and a great desolate wind sweeps away those dreams. Wounded and angry, you wish you were dead for ever thinking or believing and falling for it again. <br><br>Then other similar mirages appear on the horizon, as you walk in your own landscape, and you rise to the occasion once again, and you are disappointed once again, and one fine day all that is left of your spirit is a tiny scar on your heart no bigger than a fingernail scratch. You no longer feel anything either. You no longer care. <br><br>Only many years later, only when I had given myself passively to this lovelessness in the conviction that I had metamorphosed from a loveless childhood to the adulthood of more of the same, disappointment, betrayal and loss. Only with this wisdom had I come to believe in nothing, and only then was I surprised by love. <br><br>What is the meaning of ordeal? You'll know it when you know it.<br><br>This book contains "Papier Mache Bowls – Vessels of Grieving."<br>42 full-color photographs,"The creative meaning of ordeal."
Laina & The Vamp
For every woman who ever loved a Vampire.<br><br>"What is your passion?" Vladimir asked Laina.<br><br>"White," she replied without hesitation. "I eat cottage cheese and pot cheese, farmer's cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, meringue, Reddi-whip, Cool Whip, mashed potatoes, white rice, spring turnips, and I drink non-fat milk and occasionally one glass of Chardonnay–maybe two."<br><br>The Vampire watched her. Was she kidding? He was expecting something more like jewelry, lingerie, perfume.<br><br>"My skin is very pale, you see," she continued, "I think I'm anemic."<br><br>The Vampire muffled a groan, rolling his eyes in ecstasy. This made Laina unsure. After a noticeable interval, and out of sheer discomfort, she asked him the same question.<br><br>"What is your passion?"<br><br>Vladimir grew uneasy. His eyes moved to her watch and he smiled uncomfortably and then gazed off again. His favorite color was indeed black, possibly the only aesthetic principal he steadfastly maintained, but he had never been opposed to anything that smacked of style and excess, like red.<br><br>Finally he leaned into her and answered, "You."
Just Desserts
Sylvia Stanger has always lived in the asphyxiating brick community around Canal Street in New York City in the fifties. She never stepped over the invisible line that separated the Jews from the Italians. She was a voluptuous woman in her thirties, married to Martin who worked at his uncle's shirtwaist factory, with two young daughters.<br><br>One morning, an ordinary morning, something changed. Sylvia work up as usual one morning but the day was anything but usual. Sylvia's past came knocking on her door and she had to get out of bed in order to answer it. Or else!<br><br>It is a subtle journey into madness.<br><br>'Poetica,' the Jewish Literary Magazine, chose 'Just Desserts' as a 2014-2015 fiction selection.
Rattle Snake Lodge - Memoirs of a Seeing Woman
MY NAME IS AMANDA FRENCH. My family name French, I believe says it all. We, the French women, were born to wear elegant clothing and accessories, the finer brocades and silks, fluid and cool, raw dupioni and nubby shantung, the texture that is pure sex to the hand that appreciates.<br><br>All the women in my family have some sense of the future and will tell you what it holds; and even before I was sure what it was, I knew I had it, the power to see. My grandmother, a healer, could interpret the sky; predict weather patterns, upcoming anomalies, drought, that sort of thing. My sister read hands; tiny crooked lines leading up and down, front to back, thumb to wrist, are the roads she helps to navigate. My aunt could read dreams and tell an expectant mother the sex of her unborn baby. My great grandmother could heal "troublesome ailments" and call out evil spirits from the sick, the overlooked, and cursed alike. And her mother, my great great grandmother before her, was known to associate with ghosts, the spirits that have passed over but not before promising to return and tell all, which they did by channeling through her in different languages. Her sister, my great aunt, could tell you the day and time of your birth and the day and time of your death.<br><br>Sometimes I know the future in my breast. Sometimes I see the future coming out like a picture show, images that seep into your head the way rainwater collects in a basement corner, gathering from no place in particular. More often though, I see events in tea leaves, little bits of myself floating to the top of a shapely Spode china cup, tentatively dancing along the fragile gold leaf rim like your last memories in the few minutes before death. Often as I would stare down into my tomorrow, wondering if I should drink the brew or run to the sink and pour it down the drain, I would often do the latter. It's not that a particular vision was so frightening or alien–I grew up after all with these gifted women around me conversing with entities neither you nor I could see–it's just the memory of seeing trouble early in a courtship and remembering what it felt like, one lone tear snaking down my face, and my words all square and neat as I told him, "I love you but… I see no future." Or, I did see a future and there was no happiness in it. But, with this man, with Reed, I never saw a blessed thing. I never saw anything at all in the beginning. If I had, it would have been as shocking I'm sure as seeing blood on the moon. I guess it's true what they say, that you never see the bus that hits you.