existentialism | M Thomas Apple Author Page

A writing prompt that almost answers itself

February 4, 2024
MThomas

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I would say “yes.”

How?

Failure influences my perspective on life.

Successes influence my perspective on life.

Deaths influence my perspective on life.

Births influence my perspective on life.

Travel influences my perspective on life.

I would list the above five as “significant events” in life. But “the passage of time” is a little more vague.

Four years doesn’t seem like a long time to me now, but it sure did when I was 18.

Even six years doesn’t seem all that long now. But to my daughter who graduates from elementary school this March, six years is half her life.

My perspective on this question is that it’s the people in my life that have changed my perspective.

Even my daughter gets this. She wants to visit Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the US again because, as she put it, “a little piece of me is still there.”

But that’s just her perspective. Or is it?

Dear Diary – February 12, 1998

January 20, 2024
MThomas

That’s what we are, really; a constant turmoil between past and future, the mixing point of who we once were and who we are afraid we may become. We are constantly becoming — yet we never lose sight of the past, or if we do, we do so deliberately…but our past lies in wait, crouches and hides unbidden, always ready to pounce out from the mind’s darkness to set itself against future hopes and desires. Our previous selves eternally war with our future selves; it is the center of this conflict where we exist, and it is because of this inner turmoil we stay alive.

Dear Diary – May 19, 2001

September 15, 2023
MThomas

A story must be more than merely a story. It must be an examination, of the human heart, of the mind, of the spirit. Of experience and existence. A simple recapitulation of one’s personal past or the delusional suffering of a dysfunctional suburban American family have no merit. Overcoming the reality we believe we live in, debunking fiction and elevating the truth, that is worthwhile.

Call a spade a

December 5, 2022
MThomas

Just saw someone on my morning commuter train wearing a fluffy beige coat with a single word in all capital letters, stretching across the back from left elbow to right elbow:

EXPLOIT

Yeah. That’s what happened, alright.

The Great American Rake Off

November 20, 2018
MThomas

Just gonna post this here for posterity…

The beating of my hideous heart!

February 11, 2018
MThomas

So much for my New Year’s resolution of writing more regularly on my blog.

I can blame “writer’s block,” which is sometimes just a convenient excuse for general laziness and sometimes stems from a genuine fear of being entirely uncreative and uninnovative.

(My software program tells me that uninnovative is not a real word. Well, now it is. So there.) Continue Reading

I’ve been meaning to add a personal essay page to my web site for stories that didn’t seem to fit into any neat categories. The immediate impetus is an essay that was recently “rejected” by my former graduate program’s in-house literary journal…probably because it’s an essay and not a short story (I posted elsewhere an article about the quirkiness of the English-speaking world’s insistence on an artificial separation of “fiction” and “nonfiction”).

Rather than wait up to half a year to see whether I could get it published online in a magazine (most of which seem to only publish US-centric, “woe is me” or “OMG look at THIS” sensationalist drivel) I thought that at least I could share it here…

The essay is “En” (縁), a topic that Asians (particularly those in Confucian-influenced societies) know a lot about. I first encountered the concept as a teaching assistant in Gojo High School, Nara, about 15 years ago. Almost like a previous life. Maybe it was…

Check it out here.

Notes from the Nineties: The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha

March 21, 2016
MThomas

This is the fourth preview of my upcoming collection of short stories and poems, Notes from the Nineties. In the first part, I explained the background behind the first story and poem pair, Cois Fharriage and Ag an gCrosaire. In the second part, I took a look at some of my experiences in Japan that informed Asian Dreams and Training the Mountain Warrior. In the third part, I delved into the “true story” of The Lost Bunny Shrine of Annandale.

teeth Today marks the first day of spring, as well as the start of the Easter Week. And while it is the end of Spring Break for some schools in North America, it’s still spring break for others…and it was, in fact, around this time of year back in 1996 that the seeds of “The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha” were planted. Like teeth.

That remark alone should let you know that this is not a typical story (if the title hadn’t already tipped you off by now). Continue Reading

New book notice

February 5, 2016
MThomas

Time for a book release party…

I’m putting the finishing touches on an anthology of short stories and poems, some of which date alllll the way back to 1992. Pre-SNS. Pre-email, even. Scary stuff.

A few come from my undergraduate Senior Project. A couple from my MFA thesis (the main part of which became Approaching Twi-Night). Another handful were used to apply to said MFA program. Aside from two that were published in university literary journals, the poems have basically never seen the light of day. A couple of the stories did appear in previous versions elsewhere.

The stories are meant to provoke, to inspire, to draw a contrast between aspects of life in Upstate, out of state, and overseas, to see the world through different eyes…to challenge perceptions. And naturally, to make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. Readers should find something to interest them, no matter their reading preference. That, in my humble opinion, is one of the biggest benefits of daring varying writing styles.

This space will be updated from now until the book release with notes on the stories — some shorter, some longer — but the poems I leave to the reader’s interpretation.

Hope you look forward to it!

Click here or on the tab above for the Notes from the Nineties page.

The bells of silence

October 3, 2015
MThomas

It’s been a while since I wrote here for (again) work and family-related reasons. For starters, like most Mets fans I got caught up in the division-drive with its ebbs and flows and occasional near-cardiac-arrest-inducing turns. It wouldn’t be the Mets without some sort of chance of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

It was, in fact, during the last week of mind-numbing play that lead to the clinching game against the Reds that I started to notice a turn for the worse…in my health. My daughter Erina had had a fever approaching 40C (104-105F), and I had a lost at least a couple nights of sleep, running over to her room as she woke up every two hours or so. Fortunately, she recovered, but proceeded to pass whatever bug she had on to me. I endured — what else could I do, really? — and last Friday morning, woke up just in time to watch the final pitch from Familia that sealed the deal.

Problem was, I could barely hear the crowd.

M Thomas Apple Author Page

Science fiction, actual science, history, and personal ranting about life, the universe, and everything

A writing prompt that almost answers itself

Dear Diary – February 12, 1998

Dear Diary – May 19, 2001

Call a spade a

The Great American Rake Off

The beating of my hideous heart!

On “En”

Notes from the Nineties: The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha

New book notice

The bells of silence

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