Kevin Kuzma

QUOTABLE

WELCOME TO THE SITE

Words are my only evidence that I have a shadow in this world. Only with a commitment to notebook and pen, early mornings in cold leather-backed chairs or empty dining room tables - and opening my senses - am I able to coax them out.

Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category

Mimosas Before Noon
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

The orange juice gave the champagne a breakfast disguise that made it right to drink before lunch.

I’d seen them come out on trays. The waiters were carrying them through the country club, lifting them up over the wedding crowd. Open at the top and curved in the middle, they were the brightest in the room – decorations brighter than the occasional spring dress.

I waited for the mimosas to come my direction, but the servers coming from the kitchen were all right-handed. When they hit the first bodies crowded in the foyer, they veered right and around a round wooden table with a sign-in registery and enormous flower displays. (more…)

Literary Dry Cleaning
Friday, April 24th, 2009

Sherry’s best days were behind her when we met. She was pudgy – a ripple above her waist in her dry-cleaning shirt. An attitude that’d been sharpened in arguments and by disappointment. She showed up at work with her hair wet on her back, for the mid-afternoon shift, and she cussed and smoked the way you’d expect from a junior in high school. Those were the impressions of a junior class college boy who thought he could spend his summer reading his way into an editorship with the campus newspaper. I was right about the reading. I was wrong about her. (more…)

Little Something for CCC
Friday, April 24th, 2009

Hey, here’s a post I made today to Career College Central. This is the industry magazine I edit that focuses on the career college sector of higher education. There is some information here on my journalism background and the fate of print journalism. I originally wrote it for this blog, but it was a bit too rambling even for these pages. I cleaned it up and it actually made some sense.

Play, Play, Play
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Big, blue sky. Yellow sunshine. Jumping on my shadow. Raising my arms. Watching the long bends fall to my side. Throwing an inflatable ball into the back basketball goal with every hope that it will go in. Sweet smells from new flower beds and budding plants floating to my nose, just arriving on the gentle breeze. I had a toy batmobile with two slots for Batman and Robin. I pushed that around the sand and what spilled on the pavement. (more…)

Irish Lies
Monday, April 20th, 2009

Nothing says Irish pub more than country music and teller windows.

It was late on Sunday afternoon and the shops in the Zona Rosa shopping district were closed when I came to a stop light. I’d never been in O’Dowd’s, but I was driving by looking for help wanted signs and the music was blaring out into the streets. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it from what I’d heard, it seemed like there must be a party going on inside. No signs were in the windows. There weren’t any windows. Still, I decided it was worth a try, and turned onto a side-street to the nearest parking lot.

The spring winds had picked up and it flopped my hair to the opposite side and blew my collar up. I felt like James Dean in the iconic photo taken in New York, his hands shoved in his pockets and half-shrugging in the rain. I followed the music sound to the doors.

A guy was smoking outside. He wore khakis and a short-sleeved button up and looked like he should be a bible study, light a candle for everyone to sing around and tending to his sexless marriage. I took him for a dad, an unhappy one who’d settled for self-gratification a couple years into the marriage and had been praying for some ball slapping or something a little more unusual by their 10th anniversary. (more…)