Inkwatu

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Ernest Hemingway wrote that to win a bet as the shortest story ever penned. It has spawned countless Internet contests for aspiring writers to create their own 6-word stories. There is another ultra-short literary form called flash fiction–short-shorts less than a 1,000 words. There are a number such creatures: micro-fiction, postcard fiction, etc. A particularly moving form, not exactly postcard fiction, but on postcards and definitely rich with drama, is Post Secret, “…where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.” There’s also the practice that I call “silent stories”—taking note of simple scenes in real life, glimpsed by happenstance, that are pregnant with dramatic possibilities.

The mind is ever inventive. It has the faculty of being able to create an entire world, a complete, plausible scenario of “what’s happening” from the merest shreds of information. A case in point: about 25 years ago, I’d stopped for lunch at a cafe in Germany that was not frequented by tourists. In the back room where I was eating some of the best french fries I’ve ever had anywhere on the planet, there was a man of about 80 seated alone at a table, stiff-backed and introspective. He had a very aristocratic bearing, quietly arrogant and unbowed. His hands were long and narrow and moved hardly at all as he ate a simple meal. He wore all black clothing from a much earlier era, old but well preserved. He would have been about 50 when Hitler invaded Poland. What was his story?

I’ll never know, of course. But, my mind spun a multiverse of possible dramas, quite possibly (more likely probably), none of which bore any resemblance to reality. This ability of our minds is, of course, the very essence of the psychological phenomenon of psychological projection, the stuff that makes Rorschach inkblot tests work. Unchecked by reason and objectivity this ability becomes problematic, but harnessed in the service of conceiving fiction, or even just “tuning in” and enriching one’s environment through fantasy, these silent stories awaken our creative juices.

St. Petersburg abounds in such silent stories, especially in the once more-glamorous part of town just north of Central Avenue where there are a large number of rooms for rent. Variously called “apartments,” “residential hotels,” the Such-and-such “House,” and “boarding houses,” these places all are each their own silent stories, and each is filled with as many separate silent stories as there are occupants. These dwellings often have somewhat grand names such as the Biltmore, the Whitney, the Stanton, the Poulson, the Parkview, the Baywalk (no, not that Baywalk), the DeVoe. (The word, “The,” in each of those titles seems imperative!) I hope these aging beauties never die because they serve as karmic nudges to see ourselves and others—past, present, and future–in perspective.

A word of caution: it’s too easy, when glimpsing one of these establishments, or their occupants, to be depressed rather than charmed, to attach the label “failure” rather than “survivor,” to see decay instead of a fine patina. But, without denying the distressed straits of many of these denizens of unknown silent stories, it’s important to also recognize that reality is far more complicated and encompassing than any of the puny plots our imaginations can conceive. Each of these buildings and each of these people do, in actuality, have rich silent stories, which, if we knew their details, would enthrall us as much as any novel. They are all worthy of being loved.

The famous painting by Edward Hooper, “The Nighthawks,” captures an archetypical silent story. Hooper’s wife, Jo, said he described the subjects of that painting as “three characters.” How apt—for it is characters that inhabit stories. (”The Nighthawks” has a latter-day tribute: “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Gottfried Helnwein where Hooper’s anonymous characters have been replaced by Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley).

As you walk around downtown St. Pete, ask yourself: Who is that fellow waiting for the bus at Williams Park whose perfectly matched tweed outfit is from not just a different time, but a different clime? Who is that woman from whose shoulders much used, grimy, professional camera bags dangle? Is she still a photographer? Was she ever?! What affluent family might have once lived in that fine brick home that now houses an insurance company? Who might have traveled this street paved with Augusta brick? What silent stories do we walk among?

Hopefully, someone, someday, will wonder about us and the stories we now enact.

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