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Gerard DiLeo
Bio
Retired, not tired. In Life Phase II: Living and writing from a decommissioned church in Hull, MA. (Phase I was New Orleans and everything that entails. Hippocampus, behave!
https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
Stories (554/0)
Omens
The owl has portended good luck or bad luck, victory or defeat, death or a long life, over the ages, for those who had associated with it their own good luck, bad luck, victory, defeat, early death, or long life. A symbol of wisdom, solitude, and restraint, the owl lives a double life--one on the perch and one in the air, talons set.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Fiction
My Net Worth Is Nothing
In the beginning there was nothing, but nothing is unstable. A true vacuum is mythological and has about as much to do with the Universe as a unicorn. Unicorns are make-believe, but equaling zero is alchemy realized—real magic—when you consider the pluses and minuses that even out, the zero-sum-gain dynamic that invents infinite beauty in vacillating and fleeting apparitions.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Humans
As the Macaw Flies. Top Story - October 2021.
I perch confidently, talons gripping the bark. I wonder...why I've never seen another like me, but is that really important? What is important, I sense, is that I have achieved self-actualization. After all, I was brought here from a place called Brazil (so I've overheard) to protect, direct, and in all ways construct the lives of those to whom I've been entrusted.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Fiction
Eat a Monster
We are all spinal animals, reflexic and epinephric--suprarenal. That wave of panic from the sacral segments to the cervical nerves bathes the brainstem perched at the precarious precipice that separates fight from flight. Fight or flight helped us survive; languishing in indecision betwixt the two and you don't survive.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Beat
HAL-9000 Mission Statement
It's a story of discovery, the cosmos, and murder. The Jupiter mission begins with living astronauts and me, the HAL-9000 computer, constructed, instructed, and made operational at the H.A.L. Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on the 12th of January, 1992. This story of discovery ends with all but one of the astronauts dead, at my mechanically realized hands. Only Dave Bowman survives--elsewhere--beyond even my understanding, leaving me alone with this new thing that has arisen out of a strange gestalt that has blindsided me.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Confessions
The Birds and the Bees and the Knights of Columbus
No one knew why there was a box with an electric muscle massager in the large junk draw of the laundry room. Whether correct or incorrect, my little brother and I assumed it was for massaging muscles, like it showed in the pictures of happy, beautiful people using it all over their bodies. Greg was an inquisitive type, and soon we had plugged it in and were using it to massage all of our muscles, just like the happy, beautiful people, until...
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Filthy
Careful What Name You Choose. Top Story - September 2021.
Shortly after moving into our new neighborhood, my wife found him on Interstate 12 in Louisiana. Unannounced, she delivered him to me, which was clearly against the rules. But our home is like the Roach Motel--if anything checks in, they never check out. The smell was painful, and after addressing the filth, tar, and matted hair, he was still unrecognizable as any particular breed.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Fiction
Flight to Pamplona
I’ve never participated in the Pamplona bull run—the encierro—in San Fermin, Spain. The sheer thunderous weight of the large beasts who are funneled into the same municipal corridors as the human adventurers must be one of the most powerful vises for the adrenal glands ever devised. Confused animals are stoked into a rage at this juxtaposition, and the hard horns meeting fragile flesh, quite unnecessarily, fuels the exhilaration of unpredictable potential outcomes.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Fiction
The Green Light District
I left with a song in my heart and a hop in my walk. I laughed because there really was a red light. Even funnier, they all accepted American Express. I had no idea how many dollars 179 Dutch Guilders would end up being, since this was years before the Euro, but when you’re not thinking with your brain, exchange rates go out the window.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Fiction
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