Monthly Archives: March 2023

Hippocampus Forgets

I’m excited to share that my short story “Hippocampus Forgets” appears in Issue 990 of Bewildering Stories, an online magazine for speculative writing. It’s a fantasy story about a female hippopotamus. The idea sprang from a goofy thought I had one day—what if a hippopotamus named Hippocampus suffered memory problems? The idea set me off on a long road of writing, revising, and rejection before finally getting accepted.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

The best part of the whole process was following the internal drama of the character Hippocampus, a mother of four who keeps forgetting the name of her youngest child, her son Corpe. Her memory lapse stems from a violent premonitory dream that serves as a warning as Corpe’s fifth birthday approaches.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

In writing the first draft, I felt like I served as a portal for Hippocampus to materialize. I wasn’t so much writing as dictating the story from her. It’s a rare occurrence for me, but in this case, I followed the characters where they wanted me to go. And nearly six-thousand words later, “Hippocampus Forgets” was born.

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Dostoyevsky Doorstop

I just finished reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Clocking in at nearly 800 pages, the book remained in my Kindle library for more than a year. Even as I skipped through page after page, the completion rate remained at about 62 percent. I thought I would never finish. Now I am tackling another classic tome of literature—The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I’m only 27 pages into it, and I’m already confused by the multiple characters the author has introduced. But I think having a print copy will make the reading easier than Copperfield.

I always struggle with longer novels, but they can also be the most satisfying. Two of my favorite novels are longer works—Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe and The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac.

I’m approaching Karamazov like I mentally approach a Central New York winter. You can’t see the end of winter in late October. You have to take it one day at a time, one snowstorm at a time. So I can’t anticipate reading the last sentence of page 985 and then closing the book. I just have to plug along, page by page, day by day until I reach the end. My goal is to finish by Christmas.

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Memories of Mr. Lanzi

Francis DiClemente's avatarFrancis DiClemente

I heard the sad news that one of my favorite teachers, Anthony Lanzi, passed away. This is an essay I wrote about him a few years ago.

Mr. Lanzi’s sixth-grade class, DeWitt Clinton Elementary School, Rome, New York (1980-81). I’m third from the left in the first row.

Our sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Lanzi, was a towering figure with a swarthy complexion and dark, wavy hair teased high and coated with hairspray. Not a strand seemed out of place. Imagine, if you will, a taller, thinner, nattier version of Elvis Presley. That’s how I remember Mr. Lanzi.

I think he had previously studied or worked in the theater, and he wore a hint of makeup to class—light powder on his cheeks—as if he might be called upon in the middle of a school day to fill the role of an understudy and he wanted to be prepared to take the stage…

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Tree on the Horizon

I know winter is not over yet, but my favorite time of the year is snowmelt season in Syracuse. A blanket of white still covers the ground, but the roads are mostly clear. I have probably jinxed us with a big lake-effect mess in the near future.

I like how the trees remain stoic with their naked branches (prior to blooming in spring). I captured this photo while traversing through my neighborhood on my Sunday walk.

Tree on the Horizon. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

March is filled with good things. We have Lenten fish fry specials and St. Patrick’s Day. And I think it’s the best time of year for sports fans. The NCAA basketball tournament, NHL and NBA playoffs, and the start of the MLB season all loom on the horizon. So I will enjoy these March days as we get ready to transition from winter to spring.

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Glimpses of Existence Now Streaming

I am excited and honored to announce that my experimental documentary short Glimpses of Existence has found a distribution home at OTV – Open Television. You can find it here.

“OTV is an Emmy-nominated nonprofit platform for intersectional television, with artists and their creative visions at the center.”

Glimpses of Existence premiered in 2021 in an online screening presented by NewFilmmakers NY.

It’s a zero-budget film in the form of video collage. I took inspiration from the experimental films of Jonas Mekas, in particular Walden. Using poetry and scenes captured with my iPhone—primarily during the pandemic—the film attempts to find meaning in the ephemeral moments of our lives, seeking the extraordinary amid the ordinary.

The central focus of the film is my son, Colin, who has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Despite his condition, Colin finds joy in everyday activities, and through his eyes we recognize the importance of treasuring the tiny segments of life we are granted—minutes, seconds, hours—while being reminded about the transitory nature of existence.

Glimpses is a companion piece to a previous experimental documentary—Fragments of the Living. You can download the @weareotv app Free on Apple, Android, Roku, and FireTV, or stream at watch.weareo.tv.

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