One Times One  Other Numinous Stories Of Redemption And Loss

REALITY IS NOT A DUALISTIC PHENOMENON

Everything is one thing with no limits either in essence or in our feeble attempts to identify and limit it with our wonderful words. These 14 stories in Frode’s second collection of short stories show that: reality is everything mixed mysteriously together. Reality, as this collection’s subtitle this suggests, is a numinous mix of loss and redemption, as the title story, "One Times One," exemplifies. All the stories are numinous because they embody some aspect of the spiritual nature of reality. They are all stories about the redemptive quality inherent in all human beings. And each story presents some kind of loss in the context of spiritual redemption.

•            A modern dragon tale--the title story-- where an ancient onyx ring’s power brings a teacher and her apprentice into darkening collusion.

•           Three stories of mental and existential breakdown with a leaf, a white noise machine, and a Prius.

•           A craps dealer becomes the center of a high desert universe where winning, losing, and enlightenment merge.

•           A man’s knife skills, his wife’s breast augmentation, and a labyrinth rescue a disaffected couple.

•           A cup of coffee and arcane blessings are the key to the world of a saint in the author’s strange but true story.

•           A young magician has a unique power to summon living things, and his final trick brings horrific catastrophe.

•           Three enigmatic fighters execute members of the world’s four great religions in a gruesome parable.

•           A museum director of antiquities uses ricin to guarantee his newest exhibit of a female ninja.

•           The Big Dipper and 7 Mexican volcanoes reveal the secret use and control of an extraterrestrial beacon.

•           The members of a bluegrass group play their hearts and lives out as a personal loss for the leader creates a new song.

•            A parable about the unity and misuse of nature where 7 great spiritual masters gather to toast humanity.