Aubergine - Winter 2020 by Guggenheim Investments

Aubergine ONLINE JOURNAL OF THE ARTS

VOL. 0I | WINTER 2020

Table of Contents Juan Alvarez, New York Diet Peach Ice Tea Penguin Motivation Amargo

Sherika Henry, New York 4 11 21

Leor the Light The Twin Towers

John Miller, Santa Monica 7 12

Untitled, 2015

36 Chambers

David Milstein, Rockville 10

Joseph Dewing, Indianapolis

Flower Study in Metal

A Foot in the Head

Zachariah Warner, New York

reuse//recycle

Alexander Zasky, Chicago Dragonfly

Debbie Lopez, New York

Raghunath Srinivasan, Chennai

Semi-Pro Latin Dance Performance: Bachata and Tango

Nature Don’t Protest Rain Through Umbrella

Helena Mehalis, Santa Monica Live My Life for Me First Forever Christmas Easy

4 15 19

Nick Pitman, New York

12 19 22

One Day Sketch in Oil Of My Grandmother’s House

Untitled Santa Monica Pier Sunset

Monica Francisco, New York Guava Fruit Vendor Sabtang Lighthouse Twin #1

Brian Flueckiger, Chicago

Danielle Maria 1997

Luke Nunn, New York

Timothy Kujac, Santa Monica Oscar the Boy Who Loved Asparagus

The Proof of Bravery

17 Alysia Kinsella, Chicago

Illusion in Wood

17 22

Jane Titus, New York Arik Hirschfeld, New York

John Casesa, New York

Warmth Inertia

Jackie Taddei, New York

6 20

Krystle May Statler, Santa Monica 8 14 18

Untitled for BJ

Santa Monica Pier Sunset Photograph By Timothy Kujac 3

One Day Poem By Jane Titus

One day I will take the crescent moon

I am a hollow stalk,

And cut all the pain away from my heart.

Heavy with burden, nodding my head

The moon like a scythe will slice away my tears,

To the ground weighted, gravid, unable to let go.

As if they were dry wheat to be harvested.

Then the knife will come, and

The Moon will be my savior â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

I will fly like a wisp of vapor

Pale as a fearful wish

Twisting and dancing with the wind

Pure as unthought desire.

Until we merge and become One vast expanse of sky.

My sorrows will be neatly bundled, Wrapped up and stacked

I will look down on the field,

With thousands and thousands

Trampled, broken stalks, dusty ground

Of sighs and sobs and wails

Tired of giving and I will see

All resting quietly together,

The pattern and I will cover the field

Making a pattern.

With my new sky self, Hoping that one day,

Diet Peach Ice Tea

A stalk of wheat, heavy with woe,

Collage

Will look up and see the soft blue

By Juan Alvarez

Of evermore.

Semi-Pro Latin Dance Performance: Bachata and Tango Dance Performance By Debbie Lopez 5

Untitled

Nature

Painting

By Zachariah Warner

By Raghunath Srinivasan

A Foot in the Head Poem (written at 3am) By Luke Nunn

A foot in the head

Now morning is near

wakes Dad seeing red.

they’re angels so dear.

A squiggly bum

I need to go shower

makes for a sleepless Mum.

I want another hour.

The struggle for sheets;

So tempting to snuggle

cover’s so hard to keep.

now there’s no struggle.

To dream? Unlikely.

Maybe I’ll take

Per chance, just to sleep?

before they awake not a snooze, just a rest with my sleeping babies in the family nest.

Leor the Light Painting By Sherika Henry 7

Live My Life for Me Music Video By Helena Mehalis 8

Oscar the Boy Who Loved Asparagus Inspired from a bedtime story told by Mary Bailey Flueckiger (1954â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1991) Short Story By Brian Flueckiger

In the town of Greenville, there lived a 5-year-

seen before; it was a vegetable that looked

old boy named Oscar. Oscar lived with his

like green drumsticks. Oscar learned from his

mommy, daddy, and pet dog Barney. Growing

aunt Gertie that the green sticks were called

up in Greenville, Oscar had the usual hobbies

asparagus. Oscar was typically a picky eater

of a little boy; he would catch fireflies in the

and was scared to try this new food. However,

backyard, ride his scooter in the park, and

aunt Gertie convinced Oscar to be brave and

coloring with his crayons. Yes, Oscar was like

take a bite of the asparagus. After the first

any other 5-year-old kid in Greenville, except

bite, Oscar could not believe how good this

for thing; his favorite food was asparagus.

new food tasted and asked for a big plate of asparagus with his dinner.

Oscar first came to love asparagus when he was 4 years old. One afternoon, his mommy

After the cookout, Oscar could not get

and daddy decided to have a cookout for

enough of asparagus; he ate it whenever he

dinner. Oscar was very excited for this

got the chance. For her his morning snack

dinner because his aunt Gertie was coming

after riding scooters with his mommy, he ate

over to visit. When aunt Gertie arrived, she

asparagus. For his afternoon snack at the

brought over a food that Oscar had never

playground, he ate asparagus with his Continued on page 26

Illusion in Wood Woodwork By Joseph Dewing 9

Dragonfly

36 Chambers

Photograph

Drawing

By Alexander Zasky

By Arik Hirschfeld

Penguin Motivation Video By Juan Alvarez 11

The Twin Towers

Guava Fruit Vendor

Painting

Digital Painting

By Sherika Henry

By Monica Francisco

The Proof of Bravery Short Story By David Milstein

Archivist’s Note: The following text was

more reside in the mounted pursuits, both

discovered by researchers from the American

of game and of females, between which

Society for the History of Mathematics during

they hardly seem to differentiate. They

their survey of the 19th century archives of

judge me a dry old tapette and laugh at me

the Davidson College Historical Trust.

behind my back as they whisper of their conquests. I envy them nothing in either

It may surprise those who remember that

equestrianism, I who ravished one hundred

l’Empereur Bonaparte himself named me a

nymphs across Europe.

Marshal of the Empire, Prince of Moscow, and le brave des braves, to hear that I have spent

I foresee a war between the North and

the three decades of my exile as a professor

South of these not-so-United States; the

of mathematics. I teach at the embryonic

hatred and contempt of the Yankee in

college of Davidson, engendered by parochial

my students intensifies year after year.

ambition on the broad fertile plain of Carolina.

Sometimes a perverse voice from within urges me to take up the marshal’s baton

My students are all rude and indolent scions

here in the New World as well. Just so was

of plantation gentry whose interests lie

my mentor General Moreau lured, and also

entirely outside the field of mathematics and

pushed by his woman, back to the field of Continued on page 23

Flower Study in Metal Sculpture By Alysia Kinsella 13

First Forever Christmas Music Video By Helena Mehalis 14

Sketch in Oil

reuse//recycle

Painting

Music

By Jane Titus

By Nick Pitman

Untitled for BJ Poem + Performance, written July 16, 2019 By Krystle May Statler

In America, it’s reported 100 people are killed

It’s been over 9 million seconds since I’ve learned

We couldn’t have known

by gun violence each day.

he was put on the coroner’s table.

we’d lose him, in this way.

My brother gasped his last breath on March 27th.

Life continues, on pause in shock.

This is my life’s deepest loss because

According to the Washington Post,

since we were kids,

he was the 280th person of 488

My brother, our brother

I’d always told myself,

shot and killed by the police,

Another grandchild

there was supposed to be

so far this year.

Another son

more time for us.

Another man I didn’t know it then,

Another loved black body

that day,

Another father

Dear BJ,

he was 2 and a half miles from my apartment,

Another friend

The greatest gift our parents gave us

traveling in the ambulance to the hospital,

Another free spirit in this world

was each other.

for air, for hope, for his life to be saved

taken from it and added to a list.

In life, I loved you dearly.

after they stole him with one bullet to the temple. We didn’t learn about his murder until 3 days after. The details of his death don’t make much sense

In death, I love you more. The first time, since I was 14 that I’d been

If love alone could’ve saved you,

in the same room with him and my dad

you’d still be here.

was when I cried over his body at the mortuary,

And while you’re gone too soon,

kissing his forehead as he rested.

what was,

and even if they did, he is still gone, and they are still wrong.

what is and These are the clothes that last embraced him.

what could be, will forever live inside me.

The first time I had been alone with him in over 5

I’ll always remember you, big brother

years was when he sat

and

in the passenger seat of my car,

always

in 4 boxes of ash.

say your name. 06 16

Untitled, 2015

Warmth

Photograph

Music

By John Casesa

By John Miller

08 17

Easy Music Video By Helena Mehalis 18

Of My Grandmother’s House Poem By Jane Titus

I dreamt again of my grandmother’s house –

As I woke, it was some time

Now awake, where do I put this dream?

A house filled with memory –

Before the cool fact emerged –

In grief of what is no more?

Lots of light – rooms filled with things that have stories.

That the house exists –

In joy that it once was?

But not as I knew it to be –

In hope to have it again?

Tonight she was not dead.

that house had been

The truth lies somewhere between all these things.

Tonight the house was filled with strength and vision.

Gone

There is a house.

That was my grandmother.

For years –

There is a place to be

I want that house.

For decades.

And bake and work

I want to live Where there is beauty and story together.

And think and feel. And yet. When I dream

Now there is something of that house

Tonight I was there.

There is the house

In every place I live:

Tonight it was mine.

There is the garden

Abit of age, a bit of earth, abit of memory.

There is the haven

I carry that magic within me.

There is the love

I keep a piece of my grandmother’s house

I had.

Tucked under my ribs, next to my heart.

Sabtang Lighthouse Digital Painting By Monica Francisco

Danielle Maria 1997 Poem By Jackie Taddei

May you walk in heroes’ footsteps

May you always know I loved you

Until you’re old enough to know

From before I saw your face

That you can be your greatest teacher

And that the moment I knew of you

If you allow your mind to grow

My heart reserved your place

May the first words that you utter

May you always feel as special

Fall upon my waiting ears

As you already are to me

May you be amongst those with me

And know that until you happened

As I live through all my years

There was much I didn’t see

May you always find the beauty

May you always know my angel

In all that God has made

That I am always here for you

May you learn from those who love you

And that you’ve filled my life with magic

And from the prices they have paid

And with a joy I never knew!

May you always be compassionate

Don’t Protest Rain Through Umbrella Painting

And true and strong and wise May others see peace and happiness When they look into your eyes

By Raghunath Srinivasan

Amargo Video By Juan Alvarez 21

Twin #1

Inertia

Digital Painting

Music

By Monica Francisco

By John Miller

22 19

The Proof of Bravery continued from page 13 By David Milstein

battle and then to the firing squad that awaited him. But I left my wife Aglaé long ago and have no woman to push me now. And I have already faced my firing squad, yes, and given them their order to fire. I have always been able to see strengths and weakness at a glance and identify the various minimums and maximums of systems. That is my gift, as applicable in the classroom as on the field of battle. Like all things in this world given to us by le mathématicien suprême, war is but the graphical expression of an equation, comprehensible by those with the eyes to identify the variables and the brain to solve for their values. As I see defeat looming for Carolina and the other southern states in a war to defend their property of Africans, so I smelled the putrefaction of the Bourbons and anticipated their demise. As I served the revolutionary committees, I sensed from afar the storm clouds that would unleash a rain of blood in the summer heat of thermidor to drown them. The one man I met who was without flaw was Bonaparte. So we called him in those days, the humorless Corsican tough. I did not like him, but as I followed his career I could not help but love him. As he said, he always fought his battles with the same plan: hold the center, turn your enemy’s flank, then charge and split them, whilst all the time intersecting them with parabolas of destruction from one’s cannon. Not only was he an unparalleled general. By enforcing the système métrique, he changed the way the world measured and weighed. As he gave order to the world of matter, so too did Bonaparte bring order to the rules of men, in the form of the code civil. Evenhandedness, clarity, fairness, justice, efficiency: so was his system of law. Bonaparte was quite simply the greatest man in the world, the most modern and unafraid of grand scale. As I was the man who could factor, he was the master of integration. Together, we were two sides of a golden coin, and the world bowed down before us. Time alone l’Empereur could not master. In the face of fierce resistance by the ignorant and superstitious, he gave up on the calendrier républicain. How much more beautiful and logical, to say “It is the month of wine, vendémiaire,” than “It is the 7th month (when it is actually the 9th!),

September.” Or to say, “It is the month of heat, thermidor,” instead of “It is the month of Caesar Augustus.” But the day after 10 nivôse, on the tenth day of snow-month in the fourteenth year after the Revolution, we fell back into two-faced barbarity, the first day of the month of the god Janus in the Year of Our Lord 1806. Perhaps that failure presaged the greater one to follow, when Bonaparte passed his zenith and began to descend. The triumphant system of the future was defeated by the forces of nature, by the catastrophe of our invasion of Russia in the Second Polish War and the subsequent mortification of our flesh. Though this happened in the days that the world remembers as the autumn of 1812, the prime of my life was in the Republic, and I will always order the days by the calendrier républicain, even in recounting its downfall. I have seen Charles Minard’s graph of our campaign, and though there are those who esteem it as a triumphant scientific abstract and chronicle of the disintegration of l’Armée, simultaneously charting time, location, number of men, and temperature, I tell you that it is missing its most important component: the Z-axis of suffering. Said axis would be asymptotic, starting low but rising to the limit of all that is possible. The point of inflection was the Battle of Moscow, or as the Russians call it, Borodino. Before that, it was a magnificent war. From the time we crossed the bridge over the Niemen at Kovno with over four hundred thousand men, on the first day of messidor, the harvest season, our harvest seemed to be of victory. From Vilnius past Minsk, all the Russians could do was fall back. The waving rye-stalks of the fields and hawks circling a sky of purest blue live on in my memory as my high-water mark of that greatest feeling in life, anticipation.

of God touched the battlefield and struck me down, in the form of an incandescent piece of shrapnel that whirled out of a cloud of smoke and buried itself in my neck. As the charge moved on without me, I saw my life pass before my eyes. They all say that, because it is true. What else can one do when faced with eternity but turn away to review for a last time one’s memories of the past? But throughout my reveries of my childhood, wife, family, and glorious career, I became aware of two most incongruous figures wandering about the battleground. One was Russian, a noble of some kind by his marvelous clothes. His top hat was a sparkling white to match the lace collar peeping from beneath his splendid dark jacket, decorated like the night sky with silver stars across his broad chest. As they drew closer, I noticed the contrast between the great strength of his enormous shoulders and the diffident sensitivity of the eyes behind his spectacles. The other was swarthy and slight, and his billowing cloak was of good quality but much used. I took him for a merchant Gypsy or perhaps a Persian or a Turk. As he drew closer, though, I saw by his hat he was a Jew. “Tsk, tsk, look at this, Pierre,” said the Jew. “What a splendid uniform this one is wearing! He must be a general. Might you be able to identify him for me?” Pierre straightened his spectacles with his index finger, stooped, and drew out a corner of my cape to better examine me. He had the eyes of an elephant, enormous and wise yet placid. “By his unique leopard cloak, I recognize him from the stories of my friend Prince Bolkonsky. This is Marshal Ney, bravest of Bonaparte’s generals.”

My skills were at their height, and the Emperor was brilliance itself. By the time of heat in thermidor, when we bested them at Borissov, at Krasnoe, Smolensk, Dorogoboui, and Viazma, we knew the Russians were beaten. Beaten, I tell you, though they refused a decisive battle.

I spit out a mouthful of blood and managed to gasp a few words. “Sir, are you a doctor? Save me, I beg you!”

At last, in that glorious but cursed fructidor we bit into the poisoned apple of triumph. They gave us our battle at Borodino.

The Jew gave a low whistle. “The bravest? My, that’s brave. Monsieur Ney, I’m sorry, but you are most surely doomed. Your artery has been severed; you will be dead in but a minute. I would respectfully suggest you commend yourself to your God.”

It was a strange battle. Some say we lost that day, but I was there and I tell you we beat them. We never lost a battle, but only the whole war. This time, though, they did stand and fight. Five times I led my cuirassiers against them, and five times they repulsed us with heavy losses. Despite everything, as we marshaled for the sixth, I knew they would break. But in our moment of triumph, the finger

“But Monsieur Lazarus, surely—” The big Russian cut himself short at a glance from his companion, and I sensed an opportunity, which I grasped as a man will at any straw to arrest his fall into the abyss. “Sir, we French of the Empire are not like the Russians and their hunting dogs the Cossacks who persecute the Jews. I would aid you were our

circumstances reversed.” I spat blood, and started again. “Do you know what the Emperor has stated of the Jewish people in France? ‘I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them.’“ The Russian turned again to his companion and said “Surely this is most fair-spoken, Monsieur Lazarus? Must you not also be interested in his qualities as an exemplar of bravery?” “You are a gentleman of quality, sir,” I said, “and I beg the name of those that rescue me so I might suitably reward them later.” He frowned but tipped his white top hat and inclined his head. “I am Pyotr Kirilovich, Count Bezukhov. If it were in my power to help you, I would. But the kind of help you need can only be supplied by my companion, who I once again implore on your behalf.” “Let me think about it, Pierre.” The Jew leaned over me and spoke more gently. “It is very fine that you and your Emperor don’t hate my people. You don’t know how rare that is. I would like to do you a favor, but I’m not sure which way that cuts upon this question. What I can do for you, you may not thank me for. Tell me one thing, Monsieur Ney: would you want to go on living if you lost what meant the most to you?” I drew shuddering breath to reply. “The surgeon’s knife is no stranger to me, and I am ready for whatever sacrifice may preserve my life. Even if I am to be a cripple, I want to live to witness the coming triumph of France and the new day of reason and glory just dawning.” I sensed it was too late, whatever medical genius the Jew might possess. I felt my soul leave my body. I floated up out of the cloud of smoke into the breezy sunlight above, so high I saw the plain and beyond it the forest, and beyond it rivers, mountains and the curvature of the Earth. It was wonderful. I was suffused in light, floating in radiance like a warm bath, dissolving into the light of the world that is to come. Then I heard words but in a different voice, as in a dream, “So be it.” All went dark. Then I woke up, and a medical officer was standing over me saying “Sir, you are blessedly lucky, I see no serious wound.” There was no Continued on page 24

sign of the mysterious stranger and his burly companion, and no sign either of that shard of metal and the gaping hole it had carved in my neck. I lived, though I had died, and I wondered at the meaning of the stranger’s words. I learned that the rest of the day had been a standoff, after which the Russians retreated. So we declared victory.We advanced and conquered the great oriental capital of Moscow, city of onion-domes and Asiatic mystery, waiting for the official surrender and victor’s tribute which were never to come. The calendrier républicain has twelve months, each with three décades of ten days. At the end of fructidor came in the last five days of the year the festival of sans-culottides, for the sans-culottes, the common man without (for him unaffordable) trousers, whose violent passion for a change of circumstance had given us our revolution and Republic. Their five days were named for their prime qualities (as judged by the poets Chénier and Fabre d’Eglantine, who came up with the names of days): Virtue, Genius, Labor, Opinion and Rewards. A sixth complementary day, added in leap years, was named Revolution. I respectfully submit that the poets erred in omitting Intoxication from the list. I know not on which of those days our sans-culottes set fire to the city, but I know they did so. Though in our histories we blame it on the fleeing Russians, I saw hundreds of our drunken troopers making bonfires of unoccupied houses for the sheer exuberant pleasure of watching them burn. The China-Town in particular I recall they burned most excitedly, because in a few of the structures were stored the fireworks for which the Chinaman is so justly famed. They set fire to whole streets of mandarin architecture five centuries old, in anticipation of the moment when the flames found these fireworks’ storing places and the resulting brilliant rainbow explosions so reminiscent of the celebration of the storming of the Bastille. By the jour du raisin, the day of the grape and the first of the New Year after the equinox, Moscow was half-consumed by the conflagration. Too slowly in the smoky delirium of our pillaging occupation of vendémiaire, the month of the vine, did it dawn on us that the fire was a pox, destroying the available supplies as a fever consumes the flesh. Even worse than fire was the hatred of the poor. When we defeated the Russian army, we drove away our best friends in a thousand kilometers. The Russian officers all worshiped us; in fact, they spoke better French than our sans-culottes. They would have taken our surrender, and fed and clothed us like Samaritans. But in our enthusiasm to crush them, we had delivered ourselves into the hands of hardened former serfs, and worse, the Cossacks summoned by the

Tsar from the wilds of Siberia, who had barely heard of France and thought nothing of slaughtering us like beasts.

I was a good Marshal of the Empire, and I said what such men say to their Emperor. “It will be done tonight.”

At dawn on the first day of brumaire, the month of mist and fog, the Emperor gave the general order for an evacuation of the city. Confused like a hibernating animal smoked from its den, l’Armée stepped unprepared once again out into the fog of war.

His smile was brittle as he acknowledged my submission to his will. I think we had both thought of each other as friends until that moment. Perhaps it had even been so.

The line of carriages on the road west stretched for ten kilometers. I abandoned the very fine goods I had accumulated over vendémiaire and rode through the mud alongside the road. I saw some make the same calculus and live. Many others stayed in line with their new treasures, cursing those in front of them, and were never seen again. Though we named our seasons for the climate of our sweet mother France, Mother Russia has her own time and nature. What is time of mist in France is in Russia the time of starving, frostbitten death. At the midpoint of brumaire, on jour du dindon, the day of the turkey, great dark-gray clouds raced from the east and dumped half a meter of snow in an hour as we trudged, our numb feet tracking blood into the slush with every step. Behind the storm came bitter cold. The men wearied, discipline waned, and alongside the road were cast aside the supplies we would so desperately need in days to come: extra shoes and spare soles, bags of biscuits and flour, even muskets and ammunition. As the afternoon faded into night, at first only a few, then more and more, once-proud members of the great Armée lay down to die in the snow. Unless they were senior officers, or had very good friends, no one stopped to pick them up. Sometimes not even then. We reached Smolensk after three days of such conditions, exhausted, miserable, and with few supplies. The horses died by the hundreds of hunger and cold. Without horses, we would not be an army but a band of lemmings leaping over a precipice into the endless void that is the steppe. So we fed them with the thatched roofs of any huts we found and slept roofless and shivering inside. The third night from Moscow Bonaparte summoned me to his quarters. His toilet was still immaculate, and he sipped from fine china a pot of tea. “Ney, you are my favorite, and my champion, and I need you to do what no other man would dare to do. You must be our shield and cover our retreat. You may pick the best ten thousand men.”

The Emperor and the remains of l’Armée waited five days for us to draw off the pursuit and then dashed west towards Vilnius, while we that same damned night plunged off east into the maw of the wilderness, so beginning of the month of frost. In that frimaire rearguard action I believe we found the frozen plain they say is at the very heart of Hell. We fought without sleep, without food, without shelter, without ammunition, without hope. We fought in the mist, rain, wind, frost, and snow that drifted to many times our heights. When a horse would no longer move, we ate it, slicing open its entrails and eating them quickly raw if no fire was handy, for otherwise they congealed into a mass of ice. The roads were glass, and the barrels of our muskets burned us as if white hot. I saw my men, who had been the cream of the III Corps, gladly take impossible risks, charging well-fed, well-shod Cossacks with plentiful ammunition with nothing but the bayonet and stock of the musket frozen in their hands, barefoot and starving. I admired them for their courage. I envied it. Because I had lost what I most cared for: the calculus of risk, and in its disregard, of bravery. That frimaire, I learned that nothing could end my life. As our numbers dwindled every day, I had to fight hand to hand myself, and many times I was worsted. I was frozen, burned, crushed, bombed, slashed, stabbed, buried alive, torn apart by dogs, shot, whipped, raped, beaten, and hanged. But though many times I died, I did not stay dead. Every time I fell, I rose up again the next day, like our Lord and Savior, like Lazarus. Those of my men who retained the capacity for thought found me uncanny and lost their regard for me. Some said le rougeaud drank blood or had no blood but frozen ice in his veins. Many knew the truth, and most sensed it. I was no longer human. As for me, the niceties of calculating limits had been my defining passion; now I found I had transcended the limit of death, and my life as a soldier lost its savor and its meaning to me. I was despondent. Nonetheless, I fulfilled our mission.

When it was found out that the Cossacks had seized the bridgehead at Borisow, I led the dire revenant of my cuirassiers, a few hundred skeletons riding skeletal horses, back out of the wilderness in time to save l’Empereur, who was trapped like a fat rabbit on the east bank of the Berezina, and the rest of the army from complete annihilation. We rode out of a blizzard and cleared the bridge. Few of the Russians would stand before us, our appearance by that time being exceedingly grim. Our withered bodies animated by sheer will, we kept on riding until we stumbled into the French camp. My men fell on their faces by the soup-fires, but I walked straight into the Emperor’s tent, knocking down the guard who challenged me and surprising the Emperor in the midst of playing a music-box while drinking a cup of cocoa. “Ney,” he exclaimed. “You are indeed le brave des braves. Someone, bring me a crown for the Prince of Moscow!” I almost forgot to kneel for my crowning, distracted by my fruitless search for the greatness that had once been so evident to me in the person of Bonaparte. Bonaparte made a beeline for Kovno but left half the men behind. I witnessed the calamity in its entirety. Soon after l’Empereur and his guard crossed, the Russians brought hidden batteries of mortars to bear on the tightly packed crowd of French stragglers. These miserable men were caught between cannon fire and the icy flood. There was a great panic of overturned wagons that blocked the way, and within minutes twenty thousand men were cut down where they stood or swallowed up by the river. On the road any man with fire was subject to immediate attack by abominable snow-men, their faces horribly disfigured and blackened by frostbite, who would attempt to slay with their numb and decaying hands anyone who stood between them and warmth. Such undead stragglers became a greater menace than the Cossacks. In Vilnius our men finally found beds to lie down in, but few ever got up again. The Cossacks came in the night and slaughtered Frenchmen in those beds like veal calves in their pens, too weak to put up any fight. I too was stabbed in my sleep, waking up with a sickle in my chest and a bearded savage with foul breath chuckling at my gushing blood. I woke up alive again, alone in an abattoir. The last border of Russian territory was the bridge at Kovno. There was no order by then; the Emperor had passed on with his Guard days earlier. Fools fled over the bridge with no thought of what might come Continued on page 25

after, that the Russian Bear might chase them further than the very threshold of its den. As the Russians came on, I grabbed a torch and the reigns of a powder-wagon. Though I was shot many times, my sapper’s charges went off most satisfactorily. The Bear roared from the far side, but a tiny fraction of our original strength did manage to get home. The English and those treacherous Prussians soon joined the Tsar in dismembering the Empire like a team of butchers working on a steer. Bonaparte became a desperate gambler chasing his losses; the other Marshals saw it too. In germinal, sprouting time, the Emperor gave the order to march on Paris itself, to wrest it back from our enemies. As he spoke visions of Moscow burning filled my head. “But of course, why not?” I said. “The conquest of great capitals is something we excel at, as evidenced by our triumph in my own principality of Moscow.” Bonaparte sucked in his breath, but the other Marshals nodded their heads. “Go on, my brother, you speak for the rest of us in this matter,” said Belissaires, a good chap. I stood up. “Bonaparte, it is over. You know it. Paris cannot burn. We must make terms.” His eyes so protruded from their sockets I feared they might burst like overripe fruit. “The army will obey its Emperor!” he said. I put my face right in his, so he could not help but look into my eyes and see within the horrors of my frimaire that are forever frozen and reflected there. “The Army will obey its chiefs,” I said, and thought it was done. L’Empereur was put away in Elba by the royalty of Europe like an embarrassing wedding gift stuffed into the back of a china-hutch, and they brought back the Bourbons, as inbred and imbecilic as ever. I was landed and given a peerage as a reward for my rebellion. I rode round the perimeter of my lands, seeking the shape of my new life. My thoughts were always of my monstrous transcendence of the human condition. I could no longer endure the society of my wife, or any woman. In my heart, as in Hell’s, was a howling, frozen abyss.

I awoke one day from a laudanum stupor to the frenzied banging of the Kings Men upon my chamber door. I was taken before the Chamber of Peers and told that Napoleon had fled Elba and was now an outlaw. Louis XVI himself asked me what might be done. I smiled at the powdered fop, a useless relic, and said: “I will bring him back to you in an iron cage.” At home, a letter waited for me. Bonaparte wrote he would receive me as after the Battle of Moscow. The letter was dated 17 ventôse, le jour du doronic, the flower also called Leopard’s Bane. I laughed until I cried. I met Bonaparte at Auxerre and fought by his side until we were bested at Waterloo by that Mason’s trowel Wellington. I was killed five times that day; I tried my best. But the thing Lazarus did not explain to me, or at least what I failed to understand, was the full price of his gift. Without the incentive of avoiding death to sharpen my judgment, I’d lost my skill to sense the high and low extremes. I could no longer pick the weak point in the line to charge and break a pike square. I howled my fury to the sky and stalked the field till midnight with my saber, when someone at last dragged me away, insensible, to await my arrest and conviction for treason. Why did I go back to L’Empereur? Because while I did not like him, I could not help but love a man who would overthrow the powdered, arrogant idiots. Yes, he was a vain thug, an over-proud bully with a heart of tin. It’s just that we live in such a limited world. Those limits, indeed, are what define us. If it was not so difficult to be great, or even good, men would cease to try. In the cold dark heart of the next frimaire, on jour du cèdre, the day of cedars, soldiers took me to the Luxembourg Garden to carry out the sentence of the Chamber of Peers. I spoke what I hoped would be my last words. “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her ... Soldiers, Fire!” I think now that my search, our search, for rationality above all else was over-narrow, if not fundamentally misguided. After all, what am I now but a spirit or ghost? Such a figure as all the spiritualists and charlatans claim walk among us. And so I do. But cannot matters of the spirit still be susceptible to logic and thought, and so to mathematics, the natural language of these? So I have spent my life since in such work.

But now my work is at a good ending point, and I am tired of teaching these stupid boys who could not solve a multivariable equation if their lives depended on it; which it will, if the battle between states is brewing here as I suspect. It takes math to aim cannon. Furthermore, I have seen questioning looks from long-time colleagues at my appearance, which is unchanged in age since the field of Borodino; most pointedly from a most unlikely amateur hagiographer, the dour Scotch Headmaster. I unguardedly confided my true name to him after an evening of talk and drink. He is a curious man, with much lore of forgotten saints that, though it would have been ridiculous to me when I wore the leopard’s cape, now seems intriguing as I wear the scholar’s mantle. But he hungers for more knowledge of me and sometimes hints at what he may have guessed. I should do well to depart before he subjects me to questions I would not answer. Other actors may also be at work backstage in this play that is my life: spilled corn that draws the dove will also call the crow. Rumor must somehow have spread. I have recently received a letter “in the strictest confidence” from a Professor at a certain New England University, asking for an interview and hinting at some special knowledge I might be able to impart with regards to secrets of longevity. The request fills me with dread. I seek knowledge of myself, but I have no desire to impart that knowledge to others or to wait here until caught like a prize beast in a trap and find the raven’s beak probing the secrets behind my eyes.

Second, that he is an immortal, alive some eighteen hundred years afterwards, or at least that he returns to life from death, as the hunting stick of the Australian savage does when thrown. Third, that he was somehow given the power to raise the dead as he had been raised (this I know as fact beyond a doubt). Fourth, that his rationalist sensibility is such that he experiments with his situation and by resurrection assembles of the dead a menagerie of outliers, persons that reflect the limits of various aspects of the human condition. Fifth, as motivation for this, that he is attempting to derive the nature of Almighty God from the admixture of the above specimens, as the Creator can be conceived of as the integral of man. Beyond this, I shall give up mere verbal constructions of these speculations. However, as a reward to you, the student or scholar who has bothered to read this note so far, I bequeath an epistemological proof I have composed, along the lines of my conjectures above, for the existence of God. Accepting that such a belief is susceptible to logical demonstration requires much bravery. An existent God is the author of the miraculous Olympian machine that is the world – but a machine which, like Zeus, is sustained through the consumption of infants and innocence. Though poor Bonaparte, a Prometheus who could not as I do re-grow his liver, was then wrong when he said I was, today I prove I am the bravest of the brave. Archivist’s Note: The proof mentioned in the text was unfortunately missing.

The man suggested we meet in what I still call fructidor, my favorite time of year, the time of anticipation. But by then I will be gone, gone from Carolina and this afterlife of scholarship. My inquiries after the Russian Count Pyotr Bezukhov, whose name I borrowed, have been so uniformly fruitless that I now believe this “Count Pierre Kirilovich Bezukhov” to be an entirely fictional creation. Nevertheless, my thoughts have returned to Russia, as the stories I hear of bearded holy men who live there for hundreds of years have piqued my interest. Perhaps I can meet them and inquire of my brief acquaintance Monsieur Lazarus. I have long considered his words and those of his fictitious companion, and in combination with datum I have drawn from my own experiences I have concocted the following set of scarcely-creditable inferences. First, that Monsieur Lazarus at least is just who he names himself to be, the man raised from the dead by Christ.

Oscar the Boy Who Loved Asparagus continued from page 9 By Brian Flueckiger

daddy. When his family watched their weekly Saturday evening movie, he ate asparagus with his popcorn. Oscar’s mommy and daddy found it a little strange that he loved asparagus so much, but they were so proud that his favorite food was a vegetable that would help him grow-up healthy and strong. One September morning, Oscar woke up very excited; today would be his first day of kindergarten. Oscar couldn’t wait to go to his new school to make some new friends, learn to read, and color with finger paints. Most of all, Oscar was excited to take lunch to school in his new lunch box. For the first day of school, Oscar’s parents helped him pack his lunch. His daddy made him a cheese sandwich. His mommy cut up some apple slices. Oscar helped by placing a box of milk into his new lunch box. Finally, Oscar’s mommy asked what he would like for his dessert. Oscar had his choice of a chocolate chip cookie, vanilla pudding cup, or gummi bears. However, there was only one thing that Oscar wanted for his dessert; asparagus! Oscar’s parents still thought this was a little strange, but they did not want to take away from his excitement for the first day of school, so they cut some bite size sticks of asparagus for his dessert. Oscar’s first day of kindergarten started out great. That morning, he met her new teacher Ms. Holly. Oscar then made three new friends that were sitting at his classroom table; their names were Owen, Margot, and Scott. Oscar spent his first morning of kindergarten by finger-painting fireflies, singing his ABCs, and listening to Ms. Holly read a book about a friendly dragon. After Ms. Holly finished the story, she announced that it was time for lunch. Oscar was having a wonderful time eating and laughing with Owen, Margot, and Scott when it was time for dessert. Owen, Margot, and Scott each pulled a chocolate cupcake out of their lunch boxes. Scott asked Oscar what he brought for dessert and he excited took out the asparagus from his lunch box. Owen, Margot, and Scott soon began laughing, “Silly Oscar, asparagus is not a dessert!” they said together. Oscar could not believe it; feeling sad, he placed the asparagus back in his lunch box without eating a bite.

“Oscar, what’s the matter?” asked Ms. Holly. “My new friends laughed at me for bringing asparagus in my lunch.” said Oscar. “Owen, Margot, Scott; is this true?” asked Ms. Holly “Yes, Ms. Holly” said Owen. “Asparagus is not a dessert; it doesn’t have any sugar in it.” “And its gross” said Margot. “How could asparagus be anyone’s favorite food” said Scott. Ms. Holly asked the entire class if they had ever tried asparagus before; only Oscar raised his hand. Ms. Holly explained to the class that asparagus was not gross, but actually a very healthy and unique food. Ms. Holly asked if Oscar still had the asparagus he brought for lunch. Oscar opened his lunch box and took out the asparagus. Ms. Holly took a piece of asparagus and ate it in front of the entire class. When she was finished, Ms. Holly explained that not only did she like asparagus, but that it contained many vitamins and nutrients that would help keep her healthy and strong. Then Ms. Holly said, “Oscar, there is nothing to be ashamed about asparagus being your favorite food. It’s what makes you special”. Owen, Margot, and Scott then felt bad about teasing Oscar at lunch; they asked if they could try some of the asparagus he brought to class. Oscar gave them each a small piece. After trying the asparagus, Oscar’s friends could not believe their surprise, asparagus tasted delicious. Soon everyone in Oscar’s class wanted to try some asparagus. Oscar was so happy to see his entire class eating his favorite food. Oscar went home that day and told his family all about his first day of kindergarten. Oscar learned that everyone had something unique about them that made them special. Oscar was proud that having asparagus as his favorite food was what made him special. The next day, Oscar once again had lunch with Owen, Margot, and Scott. When it was time for dessert, Oscar once again took out asparagus from his lunch box. He then asked his friends what they brought for dessert and each one of them took asparagus from their lunch boxes as well. From that day, asparagus became the official vegetable of Ms. Holly’s class and Oscar became known throughout Greenville as the boy who loved asparagus. The End.

After lunch, Ms. Holly began teaching the class about shapes and colors when she saw Oscar looking sad.

Appendix

Hirschfeld, Arik, New York

Nunn, Luke, New York

Taddei, Jackie, New York

36 Chambers, Drawing, pg 10. 36 Chambers - A study of acute angles playing around the degrees of a compass. There is no planned outcome, only that I stay within certain parameters such as the use of 6 colors as a factor of 36/360.

A Foot in the Head, Poem, pg 7. Written a few years ago at roughly 3am, after being woken for the second time in the fashion described in the title. I read it to a friend later that morning. Her response was, “I cursed the lack of sleep at the time, but now I really miss those days. They grow up so fast.” At the time, nursing a very strong coffee, I thought she was insane. However, now that it almost never happens any more, I wholeheartedly agree. They’re only young once. Cherish every minute of it while the wonder lasts.

Danielle Maria 1997, Poem, pg 20. I wrote this poem while I was 6 months pregnant with my first child. I wanted my daughter or son (turned out to be a daughter, Danielle Maria) to know in the future what I was feeling for them at that moment.

Kinsella, Alysia, Chicago Alvarez, Juan, New York Diet Peach Ice Tea, Collage, pg. 4. Paper collage made for “Beverage” series. Each collage is named after the drink I was having at the time.

Flower Study in Metal, Sculpture, pg 13. The process to complete this small flower was quite complex and included clay, wax, silicone and plaster molds and melting aluminum to pour into the final mold.

Penguin Motivation, Video, pg. 11. An excerpt of “Tranquilo”, a serialized collage visual album shared on the Instagram Stories platform.

Kujac, Timothy, Santa Monica

Amargo, Video, pg. 21. An excert of “Tranquilo” a visual album shared biweekly via Instagram stories. Casesa, John, New York Untitled, 2015, Photograph, pg 17. Dewing, Joseph, Indianapolis Illusion in Wood, Woodwork, pg 9. This project was created because I like 3D illusions and wanted to try something new. I was inspired by something similar online and had some old pallet wood sitting around so I gave it a try. This piece was eventually sold to a business owner who’s logo is a similar design. It is now hanging in the main hallway of his office building. Flueckiger, Brian, Chicago Oscar the Boy Who Loved Asparagus, Short Story, pg 9. This is a children’s story I wrote for my daughter. The story is derived from a bedtime story told by my mother (to help with my picky eating as a child). Francisco, Monica, New York Guava Fruit Vendor, Digital Painting, pg 12. Drawn from a photograph taken by my daughter, while she was on vacation in Vietnam. This was done through the Ipad app called “PAPER”, a stylus called “53”, and my fingers.

Santa Monica Pier Sunset, Photograph, pg 3. Nothing like an ocean pier with a ferris wheel! This is a photograph of the Santa Monica pier from the sand just to the south. Taken with a full frame 12mm lens with an aperture booster on a Fujifilm X-T20 APSC digital camera. This is a long exposure at 30 seconds with one 10 stop ND filter and one 4 stop reverse gradient ND filter on top. The image has had no post processing, this is as it was taken on 1/3/2019. Lopez, Debbie, New York Semi-Pro Latin Dance Performance: Bachata and Tango, Dance Performance, pg 5. I’ve been dancing different styles of dance since I was six. Currently, I’m on a Semi-Pro Bachatango (Bachata and Tango) performance team. Here is a big performance I did at an International Latin dance event in NYC that was huge, literally, with over 2,000 people in attendance, 2 jumbo screens, and it was live-streamed around the world! I was terrified and having fun at the same time, but I was determined to make myself, and my world champion instructor, proud!

Nature, Painting, pg 6. Nature brings you joy and peace of mind.

Of My Grandmother’s House, Poem, pg 19. In loving memory of my grandmother. Warner, Zachariah, New York Untitled, Painting, pg 6. Untitled. 2019.

Don’t Protest Rain Through Umbrella, Painting, pg 20.

Zasky, Alexander, Chicago

Statler, Krystle May, Santa Monica

Dragonfly, Photograph, pg 10. Another guest encountered this summer at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Untitled for BJ, Poem + Performance, pg 16. A performance of the poem for my brother, BJ.

First Forever Christmas, Music Video, pg 14. Original song and video “First Forever Christmas” by HelenaMaria.

Twin #1, Digital Painting, pg 22. I can’t draw eyes well (yet). So all my people are wearing sunglasses, or have eyes closed. This was done through the Ipad app called “PAPER”, a stylus called “53”, and my fingers.

Miller, John, Santa Monica

The Twin Towers, Painting, pg 12.

Srinivasan, Raghunath, Chennai

Sketch in Oil, Painting, pg 15. This was a 20 minute pose with a lovely model.

Live My Life for Me, Music Video, pg 8. Original song and video “Live My Life For Me” by HelenaMaria.

Easy, Music Video, pg 18. Original song and video “Easy” by HelenaMaria.

Leor the Light, Painting, pg 7.

reuse//recycle, Music, pg 15. reuse//recycle: An experiment in creating generative ambient music by modulating simple melodic patterns over time.

One Day, Poem, pg 4. This came from a meditation.

Mehalis,Helena, Santa Monica

Sabtang Lighthouse, Digital Painting, pg 19. Lighthouse on Sabtang Island, Batanes, Philippines.

Henry, Sherika, New York

Pitman, Nick, New York

Titus, Jane, New York

Warmth, Music, pg 17. From a 2016 jazz duo project with pianist Scott Roberts. Inertia, Music pg 22. From a 2016 jazz duo project with pianist Scott Roberts. David Milstein, Rockville The Proof of Bravery, Short Story, pg 13. Historical fiction.