The Woven Tale Press Vol. II #8 by The Woven Tale Press

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The Woven Tale Press

Vol. II #8

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in Writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. http://www.awriterweavesatale.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. http://michaeldickel.info Kelly Garriott Waite Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Thunderbird Stories Project, Volume One, Valley Living, The Center for a New American Dream and in the on-line magazine, Tales From a Small Planet. Her fiction has been published in The Rose and Thorn Journal (Memory, Misplaced), in Front Row Lit (The Fullness of the Moon) and in Idea Gems Magazine (No Map and No Directions). Her works in progress have been included in the Third Sunday Blog Carnival: The Contours of a Man’s Heart and Wheezy Hart. She is the author of Downriver and The Loneliness Stories, both available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://kellygarriottwaite.com

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Dyane Forde Author of forthcoming Rise of the Papilion Trilogy: The Purple Morrow (Book 1) http://droppedpebbles.wordpress.com Adrienne Kerman Freelance writer and editor, her essays have appeared in multiple magazines, as well as in The Boston Globe and Washington Post. She has authored a weekly parenting column, MomsTalk, for the Boston area AOL/Patch sites. http://mintsinmymotherspurse.blogspot.com Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D Freelance writer, editor, theatre director, and arts educator. She has published non-fiction articles in theater journals, as well articles aimed at young people for Listen Magazine. Her fiction is included in Theme-Thology: Invasion published by HDWPBooks. com. She is the director of a writers’ workshop From Stage to Page: Using Creative Dramatics to Inspire Writing. http://www.lisaakramer.com LeoNard Thompson Has published opinion editorials, weekly columns and essays, and interviewed performers, practitioners, writers, politicians and personalities. http://leeyonard.com ARTS: Seth Apter Mixed-media artist, instructor, author and designer. His artwork has been widely exhibited, and represented in numerous books, independent zines, and national magazines. He is the voice behind The Pulse, a series of international, collaborative projects, the basis of his two books The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed and The Mixed-Media Artist: Art Tips, Tricks, Secrets and Dreams From Over 40 Amazing Artists, both published by North Light Books. He is the artist behind two workshop DVDs: Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques and Easy Mixed Media Techniques for the Art Journal. http://www.sethapter.com PHOTOGRAPHY: Lynn Wohlers Awarded BFA from School of Visual Arts, NY, NY; writer for Daily Post’s Photography 101 series. http://lynn-wohlers.artistwebsites.com

Our staff is an eclectic mix of editors with keen eyes for the striking. So beware â&#x20AC;&#x201C; they may be culling your own site for those gems deserving to be unearthed and spotlit in The Woven Tale Press.

Editor’s Note: The Woven Tale Press is a monthly culling of the creative web, exhibiting the artful and innovative. So enjoy here an eclectic mix of the literary, visual arts, photography, humorous, and offbeat. The Woven Tale Press mission is to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers and artists–contributors are credited with interactive Urls rather than names. readers should click on an Url to learn more about a contributor. Click on a “Featured!” button to read more about a contributor on The Woven Tale Press site. To submit go to: http://thewoventalepress.net

http://www.sethapter.com/content/home

Found Object Art

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Combines found objects with painting, collage, and/or sculptural assemblage

Certain

Featur

Point of Vew

Explore

With Care

Sundial (Mixed Media Book Page)

http://deinafurth.com

The Guide

It was one of those sleeps when your mind wakes up before your body does. I felt hot again. Considering I was now at the age when hot flashes can begin to taunt a woman daily, this might very well have been my initiation into menopause, and boy howdy, it was starting off with a bang. I wailed. At least, I think I did. It was a weird, half-asleep sound injected with the unique fury of a woman whose body felt as if it were ablaze with violently perishing estrogen. My eyes finally popped open, and the whole room was lit in a soft adobe glow. Oh my God, was my house on fire? I shoved the blankets, sweat-soaked and discomfortingly heavier than they should have been, off my body, kicking my legs furiously as if the covers themselves were the culprit burning my skin. Pushing my wet hair from my eyes, I sat up, and on the art-deco dresser across the room, there was a beautiful, old-fashioned birdcage. It was on fire. And I don’t have a bird. I clutched my stomach. This wasn’t fair. No one had told me about the hallucinations! I had cramps, so maybe this was my body’s way of telling me hey, fuck you. Fuck you for never putting babies in me, or for never bothering to…I don’t know, honor me through that new-age period blood “art.” You ignored me, so I’ll go out in a blaze of glory and make you look nutso. I win. What was I thinking? I was talking to my uterus. And apparently it’s a bitch. I squinted, trying to discern the cause of the fire, but it was contained to the birdcage. Curious. Then I saw the wings. They were spread out slowly, as a lazy bird would do after a nap. I stretched too, my nightgown clinging to my damp skin. Hey, I looked sort of like I had 4

wings in that gross old thing. “Am I going nuts?” I asked, yawning. They say you’re only crazy when you start answering yourself, right? “No, you’re just preparing,” came the voice from the birdcage. It sounded the way gold looks–beautiful, shiny, enticing, maddening. It was altogether unearthly. “Preparing for what?” I said, lowering my arms and crossing them over my pelvis. I didn’t trust it. The bird or my body. The bird lowered its wings, and the fire dulled to a flickering little candle flame. I could see it—a red bird with golden scales on its belly, eyes big as golfballs and black as tar. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and to be honest, it wasn’t anything that I ever wanted to see again. If this was a nightmare, it was a damn bizarre one. “For your journey,” the bird replied. When it spoke, its long downward-curving beak clacked like two shells rubbed together, and a blue serpentine tongue darted out and back in again, almost too quickly to be noticed. But my gaze didn’t linger on that; a siltlike material was sliding down the bird’s back and falling to the bottom of the cage, where it piled up like sand in an hourglass. “What journey? What are you?” My voice came out sounding much smaller than I’d anticipated. I clutched at my nightrobe, feeling colder than I had a moment ago. The bird turned its head to the side, spreading its wings again. It fixed its beady void of an eye on me. The hair on the back of my neck fought against my drenched locks to stand up. A bleakness had seeped unnoticed into the room, and I couldn’t stop it. “Your journey to your new world,” the bird said, fluffing its wings as if to emphasize its words. More sandy stuff fell from the feathers, piling higher around the bird’s scaly legs. “I’ve come to lead you there, when you’re ready.” “You’re a bird that I’ve never seen, in a birdcage I’ve never owned, and you talk and you’re on fire,” I said shakily. My hands felt cold. I tried to wet my tongue but it seemed all my saliva had dried up in the heat. “I don’t know what’s happening to me....” The bird flapped its wings, rising proudly from its perch. Its body passed through the bars as if there were no bars at all, as if through a hologram. More sandy material cascaded to the surface below. Its feathers were sparse now, and I could see patches of scalded, red and black skin picked clean of any down whatsoever. 5

I realized then that it wasn’t silt, or sand, or dust that fell from its body. It was ashes. The bird was dying. My eyes stung as if tears were about to come, but they didn’t. I watched as the bird glided across the room, closing the gap between us swiftly, its flaming body casting a soft orange light against the wall like a lantern in the dark. I could see now that my bed was covered in blood; my nightgown stained red. I let out a yelp, clawing at the fabric, trying to discern the origin of the fluid. It was smeared across my thighs and down the insides of my knees. I tried to scream. I couldn’t. My mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. The bird hovered over me, its ashes caking into my blood, its body withering to a husk of the glorious creature it had been, right before my eyes. It opened its beak once more. “The next life awaits you,” it said, its voice still enticing and smooth. “The cancer is gone. You’re safe now.” At this, I relaxed. I leaned into my pillow. Black dots dabbed at the corners of my vision. “Thank you,” I murmured. The unease melted into relaxation as a blanket of ashes covered me and eased me into a deep sleep.

http://lagill6.wordpress.com

Pebb

Patter

and

A walk along a pebble beach can provide an abundance of material for the creation of abstract pictures. I would stop and photograph a small area at my feet. But no two pebbles are exactly alike; there are considerable variations in size, shape, color, pattern and texture. Zooming in on these variations is how my abstract images originated. A

Textu

bles,

ures

Beach Abstract 1

Beach Abstract 2

http://littlewritelies.com

Like This

p to t, offering it u u -o e id s in a ll er umbre She flipped h gather rain. to y d a re p u c the sky like a “What are you

doing?”

to get out of t h g u o th ’t n e birds that hav d upwards, e n n ri g d n “Catching the a aid e hail,” she s d. the way of th occupied han n u r e h h it w e fac shielding her rver of the doo o c e th m o fr !” I shouted “You’ll get hurt way. ll“I’ve already fa . id a s e h s ,” ff y worse o “I won’t be an en.” ee her bent s ld u o c I , e k turned to m er raincoat, h f o m o tt With her bac o b e ket. g out from th ard in her poc w k wings peekin w a d n a n alo hidde her cracked h

When the Ele

phants

Flash Fiction: 100 Words or Less

Brok L

e oose Unlike the res t of the people at the zoo, yo away–when th u and I ran to ey broke from ward the elep their enclosure escaped capti hants – not . They were o vity and they d d s ly tu calm for havin died us as we reading over g just our intent. drew up in fro nt of them, th eir eyes They saw wh at we wanted –needed–and found their ca bowed their lloused skin, giant heads. and ran over until now, but Our hands their fearful tu we had need s k s e . d W th e hadn’t reali our own giant is; we had ne zed it fears. eded their ma mmoth size to dwarf 10

http://www.yvonnecoomber.com

Heart of the Forest

Seduced by color, I perceive the world accordingly. My palette is blazing, lyrical and soft by turns, with hot, vibrant and cooler hues inspired by the many journeys I have made. I almost always work outside, so howling gales and gentle breezes have as much influence on my painting as lacy ice and scorching sunshine. The weather, in a very immediate way, directs the end result of the image. I throw, rub, dribble and pour oils onto linen canvas before using sponges, rags, palette knives, brushes and my fingers to create finer details. My paintings are a dance.

Poppies

Bliss

You Bring My Heart Love

http://timwilkinson.blogspot.com

Robin Egg Blue

It was early spring, too early for fatted cats gorged on baby robins to lull about beneath the spotted shade cast by the newly emerged redbud leaves. Yet it was the time of callous winds, bearing neither winter’s fading chill, nor summer’s imminent promise of harsh and tepid warmth, alternating undecidedly between either sentiment, ever capricious, indifferent and coy. The color of light summer skies, bleached and washed with drifting cloud and morning mist, the egg lay beneath a towering elm. Shielded from the sun by the tree’s arching folds and sheltered from the rains by a canopy of green, it sat safe and undisturbed. Shaken and blown from the nest by the returning southern gales, it sat alone amid the padding patch of fresh and tender growth, defenseless, nestled and supported by the early sprouts and stretching blades of rain-coddled grass. Robin egg blue, it caught Timmy’s attentive eye. Though not as obvious as the plumes of the red cardinals, boldly silhouetted against the backdrop of jade-toned leaves, or as imminently visible as the deep, royal blue jackets of the jays or the pristine white vests adorning the doves, he spied it nonetheless. For as blue is but the sister to green, and green but the blush of the earth and the sea, it blended nicely, tucked and cushioned upon the verdant matt, invisible to all but the eyes of a curious, inquisitive boy. And despite the fact that he’d nearly crushed it beneath the pink-toned flesh of his bare and nimble feet, Timmy caught its subtle shades, knew its form and purpose and from whence it surely came. Why blue he pondered, sitting cross-legged beside it, thoughtfully admiring its delicate shape and diminutive size. Of all the colors available, why robin egg blue he asked in silent review. Why not brown, mottled and spotted with earthy tones and bits of green and gray to camouflage its presence from the coons and possums, snakes and troublesome jays? Why not sandy bronze, with speckled tans like the eggs the plovers and sandpipers lay in tiny, elusive nests upon the open ground, or clustered tightly together amid the stones and dried grasses at the water’s edge? Robin egg blue seemed such a poor choice for a helpless egg set high in a tree surrounded by dappled leaves, gnarled and furrowed bark, branch and tawny twig. Timmy pondered this question long and hard. Even at his young and tender age, having gleaned but the barest intimations of the natural world and the wonders beyond the 15

bounds of his own backyard and the sparse tracts of beach and woods near his home and school, he knew that the world and its god did little without purpose or measured intent. How long Timmy sat there contemplating the egg, he could not have said. Yet, it was little enough time for him to be irritated upon hearing his name called loudly from behind. “Timmy! Timmy, come in now. There’s someone here I want you to meet,” came the insistent cry from the screened back porch, breaking the observant silence and the absorbing flow of his dreamy thoughts. Unhappily, he duly obeyed, rising slowly before turning from his intriguing discovery towards the repeated call of his mother’s voice. “Timmy,” began his mother, standing beside the polished yellow, pine-topped table in the small breakfast nook. “I want you to meet my sister, Rose, from California. She’s your aunt. She’ll be staying with us for a while.” Looking up, he saw the familiar face of his mother gazing down. Yet it was not his mother’s face, not really, for she stood just behind him, to one side. He paused briefly, confused perhaps yet not overly concerned, and of course being eager to finish this chore and return to his berth in the soft, cool grass, he accepted the oddity without question. “And this,” said his mother turning him to the left as the image of his other mother tugged at a small form standing just behind her. “This is Cheri, your cousin.” “Cousin?” he thought, “Aunt?” Having never heard these words before and therefore having no expectations, Timmy only smiled with surprise as a petite and shy little figure appeared suddenly before him. Clinging to her mother, her eyes turned away, Cheri appeared, coaxed with patient firmness until she stood nervously before him. As she stepped forward, her face lit with a light both beguiling and beautiful, something inside him seemed to snap, yet not a snap as of something breaking, more a snap as of something new coming to life. To him she looked somewhat younger, a head shorter, her face softer and her lips a touch redder. Her shoulder length hair of wispy, silken blond, stirred with strawberry pinks and mulberry reds, seemed to float about the eggshell white of her face and shoulders, as if it too feared and shied from the polished, faultless touch of her skin.. For the briefest of moments, they both simply stared. Her eyes darting bashfully away, his drawn towards the ever-brightening sheen of her flawless features; the odd scattering of freckles about her pert, slight nose, the light, garnet toned hues of her eyebrows 16

and the contrasting blackness of her full lashes, each highlighting her wonderfully inexplicable appeal. Looking up, her eyes finding his, a tiny grin spreading across the fullness of her cherry-toned lips, he suddenly knew. He stood motionless for a time, able only to stare in rapt, enamored delight, his disbelief both wondrous and raw. Here was the answer. And as if to confirm his suspicions he looked upwards, examining the eyes of his mother, then those of his aunt before returning his gaze to the wide and spacious orbs of the angel before him. There it was and all so plain, so obvious. How had he missed it before, he puzzled, knowing well that the question mattered little, now that he had the answer. Cheri gazed back at him, her shyness quickly fading as he stepped boldly before her. “Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand, gently tugging and guiding her away towards the door that led out to the backyard. “I have something to show you.”

http://yuanspoetry.blogspot.ca

An Allegory – of Power/Food Chain The Atlantic cod, living upon Herring and like, upon Krill, upon Plankton That is, when the cold water of the gulf stream Meets the warm water of the Labrador currents

She hesitated for only a moment, saying nothing as he pulled her his way. Then stepping forward, her eyes bright, eager and questioning, she turned to look at her mother, then back to Timmy, wrapping her fingers about his with a light and assuring squeeze. “Don’t worry,” he added. “It’s something pretty. You’ll like it. I know why now,” he added, gazing deeply into the light, sky blue of her eyes, the same sky blue he saw mirrored in the eyes of his mother and aunt. With Cheri’s hand in his, Timmy guided her towards the back of the yard where grew the tall elms. Sitting beside her in the cool of the deep shade, he pointed up to where a woven nest of dried and stringy grass hung over the edge of one high branch, and then down to the ground where the tiny egg lay. “Robin egg blue,” he said. “I know now. It’s the color of love.”

What Is an Antiself a young willow trying to hold its shadow firm an old mouse making love with an alien cat a stone rolling downhill in front of its own soul

http://artfetch.com/pages/aukusti-heinonen

Reflections

Aukusti Heinonenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Reflections series explores memory and time, as well as mirageâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;those illusions of sight, which the artist describes as an allegory for our willingness to find what we want, in what we see. Heinonen layers images and re-photographs the results.

Sight/Shimmer 2013

Out of Reach, 2012

Trace 2013

http://artfetch.com/pages/eleanor-cunningham

A Distant Situation

A Prolonged Gaze 21

Have a Look

Eleanor Cunningham adds the physical stuff of actual water, salt and different photographic processes to her images of the interiors of old houses and stately homes. She draws the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention to the relative fragility of what once was considered a permanent visual record: the photograph. 22

http://chaosgirlandtherealworld.wordpress.com

I Had a Home in Africa

When I turned twelve, I was in a country a world away from where I was growing up. My family had been spending a sabbatical year in the U.S., New England mostly. It had been a year of travel, and immense and varied landscapes, of being popular at school for the first time on account of being “foreign,” of having an “exotic” accent, and eating with both a knife and fork. In Connecticut we’d lived in a house on a lake, a wooden house, with a fireplace that actually worked. There was a real forest across the road, and in winter, snow and ice, in autumn, trees that turned brilliant colors and dropped their leaves, changing the landscape entirely–utterly different from Africa. When we returned to Africa a few months after my twelfth birthday, we returned to the house where I had been born. I continue to live there until I married. It was a beautiful house, really, with leaded-light windows, high ceilings, solid walls, a pitched roof and bricked exterior overgrown with a small-leafed creeper. The bedrooms were up a winding flight of stairs–parquet as were all the floors in the house–with loose rattling steps. The rattling wasn’t eerie, though; the house was too full of noise and family for ghosts who would have left for more hauntable pastures. My mother always said that the house was too small for us, though. I suppose because there were six of us and only three bedrooms. It didn’t seem small to me, and in any case, I loved that house growing up just for being what it was: the place where we’d always lived. Being the only girl child, I was privileged with a bedroom all to myself. I hated it. My brothers and I, when we had shared a room in our younger years, had spent many hours whispering after lights-out, and playing games shining torchlights up at the ceiling. I got used to the room eventually, though, however tiny but with the best view in the house. The house was situated on a ridgeline, and the back of the house faced an undeveloped landscape of valleys and hills. Later on, squatter settlements would spring up in the bush, and the regular calls of the muezzins drifting over from the mosques would be interspersed with the sound of automatic gunfire stuttering up from the valley. But before that, I’d look out from my window, especially on moonlit nights (because the moon also 23

laid claim to that valley) and think of Mowgli and his jungle. It wasn’t that far-fetched a fantasy. As youngsters, it was drummed into us to look out for mambas and boomslangs and black widow spiders. I remember a king cobra being discovered under our hedge by a very jumpy gardener. Gangs of vervet monkeys regularly raided our suburban gardens for fruit–one bite of each before it was dropped to the ground. Once, I attempted to shoo off a monkey from the avocado tree with an ineffectual waving of my arms. The cheeky blighter, affronted, came chattering angrily down the branch towards me, her reprimand more persuasive than mine. I scuttled back into the kitchen and shut the door. There was a night when a man was killed outside the gates of that house. I heard the shot, a clap which made me jump, but I couldn’t place the sound. I would have forgotten about it, except for the adults hastening out at the sound of the sirens. I followed them, pulled by a horrified curiosity, until my mother noticed me padding alongside her in the dark. I was secretly relieved to be sent back into the house. Another time years later, when I was alone in the big house with its iron bars on every downstairs window, I spied a squad of policemen armed with automatic weapons, advancing through the garden. I was happy to see them, actually. A man had knocked on the door ostensibly looking for work, but I hadn’t seen him leave the property, so as I’d been trained, I was suspicious. As it turned out, a nosey neighbor had seen the same stranger arrive but not leave, and equally suspicious, had been the one to call the police. No sign of the man was ever found, and the sergeant looked either disappointed or annoyed to have been called out for nothing. But in those days, life was steeped in bloody horror stories of violence and paranoia. We lived like strangers and conquerors of the land, locked up behind walls and burglar guards against the barbarian hordes. Bravado isn’t lack of fear. I guess that’s why you needed a squad of armed men to confront a lone intruder. When I left that house in the autumn of ’94 to begin a dysfunctional family life of my own, it was in the throes of our international move. Within six months, our family had relocated across the world to New Zealand. In the commotion of immigration, the sadness of not only leaving home but saying goodbye to it forever, barely registered. In the years since, StreetView has allowed me to walk down those familiar roads again, even though I’ve never been back–the technological magic of the warlock Google. The property has been transformed now, from a family home to something fortress-like. There’s a sense of disconnect, of loss, the distortion of a memory – but it’s an acceptable loss. While no house can ever replace a childhood home, life goes on. 24

http://www.annawojtczak.com/index.html

Pen and Ink

Weight

Seeds

End of World Restaurant

Meeting Weena

http://artofchad.wordpress.com

Geometric Expressionism My journey towards creating a theoretical manifesto for Geometric Expressionismâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; the use of geometry to influence the emotional engagement with artâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;went against dominant 20th century trends; the Euro American painting tradition was a retreat from logic in the pursuit of emotion. It commenced with the fauve movement, the intensification of emotion via the use of bold colors. After fauvism came expressionism, addressing that intensification via abstraction of the real. The abstract expressionists believed that any reference to reality at all corrupted pure emotion. Black squares by Kasmir Malevich and orange rectangles by Mark Rothko brought audiences to tears. Instead of liberating emotion, I wanted to restrain it in order to re-infuse a concept and logic. Ironically, I had noticed that a restraint of emotion with geometric forms could increase emotional tension.

Evolution of the Hand (2000) (My first Geometric Expressionist painting) 29

Braddo, John (2000)

Braddo, John (2000) was my next Geometric Expressionist painting. I had become friends with John after he bought some of my paintings and asked me to paint him. Rather than paint what he looked like, I painted the feelings I got from him. Again, I felt restraint in himself and in how I saw him.

City Strip

While living in various inner city suburbs of Sydney, I again found myself gravitating towards a geometric style. The areas were home to Sydney’s corporate offices, but also its red light districts, night life and housing commission flats. At night time, the city showed a face that was not the face typically shown on tourist postcards. I didn’t seriously start considering any theoretical impact of geometry until around 2007. I drew a doodle that made me think of a servant. After I filled the doodle out with color, I realized that the image reminded me of a cross between the Dr. Who Cyberman and Alberto, the assassin from Scarface. The fact that I would be reminded of two different characters that looked nothing alike got me hypothesizing about the brain perhaps coding memories as a combination of symbols, colours and shapes. For example, when we think of a Cyberman, we might create an image from a set of building blocks which may later be used to create another character with a large percentage of the same building blocks. Furthermore, whatever image we create will perhaps be biased towards emotional memory over visual memory. In other words, we don’t remember what something looks like as much as we remember what something feels like.

The Orange Man

The Horror The Horror

Three Barons

The Sugar Daddy

Son of Man

http://squidmcfinnigan.blogspot.ie

The Baker Street Boys...

Some couples are blessed with children, some would beg to differ. The Casey’s of Baker Street were legendary throughout the city of Limerick in the fifties and sixties. Mr. Casey ran a butcher shop with his father. When he married Lucy O’Neill, a perfect storm of fertility was unleashed on the city. Within a year they were blessed with a bouncing baby boy, closely followed by bouncing twin boys. In short the kids kept bouncing out until their little house was splitting at the seams, every one of them boys. By the time the Casey’s moved to Baker Street, there were nine rambunctious little rascals tagging along between the ages of four and twelve, including two sets of twins, one identical, one not. The house the Casey’s moved to was a three story townhouse. It backed directly onto a row of single story, crofter cottages that had been there long before the city grew around them. Baker Street was never the same after that day. All of the Casey boys had been blessed with vivid imaginations. They could turn any stick into a gun, any hole in the ground into a castle. There wasn’t a bad bone in one of them, but their high spirits often bordered on riotous. One of their favorite places was the roof of their house. The older boys soon found out that they could climb out of the skylight on the back of the house and into the gully in the roof. From there they had a vantage point over the whole city, all the way to the banks of the Shannon. They played spy, soldier, and knight up there. They soon found they could clamber down the drainpipe, on to the boundary wall which separated their tiny back yard from the little row of houses behind them. From there it was only a scamper over the roofs and a short drop into Farmers Lane.

This was years before the term “Health and Safety” sucked the joy out of life. Back then, an adult’s reaction on seeing a troop of pre-teen boys clambering down the outside of a three-story building was less “Oh my God, they will be killed” and more “Oh my God, I’m going to kill them.” To the people who lived in the little cottages, the thunder of hobnail shoes crossing their roofs became common place. The only one who ever complained was old Mr. Ryan. He was a grumpy old sod who lived directly behind the Casey’s house. One day after a particularly exuberant game of Cops and Robbers followed by a rooftop chase, Mr. Ryan tuned up at Mr. Casey’s shop, hopping mad. When Mr. Casey got home, he rounded up all the boys and read them the riot act. He stopped their pocket money and took away all their comics for two weeks. Two weeks! Having your comics taken for a week in the 37

The Murder of Crows sixties was the equivalent of shutting off both the TV and the Internet toady. That night, the Casey boys held a meeting in Eoin’s bedroom after dinner. They decided that they’d had enough of Mr. Cranky Pants Ryan. Eoin had a plan, all he needed was a twenty-thousand tonne container ship full of corn and a few other odds and ends. Two days later a very similar ship pulled into Limerick City Harbour. And with grain shipments came crows. Lots of crows. That evening the Casey boys ran home from school like their tails were on fire. Soon the whole clan had gathered on the Baker Street roof. Dozens of crows were perched on the roofs and chimneys all around them. The birds didn’t seem to be bothered by the smoke coming from Mr. Ryan’s house. Eoin had his catapult with him, a prized possession. His little brother Eamon handed over a fistful of ball bearings he had salvaged from a dumped washing machine earlier in the week. Eoin loaded the catapult and took careful aim. The ball bearing pinged off the edge of the chimney making the birds flap in alarm, but they soon settled back down. Eoin’s next shot sailed over the heads of the birds. In the distance, the sound of breaking glass made him duck quickly under the ridge tile. “Give me a go, you cross-eyed yoke.” Eamon grabbed the weapon. He loaded the catapult and took aim. His little arm shook with the strain as he drew back the rubber, sighting between the v, aiming a foot over the heads of the massed crows. He let the ball fly. All the boys watched as the shiny silver missile crossed the few feet between the Casey’s roof and the Ryan’s Chimney pot. The little ball found its mark–one crow vanished in a puff of feathers down the chimney while all the others flew away. Nine little heads peaked over the ridge tiles like smiling pumpkins when Mr Ryan’s backdoor flew open. Black smoke billowed into the sky in a rolling cloud. Old Mr Ryan stumbled out half choking. The stink of burning feathers could be smelt in Dublin. The Caseys tumbled back through the skylight, laughing delightedly. Operation “Singed Feathers” was a complete success. The boys hugged and laughed until Mr. Casey shouted up the stairs to keep the racket down. From that day on old Mr. Ryan never complained about a few footsteps on his roof again. 38

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As the internet devours a larger portion of my life, I find I’m overwhelmed by the mass of options, alternatives, and choices available to me…and a growing sense at what I may have missed…especially with regard to blogs. Yes, I needed a curator to help me discover creativity and inspiration within the blogosphere; and thanks to the keen eye, discerning taste, and diligent digging of Editor-In-Chief Sandra Tyler I have found my monthly destination for much that is creative (and eclectic) on the web. — Mark Fine of http://finewrites.blogspot.com/p/main-page.html and author of The Zebra Affaire

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The Woven Tale Press delivers. It is my ‘go to’ source for the best writing on the Web. Editor Sandra Tyler and her minions, busy as proverbial bees, hunt for the best writers, poets and artists out there...You may, as they promise, enjoy their eclectic selections of innovative prose, humor and visual arts. And, they gift to us links to visit all their contributors for more. Go! Read! Submit! Your time will be well spent. I personally guarantee it.

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–Steven D. Malone of http://www.stevenspen.com/

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I believe art is anything you happen to find beautiful. Some find it in a straight V8, for others it’s the delicate brush strokes of an old master. I happen to think it’s in the mental pictures painted by the words of a good story teller. This is where The Woven Tale Press excels. Sandra and her hard-working team don’t try and tell us what we should like but rather extend a wide-ranging net into the world of the internet, hauling aboard treasures of all kinds. With every addition of the Press, I find myself enlightened, entertained and enhanced by the gifts held between its covers. –Squid McFinnigan of http://writingmylif.blogspot.com

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