Blackbird Dock by The Linnet's Wings

B L A C K B I R D DOCK

MUSE "Malancha was the place where Rabindranath Tagore had spent some time and wrote some of his pre-Nobel Prize compositions. The Maharaja of Tripura had contributed liberally to Tagore´s pre-Nobel journey to England. They were great patrons of Bengali Art and Culture. The cottage was well maintained and had become a tourist spot. I was fasinated by a line of Tagore´s song written on a bamboo plate: “Jakhan aamar payer chinha parbe na aar aei bate” (When my footprints won´t be treading this road) Much later in life I realised the deep philosophical meaning of the song derived from Baul, a mix of the Muslim Sufi and the Hindu Bhakti cult metaphysical philosophy." … Train to India: Memories of Another Bengal by Maloy Krishna Dhar

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring And carried aloft on the winds of the breeze; For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, The bare trees are tossing their branches on high; The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing, The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky. I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray; I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing, And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day! Anne Brontë, 1820 - 1849

LATEST PUBLICATIONS The Linnet´s Wings Press Poetry Series: A Poem on the Wind

Broom out the floor now, lay the fender by, And plant this bee-sucked bough of woodbine there, And let the window down. The butterfly Floats in upun the sunbeam, and the fair Tanned face of June, the nomad gipsy, laughts Above her widespread wares,the while she tells The farmer's fortunes in the fields, and quaffs The water from the spider-peopled wells. The hedges are all drowned in green grass seas, And bobbing poppies flare like Elmo's light While siren-like the pollen-stained bees Drone in the clover depths. And up the height The cuckoo's voice is hoarse and broke with joy. And on the lowland crops the crows make raid, Nor fear the clappers of the farmer's boy, Who sleeps, like drunken Noah, in the shade. And loop this red rose in that hazel ring That snares your little ear, for June is short And we must joy in it and dance and sing, And from her bounty draw her rosy worth. Ay! soon the swallows will be flying south, The wind wheel north to gather in the snow Even the roses spilt on youth's red mouth Will soon blow down the road all roses go.

SURFACE, ASPECT, ANGLE Cells: A small room in which a prisoner is locked up or in which a monk or nun sleeps.

Three Pound Of Cells by Oonah Joslin https://www.amazon.com/Three-Pounds-CellsOonah-Joslin/dp/0993049370

art:

title: iris blue´s beach ball artist: marie fitzpatrick medium: oil on canvas style: surrealism

I Love You I love your lips when they’re wet with wine And red with a wild desire; I love your eyes when the lovelight lies Lit with a passionate fire. I love your arms when the warm white flesh Touches mine in a fond embrace; I love your hair when the strands enmesh Your kisses against my face.

CLASSIC

WIZARDRY Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree— The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most constantly?

Not for me the cold, calm kiss Of a virgin’s bloodless love; Not for me the saint’s white bliss, Nor the heart of a spotless dove. The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring, But give me the love that so freely gives Its summer blossoms scent the air; And laughs at the whole world’s blame, Yet wait till winter comes again With your body so young and warm in my arms, And who will call the wild-briar fair? It sets my poor heart aflame. So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, Still fragrant with ruby wine, And say with a fervor born of the South That your body and soul are mine. Clasp me close in your warm young arms, While the pale stars shine above, And we’ll live our whole young lives away In the joys of a living love. Ella Wheeler Wilcox

On Love Love adorns itself; it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty. Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom. Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it. Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted. Rabindranath Tagore

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now And deck thee with the holly’s sheen, That when December blights thy brow He still may leave thy garland green. Emily Brontë Somewhere or Other Somewhere or other there must surely be The face not seen, the voice not heard, The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me! Made answer to my word. Somewhere or other, may be near or far; Past land and sea, clean out of sight; Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star That tracks her night by night. Somewhere or other, may be far or near; With just a wall, a hedge, between; With just the last leaves of the dying year Fallen on a turf grown green. Christina Rossetti

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.” Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

CLASSIC ART

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” Voltaire

("The Twittering Machine and Revolving House," Paul Klee @ The Linnet´s Wings)

Prose, Poetry, Photography, Interview, Art, Lyric And More From: "The Linnet´s Wings" Contributors

ART: PS: Title " An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"

Socrates talks about ekphrasis to Phaedrus thus: "You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter's products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever".

LW POETRY 15

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, mail the publisher at thelinnetswings@gmail.com

8 /2018 Second Edition ISBN: 978-1-9164622-1-2

Frontispiece: Heartsong by C Mannheim

Other Publications

"The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ISBN 13: 978-1480176423-https://www.amazon.com/Song-Hiawatha-Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow/dp/1480176427 "The House that Jack Built" ISBN-13: 978-1483977669 Chapbooks "One Day Tells Its Tale to Another" by Nonnie Augustine ISBN-13: 978-1480186354 https://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Tells-Tale-Another/dp/1482730995 "About the Weather-- Spring Trending" by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick ISBN-13: 978-0993049330 "Disabled Monsters" by John C. Mannone ISBN-13:978-1522869504 https://www.amazon.com/Disabled-Monsters-John-C-Mannone/dp/0993049389 "Three Pounds of Cells" by Oonah V Joslin ISBN-13: 978-0993049378 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Pounds-Cells-Oonah-Joslin/dp/0993049370 Poetry and Photography "This Crazy Urge to Live" by Bobby Steve Baker ISBN-13: 978-099304909 Short Story Collections "The Guy Thing" by Bruce Harris ISBN-13: 978-1981116409 https://www.amazon.com/Guy-Thing-Bruce-Harris/dp/1981116400 Poetry Series Contributors´ Quarterly Spring Poetry, 2015 ISBN-13: 978-1512051225 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Spring-Poetry-2015/dp/1512051225 Spring Poetry, "Ghosts," 2016 ISBN-13: 978-1517567637 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Poets-Ghosts-Poet/dp/1517567637 Autumn Poets, 2015, ISBN-13: 978-1519157827 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Autumn-Poets-2015/dp/1519157827 Autumn Poets,"There´s Magic in the Pictures" 2016 ISBN-13: 978-1537361659 https://www.amazon.es/Theres-Magic-Pictures-Linnets-Wings/dp/1537361651 Summer Poets, 2015 ISBN-13: 978-1514761717 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Summer-Poets/dp/1514761718 Summer Poets, Just Like "Peer Gynt" ISBN-13: 978-1532865114 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Poets-Just-Like/dp/1533245886 Christmas Series The Linnet´s Wings: "A Christmas Canzonet" ISBN-13: 978-1519581686 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Christmas-Canzonet/dp/1519581688 The Linnet´s Wings: "A Christmas Canzonet" ISBN-13: 978-1540454935 https://www.amazon.com/Linnets-Wings-Christmas-Canzanet/dp/1540454932 A Christmas Canzonet: "Dreamers" ISBN-13: 978-1977809070 https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Canzonet-Dreamers-See-Contributors/dp/1977809073 Poem on the Wind: Art and Poetry Series "Purple Kisses" by Priya Prithviraj ISBN-13: 978-1978203266

EPIGRAPH: Umberto Eco

Table of Contents

Part One

The Dancers 26 Louise Abbéma 28 Previewing The Secret Marriage by Susan Tepper 30 10 Questions for Susan Tepper 34 Editorial 38 The Suncatcher and On a Summer´s Morning in Andalusia 44,45 Song of Seals by Oonah Joslin 47 Una Entrevista con Kandy Abuelita Mochilera 48

Part Two

Moon Gypsy 54 The Stolen Child by W. B. Yeats 56 The Guy Thing by Bruce Harris 58 A letter to my missing children by Ramesh Avadhani 68 The Volcano by pavle radonic 74 Love's Loneliness by W.B. Yeats 81

Part Three

The Golden Note 86 Nothing Lasts Forever by Oonah Joslin 88 Circa 1950 by Megan Denese Mealor 90 Beginnings by Megan Denese Mealor 92 Ode to Jezebel by Megan Denese Mealor 94 A Lost Face and then Some by Tom Sheehan 96 Being Present by Judy Shepps Battle 98 Buying Tobacco in Spain by James Graham 100 GA 96 by Jeff Jeppesen 102 Glow-worm by Michael Wooff 103 Last Summer by Akeith Walters 106 RUNNING LATE by Arthur Callender108 Solon's Drone by Anum Sattar 109 Sometime in the Future by Peter Feng 110 The Skip by Ron Lavalette 113 Two for the Birds by Patrick Thoren Erickson 114 Wanderer's Night Notes by Beate Sigriddaughter116 I Am Near to Where I'll Find Myself by Tom Sheehan 117 Getaway at Nineteen by Ceinwen Haydon 118 What it’s like to be a Jezabel by Dolores Duggan 119 Tulips in a vase by Lesley Timms 121

Photo

ography

Art ILLUSTRATION

From "Purple Kisses", Niveditha Warrier, 37,39,40,41

Linnets´ House Design

The Dancers, 2018, 24 The Evening Dress, 2018, 45 Moon Gypsy, 2018, 53 The Golden Note, 2018 84 Girl Lost, MLF 89 Sparrows, MLF 91 The Grey Squirel 96 Lazy Cat 109 Fast Forward 111

CLASSIC Art

La Terrasse du Casino de Fécamp, Louise Abbéma 26 Jardin fleuri by Louise Abbéma 44 Dancing Woman ny Rabindranath Tagore 48 The Illumination of the Shadow, Gaganendranath Tagore 51 Au Piano by Louise Abbéma, Style: Impressionism, Genre: genre painting, Media: oil, canvas 64 Bouquet de fleurs, Louise Abbéma 66 Wayang (shadow puppets) from central Java, a scene from 'Irawan's Wedding', 73 It´s sweet doing nothing by John William Waterhouse 87 Muse de la Musique by Louise Abbéma 82 Head of a Woman by Paul Gauguin 92 Entre Deux Trains by Theophile Steinlen 94 The Packet of Tobacco by Juan Gris 98 The Book Worm by Carl Spitzweg 102 Ring around the Rosy by Maurice Prendergast 106 Under Honey's Harmonica by Boris Kustodiev 107 Mountain by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis 115 Woman with pitcher under trees, August Macke 116 Jack of hearts by Olga Rozanova 117 Editors for this Issue Managing, Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick Senior Editor, Bill West

Web: The Linnet´s Wings Submissions

Poetry, Oonah Joslin Photography, Maia Cavelli Datebase and Web, Peter Gilkes

Web Address www.thelinnetswings.org

Offices Surface: Publishing Office: Corkaree, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath Design Office: Carchuna, Granada, Andalucia, Espana

Epigraph Genuine courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has no ulterior purpose. -- Rabindranath Tagore

Epigraph Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors. Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose "

I have no words, alas! to tell The loveliness of loving well! Nor would I now attempt to trace The more than beauty of a face Which, ev’n to this impassion’d mind, Leaves not its memory behind. In spring of life have ye ne’er dwelt Some object of delight upon

With steadfast eye, till ye had felt The earth reel, & the vision gone? And I have held to memory's eye One object—and but one—until Its very form hath pass'd me by, But left its influence with me stilL Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”

Art: Tiitle: The Dancers, Oil on Canvas Buddy Photo, G. Gaffey, 2018

CLASSIC ARTISTS Louise Abbéma

Louise Abbéma (30 October 1853 – 10 July 1927) was a French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque. Abbéma was a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon, where she received an honorable mention for her panels in 1881. She was also among the female artists whose works were exhibited in the Women's Building at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A bust Sarah Bernhardt sculpted of Abbéma was also exhibited at the exposition.

"Susan Tepper smoothly guides you through a lost world reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Cote d' Azur: glitter and glamour and pain, all in gracefully crafted scenes." —W.F. Lantry, Editor Peacock Journal

AVAILABLE HERE https://www.amazon.com/Monte-Carlo-Nights-Susan-Tepper/dp/0998187224

PREVIEWING

THE SECRET MARRIAGE by Susan Tepper

Coming Soon to a link near you!

In The Beginning

THE COTTAGE

One bright morning in late August I climb in my Jeep and head down our long driveway, noting the stand of hemlock that Jack keeps saying needs serious pruning. My plan is to stop at the outdoor market and buy apricots. Instead I drive past the market, and the parking area, out to the veteran’s cemetery where everything seems frozen; even during summer. Then I merge onto the parkway going east. I could’ve driven west. The parkway offers those two choices. Long Island is longer than wide. If you drive too far east, eventually you will fall off. I exit the parkway at a sign that has a sea name. ~~~

At the time I first saw the cottage I never dreamed of someday living here. The light-pink door – a woman’s door ran through my mind. This is a place a woman would walk into alone and live. The pink door, almost flesh in tone. Soft against white clapboards. A small contained cottage on a small plot of land. Out front a weedy pebbled path leading straight to the door. There’s an arbor strung with climbers; also pink. Old-fashioned roses. The kind people planted when life was simpler. A cottage like a fairy tale makes real. I don’t remember what I was doing here the day I first noticed the cottage. I must have been doing something. ~~~ This town attaches itself to The Sound. It has a form, like a glob, or something beautiful, depending on how you picture it draping the water. People park boats in driveways. There’s a nautical museum and shops selling shell products and household items with sea motifs. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t love the water could survive such a place.

Ages ago, I sailed across to Connecticut in a 16 foot run-about with a boy I was convinced I loved. We launched from another town north and west of here. I was only fifteen, when all of life seems endless. It astounds me now. To think back with so much clarity about nothing. And who can say? Who can say I wasn’t correct being totally in love with my life, then, as I knew it; and only knew it then. I’ve been told things that I don’t believe yet nevertheless have made me weaken. Even a straight-forward lie can weaken you body and spirit if it’s heard repeatedly. Then there is the lack of love. You can’t bolster it with bright pillows, paint its door pink, or sail it across to Connecticut. In the rented cottage, kneeling in front of an old walnut bookcase, I'm thinking this would be a sweet place for a young woman to bring up a child. Through narrow mullioned windows I watch the October sun fading. Gulls line up on a roof top across the street. A tricky time of day. For many reasons. I used to pour some wine and sip alone during this time of day. Our son Cody, grown up now, lives thousands of miles away. Here, alone in the cottage, I somehow haven’t felt the need to pour the wine. Though I do feel my feet getting cold without socks. I tug on the right side door of the double-door bookcase. It sticks then opens. I lean in breathing the smell of old things. Someone’s mementos. Memories. They have an odor. There are so many cracked leather books. Taking one out I’m careful how I handle it. I take out a few others. Some so delicate the pages could easily crumble. Inside an embossed brown leather book, I discover the tiniest curled worm – poking it with my finger. I never knew the bookworm was real, thought it was a myth, until now. It seems to be alive yet doesn’t uncurl to me. Like a dead baby’s finger. Remembering the child I lost, the one I didn’t realize was growing in me, I close the book gently, placing it back on the shelf where it belongs. Ella, the realtor who rented me the cottage said, “This must be your lucky day. Cheap for such a good place.” She handed me two keys. I stared at them in my palm. “Why two?” “Well,” she said winking. “In case you lose one.” I’ve felt lucky in spurts. Both times I got married I felt lucky. Even when my first turned quickly to sadness. I felt lucky getting out, both of us relatively unharmed while still so young. If you have to get out, it’s best to do it early. Luckily, the cottage came furnished. Not exactly what I’d choose but comfy things like a retro movie. A few antiques. It’s nice sitting at the speckled formica table having a meal or cup of tea. The vinyl chairs are cracking but the bright tomato- red makes them cheery. When I shift, they squeak like canaries. According to Ella, some man who lives in California owns the cottage. Hasn’t been back in twenty years. Twenty years? How can she pin it down so precisely? A man painted the door pale-pink? Surprising. While Jack, on the other hand, built us a glass house. He’s so damned proud of the place. Never mind I hated living in a fishbowl. Leaning my chin on my knuckles, at the table, I’m thinking of buying a couple of long silk nightgowns. Winter is coming and silk is good for keeping warm. Waking slowly, I can hear the wind gusting; the beginnings of winter approaching. At night there’s a chill off The Sound, just a few blocks over. The sky seems blacker, more turbulent, than when I lived at the glass house.

My first day here I picked up basic items – underwear, T-shirts, shorts and light weight jeans and a green sweatshirt from the local something-Mart. Cosmetics and toiletries, a brush and hair dryer. With winter coming, I really need to get to a mall. Back at the glass house I left some real beauties, very nice clothes, many quite expensive. Why this makes me laugh out loud, I don’t know. Stretching, I laugh again swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Nice legs. A shame to waste them. The laughter over as quickly as it started. Moving fast I strip the bed. A narrow lumpy mattress, with dark stains, outline where a body, probably many bodies, spent many nights. Those old bodies, my old clothes – all superfluous now. This is the mattress where I sleep, in a cottage close to a postage stamp beach. Teensy – as beaches go. A long wood dock, where the boats are moored, shows rot in places. Sometimes I walk it, watching the swells. But now I stare down at the mattress. Outline of a crime scene. I flip it over, bodies marking that side, too. No escaping the past if it wants in. “Fuck you,” I tell the mattress. ---

10 Questions For Susan Tepper Her publications include:

Books:

'Monte Carlo Days & Nights' Rain Mountain Press 2017 'dear Petrov' Pure Slush Books 2014 'The Merrill Diaries' Pure Slush Books 2012 'From the Umberplatzen' Wilderness House Press 2011 'What May Have Been' (co-author Gary Perecespe) Cervena Barva Press 2010 and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. 'Deer & Other Stories' Wilderness House Press 2008 Blue Edge (Cervena Barva Press 2006)

Articles:

Green Mountains Review, American Letters & Commentary, Gargoyle, ELJ, The Bitter Oleander, Forge, Poetry Salzburg, The Stony Thursday Book, Prime Number Magazine, Crannog, Thrice Fiction Magazine, New Millennium Writings, Salt Hill, Ibbetson Street Press, Skidrow Penthouse, Snake Nation Review, Story/South, Aeolian Harp Anthology, Pirene's Fountain, Vestal Review, The Linnet's Wings, Thunderclap Magazine, Schuylkill

Valley Journal, A-Minor Magazine, Blue Fifth Review, Mojave River Review, Digging Through the Fat, Cervena Barva Press, Peacock Journal, The Battered Suitcase, Scissors and Spackle, Lost in Thought, The Glass Woman, Writing in A Woman's Voice, Unlikely Stories, Oddball Magazine, Literary Orphans, The Jellyfish Review, The Somerville Times, Bartleby Snopes, The Mom Egg, Publishing Genius, Wigleaf, The Olentangy Review, Change 7 magazine, Camroc Press, Buttontapper Quarterly, Indian Summer Review, 3 Elements Review, Free State Review, Midway Journal, Florida Flash, The View From Here, Mad Hat Review, Apocrypha and Abstractions, fwriction, Metazen, Mocking Heart Review, Santa Fe Review, Blink Ink. --Q: How do you approach a story, will you work from prompts, real life situations, how long might it take you to develop an idea? A: I never think ahead about what I might write, nor do I have any preconceived ideas as I type from word to word, line to line. Long before I started writing, I was an actress with extensive improv training. With stage improv, you never know at any given moment what the other actor(s) might do. It’s fast and spontaneous. That’s how I write. I have worked from prompts and in retrospect I don’t feel they produced my best writing. I believe the best writing comes from a source or a well-spring deep inside you. I also never know whether a piece I’m starting will be a flash fiction, a longer story or even a novel. Many of my novels have been extensions of a story I was writing, and then I fell in love with the characters and didn’t want to part from them. So it kept growing into a novella or a novel. Q: Have you a favourite character or a memorable one that you have created, one that you pop back to occasionally? A: Petrov is a character I created, a Russian career soldier during the 19th Century. After he came out in full book form titled ‘dear Petrov’ (dear being a term of endearment used by the woman who loves Petrov and is the first person narrator), after that book was published, I continued to write individual short pieces about Petrov and his lover. Dozens and dozens more stories. He’s symbolic of many things, though I don’t analyze him or his woman. I just write them as they appear to me. I feel they are dictating the stories, while I’m just the fingers tapping the keys. The one concrete thing I can say about the whole ‘Petrov’ series is that it is fiercely anti-war. That, I think, is obvious from the way the narrator presents each story. Q:What is your favourite genre? A: Well, I like them all. I write as much poetry as I do fiction, I write novels, flash fiction, interviews, essays, opinion columns. I can’t seem to turn off the spout. If I absolutely had to choose one, it would be the novel. There is something so strange and delicate about digging into the lives of the characters you create. It’s as if you start with a small plant that you put into the ground and you water it every day and watch as it grows and blossoms. It’s a breathless experience for me. Q: So you have written poetry? A: Yes, hundreds of poems. My first writing ever was a poem called Gypsies which came

into my mind spontaneously while I was driving on a parkway. I pulled onto the shoulder of the road and found a scrap of paper in my purse and wrote that poem in one gasp. Then I didn’t write anything for another decade. I was still deeply into the world of the stage and I was supplementing my income by singing with the bands. Q:Why did you start writing, was there a trigger or is it something that was always part of you? A: My mom was a writer for decades, I had no interest in being a writer. I went to the stage while still in my teens. I believe there is always a trigger that moves a person in the direction of art. When I married for a second time, I wanted to have a baby so I quit acting. But a baby wasn’t in the cards for me. I was very sad that summer. A voice kept saying in my head: Write that story. My mind kept thinking: What story? Finally I sat down and out flew a pretty long story about a woman cheating with her best friend’s husband. Nothing remotely similar to my life. I took it to a New Photo@ Miles Tepper School writers’ workshop where I had the most incredible and inspiring teacher, Alexander Neubauer. He gave me the green light. And I thought: Wow, I can do this! It was a really positive thing for me at a really difficult time of my life. I’ve never looked back. Q:Are you a good reader, a voracious reader. Would you read much in a year? A: I read all the time. From when I was a small girl I practically lived at the local library. They let you take out 6 books at a time. I remember walking home clutching the pile of 6 that was staggeringly high for my height back then. I took out all the biographies of the wives of Presidents. They were in a hard backed series with turquoise covers and gold lettering. Quite elegant bindings. I remember Dolly Madison, Martha Washington, Mary Todd Lincoln, all of them. Kept in a line on a bottom library shelf (now there’s a metaphor about keeping women down and in line!). I can remember kneeling on the tile floor searching out those

titles. Why they so mesmerized me, I have no idea. But they were feisty women (at least in those biographies) and I’ve turned out to be a rather feisty woman. So maybe it was early training. Or Kismet. I have no idea if the books were written with a modicum of truth, or if it was some compilation of truth and fiction. Nevertheless, those were my favorites around the age of 10. From there I moved on to Nancy Drew mysteries and Cherry Ames Girl Nurse. I think I stopped reading for a while in high school. Too many other distractions like the boys! Q:What type of book do you like to relax with? A: I don’t think I read to relax. I read to discover something that’s currently bubbling in my unconscious mind. The world seems always to be teetering on the brink of some disaster. I’ve been reading all the books James Baldwin ever wrote. Also the entire works of Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, Richard Yates, Camus, Dostoevsky. Many more.. Q:Do you have a favourite family story? A: If ever there was a group of eccentrics, who took on life the way it was delivered, it was my family. My mom was utterly intrepid. She drove across country from Long Island to Spokane with her three kids in the car. To visit my dad who was working out west for a year. I was 13, my brother 11 and my sister was a toddler. My mom just did it. Amazing. She had Triple AAA map out the whole route in advance, including where we would stop to sleep for the nights. It was an incredible journey. I still have photos of us standing in front of various signs that read: WELCOME TO MONTANA or somewhere else. One morning we ate breakfast in a rustic local diner filled with cowboys. They were very nice to us. And my mom, being extremely beautiful, I’m sure created a stir amongst those cowboys. Q:What are you reading right now? A: Simultaneously, I’m reading James Baldwin’s memoir The Fire Next Time and William Trevor’s final posthumous book titled Last Stories. Unfortunately the reading is slow going because I have some eye surgery coming up so my vision isn’t too great right now. Q:What is your favourite classic? A: Anna Karenina. I’m a hopeless romantic. ---

War Quotes “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).” ― Otto Von Bismark

A Poem on the Wind The Linnet´s Wings New Muse Series

art: title violetta, artist, marie fitzpatrick, series, iris blue, media, oil on canvas

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

Victor Hugo

Purple Kisses by Priya Prityviraj Illustrations by Niveditha Warrier

Purple Kisses by Priya Prityviraj To Read More Click Here

www.thelinnetswings.org

Let´s Create

Oonah Joslin, our poetry editor, accepted a poem by Priya Prithviraj for one of our quarterly ´Wings´ issues a few years ago. We run about 20 a quarter and the work is always a perfect fit for us; by the time it gets to me here, in the design office, it´s ready to go, and any mistakes afterwards are my own as I´m fixing text and occasionally losing something! So when Priya approached me about an idea for an illustrated poem-book a while later I was intrigued. Intrigued enough to find her archive and read her work again. For I know we don´t publish tomes and most of our poetry is less than two pages long. And "Kisses" was a short one. So how does one build a book from a short poem? was one of my first thoughts, the second was now: There´s passion! So I replied and asked her to send it through to our Gmail address, which she did. The day her mail came into my inbox, I was sitting here in the conservatory, in Andalusia, and the wind, the Leveche, was howling through every crack and crevice it could find and I was wondering where "Sunny Spain" had disappeared to, and then I opened out the text and artwork and it stroked my vision and I found a muse. I found a muse on the wind, it was my bit of fancy for the day. And it became a book. Not a big fat tome but a short creative art-filled muse that dripped small nuggets of imagery, that were lit by a few carefully chosen words, into my day. I love to see passion at work, particularly in the field of art and lit. If I were to describe the categories I´d say the areas are defined by how one lives life. For they´re more than a turn of phrase or the pretty sentence construction ,or that dead keen metaphor, or that clever foxxy name on the bye line or title. Is it not about setting a score onto a stave, as a day is lived, survived and celebrated: To be able to express that in prose or verse, or in art or music is a heavenly gift. And no day or symphony ever just sits there, it jumps off a page, to stroke an imagination to insist on being heard. And it´s then the muse appears and when one can lift it off the bookshelf--Now there´s a bonus. We´re open for submissions for our "Poem on the Wind" poetry series! Marie Fitzpatrick

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Langston Hughes

Purple Kisses by Priya Prityviraj Illustrations by Niveditha Warrier

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again. Rumi

Purple Kisses by Priya Prityviraj Illustrations by Niveditha Warrier

The thing that I think is the most important is taking moments to express your appreciation to your partner. A thank you or a quick kiss can go a long way toward affirming your relationship and commitment to each other. That's not hard to do even when you're juggling insane careers and three kids. Michael Ian Black Purple Kisses by Priya Prityviraj Illustrations by Niveditha Warrier

The Suncatcher As the Birds prepared for summer fare, The bugs came to their aid. And the butterfly, this year's new share, Set down in the wind streaked shade.

To gild the glade with wavy weave, To celebrate long days, And birth the good that spring conceived, That was bound-up in cold-winter plays.

For at the bottom of the flower plot. Where dandelions spilled their seed. Were bits of filmy spider's webs that were caughtUp in the sun catcher's reeds.

For themselves and their near neighbours Who shared their space and soil, And enjoyed the music of the spheres That was reflected in dew drops´spoils.

From which Sir Bird and his good Lady Hung posts to guide the fun. And butterfly helped bend the leaves While they pinned web edges on.

As the Birds prepared their summer fare, The bugs came to their aid. And the butterfly this year's new share, Helped trap wind-seeded prayers. MLF 8/06/2018

On a Summer's Morning in July in Andalusia

An early mist sheds light on communion: Sky's blue floats on an easy sea that lays-out Sinuous see-through cut-outs through which Man view fish that scud around the wading White pillars that step in their path, And the cooler morning air brings fishermen out: They who know the lines that wary fish avoid, They who know the bait that just might make them rise, And they have this summer's nature on their side; As they drop their patient line they wait Quietly for the bites, under sun's blue shade. But the cool abates as noon creeps up the sky, Then they take their lines and nets and small boats in. As heat drops down, to raise in yellow orbs That spin through noon; and in the afternoon She sweeps the sky before she falls to cool The evening tide, to call the local out, To watch collected dust and colour set. Calling locals out to view her at her best -Calling locals out to view her evening dress. One designed by earths' couture to flow and flounce, And fal,l just as moon pops in to ready Dusk for dark: She lights the lightest sky And on her heels trips in the North Star. MLF, 2014

Art: Title: The Evening Dress, Watercolour on Card, Linnet House Design Image

Belle Époque dated from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914

Louise Abbéma Jardin fleuri

Louise Abbéma painted portraits in the Belle Époque of other contemporary notables, and also painted panels and murals which adorned the Paris Town Hall, the Paris Opera House, numerous theatres including the "Theatre Sarah Bernhardt", and the"Palace of the Colonial Governor" at Dakar, Senegal. She had an academic and impressionistic style, painting with light and rapid brushstrokes.

Song of Seals In gold spooned moonlight banked against purple cloud sanded seals sing evensong; a-low hallo-la-loo a halle-lu-jaweh halloo-la-lo sing songs of shipwrecks, sirens, saints and plunderers along the wave lengths of legend, shadowed in Lough Stone light. They sing the priory arch in echoed sound built high to span the stranded causeway isle to land; to span centuries. Lights to port and starbird blink red, green; speak to an unseen hurry of shipping silently slipping past.

https://www.amazon.com/Thr ee-Pounds-Cells-OonahJoslin/dp/0993049370

Oonah Joslin is the poetry editor at The Linnet´s Wings. A Song of Sealsl is part of her first collection tilted: "Three Pounds of Cells" and published by The Linnet´s Wings in 2016

Lights ashore carry coffee-sipping colonies splitting through fields; an orange streak on metal rails into the darkness passes past the past and on and on to the mournful cry hoo-hoo-la-loo echoes left behind unseen, unheard, unhindered, a cross on sacred banks.

Oonah Joslin

Una Entrevista

con

Kandy Garcia La Abuelita Mochilera 48

When time is used as an instrunment Dreams are made real -- MLF 17 years ago Kandy retired , she was 66, and since then she´s been travelling the world ... P: Kandy, estoy seguro de que tienes una fuentede-juventud escondida en tu jardín, ¡eres una inspiración! ¿Puede contarles a nuestros lectores, un poco acerca de la mujer quién lleva la mochila por todo el mundo por favor? ¿Dónde comenzó el viaje para ti?

Q: Kandy, I'm sure you have a fountain of youth hidden in your garden, you're an inspiration! Can you tell our readers a little about the woman who Backpacks ll over the world, please? Where did the trip start for you?

R: Mi viaje empezó hace muchos años. Desde muy jovencita pensaba siempre que un día daría la vuelta al mundo, aunque este sueño no pudo cumplirse hasta que llegó mi jubilación, así que tuve que esperar a cumplir los 66 años.

A: My journey began many years ago. From a young age I always thought that one day I would go around the world, although this dream could not be fulfilled until my retirement came, so I had to wait until I was 66 years old.

P: Su calendario estás ocupado para la segunda mitad de 2018: Sri Lanka en agosto / Perú en septiembre / Birmanis en octubre / Sur de India en noviembre. Vas a la India dos veces al año, ¿tienes una antigua asociación con ella, tal vez a través de la meditación o el yoga, o estaba otra atracción?

Q: Your calendar is busy for the second half of 2018: Sri Lanka in August / Peru in September / Birmanis in October / South India in November. You visit India twice a year, do you have an old association, perhaps through meditation or yoga, or was there another attraction?

R: La India la descubrí en el viaje de mi vuelta al mundo y reconozco que nada más pisar el aeropuerto de Delhi, lo primero que pensé que este País no iba a ser uno de mis preferidos, pero cuando empecé a recorrerle y a descubrir a sus gentes, a esos niños con unos ojos llenos de felicidad, esos aromas a flor de jazmín que envuelve sobre todo a las entradas a los Templos y esa generosidad del pueblo que nada tienen y lo poco que poseen siempre están dispuestos a compartir, entonces me dí cuenta de que la India es el País donde quisiera vivir y por eso todos los años le visito dos veces.

A: I discovered it on my round the world trip; as soon as I stepped into Delhi airport my first thought was that this country was not going to be a favorite, but when I discovered its people: the children with eyes full-of-happiness,the scent of jasmine flowers that envelops, especially at the entrances to the Temples. And that generosity: People who have nothing are willing to share! So I gave myself. I realized that India was a country where I would like to live, and that is why every year I visit twice.

I like when you shut up https://youtu.be/9mmTbcjgNUQ "Let me also talk to you with your silence clear as a lamp, simple as a ring. You are like the night, silent and constellated. Your silence is from the stars, so far and simple. I like you when you shut up because you're absent." ©Pablo Neruda, (fair use)

Title: Dancing Woman Artist: Rabindranath Tagore Location: National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi, India Tagore’s emergence as a painter began in 1928 when he was 67 years old. Beginning with scratchings and erasures on the pages of his manuscripts during the mid-20s of the 20th Century, he slowly moved towards drawing and painting independent images. Between 1928 and 1940, Rabindranath painted more than 2000 images

P: Has viajado en la mayoría de los continentes, pero ¿dónde está tu lugar favorito en el mundo?

Q: You have travelled on most continents, but what is your favourite place in the world?

R: Lo respondí anteriormente, sin duda alguna ha A: I answered it before, undoubtedly it has been India. sido la India P: ¿Cuál fue la mejor experiencia que ha tenido en Q: What was the best experience that you had on your journies, the best that you can remember? sus viajes, lo mejor que puede recordar? R:Creo podría decir que fue en Temuco (Chile), A: I think I could say that it was in Temuco (Chile), when I went alone to the town of the cuando me fui sola hasta el poblado de los “mapuches” y cuando al fin llegué allí este pueblo "Mapuches, " it was so late, and when I finally maravilloso me abrió las puertas de su casa y me arrived there this wonderful town opened the invitaron a pasar allí la noche ya que hablando con doors and invited me to spend the night there talking with them. ellos se nos había hecho ya muy tarde | P: ¿Has recorrido el Camino de España y, de ser Q: Have you travelled the Camino in Spain, and if así, cómo calificas la experiencia en comparación so, how do you rate the experience in comparsion to your internatioal travels? con tus viajes internacionales? R: Bueno viajar por España es algo simple, creo A: Travelling well in Spain in simple, I think it´s no necesitas ni llevar un plano, vas preguntando y not necessary to go by plane, you ask and you get the information, however travelling outside of te van informando, sin embargo viajar fuera de España es otra cosa, debes conocer el idioma del Spain is different, you must know the language of País donde te encuentras y todo se va complicando the country and everything is getting more and more complicated. más y más P: ¿Tienes un novelista favorito o una historia favorita que amaste y recordaste?

Q: Have you a favourite novelist, or a favourite story that you loved and remembered?

R: Creo que el libro que no olvidaré jamás fue el del El viejo y el mar , de Ernest Hemingway. Quizás ese libro me hizo entender que lo que quieres con ahínco y tesón siempre lo consigues y cualquier esfuerzo tiene su compensación.

A: I think the book that I will never forget was "The Old Man and the Sea," by Ernest Hemingway. Maybe that bookshowed me that what you want with determination and hard work you always get and any effort has its reward.

P:¿Cuál es tu poema favorito y por qué?

Q: What is your favourite poem and why?

R: "Me gusta cuando callas" de Pablo Neruda

A:" I like when you shut up" ...., de Pablo Neruda

P: ¿Lleva material de lectura con usted en sus viajes, o compra a lo largo del camino?

Q: Do you carry reading material with you on your trips, or do you buy along the way?

R: No llevo nunca libro de lecturas, vigilo mucho A: I never carry reading material, I watch the weight of my backpack a lot, and every day I start el peso de la mochila y además cada día que estreno es un libro en blanco que relleno a lo largo is a blank book that I fill throughout the day. del día.

P: ¿Tienes un Kindle o prefieres libros?

A: I have always preferred books but lately I understand the Kindles is much more practical

R:Siempre he preferido libros pero últimamente comprendo es mucho más práctico los Kindles Q:Do you keep a diary of your trips? P:¿Lleva un diario de sus viajes?

R: In my first round the world yes, I took it and every night I wrote a kind of summary of the day R:En mi primera vuelta al mundo si, lo llevé y but now that I repeat trips to the same countries todas las noches escribía una especie de resumen I do not to take anything. I try everything. del día pero ahora que ya repito viajes a los --mismos Países no llevo nada. Todo procuro. Q: Do you have a Kindle or do you prefer books?

The ILLUMATION of the Shadow Provenance: Private UK collection; acquired directly from the artist in India in 1924/25 and thence by descent. The current owner's mother acquired the painting on a trip to India in 1924/1925. Whilst there she stayed with her uncle Brigadier Rivers Worgan who was at the time Military Secretary to Lord Reading, Viceroy of India (1921-1925). Notes made by her at the time suggest that the painting was either gifted to the owner's mother by Brigadier Worgan, or purchased by her directly from the artist. Her diary written at the time does mention the fact that they called on the Tagores who were away at the time, and although there is no mention of a return visit having been made, she had signalled her intention to call on them again. The painting was brought back to the UK in 1925 and from then on hung in her house. The scene depicted is a feast taking place during the festival of Diwali and it is likely that the building depicted is the Kali Temple, at Dakshineswar near Calcutta. It is thought to be this location because of the characteristic nine-spired main temple built in 1855 by Rani Rashmoni, a philanthropist and a devotee of Kali, a goddess associated with eternal energy. The presiding deity of the temple is Bhavatarini, an aspect of Kali, literally meaning, 'She who takes Her devotees across the ocean of existence'. Source: Bonhams

War Quotes

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu

The Illumination of the Shadow, Gaganendranath Tagore (India, 1867-1938) watercolour and oil on card, signed and initialed GT lower right, label on reverse stating the title and artist's name, framed, 27 x 18.8cm (10 5/8 x 7 3/8in).

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. Rabindranath Tagore

Art: Tiitle: Moon Gyspy, Oil on Canvas, Photoshop

The Stolen Child W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berrys And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. Away with us he’s going, The solemn-eyed: He’ll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

THE GUY THING by

Bruce Harris

he house was quiet, and for once, I appreciated that. I was fourteen before my parents felt able to leave me on my own in the house, and I was happy to let them finally get out together without arranging a ‘sitter’. They were careful with their choice of sitters, but it never did sit easily with me, and it became even more problematic when I got to secondary school age. Only children find ways to fill the time, and in any case, I never have found making friends particularly difficult. Perhaps that arose from being an only child too; it’s easier to get on with other people when you’ve managed to get on with yourself. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Mum got back, though Dad would be later. The pause would allow me time to think and adjust to the lurch back to another time and age returning here always arose in me. I put my bag down on the chair next to the phone table; this was still a source of irritation to my mother – ‘that chair is for answering phone calls, Mark Routledge, not dumping your bag on; upstairs with it now, there’s a good lad’. Now it was one of our rituals, the ways she folded me back into her territory when I’d been away. This time, though, I felt a reluctance to shift so easily into boyhood regimes. For a while, the bag could stay there. I walked right through the house and into the back garden, sitting down on the bench under the kitchen window, where I was once small enough to indulge in a little naughty eavesdropping, wondering what Mum and Dad talked about when I wasn’t there. When I was nine, I discovered that I was an only child because having me had resulted in my mother being

unable to have any more kids. I scuttled quietly away from under the window, the wet already starting to my eyes, thinking how much now fell into place; their almost excessive care with me, the long, fussy inspections if I so much as grazed my knee, the school report post mortems, with detailed questions concerning what teachers saw as weak or ‘not so good’ areas, the fact that none of the more stringent punishments which seemed to have been visited on some of my schoolmates had ever applied to me at any time. I was it for them; I was all there was ever going to be. To let them down or disappoint them in any way just seemed cruel, shameful, something which probably wouldn’t allow me to live with myself. And that phrase, of course, the question of whether a not a young guy can live with himself, split the whole recent experience open again like an exposed wound. I looked at my watch. Almost exactly one week to the hour when the decision on the George Terrace boys’ night out was taken. I put my head back against the wall of the house, looking with a kind of relief at the familiarity before me; the neatly trimmed and mowed lawn forming most of the centre of the garden (Dad) and the flower beds running down the side of the lawn to my left and across the back fence (Mum), which Peter Hanley and his little pals used to bang footballs against, occasionally irritating my folks to protest, nice as they generally found the Hanleys to be. Peter was at university too now; I wondered sometimes how he was getting on. He never seemed to come home, not at the times I did anyway. Play for time, Mark. Rather than a week ago, go back to three years ago, my last school year, and an experience which might help you get a better grip on a week ago. Ninety-odd senior boys gathered in the school’s Lecture Theatre, for an event billed as part of the school’s ‘pastoral programme’ , while at the same time, ‘contributing to helping us through the A-level period’. Widespread curiosity in advance, particularly about why boys only, including various speculations about who had been up to what and when. Like most large groups of boys, we contained a number of wilder and sillier spirits, and a few, mercifully few in our case, who could be believed capable of just about anything. In the event, by the time we were all in the lecture theatre used for these more limited assemblies, a certain natural curiosity was just about overcoming the world-weary cynicism we Alevellers normally affected. We found ourselves looking down on two people sitting at the table below. On our left, Mr. Daniel Masson, Head of Sixth Form, a tall, authoritative-looking man known for his unflappability and easy control. Masson had been at the school for over twenty years, and he was universally known as D.C. Long ago, years before any of us had started at the school, someone had christened him ‘Daddy Cool’; with use, it became shortened to D.C. and stuck. No-one could ever remember Masson shouting at anyone. He didn’t need to; one look from the ice-blue eyes, one moment of those expressive lips straightening, and the miscreant would feel about nine inches tall. He was renowned for scrupulous fairness, and even though he had to be at least in his late forties – this wasn’t his first school – he was still a good-looking guy who turned himself out well, which is more than could be said for some of our teachers. On his left was a man of quite generous years, nicely turned out in a sober blue suit, with mostly steel grey hair on top and a face which managed to look friendly and formidable at the same time. He was smaller and stouter than D.C., but although he was at that moment wearing a quiet, reassuring smile, he looked very obviously not a man to be mucked about – ex-military, perhaps, or a high-ranking policeman, and clearly D.C.’s senior by at least seven to ten years. He wasn’t looking at the floor, or the ceiling, or out of the window, as various people who had addressed

these assemblies tended to do – he was looking at us. ‘What’ve you done to get nicked for, young Routledge?’ whispered the guy next to me, one of my best buddies at the time, Charlie Slade, a guy who wasn’t an occasional cynic; he was like it just about all the time, for as long as I’d known him, some five years by then. I grinned vaguely at him. We gazed downwards, daring them to interest us. The atmosphere in the room was beginning to get restless; many of the lads regarded this pastoral stuff as irrelevant and time-wasting, and D.C. down there was known to be dubious sometimes himself; he had a line in barely disguised put downs and spontaneous dry wit. Whatever this was about, it would need to be good to justify why we weren’t learning, revising or doing something active; many of the guys around me took part in at least one sport or outdoor activity, and were perpetually restless when they weren’t moving about for some reason or another. They weren’t natural sitters and listeners. D.C. stood up first. Something droll, D.C., we thought, to save and tell the girls later on. But there was no smile, quiet or otherwise, playing about his lips. ‘I’ve accompanied Mr. Latham here today, partly because I know some of you don’t take these sessions as seriously as you should, but partly because I have a kind of vested interest’. To our astonishment, Daddy Cool’s bottom lip suddenly shook, and when he started again, his voice was also shaking a little. Now a dropped pin could have echoed round the room. ‘When I was seventeen and my brother Paul was twenty one, he was facing his university final exams; he had ambitions towards being a research scientist, and a job lined up which could get him into his area at quite a senior level. My parents were pushing for him to get the exams done well and ‘make us proud’; one or other of them phoned him almost every day, asking him how the revision was going, making suggestions and getting indignant with him if he wasn’t working. He had an offer to get into a top place, but he needed top grades to do it’. He had to swallow and, yes, the eyes of Daddy Cool, of all people, were now visibly moist. Some boys were perched up on their seats, school cool abandoned. ‘Two days before the exams started, he died. He already was, though we didn’t know it, taking some pretty bad stuff to help him get by, or so he thought – yes, there’s nothing new about that, boys, believe me. He’d not only done himself all kinds of damage, he also owed a lot of money to some very unpleasant people’. D.C.’s left hand grabbed at the table behind him. Latham next to him was looking up with real concern in his eyes, and the room warmed to him. But we were watching D.C.. ‘I am going to do this’, he said, almost under his breath, to Latham. Then to us – ‘I’ve never spoken about this in public before, so bear with me’. We bore with him, still in absolute silence,anticipating and dreading at the same time. His voice rose, to become a grotesque caricature of his assembly announcements voice and volume. ‘He killed himself. It was no accident, no miscalculated dose; the amount of stuff he’d taken made it abundantly clear that he meant to do it, and he did it’. The silence in the theatre continued and the tension ratcheted up. D.C. wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and steadied his voice, obviously with a considerable effort. ‘I loved Paul. And I mean that; I loved him, pure and simple. I used to count the days until he came home in the holidays and we could have a chat and a laugh together. He was intelligent, funny, generous, honest - ’ For a moment, he struggled to go on. Another minute passed, of what can only be called a very loaded silence. ‘You are all now close to manhood, and I don’t doubt most of you are already well aware of the dangers of losing control, physically and emotionally. I think most of you would concede that I very rarely do lose control of any kind, and maybe, after Paul, it became easier, because I knew

that nothing in my life could ever hurt me that much again, coming as it did when I was still very young and very vulnerable. I will not deny that the whole business damaged me mentally so badly that I came very close to damaging myself physically as well. Boys of your age do not like to think of themselves as young and vulnerable; you think of it as being a bit wet, a bit weak. But you are – we all are, when it comes to it, but the longer you live, the more opportunity you have to build your defences. I know most of you are already planning to go to universities, where you will find yourself also under pressure and, in many cases, removed for the first time from the support of your family. And even those who are not going to university will be setting out on training programmes of various kinds which will make heavy demands on your relative inexperience and ability to stick with it. Part of my job is to care, and Paul is one of the main reasons why I started doing this in the first place. We have little time and opportunity left now to help you put together the strength and confidence you’re going to need, but I call on you, guys, I implore you, to please listen to Mr. Latham, please listen carefully to Mr. Latham, who has immensely more experience in this field than I have, even allowing for Paul. Every one of you, and I mean every one of you – I’ve known all of you and your families for years – have people for whom you are very important. Listen to Mr. Latham, and it might just lessen the chances of any of them ever having to go through what I’ve been through’. He sat down, and it took him several deep breaths before the D.C. control was fully back in play. Mr. Latham got to his feet. He started speaking immediately, and those among us who expected some old man’s quaver were instantly disabused. He wasn’t really an old man in any case, of course, but we were at the age when anyone over thirty was classified as practically geriatric. Latham was brisk, straight off the shoulder, take it or leave it. ‘It is now (NOT) a war which you would find in your history books, but the Falklands War is one which directly involved me, and I wasn’t much older than all of you at the time. It was my experiences during that conflict which started me off in this line of work. I am not here to make your blood run cold with the sort of things I saw and experienced; for the moment, let me just say that I left the Army three years later, in 1985, and for a while, I more or less fell apart – crime, violence, excessive drinking, short spells in prison. During my final six month sentence, I was treated by a psychologist called Edward Burridge, sadly now no longer with us. I had the usual young tearaway’s contempt for ‘shrinks’, but he slowly and insistently talked me round. He made me believe that my pain at what I had been through was perfectly reasonable, not weak; that any human being worthy of the name would find such experiences appalling, and that whoever’s fault it was that things had gone so badly wrong, it wasn’t essentially mine; the first and most important thing I needed to do was stop blaming myself. When all’s said and done, he said, you have survived, and that speaks of qualities you’ve yet to fully realise and potential as yet unexplored’. I glanced across at Charlie, and was amazed to see his face red and drops around his eyes. Though it was, amazingly, the first time in our friendship that I’d thought about it, I found myself wondering what had actually caused Charlie to become so cynical in the first place. ‘I’m not going to go into the rest of my career, you’ll be happy to hear’- he smiled, with a remarkable warmth. ‘But I already knew quite a lot, as you can imagine, about damaged young men, and for a while, I became a counsellor and advisor attached largely to the military, helping men deal with what had happened to them. It didn’t take very long, or much research, for me to realise that, for young men, it isn’t just about wars. At this point, I will refer to a few statistics which might illustrate just how many young men it is about. In the last year for which full figures are available, over 4500 men committed suicide in the U.K., three quarters of the whole national total. This equates to twelve male suicides

every day. And, to put the age figures in perspective, the rates for men between the ages of 18 and 45 are much higher than for their elders, and 75% of those who take their own lives have never actually been diagnosed with a mental health problem. They keep it to themselves, meaning no-one know about their problems, or they suddenly crack’. Now, three years later, with my head back against the wall of the house and my eyes closed, I could still remember the atmosphere in that room; I could almost see Latham standing there saying it like it is. And, of course, as soon as I opened my eyes again, my playing for time was over and last week returned once again vividly but distantly, like some worrying dream which might not even have happened, except that I knew only too well that it had. It was our student flat share lads’ last chance for a night out before the end of our second university year, though we all knew that it was only the last chance because we’d made different arrangements for the next academic year, the crucial final one. Cal was spending a couple of days with Amy before they both travelled back to her place; they already had a share sorted out for themselves next term. Pete was going home prematurely because he wanted to train on the coast roads around his parents’ home before the summer athletics meetings; next term, he was going to move back into the university as a senior student so he could easily use all the sports facilities. I was going home for the summer, to do the summer café part-time work I’d done before to pay for myself, as well as using the peace of home to study in preparation for the crucial year. It was Mel who wanted the night out the most, and maybe it was because poor Mel wasn’t coming back to university, at least not ours. They’d chucked him out. He hadn’t done enough work, and what he had done was deemed inadequate. Mel thought he was being original and throwing different lights on things, when he actually got round to doing the work, that is; the uni didn’t agree, either about the quality or the quantity of it, and they had their precious pass percentages to look after. Mel was one of the reasons – not the only one, by any means, but one of them - why the flat share had come apart. It was also because sharing a place had more ruthlessly revealed our respective naiveties and inadequacies. Out of the first year halls of residence, we had to feed and look after ourselves, which meant endless arguments about cooking, shopping, cleaning etc.. We were all studying English; we had that in common, but not much else. All the same, we George Terrace boys had been in the flat together for three terms, and we all thought that something needed to happen to mark the end of it. Our campus was only a few miles away from the coast, and we decided to go to a posh sort of pub on the coast, one we went to occasionally but not often because it was relatively expensive. We were bussing in and cabbing back. It ran to a bit of money by our standards, but we’d all been doing bits and pieces of work during the year and had accumulated enough for a good night out or two and at least the first few weeks of the summer. But by half past nine, the night was not going well. I knew the time, because I was bored and fiddling with my watch; a lull, a sense of anti-climax, had settled on the night. We were not as easy with each other as we used to be. Cal was flipping a beer mat up and down, his dark eyes flickering between us and the floor, his long, lean body perched up on a stool. Pete, the boy next door, shorter haired and smarter than any of us, was looking at his phone and grinning at something. I glanced to my right, some subconscious alert, perhaps, and saw Mel Whittingham’s face on the edge of tears. This didn’t fit the night or the place, but then that was part of Mel’s trouble; he rarely did fit, anywhere. He was clever, articulate and honest in his own way, but he seemed to live on a kind of emotional roller-coaster, and which Mel you found yourself dealing with at any one time could only be guesswork. With that so naked face, the long gaunt cheeks and the childish eyes, he did not have the same camouflage as most people; he wrote anguished, over-elaborate poems

which he still insisted on showing me occasionally, and as some of them referred to his current relationship with an equally unfathomable girl called Alysia, or Ally as he called her most of the time, it could be awkward to find anything appropriate to say without wounding him. Both Pete and Cal had reached the point where they refused point blank to look at his poems or have intimate conversations with him, which hadn’t, of course, helped the atmosphere in the house. I realised he’d said something to me. ‘What?’ I said, gently; he still looked near to tears. ‘It’s over with Ally, Mark. Can you believe it? ‘It won’t work when we’re not at the same place, Mel’, she says, as if a relationship is mostly geographical. I thought we were soul mates; I thought it was for the duration, you know? Permanent, inseparable – ‘ His head bent and it seemed that he actually was crying. Cal, with that emotional maturity with which he was so justly infamous, tutted and turned away. Cal’s ideas of the appropriate roles and behaviours of men and women was about twenty years out of date, and he knew that’s what I thought because I’d told him so, which again, hadn’t helped the house harmony. Pete just gazed open-mouthed, at such a sight on such a night. For Pete, you behaved according to the occasion; happy, sad, determined or what he called ‘smoky’, as is anything to do with sex, either directly or indirectly. Mel was just out of kilter with the occasion, and therefore there wasn’t much to be done until he got back in again. Mel’s thin voice scratched on over his sobs, and I touched his arm. I suppose he had become, for me, a sort of barometer of my own human decency; he was just a vulnerable human being, who needed people around him to be supportive, and that wasn’t always what happened, even with me. My barometer still landed on the solitary, the impatient or the needlessly angry now and then; I was still a very young man, as were we all, but I was at leasttrying, I thought, to move in the right direction. ‘If she’s ready to give up on it that easily, Mel’, I said, ‘isn’t it best to move on? Chance for a new start, work wise and women wise?’ A sudden, loud anguished voice; he did that, Mel, not particularly rarely, and it was difficult enough in a private place. Several heads turned in our direction. ‘Oh, hell, Mark, we’ve been crazy about each other! We’ve done all sorts of stuff together’. He then started describing, in only a slightly reduced volume of tone, some of the more intimate forms their being crazy about each other had taken, which one or two of our near neighbours were showing they didn’t really want to hear. Cal then did what he always tended to do when faced with anything challengingly emotional; he walked away. ‘I’m going to the bog’, he said. ‘Maybe when I come back, lover boy will have stopped going through the Kamasutra. I don’t want to know’. Mel started up again, but Pete simply cut across him; Mel was being inappropriate to the occasion, and that had to be remedied accordingly. ‘So what’s the summer got for you, Mark? Not all work, I hope; when I saw those reading lists, I thought, you must be joking, I’ve got training and stuff. Money to earn’. Crass as it was, it worked for the moment. Mel was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them, and he subsided into one of his deep, silent miseries, like someone alone with his thoughts the night before his execution. Pete and I talked on, amiably, inconsequentially, the kind of thing nights like this were essentially about, as he saw it. I had always rather envied him his selfcontainment and his ability to turn occasions into being as he thought they should be. I had gained some extra survivability of my own from him, knowing that his sort of approach would

get further with most people than Mel’s, poor Mel who never really understood what any occasion should be apart from whatever he wanted it to be at the time. By the time Cal came back, having either had a sudden internal crisis or just wondered out to enjoy the view for five minutes – the latter, I suspect – the night was on much easier lines, and with the consumption accelerating, we became much easier with each other, starting to reminisce on the outrages, embarrassments, triumphs and disasters of the year – all pretty kitchen sink stuff, but probably alright for people who were about to stop living together and were unlikely to resume. Mel sort of took part, in so far as he contributed the occasional bleak smile and an odd deep-voiced single sentence as if spoken from inside a tomb. The place was one of those which seemed to close more or less when it felt like it, but as midnight approached, we realised we were all spending more money than we could afford – no change there – and Pete, the organiser in chief as ever, called a taxi – twenty minutes, they said. It was only then that we noticed the absence of Mel. ‘Where did he go?’ I said. ‘Bog, presumably’, said Cal. ‘Best place for him’. ‘Look, Cal –‘ I started, but Pete was there again. ‘Last George Terrace night, boys. Let’s play nice’. But Cal had put up with too much and had too much to drink; the year of resentment had to emerge, even if we were at the end of it. ‘Yes, O.K., Pete, I know, but the guy’s a pain in the arse, and I don’t mind saying it. I’ve held my peace to try and hold the thing together –‘ ‘Have you now, Cal?’ I said. I’d had a fair bit myself. ‘Can’t say I noticed’. A dirty look, but our basically sound friendship held. ‘I’ll wait outside. Get a bit of air’, he said. ‘I’ll check the bog’, I said. ‘We’ll catch you up, Pete’. He nodded and walked off after Cal – quite glad to do so, too, I felt. Mel wasn’t at the urinals and all the cubicles were open. I walked round the whole perimeter of the pub, and stopped at the point which faced most directly towards the coast. A sudden and shocking thought came to me, and everything else was blocked out; I found myself sprinting, beer or no beer, the quarter mile or so to the coast, which I knew at this spot was partly at the top of a long cliff drop. All that whole busines with D.C. and Latham, back in the lecture theatre, came back at me shouting its head off. By the time I was about a hundred yards away from the wooden fence which separated the path from the cliff edge, I knew that my suspicions no longer amounted to a drunken panic. It was a clear night, and his figure, on the other side of the fence only a few feet from the very edge, was clear enough. He was standing very straight, as if being told off, his arms down at his sides. ‘Mel!’ I shouted at the top of my voice, the sound echoing strangely into the quiet of the night, with just a gentle breeze from the south and the murmur of the waves. I knew well enough that the spot where he stood was on the edge of a plunge directly downwards from upwards of a hundred feet, straight into the huge boulders stacked up against the bottom of the cliff. Even if he didn’t drown, the rocks would smash him to pieces. Mel glanced back at me over his shoulder, his face almost zombie-like, pale and red-eyed. ‘Leave it, Mark’, he said, in an ordinary tone I could hardly hear. ‘Leave it’. Footsteps were sounding from somewhere behind me, and I turned to see a policewoman and a policeman, the latter talking into his phone, coming across the grass towards me. Someone must have seen Mel go towards the cliffs from the upper rooms of the pub.

It wasn’t the kind of moment when a loss of temper would be highly recommended, but that’s what happened. With the strain of the exams, in a university with no scruples about ruthlessly getting rid of people who might not do well, my own relationship with a gentle, patient artist called Denise Sanders seemed to have more or less just faded away; she’d already left a few days before, with no more than a peck on the cheek and ‘I’ll write’. In prospect was a long summer with a lot of academic work to do and next to no money, and this was how it was going to start, with one of my friends about to kill himself. Enough was enough. I put one hand up to the police in imitation of their own ‘stop’ gesture. ‘Five minutes, please! Five minutes! Alright?’ Without waiting for an answer, I ran across to the fence and screamed at Mel. ‘Do you hate me, then, Mel? Do you hate me as well?’ His white face again, and the anguish in it sickened me. ‘Hate you? Why should I hate you?’ ‘You want me to live for the rest of my life with the sight of your body, or what’s left of it, smashed and bloodied on those rocks? Is that what you want as your parting gift, Mel? And is that what you want for your mother? Your father? Ally? Do any of them deserve that, Mel? Have any of us done anything to deserve that? Really?’ His body had turned, uncertainly, towards me. I jumped up on to the lower bar of the fence and reached across, stretching my arm out so far that it was no more than a foot from his. ‘Come on, Mel’, I said, my anger expiring as quickly at it had flared. ‘Come on, buddy’. His head went down and he put his hand in mine. He felt the firmness in it and he looked directly into my eyes, and at that moment, he knew how tortured I was feeling. He collapsed against the fence, sobbing. I urged him gently over the fence and glanced towards the police, who had already approached to within twenty feet - whether wisely or not, I’m not sure. ‘Well done, sir’, the man said quietly. I helped Mel further from the fence, and the man stayed between us and the fence, presumably to prevent Mel breaking in that direction again. The policewoman took one of Mel’s arms as I took the other. A group of people seemed to be peering at us from the pub, as if watching a show. I stopped. ‘I can’t cope with that, and I’m pretty sure he can’t’, I said, and the policewoman looked over at me. Her eyes were a curious light green, I remember, and she seemed to be making some kind of assessment in her own mind. ‘No, right. You stay with him. PC Reynolds is keeping an eye on things at the fence. I’ll sort this out’. She strode determinedly towards the gawpers, and Mel started leaning in to me and saying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again. ‘Take it easy, mate’, I said. ‘It’s all over’. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t, I thought, even as I sat in the safety and security of the garden of my childhood home a week later. I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since, and I didn’t fancy my chances too much tonight, even in my own bed from way back. Nightmares have included his white face suddenly disappearing over the cliff edge; his body lying across a jagged rock, with streams of blood trickling into the water, his head pounding up and down against the edge of the cliff, his eyes pointing vertically down to the floor as Cal and Pete tried to jolly him out of it ... I walked back into the house, picked up my bag and to hell with adolescent games, ran upstairs, stripped off and showered, standing while the jet of water hit me right between the shoulder blades and grateful not to be in a uni changing room full of people. As I dressed, I heard the front door open and my mother’s voice shouting up the stairs.

CLASSIC ARTISTS

Au Piano by Louise Abbéma, Style: Impressionism, Genre: genre painting, Media: oil, canvas

‘Mark, darling? Are you back with us?’ I opened the door. ‘Yes’, I shouted back. ‘Hi, Mum. I’ll be down soon. I’m just showering the journey off me’. That voice, this place. Now I knew how much they meant; here, where I’d grown up, been encouraged, indulged, helped along, loved, even when I was being a pain, and I can be a real pain when I want to be. I couldn’t help wondering about Mel’s equivalent of home, and what he was doing, and no, I wasn’t Cal, I wasn’t the indifferent blokey bloke, each to his own, meet, live with and move on. Nor did I want to be. Ever. He phoned me about ten days afterwards. I had started working in the café again, and suddenly, there was his face on my phone, better and more naturally coloured. I said I need to go to the toilet and took the phone into a cubicle. His parents, he said, had taken it all pretty well. They confessed that they’d never been quite sure that the place was right for him, and if he and them were going to ‘finish up with all that debt’, the place needed to be ‘suitable’. He also thought I was right about Ally – ‘she’s obviously not all that bothered, if she can ditch me like that’. He had a summer job helping out at a local kids’ play park, and he was aiming to do something like a gap year – ‘maybe I should have done it when most people do it, but anyway, there’s all sorts of stuff I could do, and it’ll give me a chance to get my head together, and get it all out of my system - Ally, the university, and I’m afraid, if I’m being honest, Cal and Pete - ’ ‘Say it, Mel. It didn’t work, ultimately, and we should maybe have realised it earlier’. ‘All the same, it all got way, way out of proportion, and it’s my fault more than it’s anyone else’s. New start, Mark, but I will miss you’. ‘Likewise, Mel. Let me know how you get on, buddy’, I said. ‘Sure will, pal. You don’t get shot of me that easily. And thanks, Mark. Thanks a lot’. Thumbs up, moist eyes, gone. I think back again to D.C., Latham, and Charlie Slade, sixth form cynic of the year, suddenly blubbing out whatever was eating his insides because he kept it in there. Boys with secrets spreading within like cancers, too gone and ghastly to be taken out and examined. Unconfessed, untackled, festering guy things, getting daily worse until they burst and add one more to the statistics. Mrs. Maxwell the manageress is shouting outside. ‘Soon as you can, Mark, love. Mrs. Turner has just arrived for her coffee and cupcakes, and we know what a shine she’s taken to you, now don’t we, dear?’ She goes off chuckling to herself, like she does. I practice my smile for Mrs. Turner in the mirror on the way out and go off to unashamedly exploit my sexual magnetism.

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A letter to my missing children Ramesh Avadhani

y two children are missing for the last fifteen years. I do know they live in the same city as I, Bengaluru in southern India, but I am not sure where. I don't know what exactly they study, eat, or play. To find out anything about them or to try and meet them would be risky. For me and for them. I won't say anything more. I get on with my life as normally as I can even as I keep thinking of them. I dread the nights the most, when silence reigns and my mind goes on overdrive until the sleeping pill finally takes effect.

About a year back, however, it occurred to me that I could do something: I could write to them. I could encourage and guide them through letters and also keep reiterating my love for them. I chose to write on matters that affected me a lot: during my growing up years, then at work, and then in love and marriage, because these are the milestones they will encounter, too. Some of these letters I emailed only to my son, S, as I got to know his email address from the social media. I would like to imagine he read the letters. But so far he has not responded. I have my doubts whether he has shared the letters with his sister and my daughter, C. There are reasons for that as well about which I can't talk. As for me, I hope that one day my children will come across these letters - compiled under the title "26 Letters to My missing Children" - and realize how much I love them, how much I want them to not unnecessarily suffer in this beautiful yet tricky journey called life. The following letter is from that compilation and is on: 'Service'.

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (writer, lawyer, editor, and pre-eminent leader of India's struggle for independence from British rule.)

My dear children, I wasn't able to write to you the last couple of weeks as I was tied up with some writing work and contacting people. I apologize for that. Writing to both of you has become a habit for me now, a habit that I am happy I cultivated. People say when you are at something for 30 days, be it writing, praying, watching educational programs on television, or reading a book that not only entertains you but also educates you, then that activity becomes a habit. I am happy that both of you have cultivated good habits - You, C, in your dance, and you, S, in your music. It's my prayer that both of you excel in them as the weeks and months go by. But I would urge you both to consider these habits as only hobbies. I have already mentioned to you far more substantial vocations that you can prepare yourself for in your lives. Like working in a government or non governmental organization for the benefit of the oppressed and poor of our country.

Money is important but it's not everything. Fame is good but not essential for a meaningful life. True, money and fame may give you a great deal of comfort and power which are the two most potent objects that everyone hungers for. But do you really need them to make a significance in the lives of others? I think not. My parents would reiterate to me regularly: your life should benefit at least a hundred people. And I repeat the same thing to you but with some modification. It would be grand if both of you could live a life that would truly benefit at least a thousand people in our country. A thousand people is a fairly critical number that would in turn influence at least five other thousands people and that, because of the ripple effect, will in turn influence many more thousands and so on. A fantastic beginning by just two people. You. Use the power of social media at which, I notice, both of you are adept. You, C, have more than 20,000 followers which is remarkable for a girl who is only 18. And you, S, have several thousands. Both of you combined are powerhouses who can focus your time and energy for the benefit of our countrymen. I have always experienced this: when I bring happiness to others, the deepest core of my being experiences even more happiness. Sometimes I think that the true purpose of human life on earth is just this: To evolve to a stage where we all live in a good amount of happiness, helping and loving one another. All of humanity's physical and other developments from the Stone Age would pale into insignificance before this phenomenal achievement of the spiritual and the intellect. But to come back to what I was saying: about happiness: also keep in mind that only when you are reasonably happy will you be able to spread happiness in the lives of others. It's a fluent circle, not a jagged circle. Spread happiness, gain happiness, spread more happiness! I will explain what I mean by a jagged circle a little later in this letter. But first about my mother. The eldest of four siblings, Mother was born in Chennai (it was called Madras in those days of the British Raj) and right from her young age, she was the one who slogged at household chores--getting her three siblings ready for school, sweeping and swabbing the house, helping her mother in cooking and other chores. Then, Mother was married off early, at the age of 15. Much against her wishes, which she dared not express (such was her fear of her authoritarian father as also such were the times when women were deprived of several rights), she was forced to discontinue her studies. She was utterly dejected because she loved school a lot and was eagerly looking to go to college and then taking up a career, to show to the world what she was made of. But, alas, she was married off. Anyway, after the wedding ceremonies, with her small body, crushed spirit and apprehensive mind, she moved to Masti, a village near Malur in Kolar district, to be with Father and his parents and siblings. There, too, Mother's chores continued - to cook, keep

the house tidy, wash dishes and clothes, and attend to sundry chores. Mother gave birth to four children there and all of them died in infancy due to poor hygiene and non-existent medical care in that village. It was only when she moved to Bengaluru with Father that her fifth born survived - I. Then came my four sisters. You can imagine the amount of non-stop slogging that Mother did all those years. Service to so many people in Chennai, Masti, and Bengaluru. She is now 88 and continues the same service oriented life. She cooks food, cleans up the house to the extent her weakening body and aching bones can, manages the house expenditure, supervises the maid servant, purchases vegetables and fruits from the vendors who pass by our house shouting their heads off about the prices of potatoes and onions and tomatoes, minds the house when the rest of us have to go off for a function or a movie, and gives advice and care to me and my sisters whenever we need it. Hers continues to be a full-time job. I asked her once why she couldn't ease back from all this, why not take life easy, wasn't she tired of serving others all her life? She said she doesn't know what the word "tired" means. And she added, "When I work for others, it gives me joy, my life has meaning. I feel I was born to be of service to others." Yet, I know that Mother is not all that happy; she has her own demons that she won't confide in any of us. I suspect it's because she hasn't found in any of us someone truly devoted to her after all these years of service to us. I do try but she doesn't trust me fully because of my past marriages that took me away from her. How do I know this? It happened thus: my niece and I admitted Mother to the hospital for gall bladder stone operation at the famous Ramaiah Hospital in Mathikere, Bengaluru. The operation was a success and she was wheeled out of the theater and put in the special room that we had booked for her. She was still semi-conscious. When she came out of her anaesthetized state, even as we, my niece and I peered at her over the bed, the first words she uttered was, "Bhanu, where is she?" This despite Bhanu not being anywhere near the hospital the whole day or the previous two days preparatory to admitting Mother to the hospital. Bhanu is the eldest of my sisters. She was the one who supported Mother when I went away, pursuing my love. She was the one who comforted Mother in her darkest days. Even now, years after that operation, despite years of my penitent service to Mother, despite Bhanu not being available for Mother as much as she wants, her face lights up at the mention of Bhanu's name. Such are the irretrievable turns that Life takes. So, what is it I am trying to underline here? Some impressions last forever despite changed circumstances. And also this: When you serve others, you must do it happily. Yes, there are those who claim that one doesn't need to be happy himself or herself

to spread happiness. That results in a not perfect circle of spread happiness, gain happiness; the jagged circle I was talking about earlier. I would not fully subscribe to it for the simple reason that it doesn't spell logic to me and as I said under "Numbers", this whole universe is mathematics. What is the mathematics in this instance: if you are not happy yourself, how can the person you are trying to make happy be comfortable with the happiness that you want to give? Wouldn't he or she feel some guilt, some discomfort? That small measure of guilt or discomfort is enough to spoil the happiness that you are trying to establish in that person. I am not talking of absolute happiness. I am saying you have to be reasonably happy yourself to make others happy. That is my belief and I will stick to it. Even a child can sense if you aren't happy and will balk at taking what you have to give. You will observe one thing in many of these letters I have written to you: I have given various little tips that will help you judge people. That's a very important skill you should develop because you are quickly getting over your teen age years. And you will come face to face with people at work where you will spend many more hours of the day than you would spend in the familiar comforts of your school and home. This will continue till the very end, till you retire from active work-life, maybe even after that, too, because as leaders, there is no resignation from service towards people. Leaders are in short supply in India. We have few leaders who motivate our people to excellence in their lives, to engage in noble and humanitarian activities. That is why the marginalized and downtrodden remain so for so long. It's not that they cannot improve, but they do require help to rise. They do require some assistance to walk on the paths that will give them the right rewards. They do need sincere encouragement to shake of decades of stultifying existence. And all this I will grandly pour into your laps as your responsibility. :) Take it up. Make all connected with you prouder of you guys. Make yourselves prouder. Happier. And enjoy every moment of your existence because you will be helping others enjoy every moment of their lives. With love and hugs, Dad

more about the writer: www.rameshavadhanienterprises.com Agents/publishers interested in considering the full mss of "26 Letters to My Missing Children" may please contact the author at tam201 6201 6@outlook.com

The Volcano by pavle radonic 74

ART: Wayang (shadow puppets) from central Java, a scene from 'Irawan's Wedding'

The day began with a food adventure. As arranged the guide Mahshushah—Susie—arrived for breakfast. Carmen's Bircher Muesli with dried fruit the base, Cornies, plain yoghurt and a local fruit that the Madura girl failed to recognize. — Is it mango?... This was a surprise. Susie was completely stumped. Was the fruit of Madura, up above Surabaya by Bali, so very different from that of central Java? The stall-holder at Beringharjo Market had been asked most particularly. — Ker-some-yuk. You don't know kersome-yuk Susie? (Wiki gave kesemek, the yellow persimmon. Very tasty when allowed to ripen and soften. The mispronunciation had added to the problem. Why the fruit came here in Jogja coated in a grey dust was a mystery. One could not help thinking of Merapi.) Rich full cream milk rather than soy Susie choose — a beverage she had drunk only when she was sick, she surprisingly added. They were poor in Madura and likely without a cow in Susie's grandfather's house. Madura was known for harsh living and some very interesting customs that were beginning to draw tourist interest, the cow races

being one. Slowly Susie spooned her breakfast, smiling bravely with the observation upon her and blushing beneath her scarf. It would be OK if she couldn't finish, couldn't stomach the food. We would give it to the rooster. This only made Susie squirm some more, smiling as she battled on. The plate had been stacked too high. Susie gulped, chewed carefully, scraped around the edges of the bowl. The yoghurt was sour; ordinarily she liked yoghurt, Susie said. In the end there was nothing much left in the bowl, even few yoghurt traces. Teeth-brushing and dressing gave Susie recovery-time. The challenge of the completely foreign meal had been under-estimated.

We were off to visit the mountain, the gunung, Merapi volcano. There was a little township down at the lower reaches, about two hours out of Jogja by local bus. We needed to get up on Sudirman for the first bus and take a second after that. Transport to Kaliurang was a problem, a number of people had reported in the days prior. Before leaving Landlord Adhi had reassured that there would be something plying the route. Normally Sudirman was a 20 minute jaunt up the road. Susie however seemed not to be much of a walker; the year before she had avoided even short walks with long roundabout bus trips. After the big, uncustomary breakfast it seemed sensible to take a becak, at least for Susie. About half way up Mangkubumi, the continuation of Malioboro, who should happen by going in the opposite direction but Paijo with an empty vehicle. — Hoy! Paijo! In the initial stretch from the station Susie had been surprised at the number of greetings along the way, from becak drivers, parking attendants and stallholders. Yes indeed Susie, one had become famous along that segment up to Tugu, always a fine fanfare. Paijo's standard 800mm becak seat was really room enough only for Susie. She would be met around in Surdiman at the bus-stop. Go ahead, it's alright girl. The author would follow in another shortly. ….No. Susie could not understand. Susie would not accept the ride. No and no more about it. But Susie, it's a tight seat. We would meet soon at the stop, no problem. — I am not that fat, Susie replied. By custom touching a woman like Susie was not permitted. No handshake, no pat of any kind. One had been given the hint by a mutual friend, or former friend in fact. How then to squeeze onto a 800mm seat with proper distance and decorum maintained? It was not easy. Leaning forward, elbows on knees. This was a fix now, we needed to manage. Fortunately, with a reliable driver expertly avoiding the potholes and drain covers on Mangubumi we succeeded well enough. Unnecessary expense and bother seemed to be what had been avoided here; and the female given some kind of precedence and special favor.(Susie offered nothing further.) The local bus was as expected. One had to smile. At least the driver here did not smoke. With the front bench-seat free Susie wanted the viewing platform. Holes in the floor; the passenger door, like on the second van on the return, was clasped by an improvised welded catch. Instrument panel gaping hollow. There was no need for a speedometer as the

By custom touching a woman like Susie was not permitted. No handshake, no pat of any kind. One had been given the hint by a mutual friend, or former friend in fact. old rust-bucket was confined to third, especially with more than a dozen passengers crammed in back. Passengers were picked up roadside and other pedestrians encouraged by the driver. Schoolchildren, many old grannies and granddads who told the driver where they needed to be deposited. The joke about the dash button for aircon was appreciated by the driver. Broiling hot behind the windscreen, even at nine o'clock. Work hard and improve your life, a sticker called from the glass. KORUPSI was added by hand. No surprise the driver was a Jokowi supporter. Ya, Ya. The common man had invested much hope in the new President. The driver stopped a number of times near main intersections awaiting any possible customers, once or twice in an open, unshaded position. He and Susie seemed unaffected by the heat. Petrol fumes had one slightly wonky-brained. At one point while we were stopped in traffic a chap opened the glass door of a roadside BNI ATM booth that brought an almost liquid flow of relief. The perished vinyl of old Marko Popovic's bomb on a vacant piece of land beside his house in Spotswood, an old FB wreck left to rot sometime in the late Fifties: caught between Susie and the driver in the midst of the rich tang of this still mobile carcass, the earlier misadventure in the suburban paddock, trapped by a jammed door and out of hearing of the adults, returned long forgotten childhood terror. Bajay these contemporary dinosaurs were called in Jakarta; ankot here in Jogja. Like the self-appointed traffic wardens with their whistles and illuminated plastic sticks, they were an indispensable link in the transport system. With the heat, traffic noise, the array of folkloric figures joining and departing, the great mount had been more or less forgotten. The particular destination was Kaliurang, a small town on the foothills of the volcano, the door-stop so to speak. What might be managed from there would be seen. A roundabout orienteering approach to the great totem—always delivering some kind of benefit. (Organized tours to designated sites were anathema, not to be countenanced.) After perhaps forty-five minutes of rattling low gears, picking up and off-loading passengers, passing their crumpled notes across to the driver, Susie unexpectedly alerted. — There Merapi. She had noticed the failure to make the sighting. — Oya!... Directly ahead the road arrowed straight at the base. A little embarrassing. Susie had heard too many times the strange enthusiasm for the volcano. There were no volcanoes on Madura. A year ago Susie had been up close to Merapi from a different direction. Montenegro was full of mountains, nothing but, Susie had

been told. In over four months in Jogja over three separate visits the giant had been previously sighted on three single occasions. Once was from the hotel window quite unexpectedly after a clearing shower near the end of the first trip. Second was on the return to Jogja six months later one afternoon walking up as usual from Malioboro just past the station. A schoolboy had been stopped on a bicycle in order to confirm the identification. Third again perfectly accidentally climbing the steps to the plane for departure. Like the monsters from the fables, appearances of the volcano—an ever-present danger to the entire region for all the shrouding of cloud—did not take place just when one wanted. Twin peaks. On the second viewing from near the station the dual peaks up on the horizon had also been visible. What was Merapi’s companion called? No. There was only one Merap. Another trick of perspective relative to the approach. It was smoking. No again from Susie. Cloud; the other option. But this was wispy cloud all in the single direction like a child’s drawing of a smoking chimney back in the same distant school-day past of the old FB. — Not sure about that Susie. You certain? The driver will know. Ask him. Asap, smoking. Thin, low, almost horizontal smoke. Clear sign of the mountain’s life. After a long lead-time Sinabung in Sumatra had blown a few days prior, ten thousand people evacuated from the upper reaches. Beside the road later we would pass an Evacuation Resource Centre. Initially the driver said he was only going as far as Pakem, still an hour out of Kaliurang. We would need to wait for another bus near the market there. Half hour prior to Pakem the rising ground had been noticed, nasi fields either side and segments of forest through the thinning roadside housing palisades. The market at Pakem presented the same old women with their fruit and vegetables sitting along a shaded path. This was a more central location; around by the bus terminal a rickety tumbledown market might have done less trade. In the event, a short while later the same driver returned. He would take us up to Kaliurang. Twenty thousand to Pakem and the same to Kaliurang for two. Four dollars. Now the road climbed a stronger gradient, testing the horsepower of the old angkot. Plan, plan, the driver was encouraged. No-one was in a hurry. The horn was vital on the roads in Indon cities. The horn had almost never been heard in Jogja blasted in anger. As a warning in overtaking, especially for larger vehicles, it was a life-saver. The driving was remarkable, the use of the whole of the road, the fine judgment and consideration—one had become accustomed over four/five months on Java. Climbing, climbing. There had been a golf course marked on the maps, quite high on the ridges. Numerous tennis courts. On the descent a serious doubles game with a forceful serve and players kitted in branded apparel. (The urge to get Susie to tell these boys the current world Number One was a near relative was suppressed.) With one thing and another we had left a little late. The driver warned after 2PM it would be difficult to find transport returning. At the time it sounded like bluff of some kind. Up at Kaliurang the beast was not visible; it had retreated to its lair. Earlier the grey sides down along the Western flank showed what must have been recent ash. Good fecund soil it made. That was why farmers camped so close to the crater; in fact lived up at the

heights. The tree-line seemed to stop a short distance from the town. Smoke kept drifting in the same direction, the wind light westerly—up at altitude perhaps it was not so light. The particle count at the peak must have been high, the thick air seemingly visible from a distance. One would not attempt an ascent on the ashen side; like for most mountains, any kind of ascent seemed exceedingly hazardous looking from below. There would be guides available; innumerable roofless army jeeps waited around the bus bays. Perhaps the tourist interest had brought a road that reached the crater itself. A short little gad about the place. Kaliurang. Through the trees one could see the attraction it had exerted in the houses. The cool air was a godsend; later it would make slogging down far more manageable. A stop for teh first of all. There was no need for Susie; she had brought water, she declared. But not iced with orange Suze. (Her favorite.) There was a forest walking trail above: Susie had done her research with a friend. Audible gasps from the girl as we climbed the widely-spaced stone steps. At the entrance to the forest walk Susie was outraged to hear the difference in pricing for domestic as opposed to foreign nature-lovers. 5,000 for the latter and 155,000 former. (Fifty cents and fifteen dollars.) No, we would pass on that thank you; largely in support of Susie’s position. Her outrage was honorable. Susie was told many places in the world it was similar; there was nothing exceptional here. A sin against hospitality possibly. No forest walk, a pity but never mind. Away then to this gallery, or museum, that had been recommended down in Jogja. Some years back Luddy the Botero-inspired painter had held his first solo show there. Well worth seeing, according to Luddy. (To be fair, Picasso was Luddy’s other touchstone.) About an hour down the hill and by a tennis court, they said. A number of empty decoy courts en route. There was money up on this hill now, in the encroaching Western forms. Little of the worst grossness in new architecture; the older houses showed a deal of the native aesthetic and softening patina always helped. Perhaps twenty years ago the Suharto-era military and business nouveau riche had migrated, a cohort that could wear a disaster; they had people in the right departments. The golf course must have been on the other side of the ridge. Footslog. Three or four times along the winding paths we had asked for confirmation. There had been no straying; the woman who had said a single kilometer had little sense of that kind of measure. Museum Seni Budaya Jawa Ulen Sentalu—the Javanese Art & Culture Centre. A Chinese doctor from a prominent family who was also an architect based in Jakarta, a Christian by the name of Mr. Sam, had designed and built the structure using the stones from Merapi for monumental effect. There was some kind of received Javanese historical schema followed: life began in a cave, progressed ….. something, something….until ultimately the light of an English suburban garden at the end was reached, the pretty young guide explained in best delivery for which she continually apologized and for which she was excused and warmly commended. (Nervous cheek-blowing of the form of children's bubble-gum play was common among pretty young women of this generation, reflexive under the male gaze.)

After being forced to await the Guide’s arrival we had gotten off to a bad start with a complaint immediately. A veteran gallery-goer in cities all over the world felt no need whatever for a mandatory Guide, let it be known! (Even one included in the price of entry.) People might stray and wander, the Pretty had apologized blushingly. More blowing and eye-lash tremor. The girl did not say she was not to blame. Could the ground open before her and swallow her up the young Beauty would not cry out. (At the exit she would be graded as Excellent in the assessment provided; the suggestion of complaints if the visitor wished brushed aside.) Aduh!... No more whining had been firmly decided. The batik was acceptable, no problem with more batik. Lovely, very lovely. The repro Buddhist and Hindu figurines were tolerable enough. Artifacts: a bronze cigarette-box used by the Sultan who at forty-nine had taken a seventeen year old girl as third or fourth wife. Photographs. Sukarno brought a development on the theme of young victims of old lechers. (The girls knew the peccadilloes of the founding father.) Suharto must have been airbrushed out of the record; the Museum little more than perhaps a decade old the reason. A good number of Dutch thieves regally attired. Here and there the girls were given a brief overview of colonialism. (For some reason two others joined the blushing Korean language graduate-cum-Museum Guide.) Worst of all was the factory-produced portrait series of royal personages: this Sultan and that, Sultana So-and-so and Grandma Sultana across the generations. Painting after painting in gilt and polished jati frames. The series had been knocked up in a warehouse in under three months for the opening for a good paying client. Charles and Diana’s visit in the year of 1989 was commemorated in one painting near the end, where the pair was shown seated with their Equatorial equals in a mini-drawing-room, poor Di knees-close beside Charlie in his safari shirt, secretly seeing Camilla. The emissaries had come to grace the court of the local Sultan and over a cup of tea clinch a concession. Beautiful young guides, the chief in particular, eclipsing the English rose by far. The paltry offerings on the walls and in the glass-cases didn’t matter a fig. (Not a rambutan.) We skipped along and lightened the ordeal with some jocularity. At the end there was an offering: a little elixir of youth. To keep you young, tempted the Princess. (Di was not fit to lay-out this girl’s kebaya in the morning, nor iron her scarves.) Combination honey, cinnamon, pandang leaf and ginger. Mead fit for a royal. Susie needed to pray, it was after half-two. A musollah could be found beside the rear exit just beyond the garden. Not all of twenty minutes. Now for the descent. The battlements had not been scaled, the molten lava resting within the lip of the crater left unsighted. Never mind, another time. We had knocked on the door of the gunung and found our relatives not at home. With the smoke paragliding into the belly of the great giant would have proved difficult. We agreed it might be best to head along the main road. The buses would stop; with some luck even the tour buses—there had been a good number lined up awaiting schoolchildren and internal tourists. The incoming driver had suggested after 2 PM it would be only ojeks going down—motor-cycles—which would be the last option. A rust-bucket van was one thing; riding pillion, helmetless in all likelihood, quite another. Only a few minutes after 2. Any bus traveling up to the main center would not have reached the road here near the museum. Our timing was good. An uneventful, slow descent, Susie as usual making up the rear. That old Madurese habit naturally again reminded of old Montenegro. The patriarchy might not have been as

dominant on the Tropical island. In old Montenegro the man proverbially rode the donkey while the wife made up the rear with the firewood strapped to her back. Susie might not have been surprised by anything were she deposited up in those stony wilds. Where necessary, asking for directions or using her language, Susie would take the lead. In the case of some kind of march joined, however, Apres vous most certainly. There could be no variation. A hand Susie extended for indication of direction. A few times heading down Susie skipped along to catch a remark; at a couple of places the young woman picked grass switches. Back at the losmen there had been a suggestion her bag might have been a bit overloaded for the day ahead. The transport was taking its time. We walked against the traffic on the right, two-way undivided road with narrow single lanes. On the bends Susie was warned to come off the shoulder; often there was a foot of grass verge beside a channel. A curious pair; children's eyes particularly stared. A picture of husband and wife. (In her cover Susie could have passed for more senior years.) We alarmed some ducks with what must have been inauthentic Javanese quackery. Chickens and roosters strayed onto the grassy verge and motorists and riders occasionally honked and passed greetings. The first offer of rest Susie rebuffed; she was made of sterner stuff. Second after perhaps an hour and half from the museum accepted. A safe, shady spot and comfortable grass matting. Ten minutes was enough for Susie. After another hour a chap carrying a parang who had come out from his paddy suggested Pakem was another tiga jam on. — Tiga jam? Tiga jam!... Three hours. Second stop; perhaps four o'clock. The phone was in the bag and asking Susie was best left off. Here at this stop a biker pulled up opposite without being hailed and offered a lift. He seemed to indicate one by one, two trips. A smiling gap-toothed fellow around forty. Susie was adamant: No. No. Tidak. A number of times the man needed to be told. In the end we went down the last half to Pakem by ojek riding with a young mother who had been assisting at a roadside stall. The sister would look after the business while she was gone, R20k for two trips. Her little girl would not be left behind, she rode standing inside her mother's legs in the usual way in Indonesia. There was no second helmet—nothing for the child. In her cover Susie needed to ride side-saddle, over a quarter hour before the escort returned. At Pakem the young woman had suggested the Terminal for a bus. The market adjacent had closed, a woman on the far side just covering her cabbage. Lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes otherwise. We had had no lunch, there had been no time. Susie had never eaten tomato. — Like this?... The woman had obliged by washing the red marbles with water from a bottle. — Ya Suze. All bar this core here. Try it, enak. Not perfectly ripened, hard on the outside but hidden softness within. The juice surprised Susie, forcing her to bend forward. (Grandma Rose had never happened upon a tomato in the Herzegovina no more than Susie in Madura, or even previously Central Java. Such a great deal in the region returned one to the mythic past of the family saga told by Bab over many years.) There was in fact an empty dilapidated angkot parked directly before us. Off the roadway it was unclear whether it was capable of motion. (A Terminal was a grandiose description for this dusty Wild West back-lot of tumble-down woodwork.)

One of the chaps in the knot of curious onlookers turned out to be the bus-driver. Suze had enquired earlier while waiting: the man wanted R25k. each to the outskirts of Kota Jogja. No dice pal. Try someone else. It had been a tough, tough descent and the remainder ahead uncertain. Nevertheless, No to you, thanks all the same. After half an hour of hanging uselessly at stalemate we decided for the main road again. At one shady spot nada another half-hour. Signs of the usual early and rapid dusk on the Equator. We tried further around the next corner where the side-arterial might bring something. A slight, barely perceptible sense of the girl fading. Wilting was she just a tiny smidgeon? Raising the possibility of a cab confirmed. An hour earlier Susie had been told we would catch a cab if need be, hail the first we saw. There had been none before Pakem; or one in the wrong direction while Suze was being ridden down. The possibility of calling for a cab on these mountain sides had never entered the head. — You can call for a cab here?... (Mundane modernity had been hermetically sealed off on this journey.) An ankot traveling at first in the other direction got us out of the woods. The driver had been signed for where we were headed. A short while later, like a mirage in the desert, here was the blue van coming on, a replica of the first complete with the same improvised welding for the passenger door. Late afternoon bench-seat an easier prospect. The man would take us as far as UGM, where we had caught the first ankot. Supper rose up in the imaginary, Suze wanting "everything" on the plate. First though another prayer. We had heard the maghrib echoing a number of times along the stretch, in the usual way emanating as if from underground. Driver knew where there was a mosque. He dropped us out front of Al-Hassanah, where it seemed Susie might not have been before. There was no need for ablutions, Susie advised, as they had been performed at the museum. Within the walls in a corner of the vacant hall at Al-Hassanah an older woman sat across a small table from a fresh-faced man perhaps in his late twenties. She was his guru, the chap revealed. Much conversation while Susie was gone. Yes, an informal spiritual guide; it was common in the Muslim world, a kind of mentoring of the younger generation. The youth sought it out. A smiling gap-toothed scarved woman of the traditional sort with much less English than she had given indication during the preliminaries. Possibly she was illiterate; or only functionally literate. On the other hand perhaps her literacy extended only as far as the Qur'an. From her manner one did receive a strong impression of strength of mind. A covered cup of tea was presented to Guest. Not a Muslim, no, but a friend to the Muslims and good people everywhere. The introduction was a success. The pair had Bosnia-Herzegovina somewhere in the mental frame—the usual recourse in the Malay world for detailing background and roots. Almost certainly the young man was in good hands here. But where was the pair themselves from?... Orang Jogja?... Here was Suze, all done, a quick prayer. Out on the road shortly after for the Transjogja that would deliver us to a dining place, Susie explained that after a prayer she was always fully restored, hardship and trouble all past. The weariness of that long day's trudge the same. But Suze, where was this woman from would you say then?....

That morning after turning out of the gang on the first leg of our way Susie was brought to a halt before one of the big beefy becak drivers waiting beside the rail-line. Some days prior in answer to a question Susie had affirmed that she could instantly tell a fellow islander, a fellow Madurese. How Susie?... Well, by the accent; otherwise by manner and clothing. Certainly. The girl had no doubt. The year before Susie might have in fact been told about this becak driver. Instantly she picked the man as one of her own. Mustachioed, tubby, strong-voiced. There could not have been anything in the soiled, drab clothing. The pair did enjoy the new acquaintance. Susie had been told of the most resplendent cowboy in Geylang Serai back in Singapore: the adornment of flatcap, big shiny belt-buckles, twin pocketed Texan shirts in a range of colours; a large range of stones in his rings, large watch-face. In stride this man was something to behold. Head erect, magnificent square shoulders, easy swing of legs. All his movements were big-time male-lead swagger, decisive and declarative—pointing finger, smile, eyes for the waiter. The chin alone spoke volumes. Either brought as a child from the island, or from Madurese parents settled in Singapore. Muscle-man Rahim the former jail-bird could not be beat for lordly manner and confidence. Only by the old Madura man. Rahim never let his eyes rest on the chap. Best guess was mid- or even late-seventies. Mullet behind dyed and beneath the screwed-down caps almost certainly a shiny pate that only the intimates of his house might witness. Could this chap possibly enter the gates of a mosque? ....Now, this woman before us Suze. What did we have here? Woman was good enough to play the game untutored; she had been told the companion was a fellow islander. Under proper test conditions the ledger was squared here: a failure for over-confident Susie. (The woman had been in Jogja too long, Susie later offered in her defense.) Fine broad and soft smiles either side—possibly the good guru could instantly intuit the orphan. Much pleasure taken from the wing by the Intermediary. There was some distance between them on Madura, but that made no never-mind. It might be something to import the big star from the northern isle for a short season in Yogyakarta, walk him down under lamplight past the men in their buggies, the becak drivers and all the stallholders. Many there were Madurese orang, come over to Yogyakarta to earn a decent living. No one there would give a second look to the Whiteys. Suze and the Guru compatriot could rustle-up some home-cooking, steak and eggs and hot steaming coffee. We would make a party for the spectacular cow-race season back home. Susie had never known her mother, nor her father either. The mystery of her past understandably hung about the young woman. Susie was soon to embark on anthropological studies at a KL university where she had been successfully proposed by connections. (In Indonesia a person over twenty-five years of age could not enter university.) Susie did have the luck of being brought up by her maternal grandparents. Granddad had been ill recently. ---

Classic Artists

Muse de la Musique by Louise Abbéma

The mountain throws a shadow, Thin is the moon's horn; What did we remember Under the ragged thorn? Dread has followed longing, And our hearts are torn. Love's Loneliness by William Butler Yeats

Louise Abbéma

Abbéma was born in Étampes, Essonne. She was born into a wealthy Parisian family, who were well connected in the local artistic community. She began painting in her early teens, and studied under such notables of the period as Charles Joshua Chaplin, JeanJacques Henner and Carolus-Duran. She first received recognition for her work at age 23 when she painted a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, her lifelong friend and possibly her lover.

ÉPOQUE

BELLE (30 October 1853 – 10 July 1927) was a French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque.

Old fathers, great-grandfathers, Rise as kindred should. If ever lover's loneliness Came where you stood, Pray that Heaven protect us That protect your blood.

She went on to paint portraits of other contemporary notables, and also painted panels and murals which adorned the Paris Town Hall, the Paris Opera House, numerous theatres including the "Theatre Sarah Bernhardt", and the "Palace of the Colonial Governor" at Dakar, Senegal. She had an academic and impressionistic style, painting with light and rapid brushstrokes.

ART TITLE: THE GOLDEN NOTE LW PHOTOSHOP

Nothing Lasts Forever

I’ve been clearing stuff out, spring cleaning, throwing away out of date food, ahead of a visit from my sister. I am glad she comes once a year. It motivates me. She says I should do it all for my own sanity but that boat sailed years ago! Anyway, I can be a bit of an eco-warrior – in my small way, and this year’s cause is plastics. I even bought an old fashioned galvanised mop bucket instead of a new plastic one to replace the old plastic one, because although plastic lasts forever, we’re forever having to replace it. We lose the lid off this and the handle snaps off that and plastic pits, fades and cracks. So plastic lasts forever in the environment – but no longer fulfils its function. In the shed we found a teensy wasp’s nest, about the size of a walnut. When I opened the door, mummy wasp came buzzing at me. But wasp’s nests do not stay teensy so we had to break up that happy home. I’m afraid when it comes to wasps, all my ecofriendliness heads for the nearest exit. There was a Raid. There was Wasp Nest Destroyer. False nests called Waspinators were deployed to discourage further occupation in the area of the shed and hedge. Of course birds and bees are encouraged. I allow weeds to grow because bees needs them. And we like birds! I allow grasses to thrive so that birds can have the seeds. Our eco-friendly cat scare sees to it they can nest in peace in the yew and hedge. I like cats. I used to have a cat. But they will go for nesting birds! We all pick and choose who is welcome in our gardens. Wood is environmentally friendly. It’s recyclable – except decking and fencing that’s been treated with stain, apparently isn’t. And the stain is supposed to make it last – but not forever of course. Our old decking was rotten. You can get a type of plastic decking but being an eco-warrior I decided to pave the area where the old decking used to be, instead. Then there was the arbour. It was mouldering in an L shaped, shady part of the yard, not being used, and it needed staining. (I know what I said but I can’t just let it rot!) So I got a man in to move it close to the back

door, by the new paving. Only, when I came to treat it, I noticed our arbour was being used after all – by dozens of spiders. It was just covered in webs – its very own ecosystem. Now, my sister is an arachnophobe. I don’t mind spiders myself, quite like ‘em. I stroked a tarantula once. But the deed had to be done before I applied stain, so out I went trusty brush in hand, apologising to the spiders as I swept away their lace work larders. I felt a bit guilty. It seems we can’t have one thing without destroying something else. What is an eco-warrior to do? And I thought: How would you like it if someone just came along, moved your kitchen to the other side of the house, took all your food, cleaned the whole place and painted it? Wait a minute, I’m doing them a favour! And it’s a real bristle brush with a wooden handle too! I put up wind spinners and lights. I admired my work. Pretty spider home! I hope my sister doesn’t mind too much. Next day it rained and my outdoor activities were put on hold. I know I’m hypocritical. We humans don’t live in harmony with nature, but I try to be aware of what I am doing every day, hoping that even small things make a difference. Through the window, (must clean that) everything looked a little better, a little fresher. My plans were coming together. And I thought, after all, my footprint on the planet is fairly small. Local produce. One car. Hardly any flights. I may not be the prefect eco-warrior, or editor, or poet but I feel content – in my small way. After the dark stain, sitting on an old arbour, beads of summer rain. Oonah

Art: It´s sweet doing nothing by John William Waterhouse

Circa 1950 i remember you against the feral sepia tree the sunset dazed around you leaves like burnished prisms eyes a dappled echo we still meet there, long ago Megan Denese Mealor

Beginnings God without Eve: watercolor wanderlust a blizzard stoked with stones She smoothed in vicious strokes of sea lit reclusive hillsides with bellflowers and begonias etched herself at awestruck angles tangled Adam's warring bones climbed and climbed forbidden skies slept forgotten in the mosses Serpents sweetened and riddled deafening star-stunned sparrows left unfeathered, undefined Megan Denese Mealor

Ode to Jezebel jezebel, that seditious sibyl all vivified brass and saucy jazz blue moon blaspheming igniting feral sanguine lips transliterated a vulturine jade recast carnivorous consort to trembling anemic despot she purloined pastorals defied providence in the name of grandstanding gravity vivacious vanity wars that piratic provocateur marauded as seraphic lodestar rimming callous melancholy with lewd ink, debauched kohl garnishing garnet plaits with flashes of jacinth and beryl damning her unswayable sinew to the massacre of mythology the desecration of fabrication the exoneration of violation she tarried boldly at the lunette awaiting her vindictive victor his crowing chrysolite caravan sanctified with rabid spite beseeching decaying demons for lucent wings of dauntless might alighting her curse to some clashing paradise

redeeming the rectitude of her carnal curtain fall for just a histrionic heartbeat jezebel flew with falling angels Megan Denese Mealor

Art: Head of a Woman by Paul Gauguin, Date: c.1892; French Polynesia, Style: Post-Impressionism, Period: 1st Tahiti period, Genre: sketch and study, Media: pencil, watercolor, paper

Art: Entre Deux Trains, Theophile Steinlen, Style: Realism, Genre: sketch and study

A Lost Face and then Some Tom Sheehan

When asked to read to celebrate my new book of memoirs, I let the audience enter the cubicle from where the work came. I told them: I'll celebrate with you by telling you what I know, how it is with me, what I am, what has made me this way;

a public posture of a private life near nine decades deep. Just behind the retina, a small way back, is a little room. with secret doors, passageways, key words besides Sesame. If you're lucky enough to get inside that room, at the right time, there's ignition, a flare, now and then pure incandescence, a white phosphorous shell detonating ideas and imagery. It's the core room of memories, holding everything I've ever known, seen, felt, spurting with their energies.

Shadowy, intermittent presences we usually know are microscope-beset, become most immediate, deliberate. For glorious moments, splendid people rush back into our lives with their baggage, the Silver Streak unloaded, Boston's old South Station alive, bursting soldered seams. At times I've been lucky, white phosphorescently lucky; when I apprehend all, quadrangle of Camp Drake in Japan in February of 1951, the touch and temperature of the breeze on the back of my neck; I know a rifle's weight on a web strap on my shoulder, awed knowledge of a ponderous steel helmet, tight lace on a boot, watch band on one wrist. Behind me, John Salazer is a comrade with two brothers not yet home from World War II, who the captain calls and says, "You go home tomorrow. Be off the hill before dark." "No, sir, I'll spend the night with Jack down in the listening post." At darkness a Chinese infiltrator hurls a grenade into their bunker. The count begins again, eternal count, odds maker at work, clash of destinies. On the ship heading home, on a troop train rushing across America, in all rooms of sleep since then, are spaces around me. Memory, fragile, becomes tenacious, but honors me as a voice, and my will to spread their tenacity. My book says, 'For those who passed through Saugus, all towns, comrades bravely walked away from home to fall elsewhere, and the frailest one of all, frightened, glassy-eyed, knowing he is hapless, one foot onto D-Day soil or South Pacific beach and going down, but not to be forgotten, not ever here." I had their attention. We shared: The shells were cannonading as one died in my arms, blood setting sun down. In darkness now I cannot find his face again. I search for it, stumble, lose my way. This May's rich again, exploding. Sixty-five May months burst the air. I inhale anew, leaves bomb me, sap is still, muttering of the Earth is mute. I remember all the spring Mays; one tears about me now, but his face is lost. How can I find his face again?

Being Present

by Judy Shepps Battle Gray baby squirrel feasts on gold millet and unshelled peanuts oblivious to yesterday’s hunger and tomorrow’s uncertainty so in the moment that bushy tail quivers with raw excitement. A family of brown finches watch respectfully from naked maple tree branch praying for leftovers.

Art:The Grey Squirel, Oil on Canvas, 2018, MLF

Buying Tobacco in Spain James Graham

She spoke no English, I no Spanish. A pointless phrase or two, a frown, a shrug. At last we gave up words and lifted off in the simple, sumptuous grammar of the sign, mime not quite worthy of Marceau perhaps, but a warming intimacy of hands and meeting eyes. 'O.K.' was the only word that passed, and I said, 'Gracias'. But then it came to money - and suddenly those little paper tokens with their codes and falderals and etchings of grand buildings and great men seemed to come between us. (It was partly that I fumbled, dropped some, couldn't count.) Very strange they seemed, stranger than language (stranger even than breathing hot smoke of shredded leaves). It wasn't like that on the planet I'm from. There, we would exchange, oh, things for things, or things for promises; or, sometimes, songs for remedies.

The Packet of Tobacco by Juan Gris, Date: 1916, Style: Synthetic Cubism, Genre: still life

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GA 96

Jeff Jeppesen orange light leaks from between clotted pink clouds overlapped, like a bloom of jellyfish seen looking up from the bottom of a lagoon farmer’s drainage pond smoking after the cold rain shower that just passed of course it’s dangerous to keep looking away on this pretty drive and this time the big black dog curled dead in the middle of the road turns out to be only a strip of shredded tire thrown by a semi another mile or so aching hands will loosen on the wheel a good song will play on the radio I’ll hum

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Glow-worm by Michael Wooff Why is it that you bioluminesce? When there’s a birth the light you give is white, And when you blink a ship is in distress. Turn blue and you cause shepherds to delight. If rain falls on your light it won’t go out. Your radiance is purer when winds blow. If you glow red a murderer’s about And if your legs turn black there will be snow. You do not dart as does a firefly To mate, or to attract and kill. God knows. Yet should He choose to lift you to the sky Where all the stars are, you’d be one of those.

ART: The Book Worm by Carl Spitzweg, Date: 1850; Germany, Style: Biedermeier, Genre: genre painting, Media: oil, canvas

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Last Summer Akeith Walters

Deep in the bones under undistinguished skin that blends summer cousins together with an early June burn, I knew it was the last summer, though with all my ten years of wisdom I didn’t know why the skinned chicken breasts on the kitchen counter, waiting to be baked instead of fried, was a better dinner for my uncle's grimed-knuckled health when he always had four eggs and browned spam for breakfast, the most important meal of the day my aunt would say to me and my cousins, even though we knew deep in the bones the most important thing was the tire-swing over the swimming hole hidden in the thin woods behind the barn where we would gather in the thick-shaded heat of a sweaty day to smoke cigarettes without any underaged regrets for my uncle who believed faithfully deep in his bones that it was my aunt who slipped through the back bedroom door to pick the pack of unfiltered Camels from the bib of his overalls while he napped the afternoon of his last summer away.

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Art: Ring around the Rosy, Maurice Prendergast. Date: c.1900 - c.1903, Style: Impressionism, Genre: genre painting, Media: watercolor, paper

RUNNING LATE Arthur Callender

The first Off-peak commuter train Left for London bang on time; Today sucking in along the way, workers Coming down from a weekend off, now gearing Up to another five days of bill-paying grind; each Primed, it seemed, like high-wire acrobats might be, anxiety And split-second timing-wise and did not take kindly to the delay. Indeed, It would be fair to say That the carriage was electric With spleen-venting verbs occasioned by The wait; ascending from irritation through aeration, Agitation and infuriation to vehement, yet impotent, castigation Others Appeared to be Silently stewing. Might there be a hint Of trouble brewing? Was the wrath of the downtrodden Hyper-tensile mob about to be unleashed on account of the 8.50 from Clacton arriving ten minutes late into Liverpool Street?

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Art: Under Honey's Harmonica by Boris Kustodiev, Date: 1927, Style: Art Nouveau (Modern), Genre: poster

Solon's Drone Anum Sattar

Call no man happy until he is dead —Solon Rather than try to join the diligent honeybees who toiled away on the pink tipped flowers to store grains into the pollen baskets on their hind legs while thrusting their shimmering reddish brown proboscises and sucking the golden liquid from the innards of the blooms the idle drone bee was glad to feast on their royal jelly before he lifted up to fertilize a virgin queen on the wing. And though he did succeed in mating with a monarch the other bees still resented him for having emptied their honeycombs and before he could gorge more on their precious bee bread the whole swarm of bees came streaming into the straw skep to condemn the parasitic bee by stinging him without pity.

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Sometime in the Future by Peter Feng

Maybe you don’t have to wait until 2116 to see me becoming a star twinkling in the sky like the photons that hurry through our body sands you found to be translucent Maybe then you will have become a star too We will crash into each other’s face like stardust settling down eventually Maybe I don’t have to wait until 2049 to stop arguing with you about the shape of snowflakes I will agree every cake you made is a real cake, instead of some newly excavated Mayan bread In 2059, you will run the last manual check to see if my forehead is directed at the No Man’s Land in Heaven As late as 2069 I will attempt my first catastrophic crossing in your night sky like the C-chord you swept on my guitar like the noise of my heart you heard on that bridge the first light of dawn, the first flash of maybeetles in darkness. All this will probably end before 2079 when I lose all modes of existence indicated by brain waves and become what you met in the Book of Dreams for the first time

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The Skip

Ron. Lavalette

It’s like when that needle hops on your favorite vinyl but it hops at just the right spot…just the right spot…just the right spot and you almost don’t want to go over and fix it because it’s just the right spot…just the right spot and it’s the snippet you could listen to forever…forever…

Art: PS: Fast Forward, MLF, 2018

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Two for the Birds by Patrick Theron Erickson

A little thing upon my path a titmouse perhaps or a finch a little thing nonetheless at once both daring and wary Upon our meeting unannounced a parting of ways soon after first this way he looked then the other as good a pedestrian as any not one seed he left unturned and I’m persuaded

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next time I’m of a mind to sweep I won’t but leave these things be for him to glean then sweep up the hulls thereafter.

The birds are eating their bread and butter I exclaim And should you object Birds don’t eat bread and butter! I insist Then with what is their slice of life spread? And what about their scissor tails those butter knives which slice both ways? And should anything part them from their daily bread anything at all hear them tweet bread and butter bread and butter.

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Wanderer's Night Notes Beate Sigriddaughter

I am tired of this valley of tears, this footpath of grief where you walk barefoot among scorpions, finally closing your eyes, convincing yourself it doesn't matter, all is well. It isn't. We aren't. I pray for courage to dance my anger now, and dance my hunger loudly. This is not the way it was supposed to be. What is the point of limping through this unnecessary life? Why not make it a pleasure for each other instead of this torment of acceptance of puny bits of nothing much. I want to love you, life. Make it easy, so my anger is no longer necessary. Make beauty fall like morning dew, and sadness burn away all the debris with fire, ashes to ashes. Let me love with gold and grandeur. Teach me your scratchy ropes. I will learn. I will climb. I will love.

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I Am Near to Where I'll Find Myself Tom Sheehan In the innards of my soul, the bare breath of it, bones not playing a meager role, all parts make this whole. I am what I am, bound for unknown delivery, some vast place of peace and lore that will have me as faulted as I am, devious in search of worthy word, a hunter past littered ken where only music's heard, where played is my mystery of language at best reach, a memorable line of poetry, Columbus upon the beach. Haul me up in any form, make way for a foolish bird, though flight's beyond my fancy, but best my fancy's stirre

Art: Mountain by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Date: 1906, Style: Symbolism

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Getaway at Nineteen Ceinwen Haydon

Break out and grow up, escape claustrophobic cruelty, get miles and miles away. Those first nights frighten, emptiness and freefall make me grab a hand, the sticky fingers of a bright boy, Oxford scholar, heart of stone. He’s mighty bored and takes me. Less bored he impregnates me and with womanhood up-grown, too young, my freedom’s broken. Art: Woman with pitcher under trees, August Macke, Date: 1912, Style: Fauvism, Genre: genre painting, Media: watercolor

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What it’s like to be a Jezabel Dolores Duggan

None under forty will understand that title As it is a state of mind To make conscious decision To pluck yourself from raging grief And meet a man in a hotel lobby For just one coffee and One soft drink. Then. A light touch on the right forearm Descends into an affair of the heart Tumbling into an abyss of It can’t be helped, save my life kinda Mad, bad, magic and mysterious seed Of love

Art:Jack of hearts by Olga Rozanova, Date: c.1912 - c.1915, Style: Cubism, Series: Playing Cards, Genre: design

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Still Life with Tulips and Oranges by Samuel Peploe

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Tulips in a vase Lesley Timms

Goblets of spring sunshine; Tightly clasped waxy cups Balanced upon elegant stems, Licked by soft green flames. Fresh, firm, ephemeral beauties, Naïve. Blind to transience. Sustenance-steeped, Coaxed by balmy air, Clenched coronets sigh, relax to Open-throated chalices; Wide, gilded opaque mouths, Briefly alluring, fading fast. Withered, curled petals drop, Scattering papery decay. Yet each denuded stem stands proud, Exposing a star-crowned Venus; An alabaster goddess Guarded by lemon-powdered spears.

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