Storyman 3

ISSN: 2009-2369

The Linnet's Wings

And as to being in a fright allow me to remark That Ghosts have just as good a right In every way to fear the light, As men to fear the dark Canto One, The Trystyng, by Lewis Carroll

The Linnet's Wings SUMMER 2014

Also by The Linnet's Wings: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow One Day Tells its Tale to Another by Nonnie Augustine Randolph Caldecott's The House that Jack Built

Frontispiece P.1 The actor Ichumura meeting a cat ghost

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Published by The Linnet's Wing, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, of transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written prmission of the publisher.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way or trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Visit www.thelinnetswings.org to read more about our publication.

ISBN-13: 978-1500469016

Summer Quarter 2014 INTRODUCTION Prologue 11 Editor's Note 13 Epigraph, Mark Twain, 15 SHORT STORIES You Can't Keep Doing That by Niall Joseph 17 The Fibber Affaire by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick 99 The Actress, David W. Landrum 103 New York by Bruce Colbert 113 Whitney Van Ness by Bill Frank Robinson 123 ESSAY Something to Stem the Diminishing or My Journey to Takashima, Daniel Clausen 29 CNF We had lived by Josh Delacy, 47 MICRO FICTION Love Song of a Divorce Attorney, Janet Shell Anderson 24 Comic Strip Jim by Helen Moat 26 August, 1946 by Bill West 28 Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen 36 SPANISH SECTION

Marie Fitzpatrick The Art of Antonio Domínguez de Haro 83 Translation: Adam by Federico Garcia Lorca 88 POETRY Daft by Caleb Brennan 55 Once I wore a red bikini by Tiff Holland 56 These Dogs and Those by Tiff Holland 57 Weathervane by Tiff Holland 58 5 Tankas by OOnah V. Joslin 59 Very Warm for March by Laurel Blossom 60 RED REWIND by Laurel Blossom 61 dark snow by Linda AShok 67 The Beloved Disciple by Andy Reilly (On the exhumation of John Henry Newman) 68 Cat Named Chainsaw by JD Hart 69 River Poem by Beverly Jackson 70 Seasoned by Beverly Jackson 71 Feeding Frenzy by Beverly Jackson 72 At Pottery Barn by Jane Rosenberg La Forge 73 Nazis by Jane Rosenberg La Forge 75 Evolution by Zev Torres 76 Carved by the Wind by Zev Torres 77 ADORNED by Katherine Noone 78 Brief Escape by Eira Needham 79 Cigarette Gallery by R. Donald James Gauvreau 80 Point by Casey Wolf 82

CLASSIC Extract from: Awakening by Herman Hesse 51 Quotes Canto One, The Trystyng, by Lewis Carroll 3 Anam Cara, John O Donoghue 54 ART Esbjorn Doing His Homework by Carl Larsson 17 Frogs by Shibata Zeshin 23 The Bridge of Souls by Wojciech Siudmak 25 Butterflies by Odilon Reddon 27 After War by Nicolae Tonitza 35 Arlequin et Pierrot; model Jacinto Salvado André Derain 37 Happy Pierrot, Antoine Watteau 38 Lady and Pierrot, Konstantin Somov 39 Pierrot with Book, Juan Gris 40 Pierrot Lunaire, Paul Klee 41 The White Pierrot (Jean Renoir) Pierre-Auguste Renoir 42 Pierrot Dancing, Edouard Manet 43 Brighton Pierrots, Walter Sickert 44 Clown, Nicolae Tonitza 45 Allegory, boy lighting candle in the company of an ape and a fool - Fábula El Greco 46

A funeral mask tolls bell by Odilon Redon 47 Easter Chimes Awaken Nature by Alphonse Mucha 51 Weight of the Soul by Wojciech Siudmak 54 The Three Sisters with a Sculpture, left panel from The Three Sisters Triptych by Henri Matisse 65 A hitched wagon by Theodore Gericault 81 Portrait of Adam - Giuseppe Arcimboldo 87 After the Dance by John William Waterhouse 89 The Bower Meadow Study (Study of Dancing Girls)

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 90 Dancing Couple of the Variety by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 91 Dancing man from sketchbook 60 by Theo van Doesburg 92 Phantom Dancing with Castanets by Francisco Goya 93 Dancing troll by Theodor Severin Kittelsen 94 Two Dancing Old Friends by Francisco Goya 95 Three Nude Women Dancing by Theophile Steinlen 96 The Dancing Lesson by Thomas Eakins 97 Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse 98 Actress Margaret by Niko Pirosmani 103 The Wrestling Bretons - Paul Serusier 113

Illustration for A Child's Garden of Verses, published by John Lane, Source: Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work (1914), p. 136. Ref: The Victorian Web

The Linnet's Wings Press 115 Websites researched: gutenberg.org/ wikipaintings.org/ goodreads.com, / en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dewey Managing Editor Marie Fitzpatrick Senior Editor Bill West Editors for Review English Bill West Yvette Flis Marie Fitzpatrick Guesting (Poetry) Elizabeth Glixman Spanish Marie Fitzpatrick Contributing Editor Martin Heavisides Consulting on Photography Maia Cavelli Consulting on Copy Digby Beaumont Web and Database Management Peter Gilkes

'In scoldings and praise her love glistened Blinding us with its contradictions .'

Zev Torres

ake do with what you have. Every man is the architect of his own fortune. If the shoe fits, wear it. Never spend time with people who don't respect you.

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Before healing others, heal yourself. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Let bygones be bygones. Everyone gets their just deserts. Let the punishment fit the crime.

Little leaks sink the ship. The proof is in the pudding. What breaks in a moment may take years to mend. What you give is what you get. You can't buy an inch of time with an inch of gold. Any plan is bad that cannot be changed. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

E'er you remark another's sin, bid your own conscience look within. Familiarity breeds contempt. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. If God wants people to suffer, he sends them too much understanding. For news of the heart, ask the face.

Forethought is easy, repentance is hard. Give thy thoughts no tongue. Having two ears and one tongue, we should listen twice as much as we speak.

A man is known by the company he keeps. Ain't no pot so crooked, you can't find lid to fit. Different strokes for different folks. Each bay, its own wind. Each person has his strong point. Even a sheet of paper has two sides.

'I would make a face at her, she'd shake her head and frown Someday your face will stay like that. I wonder, did it?'

Peggy Johnson

Even children of the same mother, look different. Difficulties make you a jewel. Don't buy other people's problems. Don't let the critics get you down.

Every adversity carries with it the seed of equal or greater benefit. Everybody makes mistakes.

But do mothers know it all? Here are some philosophical comparsions from, John Dewey, one of the most respected academics: A man of his generation. A man that cheered on family in much the same way mothers do. But then it was to men like himself that women looked to for direction. No!

John Dewey The moral situation involves voluntary activity. To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure

an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. To me faith means not worrying. No man's credit is as good as his money.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy. Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience. Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

Hunger not to have, but to be. Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.

There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.

Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues. If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

Just a thought.

A notion by its very description doesn't carry much weight. So it's fair to conclude from press reports on the wrong-doings in the mother and child homes in the Irish Republic that Christian morality since the inception of the state was j ust considered a notion. When one considers the enormous space that the loss of these children have left in our lives, when one considers if allowed to live normal lives what they might have become, the gifts that they might have brought to community and state j ust by being allowed to be who they were. When one considers the enormous space that our own children occupy in our lives!

If the moral situation involves voluntary activity then there were few citizens, community, or political leaders who were prepared to wear its mantle, who were prepared to take a stand in a country where women were considered second class persons. Was it a country where citizens choose to fear a manmade God as they choose to ignore the loving aspect of the spiritual God that they praised each Sunday!

I wouldn't have thought so, for while growing up in the Irish Midlands in the '60s I remember mostly kindness and care from family, relatives, friends, neighbour s, and teachers who took care of their own. And yet it's there, festering in the heart of the nation as we approach a centenary celebration. And from my memories of a happy childhood, I can only assume that the path that the Irish Catholic State and its citizens trod diverged at some point, either that, or they were never in step.

But resentment grows. Doesn't it! It grows in hearts and minds and people wait. It was the '8 0s before Irish women --the second class person said No more, and started to walk away from marriages, from abusive relationships and that was the start of it. It was the '90s when the priest's and bishop's brides made an appearance, and soon after men and women came forward with the abuse stories and they continue. As we prepare to publish our issue, I read that the much anticipated Garth Brook's Concerts may be cancelled. I note the headlines: Our international reputations is in shreds ... and I wonder to what it pertains.

Anyway, we have free will. Thankfully. Freedom to choose our leaders — we are gonna have to become particular. Freedom to acquaint ourselves with other cultures, and to stroke these with our own cultural flavours and tastes. To blend and compare; leave aside what we don't want and hook onto the good stuff. Of course there are filters to be worked around, social ones that we may not recognise and they present a challenge. For to overcome them we need to understand whose building them and what their motivations are in a social, political, economical and religious field. Of course a hint to their motivation is to consider who wants our money and what they're prepared to do to relieve us of it, for it's only the 'stuff' that you carry within your heart and mind that's free; all the externals come at a cost.

And then we all have our own filters; those that we use for protection against the vagaries of the weather as we step through our day to day life. And# life is wonderful! This celebration of the body and soul, both indivudal and collective.

Our poetry editor, Nonnie Augustine, resigned last quarter. She was one of our founding editors and I'd like to thank her for her time and efforts over the last seven years. She tells me she wants to concentrate on promoting her book: 'One Day Tells its Tale to Another,' while working on a new collection. She's a fine poet and it's a fine publication. Nonnie's been a great friend and she'll be missed.

Also last quarter, Diana Ferraro left our Spanish Section due to her own work demands. Diana, established a strong foundation for us here in this section, and I hope that we can continue to build on it. The perceptions that translation and interpetation bring when we hear the foreign voice and watch its interpretative dance opens up different worlds for all of us, for language is the way in which we depict our subjective experience and objectify our environment as we create it -- the mechanics of communication and interaction -- how we use it helps all of us to consider the circumstance that creates and separates us.

It's been an pleasure working alongside Diana for the last couple of years. I edited the section myself this quarter while we consider our future options.

Also, Elizabeth Glixman joined us in poetry for the quarter, it's a big thank you to her. It's very fine work that she delivered for this issue, work that was written by sure hands. Once again we have a very fine issue and as always this is down to all our contributors and editors who share their work with all of us.

# On another note, The Linnet's Wings Press will publish "This Crazy Urge to Live" by Bobby Steve Baker this coming quarter. This is his third publication and his first full length book of poetry, with original ekphrastic photography and art. It's a very beautiful work by a fine poet and photographer and it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to be associated with this fine voice. # At 'The Linnet's Wings,' we appreciate the value of time. So each quarter we try to take a step forward in our presentation, to go an extra mile to see what else we can offer our contributors and readers to make their access easier and to make the time they spend with us reading and viewing more worthwhile.

In Spring, we stepped-up our web design and implemented our blog. The few technical issues we had with that have now been smoothed over. This quarter Peter Gilkes designed a new digital display for us, this by the way will not replace our JoMag issue, however it gives our reader a choice and it can be accessed on our website on our 'Book On Line' link. We hope that you'll pop in and take a look, it's open for all types of android and web download viewing.

Lastly I want to wish you all a wonderful summer. One filled with peace and light, fun and long evenings spent in the company of family and friends.

My Best, Marie Fitzpatrick Managing Editor

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. (from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)

by Niall Joseph

Esbjorn Doing His Homework by Carl Larsson

S

aul was sprawled exhaustedly across the scattered research papers on his bed, overflowing ashtray precarious by his arm, when it came to him finally like a shard of mirror flung through his mind.

A devastating opening line. Fumbling in the dark for his glasses he flipped the ashtray to the floor and had to curse his way through a cloud of foul dust, repeating the line in his head, to get to his desk. His last book had taken him four years to finish after Evie, his wife, died of bowel cancer halfway through; it had been eighteen months since he typed its last line and vowed never again, and six weeks since succumbing to his editor’s superfluous reminders that, at fifty six and enslaved to diabetes, if he couldn’t write anymore he was done. Six bitter weeks of research, excessive corner shop visits, and waiting, waiting, waiting for that line. He flicked on the lamp. Too bright. He pushed it

closer to the desk. Shadows filled the room like panthers. Better. When his phone rang he jerked the chair against his bad knee. The grimace came up from his soul. Later he would blame that pain for making him answer the phone when he should have just let it ring.

‘Saul?’

‘Emily. This is… I’m not…’ Emily was twenty years younger than Saul and liked to think of herself as his confidante, his release, that even when the doubt and unreality enveloped him like a choking gas he could talk to her. It pissed him off that she was right and he refused to have her privy to this moment.

‘I’m just getting out of the bath, can I call you back?’

‘You don't have a bath, Saul.’

‘The shower. I’m just getting out of the shower. I’m still dripping.’

Saul had interspersed his day with four separate corner shop visits - for kosher sausages, a Gatorade, apples, and finally more cigarettes - but just now he felt like he could lift a house. The side of his bookcase was covered with scrawled yellow post-it notes and he felt hyper-alert, as though all the preparatory work of the past month had sharpened itself into a point inside him. He would hang up but she might come over. He stood, still repeating the line in his head.

‘I know you,’ Emily said in his ear as he walked towards the kitchen, dressing gown flapping against his veiny calves. ‘It’s two am. You've been writing. Or trying to.’ She laughed. ‘You were probably sat blankly in your underwear half the day.’

Saul could make out clinking glasses and vapid murmurs behind her voice; she was in a bar, no doubt with her ‘actress’ friends. ’I bet you’ve gone through two packs of the Noblesse,’ she went on, ‘maybe you've even had another of your famous breakthroughs...’

Saul hung up and tried to keep down the rage. He felt inside the kitchen door and flicked on the light. Emily had been a necessary crutch while Evie was sick. She had a talent for inveigling confidences from him in weak moments, and as a result knew how to get under his skin when she wanted to. Not tonight. He slipped the phone into the pocket of his dressing gown, grabbed a glass and, turning off the light, paced determinedly back to his corner cocoon. His knee ached as he reached for the bottle of Otard on the bookcase. He spoke the line out loud for the first time. Mistake. It sounded flat. Lifeless.

He needed to see it, black on white. Hopefully… He grunted. Damn woman had unravelled him in a shot. Smoking a post-coital Gauloises on his bed she thought him a peerless genius, but get her drunk and she loved nothing more than to remind him how flimsy his existence was, how devoid of meaningful relationships now that Evie was gone, how a life lived in books was by definition two dimensional. He tried to let it bounce off him. Yes, he and Evie had never had children, he thought, pouring himself a finger of the brandy. Yes, he didn’t have many friends and yes, fictional characters occupied more space in his mind than politicians, historical figures, actors. But only because that is the way of the world, Emily. He sat down and picked up his drink. Didn’t the life of the fictional Reb Yudel touch more people than that of his creator Shai Agnon, for example? Weren’t Don Quixote’s tracks deeper than Cervantes’?

He swung the chair into the desk, determined not to let her derail the process. History is the accumulation of stories, it said on a post-it on his bookcase, and the greatness of a story is measured solely by its influence. Dry factual accuracy doesn’t come into it, Emily, even if it does have great tits.

Saul typed his opening line and leaned back nervously. It looked ready to explode. He exhaled, relieved, then leaned in and carried on typing from that opening. And typing. In the opening his protagonist was paying to be bitten by a small venomous snake. He sweated as he came to the point of no return. Before long he had a rhythm; the words came into his heart from some place outside him, they flowed through his arteries into his fingers and the story grew before his eyes like a shoot breaking

soil and as it grew he typed without pause and felt it flex and stretch beneath his hands and pick up bells and bones and tassles. The paragraphs multiplied. His body tingled. He could feel the beginnings of a voice, make it out in the distance maybe. It was like he was discovering all over again what it was to write. When the phone rang again he wanted to smash it. Hadn’t he turned the damn thing off?

He pulled it from his pocket and poked at it cackhandedly, trying to cancel the call, but ended up answering it by mistake.

‘You need me.’

‘Emily, for christ’s sake...’ The sound of rainfall told him she had left the bar. His right hand held the phone and his left hovered on the keyboard.

‘I’m your heart.’

‘Listen, honey, it’s late, we...’

‘I’m your well.’

‘You’re definitely not well, Emily, no one doubts that,’ Saul responded instinctively. The cruelty of the remark resonated in the rainy silence at the other end of the phone. Independently wealthy from a design company she formed in her twenties and now abhorred, Emily had married and divorced four times in fifteen years. Psychiatric institutions blotched her life story like dead jellyfish. Acting was the latest of a thousand fruitless pursuits; she sought sought sought but never found. Saul felt he was drawn to her because he valued judgements that came from a place of barbed wire and scars.

‘You and your breakthroughs,’ she said eventually. ‘You know you’re going to trash it tomorrow, Saul. How about I come round?’

‘No. Emily. Not a good time. I’m...’

Digital clink. The line went dead.

Saul put the phone down on the desk and took a deep breath. He took off his glasses, letting them dangle on his chest, then brushed his hair back behind his ears and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He wouldn’t answer the intercom. The last time she came over like this she had smashed Evie’s porcelain pie dish on the kitchen floor. He stood up briskly. Walking to the window - it was really pounding outside - he pulled it down with both hands, enjoying the thud as window met frame and then the swish of the red curtain across it. With the lamp as it was the flat would look dark from the street below. She might think he’d gone out in order to avoid her and thus leave him in peace. He walked back to his desk, sat down, and picked up his phone. Holding down the power button he watched the life putter out of the previously brilliant screen. That was when the siren sounded in his mind.

He glanced over what he had written. It was… He brushed his hair behind his ears and tried to block out what was coming. Tried not to remember the false starts of the previous weeks. Tried not to remember why, apart from those false starts, he hadn’t typed a line in a year and a half. Tried not to remember that he hated everything he had ever written. Emily you bitch. But it wasn’t her. Saul had learned through bitter experience to be wary of the kind of buoyancy he had been feeling tonight. Not only with this one. He tried to stop it but from deep in his liver the thought surged that it had been the same with every book he had ever written; a searing start during which he felt the Possibility of finally coaxing something meaningful, something true even, from that primordial gloop of zeroes and ones behind his computer screen. Then at some point - it had gotten sooner with each book - ambivalence would kick in, and by the end he would hate the book so much they had to pay a motivator to stay with him in the flat and make him finish it. They sold well, at least they used to, but in his heart Saul knew his books were pretentious bullshit. Not one of them adorned his shelves.

But this one… this time… He scrolled up a page and knew he had been feeling nothing but

adrenaline and flow. He’d been up since six. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. He took another sip of the cognac and scrolled right back to the gleaming opening line that had woken him, hoping to convince himself he still had that at least. He didn’t. It was banal and transparent. He shoved the coffeestained papers out of the way to look at the black and white prints of writers he admired – Agnon, Borges, Murakami – that he had taped to the surface of his work table. He used to believe they helped him focus; it was Borges himself who said the history of literature was a never-ending, fascinating conversation. Of course he meant the history of good literature. Saul couldn’t believe how old his hands looked. Before he married Evie - this was going back - when he told women at parties he was a writer they would arch their backs.

Maybe it didn’t matter, he thought, scrolling to the last line he’d written. He might edit most of it out tomorrow, but the important thing was to get some rhythm into it that he could pick up later. He should write a couple more pages. He lifted his hands again. When he heard the knock on the door they dropped heavily onto the keyboard.

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me you fool.’

How the hell had she gotten here so fast? Saul stood and walked to the door. Leaving the chain on its bolt he pulled it open slightly.

‘I told you not to come,’ he said through the gap. Emily had an impossibly small velvet purse in one hand and a white plastic bag in the other. She was soaked. Her normally silky black hair had ruffled into her eyes, and her dripping coat clung to her chest.

‘Open the door Saul.’

‘I’m in the middle of something.’

‘Ok. Then stand back.’

‘No. Emily. No. You can’t…’

‘I mean it Saul.’

‘Emily, I said no.’ He moved to the side as she took a step back and raised her right leg. ‘Emily!

This is a private…’

Thump. The chain snapped feebly, the door burst open, and she pushed past him into the room.

‘You can’t keep doing that Emily,’ he said, grabbing the door to stop it swinging. ‘I deserve …’

‘You’re a cretin, Saul,’ she said, facing him just long enough to register her disgust before walking straight to the desk. ‘The girls think you were probably abused.’ She laid her things on the desk and straightened his lamp. The panthers went skulking behind the furniture and she peered at him through dark, bloodshot eyes. ‘But I forgive you.’

‘Marvellous,’ Saul mumbled, closing the door resignedly.

‘I brought soup,’ she continued, draping the dripping coat over the back of his chair and raising the plastic take away bag. ‘We can talk it out.’

‘I’m still working, Emily,’ Saul insisted halfheartedly, ‘Please. In fact I'm on the verge of a break...’

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Emily looked him up and down with a curled lip. ‘Really?

You’re gonna make it that easy?’

Saul sucked in his stomach, tied his dressing gown around his waist, and folded his arms.

‘Yes, Emily, a breakthrough. It’s a word creative people use to describe…’ He stopped when she put the soup back down on the desk and leaned towards the laptop.

‘Emily! That’s not...!’

He moved towards her but he was fifty six. ‘“A shard of mirror flung through the universe of his mind”? What tripe,’ she said.

Saul leaned across her and snapped shut the lid of the laptop. ‘Thank you for your customary incisiveness Emily,’ he said, too close to her now for comfort. He picked up his glass of cognac before she had a chance to down it and took a step back, almost slipping on a tennis shoe he was sure he hadn’t worn in years. ‘It reminds me of your poetry,’ he said, regaining his balance. ‘Bursting with the unavoidable conclusion that you know less than nothing.’

She smiled at him, but her lip quivered. ‘I know you, you pompous dick. I know how superstitious you are about your hair.’ He slapped away, probably too brusquely, the fingers that reached towards his head. ‘How you’re too ditsy to buy more than a couple of things at a time in the corner shop.’ Her voice was shaky now. ‘And I know that your real life is lonely and pathetic because you pour all your efforts into this stupid computer.’

She had probably taken a couple of pills on top of whatever she had drunk, Saul realised; exactly the ingestion that made failed, half-hearted thespian romantic for her. He couldn't handle crying women unless they were on his screen in a half-finished paragraph.

‘You eat, you sleep, you shower,’ she moaned, her face flickering. ‘You stick post-it notes on your furniture.’ She sat. The top two buttons of her blouse had come undone, Saul couldn’t help but notice.

He pulled a towel from the closet and tossed it to her gingerly. ‘You spew yourself into this machine and sooner or later it ends up either in a book you hate or crumpled in a self-loathing ball in your recycle bin.’

She raised the towel to her head and gave it a cursory rub before leaning forward in the chair and grabbing the glass from his hand. ‘It’s hand to mouth, Saul.’ She took a drink and clacked the glass down on the desk. Dropping the towel on the floor she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. ‘None of it is real; none of it matters. Houses of cards.’

Saul looked down at her. Sometimes it was as though she had broken into his heart and was quoting lines from its walls. It was infuriating. ‘Emily, listen to me,’ he said, kneeling in front of her and resting a palm gently on her thigh, ‘it’s late, you’re feeling a bit stupid...’

‘Shove it, caveman,’ she snapped, brushing his hand away. He stayed put, more out of tiredness than a desire to rile her.

'I know you wouldn't even listen to me if it weren’t for these tits,’ she said. ‘Right, not having kids was totally worth it!’

He replaced his hand on her knee as she picked up the glass and downed the last of the brandy. He stoodslowly, tired and beaten. ‘What you refuse to accept, Saul,’ she said, looking up into his eyes as she lit the Gauloises, ‘is that I’m your only link to real life now. You say the centre of your work is everywhere but you haven't spoken to your brother in six months for God’s sake!’

Saul stepped back flusteredly, though unsure why he should choose this comment to take offence.

His knee twanged with the sudden movement. ‘The centre of my work is everywhere!’ he almost shouted, stumbling slightly before tugging his dressing gown strap tighter and continuing in a lower voice. ‘The centre of all books is everywhere. Literature has no circumference, better people than me have pointed out, nor does it require the approval of…’

‘Who? The people who read it?’

He tried to ignore her. ‘Willis is in my work, Agnon is in my work...’ He couldn’t go on.

‘When it’s direct it’s called plagiarism Saul.’ Emily puffed and the cloud of thick white smoke in

the centre of the little room expanded. Saul ground his teeth briefly and took a deep breath.

‘And Agnon read Cervantes who read Shakespeare. And someone will read my books and write a story that will influence...’

Emily raised her hand and began opening and closing it slowly, mimicking a mouth. Saul sighed.

He wished the room had another chair. She rested her elbow on the edge of the desk and swung the chair gently from side to side, her legs wide. Saul was far enough from her now that he could see most of the way up her skirt.

‘Right, right. It’s all interconnected in a huge wanking mass of self-congratulation. The problem, genius, is that a book is like a ringing telephone. And no one picked up your last two efforts. All they are now is paper.’

Her words climbed up inside Saul with hammers and razor blades and took to him from the inside out. He stole a breath and shuffled before her.

‘That doesn’t matter. The simple expression… The very act … Language, Emily, is the only thing we can be absolutely sure is real, because it’s the only thing that is one hundred per cent subjective,’ he said, remembering a post-it. Even as he said it he felt ridiculous, like he was perched on a ledge halfway down a cliff face. Emily rolled her eyes and leaned back in the chair.

‘You know how many creatures there have been on this planet since it came into being, Saul?’

She took a drag on her cigarette, pausing deliberately to swing the chair provocatively from side to side again.

Saul visualised fucking her with his fist in her mouth. He wanted to sit but had nowhere to go. ‘You’re fifty six years old, for Christ’s sake,’ she said. ‘Who do you think you are?’

Saul puffed up. ‘I am…’ He faltered, and took a breath. ‘I, Emily, am…’

He had nothing.

‘You are,’ Emily said. She stood up and rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Wow. You still got it, Saul.’ She leaned in and with the other hand tapped him on the balls so that he shuddered. ‘Indeed.’

She brushed past him towards the bedroom. He couldn’t help swivelling to watch. She swayed her full hips deliberately, and halfway there turned and began unbuttoning her blouse. ‘This all I'm good for Saul? Is it?’

Saul stood for a second in silence. The rain clattered it’s one and zeros into the puddles; it streamed down the drains, towards the rivers and oceans. He looked from a stripping Emily to the closed laptop. And back to Emily. She was pert. Very pert.

‘Anything else you’ll get from a book?’ She kicked off her shoes. Saul had to duck to avoid one of them. Then she let the blouse slide to the floor. ‘Is that it?’ She reached up her back slowly and snapped open her bra, challenging him to look into her eyes. ‘I’m right here, Saul, and I’m flesh and blood.’

She turned towards his bedroom and looked back over her shoulder, the bra straps swaying, swaying. ‘ What are you going to do with me?’

Saul glanced at the laptop. Then he walked to Emily and grabbed her from behind by the upper arm. When she began to speak he threw his other arm around her and pressed his hand over her mouth.

Frogs by Shibata Zeshin

by

Janet Shell Anderson Old women like wrinkled velociraptors probe surprising streets to shop for baby clothes. I am caught up. High Plains Spring is hesitant outside the big box stores, Super Target, Kohls.

Nebraska fifty-two mile per hour winds slash just and unjust alike while thuggish skies lower over the south side of Lincoln, monster trucks appear from nowhere.

I do divorce.

A filthy man whose sign says he will work for food shouts something. Appropriate thunder cracks.

I am an attorney.

I miss my ex. Maria, haloed in the slanting stormlight, walks transcendent across miles of asphalt, past lines of parked SUVs, surveillance cameras out of reach.

The wind dies. I smell tornado weather.

The green spring peepers in the pond near Walmart sing their thin frog songs each to each.

I do not think that they will sing for me.

The Bridge of Souls by Wojciech Siudmak

by

Jim is lost in a sea of green, blue and white. While Amy sees nurses and carers, tea-makers and body-schleppers, Jim sees villains and undercover thugs. Amy watches the carers led him down the corridor, a light hand on his back. Jim says they pull him around by the nose.

“Why don’t you go into the garden?” Amy asks him. “It’s a lovely spring day.” She searches for his eyes, but they’re lost beneath his checked cap and the thick, frosted glass of his spectacles.

Jim grins and a thin beige line spreads out across his chin. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t even make it as far as the gate before they’d be after me with clubs.” Amy looks at him. His tweed jacket melts into his trousers, the trousers into his shoes. In her mind he’s about three feet high; in reality, he’s around five. She thinks of him as a comic strip escapee.

At five in the morning Amy creeps along the corridor, heading for the bathroom in this place of lost souls. Somewhere a TV is blaring, and a wandering figure is crying in monotone: “Whereare-we-going- how-did-we-get-here-what-are-we-doing?” Amy wishes she knew the answers. She spots Jim asleep in his bedroom chair, his cap still on his head, his eyes lost in the ice-white glass.

“You’ll get a summons,” he says, wakening up. “That’ll be three ice-lollies a week.” Then he laughs. “I mustn’t say things like that: They’ll think I’m mad,” and he yells a “Merry Christmas” as Amy continues on down the corridor.

At the end of the building, the early morning light outside the window is defining the blossom.

Soon, Amy can escape the winter of this place and head out into the spring. ###

Butterflies by Odilon Reddon

by

Bill West Yuki hears the faint drone above the singing of cicadas. She sees the mirrored sun flash from a toy-tiny plane up high. Children outside school look up. The breeze carries scent of camphor trees from the Kokutaiji Temple grounds.

From the plane something black falls. White petals bloom and fill. The plane turns away sharply, its drone now high-pitched and eager.

She watches the parachute and remembers flying kites with her brother. In her head she hears the nursery rhyme, Falling, falling is the kite.

Run and run to keep it right.

How she would love to fly a kite. She would paint it, a crane flying over waves. Children would watch her run and run, her kite would soar above them all. Everyone would admire its colour and beauty, and ignore that pale imposter. ###

by

T

Daniel Clausen

he universe is rolling back in on itself. Somehow, the universe, ambitious and apt to slip into speculative bubbles, had gone too far—and then, realizing its mistake, had stopped, debated its condition and realized that it needed to go back. Now it was slowly creeping back into itself. Inch by inch, it was excruciating. There was nothing easy about this diminishing. The expansion part had been easy. But now the diminishing, the folding back in on itself part, would be a painful ordeal.

In the midst of all of this, I am certain of only one thing—it is difficult to write a feeling. In fact, it’s the hardest thing to do. To turn a lump of sensations and happenings into a narrative whose coherence flips the world and exposes its underside is no easy thing to do at any age. In reality, things are never so clear as they appear at the end of a story, and the reality of that summer day in 2008, when I was 26, is that there is no story—not yet—just that feeling. The feeling that the world was trying to become more manageable, and that horrible things were occurring in order to accomplish this.

A small island in Japan and I were/ are both part of the same story, but I doubt I have the narrative skill to tell you how. * By the time I made my way from my girlfriend’s house to the port building on Nagasaki Bay my back was already sticky with sweat. My T-shirt clung to my body from the fifteen minute bike ride. Even at 9 am in the morning the summer sun was hot enough to exhaust me. At 26, I was really a confused teenager, but I knew one thing: I was going to Takashima. In reality, even this much had yet to be decided, but since this has all happened before—and in some ways is all happening still—then perhaps it is enough to say that the mountain spirits of Nagasaki had already conspired to make it happen.

Who was I at that moment in time? It’s hard to say. The particulars come through clear enough, even if they don't automatically make sense. I was an ex-English teacher, still living in Japan, unemployed temporarily (that is another story). I was waiting for my life to catch up with me. That or my life had passed me by—one of those two. I'm not sure if who I was had any bearing on why I was the one to find this place, Takashima. Perhaps it did.

I was doing two things with my days. I was working on a novel and preparing for my comprehensive exam for my online graduate degree. I was also doing a third thing. I was waiting for things to work out.

My girlfriend was Japanese, my career prospects were in the US, and I was getting lost. On this day, protected from the hot summer sun, I was waiting in a port to go on an excursion to one of the islands just off the coast of Nagasaki.

This was a normal enough thing for me. The ship rides to the islands were fairly cheap, especially to Iojima. There are three islands close to Nagasaki by boat: Iojima, Takashima, and Gunkanjima. I had been to Iojima many times. The island is a resort island that caters to tourists and day-trippers like myself. Then there’s Gunkanjima, an abandoned mining town that one could only look at from distance by tour boat.

Like the other islands, it had once been a site for coal-mining. But unlike the others, Gunkanjima is now uninhabited and inaccessible. I’d never been to Takashima. Whenever I talked to friends and students, none of them would ever really try to sell me on the merits of visiting the island. When all things were weighed evenly, it just never seemed worth the time and effort to go there. It was a bit more money for the boat ride and there was a lot less to do, or so I heard. (Some students did mention that there was good fishing off the island.) There was one incentive to go the island though, and that was that I had never been snorkeling there. That day I was feeling adventurous. I needed a change. I needed to be inspired.

I bought the boat ticket, grabbed some pamphlets about walking and cycling tours on the island, and then waited. The next boat wouldn’t be leaving the dock for at least another hour. The best case scenario was that I would go to the island and be inspired to move past some recent writer’s block I’d had with my novel. I was stuck on the third chapter of what I expected to be a six-chapter book. The middle of a story is always the toughest. The easiest thing for me is to get lost in the middle chapters and never find my way out. I would snorkel the reefs off Takashima, ride a rental bike around the island, and come back refreshed to work on my book. Everything would go beautifully. The day was filled with possibilities. Rational exuberance was taking over. * Subtle things let me know that day was different. At the port building, waiting for the boat that was to take me to Takashima, I found myself on the second floor instead of on the first. It was the first time I had ever been to the second floor of the port building. There I had a better view of Nagasaki harbor. I found a nice spot near the window. After I’d finished my bowl of ramen soup, I sat there and daydreamed about what it would be like to do this for the next few years: to bring a notebook, sit in the port building, look out into the bay, and just write. As I sat there by myself, the moment seemed unreal and hopelessly dreamlike. With each passing year, notions like this, that I could sit somewhere of my choosing and dream freely, were becoming both more realistic and hopeless at the same time. Realistic because I frequently found myself doing things (even on occasion dreaming freely), and hopeless because some vague “grownup” future seemed to be bearing down on me.

Adulthood was troublesome. Truer words have never been written. * The fifty-minute boat ride to Takashima was only slightly longer than the thirty-minute journey to Iojima. Yet, the differences were very apparent the moment I stepped inside the Takashima port building.

Subtle things were amiss. For one, there was a fish tank in the port building that was in miserable disarray.

It was dirty—really dirty. (Things were never dirty in Japan). I could barely see the fish inside, which I assumed (hoped) were still alive. The cover for the bottom of the fish tank generator was off too, its wiring and machinery exposed as if someone meant to repair it but had just given up midway through. The lighting for the building was off somehow. All of the lights were working, but the port building seemed dimmer than it should have been. (When were such details never attended to in Japan?) Across from the entrance was a small bar/ shop that advertised beer and ramen, but there were no customers, and at around 10:30

in the morning there was no one there to watch the store.

My eyes told me the obvious: things were unruly! But my head couldn’t believe it.

As I started to walk the city, I recognized immediately that things were very different from Iojima, the resort island I often visited. The streets were empty. There was no elaborate hotel resort to greet me.

Instead, I found a place with small houses that was nearly deserted.

Not everyplace was falling apart or in disarray. There seemed to be pockets of resistance. There was a brand new, almost gaudy, if small, athletic facility with a pool and spa not too far from the port building. My guess was that this was one last attempt by the city to keep the island from dying out. Just past it though was an apartment building that was falling apart. My first thought was that the building was condemned. From where I stood in the street I could see though that there were clothes hanging off two of the windows. Out of about thirty apartments only two seemed to be inhabited. The thought briefly crossed my mind that the two residents could be squatters. But for some reason the thought of squatters in Japan seemed too far fetched. I stared at the balconies for a long time. Finally someone came out onto one of them. * I had come to the island to refresh my senses, to give myself a new sense of purpose, and to overcome the onus of the middle—chapter three of my novel. I hated the middle. That was where things could all go wrong.

No one was on the beach when I arrived. I was by myself except for a small bulldozer that was abandoned for the moment. It was there to move the sand. My best guess was that the sand was brought from someplace else to the island in order to make the beach more tourist friendly. Soon the tourists would come, I guessed. Perhaps on a weekend the sons and daughters who lived on the mainland would come to visit their parents and other elders and bring boxed lunches. They would take turns going into the water and seeing how long they could hold their breath.

I left my backpack on the beach and hoped that nobody would steal it. I dove into the cool crisp water. The ocean was deeper, clearer than Iojima. It was also full of beautiful tropical fish of different colors. My favorite was the small fluorescent blue fish that hung out around the rocks. In the ocean by myself, with all the fish, I began to think how strange and lonely my journey had been that summer.

Most of the friends I had worked with over the years in Nagasaki had recently left. Now some of my most magical moments were alone in the ocean. My dreams of snorkeling and working on my novel had made me the loneliest person in the world. It occurred to me that maybe there was something there—that this should be part of my novel somehow. I thought about how this loneliness looked, smelled, tasted.

There was purity to it. But that purity was not without its costs.

How many years could I spend like this, by myself, on weekdays, working on my novel, having adventures by myself? Could I squat in one of the abandoned apartments and live outside of time, outside of control? Could I live in an unruly Japan only I knew about? Could I live in chapter three for the rest of my life? I thought about these questions, and I looked at the fish. They sat there content, not doing anything, occasionally swimming in circles.

Yes, I would be on chapter three for the rest of my life, swimming in circles. Or I would not. There was no way to split the difference. *

When I got out of the ocean there were two people eating lunch on the beach. Both of them looked like they were retired, but in the way that Japanese people often do, they also looked quite young. They looked like two friends catching up after a long time apart. One of them gave me a friendly smile and asked how the water was. I told him that it was cold but refreshing.

They both looked at me with a smile. It wasn't long before I began to ask nosy questions. I asked why the buildings looked abandoned. The chatty one with the smile explained to me that the younger people were moving away to the city. He said that it was a bit better at night because people were returning from work, but that even then the city looked empty.

The company of these two men is nice for a moment, but our conversation soon runs out. I thank them for chatting with me and then return to the ocean for some more snorkeling. I will see the two men when I leave the ocean, but we will have very little to talk about. * After I got out of the ocean and dried off a little, my next thought was that I needed to find a bike to rent. I found two men eating a bento (box lunch) by the side of the road. They were in their thirties and seemed like they were taking a break from something, but I had no idea what kind of work they did. They wore overalls and I thought they could have been construction workers of some kind. When I asked if there was a place where I could rent a bike, one of the two men stopped eating his bento and pointed me to a nearby bike shop. It was just a block back the way I came. I had missed it because it looked like it was out of business.

It was right across the street from one of the bright spots of the city, the big, newly constructed city building.

It was this building and the athletic center that seemed to contrast starkly with what was going on. City politics, I thought. A city trying to save itself through public largesse. I didn’t really know anything about it. But I thought I knew. At least I knew the story in generic terms. I had seen it all over TV. The debate about small towns dying out, the struggle to keep them alive. And it always seemed to come down to the same thing: city politicians trying to persuade the government to spend money to save their town.

At first when I saw the bike shop I didn’t want to believe that this was it. The sign with its kanji was easy enough to read, but the store itself looked like it had been abandoned for some time. I wondered what to do next. Would I have to explore the island on foot?

An old ojisan (elderly Japanese person) saw me idling by the bike shop.

“Oy, are you okay, young man?” he said (in Japanese of course).

“I want to rent a bike,” I said in reply.

The man looked at me and said to hold on. He took out his cell phone and called someone. A minute later, he turned to me and said, “Go ahead, leave the money with me and take the bike you want.”

If it were any other place in Japan, I wouldn’t have doubted for a moment that the man really did know the bike shop attendant and that it was okay to take one of the bikes. But this wasn't anyplace else in Japan.

Still, the man seemed harmless enough, and a few of the bikes seemed like they were in good enough condition.

I gave him three hundred yen.

I took one of the rusted bikes on the rack, thanked the man, and was off.

The ride around the island was gorgeous. And I began to notice more of the same. Lonely roads, some houses that were well kept, some that were decaying. I found another apartment building with foliage

creeping up the sides, weeds, but also elderly people living inside.

Where was I going? The sun was hot, just a little after midday, and I was going up a steep hill. I was looking for the hiking path that would take me up the mountain to the highest point of the island. I was sweating profusely again. I reached the path that was specified on the walking map, but not easily. It was weeded over and it took me a few minutes to figure out how I was going to get through, indeed whether it was possible to walk through. If I started, I knew I wouldn’t turn back. Even if the thing became an atrocious slog. But I was here. I had come this far, and I had already been drenched in my own sweat, seawater, and my own sweat again, so there it was.

As I climbed, for some reason I began to think about my dad. He’d passed away several months before.

That, too, is another story. The stories just seemed to pile on, one after the other, and meanwhile chapter three, my life, my will to go on slowly festered, swam around in circles, and dared my crushed spirit to squat in a decrepit apartment for the next five years. Such sentiments in the middle of weeds! When I reached the top, I would write it all down. It seemed important.

When I did reach the top, I saw all of Takashima. The concrete lookout tower on top of the mountain put me in a position where I could see the entire island. I still have the pictures today.

Who was I? Could I be a novelist? Could I be a teacher? A squatter? For the moment, I was just a young man, twenty-six, standing on a mountain (more of a large hill really), on an island where order was slowly giving way to neglect. I thought of my dad and I wanted to cry.

I looked over the island. In the background was Gunkanjima (battleship island), a city that died a long time ago. There was Nagasaki City, Iojima, and me, an anonymous foreigner.

Nagasaki was made of magic, I thought. I still believe this. The novel I was working on was (is?) shaky to its foundation, insecure in its progression, but was at least wise enough to get that right. Even chapter three gets these essential things right. The sun was hot, but the breeze felt cool, inspiring. Can the breeze save the island?

There are stories here: the story of the provincial politician trying to save his town, the story of the old timer in the decrepit apartment, long estranged from his son. There is the story of the man who was supposed to be there to fix the fish tank but had to leave it with the cover open. The world is suddenly filled with stories.

The world is and has always been made of stories. They bump up against each other and create me out of words, some weird foreign kid without a job, perpetually carrying a duffle bag full of snorkel gear, suntan lotion, and bottle rockets. The summer of 2008 is still happening. * But there I am in the summer of 2008. I’m on the mountain top, thinking of my dad, who diminished like the city. I’m there, and here I am trying to write a feeling. There doesn’t seem to be a story here: a lost boy goes to an island off of Nagasaki. I am trying to write a feeling. Maybe the story goes something like this: we all get stuck in chapter three sometimes. We get stuck in the middle with no understanding of the end. It’s all feeling and details with no clear path.

The path is too weeded over and now that I’m at the summit, I have no way of knowing whether I can ever go down again.

And yet, it’s not quite right.

I do walk down the mountain, get back on the boat to the mainland and go to my apartment. I don’t spend the next year on the second floor of the Nagasaki port building eating ramen and writing my novel.

Instead, I go back to Florida. I finish the novel while taking more graduate classes and learn a thing or

two (but nothing about this dreaded adulthood I fear so much). My dad didn’t cease to exist. When he finished diminishing, he grew bigger, more real, and dominated everything else (that is another story).

What does that mean for Takashima? I’m sure it’s still there. I’m sure it still exists and will for a while to come. And making sure it exists is a serious task; because if it ever ceased to exist, its spirit would dominate everything. * From my room in Edgewater, Florida in the year of 2013, I do a web search on Takashima using key words typed in Japanese characters. On the Wikipedia page for Takashima it says that the population is 722 and that the island is 1.39 square kilometers. I find other things on Takashima that I seemed to have missed that day—supposedly there was a museum on coal mining not too far from the port. * It’s the summer of 2008. I’m still 26 and confused. But though the path is weeded over, I find my way back down. I go to the little fitness center and use their pool. It’s impressive. When I’m done, the sun begins to set and I sit in the lounge area of the port building waiting for the ship to take me back to the mainland.

I take out a book (the name of the book escapes me) and pass away my time. I forget about chapter three and my dead father for a while. In a half hour, I’ll be going back to the mainland.

I look at the fish tank in the middle of the lounge. It’s still dirty. The cover is still off the generator and wiring and machinery is still exposed. The bar/ shop is now manned by an older woman. Asahi beer is for sale. If I were sentimental, I would buy a beer and toast the day with her. But I’m not particularly sentimental, and as I recall, I didn’t drink much beer at that point in my life. Instead, I pull out a notebook and start writing these words down. It all amounts to the same thing. I’m not a politician, but there is something I can do to stem the diminishing. I was 26, confused, and alone on an island somewhere off the coast of Nagasaki.

That was my story. It was enough. For now, it’s enough. * The universe can’t roll back on itself forever. At some point, the diminishing breaks to something that feels more natural and free. Somehow, I managed to get through that summer. Somehow, I managed to move away from Nagasaki and find something else to do. I still think about my father, but other things now seem more urgent. Somehow, I go on.

On the way back from the island, I forget about Takashima for a moment. Having been there, having experienced it and let it fade into memory, I know that it will go on existing. I look at Gunkanjima, the dead island off the coast. I don’t get it yet, but it dominates my existence in ways that I only begin to realize, even more so because people had stopped stepping onto its shores. It could not fight the diminishing the way I did, the way Takashima did. From far away, the story seems clear, but its obscure details dominate everything.

###

After War by Nicolae Tonitza

by

Daniel Clausen In my Tokyo office, at two o’clock on a Thursday, I find that I can’t get anything done.

Though I’m busy, though I whack away at my laptop keys, the only thing I’m working on is my blasted memoir. I take frequent coffee breaks and pace nervously. The section manager comes to chat me up about some new IPO or some new major player in the market. He talks about the rising influence of certain hedge funds or some company he’s bullish on. I nod my head, but in truth he doesn’t exist. Nothing around me exists. At least not the way Nagasaki exists.

As I write about Nagasaki, my life in Tokyo fades into a monochrome background. I walk back to my desk. The office lady that has a crush on me shows up to compliment me on something or other, but I can’t even acknowledge her existence. She talks about her sister. Her sister’s in trouble and needs to get a job. She needs to stop mooching off their parents. Oh, and how have I been lately?

And then, I can’t even hear what she’s saying. It’s not her Japanese that’s confusing. It’s the smallness of her voice. It comes from somewhere far away, from that place behind the back of her throat, a place I’m not sure exists.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I’m too focused on my writing. My bloody, obsessive writing.

My reports, whatever they’re supposed to be about, are late. Nobody seems to notice. They all point to me and say their “sugoi”s (fantastic!) and what not, because to the casual observer it looks like I’m deep into my project.

And I am. The dangerous excavation of my past is well under way. Its currents will no doubt lead me to ever more constant coffee breaks. I will nod at people with their far-off voices from places that don’t exist. I will nod because that is the only meaningful action I can manage and because Nagasaki is more real than anything else inside the break room. ###

Arlequin et Pierrot; model Jacinto Salvado André Derain

Happy Pierrot Antoine Watteau

Lady and Pierrot, Konstantin Somov

Pierrot with Book, Juan Gris

Paul Klee, Pierrot Lunaire

The White Pierrot (Jean Renoir), Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierrot Dancing, Edouard Manet

Walter Sickert, Brighton Pierrots

Clown, Nicolae Tonitza

Allegory, boy lighting candle in the company of an ape and a fool - Fábula El Greco

by J o s h d e La c y

A funeral mask tolls bell by Odilon Redon

In case my brother dies before me, he and I already planned his funeral. It will go, more or less, something like this: Friends and family will file into the church. A few whispers, a few sad smiles and nods. I will sit in the front pew with the rest of our family, and our friends will sit behind us. Black suits and black dresses; tears and tissues. Sisters will hold hands, and husbands will hug their wives. Everyone will look to the front of the church, waiting for the last stragglers to find seats in the back so the service can begin.

The first song will play. Quiet, for the first few measures. A rumble, then a few low chords. And then that unmistakable synthesizer—the pump-up song of wrestling practices and high school weight lifting. Drums kick in and Europe starts singing, and at the chorus everyone knows they’re listening to The Final Countdown. Grandmothers are whispering to their husbands, and my mother looks furious, and children are giggling and glancing at their parents. It goes on for five minutes.

I will stand up after the music fades, and I will walk to the front. Everyone is a little nervous, now.

“I loved my brother,” I will say. I adjust the microphone. “We spent a lot of time together, and we did a lot of things together, and we talked about everything together. And if I could tell him one more thing—” Here, I choke up a little. I pause, still smiling about the song, but wanting to cry, too, because smiling makes me miss him even more. I adjust the microphone again. “If I could say one more thing to him, it would be—" I will take a breath and look out over the pews. Another long breath, counting off a measure in my head, and then— “I knew you were trouble when you walked in! ”

I will sing the rest of the song in its entirety: I Knew You Were Trouble, by Taylor Swift. No recording or accompaniment. Just my singing voice, which—the opposite of my brother’s—should never be heard in public, let alone at a funeral.

At first, people will shake their heads and smile, but after I finish the chorus and start on the first verse, those smiles will turn into grimaces, and not-so-close friends will raise their eyebrows.

“Is he serious?”

“This is disgusting.”

“Why isn’t anyone stopping him? This is so disrespectful.”

People will start to leave. A few in the back, slipping out quietly. Then a grandfather from the third row will stand up. People will pull their legs in to give him room as he shuffles to the aisle. He will glare once more as I sing Taylor Swift as loud as I can, and then he will stalk out as forcefully as an old man can stalk. More will follow, and by the time I’ve finished singing, it will be a less well-attended funeral than it had been five minutes ago, and those who stayed will be whispering not-so-subtly. #

At my own funeral, I want readings from Marilynne Robinson and John Steinbeck. I hold their books close, and I read them often. If I can give final words, I want them to be theirs.

Someone will read for me—a friend, or my cousin, or my brother, if I am the one who dies first.

“Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes,” he will read. “And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life."

And then someone else will walk to the rock that we are using for a pulpit, there on the side of a mountain. Hurricane Ridge, maybe, or somewhere near Mt. Rainier, where you can get to the place by car.

That someone will read another passage, and another person will read a third. # My grandmother died in her living room thirteen days ago at 5:40 a.m. She died of cancer. Her memorial service happened this past Saturday, and the next night, sitting on my parents’ couch to draw out the time until he flew back to Montana, my brother and I decided what we wanted for our own funerals.

We did not plan much, comparatively. My grandmother had arranged almost all of her service, and she arranged it months before she died. She picked the ushers and the speakers, and she chose the hymns and the musicians. She even hired the organist and the soloist, and she made all the arrangements for paying them. We joked that she had even planned, down to the day, when she was going to die. # We waited in the choir room before the service. My parents and my brother, my aunt and uncle and cousin. My grandfather and my great aunt and my other grandmother, plus a few other relatives.

We had an hour to wait. My mother talked with my aunt, and my father talked with his mother. My cousin played a videogame, and my grandfather pretended to sleep.

There was a whiteboard on the far wall, and because I did not want to talk to anyone, I erased someone’s notes from last week's Sunday School and found a marker. I wrote out short, easy poems. "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "In a Station of the Metro." They were not relevant, but I had them memorized, and I liked them. I wrote in large letters: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water

beside white chickens.

My mother laughed. “White chickens? What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t have to,” I said.

My brother was playing a piano, a stand-up piano that was not very good, but I think all of us appreciated his playing, even though he was not looking at us and we were not looking at him. He was playing basic things, things that he plays whenever he improvises.

I started writing a longer poem, this one in smaller letters so it would fit on the rest of the whiteboard.

I had to rotate the marker as I went, because it was an old marker and did not write well. “o's" looked like “a's;" “e's" looked like “i's." I doubted anyone could read it.'

After a while, my brother started playing whole songs. Some originals, some covers. He sang one song by The Lumineers, soft enough so people could still talk. It was not about dying, but it was about love and sorrow and wanting, and it was beautiful, or at least I thought it was, and I think he did, too.

One grandson was singing, and another was writing, and another was playing a video game. Daughters were talking with each other, their voices mattering more than their words, and the rest of the group was mingling and waiting. None of us were okay, but we were making ourselves as okay as we could be.

It was scattered and desperate, and it might have looked calloused, or distracted, or disrespectful, but we were making ourselves as okay as we could be.

Taken from "Siddhartha" An Indian Tale

Easter Chimes Awaken Nature by Alphonse Mucha

Awakening

When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them.

Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!"

Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process."

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself.

All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there

sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day."

In thinking this thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.

Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning.

When he had left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "But I am no longer the one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father's place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation?

But all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest, as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he was. For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing. Now, he felt it. Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been his father's son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric.

Now, he was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left. Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered. Nobody was thus alone as he was. There was no nobleman who did not belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language. No Brahman, who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them, no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas, and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also belonged to a caste, in which he was at home. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he, believed in his faith, spoke his language. But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong to? With whom would he share his life? Whose language would he speak?

Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth.

And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back.

"O

nce the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent.

You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”

— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Weight of the Soul by Wojciech Siudmak

“My heart is like whatevs” She supposed, as she left out that religious execrate. That one you can hear young girls often make these days.

Her flip phone cover clipped, closed as she came to slow revelation that likes most young girls, She had lied and she was as daft as a fool for him.

It was our honeymoon, no one could see me, no one we knew. We spent days swimming in turquoise, napping in hammocks. I crossed my legs. My hair was curly. I was tan; you were burned.

My thyroid had not yet eaten my unibrow.

I leaned toward the camera. Of course, I thought I was fat despite the neat crease at my belly button, acute angles arranged to fit inside the frame.

I was happy, the stroke had not yet broken my smile.

Earlier, a man in dreadlocks had paddled in on a surf

board, right up to the hotel’s buoyed line, to sell us shells and a starfish to place on the mantle, so that after your pink skin turned to tan, and years later when I smelled burnt toast all the time, every thing tasting like iron, we would remember: once I wore a red bikini.

These dogs are not those dogs one two three all black and white running after Frisbees ball sheep These dogs sit at my feet white yellow black muzzle the hands dangling at the ends of my arms They don’t watch me sleep I tested the electric collar on myself So those dogs wouldn’t chase cars jumped ten feet at a shock that didn’t faze them Approaching, retreating, Deciding it was worth it, a singular jolt of pain to bring order to the universe These dogs are chaos bark at their own reflection in the dishwasher let us dress them as Santa Claus wear bunny ears, poke their noses

through the knotholes in the fence to visit neighbor dogs they recognize as kin, not Those dogs saw everywhere only the Other even in We who patted their heads and brushed their coats and filled their bowls It was their job to curtail our tendencies to wander to bite to keep us safe.

I’m going to fold myselfup a tin-foil hat and walk out in the rain, try to short-circuit this constant buzzing, redirect it with a Kaiser Spike, a weathervane made out chicken bone I’m going to candle this ear, this end-of-tonight’s broadcasting-static, let the hot wax cool into perfect-wicked cochlear images, and then I’m going to set them on fire, burn the sound down like a lightning-struck tree, a feeble black thread I’ll give a good yank.

I’m sterilizing needles for acupuncture, studying reflexology. I’m going to roofa pound myselfquiet.

All I want is to hear my heart beat, blood pooling into bruises, my own thoughts moving in a straight line.

Placing pennies on closed eyelids draws all the sounds away from a body, bottle trees evict any kind ofhaint, dog bark overwrites exclamation point script and there’s aways the garbage disposal, the dishwasher, to grind to ground, to wash away.

The vacuum cleaner with its attachments designed specifically to exhume dirt and dander, dust and dead cell, is worth a try, but first the hat, flag-of-surrender folded, shiny side in, or maybe sculpted into a fancyrestaurant left-over swan.

I’m going to swim away on a sea ofhum-statichiss-ring-buzz, use it against itself, transmit to the universe on my private frequency, while I take a bat to invisible, internal pitches, and when the storm finally comes, just to target something tangible, hit soft-ball sized hail over the backyard fence in the rain

1 We were not young love conversation flowed between gaps in indifferent hearts into silence ‘til the day you gave me flowers without reason.

2 Uploading birdsong a day of cherry blossom rains confetti. I save soul-fuls of memory.

All you say and all you do.

3 Fickle and faithful every day the sea returns with gifts for the beach inseparable yet attracted to the moon.

4 The way I like it you make me an old fashioned; heavy on bitters, sugar, bourbon, cherries, twist, ice shaped like skulls and crossbones.

5 Your pillow tumbling with thick tight curls that sprang back in youth undaunted cradles your baldness now but the moon and I remember.

Trees already green. Animals grazing, Black and white and brown.

Utility poles stripped silver of their bark Speed along the highway, leafless backs upright.

Top down, radio up, air Tossing love’s lovely lyrics everywhere.

Have you kissed her behind her knees today?

Wherever you are, whoever she may be.

1.

Midge called to say she’s sorry about Lucy.

Knows, she said, I loved Lucy like a sister What’s a sister?

When I hug Midge, she stands like ice tongs, arms at her sides.

Who could blame her. How could she know I forgive her.

Because what did my parents need her for. They had me.

Midge. Midget. Midgette.

Usurper. Usister.

I hate my sister

2.

And still Lucy’s long, low voice on the so-called answering machine.

Red Spanish shawl she brought back from her honeymoon.

Two beige silk shirts, a pair of slacks, scarf I gave her when her hair.

Gifts from Stan when she died that April.

It feels like yesterday.

Pink tulips on the bedside table, petals falling, arm across Stan’s chest.

Her quiet breath. Then in, then no, then out, then not.

Spring in its extreme ephemerality.

3.

Yellow with jaundice, beginnings of growing back black hair on her head, she could hardly open her lavender eyes.

Very thin, except the hands all distorted with swelling, resting on two small pillows.

Lucy, I’m thinking about you all the time, I said.

She said, think harder.

Songbirds, according to the morning paper, are not after all in decline.

She craves birds.

Treatment is no longer an option.

4.

Rain is falling. Black umbrellas, pink and blue umbrellas, flowered umbrellas, umbrella with the face of a frog.

Thy name is mud.

She craves chocolate.

Blue, sunken around the eyes, she pursed her lips the way old people do.

Sour milk.

But even when she lost her train of thought, determined to retrieve it, you could see her drag it back, ribbon of silk like a scarf.

Into her failing, falling body.

It’s spread to her bones.

5.

Lucy said to the doctor, I know this is a trivial question but there’s this red dress I’ve been dying to wear and my friend is having a birthday party. Can I go to the party for a little while, maybe dance one dance, go home? No brace?

The doctor said, you go to that party, you dance. When your back starts to hurt, you put on the brace, wrap a beautiful shawl around your shoulders, stay at that party as long as you want.

Then Stan invited her to dance a slow dance. She made her way down the length of the room, wearing her beautiful red satin dress that showed off her beautiful, treacherous breasts, she rested her cheek on Stan’s chest, they danced a small dance at the edge of the dance floor.

The past rewinds, like clacking film, all the way to the present.

Memory catches on the sprockets of grief.

6.

Back on a kind of chemo she has to have administered at the hospital, stronger, not the drip she can wear at home.

Her pain the kind you get when the cancer’s widespread.

If Lucy will still be here by Easter.

Lucy with her throaty laugh, her red paint brush, her thimbles and thread.

She called the installation Inseparable.

Five scarlet dresses on the gallery wall, long sleeves continuous like women holding covered hands in one long drape or chute. Long skirts extended across the floor, tangled in the middle, passionate as matching blood.

So close we could read each other’s thoughts. So close we got our periods together.

So close nobody, not even God, could tell us apart.

I was always a little bit in love with Lucy.

7.

Lucy’s cancer has spread to her so-called liver.

In the beginning, she insisted a tumor behind her left nipple.

Would it have been there if she hadn’t made them look?

When asteroids crash into Earth, the heat and pressure make midair showers of tiny, glittering diamonds.

As when Lucy used to laugh at me for describing my fat, flat sister.

Light travels one foot every billionth of a second.

Everything is elegy.

8.

Meantime, the anole’s skin, brown and split, turning white and whiter, body shriveling, eyes enormous, fixed and black.

Like time-lapse photography, jerky strobe.

Tail slipping over, body cramped up, caught on the bark of a Sabel palm.

Couldn’t turn our eyes away, though sure the thing was dead.

Suddenly, with a jerk of the head, translucent skin in its hungry jaws.

Shortly, one white scrap left hanging.

Shortly, the dewlap, red and glowing, vibrant in the noonday sun.

Why not like that, my sister said. Death and resurrection.

Why not like that, I thought.

But no.

Charred ruins like bones of a great cathedral, arches like hands in smoldering prayer.

Buildings falling over and over, endless recurring infinity loop.

Paper money, incense, guilt. Ashes, ashes.

We all fall down.

The little pan in her premise has a heart to fry for an omelet; an unusual one. With cheese lustfully grated to cover its nudity, she gets the garnishing ready. The river is very hungry by now. The little toy in her bath cackles for her frothy breasts. She takes her bath and wears oysters.

The river ogles at her blue. The kitchen unabashedly relishes the warmth of her oven. The metal skirt takes the platter of toast on swirling rumi technology. You can see how the heat ravages the juicy heart and bites it into a crispy, tangy start. The snow is finished growing darker but couldn’t convince the storm in him to switch on an upstart. A commotion she much longer waited for.

Resting on his breast.

Resting in his grave.

As close as a wife.

More distant than a slave.

To love better the grace-lost world, he loved where friendship blessed.

But those who thought they loved him more broke heart, and faith, and rest.

Altar sanctified with dust.

Pious plan confounded.

Heart speaks to heart in the damp earth compounded.

When I was a kid, there was no Internet To connect the world, we simply talked Or didn’t Sometimes I listen to the warble voice Of local radio personalities Just for old time’s sake (a phrase That, when used appropriately, marks Age almost better than rings in trees) This morning, the familiar commentator Announced a cat had been lost The cat’s name was Chainsaw All the way to work, I picture people Well-meaning neighbors, helpful kids Walking up and down the street Calling Chainsaw repeatedly, listening For a faint meow in return.

I had a word cupped in my hand, or was it a thought?

Now it's gone, replaced by that spangle of river water jouncing over driftwood before it flattens to gray, moves in slabs under the reflections of cumulus fleece.

There's a stitch in my chest that some might call pain but it's gone as quickly as the hare that skitters across the rocky basis at the bottom of the levee. Hiding. That is its way-and my heart's way too-to flee in starts, then stop to tremble.

The horseheads and wild snapdragons curl in my hand where I wanted a poem instead.

Or those two swooping hawks made a nest in my breast.

The river runs flat, but the darkness beneath surges under a wrinkle of light which beckons like a curled finger, fresh water to the waiting sea.

Last year she was undoing a lifetime of knots, swimming in rancor under pods of mimosa, waiting for summer, worried that snow songs held off spring. This year May coaxes a shadow behind the fence, dark-eyed kisses in a tub of hot rain, dyeing her mouth the color of blooms, promising, promising.

Her house is not empty. The memories web her brain, and drip into veins running cool.

It won't be July before company comes.

The clairvoyant nestled between her thighs is sending out signals, tracking the leashes tied to the ribs of lumbering men, synapses popping in time with a tune, words too soft to hear.

--for Diana I have forced you to eat the fruit; you have forced me to grow it.

What a pair we are, growers and eaters. I spread out plates of green, seedless grapes, your eyes swallow them whole.

You may yearn for purple Concord, or red Merlot, but you eat nevertheless.

We are old, careless, without men, we sit in hammocks and eat from our laps. Dressed in flowered cotton and battered hats, we laugh, grow fresh salad in the yard and eat.

Cats narrow their eyes at us.

We stare back like neutered queens, lording it, eating earth, sky and wild romaine.

When my mother was reduced to the stuff that does not burn, we put her in a river and roots of her beloved trees of rue, and anywhere ashes might go unnoticed, in the city where exile is in the air, flotsam that rises with the sun. My sister did not wish to be spread out, so she chose the bay that took in prisoners and their grandiose plots.

When the boy who lost both parents had their funeral, he poured them over the edge of the pier and people said they could hear them,

like pocket change or costume jewelry, as if checked and filed through, to ensure no one had been stolen.

Imagine your legacy of crowns and mercury floating as if an obstacle, a poison, for fish and dolphins.

I am Jewish so burnt offerings will always be interpreted as waste and consequences, even when they are light and neon bulbs the children try to turn off during the religious lulls.

At the Pottery Barn, now for sale, white candles with wavy yellow thing-a-ma-jigs instead of wicks, to echo the eternal.

On my uncle, on his sun-blistered shoulders and arms, moist and exhausted, I performed my little innocent operations. We weren’t supposed to know about them back then, my sister and I, and now they are everywhere, comical in their marches and reminiscences; I almost feel sorry for them, their iron jewelry, their bald heads, with their aversion to hybrids and a predilection for accounting.

Why not imagine that light just as the poet did, after death, after all things material, like enamel or porcelain or even more neutral: not even sugar is untouched in this regard, with the bones used to bleach its appearance. But a longer journey, through root and vessel, shoe leather and nail, and into the filing cabinet where the records cook and bubble over into the bright eternal.

We watched from out of sight As she furiously swept away Specks of dust no one else could see Slammed shut cabinets that wouldn't remain shut When slammed.

Listened to her raspy detailing of grievances Addressed to objects that could not talk back The broom the obstinate cabinets The space between the floor tiles Harboring those particles.

Grievances about the Contractor who left too much space Between the floor tiles Didn't use enough ground About her husband -- our father -- who Never exercised appropriate authority Joked with the plumber Befriended the roofer Who then cut corners and ripped them off About her children Who hadn't learned how to Read her mind.

Yet we knew when circumstances demanded That we abandon our watch Seek a safer vantage point to resume our vigil Until her next sudden and even more striking

Transformation When at last The eagerly anticipated guests Arrived.

Carved from the wind Arcs 'neath the gusts Dances lightly unseen Gracefully mistrusts Falls in slow motion Alights on a song Glides by heaven's torch Tenderly mourns Chilled by a mist Hastens over a fallen' branch Wades 'cross a swollen stream Returns home by chance.

The wind howls.

Sprays us with the last Autumn leaves In its wake stoic bare trees shape up for their Spring coats lavish, layered as a lady’s gown.

Rising above brume, I sail on a cirrus carpet through far-flung cerulean; sun bussed.

Hirundo rusticas flock by with a flash of russet throats.

The eye of heaven flutters, stippling evening; pomegranate across white chiffon curtains.

Parachuting earthward with sycamore, swirling towards appliquéd leafage, I crash land in the mist slumped on my chaise lounge by the window.

Twilight peers through the panes.

Drawing the drapes across his sneer I switch the light on seasonal despair.

He lingers outside, waiting for the scarab beetle to roll back the sun.

Rising above brume, I sail on a cirrus carpet through far-flung cerulean; sun bussed.

Hirundo rusticas flock by with a flash of russet throats.

The eye of heaven flutters, stippling evening; pomegranate across white chiffon curtains.

Parachuting earthward with sycamore, swirling towards appliquéd leafage, I crash land in the mist slumped on my chaise lounge by the window.

Twilight peers through the panes.

Drawing the drapes across his sneer I switch the light on seasonal despair.

He lingers outside, waiting for the scarab beetle to roll back the sun.

A hitched wagon by Theodore Gericault

there is no response but standstill to this fresh hit past and future so far foreshortened press in against now as a single point i neither flee nor speak nor hide away there is nothing left but this

Almuñécar, Granada, 14 de mayo de 1928)

There was a queue of people at the door of the Sale de Expositiones de la Casa Condesa de Torre-Isabel when we arrived for the exhibition launch on a warm evening in early June. Some idling, some waiting to get through, others smoking a last cigarette before they entered to hear the dignitaries speak in glowing tones of one of their own: An Andalusian, an Almuñecar man, now in his 80's, who sent the critics racing for their pens when he launched his first exhibition at the age of 16, which expressed his interest in submarine landscaping.

My art teacher had passed on the official invite, the lovely enscribed and illustrated invitation from the La Alcaldesa del Ayuntamiento de Motril, which I was glad to get. Having attended some of their public presentations in the past I knew by experience the detail and polish that attended their affairs. However, just being an amateur artist and no critic, when I view art it is from a subjective perspective rather than an objective one. For what do I really know about the type of work that goes into producing and harnessing year in and year out a constant flow of creativity.

So I consider myself as the person on the street walking through the corridors of someone else's imagination. Like most of you guys out there?

And what a treat I had. I don't have to say here that Domínguez de Haro is a fine artist, for anyone with an interest in Spanish art will recognise his name, he's a man who uses his skills to paint and detail marine life, who uses his voice to display the colour, life and sound, to leave an artful reference and story of what we have, and what we have to lose if don't attend to our environment with better care.

His colour, his detail, the clarity of his stroke ,and the tone of his voice invite one to step into imagination, to lift the undersea world into a daily mediation. "For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility ..." Marcus Aurelius, —and De Haro gives one an alternative image to mediate on.

At recepion on the way through, I received a neatly tied scrolll with a short bio and with a print of one of his paintings, ready for framing, and I also bought a catalogue of his work. What struck me on flicking through it there and then was his introductary piece: El Origen de la Vida, only painted in 2008,

La Gruta Del Mero, Oil Canvas, 1992

De Merienda, Oil Canvas, 1998

El Origin de la Vida, Oil on Canvas, 2008

it depicts a mother and child submerged in the blue of the ocean. The life connection, awakened within the colour, communicated a soul's understanding of all life as one, and it drew me into the body of his work. And I loved it enough to research and read more.

The promise that surfaced in the young lad's work was fulfilled. De Haro has had a glowing career, with numerous worldwide exhibitions, with response from museums who bought his work and from art bodies who Aguas Y Luces, Watercolour, 1985 supported his passion. From a young age he had the privilage of following his heart and living his dream, and now in the winter of his life he can step back in and know he fulfilled that first promise. It's not every artist that receives recognition within their lifetime. But De Haro, is the type of man who would appreciate this, too. He's seen the tough times, when he was involved in a serious road traffic accident and nearly lost his life in 1990 , then he had to walk away from his scuba, and revisit his voice as he searched his spirit for the form that the sea had imprinted there. But he had tasted the flavour, so he found his way within to transcribe from memory.

One of my favorite paintings is his 'Las Sandalias del Pescador;' of course from a writerly perspective I loved its title as it immediately brought to mind fish wearing flip flops, high heels and shoes of all types as they went about their affairs. And of course on further reading I discovered that this image is of fish seen through an old microscope, but that's the beauty of art, the viewer gets to transcribe their own impression onto the artists' voice.

De Haro has spent a lifetime working on his passion: Painting and the seas. He became a scuba diver to investigate, appreciate, understand and capture the beauty of the underwater landscape; when he could no longer dive he found a way to Paraíso, Oil on Canvas continue for that's the drive of passion. Each of Dominguez's paintings carries a conservation message about a future devastated by pollution. Poetry, music and hope live within his work, Dominquez has successfully exhibited in Europe, UK. and the US. And I glad to discover that a permanent exhibiton of his work can be found in Granada, for it makes it accessible for me to visit at will. For those who want more information about his life work, his profile and a complete biography with a list of exhibions past and upcoming and a list of museums that own his work can be accessed through his website and on Wikipedia.

MLF, 3rd July, 2014

Portrait of Adam - Giuseppe Arcimboldo

(5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) Árbol de Sangre riega la mañana por donde gime la recién parida.

Su voz deja cristales en la herida y un gráfico de hueso en la ventana.

Mientras la luz que viene fija y gana blancas metas de fábula que olvida el tumulto de venas en la huida hacia el turbio frescor de la manzana, Adam sueña en la fiebre de la arcilla un niño que se acerca galopando por el doble latir de su mejilla.

Pero otro Adán oscuro está soñando neutra luna de piedra sin semilla donde el niño de luz se irá quemando.

INTERPRETATION Marie Fitzpatrick

For where the newborn woman groans Tree of blood irrigates the morning.

Her voice leaves glass in the wound And a blueprint of bones in the window.

When the light that comes fixes and wins white fable goals that forget tumult of veins in the flight imagine the shady coolness of the apple, Adam dreams in the fever of the clay a child draws near him galloping for the double beat of his cheek.

But another dark Adam is dreaming Neutral cold moon without seeds Where the child of light will be burning.

After the Dance by John William Waterhouse

The Bower Meadow Study (Study of Dancing Girls) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dancing Couple of the Variety by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Dancing man from sketchbook 60 by Theo van Doesburg

Phantom Dancing with Castanets by Francisco Goya

Dancing troll by Theodor Severin Kittelsen

Two Dancing Old Friends by Francisco Goya

Three Nude Women Dancing by Theophile Steinlen

The Dancing Lesson by Thomas Eakins

Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse

ac's was an old style pub with thick walls and a thatched roof. The open fire that was set into a wide grate was kept lit from October to April, at night its smoulders were covered by ash that kept the spark alive until morning when she was rekindled.

The pub had been in the same family for a 100 years. At one time, it was fronted by a small shop where grandmothers on pension day bought a pound of ham for the tea before popping into the snug, at the back, for a bottle of stout. In those days the sexes were segregated: the women had the snug, the men the bar. Over the years the pub had become a part of the town's fabric with its own clientele, legends and stories. Stories that were told there were both lies and truth, and sometimes lies that were fabricated from truths became local legends.

Like when Bono visited town. Sure the boys said that he spent the Tuesday night jamming in the pub whereas he'd only stopped to buy a drink in the local shop while passing through. A few young ones recognized him and got his autograph. Johnny paid one of them 50 quid for it and put it behind the bar. That was enough to set the tone of the crack for the month and longer.

Anyway with the recession at its peak Johnny Mac was struggling to keep his doors open, so he decided to run a lying competition to find the best liar in the area. And he decided to run it in November, the month of 'All Souls,' when business was slow: The month some of his best clients abstained from alcohol. Johnny organized two local actors from the local dramatic society and two journalists from the county paper to adjudicate.

Now Johnny Mac believed in keeping things simple and he had three rules.

They were: Each participant had five minutes for their tale in the heats and 20 minutes max. in the final.

Each 'lie' had to have a beginning, a middle and an end or it got struck off -- each judge had a bell, and if the three bells were used the participant stepped down.

There was one winner.

The prize was a storytelling medal, and family tickets for four to a Christmas panto in Dublin with an overnight stay in a city center hotel.

Sure with the journalists input he got free publicity, and on the first night when the doors opened there was a queue to get in. The pub was packed, and a winner was picked from the ten entries, as there was from the following two weeks.

There were two local boys in the final and an outsider that no one knew. He'd been in the audience the second week and took a shot at it; he entered the competition, and told a story about a horse who took a man to town every Friday night for his drinking session just to wait outside until he was finished, and then he took him home putting him to bed in his stable, and pulling his blanket over him. He had a way with

him that raised a laugh and the judges were impressed enough by his off-the-cuff tale to put him through. #

The last Friday in November arrived.

It was final night. If it was a good night, it would set the tone for a good Christmas take at the tills.

The morning of the final Johnny was rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a good night's takings — a disaster of a month had been averted by his own creative input, and he was looking forward to a good Christmas, and he was making plans for a holiday in the Canary Islands, or even Mexico, in the New Year, day–dreaming of surf and beer and svelte bronzed women in itsy bitsy bikinis sunbathing on the beaches when the local polis arrived.

Jimmy Fitzsimmons was the local copper. Small for a polis man, he just made the height regulations and he was fat. Food fat rather than drink fat, for Jimmy had no time for the beer. However, Jimmy was also a member of the local dramatic society and had been attending the Wednesday shows to support the judges. That morning, he was on duty when a fax came through from police headquarters to the local station: The FBI had alerted the Irish Police about a man that they wanted to speak to about a murder in New York and had sent through a photo. And Jimmy Fitzsimons was sure it was the stranger that was in the final of the liar competition.

He told Johnny about it.

'And what do you expect me to do, Jimmy, make a citizen's arrest! Is it that ya want! me making a fool of meself; why are ya telling me anyways?' Johnny asked.

'Just to let you know that you might have a few visitors for I have informed headquarters.' Jimmy answered as he leaned into the bar counter with a self important smirk and settled his cap on the back of his head.

Now, Jimmy Fitz was well known for his investigations. No one took him seriously. He couldn't shoot, hunt, fish or ride, had no driving license and ya'd hear the Honda 50 that he rode around town coming at ya from a mile off.

The Country Women's Association solved more local crime than he did just by keeping their eyes open -- and boy, they had sharp eyes!

'I'll tell you what Jimmy,' Johnny said.' You bring in your FBI and your headquarter boys and whoever else ya like, but I'm I'm telling ya now keep me out of it.'

'So. That's all you have to say,' Jimmy said. 'We could have a murderer in our midst and that's all you have to say, and you! a respected member of the community.'

'Well now, Jimmy, it's like this I just pull pints you pull criminals. Tell me again. How many was it that you caught last year? He insisted, but it was to Jimmy's back he was talking for he had left in a huff. # However after Jimmy left, Johnny had a rethink. Maybe he'd been hasty. So he phoned Mick Maguire, one of his adjudicators, who worked for the press and he related the story.

Mick was delighted to get a heads-up and told him to leave it with him. Mick phoned around a few of his contacts and had the rumour confirmed, and he phoned Johnny back with the news.

'Jesus, Mick, what will we do at all?' he asked. 'We don't need that type of publicity. Can you believe that that eejit got it right this time out!'

'Have you an address for the man?' Mick replied with a question.

'Sure. Why would I,' Johnny said, 'I run a pub, that's all. If he shows he shows. However we don't need his ilk, but we don't need any kind of polis' shenanigans either, sure that will only result in bad publicity for us all. Can you get into me early?' he continued, 'and we'll see if we can sort this before our Honda-cop creates a scene.' # Mick arrived in Mac's at 7PM with a photographer in tow.

'What do we want him for?' Johnny asked, pointing at the camera.

'We want him because we'll be putting the medal winner on our front page. Will ya calm down man,' Mick replied, and he lifted the pint that Johnny poured for him off the table, and handed it to his boy with camera, saying: 'You don't mind staying out of the way, Brian, we'll keep your glass full,' and he nodded to a window seat which Brian promptly took.

Mick settled himself on the barstool, 'Anymore news from Fitzsimons?' he asked.

'Naw, he's not been back.'

'Well, how are you going to play this?' Mick asked.

'Well do you know if Fitzsimons is coming tonight?' Johnny enquired.

'I'm sure he is, but I'll give him a ring if ya like, I'll throw out a hint that I know something, and that's sure to get him in.'

'Well you get him here, and did you bring that boy's photo with you?'

Mick handed it over.

'Right now. Yes. This photo looks like him. All right all right,' he said. 'Okay then, this is what we're going to do.' And Mick sat back, listened, nodded at the appropriate moments and smiled. Then getting up to leave, he called to Brian. 'Just keep that glass refilled, but for heaven's sake stay there and stay sober. Keep me a seat, and I'll be back soon. # That night when the judges arrived they were all dressed as policemen.

The previous year the local variety show had staged 'The Laughing Policemen,' a skit based on the old 'Charles Jolly' song. Six of them had preformed it, and Johnny had phoned them earlier to ask the boys — his judges — to put the old line-up together and stage it that night. The only stipulation was that they were to arrive in costume as he had no changing facilities, and he had also asked that they please mix with the punters just for the fun of it. The boys were up for it, and for the evening added another few members of the drama group to their line-up.

So with a full house and the final set-to-start Johnny took the mike from his MC, thanked everyone for their business and said that, as the venture had been so successful he was putting a drink on the house, and they could pick up a ticket for it, from 'The Laughing Policemen' who would distribute them before they did their turn. Shure he got a standing ovation.

'Go Mac's, Go Johnny,' rang out from the audience. Johnny handed the mike back to his MC and the first finalist started. But the man must have been nervous for he fluffed his lines, and within five minute the three bells had rung.

The second boy up was the outsider, the stranger. This time he told a story of a jailbreak. He held his audience, his wit kept them enthralled. They oohed and ahhhhd and clapped when the convicts got clear away.

Johnny had watched for the murderer's reaction when he saw the boys dressed up as policemen but he gave nothing away. And to give him credit he could tell a story. But it was him okay: The murderer; though Johnny didn't know who he had murdered. Mick McGuire had given Johnny the heads-up earlier, he had phoned Fitzy, who had confirmed that it was the boy they were looking for. Mick said laughing that Fitzy had said: he wouldn't be there as a punter but they could expect visitors.

The stranger sat down to great applause, and then with last of the beer tickets dispensed 'The Laughing Policemen' got up to even greater.

They coloured the background so well that no one really noticed when two real ones came through the door and asked the stranger to go outside with them.

At that stage everyone was on their feet singing along to: hahahahahahaha hahahahaha hahahahahahaha hahahahaha A few of them shouted 'well done' to the stranger as he was led out, his arms held securely by the real coppers. One woman called out: 'We reckon you'll win man.' That's what she said.

And there was Fitz holding the door open and waving at Johnny who was shaking his head at him attemptiing to dismiss his acknowledgement. # Sure the end result was a done deal then. Before the last man — Johnny's brother-in-law — got up he'd won.

The following Monday the front of the weekly paper printed a photo of the police taking the man out of the pub, the write-up suggested that he was a dangerous murderer.

Jimmy Fitzsimons told Johnny afterwards that he'd been involved in a hit and run. But no one mentioned that. As shocking as it was, it was too tame for Mac's clientele. And with the Tuesday night sessions still going strong the rumour went out about the murderer who had entered the competition and told the story of his jail-break on stage. That cemented the 'liar' competition and it became an annual event.

Christmas was good to Johnny that year and he showed-off a great tan when he got back from the vacation. It must be 30 years ago now since this event occurred, and his daughter is now running the old bar.

Johnny's dead, he died in Spain, bought a bar out there when he retired and a couple of local ex pats took him out. They didn't want the competition. 'Twas a sad ending I suppose, but sure he was 79 when it happened, and the hoods in their 30's will never see the light of day again. They're secure behind bars in Alicante. # I wrote up this story for my kids, just to show them that there's always a way around disturbing situations, one can always find a handy way out with a bit of thought, a few friends and a good community.

And then I'm heading down to Mac's I've entered this year's liar's competition, there's 2000 Euros, now,for the winner, times shure have changed, and shure if I win I plan to take the family to London for the

by

David W. Landrum The curtain rises on the scene With someone shouting to be free.

The play unfolds before my eyes.

There stands the actor who is . . . me.

---from “The Actor” by the Moody Blues

Actress Margaret by Niko Pirosmani

ossity Chandler blinked as cameras flashed at the door to the restaurant. In all her years of celebrity she had never gotten used to this. She found a table and ordered a double scotch. Aaron Reynolds, a friend of hers from the theater world, waved and came over to her table.

“I just saw Hamlet over at the Parks Theater and decided to drop in for a night-cap.”

“I saw that last week. Did you like it?”

She went into an analysis of it. She had liked the major roles but thought several of the supporting characters—Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Osric—were poorly done. Aaron agreed with her.

“Hamlet is here tonight,” he said. “So is Ophelia. Would you like to meet them?”

“I’ve wanted to meet them all my life,” she smiled. When they came to her table, she invited them to sit down.

Hamlet was young and sharp, handsome in a rugged way; the girl who played Ophelia was one of the most exquisitely beautiful women Sossity had ever seen. She had a slender, perfectly formed body. The blue dress she wore hung on her like a natural ornament, complimenting her graceful posture. Her white-blond hair, blue eyes, long lashes and well-shaped mouth demanded a person look at her.

Both players were excited to meet Sossity. Both had been to her concerts and owned her recordings.

“I compliment the two of you on your performance tonight,” she said. Then she added, “I love that play.

I was in Hamlet in college.”

Derrick (Hamlet) asked if she were Ophelia.

“No, I was Gertrude.” Then she reached over and lightly touched Derrick’s hand as she put on the voice and intonation from years ago at Purdue University’s Little Theatre: “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,

/ And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. / Do not for ever with thy vailed lids / Seek for thy noble father in the dust: / Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity.”

Derrick took the cue: “Ay, madam, it is common,” he said. “ If it be, / Why seems it so particular with thee?”

She listened with delight as he recited her favorite speech in the play:

“Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' / 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, / Nor customary suits of solemn black, / Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, / No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, / Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, / Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, / That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, / For they are actions that a man might play: / But I have that within which passeth show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”

She laughed and clapped her hands, hoping she was not acting too silly. “God, I love that speech.”

“I loved yours,” he said. “That was great, Sossity.”

“I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that made me happier than doing that role. The night the play ended, after the cast party, I went back to my dorm room and cried myself to sleep because it was over.” She looked at Leah. “Gertrude and Ophelia don’t have much interaction, unfortunately,” Sossity remarked.

“Not much. Too bad.”

“Well, I’ve acted enough. What will you guys have?”

Derrick a rum and coke, Leah a black martini. They drank and talked about music and acting. Derrick had done an internship in London over the summer and had been on stage with Anthony Hopkins. Leah was doing Hamlet but also acting in Scotland Road.

“You’re acting in two plays?”

“Three, actually. I’m doing a matinee of a sixties play called The Man Who Turned Into a Stick,” by Kobo Abe, a Japanese playwright. It’s very abstract—magic realism—but very cool.”

“Three plays in one week?”

“It’s tiring—but last summer I was in the cast at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario. I did three plays a week there, every day, twice on Saturday, and over the season I was in five different plays with some pretty big parts. That definitely builds up your stamina. Doing these seems like a picnic compared to that.”

She asked about Scotland Road. Leah explained the plot. “I’ll have to go see it,” she said They drank and talked until one.

I want you give me the performance times for Scotland Road, ” Sossity said to Leah as she left. “I’d love to attend. And how about lunch tomorrow?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“I’ll call you at eleven.”

Sossity returned to her empty hotel room, took a shower, and went to bed. At eleven the next day she called Leah.

“I was thinking of the Yamishiro. Ever been there?”

“I can’t afford places like that,” she laughed, “but I’ve heard of it.”

“Give me your address. I’ll pick you up at noon.”

That morning one of her employees had delivered a vintage white 1971 Avanti II she had seen on tour a few months back, took a fancy to, and purchased now that she had her license back and could drive again.

She drove it to the address Leah had given her. She was waiting on the sidewalk in front of a beige stucco apartment house. She wore a white top, a tiny pink skirt, white tights, pink boots, and a beret. She carried a pink purse.

“Thanks so much for this, Sossity,” she said as the car pulled away and headed for the restaurant.

“Glad to. I love your outfit.”

“I thought I ought to dress up a little for you. I love your car!”

Sossity told her about how she had acquired it as she made her way through the LA traffic. They arrived at the restaurant. A group of photographers stood at the door.

“How the hell these people know where I’m going to be is beyond me,” Sossity grumbled. “They must have a full-time psychic who can scope out my schedule. I hope you don’t mind being in a photo with me.”

“Why would I mind that?”

They let a valet take the car and approached the photographers. Cameras flashed. They made their way inside.

“Wow, that was weird,” Leah said once they sat down.

“Welcome to my world. I get tracked as closely as the Space Shuttle. Let’s order.”

They ordered drinks, a sushi appetizer and miso. Sossity asked Leah about her career.

Their food arrived. They ordered more drinks. When they finished eating, Leah gave Sossity tickets to her plays.

“Can you work these into your schedule?”

“I think so. I don’t have any gigs scheduled till next week.”

Sossity paid. They went out to the parking lot. Just as few steps from the door they heard someone shout.

“Leah!”

Both women turned in the direction of the male voice. Leah’s eyes grew round with fear. The young man coming toward them was tall and handsome, with dark skin and curly black hair. He looked Dominican or Italian. He walked toward them, expression belligerent, and seized Leah’s arm.

“Goddamn it,” he growled, “I told you to call me.”

He shook her violently. The paparazzi were there in a moment with their cameras. Sossity interposed herself between the young man and Leah.

“Leave her alone, you bastard.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Someone with enough money to hire a lawyer who’ll get your ass locked up for the next twenty years,” she shot back. “Either let go of her or I’ll call the police.” She moved in closer, wedging herself more firmly between Leah and her assailant. “Let go of her arm,” she said, her jaw tight. He sneered. He looked like he might hit her. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.

Recognition lit his eyes.

“I know who you are,” he said, his lip curling up in contempt.

“Let go of her arm. I swear to God, I’ll have you arrested.”

By now people had noticed the altercation. The young man abruptly let go and walked backward, pointing.

“I’ll be back,” he said to Leah, pointing at her. He hurried to his car. “Don’t think this is over. I told you to call me and you’d goddamned better do it.”

Leah wept and trembled as a crowd gathered. The young man hurried to his car and climbed in. Sossity heard the tires squeal as he left the parking lot and headed on to the freeway. She put her arms around Leah.

The paparazzi continued to snap photos. She put out her hand. “Look, guys, we don’t need pictures of this.”

Usually the paparazzi heeded her objections and agreed to desist, willing to exchange posed shots (which they could sell to magazines and internet sites for a high price) for candids; but this scene was too sensational for them to trade off. Cameras flashed and whirled as Leah trembled and wept and Sossity tried to comfort her.

She cursed herself for not bringing Jason along.

“Let’s go to the car,” she told Leah.

They pushed through the cordon of photographers the car. Leah wept as they headed down the highway.

Sossity decided just to drive around until she had settled down a bit. She reached over and took her hand.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she said.

Leah tried to speak but could not get control.

“Why don’t we go for a drink?” Sossity offered.

“Okay,” she said, rallying. “But I’ve got to get to a rehearsal in two hours.”

“No problem. I’ll get you there.”

“Sossity, I’m so ashamed. I don’t know what to say.”

“Who was that?”

“A boyfriend I I split with.”

“Has he been stalking you?”

She did not speak for a long moment then said, “Sometimes.”

“You need to call the police. I get can get my lawyer to get a restraining order—but, really, we wouldn’t even need that. There is a law against stalking.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. Give me some time to calm down and I’ll tell you about him.”

Sossity called a bar where she had an arrangement with the owner. When they got there he ushered them to a private room. Leah ordered a lime daiquiri. Sossity ordered a neat double shot of Forty Creek Barrel Select. She was getting drunk and knew she should not be driving. Leah had sipped her daiquiri.

“Lázaro and I dated all last year,” she said. “Things went well then he got to doing coke a lot. He started getting violent. I told him to leave and he did. Everything was fine. But the last month he’s been pulling stunts like this. I’m afraid.”

“You should be. If he is that out of control, he could hurt you. You don’t have to put up with that kind of thing at all, Leah, and you know you don’t have to.”

“I know.”

Sossity got out her phone. “Here. Call the cops now. It will put you in a better disposition when you go to rehearse.”

Leah called. The police said she needed to come in to headquarters and file a complaint. After she gave back the phone, it rang. Sossity answered.

“Sossity, what the hell is going on?”

It was David, her ex-husband. She felt her anger pique.

“Hello, David. Nice to hear from you,” she said. “You have such good phone manners.”

“Cheryl needs to talk to you.”

A moment’s silence then her daughter’s voice came on.

“Mother, are you okay?” He voiced quavered.

“Yes, honey, I’m fine. What’s wrong?”

“I saw you on TV. Was that man trying to hurt you?”

The video clips. They had frightened her daughter.

“No, honey. He was not trying to hurt me. He was in an argument with his girlfriend and I told him to leave her alone—that’s all.”

“I saw it on the internet. It scared me.”

“Sweetie-pie, I’m so sorry. There’s no need to be scared. It was just a little incident and it’s over now.

I’ve got Jason with me. He won’t let anybody hurt me. Are you okay?”

“Yes, Mother. I miss you.”

“I miss you, honey. How’s school?”

“Good. I like my teacher.”

“What’s her”—David took the phone back.

“Whatever happened, it scared Cheryl,” he said.

“Yes, she was telling me that before you grabbed the phone. I got between a friend of mine and her boyfriend,” she began. He interrupted her.

“Look, I don’t care what’s going on in your so-called life. Just remember you have a son and a daughter and what you do in public affects them."

“I had a son and daughter till you took them away from me half the year, you worthless bastard.”

She clicked off. Leah raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“My ex. He can be obnoxious too. You know what happened with my kids?”

“I read it in the papers.”

“He has them for the next three months and will hardly let me speak to them.”

“I guess we’re both getting it from our ex’s.”

Sossity wanted to change the subject. She asked Leah about the plays. Leah talked about roles.

“Ophelia is not a very big part in Hamlet, ” she said, “though you have to play her intensely when she comes on stage. It’s hard to play insanity and make it convincing—especially hers, because it’s . . . well, articulate insanity. The character of ‘The Woman’ in Scotland Road is much more intriguing. I said I’m playing two crazy women, but you’re not really sure if the Woman in Scotland Road is crazy or not.

She may be telling the truth—that’s the thing that makes it so spooky and postmodern. But I don’t want to ruin it for you.”

“What about the play you’re doing Saturday?”

She grinned. “I’m The Woman from Hell in that play. Nice roles, aren’t they? The director made the character of Death and me mimes—black clothes, faces painted white with our eyes highlighted. It’s a pretty cool play, though.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing it.”

“I’d better go. It’s a long way down to the studio. I can catch a taxi if you need to be somewhere, Sossity. I feel like I’ve imposed on you enough already.”

“You haven’t imposed at all. I do have one request, though. I’m a little drunk and I wonder if you could drive. I’m afraid I’ll get another DUI or smash up the Avanti.”

“Drive that really cool car of yours? You bet I will.”

Leah’s burst of enthusiasm and the talk about theater got Sossity’s mind off Cheryl. Leah took the wheel of the Avanti and piloted it expertly through the tangled traffic of Los Angeles. They exited, came to a quiet side street in a canyon, parked and went into a Bauhaus-style building surrounded by eucalyptus trees and oleander bushes. Inside, the cast and crew of the play, who had seen the television clip, rushed to Leah and expressed their concern. After she had assured them she was fine, she introduced Sossity to them. They reacted to her as people often reacted to her celebrity status. She asked if she could stay until Leah finished rehearsal and if they had any coffee.

They found an office not in use that day. She took off her shoes and relaxed in the air conditioning.

Someone brought her a cup of coffee and logged her in to the computer so she could catch up on email. She checked the internet. The celebrity blogs were full of news about her divorce and the custody situation with her children. And of her confrontation with Lázaro. She would have to call Cheryl and reassure her; she might even talk to their social worker about allowing an early meeting with her daughter.

She wandered into the auditorium. Five people were on the stage. They played two scenes and then exchanged notes and comments. After they were finished conferring, Leah came down. She seemed recovered from the trauma of her encounter with Lázaro.

“How did rehearsal go?” Sossity asked.

“Great. Here’s another ticket to the play if you want to bring someone.”

“My manger’s coming to stay a few days with me. Maybe I’ll bring her. I would bring a boyfriend but I don’t happen to have one at the moment.”

Sossity took Leah back to her apartment. She walked to the door with her to make certain Lázaro

was not lurking somewhere. Sossity admonished her to call to the police if he harassed her in any way. And she reminded Leah that she needed to go to the police and file a complaint.

“Don’t be a facilitator,” she warned.

Sossity drove back to her hotel. She was thoroughly drunk when Tonya arrived.

Tonya Aldair had been her manager from her struggling days. She was short, thin, with red hair, pale skin and watery eyes. She at once saw Sossity’s drunken state and began to admonish her, as Sossity had known she would.

“Your liver is going to be a brick by the time you’re forty.”

“Lay off, Tonya, I don’t feel like hearing it.”

“You need to hear it and you need to get sobered up. I’ll send down for some coffee.”

“Make sure it’s Starbucks.”

Tonya ordered the coffee.

“What was hat little episode on television and the internet all about?” she asked.

“I rescued someone.”

“Not a good idea.”

“No? I guess if you’re a celebrity you can’t keep someone from getting slapped around by her boyfriend, hmmm?”

“It was good, in a way. People are saying you’re courageous and caring. But you need to watch out.

Why wasn’t Jason with you?”

“I can’t have him tagging along all the time.”

“You might be wise to have him tag along.”

Silence fell. Tonya seemed to feel a twinge of conscience at being overly negative.

“Looks like Labyrinth is going platinum,” she said.

“Good. I need a little success right now.”

“Written any new songs?”

“Hell no. I’m too drunk to do that.”

“We need to have something in the next couple of months.”

“I thought our remake of Travelling Band was doing well.”

“It’s number three in CD sales and number one in iTunes.”

“Then why in the goddamned hell do I need to worry about my next album? Sounds like my stuff is doing fine. I’ll be ready to start working on something new in a few months.”

“It takes longer than that to do an album, Sos. People forget quickly. You’ve got to keep coming out with new material.” She paused. “Remember you’re going on tour next week.”

“I remember.”

“Are you up to it?”

“I’m up to it. Even if I’m not, it’s too late to cancel now. I’ll get through the tour.”

The room got quiet again.

“Anything I can do to help?” Tonya asked after a moment.

“Get my kids back for me,” she said grimly.

She thought of the pain she had experienced these last weeks. She was glad she still had a few days off

before she started her concert tour.

She showered and slept until late afternoon. She and Tonya had dinner and headed for the theater.

Jason, Sossity’s bodyguard, met them there.

They went backstage at Leah’s invitation and met the cast then settled into their seats for the performance of Scotland Road.

The play was a bit slow starting out, but as the enigmatic plot unfolded Sossity sat riveted. Leah, dressed in a hospital gown, looked beautiful, and uncovered her character with sudden velocity, so that by the last third of the play she had dominated the stage. The last scene, when fog began to roll in with the sound of waves and Leah’s character described her vision of the Titanic and the character John says, “Yes—I think I see it!” she sat there stunned as the lights went out to signal the end of the play. The audience began to applaud. Sossity joined in the standing ovation they got and whooped her approval.

“That was cool,” Tonya said. “Your friend is a great actress.”

They lingered. Leah invited them backstage. Sossity talked with the cast. As often happened, someone brought in a guitar and she sang two of her hit songs. When people began to drift off toward home, she asked Leah if she had a ride.

“I’m catching a ride with one of the other cast members.”

“Why don’t you let me take you home? I have my bodyguard here. Your friend Lázaro might be stalking you. Better to be safe than sorry.”

She agreed. Sossity, Leah, and Tonya took the Avanti back to Leah’s place. Jason followed them. They said good-byes and Leah went into her place, accompanied by Jason.

“Let’s wait until we see the lights come on,” Sossity said.

The light did come on, but then came screams and the sound of scuffling and glass breaking. Sossity and Tonya bounded from the car and ran up the flight of stairs to Leah’s apartment.

By the time they got there Jason had subdued Lázaro. Leah was on the sofa, sobbing. She had walked into her room; Lázaro had assaulted her, punching her several times in the face and ribs. Jason, who was outside the door, rushed in and overpowered him, handcuffing him (he was a licensed private detective authorized to make citizen’s arrests and carry a gun). Tonya called the police and Sossity saw to the sobbing, trembling Leah.

The police arrived quickly. Jason told his story and Leah calmed down enough to give a statement.

They arrested Lázaro for assault and battery and unlawful entry (he had a key to her apartment from their days together). By the time they took him to jail it was almost 2 a.m.

“You’re coming with me,” Sossity said. “You can stay with me and Tonya at the hotel.”

Leah did not argue. Her left cheek showed a burgundy bruise; Lázaro had blacked her right eye. Two EMTs examined her and said the bruises were not serious and would heal up in a few days. Leah packed a small suitcase, Sossity dismissed Jason, and they drove over to the hotel. They managed to slip in unseen—though Sossity knew this latest incident would make the news as well. Exhausted from performing and from trauma, Leah went to bed and fell asleep. Sossity got another room for Tonya, showered, and slipped on a nightgown.

Before going to her room, she looked in on Leah. Seeing her in the dark, her blonde hair spilling over the pillow, in deep sleep, reminded Sossity of her daughter. She poured herself a drink, hesitated, and then called Dustin, her lawyer.

“Sorry to get you up at three in the morning, Dustin, but this is important.”

He was used to this sort of thing and took the intrusion on his sleep graciously.

“I want to see Cheryl, she said. “I need to talk to her.” #### The next day Leah had a huge shiner. Tonya gasped when she joined them for breakfast. She took Leah’s hand. “You okay, girl?”

“It hurts a little, but I’ll be fine.”

“What time do you go on stage?” Sossity asked.

“The play is at two.”

“Will you be able to act looking like you do?”

Leah smiled weakly. “Remember I’m a mime in this play. My face will be painted white and my eyes will be painted black with tear-lines running down from them.”

“If you don’t feel up to it you need to take a pass,” Sossity commented.

“I don’t feel great, but I’m going to play the part.” She smiled. “The show must go on. And I’m not going to let Lázaro wreck my life. Sossity, you said you would lend me your lawyer. I can’t afford one myself, but I realize I’ve let him get away with this for too long. Could you help me out with the legal costs?”

“I’ll put my lawyer at your disposal and you won’t have to pay me anything. Dustin is in league with the Devil when it comes to law; he’ll help you out. And don’t worry about the medical bills—I’ve got it covered."

They ate and talked about their favorite plays. Tonya, to Sossity’s surprise, knew a lot about theater and most of the conversation was between her and Leah.

“How do you know that much about plays and musicals?” she asked her after Leah had left for makeup call.

“I acted all through high school and college.”

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

Sossity spent the next two hours on the phone taking care of details for her upcoming concert tour.

At noon she and Tonya dined with two other staff members from her organization and drove over to see Leah’s play.

The performance was in a converted warehouse. The stage was bare. Leah came out shortly after the beginning of the play. She and her partner were dressed like traditional French mimes: painted faces and slouch hats, though he wore black trousers, she a leotard and black tights. The Man From Hell was cold, cut-and-dried, business-like about his death; the Woman From Hell was in training and thus more compassionate and ambivalent about the Man Who Turned Into A Stick. At the end she did not want to throw him in the gutter; when forced to, she did so but displayed compassion for him. Being thrown in the gutter represented his death.

The play was short. Sossity thought it providential that the director of the film had decided to cast the characters as mimes. The paint covered Leah’s black eye and bruises. She would be performing again soon, though. She supposed the bruise would go down a little and could be covered with make-up in the

other productions.

When the receiving line had broken up, she and Tonya talked to Leah in backstage.

“You need a place to stay tonight?” Sossity asked.

“I’m going to spend tonight with my old boyfriend, Caleb. I used to date him until Lázaro muscled his way in.”

“He was the male lead for the play?”

“Yep.” “Very good looking guy,” Tonya commented.

“You bet he is. I met Lázaro at a party when I was dating Caleb. He came on so strong I dumped Caleb for him. I didn’t like the way he treated me but I put up with it. The more he abused me, the more I accommodated him. Caleb caught wind of it and wanted to confront him but I wouldn’t let him. I was afraid Lázaro might come after him—though I’m sure Caleb could have taken care of him.” She smiled. “I guess I was thinking too much Ophelia and too little Woman from Hell.”

“I know what you mean,” Sossity said.

They lingered, talking and drinking, until late. Finally they said good-byes. Sossity and Tonya climbed in the Avanti and headed back to the hotel.

Sossity thought of the roles she had played in high school and college: Emily Webb in Our Town, Gertrude in Hamlet, Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. On the music stage, too, she assumed a character; music performance was a variety of acting. The mirror to nature, she remembered, was a line from Hamlet, though she could not remember who said the line. Acting, showed human passion. She reflected on how we see the passions of other people but not our own. Driving through the crowded freeways of LA, she determined that she would start contacting friends in the movie industry in order to help Leah’s career.

Sossity also resolved that she would start writing her own script—writing it and acting it out.

She asked Tonya to tell her about the times she had been on stage as the two of them drove on.

by Bruce Colbert

"Y

Dark as Dutch Chocolate

ou either come, or you don’t!” was the way my poet cousin phrased it before hanging up the telephone, demonstrating her general disinterest, or perhaps boredom, with anything concerning my present life, or ‘my issues’ as she liked to call them. I called them concerns, or questions.

Hillary had been the first grandchild in the family, the eldest daughter of my late aunt Sarah whom I adored although we rarely saw her after they settled in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he husband Eric had been a well-known oceanographer, a watery trade which seemingly had room for even the most bizarre of scientists. His specialty was the popular Great White shark, though he was also a world-renown authority on plankton for some reason. With the release of the hit movie Jaws, he had become a sought after keynote speaker, and made enough money from these after dinner speeches to allow them to buy a quaint, Victorian rose-covered cottage on Nantucket, a location both he and his Atlantic fish charges seemed to favor. We had visited them on the island once, just after I had graduated from Berkeley.

He had told the story of sharks for years over cocktails all those summers, and usually a handful of writers from the art colony on the Island were always guests; he liked an audience and was a natural spinner of sea yarns, so when the book Jaws hit the New York Times Bestseller list, the top book for two years running, it was no surprise to Hillary. She remembered the writer: he was a local guy from a rather famous literary family that summered on the Island from New York, and what angered her most, was there was no acknowledgement, not a word in the book, thanking her late father. The little bastard, this upstart writer, and he was small guy too, a runt, she told me.

I recall that summer trudging along the beach with Eric one morning, when he always took his two mile walk, and he stopped me, and said, “look!” pointing seaward.

“What?” I answered.

“Over there,” he indicated with his index finger, excited.

“What is it? I can’t see anything!”

“Dorsal fin, a big one, maybe twenty feet, could be more!” he proudly announced.

“Shark!”

“Of course.”

“No way, I’m swimming here, no way,” I told him, shaking my head. I had taken a commission as a new officer in the Navy much to the surprise of my Berkeley friends, so I made a mental note of the dorsal fin, in case I saw one of his brethren from the deck of a destroyer, or at worse, next to my life jacket

in the water.

I had remembered the story of the USS Indianapolis , the ship transporting the atomic bomb to Okinawa that on its return voyage had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, and as it sank, six hundred men went into the water. When a rescue vessel finally got to the stricken men, only two hundred had survived the shark feeding frenzy. It was a tale told to every young Navy recruit before he went to sea.

The next time I saw Eric was at my sister’s wedding in St. Louis, and then, five years after that, at his wake.

My sister Janet who was closer to Hillary’s age, had been invited to Nantucket more often, and she had spent a month there two summers in a row, I’d remembered vaguely, and then she and Hillary had some kind a falling out, over the same young man, who later became a rock musician, playing bass guitar with several Boston bands.

Hillary was one of those postmodern poets, always brusque in conversation, who liked to end their conversations with a ‘shit,’ at that very least, or worse, despite her Columbia pedigree, and the fifteen years she’d spent teaching Keats on the Morningside Heights campus. She had a steady sort of profane streak, period, maybe because of too much Keats, I don’t know.

She had long stringy red hair usually tied in an unmanageable ponytail that she still wore well into middle age. Hillary liked all kinds hats too, and for years she always wore these black homburgs or checkered pork pie hats to family events, always men’s hats, in a sort of Frida Kahlo style. You would see her with the hat on, brim pulled down over her brow in those old black and white family polaroids with that wry Cheshire cat smile on her face, thinking to herself, “I can do anything I want, and you can’t stop me!”

She had met Beat poet Allen Ginsburg, on one of his lecture tours when she was a student, and had convinced him of her many skills as a personal assistant, and traveled with him for a year, until she met her poet husband Gregory who had been a young disciple of Timothy Leary. The following year they married and lived in a commune outside of Humboldt, California’s Golden Triangle for another year, and then were divorced.

Poor Gregory didn’t survive the Seventies, and somehow was lost at sea off Casablanca when he was visiting his friend novelist Paul Bowles, who he had met through Kenneth Rexroth when they all shared a house together in Berkeley in the late Fifties. He had been a young soldier in the Korean War, and was thirteen or fourteen years older than Hillary.

Always after a couple of drinks, she’d remember that first day at the commune, driving up in a van with another couple from San Francisco.

As they unloaded their sparse luggage, a harried young hippie with long hair flowing behind and carrying a large meat cleaver passed right by them in hot pursuit of a screaming pig, bearing down on the frightened animal, and swinging the cleaver in circles in the air.

She turned to Gregory she told me and, said, “You told me they were vegetarians!”

He just shook his head in disbelief. The year passed slowly.

“I woke up from a acid trip one morning” and said, asked myself? ‘What the hell am I doing here and with this guy?"— meaning her husband.The next day she was standing on the highway hitchhiking back to Manhattan, and then she finished her poetry studies.

“It wasn’t a total loss,” she’d recall, “ At least I learned to make bread!" 'An experience,’ was how she described it, mostly pleasant and mercifully short.

She did have one old grudge, though. Hillary had been one of the founders of the Bank Street poets, a group of writers who lived near the Columbia campus in the Seventies who all sent their small children to the Bank Street College elementary school on 110th street. There were eleven poets in all, seven women and four men. One of the women, Ellen Johannsen, whom she had considered barely a writer of anything

readable, despite three books, this year had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, for a revisionist book, on those young mother years, a book Hillary told me should have been stuffed in the bottom of her cat litter box, if she had a cat, In truth, Hillary didn’t care much for animals, or pets at all, but perhaps I’m wrong, the metaphors of birds trilling sometimes appeared in her lyric poems.

In those days the Bank Street poets met at each other’s apartments, and worked together for maybe four or five years, and of the four men in the small group, two were dead by the mid-1980s, victims of suicides. There was a slim volume of poetry they all published in the late 1970s, which was thought to be as important as the Beats, but it never became popular in poetry circles deciding these things.

In her last year of college, Hillary had married a guy, from Rhode Island, in the law school, and a year later they had a daughter, Johnna. The marriage lasted five years, and now her daughter was grown with two twin girls, living on the Eastside of Manhattan, near MOMA ,with her stockbroker husband seemingly happy, and she sent her daughters to the Brearley school, at forty thousand dollars a wack.

Hillary had kept the university apartment they first moved into with Johnna, and it was rentcontrolled, and so, affordable. She spent most of her time in the nearby Hudson Valley where she owned a lovely old Dutch farmhouse, and led poetry readings among retired academics. She also taught one course a year at Bard to a class of would-be geriatric poets to stay in practice.

I had watched her in the classroom, and she was a dynamo, quoting verse after verse of Yeats as her Columbia students who fumbled with texts, fingers firing through pages, tried desperately to stay with her. No one intimidated her.

One story I’d heard about Hillary was that the infamous Columbia professor and TV Quiz show guru Charles Donnelly had a crush on her, and tried to get intimate with her one afternoon in the library stacks. She had looked askance at his bumbling passion, and said, “Either do something, or keep it in your pants!” and walked away laughing.

This was the apartment she offered to me in New York, and I had agreed to sublet it, furnished with her five thousand books and bad art, a deal we could do in the city because I was a traceable family member, and anyway I wanted to flee my life in LA. I’d had some success in LA producing a couple of TV Sitcoms, and one particularly violent cop show that had surprisingly high audience ratings for five straight years before getting yanked. I’d also done four or five features, films that were box office successes, reaching the 50 million dollar mark. But I hadn’t acted, or written for the stage, since I left New York twenty-five years earlier. I was burnt out, truthfully, and I had to get out of Los Angeles, or check myself into a psychiatric hospital somewhere.

It was time to find greener pastures, leave my recovering alcoholic actress ex-wife behind, with her trainer boyfriend, and the house we had owned together in Laurel Canyon or the bank owned.

Karin had been a regular on a hit TV detective series with actor Robert Blake, who was later accused of shooting his wife, which Karin always believed he’d done, knowing him, though he was later acquitted.

It seemed Blake and his wife had dinner at a well-known Santa Monica restaurant near Loew’s Hotel, and as he was ready to drive home to Malibu, he realized he’d left his pistol back at the restaurant; yes, his handgun. So naturally, he went back to retrieve it, and upon returning to his car, found his wife shot dead. It was a grisly and other worldly place, Los Angeles.

I got the keys from Hillary and moved into the New York apartment at 116th and Riverside, just opposite the Hudson River park, on a Sunday night, bringing with me two bags from LA, a pathetic legacy of the years since I’d left the Seventh Fleet as a lieutenant junior grade, and wanted to do film and television.

“Super’s name is Emilio, call him ‘Jefe’, that’s chief in Spanish, boss,” she instructed me, “He’s Puerto Rican! Get him if anything goes wrong, not me!

“No messing around with the girls here, either,“ she warned me, “they’ll toss me out.”

“It never entered my mind,” I answered her, with a little smile.

“Everything in here is old, like me!” she sighed. “I think I bought the gas stove in the early 80s, three burners work. Too much of pain to fix the other.”

I told her I’d try, I’m handy, I was an engineering officer on the destroyer—keep those engines humming—and I’d do the routine maintenance around the apartment.

“Not to worry,” I offered, meaning the whole apartment deal.

“Oh God, worry? don’t start.”

“My ex-husband put those bookshelves up, he was so proud,” she remembered, “but the damn things are still crooked.” She hit one shelf with her little fist, and a cloud of dust rose from the old books.

I looked at the shelves trying to figure out how I could adjust them but then gave it up.

“Maybe I’ll be in for a reading now and then, but probably not, it’s too much trouble,” she sighed, though she did see her daughter occasionally in New York.

The daughter also had a second home near Allandale, next to Bard College, and they got together on weekends when she was up in the country.

So the place was pretty much mine, to do with what I wanted, and cheap—just paying her five or six hundred a month.

“You can bring all the women in you want, just don’t get them from here, OK?” she said walking to the door. “Promise?”

“Rest easy, Hillary, I’m too tired for that!”

“And make sure you introduce yourself to all the desk people, each one, as ‘my cousin,’ so they know,” she stressed.

“They’d love to kick me out, so they can quadruple the rent, put ten students here.” and with that she slammed the door.

The second evening there I did my wash downstairs in the basement laundry. It was late when I took the elevator to the basement but when I got there, a young Hispanic woman dressed in what could only be called a t-shirt and thong was taking her clothes out of the drier as I loaded mine into one of the washers.

She seemed to bend far into the drier, taking her time pulling out items one at a time, with her shapely behind starring at me all the while, a thin piece of twisted pink fabric separating her buttocks. She smiled at me through the whole unloading process, enjoying my obvious discomfort, and then left. For a moment, I thought I was having Sunday brunch on Venice Beach watching the parade of pulchritude pass by.

My old director friend Terry Johnson had returned to doing Off-Broadway plays after twenty years of films, and I asked him to lunch that first week, trying to get some bearings in the city.

He told me to go to one of the acting studios like Uta Hagen’s old place in the West Village, take a class or two, sharpen my skills. The last play I did in New York was something called MacBird, the Macbeth epic told with a Lyndon Johnson plot twist, at a small theater, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War soon after he had refused a second term. The Village Voice, when it was a real newspaper, in those years, had liked my performance, and the youngish reviewer had gone ahead to work for the New Yorker and later the Times.

But alas, he’d since retired, and lived in Barbados with his lifelong partner, a choreographer, whom I had also met, at the opening cast party, afterward at the director’s studio on McDougal. I was clearly a relic here.

Johnson thought for a moment over his coffee, and said, “Tell you what! I’m doing a revival of Tennessee Williams,’ Night of the Iguana, the original script, with the German tourists in Mexico! They way he wrote it.”

“You look German, the gray-blond hair,” he added, motioning to my full head of hair, a legacy from my maternal grandfather. “Got the portly wife already, the two adult kids, yeah,’ it might work, “a few lines.”

So after all these years, my first role in New York was ten lines, and Terry always the perfectionist behind a camera, had also hired a German tutor so our coming onstage was authentic, things a German family on vacation in wartime Mexico would talk about: sunburn, hot weather, the spicy food, and the lack of decent cold beer. He even had us learn, the Lorelei , the ancient German folk song, and sing it off stage, as the Reverend Shannon character drank whiskey onstage.

Joyce Faulk who played my German stage wife was a lovely woman, and an imposing figure at two hundred pounds in her late forties with a skirted period bathing suit complete with a white turban. In one moonlit scene at the mythical Casa Verde hotel built onstage, we waltzed to Mexican radio music very much in love, and at the same time shamelessly celebrating the Nazi Luftwaffe firebombing of London.

The woman who played the Eva Gardener lead role of Maxine had taken a leave of absence from the Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera where she’d been singing for eight shows a week for the past five straight years.

“I had to get away!” she told me as we were waiting for the stage manager to call, ‘places’, “so, I wouldn’t go nuts!” She joined us for the two month run, and then returned to Broadway.

A beautiful woman, all the men in the cast agreed, but strangely enough, married to a man who brought to mind the Adams Family TV series character, Lurch.

After Iguana as we called it, a few roles started to open up, parts for middle age drunks, abusive husbands and fathers, priests, ex-colonels. I played an Off-Broadway father of one of the Columbine killers, a best-selling novelist who has an affair with his daughter-in-law, a broken down abstract painter talking to dead artists, a renegade CIA agent who kills his Russian agent, a journalist in Cairo.

To fill in the gaps I started to do bottom-feeder television, low-budget horror and paranormal fare that I promised myself I wouldn’t but did anyway.

I did one TV series playing a dead relative of a well-known British film star who returns to haunt him on set, almost ruining his career, until I’m exorcised by an aged Long Island Catholic priest.

One TV series I did had a broad range of horrible parasites attacking humans, lovingly termed, Monsters Inside Me, based on actual cases of blindness, paralysis, and brain deterioration, and often excruciating deaths.

On Stalked, I was an emcee at an Asian beauty pageant in rural Wisconsin, and was a part of online harassment scheme of the young contestants I secretly desired.

I unsuccessfully auditioned for the History Channel mini-series roles for characters like Cornelius Vanderbilt, and General George Patton, and Rasputin, too. I tried to get HBO series roles as homosexual college professors, politicians, and surgeons.

I played Ed Ray, the retired school bus driver who rescued twenty elementary school children in the 1970s Chowchilla kidnapping case, for something called Mystery at the Museum, about museums all over the US, though I couldn’t understand why someone would dedicate an exhibit to this obscure crime.

For another TV episode, I was a Mormon neighbor who stopped by his neighbor’s farm to visit just before he executed his entire family and buried them inside the barn, this time for a new series on mass murders.

Then one day Terry introduced me to Maria over a coffee in Chelsea. I had been writing a two character play about an alcoholic playwright who pens his final opus, and needs the young woman he made a star on Broadway to do it. At this point in his life, no one in New York will touch him. But that didn’t seem to work, so I made him a painter on the skids, with an art dealer girlfriend and a bitchy ex-wife.

Maria Rivera was in her early thirties, a Puerto Rican girl who grew up with a single mother and two

brothers in the Bronx, and had found her way somehow into the New York theatre world where she had been noticed by him in a couple Off-Broadway productions.

Somehow we found each other amusing at that first meeting, and she said she’d meet me the next week to read the script at some café, and maybe we could put the play up at a small East Village black box theatre, she knew a few.

It started innocently enough, I had spent eight roller coaster years with an attractive television actress wife, and now I had just wanted to find peace, real peace, and maybe some small satisfaction in my work, the acting and the writing, I didn’t want to repeat that painful journey with any good looking actress, the self-absorption, the over-the-top insecurities, the narcissism and craziness, and in Karin’s case, the booze.

Her drinking finally drove me over the edge, and I just moved out of the house, so I wouldn’t go crazy myself, or join her in the drunken evening rants. She had driven my old vintage ’74 Alfa right through the garage back wall and halfway down the ravine in Laurel Canyon, supposedly on the way back from a late table read for a new TV series, dead drunk.

Maria was a tall, with olive skin, dark eyes, on the slender side, maybe, but she had a French grandfather, so that took away some of the Latina features and her nose seemed a bit long, pointy. She had done some hair modeling for Seventeen as a teenager, so she saw herself as an attractive young woman, and played to that hand.

One memorable thing about our first time together was her constant use of the word, ‘fuck,’ it reminded me of a Navy Boatswain’s Mate I had known at Subic Bay in The Philippines, for good reason known as ‘Public Bay’ throughout the Pacific fleet. It was inseparable from his speech, any conversation he had; she was that way too, but hers had a sweet, childish sound, had almost laughable quality to it.

She was unusual for a woman that young, I thought. We had several coffees at cafes around Chelsea, and one at my Columbia apartment where we staged movements. Maria liked the character I’d written, its grittiness, and told me she knew her share of tough women, her mother for one, beaten by her drunken father, and steeled on the outside, but vulnerable and soft on the inside, still a very feminine woman.

Terry agreed with staging the play, and he found us a seasoned young director, who had assisted him in a handful of classic productions he did in the city when he had a small Chekov company.

Maria lived six blocks from me on the Westside just off Columbus Ave, so we did the early play rehearsals at my place, which was convenient for her.

The third time we’d worked on the play, just lines, and before involving the director, we were working at the apartment, and I made her a coffee, and we talked about our lives, the past, mostly disappointments.

The shocker came early. She matter-of-factly told me when she was fifteen she had been gang raped near her Bronx high school by four older boys who had pulled her from a street corner early one evening on the way home, and had taken her into a nearby small overgrown city park. One of them had put his hand over her mouth, and he and another boy dragged her across the street, somehow unseen, into the arms of two others waiting in the bushes. One boy held her arms and one spread her legs apart, while two of them had raped her. Dazed from the pain, a third one mounted and raped her, and then all four ran into the New York night.

“My God!” I’m so sorry.”

“That breaks my heart, “ I told her, a veil of sadness descending on me, feeling a sorrow and pain for her that I couldn’t explain to myself. “What an awful thing!”

“I’m over it,” she answered.

How can you get past that? as a woman, or a even man, how on earth, do you put something behind you this painful, the searing emotional and physical pain?

I reached over and took one of Maria’s pretty hands, with her muscular long fingers, and held it in both my hands, firmly and gently, protectively.

Why did she tell me this, why now, or at all? I wondered, it had nothing to do with the play, or what we had talked about, mostly failed relationships, some with a twist of humor. I had remembered the nurse who had ordered ten pizzas from different pizzerias sent to my apartment in LA, after I’d cancelled at the last minute as her date for a friend’s wedding. She sent the pizzas two nights in a row, collect, when you could still do that.

“They went to jail,” she said.

Then she laughed: “Before, my mother dressed me in long dresses, and mini skirts, things she bought or made herself. After, she would only let me wear pants.”

I stared at my empty cup, and then I looked up at her, but she was on to something else, picking up a pencil and feverishly making notes on her script.

We had a series of rehearsals downtown at a studio with the director who was patient with me, and recognized in her the natural actress that she was.

One afternoon, he had a meeting at Black Rock, as the theatre and television world called the NBC studios in the Rockefeller Center, and so we ran a few scenes ourselves.

In one heated exchange: she’s leaving me in the play and she throws her coat in my face while I ignore her, looking down at my empty hands. We ran that scene a half dozen times but something seemed lacking in our emotional connection as a couple.

The studio was hot, we were both wearing t-shirts, and as I delivered my final line she hit me in the face, not with her jean jacket as scripted, but with something black and lacy. Unnoticed to me as I got into the despondent character role, she had taken off her bra and slammed it my face, and laughingly stood in front of me with her mocha breasts heaving.

They were small and beautiful, with nipples as dark as Dutch chocolate. She was smiling at me, shaking her head, moving one index finger from one side to the other, motioning. me to stay where I was, at least that’s what I thought she wanted.

“Put your eyes back in your head,” she said, laughing.

“Now maybe, we can connect, huh? she blurted out, reaching for her t-shirt and slipping it on without the bra.

I still sat there stunned.

“I’m going to sit on your lap and hold you for a minute,” she went on, “then we start the lines, as a couple.”

“OK,” I answered.

“You understand?” she said. I nodded.

Gradually the play came to life, and the characters became us. We had two weeks in the theatre, and we decided to run through the play in costume.

One dressing room was being painted, so we both shared the other. And as I started to undress she noticed that I was wearing white jockey shorts.

She burst out laughing pointing at my shorts. “Hey grandpa!” she howled, “nobody’s worn those in what? ‘a hundred years!’”

The next morning I hurried over to Macy’s men’s department, and asked the twenty-five year old clerk what kind of underwear he wore, and he directed me to a display off colored bikini briefs, and I bought a dozen pair.

Maria knew a lot of players in the theatre and film world, and she traded on her big asset, her beauty.

Right out of some second-rate theatre school above a deli, she gone to in downtown Manhattan, she somehow had become a girlfriend of one of the best-known womanizers in the business, the notorious and prolific playwright Beau Wachovsky, who had an insatiable taste for twenty-something women to whom he would act as sometime mentor, at least as long as the relationship suited him, which was generally a few months. He was sixty. Maria was the single exception, saved from oblivion, and she remained his confidant. Every month or so, he’d invite her to dinners with Hollywood stars who came into town, and famous LA screenwriters with whom he worked with as a film script doctors.

She was very possessive of Beau, but once she did invite me to a party at his Gramercy Park townhouse where a top New York jazz trio was playing, and I learned she was the sometime girlfriend of the quintet leader Dale O’Brien. Maria got around for a Puerto Rican girl from a working-class single mother, still in a crummy low-rise in the South Bronx.

Beau’s house was garish in a low-keyed sort of way, the walls were painted a Kelly green, crummy poster art on the walls, and he had beaten up cheap furniture spread around a large living room. His Marine Corp memorabilia rested on a fireplace mantle, and there was a tiny writing alcove with an old wooden desk and a mental file cabinet. The dining room was a bit more stylish, where food from the local neighborhood Mexican eatery was laid out, and in the modern kitchen you found a makeshift bar on a tiled counter with a dozen bottles of decent wine.

Screenwriter Larry Haggers was there and as I was talking with Beau and a woman I’d just met about being a guest of the military myself, he interrupted us, and asked, “Hey Beau, how many Pulitzers, do you have?”

Beau didn’t miss a beat and said over his shoulder, “Just one!” and went on about the summer heat and fleas you’d find at Camp Lejeune. He had written a play about his barracks experience that unfortunately lacked the punch of his usual violent working-class, his Irish and Italian characters, and the critics had yawned. Since then he had tried a political trilogy, and two of the plays had gone off the road. But he struck gold in LA, several of his scripts had been optioned for films, so he was gracious as ever to his guests.

Maria filled me in on all this, when she gave me a minute or two at the party. – and here, a comma before his Irish and Italian characters, and I added an article before plays. Again it was affecting flow imho.

He was a jazz aficionado, and after their brief romance had introduced Maria to the saxophonist O’Brien, and they had become an item, for maybe two years now. O’Brien was a big, gregarious dark haired, bearded Boston Irish guy maybe twenty years older, a longtime musician who had cut records with all the legends and had been playing professionally since he was sixteen. He had a daughter around her age whom I met at the party, at the bar, actually, and we talked about Maria a little. He was open and honest, and I liked him.

Two weeks later an article in one of the city news tabloids named Wachovsky as a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by a young woman with whom he’d been involved, accusing him of deviant sexual behavior, a sort of assault, I gathered, reading the article.

His response had been ‘no comment’, but he did admit that he had dated the woman on several occasions. Her age was listed as twenty-five.

The young woman claimed that Wachovsky had promised to guide her in her nascent stage career, and that he had sexually brutalized her, and now, a year later, her attorney was asking for punitive damages.

He was called in the article, ‘a notorious sodomite!’

I mentioned this to Maria in passing after our next play rehearsal, and she didn’t say much about it, changing the subject of conversation quickly.

“Crazies, out there!” was all I could get out of her, and then as we usually did, I took her out to a neighborhood cafe for a latte, and we talked about the play, and a little about what she was doing, never about me.

When we walked down Seventh Ave after a rehearsal I watched her out of the corner of my eye look at store windows, unaware of whatever was on display, just looking at her own mirrored image, and smile, occasionally flip her long hair, if it pleased her.

Once I had asked her what she wanted out of life, walking this same route, and as we approached 42nd street, she pointed up to a two story digital marquee for a new TV series, and said, “I want that!” with a swing of her arm.

“You wanna be a star, huh?” I said, with a chuckle, “like everybody else here.”

“Yeah!”

The play opened to bad reviews, from one of the minor tabloid critics, who typically didn’t like playwrights acting in their own plays, as he told Maria later, but it didn’t bother me, I knew it needed work on the last act, and quite frankly, the New York theatre didn’t care much for plays concerning middle aged men anyway. Everything had a youthful spin. There might be some interest in an abusive father on stage, but not the journey of a once married, alcoholic painter. Woody Allen had milked all the interest out of audiences there.

In the opening act, at the painters studio set in the small theatre, Maria’s character, the painter’s girlfriend Lisa, is lying on the floor in yogic mediation and the audience literally steps over her, As the damning critic moved to his seat, he stopped for a moment over Maria, and shook his head, saying, “I know what’s, next, Maria!” and let out a long sigh, and then found his seat.

His article called the play “a self indulgent acting exercise for playwright, ”who he added, should stay in television in LA, forget about the stage. I laughed when I read it, and so did old Terry who I saw one evening, but Maria was angry that I hadn’t gone ahead with rewrites, and said she’d only do this play again if it meant staying out of federal prison for a life sentence.

Her romance with the jazz musician was on the outs, and he seemed to be spending more time in Los Angeles, where he’d lived for ten years, and I gathered that her craziness was too just too tiresome for him, so he told her it was over, finished.

Maria lived well for the most part, her apartment which I visited once, was in one of those small prewar buildings, and it was furnished well, good art, a few oriental rugs, expensive lamps. She had a collection of high tech Italian designer lamps all over her place, and she read a lot of scripts, one next to every lamp, it seemed to me.

Her clothes were fashionable in a fashion conscious city, and looked expensive, but she never seemed to have enough television or film work, to live on, money must have been tight, and she always ended up doing at lot of unpaid theatre, loved a handful of experimental ensembles.

“Why don’t you get a girlfriend?” she once asked me over coffee, being her inquisitive self.

“I’m still getting over LA, and that mess,” I told her, remembering how open and innocent Karin had been when I first met her, coming off a TV set.

“Are you an candidate?” I joked, trying to put some distance on the truth, which of course was there for anyone to see.

“Not with you, Grandpa,” she said, taking her hand and gently caressing my face.

“Anyway, we fight, and you’re too picky, wouldn’t work, I gotta go!” she said, and with that she was

out the café door before I knew it, high-heel boots clicking on the pavement, wool cape flying in the wind like a sail.

She asked me to do a short play with her about an evangelical preacher, and I told her I wanted to go to an Evensong service at the Episcopal Cathedral, and she should come with me.

Reluctantly she agreed, filling me in on her Pentecostal upbringing and as we sat in the Gothic carved wooden choir loft seats listening to old hymns, and throughout the whole service she seemed as nervous as a cat, ready to spring and run out the door, never singing a note even with her beautiful voice I’d heard after a few glasses of wine one night.

I took her to the Hungarian cafe across the street from the Cathedral after the service, and we talked about religion, and our experiences with it, good and bad, “I don’t like churches, mister!” she told me, “and if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be here!” and grabbing her cellphone, saying she had to go, she ran out the door.

I was having lunch with one of my New York friends, a big time theatre producer, who’s caustic nature I could only live with once or twice a year, and the subject of Maria came up.

“Maria Rivera,” he said with a knowing laugh in his voice, “she’s a piece of work!”

“How?” I cautiously asked him.

“Good actress, but you hear stuff about her!” You don’t know what to believe!” he said, digging into the stroganoff he’d ordered with gusto, shoveling in a few enthusiastic mouthfuls, chewing.

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, I don’t have any personal experience, myself, “ he said, smiling, “but. ...”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, getting a little irritated with his little cat-and-mouse game.

“You don’t know? “ “Don’t know what?” I asked, some hidden anger in my voice.

“She’s a high-priced hooker,” he finally said, “Bullshit!”

“How do you think she lives the way she does, the clothes, the apartment?" he said calmly. “Not from acting!”

I got up from the table, and looked at him seething, my fists clenched, and threw sixty bucks on the table. “My treat, asshole!” And then I turned and stormed out the restaurant door.

When we were getting closer to each other, Maria had said to me one night, half seriously, I thought, “People wonder how I make my money, you want to know how?”

We were having coffee at my apartment after one of her shows, and she had her stocking feet on my lap, it was snowing outside.

I finished my coffee, and I looked at this woman, really looked and saw her, the woman she was, and gently rubbed her foot.

“I already know!” I told her, and leaned forward and kissed her mouth gently.

by Bill Frank Robinson The dwarf, Whitey Van Ness, a loner and outcast, rescues a comatose boy and changes his (Whitey’s) life forever.

The Archie Cleebo Saga Continues.

w

hitey Van Ness was sitting on the tall grass in a clearing and talking to himself. “Damn! That was one hell of a storm. Good thing I found this open spot to hunker down in; if I was in the trees all that lightning would have nailed me for sure. Wonder where Hoover got off to? I hope he didn't get mixed up with a skunk or porcupine.''

He pulled his pipe from his pocket and inspected it, turning it over and over, and pressing it to his nose. "That tobacco smells so sweet; I could use a smoke right now.'' He grasped a pouch and shook tobacco into his hand; it's soaking wet. He returned the unusable mush to the pouch and fished out his matches; they're ruined. He shook his head and climbed to his feet. "I'm one hell of a woodsman. First storm that comes along puts me out of business. I've got to get back to civilization. Now where in the hell is Hoover?'' He walked into the woods, pausing every few yards to shout for his dog.

Whitey was born and raised in San Francisco. His dad, Solomon, told him to be proud, dignified because Van Ness Avenue was named after his great grandpa, or was it his great uncle? Whitey never put much faith in his ancestors and the legacy they left him: where's the dignity of being the runt of the litter?

Whitey was always the shortest student in school and, consequently, the brunt of ridicule from his classmates. He was ugly beyond normal ugliness. People would say, "What happened to your face? Did you have an accident or did somebody beat you up?'' Whitey would reply, "No accident; that's the way I was born.'' If they insisted that he must have got his misshapen face in a fight he would tell them he was a lover not a fighter. That was one lie he was guilty of, he never had a girlfriend in his life.

The wilderness had swallowed Hoover: he can't be found anywhere. Whitey stopped walking and looked around. He had been so concerned for that hound that he didn't pay attention to the territory he was passing through. Now nothing looked familiar, he's lost. Whitey started laughing; he has been a klutz all his life and what's more fitting than to get lost in the woods? He bellowed into the trees. "Damn it, Hoover, if you don't get over here right now, you're on your own.'' He laughed some more: Hoover will probably do well without his owner around. Whitey drew his short, stocky frame together and began searching for the highway.

The hours passed and Whitey was more confounded than ever: how in the hell did he ever get himself in such a predicament? He walked all day and he hadn't come across anything that even gives a hint that he was close to a way back to town. He could have starved or froze to death out here and there sure as hell's not going to be anybody looking for him. For the first time in his life he regretted that he had never

bothered to make any friends, someone to care about him and alert the authorities that he was missing.

A gorge blocked his path. His confusion grew: do I go back? Or should I follow along the rim of this barrier? He looked down towards the bottom of the gorge and decided it was too risky to climb down.

The rim was equally uninviting so he turned to go back the way he came.

He reached a clearing and sat on a rock. "I'm not getting anywhere. I better think about this for awhile.'' He stabbed his pipe in his mouth and sucked on it. The burnt tobacco residue soothed him. The light was fading fast and it was turning cold so he gathered leaves and brush to prepare a shelter.

The next morning, at first light, he was traveling fast determined not to spend another night in the open. He has found a trail and followed it; it must lead somewhere. He rounded a bend and ran headon into Hoover.

The big dog leaped on him knocking him to the ground and smothering him with his tongue. Whitey covered his face with his arms. "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You don't need to get so rambunctious.

Where have you been?'' The mauling continued so Whitey wrapped his arms around Hoover's neck and rolled on top. Now it was the dog's turn to be uncomfortable. He yelped, whined, and fought to get free.

Whitey released his friend and climbed to his feet. "Behave yourself.'' He kept a hand on Hoover's head and pushed him down preventing anymore leaps off the ground.

Whitey knelt beside his pet, stroking him, talking in a gentle tone, and calming him. Finally he rose and resumed his journey. He stopped at the sound of barking. Hoover wasn't following; he's running off into the brush and then back again, barking all the time. "What's the matter, boy? You want me to follow you?'' Whitey was reluctant to leave the trail and he can't imagine where Hoover could be leading him.

"We don't have time for any monkey business. We've got to get home.'' He slapped his leg. "Come on, boy.

Come on.'' He turned and began walking away but stopped when the barking continued. Hoover was frantic: his barking and racing back and forth was frenzied. Whitey stared at the dog, thinking hard: "There must be something terribly wrong. Hoover's never acted like this before. I better follow him.''

Ten minutes later Whitey's sorry he left the trail: what if he can't find it again? Hoover bounced around an object on the ground. Whitey rushed forward then pulled up short. "What the blue blazes?''

It's the body of a small boy. Whitey dropped to his knees and felt the boy's neck. The skin was cold but he felt a pulse. "He's alive but from the looks of him he won't be for long. Hoover, we have to find a way to get him to town.'' ### The kid lay on a hospital bed while a maid mopped the floor nearby. He was in a coma yet he heard Grandma: "Sidestep to his left, Archie, away from his right. That's all he's got, a right. Make him fire that right across his own body. That way even if he hits ya it ain't gonna hurt. Not a big step, mind you, just a little step ` cause he ain't that much bigger than you.'' Grandma's voice came through loud and clear.

"Sidestep and throw the hook at the same time; he ain't got no defense so you'll nail him good. Just don't let him get his ass behind him, always be on one side or the other. Keep him turning and when he stumbles give him a shove to help him along then hammer him with everything you got. You're gonna whip this Pike-Eye son of a bitch's ass good.''

Archie stopped shadow boxing, put his gloved hands on his hips, and turned to face his coach.

"Grandma! Didn't anybody ever wash your mouth out with soap?''

Grandma's toothless mouth dropped open as she stared at Archie. "Why...why you little dickens I otta...'' Then she laughed and reached for Archie. "Come here to me so I can squeeze the daylights outta ya.''

The short, plump, black woman in a housekeeper's uniform dropped her mop and ran into the

hallway. She shouted, "Marmie, come quick.''

Marmie, dressed in an identical uniform, came running. "What happened, Catherine? What's wrong?''

Catherine turned and pointed into the room she just vacated. "He started laughing.''

"No ...No ...No.'' Marmie shook her head as she walked into the room followed by her friend. "That boy ain't going to be doing anything for awhile.'' The women looked down at the still figure lying on a bed, shrouded with an oxygen tent, and festooned with tubes. Marmie continued talking. "Our little mystery boy; nobody knows who he is or where he come from. It's like he dropped out of the sky. The Sacramento Bee ran a full page story on him and nobody claimed him.''

The Head Nurse walked into the room and frowned. "Good morning, ladies. Is something wrong?''

The housekeepers stepped aside and replied in unison, "Good morning, Missus Prescott.'' Then Marmie pointed at the kid and said, "Catherine says she heard the boy laughing.''

Mrs. Prescott walked to the bed and looked down at her patient. "I'm afraid he hasn't got anything to laugh about. Where's Nurse Hardy?''

Catherine spoke up. "She had to go to the ladies room. She asked me to watch him for a minute.''

Mrs. Prescott nodded her head and walked into the hallway then stopped and looked back. "You ladies can return to your duties now.''

The kid drifted in and out of consciousness. He knew he was in a hospital but he didn't know how he got here. Sometimes people came and asked him questions and he closed his eyes, pretending to sleep.

Voices from his past floated up out of the fog and counseled him. Old Ralph said, "Don't tell them anything, kid. They'll use your own words to hang ya. The only way to beat the sons of bitches is to be dumber than they are. Don't even tell them your name. If they're gonna find a reason to lock ya up and throw away the key let ` em figger it out on their own. Don't give ` em any help.''

Done Gone Broke Charlie chimed in, "Yeah, kid, even a fish wouldn't get caught if he'd keep his mouth shut.'' ### Sometime way back they moved him from his small dark room to a large noisy ward, day and night somebody nearby was screaming, hollering, and moaning. He heard the men dressed in white uniforms talking while they moved from bed to bed changing sheets and washing bodies. They were talking about the ones that weren't going to make it. The kid listened but never heard his name then he remembered that nobody knew who he was. Maybe he was going to die. The idea didn't scare him. All the feeling was gone and nothing mattered anymore. They brought food on a tray, cranked his bed to a sitting position, and tried to coax him to eat but he only picked at the meal; he was just not hungry.

One morning Nurse Hardy parked a wheelchair next to his bed. "Good morning, little man. It's time you got some fresh air. How do you feel?''

The kid stared at her careful not to nod his head or give her any sign at all. She ignored his silence, threw the bedspread back, and pulled him to his feet. His knees buckled and he had to be lifted onto the wheelchair. "My, you are weak. We're going to have to get you up more.''

The elevator doors opened and a freezing wind pinned the kid to the back of the chair as Nurse Hardy pushed him out onto the roof and around the corner to take shelter behind the elevator housing.

The single blast had the kid's teeth chattering.

"It's colder up here than I thought. Here, let me wrap this blanket around you.'' She pulled the folded

blanket from the back of the chair and tucked it around him. The kid watched as she stepped back and leaned against the wall where she pulled a pack of Camels from under her cloak and lit up. She blew a cloud of smoke directly at her charge. "You got everybody fooled with your little act but not me. Not even for a minute. I can look at you and see by your eyes that you know what's going on.'' She took another drag and tilted her head back and blew a cloud into the air. "I know you're hiding something.

Come on, you can tell me what it is. I won't tell anybody just like you won't tell anybody you saw me smoking and get me canned.''

The kid stared at her. He knew she was lying: she's going to tell everybody just like that dirty little rat Buddy back in Denver who promised not to tell anybody then told everybody and got him run out of town.

Nurse Hardy stepped on her cigarette butt and aimed the chair at the elevator. "Well...I guess you're not going to talk. But think about it. You're going to need a friend some day.'' ### The mid-morning sun warmed the small town. The streets and sidewalks were deserted. Only a few cars parked at scattered intervals give a hint that people might be about. On Main Street there was a narrow storefront café. Inside sat a tiny man perched on a stool at the lone lunch counter. His feet dangled six inches from the footrest. A cloud of smoke engulfed him as he puffed on a pipe and cradled a coffee cup with his left hand. A woman walked from the kitchen and stood across the counter. "Whitey, you've been awful quiet lately. Anything wrong?''

Whitey pulled the pipe from his mouth and blew a stream of smoke into the air. "Naw, everything's all right. I've just been doing some thinking, that's all.''

The woman laughed. "That's going to get you into trouble. Whatcha thinking about?''

Whitey rested the pipe on the table and studied her face. "You know, Hazel, you're about the only person I ever talk to but I've been thinking that I've been wasting my life. I've been thinking it's time I got me a home and maybe even a family.''

Hazel dropped her eyes to the counter top then used a cloth to wipe up some imaginary puddles.

"Gee...What ever got you to thinking crazy thoughts like that?''

Whitey twisted around on his seat to face the front door. He peered through the glass and out into the street. "There's that boy ... you know the one Hoover found. It's been three weeks now and nobody's come forward to identify him. I'm thinking his folks have abandoned him and he's going to need a home if he ever wakes up.''

"Whoa! If you're saying what I think you're saying just forget about it right now. You don't know anything about that boy. He might be more trouble than the Lord allows.''

Whitey spun back around on the stool and grabbed Hazel's arm as she tried to walk away. "It isn't like we got all that good a life. That boy is going to need somebody to give him a home and nobody's going to let me take care of him unless I got somebody to help me.''

Hazel's eyes and mouth popped wide open as she stared directly into her captor's face. "You're crazier than hell. You're not getting me into any of your cockamamie schemes. Who do you think you are anyway?''

Whitey released her arm and dropped his chin. "I just thought we could get together for the boy's sake. That's all.''

Hazel stormed back to the kitchen. She shouted over her shoulder, "If that's a marriage proposal that's one hell of a way to do it. ### The kid returned from the Christmas party with a candy cane in one hand and a toy soldier in the other. Tears ran down his face. What's his mom doing? And his dad? Even Big Cab gets happy at Christmas time.

Grandma, what about her? She's alone now because Andy, Lonnie, Paulie, and Carl are all dead. What's she gonna do now?

"Hey! Quit crying. You got visitors.'' Nurse Hardy was smiling as she pushed the wheelchair close for the kid to climb into.

The police have come to get him and they're going to take him to jail; the great sadness has sunk to complete gloom: he's been caught.

They entered the day room. A man and woman, sitting at a table surrounded with Christmas-wrapped presents, leaped to their feet and rushed toward the kid. The man was a funny-looking little guy but they were both smiling.

Nurse Hardy said, "This is Mr. and Mrs. Van Ness. They come to see you.'' She turned to the couple.

"This is our little man. He doesn't talk but he listens real good.''

The woman placed her hand on the kid's shoulder. "Merry Christmas! Look at the presents we brought you.'' She gave a grand sweep of her hand towards the table. The kid fought hard to keep his lower lip from quivering as they pushed him next to their chairs and placed a present in his lap. The woman kept talking non-stop. "We want you to come home with us. We got a room all fixed up just for you. Would you like that?'' The tiny man hovered next to his wife, smiling and nodding his head up and down. Nurse Hardy smiled in the background.

The kid ignored the present. His body began to shake as tears swelled up in his eyes. Whitey's wife leaned closer. "They say you don't have a name. We got one for you. It's Nigel. It's a good English name.

It comes from the Hebrew name Nathaniel. It means, ` Gift of God.' That's what you are: a gift of god because you changed me and Whitey's life forever. Your name is going to be Nigel Van Ness.''

The great stone resolve was torn asunder. The floodwaters were torrential. Hazel Van Ness wrapped her arms around the kid and pulled him into her lap. He buried his face into her bosom and sobbed great heaving sobs. ### Tree-lined Highway 120, Yosemite Avenue, travels east and west through the heart of the small valley town. On the highway and just west of downtown, sits a large old white brick building. This is Yosemite Grammar School; a wrought-iron fence faces the avenue and decorates the entrance to the school. A wide concrete stairway goes up and into the second floor hall that leads to the classrooms that line either side of that passage.

It was early morning recess and the play yard behind the school was teeming with screaming, shouting

children. A gusty wind swirled dust into the faces of all the participants. In a far corner of the large packedearth field ten boys formed a small circle.

Black-haired, brown-skinned Joe Diaz grinned showing his fluoride-stained teeth.

I'll take Nigel.''

Eight voices shouted together. "No fair! No fair! You're the two best players! You can't be on the same team!''

Joe laughed. "OK. I'll take Curly, Mike, Tom, and Spence. The rest of you can have Nigel.''

Wally Marks frowned as he hefted the football. "You gotta kick off.''

Joe kicked the ball high and wide to Wally who muffed the catch but fell on the pigskin in the melee that followed. Back on his feet Wally huddled with his team. He pointed to Nigel and said, "You go out for a pass and the rest of you block.''

Bobby Patterson leaped for the scrimmage line then hesitated and spun around. "Who's gonna hike the ball?''

Laughter greeted his confusion. Joe Diaz shouted, "They don't know what they're doing.''

Nigel lined up on the end of the line, and watched his team squabble over who was going to be the center. Nigel's mind kept traveling; he was thinking that Nigel is a good name but it isn't his. Whitey and Hazel are nice but he already has a Mom and Dad. He wanted to go back to Modesto and be Archie again.

He wanted to see Grandma. He wanted to find out if the police were still looking for him. But he didn't want to hurt Whitey and Hazel's feelings. It was a problem that nagged at him constantly. He didn't want to keep living a lie but he couldn't figure a way out that won't hurt everybody.

"Hey! Wake up!'' Nigel was stunned as the football whizzed by him and bounced on the ground. Wally raced over to him. "What's a matter?''

Nigel, speechless, shook his head. Joe guffawed and shouted from his position in the defensive backfield.

"He's dreaming again.''

Wally pulled Nigel into the huddle. "Nigel, you take the hike and throw a pass to whoever's open.''

He turned to the rest of the team. "Nobody needs to block for Nigel so everybody goes out.''

Nigel smiled to himself, that's why he's so good at football: nobody could catch him. He glanced to the sideline and saw a lone spectator. She was a forlorn-looking little girl wearing a long dress that reached the ground and an old-fashioned sun bonnet that hid her hair. Her name was Breana Worley; she followed him everywhere and stared at him with her sad eyes. The constant surveillance made Nigel uncomfortable but he felt sorry for her. The kids shunned her and talked about her. They said her family practiced a strict religion that made her wear clothes from the olden days.

Nigel shook his head to forget Breana and shouted, "Hike!'' The ball flew over his head and he spun, ran it down, and fielded it on the bounce. He sensed his pursuers and he ran to the sideline to escape.

On the full run he turned his head and spotted Donald DeCosta running toward the goal. He leaped in the air and hurled the football with all his power. Too late he saw Joe Diaz streaking across the field. He shoved an opponent aside as he charged forward to cut off the victorious Mexican.

Mighty Joe had a full grin on his face as he fielded the ball and sprinted toward Nigel. Joe always won these confrontations; running at half speed straight at his would-be tackler, he would thrust the ball out.

The tackler would grab for the ball and fall off balance when it was jerked back. Joe would easily dodge around the hapless player and run for a touchdown.

Nigel had other ideas: he remembered from his boxing days--go where they're gonna be not where they are. He slowed down as he neared the ball carrier and when the ball came at him he grabbed for the space

The Wrestling Bretons - Paul Serusier, 1893

against Joe's belly. It wasn't a perfect grab but the ball was knocked into the air and Nigel leaped high to pull the ball down. He spun past Joe and ran for a touchdown.

"You son of a bitch!'' Nigel turned around, surprised, as an enraged Joe Diaz followed him into the end zone and threw his body at him.

Nigel fended off his attacker, ducked a wild swing, and then drove the guy back with a straight left to the face. That was a clean punch but Joe's reaction was strange. He ran in a circle around Nigel and then dove in with his head down. Nigel tried to sidestep but was grabbed around the waist as Joe struggled to throw him.

Nigel was surprised to find he was just as strong as the stocky Mexican. He remembered Lonnie saying, "Go after his weakest point.'' He put both hands against Joe's face and pushed with all his might until the hold was broken.

Somebody shouted, "Here comes Mr. Hall.'' Both boys stepped back with the crowd of spectators to await the arrival of the boy's gym teacher.

The man had a grim look on his face as he pulled up on a borrowed bicycle. "If you boys want to fight let's do it right.'' He lifted boxing gloves from around his neck, held there by the laces tied together.

Nigel slapped away weak jab attempts by his opponent as he cautiously circled to his right and away from Joe's right hand. The guy didn't know much about boxing but he went crazy and wild when he got hit.

If Joe Diaz gets out of control somebody can get hurt. Nigel was reluctant to throw a punch and Joe took that as a signal to attack.

Nigel easily eluded the first flurry but that only brought on even greater effort by his rampaging opponent. Soon the barrage of wild punches was in danger of overwhelming Nigel's solid defense.

The voice from the past boomed: "Sidestep and throw your punch. Don't wait for an opening.'' Nigel laughed and his head was knocked sideways by a slapping blow to the ear.

The voice screamed, "THROW THE DAMNED PUNCH!'' Nigel stepped to his right and fired his left. Joe leaped belly first into Nigel's gloved fist, stopped dead in his tracks, grabbed his midsection, and dropped face first to the ground.

The noisy crowd fell silent. One hushed whisper said, "Damn!'' Nigel scanned the sea of faces and his eyes came to rest on Breana. She opened her mouth to speak and Nigel willed her to shut up; he didn't know what she was going to say but he feared her words. The sad tone only carried a few feet but it was heard by many. "You aren't Nigel. You're Archie Cleebo.''

Note The Archie stories were written for The Voice newspaper magazine that was based in the small mining town of Silverton, Idaho. They ran from 2003 through 2006 when the newspaper went out of buisness. The Archie stories are set in the years just prior to WWII and are loosely based on the life of the author.

Archie and his family fled the dust bowl of the Midwest USA and moved to California in 1938 where Ma and Pa Cleebo found harsh conditions and 10 year-old Archie was left largely on his own until he was befriended by neighbors (the Johnsons) with a questionable reputation. Archie, and everyone else, called the matriarch of that family Grandma. Grandma and her family were carnival workers until the carnival folded and then they moved to California where they opened an automobile repair business and thrived until driven out of business by a thug and his influential father.

The Linnet's Wings Press

Bobby Steve Baker lives and writes full time in Lexington Kentucky having grown up on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. He has published in Camroc Review Press, Grey Sparrow, Jones Av, Stray Branch, The Ann Arbor Review, Deep Water Review, Linnet’s Wings, and many others.

He has two Chapbooks of poetry, Numbered Bones from Accents Publishing Chapbook contest and The Taste of Summer Lightning from Finishing Line Press . His first full length book of poetry, with original ekphrastic photography and art is “This Crazy Urge To Live” by Linnet’s Wings Press.

The Linnet's Wings Press :

This Crazy Urge to Live

by Bobby Steve Baker

In every person's story we find a fragment of our own. For we're all connected by our needs and wants: Personal, cultural, social, and economic. This is a book that asks one to reflect on this while celebrating the ups and downs of love and life, of community and work, of family and its line, and always acknowledging family as landmark, as point of reference, as it builds a young man's tale.

For when we leave the roost and learn to fly it's then we realise that no matter what we're never truly alone as we make and break connections, and if we're lucky we allow each expericnce to move us on. It's the story of a son, father, husband, lover and friend.

The prologue chosen to introduce the body of work in the poetry/photography art book,'This Crazy Urge to Live', is One Flesh #2 : a poem that illustrates the magic, of conception, of birth, of spirit, of love.

Bobby Steve shot a a very lovely 'Mother and Newborn' photo to illustrate the poem. Together they paint the spirit of the body of work that sits snugly between the covers.

Excerpt

before the first kick is felt from inside out before people pat a belly as communal property long before a baby could survive without a physical attachment to its mother’s flesh and in this way they could be called one flesh the baby is a separate human everyone knows this

the Greeks stopped short with eros filios agape we need another word for love of a child in the birthing room when the child is laid to the mother’s breast it is transcendent ungraspable fathers now are present and this creates a bond for life but his experience is overshadowed let’s not kid ourselves

for the baby the mother’s body is borrowed for the sake of respiration and nourishment who knows if a baby in utero desires love but everyone knows this authenticity a baby gets love perfectly and constantly

witnesses have seen a glow an aura that surrounds this indescribable event I have seen it myself and every time I leave the birthing room I feel with no thought that did not just happen one tiny human exiting a larger human the crisis of separation one into two bleeds into ordinary breath and I feel for a time we are all one flesh Bobby Steve Baker -- This Crazy Urge to Live, 2014