The White Quilt

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The White Quilt The Linnet's Wings

The Linnet's Wings Mullingar, ROI iii

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THE LINNET'S WINGS (ISSN:2009-2369) Lakepoint, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, ROI

Designed by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick, 2017

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, mail the publisher at thelinnetswings@gmail.com Ordering Information: Copies available for sale on Amazon ISBN-13: 978-1981689712

/Winter 2017 FIRST EDITION 12 /2017 Printed by CS Amazon

Frontispiece: Cinderella by John Everett Millais

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Other Publications by The Linnet´s Wings "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ISBN 13: 978-1480176423 "The House that Jack Built" ISBN-13: 978-1483977669 "One Day Tells Its Tale to Another" by Nonnie Augustine ISBN-13: 978-1480186354 "About the Weather-- Spring Trending" by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick ISBN-13: 978-0993049330 "This Crazy Urge to Live" by Bobby Steve Baker ISBN-13: 978-099304909 "Disabled Monsters" by John C. Mannone ISBN-13:978-1522869504 "Three Pounds of Cells" by Oonah V Joslin ISBN-13: 978-0993049378

Illustrated Books Series: A Poem on the Wind "Purple Kisses" by Priya Prithviraj, illustrated by Niveditha Warrier

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What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; ... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless ... Yevgeny Zamyatin

FRONT MATTER

Epigraph: We still visit the University by Alex Braverman ... xiii

S h e B e l i e ve d i n D re a ms Yearning to Breathe Free by Bruce Harris 3

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Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman 15

Chapter 1: the Case of the Lost Slippers 19 Chapter 2: the Case of Cruiser Aurora 22 Zamyatin about Himslf (Early Memories) 26

Available! Spring 2018

It's my Life

28 Cactus by Lia Florencia Gonzalez 30 Saturday Morning Cartoons, William Reese Hammilton 31 The Art of Andrea Castilla (Ruta Andina) 35 A Cloud Feast, MLF 42 Odes and Lamentations, MLF 43 1946 by DC Diamondopolous 44 The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy 47 Maps by Helen Moat 49 The House on the Cliff by W.J. Wintle 50 The Cap and Bells by William Butler Yeats 55

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The Linnet's Wings Press

In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The White Quilt

56 In Pursuit of the Intangible (Poetry Editorial) by Oonah Joslin 59 Butterfly Caught by Jennifer Lothrigel 60 A Dance of Bones by Barry Charman 61 Broken Dream by Eira Needham 62 Derryside Confessional by Tom Sheehan 64 Buddhas of Bamian by Arthur Callender 65 Table Mat by James Graham 66 The River by Beate Sigriddaughter 69 Standards by Wendy Howe 71 Harleck Castle by Jim Hatfield 73 The Great Synagogue of Constanta by Brandon Marlon 74 The Square Root of Love by Sergio Ortiz 75 Thread by Sarah Ann Watts 77 Treatise by Cindy King 79 Peruvian Mops by Jack William Arpad Little 67

CONTEMPORY ART

The Art of Andrea Castilla (Ruta Andina) 35 ix

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

CLASSICS INCLUDED: ZAMYATIN ABOUT HIMSELF (Early Memories) 26 The River by Rudyard Kipling 68 The House on the Cliff by W.J.Wintle 50 The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy CLASSIC ART Children by Children Boris Kustodiev xii The Slippers of Cinderella by Aubrey Beardsley 1 Child with Red Hair Reading by Lilla Cabot Perry 2 Street Dancer Costume design by Alexandre Benois 14 Doctor-pharmacist and a second Khaldei by Boris Kustodiev 16 On the terrace in Kharkov by Zinaida Serebriakova 18 The Rostov Kremlin by Konstantin Yuon 20 Train Smoke by Edvard Munch 23 Le Coup de Vent by Theophile Steinlen 25 Portrait of the author Yevgeny Zamyatin by Boris Kustodiev 26 Girl with Flowers, Cuno Amiet 29 Colorful life by Wassily Kandinsky 44 Sunset Fires by Winslow Homer 47 Women at Their Toilet, Felix Vallotton 48 House on a Cliff, Camille Pissarro 51 Capricious by Wassily Kandinsky 55 Snow Effect with Setting Sun by Claude Monet 57 Star of the Hero, Nicholas Roerich 58 Butterfly by Albert Bierstadt 60 Skeletor by Vincent Van Gogh 61 At the Cell of Friar Lawrence, Arthur Rackham 62 Udarnitzi at the Factory Krasnaya Zaria, Pavel Filonov 64 x

Ingrid Bergman

Editors for the Issue MANAGING EDITOR Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick SENIOR EDITOR Bill West FICTION Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick Bill West POETRY Oonah Joslin SPANISH Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick PHOTOGRAPHY Maia Cavelli WEB DATABASE Peter Gilkes Offices: Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, Ireland Motril, Granada, Andalusia, Spain Online Design: Zoetrope Virtual Studio Online Submissions: The Linnet´s Wings

FRONT MATTER

Epigraph: We still visit the University by Alex Braverman ... xiii

S h e B e l i e ve d i n D re a ms Yearning to Breathe Free by Bruce Harris 3

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Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman 15

Chapter 1: the Case of the Lost Slippers 19 Chapter 2: the Case of Cruiser Aurora 22 Zamyatin about Himslf (Early Memories) 26

Illustration by Niveditha Warrier, from "Purple Kisses" Niveditha Warrier xi

Traditional Nursery Rhyme

We went to the animal fair, The birds and the beasts were there.

The big baboon by the light of the moon Was combing his golden hair.

The monkey fell out of his bunk,

28 Cactus by Lia Florencia Gonzalez 30 Saturday Morning Cartoons, William Reese Hammilton 31 The Art of Andrea Castilla (Ruta Andina) 35 A Cloud Feast, MLF 42 Odes and Lamentations, MLF 43

And slid down the elephant's trunk.

The elephant sneezed - Achoo!

And fell on her knees, And what became of the monkey; Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey?

It's my Life

Doctor-pharmacist and a Second Khaldei by Boris Kustodiev, Date: 1924/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Series: Yevgeny Zamyatin "The Flea"/Genre: design

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Epigraph We still visit the University which now serves as the last link to the known, familiar world, the world that we once knew. This dying world left us face to face with the unknown, unfamiliar, exciting, teasing, bittersweet forbidden future. Everything has changed. The very colour of our days has changed from grey and yellow to blue, pink, and black. Life has risen as a mountain of unprecedented height. The chasms of doom were of indescribable darkness. The flatness was gone completely. From time to time, the sun gathers one individual beam of light and shines on us, singles us out. There is no escape. And sometimes, the sun is as dull as the moon. But maybe, it is the moon. Our vocabulary also changes. All words related to the infinite step forth and occupy the front page: boundless, eternal, immeasurable. We apply these words to ourselves: my boundless love, my eternal patience, my immeasurable sadness.

October days were written on the falling maple leaves Red, yellow, sad and golden. Each day was falling From the tree of time into the Pandemonium of past, Each falling day disguised as last.

The maple leaves like open palms presented to a fortune teller, The palms to hold, to read, to kiss. The falling leaves As treacherous as balding head, the final countdown That makes time to be reversed, to tell how little is left Instead of spelling out the hours passed.

Each look, each glance absorbing the precious face Was framing picture of beloved — to save, to keep, To treasure during future hours of despair, To memorize and bring to life, recalling every fold of skin And curve of breast, and scent of hair.

Each day — is doomed Tschaikovsky’s swan With an obsession to become a burning Phoenix.

Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

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She Believed in Dreams "She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn't come along, she went over to the palace and got him.”

Walt Disney Company

The Slippers of Cinderella by Aubrey Beardsley/ Date: 1894/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Genre: illustration

Child with Red Hair Reading by Lilla Cabot Perry

Yearning to Breathe Free by Bruce Harris

The Fournier Bakery, Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin, Paris – Wednesday June 20th 1778 There were times, Claudette thought, when the Fournier bakery resembled her picture of Hell itself; dark, extremely hot and full of potentially damaging equipment. Her husband, Fournier himself, from a family so steeped in bakery it was named after an oven, was sweating and cursing alongside his eldest son Pierre, and at the moment it was men’s muscle that was needed to deal with and shape the heavy dough. She asked little from squat, strong-armed balding Fournier – everyone, including her, called him Fournier, or Monsieur Fournier if they were on the make – but this particular brief breather was one of her few perks.The street outside was almost as hot and smelt worse, but an occasional waft of breeze was better than nothing. She sat down on the little stool she took with her from the shop, and almost immediately, two boys suddenly appeared from a nearby sidestreet running towards her as if their lives depended on it.

This didn’t bother her at all; boys dashing about was nothing unusual. But they were soon close enough for her to see that the one on the left was her youngest son Henri, aged ten, and both his and his companion’s eyes were wild with panic and fear. She got up from her stool.He and his friend had no sooner burst past her into the shop when seven men also appeared from the same street and started running towards her at full speed.

She moved rapidly back into the shop and closed the door. So much for her short break and breath of air, she thought, and little Henri was going to need to have a very good tale to tell if she wasn’t to take a stick to his skinny rear.

‘Hide us, Maman, please, please –‘ the boy said. He was almost in tears, and this was very rare for Henri, as tough a pup as could be, able to hold his own with all the local boys, though hardly tall, even for his age.

‘I would be very grateful for your protection, Madame’, said the other boy; his careful accent and his odd clothes suddenly made her aware of him. But the men’s thundering boots were coming ever nearer, and Claudette Fournier could think and act quickly when the need arose. She hurried the boys down to the cellar, bolting doors behind her on the way. In the dim light of the cellar store room, they listened to the men clattering on past and their bursts of language blistered Claudettes' ears, used as she was to men’s talk.

‘Now, Henri, what is all this about? This had better be good. And who is your friend?’

They had both managed to calm their panic quite well by now, but Henri still took another deep breath before replying.

‘Maman, this is Marcel, son of the Comte de Sevres’.

Momentarily struck dumb, Claudette now looked properly at the boy. Yes, of course; the snooty gait, for all his recent exercise, the front foot elegantly pushed forward, and the clothes simply wrong. Henri was no street urchin; she kept him as decently clothed as her means allowed, but even without the gaudy decorations and fineries, the Comte’s son was clad in cloth way beyond what a baker’s family could afford. Anger suddenly elbowed anxiety away, and

Claudette seized a long stick from one of the firewood stacks nearby.

‘I haven’t got time for this’, she said. ‘Henri, what on earth have you done to cause a whole group of grown men to come chasing after you like maniacs? Tell me, boy, and tell me the truth, because if you have endangered yourself or this family, I will have to beat you long and hard to impress upon you to be more careful. I may not be able to punish his little lordship here, but I can give you enough for the two of you –‘ ‘I can take my share, Madame, if I need to’, Marcel said slowly. ‘When my father decides I need a whipping, which he rarely does – he is a dutiful father, but he is not a cruel man – he has a burly fellow for the purpose, and it might well be my fate when I get home today’.

They both stood there, their eyes still wild and wide from their experience, Henri’s hazel brown, lively and intelligent, and the little Comte’s a startling ice blue, signalling defiance and independence.

Claudette opened her mouth, but the aristo whelp hadn’t finished.

‘I simply want to understand my people, Madame. Everyone in this street is living on my family’s land. My father is sickly and, much as it grieves and worries me, it is possible I will all too soon be the Comte de Sevres myself. I live my life in a cage – a luxurious cage, yes, with all possible comforts and tutors provided for my education – but a cage nevertheless. If I am to look after people who will be my tenants and servants, I want to know something of them and their world, or how else can I do the job entrusted to me by Providence?’

‘Very good, Monsieur, but where does my Henri come into it?’

Henri, of course, had been quiet for far too long.

‘Marcel and I got talking when his coach had slipped a wheel turning at the end of the street. He was sitting nearby while it was mended, watched over by one of his men, and he saw me looking at him in all his gaudy finery. He beckoned me, and waved his man back. ‘All I ever see is the inside of coaches, the inside of rooms’, he said. ‘I want to know what is happening, how people live. If I disguise myself, will you run with me sometimes?’ I said I will if you do what I tell you to do and, above all, keep quiet; you are an aristo as soon as you open your mouth. The next thing I know, we are standing near a café and listening to a group of men talking freely about overthrowing the King and setting up a republic. Suddenly, Marcel is almost shouting at them about being traitors to France and his father will have them all arrested. I managed to get him on his feet and away before the men got into their stride, or I can’t imagine what would have happened to us’.

‘Perhaps I deserve to be whipped for sheer stupidity’, Marcel said.

‘Perhaps’, Henri said, looking at his friend. ‘But how long I would have lasted in your world, Marcel, without making a mistake, I couldn’t say’.

‘Is it so wrong for us to be friends, Madame?’ Marcel said. Claudette looked at the eyes again, so young, so alive, and her girlhood running free in the Norman countryside, in and out of the trees and tracks, came vividly back to her. Her anger eased, and her practical side asserted itself - a son befriending the heir of an aristo was not an opportunity to be easily spurned. If this boy would one day, perhaps one day not far into the future, have the power of tenancy or eviction in his hands, a certain amount of friendly acquaintance could be very useful; some friendships formed in childhood lasted a lifetime.

‘No, Monsieur, there is never much wrong with friendship. But true friends try to avoid getting their friends into trouble, not drag them into it. If you are to run with Henri, as you call it, you must remember what he tells you; keep quiet, pretend to be a deaf mute or something, keep away from places where men gather and drink, and don’t forget that Henri has duties of his own and doesn’t have unlimited time to run the streets’.

‘Thank you, Maman’, Henri said, and the brown eyes were glistening now. She gathered both of them into her.

Henri was the youngest of the five children to survive her ten pregnancies, and the survivors all had such a place in her heart that she could never stay angry with them for long, especially the youngest.

‘But what to do now?’ she said, as their little group hug broke up. She was still holding the stick, absurdly, and she threw it briskly back into the woodpile. She thought for a moment.

‘Henri is not too badly off for clothes; he has two older brothers and he is much the same size as they were at his age. If you go with him again, Marcel, you will find a quiet spot near the Sevres town house, put on what he brings you

and change back when you leave him. For today, I will get Jean-Claude to take you in the delivery cart with a cover over you – he knows all the quiet routes – to the neighbourhood of the Sevres house. You could tell your father you were meeting a friend and you got lost. If your father is as you say he is, I doubt whether that is a sin worthy of a whipping, but if it should prove to be, then you are to consider, Marcel, as we humble folk have to every day of our lives, that actions have consequences’.

For the first time, Marcel looked a little embarrassed, even ashamed.

‘As you are so good, Madame, I must be honest, and there is not much risk on this occasion. My father is at his sanatorium and will not be back until this evening, and the burly fellow is not an informer. I don’t doubt you’re right, Madame, but I am safe for today at least’.

They were interrupted by a sound of such ill-tempered rage that all three of them jumped involuntarily, even in the protection of their cellar.

‘Claudette, where the HELL are you?’ Fournier’s indignation knew no bounds when any family member wasn’t doing exactly what Fournier wanted them to do. Claudette’s grace and favour break was well and truly at an end. The knot of anxiety that gnawed away at her about Fournier twisted again; Fournier was not violent, or not towards her at least, though the boys had been on the receiving end often enough, but he was ageing quickly and this exhausting intemperance of his worried her.

‘Stay here, both of you. I will send Jean-Claude down to you and you can leave through the back gate, Marcel under cover. Jean-Claude is a good servant who doesn’t ask questions; bless him, he probably wouldn’t understand the answers in any case’.

‘Good God, woman, have you walked out on me? In the middle of a working day?

CLAUDETTE!’ She kissed each small forehead and gave them both an arch look which set them giggling.

That’s more like it, she thought as she climbed the stairs; that’s the kind of noise children ought to be making.

Fournier Bakery, Saturday April 25th 1789 The clamour outside was mounting, and Claudette was standing in the stock room behind the main shop, with two burly sons on either side of her, Pierre on her right and Georges on her left. They had both left boyhood well behind and they were big men, with Fournier’s build but height more typical of her own Norman d’Avranches family, who had wanted more for her than angry little Fournier. But Fournier was, after all, a businessman in Paris, with more money potential than any of the small-scale Norman shops in Caen.

Fournier himself was no more, having flown into a tantrum once too often in 1786, his heart finally giving up on sustaining a man irate almost from sunrise to sunset. And Henri, her jewel, with more brains and initiative than all her other children put together, had decided that sweating away in a city bakery was not for him and the only way he could see the world was in the Army. It was over six months since Claudette had heard from him, and as that was from a barracks in France, she couldn’t understand why he was unable to get in contact or visit or do something.

Thank goodness, she thought, as a lump of jagged wood splintered one of the smaller side windows, that Mireille and Esme had been successfully, if not particularly profitably, married off; delicate Esme would never have been able to deal with this, and Mireille would have launched herself into some foolishness which would have made the situation worse.

‘If you can’t make bread we can afford’, a coarse voice sounded through the broken window, followed by expressions which made even a woman of the world like Claudette shudder, ‘we’ll make sure you can’t make any bread at all, you bitch!’

I can only make as much bread as the available grain allows me to make, Claudette thought, though she remained too terrified to utter it. She was quite determined not to adulterate the bread with the appalling rubbish and street-sweepings that some put in it to make it seem more, and cheap. Grain was more and more expensive after

another poor harvest, so the prices had to be passed on. She was running a business, not a charity.

But the mob no longer cared. She knew quite a few of the insane crowd now surging around the front of the shop, and it hurt her to see old friends and neighbours running with the mob, too frightened to argue or defend her business.

A huge crash against the front door forced her to a decision.

‘The cellar, boys, now, down to the cellar!’

Pierre, bread knife in one hand and rolling pin in the other, looked at her reproachfully.

‘Maman, can we not at least –‘ ‘No, Pierre, we cannot. They are a mob; they are insane and fighting them might cost you your life. A bakery is not worth your life; the cellar, please, and you too, Georges –‘ She nudged and pushed at Georges who seemed frozen with terror, but it took Pierre’s more determined shove to move him. Picking up the weeping Jean-Claude from the grain store, stark as it was, they clattered away even as the mob broke in and started looting what little stores of bread she had managed to hold in reserve. Down, down, down, locking every door after them and hoping against hope none of the mob had found their way down to the little alley which the cellar opened onto. Down to the very spot where, nearly eleven years ago, she had had her one and only close up contact with a bona fide member of the French aristocracy, who she knew had succeeded his father as Comte de Sevres in 1783. While he was a huge improvement on some of the landlords known in her area of Paris, he kept mostly to the Sevres town house and the Sevres chateau miles away in the Vendee, his childish follies now dismissed as such in his mind, no doubt. This time there was no leisure to stand and talk; they were through the door into the mercifully empty alley and shortly enmeshed in the maze of back alleys passing behind the shops and counting houses of the Rue du Faubourg.

By the time they found their way back onto the main street, a good six hundred pieds du roi up from their shop front, they looked down to their left at the diminishing mob outside, with all those who had found any bread, or even bread ingredients, scampering away with them before anyone could stop them. Then a gathering pall of smoke rose from the shop.

‘Oh my God, they are burning it down’, said Claudette, retreating into the alley and finally bending her head to weep, as her two boys consoled her and Jean-Claude sank to the ground with his head in his hands.

For once, Georges had a moment of his own. He was the first to see, way down at the far end of the street, a grand coach begin its rapid progress towards them, relying on anyone in their way to get out of it rapidly. They all knew the Sevres coat of arms and the Sevres livery clearly enough. Two men were perched on the front of the coach, one of them armed, and a further two at the back were also armed. Two more guns were emerging from inside the coach, one of them clearly held by the young Comte de Sevres himself, now an athletically built and immaculately dressed and wigged young man. As if that was not discouragement enough for the rapidly dispersing mob, the coach was followed by a group of six horsemen, and as Claudette looked and looked again, her heart almost stopped at the realisation that the one at the front was undoubtedly her Henri, showing the superb horsemanship the Army had taught him. He blew her a kiss and waved to his brothers as he thundered on past.

Claudette and the three young men with her abandoned all caution and went pelting down the street after the mounted men. By the time they reached the front of the bakery, it was clear that the shop and parts of the wooden buildings behind it were already beyond saving. The Sevres men were concentrating on getting what water they could from the drainage trenches running down the street and the surrounding shops to help the neighbouring traders stop the fire before it engulfed the whole street.

For some hours, all was chaos and confusion; Sevres’ following and Henri and his men helped the desperate locals fight the fire and some help eventually turned up from the Parisian authorities, which some declared, if quietly, was a miracle in itself. A few brave souls who had an idea of continuing looting were briskly discouraged by gunfire.

It went on and on and on, and at the end of it, an exhausted, bedraggled and smoke-blackened Claudette found herself being gently helped up into the Sevres coach.

‘Your servant, Ma’am’, said the Comte, and his gorgeous gold and blue clothing was bespattered with dirt and even singed in parts. Even his wig was decidedly askew, but the face and those ice-blue eyes related back only too clearly to the little boy who had once stood forlornly, if proudly, in her own cellar.

‘Marcel – may I call you Marcel, Monsieur le Comte?’

‘Of course you may, Madame; perhaps I may even take the liberty of calling you Claudette?’

She nodded. ‘Henri alerted me to how things were; he had only just come back from his leave when he heard rumours about the ugly mood in Paris, particularly directed at the supposedly profiteering bakers –‘ ‘I can’t make bread without grain, Mon – er – Marcel. Not proper bread, which isn’t going to poison people.

But where is Henri? I have yet to have the chance to speak to him. And why is he here at all –‘ A sudden noise outside, and then he was there, Henri himself, climbing into the coach while his brothers and poor Jean-Claude, weeping quietly, waited deferentially outside. Claudette had her arms around her youngest boy once again; she felt the strength and power of him, and her despair began to ebb away, even as the remains of her business smouldered.

‘I got indefinite leave, Maman’, he said. ‘Most of us have not been paid for months anyway –the Army is falling apart between the royalists and the revolutionaries - and the boys who came with me also have relatives in this city which seems to be slowly going out of its mind. I was sure Marcel would help, even after all this time’.

Outside, Claudette saw Jean Claude being helped up on to the back of the coach, and Pierre and Georges sharing some of the men’s horses. She felt the sensation of movement as the coach trotted away more sedately than it had arrived. She turned to look at the count.

‘As your son says, Claudette, Paris is mad and dangerous, and it is best for us to make the whole trip to the Chateau de Sevres to consider the future. We are a large and well-armed enough party to look after ourselves. You will be my guests until the decisions we need to take are taken, and I am only too desolate not to have arrived early enough to save your business, Madame Claudette. You may rely on me to make amends’.

As the fetid Paris air gave way to the fresher country breezes, Claudette felt her eyes closing and her head drooping. A nightmare had turned into a dream, and it was time to rest.

Wednesday October 23rd 1793 – Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin The tumbril turned into the street, with four armed soldiers leading it and two others following. Robespierre considered it amusing to send the Comte de Sevres through the heart of his own Parisian possessions on his way to the guillotine. Robespierre couldn’t know then that his own time would soon come, and his supposed incorruptibility did not stop him from enjoying what he saw as his own little jokes.

The Comte de Sevres himself was standing at the very front of the cart. He had been considered important enough to have a tumbril to himself, typical of the Committee’s ambiguous attitude to the leading aristos. Though his only clothes were breeches and a thin open neck shirt and his rather gaunt face had paled considerably, there was nothing in his manner to suggest fear or despair. People near to the tumbril noticed the undimmed ice blue eyes glancing around at the territory he knew so well. Like many aristos, he had been taught from an early age not to display naked emotion, and his mental resistance to what was happening to him was boosted by the absurdity of it; he was a vigorous, well-made twenty five year old man with a promising future, quite possibly in public service, and the nonsensical charges laid against him were unfounded and unproven. Yes, he had many royalist friends – most of his schoolmates had been royalists – and yes, he had and did correspond with them. It was hardly surprising, given the chaos that France had become, that the state of the country had been mentioned more than once. But to say it amounted to plotting against the revolution was ridiculous, given that most of it was before the Revolution was even thought of.

As the tumbril clattered sedately down the street – Robespierre felt that people should have time to look at the condemned and see for themselves the consequences of defiance – the escorting soldiers became more restless with

each passing step. They had become used to people’s hostility, or more usually by now, indifference to prisoners going to their graves, but it was rapidly becoming clear that the atmosphere here was very different. People were emerging from their shops and houses, and the murmuring gradually increased in volume to something like the growls of a pack of animals. Sevres had restored the street at his own expense after the fires and riots three years ago, and unlike many of his class, fleeing Paris and even the country at the first available opportunity, he had stayed to try to protect his own people from the excesses of the regime.

Sevres found himself smiling at the people he knew. I did everything, he was thinking, everything I could humanly do to keep myself alive; I even had the good fortune to fall in love and marry Francoise Bertillon, the daughter of one of the leading lawyers backing the Revolution; such highly placed contacts as this made available should have protected him for long enough to keep him and his people safe. But his intense, instinctive personal dislike of Robespierre and Francoise’s outspoken self – beautiful, big-eyes and brunette she was, diplomatic she wasn’t – had ultimately brought him to this. He didn’t even know where Francoise was; he hadn’t seen her since his arrest, and for all he knew she might already be dead, with their first child still inside her; the Revolution spared noone, even unborn babies.

It was as black as it could possibly be, but his father and his teachers had taught him that the blackest times demanded the bravest men, and he was still the Comte de Sevres.

The leading soldiers saw that the other end of the street was closing to them with the sheer volume of people placing themselves in front and around the tumbril. The officer in charge ordered the tumbril’s driver to acclerate his horse, but the mounting noise was upsetting the animal.

As the tumbril forced its way uneasily past the restored Fournier bakery, everything happened simultaneously.

Eight men, led by the three Fournier brothers, suddenly emerged from a nearby alley; Claudette herself came out from her shop, accompanied by Francoise Bertillon, no longer in hiding, and they nodded signals at people up and down the street. The people moved in to surround the soldiers and prevent them from having room enough to use their weapons; the Fournier brothers and their friends smashed the back gate of the tumbril and helped Sevres down. Before the soldiers could fire a shot, the Comte had been hurried away down the alley from which the Fournier brothers and their friends had emerged and within minutes, everyone had discreetly disappeared, the horse had bolted, dragging the wrecked tumbril behind it, and six bewildered and bedraggled soldiers found themselves alone, gazing about them with the air of abandoned children.

Wednesday November 6th 1793, Chateau de Sevres, near Les Epesses in the Vendee region of France, 280 miles south west of Paris.

The main salon of the house gave onto a magnificent stone balcony looking over the splendid Vendee countryside. Marcel had not often been allowed here as a boy, his father regarding it as adult territory, and the fact that he now owned it and could use it to his heart’s content gave him an inordinate amount of pleasure. The day was autumnal, with a stiff northern breeze making its presence felt, but he and his wife had matters of great moment to discuss and neither of them had any doubts about the ability of servants to over hear if they chose to do so.

‘Yes, Marcel, we are safe here’, Francoise said, leaning towards him, her dark eyes wider than ever and her very physical presence exciting him, as it always did. ‘I knew when Henri told me what he had in mind that this was the safest place for us; he urged me to trust him and I did. For the moment, the whole Vendee has risen against the Revolution and it would take an entire army for them to prise us out of here’.

He forced himself to be rational; not easy, with her flushed beauty at such proximity.

‘Yes, that’s true. But it cannot last. The Vendee cannot conquer the rest of France unless the country rises up with them, and it will not. The Vendee might want to restore the idiotic Bourbon monarchy; no-one else does. Paris will soon send armies big enough to crush the Vendee, and then the retributions will be terrible indeed’.

She registered a gesture of exasperation, but she knew he was right.

‘Henri thinks we should go to America, all of us’, Marcel said.

‘America?’ She said the word as if she had never heard it before. She gazed at him in amazement.

‘You, an aristocrat with blood ties to the King of France, would go to a country which has just successfully rebelled against its king? Do you think they will welcome you?’

Marcel moved towards the front wall of the balcony and gazed down over his land.

‘They were happy enough to accept help from the French monarchy to win their independence. Some people think that war caused the Revolution; France bankrupted itself helping the Americans break free of the British and hadn’t got enough resources left to feed and house its own people. They were also happy enough to take the assistance of a French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette. They are a new, young country, needing and welcoming immigrants, and looking to build a future rather than fight the same old battles over again.

The choice for those who stay in France is between a murderous tyranny which has slaughtered thousands of its own people in cold blood, and an inept monarchy which keeps itself in the lap of luxury while its people starve’.

‘Yes, there is much in what you say, my darling’. Francoise considered the practicalities, as she tended to do.

‘We could sell everything; there is no shortage of local worthies who would want to get their hands on this chateau.

We could charter a ship out of La Rochelle; there are enough standing idle at the moment. We sail far enough south to keep out of the way of the British Navy, and we make sure our ship is fast and has guns’.

Now she was on her feet, her whole being active and involved, and he loved her all over again. A discreet tap on the windows behind them; Henri Fournier stood there, now Master of the Sevres horse, gazing a little nervously out. Marcel went and flung the doors open.

‘You will catch your death, Monsieur Le Comte, out here in the November wind’. He smiled.

‘When we get to the United States of America, Henri, you really must stop calling me that’.

‘You mean – ‘ ‘Yes, darling Henri, we do mean’, said Francoise, and for a moment, they looked at each other like three wild children contemplating the naughtiest prank imaginable. Then Henri’s face was suddenly disconsolate.

‘My mother will not go. Neither will Pierre and Georges. I have sounded them all out about it. We know it is still too dangerous to go back to Paris. My mother wants to go back to her parents in Caen and help them run the Auberge d’Avranches; they are trying to run it on their own now, and her father is not well at all. This is the world they know, Marcel, and they will not abandon it, however difficult it might be’.

‘And they will have my help, Henri, at the very least with the passage there, which will need organisation and support in the teeth of this remorseless fighting. But does that stop you?’

A long, long pause, as Henri gazed at his feet, and then at the view over Sevres country, and then at his two companions. His back straightened and his face set.

‘No’, he said, quietly but firmly. ‘I love France, and I hope one day to return, when the poor country has done with its desperate turmoil, at least for a while. But I need something different; I need to live without bowing and scraping to every arrogant fool with a title – forgive me, Marcel, but you are not typical, by any means – and above all, I need a chance to make a life away from this endless, pointless bloodshed’ In the silence following his words, a stiffening breeze brought them the sounds of the Sevres estate stretching out below them to the very horizon; the plod of horses drawing their ploughs; somewhere, the buzz of playing children; the clunking of carts along makeshift roads and, mercifully distant but nevertheless audible, the spasmodic dull thud of cannons.

Thursday April 20th 2017, Restaurant Chez Fournier, Rue du Fauboug-Saint-Martin Anthony J. Sevren, attorney at law, a slim, well-dressed man with an easy authoritative air and disconcerting ice-blue eyes, and John Furness, archivist and historian, more casually clothed and more academic and detached, had just enjoyed a three course Parisian dinner and were at their ease on the terrace outside the restaurant, enjoying two glasses of very old Calvados and watching the evening strollers pass up and down in front of them.

Publishing January, 25th, 2018 -- ISBN-13: 9781981116409

‘I had to pull in a favour or two to get this trip at all, John, I don’t mind telling you. But I’m glad I did. Ever since you got in touch with me last year, I’ve felt the whole fog of my family history has been lifted and I can feel – connected, I suppose, is the word’.

‘Yes, and that’s good to know, because that’s a lot of what I’m trying to do. Families might spread themselves all over places and time, but the roots business is as it ever was’.

‘So we know that Claudette did come back, judging by the name of this place?’

‘She did. In 1800, well after the Terror had subsided, Claudette and her sons moved back to her bakery. Both of her parents had died by then, and the Auberge d’Avranches taken over by her cousins. She’d been sending Pierre on regular trips to check up on the situation in Paris, and by 1800 they felt safe enough to go back. The case against Sevres collapsed, in any case, after Robespierre’s death, and the fact that she and her family had helped Sevres to escape was more in their favour than against them. Exactly when the bakery turned into a restaurant we don’t know, since for a while it seemed to function as both, but Pierre Fournier’s grandson Michel proved an artist at cooking generally as well as baking, and that swung it towards the restaurant’.

‘But Henri never went back?’

‘No, he didn’t, which is sad, I suppose, but it wouldn’t have been feasible while the Naploeonic Wars continued, and in 1812, of course, Britain and the U.S. were at war for a while. He couldn’t possibly have returned before 1816, and by then Henri was 48 and not too well, with a family of his own to look after. Oddly enough, considering his youthful aversion to it, he set up as a baker, with Marcel’s help initially, your great however many times it is grandfather, but as an American baker; by the turn of the century, he had twenty shops, and by 1816, over fifty. He didn’t get back to see Claudette before she died in 1817. Henri himself died in 1836, and it was his grandson Philippe who anglicised the name to Furness in 1866 after the Civil War, when everyone without an American name was seen as suspicious’.

‘And Marcel the Comte, my noble ancestor, prospered in the States?’

‘Yes, he did. He bought an estate near Boston, and staffed with a mixture of American people and French emigres – not all the people who fled France back then were aristocrats; in fact, only a minority of them were.

Francoise adapted her knowledge of law to the American codes and made herself legally useful, also to both American and French clients, so they did well enough for themselves and started the dynastic legal tradition which continues in you, Anthony. Exactly when they anglicised the name by changing one letter of it, we don’t know, but Marcel’s grandson Hugh was a precise, fussy man and we think it was probably him, to stop himself from having to keep on pronouncing the name to people’.

They fell quiet and sipped their drinks, watching the remorseless drift of passing people,whose racial and ethnic diversity was very obvious.

‘They’re coming here now, John, aren’t they?’

‘Who?’ ‘The huddled masses of Emma Lazarus. ‘Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’. They were all ours once, and now here they are in Europe, and thirty years down the line, who’s going to have the ageing population and more sick old people than people of working age, and who’s going to have a more youthful population and a more diverse and adaptable culture? We gained from the English religious wars and the French revolutionary wars, and now the tide flows away from us rather than to us.

Welcome to the New World, John’. ### Taken from "The Guy Thing," a new short story collection by the award winning writer, Bruce Harris: Coming to a link near you, Jan. 25th 2018.

IN OUR WORLD

'You were created to be completely loved and completely lovable for your whole life1' I love you love he loves she loves we love ye love they love-amo amas amat amamus amatis amant

quiero quieres quiere queremos quereis quieren j'aime tu aimes elle aime nous aimons vous aimez ils aiment ich liebe du liebst er liebt wir lieben ihr liebt sie lieben

--And from the land and the seas love flows And from the spirit of love filled souls love

grows

amo amas amat amamus amatis amant And

for the souls who fear love: love shows up

30 MILLION CHILDREN ARE REFUGEES

WHO TRADES THE LOVE? 1 Path to love by Deepak Chopra

Street Dancer/Alexandre Benois/Date: 1917/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Series: Designes for Stravinsky's ballet "Petrushka"/Genre: design

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

Coming Soon At: The Linnet's Wings Press

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

Doctor-pharmacist and a Second Khaldei by Boris Kustodiev/Date: 1924/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Series: Yevgeny Zamyatin "The Flea"/Genre: design

I think my father is losing it. He doesn’t remember anything at all. At first, he couldn’t remember what happened minutes ago, but could remember what happened last century.

“Where did you put your slippers?” my mother would ask.

“These you call slippers?” he would answer. “Years ago they used to make slippers. Ah! Those were the slippers! And today? Today they can’t make slippers. They make them out of paper,” and he would expound

on the relative quality of the slippers now and then, comparing their beauty, efficacy, and defects.

“All I want to know is where you put your slippers now! I don’t want to know their state at the time between Sputnik and Gagarin!

Where did you put the today’s slippers, now?” would insist my pragmatic mother.

“Now?” he would look at her bewildered, “now? Now I don’t remember. Maybe I’ll remember in twenty years!” With this joke as the

party stopper, he would recline on the couch with an apple and a newspaper.

So he’s losing it, he can’t remember anything at all. Drat!

Never mind the slippers, this story is not about the slippers, so enough already! Not enough? You want to know more about the slippers and whether they were found and what they looked like and whether my father ever wore them again? They were brown. I am sure they were brown because my father would

never wear slippers that were not brown.

“They can be any color you like, as long as they are brown,” my father would exhibit his erudition and knowledge of the more popular sayings of the anti-Semite Henry Ford. At this point, it is vital not to let him talk about Henry Ford, for your own sanity, so you win! You win! I’ll tell you about the slippers.

The current slippers, after which my mother inquired, were found between the couch and the vase with no flowers. A vase with no flowers is better than a vase with plastic flowers, while still efficiently arresting straying slippers.

The slippers made between Sputnik and Gagarin, the ones my father remembered for their sturdiness, had disappeared. Those slippers were brown on the outside and secretly red on the inside. Not entirely red, they had red and white squares in the Scottish sort of way, but on the inside they looked red to me. So there’s an allegory in this story: the insides of the slippers represent the insides of my father.

Not the kishkes – the ideology. Red, but not entirely; there are some white squares. Maybe he was a Scottish Zionist, like Golda Meir. What?

Golda Meir was not a Scottish Zionist? What was she, a Scottish separatist, maybe? So sit. Take off your shoes and put on the slippers.

Recline on the couch and start feeling at home. Since you don’t know the story, all you can do is listen. Yes, in silence.

Every man’s life is subdivided into three distinct lives: work life, home life, and a secret life. My

father’s work life was mostly in the polyclinic where he gave injections and prescribed antibiotics. The injections were very painful, the antibiotics were very bitter, and the patients were very grateful. I know these things because he tried them on me, except I was not grateful. No, he did not try the patients on me; he only tried the injections and the antibiotics. I was not grateful. I was grateful when he was trying them out on his other patients. That’s why I really got to appreciate his work life: it diverted his attention from me to the other patients and I was spared most of the time.

My father’s secret life was nonexistent; and don’t tell me it was existent, but so secret that I couldn’t have possibly known about it, especially at the age of five. Don’t tell me any of it! My father couldn’t have a secret life because he could never keep a secret; for example: that I drew a little blue bunny on the wall under the bed where I thought no one would ever find it, or that a tiny piece of chocolate was chewed off from the main body by an unknown thief that came to dinner but didn’t stay, or that Stalin died – he just couldn’t keep it secret. He would blurt it out to my mother at the very moment she stepped through the door and then there would be a scandal. So how could such a man have a secret life, I ask you? Such a man could not have a secret life, you should answer! And if you don’t, then stop feeling at home, put on your shoes, and go find yourself another storyteller, with a sleazy mind, maybe.

My father’s home life revolved around apples, newspapers, and his

slippers. His work life took, maybe, 32 hours each day, so by the time he arrived to his home life he was deserving of some rest. This was fulfilled by reclining on the couch with an apple and a newspaper. The apple was green, sour, and loud. In winter, when there were no apples, the apple was a carrot. Sometimes, it was a turnip. At other times, it was the parsnip-looking heart of a cabbage – a delicacy! But for my father it was always a green, sour, loud apple.

The newspaper was Izvestiya.

The slippers were brown on the outside and Scottish on the inside, but you could not see the inside because the insides of the slippers were occupied by my father’s feet.

It was absolutely prohibited to recline on the couch with slippers on one’s feet. The prohibition came directly from Mt. Sinai and delivered, still warm, by my mother.

And if my mother prohibits something, it’s stricter than kosher in a yeshiva. There’s no atonement for the violation, no yankipper will wash it away. It is doomsday parade and a scandal. But my father with an apple and Izvestiya was like a rock: unhearing, unfeeling, and unresponsive, and hence not a party to the crime and punishment proceedings. He was beyond redemption, which he would indicate to my mother before she could make the statement for the prosecution, “My feet are strictly off the furniture.

Strictly!” and that was that, call in the Spanish Inquisition, but he would not part with his slippers and be saved.

The couch was called divan. It

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

On the terrace in Kharkov by Zinaida Serebriakova

was light blue with make-believe gold thread and sewn-in buttons of the same cloth as the rest of the divan. The buttons subdivided the divan’s backrest into the palm-size diamonds called rhombs. The divan was situated in the dining room by the window. The dining room had one window and one door to the balcony.

The divan’s position made it possible to read the Izvestyia without turning on the light, at least sometimes. The divan was very small and could accommodate two people and a cat if all three were sitting; so when my father reclined on it with his head on one armrest, his feet (in the slippers) were dangling off the other. This proves that his feet were strictly off the furniture, he didn’t lie. (And you still think he could have a secret life?)

And then the slippers got lost. He lost them!

Before this tragic event, my father had not lost a thing. Other people lose things. My mother lost her lipstick, and one time she lost the keys to the house (and there was a scandal an d a locksmith), and another time her purse got stolen while she was riding the trolleybus – and there was a big scandal. Once, my grandmother lost a chicken on the way back from the marketplace; it was a dead, plucked chicken, it couldn’t have eloped, so maybe it was stolen while she was riding the trolleybus; either way, she came home – and there was no chicken. There was no scandal on that occasion because no one gives a scandal to Grandmother Rosa, on account of her being a saint, and you don’t give scandals to saints. Later, when I was already going to school, I once lost my shoes and walked home barefoot, and there was a terrible scandal.

But my father has never lost anything. Never! Until the day he lost his slippers, which actually happened at night.

I got blamed for the lost slippers, even though I was only five and I wasn’t even there when it happened. But since my father had never lost a thing, someone had to take the fall for him. So now I rewind my story to the time between Sputnik and Gagarin when I was five, when father was still Papa, mother was Mama, and Grandmother Rosa was just plain Babushka. This is how Papa lost his slippers:

"The conference was a success, parasites were condemned, especially Pasternak, and Papa went shopping for presents and little treats for the entire family, because not to do so would present him an as unfeeling, uncaring brute and there would be certain scandal. The choice of gifts was somewhat limited, because Kharkov’s industry consisted primarily of a tractor factory."

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

CHAPTER 1

The Case of the Lost Slippers Papa went to Kharkov. Kharkov is a city in the Ukraine. The Ukraine is a big republic in the USSR. I don’t know why it is called the Ukraine, instead of Ukraine. There’s only one Ukraine, so why the “the”? But I will not burden you with my puzzlement over English. The words that I really need, such as “scandal,” or “yankipper,” or “divan” I will explain. This is for your comfort. I didn’t have to explain them. I could pretend that this story was originally written in Serbo-Croatian and you were reading a poor translation, just like Beowulf, or Bashevis Singer.

But I will be upfront and tell you that I am writing it in English ground up, so if something isn’t kosher, then it just isn’t.

So Papa went to Kharkov in the Ukraine. Why? It doesn’t matter! But I also know you will want to stick your snoot right in it and make it matter. Fine. So I’ll tell you. There was a doctors conference about popular Soviet diseases, like tape worms and Pasternak, and my father was sent there by someone high up, very high up, maybe even from the fourth floor of the Lithuanian Ministry of Health; and they only had four floors, so this was as high up as one could get.

Papa was well-known and popular on the fourth floor of the Ministry of Health. This was on account of his extra-curricular activities: every year on the First of May and the 7th of November they held a very special celebration commiserating the (oh, to hell with it! it’s commemorating, of course) tremendous achievements of the Soviet free healthcare; and there was a party and a concert and a Khrushchev speech, and my father sang in a quartet: Morning paints with gentle colors Hedges of the ancient Kremlin, Sleeping people wake up taller In the Soviet land of Lenin.

Welcome chill and greet the bellow Of the buses’ cheerful band! ”Morning, morning,” Moscow mellow, The heart of Dear Motherland!

All-powerful, All-masterful, Forever undefeatable, My Motherland, My prostate gland – You’re the most loveable!

Sunny May will color brightly Friendly Moscow cobalt sky; Let us briskly march, yet lightly, Hauling gratitude’s supply!

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

Let the lacquer on our slogans Sparkle brighter every day; Let’s be blessed by our Stalin’s Blessings, on this day in May. All-powerful, All-masterful, Forever undefeatable, My Motherland, My prostate gland – You’re the most loveable!1 This singing pleased the Minister of Health, personally and collectively, and he remembered Papa as the singing Jew. So when the time came to send a doctor to the tape worm conference in Kharkov, my father was the one to board the train. He boarded the train with a brown suitcase. No, no! You misinterpret again, like a malicious attorney. My father was with a suitcase, not the train. And quit interrogating me, like I am in the dock. I am not in the dock, I am in the armchair, and you are on the couch. No, this is just a couch, it is not the divan. The divan was left in Vilnius. Papa did not take the divan on the train. But he did take a suitcase. Brown on the outside. Like the slippers.

Yes, there must be some existentialist significance to it. Do you know it? No. So shuh! Have a cookie!

The conference was a success, parasites were condemned, especially Pasternak, and Papa went shopping for presents and little treats for the entire family, because not to do so would present him an as unfeeling, uncaring brute and there would be certain scandal. The choice of gifts was somewhat limited, because Kharkov’s industry consisted primarily of a tractor factory.

The Kharkov Tractor Factory manufactured everything, including tractors, though this was not its main produce. The main produce of the Kharkov Tractor Factory were tanks. Therefore, the population of Kharkov had an unusually high content of spies. The spies were masquerading as drunks; that was their deep cover, but while tripping over their own unsteady feet and grabbing at the factory fence for support and pissing at it (what a devious disguise!), they were trying to get a glimpse of the new T-55 tanks and steal their secrets.

Papa marched pass the spies, a silent “phui” on his lips, and entered the factory store where he procured a manicure set, a matching kettle and pot, and a tricycle.

These purchases burdened him physically and emotionally.

Physically, he simply could not carry all that and the brown suitcase; emotionally, he had no doubt that the manicure set and the matching pot and kettle were a sign of decadence and a waste of scarce resources, and who did my mother think she was? Pasternak?

The tricycle was for me.

The train journey home was eventful. It was a dark and stormy night. Papa never drank vodka; he also refused the tea, after determining that the glass in which it was served was unhygienic. He, therefore, decided to retire for the night, using his coat for a blanket. His feet rested on the container with the tricycle placed in the middle of the compartment between the benches. The benches were occupied by spies who drank vodka incessantly. _ There is little doubt in my mind that the spies tried to examine the content of the tricycle container once Papa was asleep. They thought the container contained the secret part of a Russian tank, and they wanted to steal it, or at least photograph it with Minox, which is a tiny spy camera.

Papa slept and dreamt of the blue divan and Izvestiya. In his dream, he was crunching a loud green apple and keeping his slippers strictly off the furniture. In reality, he shifted his feet off the tricycle, allowing the spies to discover and photograph it. One of the spies quietly removed the slippers from Papa’s feet – how else can one explain their disappearance upon his arrival? This spy was even less conscientious than his colleagues, as he brutally stole the slippers in search of quick riches.

There was another theory that the spies took the slippers assuming my Papa was a spy for the third world.

The spies on the train belonged to the first world and the USSR was the second world (or vice versa, no one has ever established this kind of precedence, we only knew that the third world was third). They saw Papa go in and come out of the Kharkov Tractor Factory, lugging a container and a suitcase, with his left pocket bulging from the manicure set (which they confused with the Minox).

Once on the train, they stole his slippers and ravaged them in the train toilet, looking for the sewn-in secret messages and codes, and microfilm.

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

“Where is the microfilm, agent

John?”

“Search me, agent Mustafa!”

“I would greatly like to do that, agent John.”

“Keep your hands off me, agent Mustafa! Don’t touch my PPK!” This conversation took place over the pillaged left slipper in the toilet on the train from Kharkov. It had to take place, there’s a historic necessity for it, for no other theory can explain the disappearance of Papa’s slippers.

The hypothesis that he simply lost the slippers was discarded as laughable. It was retrieved from the garbage heap of history, dusted, and presented to Papa only by Mama and only when she lost the house keys again and he found out and The Rostov Kremlin by Konstantin Yuon yelled, and “lost slippers” were the only way to quell his rebellion.

So now you know the Case of the Lost Slippers. Why was it ever blamed on me? What do you think? Could it have happened if not for the tricycle? ###

Excerpt: Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman

CHAPTER2

THE CASE OF CRUISER AURORA Papas' slippers were sadistically taken hostage and subsequently ransacked on the train from Kharkov, and that was the end of them. But it was not the end of agents John and Mustafa, who pursued Papa and the rest of his suspicious luggage. This is because they did not believe Papa had no secret life.

The next victim of their intrigues was the tricycle.

Typically, the tricycle was used outdoors in the backyard, where agents John and Mustafa could gain easy access to it. Since Babushka and I were unaware of their malignant presence, we lost diligence once or twice. I was too young to be in counter-intelligence, and Babushka would not have allowed it anyway.

On one occasion, we lost diligence because I had to go behind the wood and coal shed. What? What is not clear?

This is where wood and coal were stored for winter, so what would you like me to call it? You thought the shed was made of wood? Is that it? Actually, yes, it was made of wood, so don’t you try snaring another ambiguity out of me.

Listen, it doesn’t matter what the shed was called; it still had only wood and coal in it. Someone wrote an obscenity on the wall, so you think, suddenly there were loose women partying in it? No! It was still a shed with wood and coal and will you let me be already? You are making me itch! Just sit and listen, it will make you feel better.

I went behind the wood and coal shed because I had to go I would not have made it up the stairs to the third floor. I knew it was coming but I did not want to get off the tricycle prematurely. I slightly overestimated my ability to hold on to the liquid, so when I finally had to go, it was urgent. The only way to prevent the immediate eruption was to clutch the tricycle squeezing it with my legs. I hoped to persevere this way for another two minutes, but one look from Babushka and the situation grew hopeless. I was outmaneuvered by superior force. Babushka had many hands: she held down the tricycle, picked me up like a kitten by the scruff of my neck, carried me off behind the wood and coal shed while undoing my pants and, I think, she also cooked dinner and cleaned the apartment at the same time.

Babushka was hardly taller than a big child. I was not a very big child so she was taller than me, but there were many children taller than her. They were taller than both of us and they were mean bullies and I didn’t like them at all.

But I adored the Saint Babushka. Everything she did was for the good of others, and I was the #1 “others”: her first grandchild, not excessively defiant, and always a little sick and in need of care. Everyone was in need of care, or at least in need of a dinner, so Babushka was much needed. The family was her religion; dinner was a religious ceremony; feeding me could easily be equated with a Temple sacrifice.

The dinner was uneventful, apart from the fact that I did not want it. But this only proves that it was uneventful, since I never wanted it. Had I suddenly developed acute hunger and ate the entire plate of chicken soup (with bread) and the entire plate of chicken legs (with mashed potatoes), this would have been considered an event; and Babushka would meet my mother at the front door and report the happy occasion, which would result in a modest family celebration: he ate the entire dinner!

But this was not to be. I discovered a golden stain of fat floating around the plate and wanted to disqualify the soup immediately. This did not work. Babushka fished out the cruising medallion and insisted that I continue the struggle. I played with the lone boat-shaped fragment of a chicken breast in the soup, nudging it towards the log of a carrot. The soup began to resemble a familiar revolutionary naval scene and I regained interest, albeit not a gastronomical one:

Train Smoke by Edvard Munch

Morning becomes the City of Lenin; No one is up yet yelling, gevalt!

What are you dreaming Cruiser Aurora Right before the sunshine lights up Neva?

What are you dreaming Cruiser Aurora Right before the sunshine lights up Neva?

Maybe you dream of the signal salvo, The Revolution’s momentous start?

We are so grateful, your contribution And participation set you apart.

We are so grateful, your contribution And participation set you apart.

Forces of nature, power of nations, Such is the fate of the naval craft.

What are you dreaming Cruiser Aurora, The destinies likeness of person and raft?

What are you dreaming Cruiser Aurora, he destinies likeness of person and raft?2 I hummed this popular children’s song while reenacting in the soup bowl the historic events of October 25, 1917.

(The events actually took place on November 7, but before the Revolution people didn’t know that. I didn’t understand this jumble of dates. November 7 was not the same as October 25; even I knew that, so how could have people not noticed? Or was the entire span of time between the two dates wiped out? Even now, I still don’t understand this phenomenon, but I became more tolerant of it, since now I know: more than mere 13 days can get wiped out, and they do, from time to time, even without a revolution.)

The cruiser-shaped chicken breast was attacking the reactionary carrot log, and then – wham! – Cruiser Aurora fired the fatal shot, assisted by the spoon – vermicelli flying everywhere – and Babushka came to storm the Winter Palace.

She retrieved the spoon and started singing something sedate about a little gray goat. The song was about another Babushka, who had a little gray goat whom she loved dearly, but nevertheless she cooked him in a soup. Babushka preferred singing about the little gray goat, because the song had a Babushka in it, instead of Cruiser Aurora. What do you prefer?

I was force-fed in this diabolical manner by the Saint Babushka.

This is entirely forgivable, because in her mind force-feeding The Child was a saintly deed. And as an object of her sainthood, I had to go to the vermicelli cross, day after day. Can anyone tell me why the chicken could not be the object of her sainthood? Or maybe the little gray goat? No? You are not answering any questions regarding sainthood, soup, and agriculture? A pity. I thought you could be useful. Well, at least you listen. You don’t listen? Then what are you doing being so comfortable?

Once the dinner was over and it was permitted to leave the gastric torment at the table, I went back to the precious tricycle. Now it must be explained that playing with the tricycle in the house was permissible, but riding it wasn’t. This did not matter, since the contraption offered numerous exciting pastimes apart from the intended one. For instance, I turned it on its side and pretended that the rear left wheel was the steering wheel of a truck. I pulled up the little bench, the one I used when I had to put on my shoes and tie the laces, and I sat and spun the tricycle wheel as if the truck I was driving was looping loops like a figure skating lady at the Winter Olympics. I soon had an accident, something broke inside the truck. I turned the little bench over and immediately it became the engine.

The truck was fixed, two more loads of sand, bricks, and other building materials were delivered to the building site, and I became a bus driver. I put all our dining chairs in a file behind the little bench. Now I needed the passengers.

Babushka took two rides and went back to the kitchen, at which point I turned the bus into a tricycle again and started using it as intended, in the dining room, against the strictest prohibition.

The tricycle had transformed into Cruiser Aurora, circling around the dinner table: the lair of the retrograde Interim Government – the Winter Palace. I rode a couple of times around the Winter Palace, and since the dining chairs were still the “bus” next to the wall, underneath the table, now the Throne Room, was unprotected and very, very attractive.

“Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood! Comrades – forward!” I gave the order and immediately obeyed it. At great velocity I directed Cruiser Aurora into the palace, and about ten minutes later, when I came to my senses, I discovered Babushka was holding something cold to my forehead, I was in great pain, my face was wet, a child was crying in the room, and the revolution was over.

There is no doubt that Cruiser Aurora was sabotaged by agent John and agent Mustafa while I was behind the

wood and coal shed. Even today my father supports this theory, because on no account will he admit that nearly half a century ago, some time between Sputnik and Gagarin, he simply lost the slippers getting off the train from Kharkov because he was too busy with the suitcase and the tricycle. His sanity demands agents John and Mustafa. But mine doesn’t. Nor do I really need them in the rest of this story, so I’ll just retire them, hoping that the CIA will pay them for their dedicated service of many years. Let my father call them back, if he wants to. ###

2A

frivolous interpretation of Cruiser “Aurora” by Matusovsky

Art:Le Coup de Vent by Theophile Steinlen

Portrait of the author Yevgeny Zamyatin by Boris Kustodiev, 1923

ZAMYATIN ABOUT HIMSELF (Early Memories)

S

Several isolated moments from my earliest childhood, like holes cut in a dark, dense curtain.

Our dining room, an oilcloth covered table, and on the table a dish with something strange, white, gleaming, and — a miracle — the white stuff disappears as I look, who knows where. In the dish is a piece of the still unknown universe that exists outside the room. In the dish is some snow which someone has brought in to show me. And that marvelous snow is with me to this day.

The same dining room. I am in someone’s arms before the window. Outside the window, through the trees, the red sphere of the sun. Everything is darkening, and I feel that this is the end — and the most frightening thing of all is that my mother has not yet returned from somewhere. Later I learned that the some- one was my grandmother, and that I was indeed within a hairs- breadth of death at that moment. I was about a year and a half old.

Later. I am two or three. For the first time, many people, a multitude, a crowd. We are in Zadonsk: my parents have come there in a charabanc and brought me with them. A church, blue smoke, chanting, lights, an epileptic woman barking like a dog, a lump in my throat. Now it is over, everybody is pushing, I am carried outside by the crowd like a bit of flotsam, and suddenly I am alone in the crowd. My father and my mother are gone, they will never come back, I am alone forever. I sit on a grave- stone in the sun, crying bitterly. For a whole hour I live in the world alone. xxx

It's my Life “My duty is to fill my time on earth with as much life as possible, to become a little more human every day, and to understand that we only become human when we love.” ― Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes

Girl with Flowers, Cuno Amiet , Date: 1896

Cactus To be near, Unable to touch you, Just look at you, Contemplate you ...

Because your thorns From times past Will not let me close.

You are here, And there in the Andes Translation, Marie Fitzpatrick

Art: Ruta Andina by Andrea Castilla

Art: Ruta Andina by Andrea Castilla

SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS by William Reese Hammilton This is about how I fell off the mountain and into a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

I can see this mountain from our front porch. Over the hibiscus and the bougainvillea, past the bananas and the palm trees, through the branches of the great mijao. It's a handsome part of our landscape, rising out of the river where the fishermen keep their boats, dominating Puerto Colombia, Playa Grande and the long valley of Choroní. Way down the coast, you can see it and guide your boat by it.

"The view from the top must be something," I say to no one in particular. "Better even than from the mountain over the cemetery."

"But, remember, you've been falling," Marisol answers absently from her book. "A lot."

"You make it sound like a disease."

"Once with Alfredo up in the mountains by the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto."

"Yes, but that could happen to anybody, anytime. I was climbing over the waterfall and my feet just slipped on the moss. I only fell maybe ten feet between two rocks."

"And then twice with Rafael and Raquel when you took them to Aroa."

"I thought it was a good time to get used to my new glasses. But with these multifocals you can't see your feet right."

"Raquel said you almost went over the cliff."

"Well, I didn't."

When I look up at the mountain from the malecón, sometimes I see small figures up there, people climbing to the wooden cross. There is probably a path through the cactus, I think, and every kid in town must have gone up at some point. I wonder if you can see the buildings of Hacienda Playa Grande from there, the great hacienda whose lands run from the mountains all the way to the sea. The one with the thick forest of coconut palms.

It is really three mountains stuck together. And they are not all that big. Not mountain-climber mountains. In fact, the Welsh would most likely call them hills. The first has the white plaster Cristo at its summit, with floodlights and stairs leading up from the river. The second has the red-and-white lighthouse, warning ships away from the rocky cliffs at night. Finally there is this tall one, a sugarloaf rising suddenly out of the others. Its great wooden cross is new, built after the old one was hit by lightning.

After a few beers, I ask Ruedi if he would like to climb up there with me. It is just five o'clock and the light looks right for some handsome photographs of Playa Grande. Ruedi is a gamer. He will go anywhere as long as you don't make him wear shoes. He likes to feel the ground under his feet. I'm still a tenderfoot and sandles suit me fine.

Just past the bridge over the river, we cut back along the bank toward the sea. The ground is riddled with crab holes and the palms lean far out over the river. The fishermen lay their nets out here to dry. To the right, the steps rise easily back and forth up the first slope. At the cement landing for the crucifix, we look down at the river and the red tile roofs of Puerto Colombia. Out at sea, the last fishing boats are heading in with the day's catch.

At the back of the landing, we hop a stone wall and head up another slope through the cactus.

There is a fork to the right, but the path to the lighthouse looks better traveled and the more natural way to the tallest mountain. From the lighthouse, the path descends precipitously along a rocky cliff some forty or fifty yards above the sea. The view is intoxicating, but we barely stop, hurrying on to catch the late afternoon light before it fades.

It is now suddenly real climbing, the narrow path switching back and forth, losing itself among the rocks and cactus. At least, it's real for me. For Ruedi, who spent his youth scurrying up and down every mountain in Switzerland like some Teutonic Spiderman, it's just a slight incline. Fortunately, there are things to grab onto; unfortunately, most are spiny and grab back. But we finally break through the last scrub to the top and the beautiful panorama. Ruedi, Swiss that he is, has put a clock on it and tells me it took us just thirty minutes. So we can now reckon how long we have before nightfall.

The view is well worth this and even more difficult ascents. To the west the sun has just turned the sea into hot metal under a thick smoky haze. Puerto Colombia lies in miniature, cradled by the mountains. I find our house peeking out from behind the trees, where not long before I stood looking back at the mountain. And there, up the road, stand the abominations they had the nerve to call Villas Turisticas. The buildings look bad enough from the street, little two-storied pastel affairs crowded in behind a high wall. But this aerial view reveals something even worse.

"My God, Ruedi, look at that."

"Yes, it looks like a factory."

"Or a slum in the making. Certainly nothing to do with villas. Not even room to breathe."

"Who would build such a thing here?"

"The same Spanish consortium that buys and sells our town's fish. The real question is, who will buy such a thing?"

"And that huge ugly slab of cement for the new bus stop. They must be expecting Choroní to be crowded with tourists."

"There was a beautiful forest there not long ago, full of giant cedros and mijaos.”

I turn and look east at Playa Grande, a much happier sight. It draws me to the rim of the cliff. I aim my camera. Thick stands of coconut palms crowd the golden beach. The light is perfect. No haze away from the sun. Crisp white waves etched on the blue tide.

I search the dense forest up along the river to the south, looking for the hacienda. For a long time I see nothing but trees. Finally a break, what appear to be white walls. But it's all too far, too vague. Yet that must be it. Near the ford in the river where the great metal gates are always locked. If I really want to see this hacienda, I guess I'll just have to trespass some day.

But the sun is dropping into the sea and in the tropics night falls hard behind sunset. We decide to start back down. I wouldn't like navigating this trail without a flashlight. And it's always a bit harder going down off a mountain than coming up. The trail hangs out over the sea far below. Cactus juts out across our path. Stones and branches which made the ascent easier are suddenly more of a hindrance.

Yet once we're off the sugarloaf, the path levels into a gentler descent. We come to a fork in the trail I hadn't noticed climbing up.

"Let's try this one to the left. It might be quicker," I say. Instead of going by the sea it proceeds down the other side, leveling off even more along a steep precipice. And it is here, lulled into a false sense of security, that I make my misstep.

I am looking out at the dramatic view as I walk. Perhaps it is the concrete shell of Santa Barbara I spy far off across the valley, high up among the trees. Perhaps it is that last shimmering light of dusk. But suddenly I have stumbled over a rock and am leaning off into space. It's wonderful how the mind slows such events down. Here to my right, just below me, is a small bush. I grab at it. And it rewards me in two ways. First, and perhaps most important, it saves my life. Second, it allows me to perform something I have never been able to do well, even in my youth.

This little bush is my axis for a perfect front flip. I do not have the film to prove it, but I guarantee that even Greg Luganis on a good day could not have scored higher on this dive. The take-off is perhaps a little questionable, but the dive is textbook and the landing spectacular.

It is, in fact, so spectacular that it could never be captured on film, but only in a Saturday morning cartoon. For I have dropped directly onto a tuna – one of those classic comic-strip cactuses. And it sticks me like velcro to the side of the mountain. I hang there, looking down at the valley floor, extremely glad to have joined ranks with Tom, Jerry, Bugs and the Road Runner, dangling on the edge of a sheer precipice and at the same time receiving a healthy dose of acupuncture. I feel my body to make sure nothing is broken. And indeed everything moves. I'm a bit suspicious that nothing even hurts. I turn, find my foothold, take the proffered hand of Ruedi and climb out of my cartoon world, back among the living.

Even as I am limping back down the trail to civilization, looking as if I've just been attacked by a pack of ferocious neighborhood cats, even as Ruedi is telling me his sorry vision of having to haul the body of an old man down the mountain to his wife, even as Marisol is pulling the last needles out of my back with tweezers, I am giving thanks to that little bush and that mighty cactus.

Now, lest you think old men should stay on level ground and eschew the higher adventure, let me relate another event. Mari and I are having a late breakfast in a Caracas fast-food joint. Coffee, scrambled

eggs and very dry toast. A ho-hum affair, if I ever saw one. But suddenly the dry toast does not swallow, stays lodged in my throat. There is not enough coffee left in my cup to help me. I rise, trying to cough it up or get to water. I see the look of panic on Mari's face as she watches my complexion turn from blue to black. She tries to get behind me for a Heimlich Maneuver, but I am on a raised dais above her and she can't get a proper hold. I'm wondering how you say, "Heimlich Maneuver" in Spanish.

"Heimlich!" she screams to the restaurant at large. The waiter stares back at us in shock, paralyzed. This is not going to gain his restaurant any stars. The man behind the counter appears not to notice. But the big man at the table behind us responds, grabbing me in a mighty bear hug and squeezing so hard, he lifts me involuntarily a full foot off the ground and pops the dried toast from my throat like a champagne cork.

Embarrassed, I ask for water. I will probably now continue to ask for water. Marisol thanks the man profusely, but I am too humbled to say a word.

Now I ask you, which event brought me closer to the end and which would have been the better way to go? Well, at least I got some nice photos from the mountain. xxx

Tales of Choroni:Beautifully crafted moments from a faraway place, equal parts travelogue and love sonnet ...

Tom Dooley, Editor of Eclectica Magazine

The Art of Andrea Castilla Ruta Andina

Born in San Juan, Argentina, Andrea considers herself to be a multidisciplinary artist.

Since 1993 she has lived and worked in Granada, Spain. Over the years she has been perfecting her techniques, linked to pedagogy, writing and illustration. Andrea constructed her "Ruta Andina" using a mixed media selection of acryllic, paper and textile.

Título: Pachamama

L

a Región Andina esconde una riqueza cultural inimaginable. Pese haber nacio y vivido diecinueva anos en ella, cada vez de vuevlo redescubro su belleza imparable, su geographia, su flora, su fauna, y el simbolismo de sus tradiciones.

Estos elementos representativos me invitan a estudiar y indagar e un porque de sus tradiciones y costumbres como la cruz Andina, "Chacana," el culto a la "Pachamama," madra tierra, agricultura, las ofrendas y ceremonias.

En mi cuaderno de viaje y recuerdos lleno de recortes, noticias, y fotos me llevan a querer convertir esta experiencia de lo vivido en una representacion plastica, que espero disfruten.

T

he Andean Region hides an unimaginable cultural wealth. Despite having been born and lived nineteen years in it, each time I rediscovered its unstoppable beauty, its geography, its flora, its fauna, and the symbolism of its traditions.

These representative elements invite me to study and explore why their traditions and customs such as the Andean cross, "Chacana," the cult of "Pachamama," madra land, agriculture, offerings and ceremonies.

In my travel notebook and memories full of clippings, news, and photos lead me to want to turn this experience into a plastic representation, which I hope you enjoy.

o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op

A Cloud Feast,

Big fat trunks with branches shooting east and west

That had knots and shoots and skinny twigs With airy light defined leaves that moved In a pulse of light: A cloud feast. It was spring

And that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky Shimmied her dance -- a story imprinted

into her aether by the trees. That winter

We had heavy snow falls that filled

The sunset with icy blues and pinks, and orange Streaked through with opaque white, and we had storms Of rain and sleet that fell from fat lead grey cloud

That spilled then ran, and in summer the light Was weighted down with the promise of heat That never materialized, and here Alll four seasons stirred the day and as I wished

For more definition I wanted to say: Be who you are summer, you are better

Than the mix the rest throw in; then when The long evenings gave way to darker days

I was happy to see her leave, to see Autumn fall, for at least I was on firm ground,

And there were no expectations of long

Welcome warm days that fell into nothing.

MLF 03052015

ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and or eaked through with opaque white, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud -that spilled then ran; summer the light was weighted down with the promise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the d as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who you are summer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autum at least I was on firm ground,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves ved in a pulse of light: A cloud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the sea ange as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story imprinted into her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that ed the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with opaque white, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, ud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down with the promise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirre y; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who you are summer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo mmer, you can be better n the mix the rest throw in; then when the long evenings gave way to darker days I was happy to see her leave, to see autumn fall, for at least I was on ound,and there were no expectations of long,hot warm days that fell into nothing. g fat trunks with branches shooting east and west that had knots and shoots and skinny twigs with airy light defined leaves that moved in a pulse of lig ud feast. It was spring and all that year through my office window, I had watched the seasons change as the sky shimmied her dance -- a story impri o her aether by the trees. That winter we had heavy snow falls that had filled the sunset with ice blues and pinks and orange streaked through with op ite, and we had storms of rain and sleet that fell from fat, lead, grey cloud --that spilled then ran; and in summer the light was weighted down wit omise of heat that never materialized, and here all four seasons stirred the day; and as I wished for more definition I wanted to say: Be who yo

Odes and Lamentations

To him she appears smaller than she is when he stands beside her meeting her gaze, communicating intention. Until she disturbed by attraction looks away, and allows him to settle in.

For when advance is made and accepted, definite steps pursue time's honour, and man awaits permission to step out of himself. Is he led by his sense of one, his knowing of fit? But a woman will insist on action, and unless he commits she'll leave.

See any cob watch pen turn and preen then look away, her downcast eyes and ruffled feathers encouraging his pursuit. When he enters her space, he checks that her gaze speaks of welcomes before he connects at a level governed by a similar part that knows what's right.

Then pen disturbed by attraction will look away, and cob will await permission to proceed. And while waiting he'll lift out of himself to float above her, and while looking down his eyes will feast on her line.

It's this swan's song that contains nature's rule. But their choice is for life and they know that it doesn't happen in heat of attraction, but in sacred space where ode and lamentations are writ.

MLF 2008

Colorful life by Wassily Kandinsky

S

nowflakes blew sideways down Main Street in Richmond, Virginia. It was Valentine's Day. Newlyweds, James and Betty Smith cuddled inside the trolley car. Betty took the cuff of her coat and brushed it across the window. Snow powdered brick buildings, running boards of parked Fords and Packards heaped with flurries, the sun paused low over the horizon. The Capitol was dusted in shades of gray.

They’d taken the train from their home in Philadelphia. It was their first trip south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

James had saved enough for a few days off and asked his bride where she would like to go. Ever since Betty saw Gone With the Wind, she wanted to visit the South.

Betty felt ritzy in her stylish beret, the mauve gloves and matching scarf

arranged in neat folds around her neck. Cold air stung her bare legs. Though rationing ended it would be another year before she could buy nylons.

For their first day in the city, they went to the movies.

Back home, as she watched the coming attractions for Gilda, she just had to see the movie. When Rita Hayworth tossed back her luxuriant hair, her low-cut dress revealing a generous bust, and smiled at Glenn Ford, Betty dreamed of seducing James in just the same way.

She didn’t have the sumptuous hair, or the opulent cleavage, and gosh dang it, she wasn’t beautiful like all the good looking dames in the movies, but she knew that James was dizzy in love with her.

The trolley clanged, stopped and picked up a man in uniform.

Betty’s nose touched the glass as she stared down the street and saw the theatre marquee with neon lights. There were so many people, bundled in wool coats and hats. They gathered in the portico, buying tickets at the box office. A column of people stretched beyond the roped off barricade, so many movie goers that another line began on the opposite side. Even on a cold late afternoon, half the city came out for the premiere.

“I’ll get the tickets,” James said.

Betty kissed his cheek. “I’ll miss you, darling.”

The trolley stopped. James tugged at the brim of his fedora. Betty hurried down the aisle and stepped into a cold gust of air.

She rushed to the shorter line, brushed snow from her coat, and tightened the scarf around her neck. People filed behind her, James waited at the ticket booth. He blew her a kiss. She beamed.

Betty heard grumbling. Of all the days to get into a snit, she thought.

Across the portico, an older man glared at her. Why, she wondered? She smiled back. Perhaps he had indigestion, or the biting wind triggered his rheumatism.

James put the tickets in his pocket and dashed to Betty.

They nuzzled.

Low angry voices rumbled behind them.

Betty didn’t move but glanced from side to side.

Two women in front looked over their shoulders. One scowled, the other clicked her tongue.

“Where’s their southern hospitality?” Betty whispered to James.

“Beats me,” he said and kissed her on the mouth.

Across the arcade, a woman shook her head and muttered.

Betty let go of her husband and stepped away.

“Hey, come here.” James reached for her.

“No darling,” she said, afraid she had offended their southern ladylike ways.

Muffled barbs. A woman cackled.

James took her hand.

“No darling. They don’t like public displays of affection.”

“Nuts!”

“They’re genteel. I’ve heard that about the South.”

A man across the way glowered and spat.

“Fuddy Duddy,” James said, burrowing his fists into his coat pockets. “We’re married.” He yanked at his collar.

“I spent four years fighting for my country, I have every right to hold hands with my wife.”

Betty lowered her gaze and stepped further away from her husband.

She smelled aftershave lotion on someone behind her.

“Let’s leave.”

“You wanted to see this movie.” James reached for her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her to his chest.

The crowd’s pulse throbbed with a venomous beat, snaking its way around the colonnade.

“Please, James. Let’s go.”

People stepped out of line. Shoes squished. Twisted faces. Snarls. The mob moved in on James and Betty Smith.

Betty hung onto her husband’s waist for fear they would tear them apart. Sweat soaked her blouse. She wanted to bolt. Run all the way back to Philadelphia.

“Trouble makers!”

“Wise guy!”

James’ arms tensed. She felt his back muscles tighten. That frightened her more than anything. Open the doors, she prayed. She feared if they moved they’d be beaten to death.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” James shouted.

Atomic eyes. Incendiary mouths. Spurts of vapor.

The theatre doors swung open, two men ran out, and the older one yelled, “Break it up, move back!” He pushed through the crowd.

Someone shoved James.

He swung around. “Hey! Step out in the open and fight like a man. I’ll bust your chops,” he seethed.

Betty grabbed him and held on. “No darling.”

“I said break it up!”

The younger man held out his arms, urging people to get in their lines. “Show’s over. Except for the one inside.”

The pack shifted, grunted and slowly began to separate.

“You agitators or something?”

Betty glanced at his name tag, Manager Michael Buchanan.

“No,” James said. “We were minding our own business. Just holding hands.”

“All we wanted was to see the movie,” Betty said.

“I’ll handle it, darling.”

“Where you from?”

“Philadelphia,” James said.

“Can’t you read?”

“Of course I can read.”

“You’re standing in the colored line.”

Betty reeled. Her gloves hid her mouth. Her romantic image of the South ruined forever.

“Northerners,” he muttered. “Get in your own line and from now on remember where you are.”

The young man stood at the door taking tickets from people across the portico.

Betty glanced around, ashamed, not for herself but for everyone there.

“Let’s leave, James.”

“You’ve been looking forward to this movie.”

“Not anymore. Let’s go.”

###

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy I leant upon a coppice gate, When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead, In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.

The land’s sharp features seemed to me The Century’s corpse outleant, Its crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind its death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.

So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, And I was unaware.

Sunset Fires by Winslow Homer, 1880

,He laid her down and traced her contours: the hills; the valleys; the hollows.

breathing in her newness, losing himself in the swathes of her possibilities.

He stretched out his arms and held her to his face

A

p

t first, he unfolded her with tenderness, minding her delicacy. He ran a palm across her surface and smoothed out her creases. Die Landkarte, la carte, la carta: she was Mother Earth. He stretched out his arms and held her to his face, breathing in her newness, losing himself in the swathes of her possibilities. He laid her down and traced her contours: the hills; the valleys; the hollows. He ran a finger along her blue veins and his pulse quickened. Their adventures lay ahead. Who knew where she would lead him?

In time, the cracks began to appear; the first crack so small, it was barely perceivable. But soon it spread along the stress line. He patched it up, only for more tears to appear on the other weak points. Yet no one could say he hadn't protected her. Had he not held her close to his heart and covered her in a protective mantle?

When the storm came, it caught him unaware. They were both out in the wide-open, exposed to the emptying skies. He was lost in the wilderness and needed her to find his way.

Was that not her raison d'etre? Instead she'd fallen apart in the deluge and disintegrated, reduced to a soggy mess. He had no choice but to throw her away.

In the end , he found a replacement. She was new and shiny and plastic; tough as hell and indestructible . ###

THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF BY W. J. WINTLE It all came about through Cyril being too clever by half. He fell into the common mistake of supposing that a mysterious something in his inner consciousness which he called intuition was a sounder guide to conduct than the general common sense of the race. He fancied that the best way to get away from the worries of life was to get away somewhere by himself: and this is just where he made the mistake. The greatest of all worries is oneself—at any rate it was so in Cyril's case. And just then he really believed that he had ground for worry.

What it was does not concern our story; so we need not stay to speculate about it. But it was something that required treatment, according to Cyril: and the treatment that it required was to get away from things. He had tried the British Museum reading-room in the off season, when everyone is away except the lady who writes the Riviera news for the Upper Ten, and the man who has found out how to square the circle. He had tried a course of University Extension lectures on the Multiplication of the Ego: and he had tried salmon fishing in the lower reaches of the Thames. But he couldn't get away from his worry.Then a brilliant idea struck him. He was half inclined to resent the abruptness with which it struck him; for anything that savoured of familiarity was especially offensive in his present mood. But the idea did not mean to be shook off: it meant to stick. And he was bound to admit that the idea was not such a bad one after all.

It was worth thinking about: and to think about it was to act on it. It was this.

A friend of his had built a kind of cottage on a lonely cliff as a sort of retreat for writing his novels. It was in a very retired spot, far away from everything except the sea; it was in private grounds; and its occupant could be as free from visitors as he wished. As it happened, he had seen in that morning's Post that his friend was passing through town and was stopping at the “Langham.” Cyril took up the telephone receiver.

“That you, Howard? Ah; how d'ye do? No; feeling a bit limp, you know; nerves a bit jumpy. Want a rest, I suppose. I say, old man, if you are not doing anything with that shanty of yours on the cliff, may I roost there for a week or two? What's that? Going to pull it down? Haunted? Rats! I'm not afraid of spooks. Yes, thanks; I'll order in a supply of stuff and do for myself, thanks. No need to trouble your people at all. Thanks awfully, old chap; it's really very good of you.”

House on a Cliff/Camille Pissarro/Date: c.1883

So the thing was settled; and next day a long railway trip, followed by what seemed an even longer journey by road, took Cyril to the house on the cliff. It was certainly as lonely as could well be wished. Five miles from the nearest town, or rather village; a good mile from the high road; within a private estate whose house was rarely occupied; and hidden away behind masses of furze and bramble, with bracken more than knee-deep; it was an ideal place for the man who wanted to get away from things.

The situation, apart from its loneliness, was simply gorgeous. The house stood almost on the edge of a lofty limestone cliff which fell a sheer hundred feet without a break to the waves that beat about its base. The cliff stood out like a miniature headland beside a little bay bestrewn with vast boulders round which the long oar-weed clung and twined like ever-writhing water snakes as the tides ebbed and flowed. All around, the cliffs were pierced by caves that the waves had worn out of the ancient rocks by their ceaseless surging, while overhead hung clinging masses of samphire and other green things.

Looking out to sea, an endless waste of waters met the eye; broken for a moment by a rocky island that showed upon the horizon on clear days, and nearer in by some jagged rocks that rose above the surface in all but the highest tides and threatened the unwary mariner with swift destruction. On three sides lay the sea, while the fourth looked landwards and—as we have seen—showed a tangle of wild growth closed in behind by dense trees and rising hills. No house could be seen, nor any sign of human life; and the path that led to the cliff was hard to find, so closely was it overgrown and

encroached upon by the bushes and bracken.

Cyril stood on the edge of the cliff and congratulated himself. He had managed to get away from things at last.

There would be no interruption here. By dint of vigorous and persistent telegraphing the day before, an adequate supply of foodstuffs and other needful things had been sent up to the cliff from the town and left in heaped confusion in the little porch. He liked roughing it; he could do simple cooking; he was not likely to find the need of servants. So he looked around him with unmixed satisfaction.

The house on the cliff could hardly be called a house in any strict sense of the term. Nor was it exactly a summer-house or arbour. It was a simple wooden structure of one storey, consisting of two small rooms for living and sleeping, and a sort of ante-chamber containing an oil-stove and a few cooking utensils. The entrance porch was at the back; and the front faced the sea, the two windows looking out from a shallow veranda. The furniture too was of the simplest; the floors were innocent of carpet and the walls of pictures; and the absence of anyone to intrude made blinds and window-curtains unnecessary.Cyril stood there as the sun sank down in a bed of opal grey flushed with purple sapphire; and long flashing feathers of ruby played across the drowsy waves. A passing boatman saw him from the distance outlined against the sky, and wondered who it could be: and that was the last time that any human eye saw him alive.

What happened at the house on the cliff, and how the horror came and grew until it ended in appalling disaster, no man knows with any certainty now. Cyril's lips are silent for ever: and the Thing that watched and waited has done its ruthless will and perhaps has ceased from troubling. All that we have is a disconnected collection of brief notes, written on loose half sheets of note- paper. They were no doubt written in the order of the occurrences; but when found the wind had blown them about the floor, and it was impossible to do more than guess at the intended sequence. We can only put them together in what seems the most probable order and weave a consequent story as best we may.

It would appear that as Cyril stood there and watched the sunset, his thoughts went back to his telephone conversation with the owner of the place, who had saidsomething about intending to pull the place down because it was haunted. Cyril prided himself on the possession of sound common sense. Without being particularly sceptical, he was by no means credulous. He required evidence before he believed anything improbable; and the evidence for the occult struck him as weak in the extreme. Nor was he at all imaginative or fanciful: he had good control over his nerves, although he had admitted to Howard that they were a bit jumpy at the moment.

So his features deepened into a broad smile as he remembered the conversation. Spooks, indeed; queer thing that a sensible fellow like Howard should take any notice of such tales. Rats, no doubt; or perhaps other wild things creeping about the place when all is quiet and making small ghostly noises; but to put the thing down to spooks was a trifle too absurd. And Cyril laughed aloud.

Then he started suddenly and looked behind him. What a curious echo! He could have sworn that someone laughed. But among rocks and cliffs one expects echoes; so it was only natural that there should be one. But, somehow, there was something queer about this echo. In an ordinary echo one gets a repetition of the sound, a little modified—either sharpened or softened—by the nature of the reflecting surface from which the sound is thrown back; but it is the same sound.

There is no originality about an echo. And that is where Cyril was puzzled and a trifle startled. This echo was different. There was a suggestion of malignancy about it that had certainly not been in his laughter. It made him pause for a moment and frown. Then sanity reasserted itself, and he brushed the thought aside as absurd. But, as he did so, surely someone laughed! It was less audible this time, but more unpleasant. It resembled the low chuckling of an ignoble mind that scores over a higher one. It was distinctly curious, and a little annoying. Cyril hoped his nerves were not going to play him tricks. Then he deliberately put the thing out of his mind and refused to think about it. He sat down on the short turf and gazed out to sea for some minutes. The sunset grey was now deepening into purple, and a long bank of cloud was gathering to the southwards. A slight breeze was rising, and the bushes behind him were whispering the secrets of the falling night. Then Cyril again looked behind him with a vague sense of disquiet.

Nothing had happened, but he had that curious suspicion of being watched that sometimes comes to one in a crowded room or street. He turned and looked fixedly at the bushes and bracken for some minutes. There was nothing to be seen, though he knew that probably many eyes of furtive wild things were watching him curiously and timidly. But it was not of these that he thought. He was vaguely aware of a Thing that was watching and biding its time—a Thing that meant mischief of a sort that would not stand thinking about. Cyril found himself waiting for the Thing to reveal its presence.

A moment later he took himself firmly in hand. This sort of thing would not do. He had read all about it in books of so-called ghost stories: and he understood the psychology of the nonsense. He pulled himself together and went into the house.

Here he found occupation for the next hour in unpacking the supply of food-stuffs that lay in the porch and stowing them away. Then his small supply of books had to be looked out, writing materials arranged on one of the tables, the bedroom put in order for the night. By this time his odd nervousness had passed off; and he turned in to bed at an unusually early hour and in the best of spirits.

He slept well, as he generally did, and was only once disturbed by something that sounded like scratching around the walls of the house. No doubt a rat, or possibly a rabbit. He had noticed that there were plenty of them about. But, just as he was going to sleep again, an odd thing happened. The moon was shining in through the window, to which his back was turned, and he noticed that while part of the room was in bright light, part seemed to be in shadow. It was as if a blind were partly drawn across the window. He turned drowsily in bed to look at the

window, when the shadow suddenly vanished! This was rather startling, for it certainly seemed as if someone had been looking in through the window.

Cyril sprang out of bed and ran to the window. There was no one there; nor could anyone be seen when he went to the door immediately afterwards. Not a soul was stirring, except a few rabbits that bolted at the sight of him.

He could only put the whole thing down to fancy when half awake: or it was just possible—but hardly probable—that some wandering tramp had found his way to the place. Anyway it was of no use to think any more about it; and Cyril went back to bed and slept soundly till morning.

Next morning he rose in high spirits, and had evidently forgotten the small disquieting incidents of the previous evening. But among his notes is an entry that seems to belong to this day, and is significant in view of what happened afterwards. He bathed in the bay, climbing down the steep cliffs with the aid of a rope that had evidently been fixed there by Howard for that purpose. He was a fairly strong swimmer, but did not go far out as the currents were a little puzzling. He was doing some quiet breast strokes in the deep channel that lay close in under the cliff opposite the house when it happened. He suddenly sank some inches. It was exactly as if someone had laid a heavy hand between his shoulders and pushed him down. He righted himself instantly and turned on his back; and, just as he did so, a shadow seemed to vanish from above him. It did not float away as a cloud might have done; nor did it melt away; but it just ceased to be there. And at the same time he seemed to hear someone laughing in the distance.

It certainly was very odd.

The rest of the day seems to have passed without event until the evening. It must have been very soon after sunset when Cyril, who had been sitting in the shade of a rock and reading a book, rose to go in. As he did so, he happened to glance up, and was just in time to see something vanish behind the rock. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was just too late to see it. He had that strange impression that something certainly was there but was gone before his eyes had time to focus themselves on it. Cyril dashed round the rock—and found nothing.

Yet the distance to the nearest bushes was sufficient to have prevented the intruder from taking cover in the short space of time. And then he was conscious of the faintest possible echo of laughter somewhere close at hand; and once more came the strong impression of being watched by something that was hostile.

But when he went into the house he encountered a distinctly unpleasant shock. Before going out, he had been writing at a table placed before the window; and he distinctly remembered leaving a copy of Montaigne open on it.

The table was now pushed back to the wall, and the book was lying on the floor. But the thing that most alarmed him was the discovery of a sheet of paper on which he had been making a few notes. This was also lying on the floor; but the sinister thing was the presence of a footprint on it. The print was very faint, and rather suggested in appearance a slight burn or scorching than soiling. It was not easy to make out, for it was incomplete; the sheet being too small to take it all. At a glance it could be seen that it was not made by human foot or hand: neither was it at all like the footprint of a dog or any other familiar animal. It exactly resembled one half of the impression that would be made by the foot of a bird, such as a barndoor fowl. But what bird could have a foot quite eight inches across? And what kind of bird would scorch rather than soil the paper on which it happened to step?

Cyril did not lose hold of himself. He saw that everything depended on self-control if he was to rid himself of this pestilent obsession. He brought common sense to bear on the situation and demonstrated to himself that the evidence was faulty at all points, and clearly showed that the phenomena were purely subjective.

It was a little difficult to get over the footprint; but he pointed out to himself that the marks were very vague and might be caused in various ways apart from the impression of any foot at all. As to the removal of the table, his memory must have played a trick with him. Clearly he must have moved it before he went out, but forgotten about it afterwards. Anything was better than an explanation that would not bear thinking about.

But the events of the night did not tend to reassure him. Three times he was roused by a sound close beside his bed, which could only be described as a sound of beating of wings against the walls, alternated by sharp raps and a sound of scratching. And on one of these occasions, when the moon was shining through the window, he was conscious of a Thing that watched but vanished when he looked up. In the morning he found that the door, which he was sure that he had bolted when going to bed, was standing slightly ajar.

The worst thing of all was an increasing sense that the Thing that watched was somehow getting closer. The net of evil seemed to be gathering round him; and it was only a question of time how soon it would enfold him. And then what would happen?

When he went out to bathe before breakfast, he had a narrow escape. He was about to descend the cliff as before with the aid of the rope when he noticed just in time that this had been partly untied, so that when he put his weight on it the knot would run through and he would be sent whirling down to break his bones on the rocks far below. It was with a grim face that Cyril retied the knot before climbing down. But he looked still more grim a moment later, when a mass of rock that had been nicely poised on a ledge fell and missed him by a few inches.This time he took care not to go out of his depth; and he kept clear of the overhanging cliffs. But again he thought he caught sight of something peering over a rock at him, which vanished when he looked that way.

Several times during the day he was haunted by this threatening danger: and the Thing that was biding its time was evidently gathering strength. He had an idea that the final attack was not very far off now. In fact he made up his mind to leave the place next day. But it was waiting for the next day that was to cost him his life.

The last thing that his notes record seems to have happened during the afternoon of this day. He was sitting in a deck chair, reading a book, when he saw out of the corner of his eye something like a great wing rise above a rock on the left at a little distance. It seemed to stretch itself and then sink down, as if the bird were resting behind the rock. It had just the appearance of a raven's wing: but no bird of such size was ever seen by human eye. Cyril did not see it quite clearly. He was looking at his book without paying any great attention to it; and he saw the wing indirectly and as it were slightly out of focus. When he looked directly at the rock, there was nothing unusual to be seen.

He got up and went to the place. No trace of anything like a bird was to be seen; but behind the rock was a cave which opened on a rock platform facing the sea. He remembered having heard that human remains had been found there, and that the cave was supposed to have been a rock shelter in prehistoric days. Then he noticed that in one place the earth seemed to have been disturbed very recently—apparently only a few days before. There was a strong musky smell about the place—quite unlike anything that he had ever smelt before—and again came that strange sense of something that was watching and waiting its chance. The gloom of the cave seemed to be something not merely unnatural but even immoral.

That is all that we shall ever know of the horror through which Cyril was doomed to pass. He evidently scribbled his note about the cave on his return—and the rest is silence.

Late in the afternoon of the next day a fisherman passing in his boat noticed something unusual on the rocks below the cliff, and put in to see what it was. There he found all that was left of poor Cyril, horribly mangled and broken. There was not a whole bone in his body; and the mangling could not be accounted for by a fall from the cliff.

His clothes were torn into ribbons; and on his chest and back were fearful rents that appeared to have been made by the claws of a gigantic bird of prey. But what bird has feet eight inches across?—and only feet of those dimensions could have made such wounds.

When they came to examine the house, they found evidence of a mighty struggle. Most of the furniture was overturned, and some of it was smashed to splinters. A bag of flour had been thrown down and burst open; and thus several footprints were recorded. Those of Cyril were easily recognised, for he was wearing boots of peculiar shape: and the other footprints were those of a bird! And the bird's footprints were eight inches across.

The End

The Cap and Bells

by William Butler Yeats The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill.

I have cap and bells,’ he pondered, 'I will send them to her and die’; And when the morning whitened He left them where she went by.

It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall;

She laid them upon her bosom, Under a cloud of her hair, And her red lips sang them a love-song Till stars grew out of the air.

But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale night-gown; She drew in the heavy casement And pushed the latches down.

She opened her door and her window, And the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue.

He bade his heart go to her, When the owls called out no more; In a red and quivering garment It sang to her through the door.

They set up a noise like crickets, A chattering wise and sweet, And her hair was a folded flower and the quiet fo love qat her feet And the quiet of love in her feet.

It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming Of a flutter of flower-like hair; But she took up her fan from the table And waved it off on the air.

Capricious by Wassily Kandinsky/Date: 1930/Alten Dessaualten, Germany

The White Quilt “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently?

And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Nippy outside with snow and ice Outings for all the Christmas toys Venturing outside without hats and scarfs Eating Christmas chocolates is hard to resist Morning and nights are not very bright Black Friday is here Everone cheer Remember Christmas is near Acrostic by Ruth O' Brien

Ruth is a first year student in, Clonaslee Vocational School, Co. Laois ART: Snow Effect with Setting Sun by Claude Monet, Date: 1875

Star of the Hero, Nicholas Roerich

Poetry Editorial Autumn 2017

In Pursuit of the Intangible I was thinking of my mother, who was born in 1914, at the beginning of WWI. She taught us to listen for what she called the Autumn bark. It’s a change in the tonal quality of sound that happens in October/November when the air becomes damp and cold and the inevitability of Winter takes hold. It is the death knell of the year. My mother had a poetic soul. She noticed every little change, each nuance in the natural flow of the seasons. Quite often they echoed a philosophy of life. I tried to explain in this haibun.

The bark whose sound is dulled by damp, whose sharp warning fails and falls, carries no threat, has no teeth. Tethered to heavy air, it sinks beneath wet turf, downed by dank, drowned in dew, cold as the incisive harvest moon. The dog from whom it issued slinks dispirited indoors, limp-tailed, to lick old wounds.

My mother called it The Autumn Bark. Every dog she said, has its day.

I always think I dislike November. And then it arrives and the light slants through and underlights the trees, angles across lawns, elongates shadows, becomes so golden that it replaces all the leaves lost. The sky at this latitude pales to blues and creams and flurries with snow. November is full of special days. Armistice Day and Guy Fawkes night, Thanks Giving in America and St Andrew’s Day. Then Advent looms and at last we light candles and look forward to Christmas.

But thinking back a hundred years to all the men lost in that conflict, especially this year to those lost in the mud of Paschendaele – all of them of every nationality, made me think forward too, to next year’s centenary of the end of that war. And I thought some of you poets, artists, story tellers and writers might have something to offer us, some story of loss, message of hope, some philosophy.

Because art is the way we understand the incomprehensible. Art is the way we communicate the transient moment and the eternal truth. And there is much to say.

Oonah Joslin, Nov., 2017

Butterfly Caught by Jennifer Lothrigel Caught in the middle of a glistening web, her wings flickered uncontrolled with the morning breeze.

Now lifeless, there was no migratory purpose to fight her restraints.

Flight and biological promises ended at the edge of each of her paper thin wings, suspended between the intricately woven circular grid.

It took billions of years to spin the web of life and still sorrow lays her hand upon the breath of beauty and we call it a cycle.

Orb shaped lights dance between oak branches pretending a great mystery is enough reason to head south anyway.

Butterfly by Albert Bierstadt Paris in the Snow by Paul Gauguin

A Dance of Bones by Barry Charman My skeleton is rejecting me again. Or so it feels. I walk an old familiar walk, and step with less familiar steps. I walk around the tilting pavement, then eye the cracks, avoid the uneven steps to come. I step upon a twig that snaps, and pause. Sometimes, when I hurt, I think myself away, dance with other days until the pain cuts in.

Faceless companion Dances through my yawning bones Leaving me alone

Skeletor by Vincent Van Gogh

Broken Dream by Eira Needham Sun bussed, she flaunts

she is drawn towards ancient trees,

white broderie anglaise with ruby flares.

saplings when Vikings invaded.

Hippy beads drape her neck like a berry wreath.

Westerlies fan; she strides through the garden, in first bloom, stoops to inhale an Old Yellow Scotch.

Dark blotches blemish its leaves like her hands.

Clouds veil the sun.

Limping now through woodlands.

1Old

Man of Calke is a very old oak in Calke Parkland UK

Art: At the Cell of Friar Lawrence, Arthur Rackham

Once slender fingers reach out to the gnarled arms of Old Man of Calke.1

Derryside Confessional by Tom Sheehan I walked high bridge at Derryside and eyed the soldiers eyeing me.

Meant for breasts comfortably slight in sweaters, their eyes winged past my neutral self and tunneled down to last night’s bivouac, tall grass matted down under the miraculous pairing, the hard swallow walking to camp afterward, tough woolens tighter on them than sheep had worn.

Ordnance doesn’t count lifted skirts, doesn’t know where a hem begins or where it ends, how dry a throat, how wet an eye, what law becomes inserted between soft children. Soldiers, in field work, at love, too soon from mother’s kitchen wares and half admonishment from sires who once felt the stitching become elastic in country skirts, look down their sights at sweater’s mounds, proud legs, square teeth lost in smiles bright as zero degrees, green stoves in cottages whose hair is braid-worn.

Derryside is never quiet or dark; it has fire and young appetites and hands, the field ache of loins, front seat disasters, doorways away from streetlights, the pros and cons of young energies wondering if the touch is real, is legal, if a mortal sin becomes a sure-fire hell-fire trip.

Peace has disparities, hate and love mix all the axioms and adages, call to waste the wasted hearts, a field pressed for a moment of never- ending love, an erect boy in uniform, a girl planning her confessional, just as moons empty across fields, stone walls disappear at boundaries, a myth thinks up another gunshot.

Record Breaking Workers at the Factory Krasnaya Zaria by Pavel Filonov

Buddhas of Bamian by Arthur Callender The cliff-carved buddhas of Bamian were sixty metres tall, or thereabouts.

Fellow travellers were photographed standing on the statues’ heads, the features of which had been disfigured over centuries by weather and adherents to a different faith.

Thirty years on, the Taliban reduced them to rubble in celebration of the one true Prophet’s grace.

I trust Siddhartha viewed it with a smile upon his face.

Table Mat by James Graham 1 On a window-table in my seventh home it bears a sturdy summer vase, until the cut lilies, slowly dying from the start, soon fail. Then dahlias. Roses. long ago, with my own two hands.

On the home-time bell I nursed it on to the half-cab bus, and home.

I made it

2 A piece of oval card, the colour of old books. First, guide your thread from the centre hole to the circumference, keep it tight and space it equally, look! Like this. Like spokes of a bike-wheel. Thread your needle, pass it under, over, under, over, round and round, as I’m doing now.

Start at the outer edge, work inwards to the centre. Pack the wool close, no spaces. Change colours, not too often, to make pretty rings. If you’re not sure what to do, just ask. This was more fun than long division: under, over, under, over, keep the wool close, no spaces. Never unsure what to do, I wove my Saturn’s rings.

3 I am a child in days of yore.

A country child: I drive a pony-trap, stop, start, right, left, with a gentle touch. I strike a vesta, light the lamp. I live two lives: I move sideways from the vexatious now into the comfortable once-upon-a-time.

Slowly dying from the start, I will soon fail.

4 Wool harvested from living sheep seems not to die, seems never to have been alive. Card, taken from a tree, does not smell of death. If I fall dead beside the window-table, this little lifeless mat will not decay – will bear new starving roses, or an empty vase.

And England was joined to the Continent.

"I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds, The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds, And the giant tigers that stalked them down Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.

And I remember like yesterday The earliest Cockney who came my way, When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand, With paint on his face and a club in his hand.

He was death to feather and fin and fur.

He trapped my beavers at Westminster.

He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer, He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.

He fought his neighbour with axes and swords, Flint or bronze, at my upper fords, While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin, The tall Phoenician ships stole in, And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay, Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way; And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek, And life was gay, and the world was new, And I was a mile across at Kew! But the Roman came with a heavy hand, And bridged and roaded and ruled the land, And the Roman left and the Danes blew in And that's where your history-books begin!"

The River by Rudyard Kipling TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew Wanted to know what the River knew, Twenty Bridges or twenty-two, For they were young, and the Thames was old And this is the tale that River told:"I walk my beat before London Town, Five hours up and seven down.

Up I go till I end my run At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.

Down I come with the mud in my hands And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.

But I'd have you know that these waters of mine Were once a branch of the River Rhine, When hundreds of miles to the East I went

Its strength declares wild green indomitable presence, even across the desert. It carves canyons, casts capricious waterfalls. Nothing this wild needs to be brave, or look for love, just does what needs to be done, with or without applause. It turns obstruction into waterfalls and music you cannot predict any more than you could predict the jostle of an intricate kaleidoscope.

It listens in the sun and whispers eerie melodies of comfort and approximate eternity.

I want to sing to it: flow, river, flow, as though it made a difference

whether I sang or not, whether I ever understood God or anything, the magic of indifference, the sultry patience, thank you, life, for giving me this strength to walk, these eyes, a pilgrim among junipers and lilacs, dancing lonely against blue, instead of stumbling still against the wind of yesterday.

A kiss of the wind, a shadow sweeping in applause. Quick memory of light teases the side of fresh sap into jewel-like brilliance. A hush.

A shimmer. Life.

The River by Beate Sigriddaughter

Conversation at the edge of the void by Shitao

Standards by Wendy Howe You learn about this strange place from birth -- journeying there through the middle earth of yourself.

having been inside, having felt the weight of her wilder will lighten, lift as mist

Not the topography of muscle and sinew, tissue and tributaries of veins or nerves. That reef of growing bones.

toward the ocean. The tide rampant with scavenger birds pecking at what floats in the shallows,

No, this is about the green hill with sea winds surrounding its henge.

A girdle of standing stones ( too large to wear except for the mother goddess)

what slimes in the lustre of a shell.

and how it holds in what is sacred, durable despite tremors or storms.

How light enters on a slant blessing each slab with a perspective; and how the girl wears its shadow

Yard of castle, Nicholas Roerich

HARLECH CASTLE by Jim Hatfield Although a relic of its former self And despite absence of the Irish Sea, Which, from a granite shelf, the Edifice had towered above through Many centuries, Castell Harlech Remains the imposing sight Edward Longshanks had determined it to be.

Originally whitewashed to be better Seen from Pen Llyn and Snowdonia’s Rebel mountain fastness, the fortress Was the first built in a ring of such, Intended to ensure the Welsh paid due Tribute to an English king.

Today it looks down upon the railway Station, where trains bound west for Pwllheli or east to Shrewsbury, must Await one other’s arrival so that each May pass and proceed along the single Track to their respective destinations.

King Edward’s disposition to dictate, even From the grave seemingly remains intact.

The Great Synagogue of Constanta by Brandon Marlon Amid the forsaken sanctuary grows a tree green and lanky, tilting with the wind ever since the roof partially collapsed.

Standing sentinel is the yellow fleurette Star of David overseeing the amassed debris below, a congeries of chipped cement, smashed stained glass, plaster, and wood beams, ruins overgrown with shrubs, carpeted with dirt.

Arched colonnades uplifted by blue pillars attest to the Moorish Revival design of a halidom once admired by Ashkenazim from near and far keen on the sublime; now only mean dogs frequent the detritus, foraging for kosher remnants of another sort.

Where now there lies a rubble heap

once stood a palace aglow with worship; where filth now strews the floor once stood congregants before the upraised scroll, devotees enthroning on their praise the Most High.

The building is the body but the assembly is the soul; bereft of its sacred entrails, the desacralized shell succumbs to the elements, a bittersweet vestige verging on demise, its hallowed scenes enshrined in memory.

The Square Root of Love by Sergio Ortiz If I'm told you're on the other side of a bridge, strange as it may seem, please, tell me, what is the bridge that separates your life from mine?

In what black hour, what rainy city, what world without light, is that bridge and I will cross it.

No matter the goal or the course, or the sun, which was light and whip of that day's journey.

No matter the sweat, the thirst, the clumsy tired steps.

The round trip.

Even the landscape is not important, nor the orange earth, the green of alpines, the turquoise sea, the gray stones of borders and millennial defenses.

When I go to love I have poppies on my lips and a spark of fire in my gaze.

I wire and garner red roses.

Red, the mirror of my darkened bedroom.

When I return from love, withered, rejected, guilty, or simply absurd, I arrive pale, and very cold.

Pupils rolled over the top of my eyes, white blood cells in the clouds, a skeleton and its defeat.

But I keep coming back

Old Woman Unreeling Threads by Gerrit Dou/Date: 1660 - 1665/Style: Baroque/Genre: genre painting/Media: oil, panel/Dimensions: 23 x 32

Thread by Sarah Ann Watts Thread AnchorAnchor My heart hurts pain like absence of hope or purpose I feel grey as shadow alone remembering other days when the world felt new and all things seemed possible Now it hurts to be alive the world makes less sense every day All the old certainties curdle like milk too long on the turn What to do when we outlive the world we knew Remembering others have walked this path before us

from shadow into light seen the sun rise but paid the price of sacrifice and grief for those who did not live did not return But made new certainties Life hope freedom reborn and the thread of tired love stretches thin and nearly breaks but runs through shadow to the light a white sail a new day

Bluebells by Victor Borisov-Musatov Date: 1903; Saratov, Russian Federation

Treatise by Cindy King Weariness, I feel you coming on big legs, mascara running, boar’s breath fogging windows as you lean on my door.

Sleeplessness, I see you pulse behind my eyes, electricity split between body and mind. Restlessness, I smell your sharpshooter bent among bluebells.

(What more should I say?)

It's not all boo-hoo in the borough.

The night nurse at St. Josephs is my kind Aunt Caroline, her feet a grievance against midnight and too-tight shoes.

I hear the kidneys’ stand-ins, the understudies for lungs upstaging the fluorescent hum.

Fact outranks allusion.

A syringe rests in an ashtray.

(Is there anything more true?)

The pinch in my spine rolls back shoulders, a minor-chord breath.

Again my body's a pipe organ.

The patients, morgue-real and ready, suck the all the air from the room, their beds right behind those curtains. I have seen balding heads, bodies shaved down to the bone.

Uoya Danshichi Kurobel pouring a bucket of water over himself by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Peruvian Mops by Jack William Arpad Little I work with a Peruvian who had never seen a mop before.

She likes that it is something new, something to be explored.

She held it up, asked how it worked twizzled its fibres in the bucket took a picture for Instagram to show her mum.

I work with a Peruvian who had never seen a mop before.

I like that mops are familiar to me, something I can explain she likes this new territory.

Miss Moppet Catches the Mouse Taken From: "The Story of Miss Moppet" by Beatrix Potter