Category: Uncategorized

#6

The metaphorical storm hit within the shrouded room below.

In places the air, with flattering success, was darkened by showers of lobster patties.

Death came to him – an Extraction, an iron-sheathed adobe building, an evil smelling courtyard, painted balconies hung with wind bells rendering the mundane heroic.

On our way we passed one or two ruins, and from gaudy America of Market street deep silence reigned everywhere. She promised her godmother she would not fail.

Instead of being so heavy, she said “No, I have not done anything at all.”  The human face, in the case of nudity versus nakedness, is born of the moon and not the sun.

(Deadpan humor of the wall, dirty dust devil and unsalable idols.)

My heart is still more wild than thine, walking around exploding. 

Thunderbird in prow of canoe spreads wings when the dead man rose up and cried out, “Fidelity of nature! Water spirits! Young Pan!”

“It’s still a dreadful time,” I said.

This surrealistic poetry is created by skipping amongst the source material, choosing phrases, sentences and images at random.

Photographers of the Frontier West

52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

America and the Daguerreotype

The Blue Fairy Book

The Urchin in the Alley

I was in Boston where I had never been before, looking at a truncated map which was also printed in a manner too small for my weak eyes. Wandering about the city, I found myself lost, on cobble stone streets in an alley which ran between two ancient brick buildings. I noticed a street urchin leaning against the damp wall, cap pulled down but very obviously watching me. I hailed to him for some assistance.

“Boy!” I called. “Come here this instant. Quick quick, come assist an old man.”

The scrungy creature had been leaning against the brick wall in a most surly manner. He raised his head not an inch, but I still sensed a watchfulness, a somnolent presence, a sickly stare.

“Here! Boy! Where on this map do you see Winthrop?”

My weak eyesight unfortunately put me at the mercy of such creatures. He took his time coming over, and he apparently had all the time in the world whereas I was needing to be gone from this dreary place in East Boston and on my way to my niece’s luncheon that instant! That I required the services of such a one curled my inner hair.

“What you need Guv’nor?” he asked. I contemplated the question, which should have been plain as I had stated my desire in a clear and firm voice, and I considered the title he had used in greeting me, sounding alarmingly like a pseudo-Dickens speech that was being used to mock me.

“Nevermind lad,” I said curtly, folding the miniscule map with some difficulty. “I’ll take care of this myself.”

I made a smart turn and took the opportunity to leave that place when he again spoke, very quickly appearing in front of my and blocking my egress:

“I’m awful so-wee Guv’nor, didn’t know you had such a sensitive bug up yer rump.”

I could hardly believe this. Did my station count for nothing? This…boy addressing me in this manner. Outrageous! But underneath my outrage, the smallest sense of danger.

“Pardon me, why in the world do you think you can speak to one of your betters in this manner?”

The urchin lowered his head and stared at me from under his cap. Oh, he played his part to the hilt so that I almost laughed aloud! Until-

“You best watch your-sef Guv’nor, or I’ll be readin’ that map from the inside o’ your belly.” He then paused for effect before popping open a knife. A very long, sharp, thin blade. “With me knife,” he added, unnecessarily.

As I have often been complimented on my keen sense of timing, I sensed that at this juncture leaving the alley would be the best action to take.

I addressed him as I would a long time friend as I inched very slowly around him. “Well old fellow, I’d best be going, don’t want to keep the party waiting! You know Elise’s temper can get the best of her!”

And I ran for my life.

Several blocks later I dared to slow and look back. No creature, no urchin flailing behind me. Empty streets, fog rolling in.

I resolved to purchase some much needed spectacles. And a new map.

Wish You Were Here

I can’t move Bill!

It’s 11:28 now, and last Friday, when I was discharged, I began having trouble with the management. Oh you know, they never liked me, always had me on the waiting list for a bed. Yes, a bed! Didn’t you know I didn’t have one? Well you sent me that one, you musta known. And no, I didn’t take it, it was filthy. I was surprised you even offered me something so disgusting. Pee stains, cat hair – did you even clean it before you gave it to me? Well, Ruth Dee, remember her? She took me shopping and I bought a BRAND NEW ONE. Whatta you think of that.

But you’re tops Bill, always was.

But the rats. You know, you heard ’em before. Squeaking and slitherin’, stealing food right out the mouths of kids! One bit me as I was walking down the stairs. You know me, I tried to get away but it was like a snail getting outta the way of a train. I’m fed up, Bill. The management won’t do nothing about it. So I packed a light bundle and I moved out, to the Aloha Inn down the street. Nice enough place, no rats at least. Working girls everywhere. Drunks. Management here won’t bother you. I used all my money to get a room for as long as possible.

Tonight, after I got some ice and came back to the room, I had a strange thought: what if the ceiling should cave in on me? Would I hear a noise before hand? Would plaster fall, like a warning, dust from the ceiling? A crack, would I hear a crack? These ideas, they started coming at me, fast and furious, bambambam!

So I got close down to the floor, tried to keep my face-skin from touching the carpet, and I looked under the bed. It looked pretty clean under there, but what a tight fit. Very cosy you might say. I got up and looked around the room for a better place Bill, I did! But not even the sorry excuse for a table looked like it could hold up the darn ceiling.

Under the bed I went, squirling and maneuvering all the way. There were some questionable items in the carpet I scooted over, but nothin’ cut me so I ignored ’em. I got myself into a good enough place I thought, right smack center in the middle and I took stock of where I were. Oh lord the dust in those springs pressing into my nose! I saw crawly things up in there, and a big enough spider resting himself in the corner just waiting for an opportunity.

I came to my senses about the ceiling about this time; it’s not gonna fall while I’m here! This a sturdy building! Has been here safe and solid for years now. No no no. I decided to get myself out of the filthy spot I’d gotten into.

But Bill! I couldn’t move! My shoulder somehow got caught up into a spring, the same spring my face is pressed into. I move one way it tears my cheek, the other I hear my shirt riiiiiiip. (Good t-shirt too. New from Target.) My lip is caught as well, my right knee cannot move and my chest feels the weight of the entire mattress.

It’s pickle, Bill. That spider moved closer, I could see him creepin’. Everytime I yell for help the most awfullest things drift down into my mouth. Plus I can’t get enough air for a proper yell. I can’t turn my head to spit neither so I buck up my courage and swallow the dang things.

I paid for 5 more nights Bill. You think I’ll be ok until then? Someone’s gonna mayhap check on poor me? Oh man, I sure hope so.

Fortune 8

2020

This Christmas Day was turning into a very a Long Day.  Every fun thing Lucy had planned for this day was already finished; her hot chocolate, her movie binge, she had opened her presents.  She walked her typical 4 miles and even put on a dress.  Make-up and earrings!  She checked the News 3 times.  This last activity was not as fun as it was compulsive.  The News said everything was the same or getting worse meaning more deaths, more sickness and lost jobs – didn’t these doom mongers take a night off? Lucy wondered.  She had always enjoyed the quietness of a shuttered retail sector during the holidays, the irony now was that most of the stores had been closed for the entire year. The quietness of the day was not exceptional or spiritual, it was mundane and lonely.

And she missed her boyfriend.  He was one of the last people she was able to have contact with before the ban on all “non-essential contact” went into effect, which allowed only married couples and parents and their minor children to interact “within a 6 foot perimeter”.  He had disappeared in June and she later found out that he had died from the virus.  Found out snooping around on Facebook. 

She prayed that her internet connection wouldn’t go out before the show came on, her final “fun” activity for the day and something she had been looking forward to.  There had been ominous signs that there might be disruptions; the yule log video on Netflix had been stopping and starting and when she face-timed with her son the connection was bad.

Lucy felt like she was living on a different planet these days, all the fellow humans turned into hostile aliens, everything familiar become a little odd and possibly dangerous.  “The Planet of the Apes” popped into her head and she considered the plight of Charlton Heston and his crew and also the Star Trek episodes where they had explored alien planets.  She felt sorry that she had condemned them for being silly cowards! She had lived in the same state her whole life so didn’t even know what it was like to move far from home.  What intergalactic wizard had come and replaced the ordinary world with this cruel facsimile? 

Lucy checked her notes again and OH NO, that YouTube show was on at 6:30, but was that eastern time? The time zones previously had had little impact on her life, but with all the online activity those details really mattered now. OH NO.

She hurriedly dragged out her lap top and brought up YouTube, punched in “Watch”, (in a panic realizing she didn’t know how else to find it) and suprisingly, a QR code came on the screen.  It was 6:25 and she wondered what in the hell she should do now.  

She slumped back and stared into space.  She picked up her phone and thought about calling her son, but for some reason she didn’t want him to know she what she was trying to watch, and she really didn’t want to call him again, having already texted him several times and facetimed with him as well. How far could she strain the familial bonds?

Her phone opened to her photos so she started scrolling absent-mindedly.  “A memory!” Her phone chirped at her.  Christmas, 2018.  She looked at the photo and saw it was of herself, smiling in front of a brightly decorated tree.  At her parents house, where the whole family had gathered, and Uncle Cy had gotten into an amiable drunken argument with everyone else, and there had been food, and presents and people.  Happy people.  Fairly happy people.

She continued scrolling backward from that point and then a photo of another QR code with a series of numbers under it.  From what or where? Why was this here? She vaguely remembered a piece of paper under her windshield wiper, she remembered crumpling the paper and then for some reason, smoothing it out and taking a photo.

“What are the chances!” Lucy said aloud.

She knew more about technology than she did two years ago, so she aimed her phone at the screen of the computer and waited to see where she would be taken.

This is the 8th installment of the series FORTUNE

Fortune – 7

2018

Sitting in traffic to get to a coffee shop on the other side of town.  Ridiculous! But Lucy couldn’t afford to live in the coffee shop’s neighborhood and she wouldn’t give up going there even if it took 20 minutes to travel 10 miles.

Going out for coffee seemed like a break and an opportunity.  A welcoming destination.  She could focus on her writing better than sitting on her bed, it was a chance to drink coffee and maybe see someone she knew. Have a random encounter, overhear some gem of an observation, watch other people do whatever they did when no one was watching. 

 Sometimes after getting her coffee and securing a table to herself, she played a game she enigmatically called “How do I know I can trust you”.   Pick a person at random and create a backstory for them, complete it with a fact from your own life creating the illusion that you have something in common.  In a mysterious way this game made her feel more connected and after she played it several times she felt like she belonged in the world and was one of it’s true participants.

The radio played a song that was popular when she was in high school and her mind wandered. Communicating with strangers had begun to feel strained, archaic.  She often felt like she was trying to use a tin can on a string to talk with others, the  distance felt that tangible and clunky.  She would second-guess a witty remark that then would fall flat and seem inconsequential.  She might interpret a silence as awkward and try to fill it with too many meaningless Ummm’s and stutterings.

She had left her job at Costco recently to write her memoir, to live off her savings and drop out of the retail world where she felt like a gladiator facing off to a herd of lions.  “What was a group of Lions called?” This unemployment further isolated her but actually gave her something in common with a lot of others. Many were working this way now, consulting or contracting themselves, not dependent on a day to day wage slave at a building in the city. 

And she used to love to talk to new people! Lucy was the kind of woman you’d see at a party flitting from group to group, leaving the sound of laughter in her wake.  At this point in her life?  She was finding it difficult to know how to reply to a cashier’s “How are you today?”

The cars were starting to move and she felt a twinge of shame.  She would be a more important, interesting person if she had a tech job and was able to live in a beautiful apartment in the neighborhood instead of commuting.  And she’d walk to the coffee shop, saying hi to the fascinating neighbors and the local small dogs, and nonchalantly walk by the graffiti and the other city life she would pass every day.  Her everyday exposure to the “aunthenticity” of the  city would somehow make her a more “real” person. 

Another thing, Lucy pondered to herself, another thing that was disconcerting lately – she had seen some kids in the university district wearing face masks.  It made her wonder what they had that they didn’t want to give away.  Or was it something she had that she was infecting others with?

She’s ask someone she decided.  

Maybe she was just imagining things.

this is the 7th installment in the serial fiction Fortune

Fortune -5

The ambulance came to take her away.

Lucy stood out in the parking lot with the rest of the diners and staff, the ones that had stayed.   Lucy had seen some patrons running out the emergency fire door.  “I wonder if they paid,” she had thought as the chaos was ramping up.

It seemed like it had been years since she first saw that girl looking at her through the fishtanks, but it had probably only been a half an hour.  Time was feeling very fuzzy to Lucy so she concentrated on breathing evenly and naming things that she saw.  “Store” and “blue car” and “streetlight”.

Would they take her to a mental hospital? Lock her up?

The door to the ambulance closed from the inside and the vehicle started away. Lucy wondered if she should go back in to get her left-overs but she didn’t want to take a remembrance of this evening home with her.  

The wildfires were still burning in some places on the west coast.  The night air was easier to breathe than the smoky, daytime air.   Because it was late summer the hot days kept the smoke thick and ,hovering and the sun in the sky turned a bright orange.  Breathing outside made you want to lick your mouth like a dog that has tasted something strange.

Lucy got in her car and put the key into the ignition. She looked up, through the windshield, and saw a flyer under the wiper. She unrolled her window and craned her body to reach it.  

A blank piece of paper.  No, there was a qvc code printed on one side, blank on the other.  Just a plain piece of copy paper with that…what was that thing anyway, like a bar code? “I have no idea what to do with this thing,” she thought.  It made her shiver a little to think of someone putting that on her car.  A bread crumb, a sign post to what? Why her.

She crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor of the passenger side. 

And then in a change of mind, she reached over to grab the paper and smoothed it open on the seat.  Smoothed it and folded it, putting in her purse.  She would ask her son what that symbol was, he was a millienial and knew about stuff like this. And how to use it. 

this is the 5th installment in a 5 part series

Fortune – 4

Lucy was determined to be festive.

She hauled a small Christmas tree home and decorated it with pretty, dried fall leaves, moss, sticks, random flowers that were still blooming in December, (mums and hydrangeas) that she picked in the neighborhood. She bought electric lights on Amazon, and because she also got free shipping, she bought 3 of the white lights on green wire and two pairs of icicle lights, one white and one red. It turned out to be rather bright in her apartment but she enjoyed the festive, party like atmosphere it created. She missed being in crowds of people, making eye contact with others up close, laughing, oh the sound of other people’s laughter! When she got it it was like a drug. Had the virus made her co-dependent? What if she were marooned on an island or another planet by herself, would she survive? That would probably be even more isolating.

And there was plenty of food at the store, cleaning products. People weren’t going as crazy stocking up because of random rumors of military enforced curfews and black-outs. None of which happened, but still, the anticipation of such events was fear provoking enough!

Lucy planned her Christmas Day very carefully: She would wake up early and walk, come home and make Mexican hot chocolate, watch as much Netflix and Amazon as she wanted, cook the vegan seitan steak and grill carrots, light her candles, turn off some of the Christmas lights and then watch that show on YouTube.

She had seen a new piece of graffiti while on her daily neighborhood rambling. She lived in an old seaport and sadly this graffiti was on a brick building. It said TheFUTUREiscoming. One word but FUTURE was capitalized. She felt an odd kind of sensation while reading it and it stuck in her brain, so when she got home she looked it up on her laptop. Why not. It led her to a YouTube video, a strangely luminous film of downtown Seattle at night. So empty! And the anonymous camera went into vacant buildings and on roof tops, shooting out into Elliot Bay at night, the wind whipping and moaning over the cameras microphone.

At the end of the video was a date, “12/25/20” and “watch”. So, since Lucy had planned out her Christmas Day in order to subvert the self-pitying loneliness that threatened to appear, wrapped and sitting expectantly under the mini-tree, she also planned to watch the “broadcast” or whatever it was. For a few minutes…it would buy her time before she could hide in her bedroom and watch Hoarders for the night.

this is the 4th installment in the series

Fortune-3

The garlic-y green beans were proving difficult to scoop up with a spoon; Lucy had dropped her fork on the floor and as she was inept with chopsticks the only viable option for transporting food from plate to mouth was the spoon.

She was in the heat of this struggle as the blue-haired girl approached her table. “Oh I guess she’s picked up her food,” Lucy thought as she noticed the stranger drawing near. The girl strode over with her plastic bag of food clutched to her chest. She brought with her the air of a messenger.

She stopped at Lucy’s table, near her right elbow and looked down at her.

“Something’s not right with her,” Lucy thought.

“Yes?” Lucy asked, feeling a bit cornered by this unknown person.

“We will know each other,” the azure-headed girl said slowly, with an implied meaning.

“Huh?” was all she could summon as a response, sensing there was an important event taking place but unsure and wary of its origin or direction.

“In the future…in a different time…when the virus…” she began to visibly struggle, for words, for oxygen, a gasp/wheeze coming from her throat. Lucy grew alarmed and tried to help.

“Here, sit down,” she said, reaching for the girl’s wrist.

“No!” The arm pulled back while she flung the other out to the side, the bag of take out food unfortunately held by that same arm, flung as a projectile towards another table, hitting the pot of soup at just the right angle to make a hot splash, causing those diners to rise screaming, burned by the soup, the management rushing over, other patrons rising and in wonder, staring and afraid.

Lucy herself rose and faced the girl, “What is going on, what’s…”

Before Lucy could complete the thought and before the girl rolled her eyes and through a mouth that was beginning to froth and twist collapsed, she said something Lucy would try to forget;

“Pay attention to your Fortune.”

Then she went down.

This is the third installment of an ongoing series.