Flash Fiction

Absence Makes the Heart: Flash Fiction

Absence makes the heart …
Flash Fiction

Time on my hands: so precious these moments alone, with my wife gone away to visit our daughter and our grand-daughter. I didn’t want her to leave me here alone. But I thought she needed the break, the space, and I also thought the women needed time together without the troublesome presence of a man. So many ideas flow back and forth when the man isn’t present, ideas that women share and debate, female anxieties that they will not discuss in front of the male, questions of children and development, teething and first words, actions and reactions, left-handedness and right-handedness, backwards and forwards skills that they will not discuss with the same comfort if the man is there.

I miss her. The sun filters through the kitchen and the autumn leaves store up sunlight like an old precious wine before they fall. Wine: I sip slowly at this bottle filled with life and sunshine, bottled sunshine they call it in Spain, sol embotellado, and I know that although I am alone, my friends are there, at the end of the telephone line. I can call them if I need them and anyway, they call me often or drop in once or twice a day to make sure I am okay. If I walk around the block or knock on their doors I know I will be greeted with warmth, an arm around the shoulder, the offer of a meal.

Thanksgiving is near. I already have two invitations for dinner and another lady, much lonelier than I am, has offered to buy the Thanksgiving food, bring it round, and cook it for me. She will also clean up after wards and leave the house cleaner than when she arrived. Can you believe it? I get company, companionship, and no, they are not the same thing, a cooked meal, and a house clean all together. It’s like winning the lottery.

But really, I prefer this solitude, my adventures with the cat, my slow stroll, not through the autumn woods, but through the leaves of this book. I like exploring my own mind, linking myself now to the self I was when I first read these pages and yes, there have been crises, and there will always be crises, and this is not a crisis, not yet anyway.

I remember when I was in boarding school. First day back from the holidays, I would draw a railway engine, and a train track, and I would number the days until the holidays came around again. For the first few days, I would cross off each day. Then, one day, as the new routine took control of my mind, I would forget to do so and the days would all blend into each other.

The new routine: get up earlier than usual. Go down and feed the cat. Make sure the cat had water. Change the kitty litter and make sure that her litter box is clean. Hoover around the litter box and pick up all the spilled litter. Place used litter in the garbage. Put the cat garbage on one side ready for Monday morning when the garbage men come around. Finish with the cat. Wash hands carefully. Then wash them again.

Downstairs I go. I put the kettle on and debate what I shall have for breakfast. Tea or coffee? Cereal or eggs? Muffins or toast? Breakfast for one is so simple. I take the easy route. Green tea with honey, no milk, no sugar. Some yogurt. Some grapes.

I sip my tea and thumb the pages of Carl Jung’s book, The Undiscovered Self. I love her and miss her so much, but I am glad she has gone. Her absence allows me to re-discover my own presence. I learn about myself once more. I remember who I am and what I am and how I survive when I am on my own, abandoned, set adrift to fend for myself.

I get up from the breakfast table, look around the house, and find my Teddy Bear. The cat will not come near me, so Teddy it is. I set him on the table next to me and tell him all my news. Then I tell him what is happening on the news. Together, we sit and wait for the phone to ring. If she doesn’t call soon, I’ll call her myself. But not yet, not just yet: I’m still discovering my undiscovered self.

In Absentia 4

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In Absentia 4
Kibble

I pick up the cat’s bowl with the claw and place the bowl by the cat food. No kibble. So, holding the blue plastic measuring spoon in one hand I take my two canes and balance the spoon between my right thumb and the cane handle. Then I limp down the corridor to the laundry room where I store the kibble. I fill the measuring spoon from the packet, reseal the bag, pick up my canes and wedge the now full measuring spoon back between thumb and cane handle. The cat mews happily and runs out between my legs. I lurch and … disaster … the spoon slips from my arthritic fingers and the kibble forms neat, rolling patterns on the floor.

What can I do? I think immediately of the Dyson and limp into the hall where I have left it. I extend the handle, hold the handle with my right hand, cane and all, and push the Dyson down to where the cat is feasting. I plug the Dyson in and switch it on. One rumble from the Dyson and the cat abandons the kibble and seeks the safety of the basement. I manoeuvre the Dyson toward the cat food but the Dyson is in carpet mode. It beats the floor and will do nothing but push the kibble before it. I push the kibble into a neat pile and leave it there. As I turn the Dyson off, the garden kneeler catches my eye. I go to fetch it and balance it against my leg, kicking it forward so it won’t catch against my canes and trip me.

I have brought the cat’s bowl with me this time and I kneel before the kibble. Then I start picking the pieces up, one and two at a time. My back aches from the slow bending and twisting and my heart is breaking as I consider my own stupidity. Hot tears of frustration prick at my eyes and I blink them away. This operation is so long and so slow. I slip forward and place my hand palm down on the kibble. My palm is sticky with sweat and I raise a handful of kibble as I push myself up. This I scrape into the cat bowl. Using this new technique, I transfer the kibble stuck to my hand first to the cat bowl and then to the measuring cup.

It’s time to get to my feet. I cannot heave myself up on the garden kneeler’s handles and hang on to the cat food: too much risk of a second spill. I have leaned the claw against the all with my sticks so using both hands on the kneeler handles I struggle to my feet. As I do so, I knock both canes over. Now they are lying flat on the floor with the claw. The canes have a rubber tip and if I stand on the edge of it, the cane will rise in the air like magic. I do this twice. Then I use the canes to grasp the claw and the claw, now in my possession, to raise the cat food. Success!

I struggle my unbalanced way down the corridor, place my sticks on the counter, put the right amount of kibble into the cat’s bowl and, with the cane, lower the cat’s food to the floor. I glance at my watch. This operation has taken me fifteen minutes, half of which I have spent kneeling on the floor. I call the cat. The cat appears. I reach for my canes. The claw falls to the floor. I grab for it and knock down one of my canes. The cane strikes the cat who is greedily feeding. The cat jumps away and spills her water all over the floor.

I stand there, horrified. Hot wet tears of humiliation trickle down my face.

Teddy Bears FFF

Teddy Bears
Friday Fast Fiction

Now they sleep in separate rooms in single beds each tucked in with a monogrammed teddy bear.
He likes to cuddle his, keeping it warm, tucking it carefully under the bedclothes. He calls it Ready Teddy, and his favorite game, especially in summer, is to hold his teddy bear by one back leg and say in a loud voice “Ready, Teddy, GO!”
At the word “GO” he hurls his teddy bear skywards and takes great delight in the fate of a sleeping fly, pinned against the ceiling and squashed. His delight doubles if one of the pointed waves of ceiling paint impales the fly and leaves it squirming there, buzzing impotently. This means target practice and he hurls Ready Teddy, “GO, GO,” skywards again and again until the unfortunate fly, falling like a condemned angel, tumbles back to earth.
She still follows the same ritual as when they were sleeping together in the same bed. First she pummels the pillows, fluffing them up with sideways movements of the hands. Next, she lays them on the bed and beats them flat. Then she picks them up and plays them like a concertina, pushing them together then stretching them out again. As for her teddy bear, she likes to discipline it, to beat it into shape. Once upon a time, it made noises and let out little squeals and squeaks, but the constant violence has silenced its sound box.
When they slept together she often took her teddy and beat it against her husband’s head. He would wake from the deepest dream head a-throb, ears and cheeks stinging, as she flailed him with her teddy and struck him blow after blow. When his headaches grew worse, they decided to sleep apart. He felt it was better and safer that way.
Last night, she sleepwalked into his room, and sat on the side of his bed. She clasped her teddy by the feet, a rabid Rottweiler with a rag doll, and thumped her teddy’s head against her husband’s face again and again.
The sleeping tablets had made him drowsy and slow to wake. His wife kept up the barrage until he finally woke, eased the teddy bear from her grasp, and walked her back to bed
On the way back to his own room, he checked into the bathroom and examined his face in the mirror. Blood seeped from his nostrils. He had bruises under his left eye and his cheeks glowed red where veins had broken near the surface
Next morning, he sat at the breakfast table, his grandfather’s First World War magnifying mirror in his hand, and examined his face. The ice pack had taken effect and he looked less damaged now. He reached for the color correction cream in the packet beside him and read the directions with care. Then he placed a tiny drop of the magic serum onto the paintbrush and worked the correction cream over the marks on his face. He watched them disappear one by one. Now he would be ready to face the world.
He stared into the magnifying mirror gazing deeply into his own eyes. Was that how it had happened? Or had their first child really fallen downstairs, banging her little head on each wooden step at eighteen months old?
The inquest had been inconclusive, his wife held blameless. They had remained childless after the trial.
Was that a blessing or a curse?

Apologia FFF

Apologia
Friday Fast Fiction

Late last night, I opened Alistair Macleod’s book The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and I re-read the first story. I was soon dabbing my eyes with a tissue and blowing my nose.
This morning, I want to destroy everything I have written. I know I don’t possess the verbal and emotional genius of the great writers and I sense that I will never be able to write like them. Graduate school taught me to be passive, not active, and to write impersonally, choking every emotion when I write. Academia also taught me how to kiss and how to run away with my thirty silver pence. “Never challenge the status quo,” my professors told me. “Learn the rules and disobey them at your peril.”
But here, in this private space where I create and re-create, there are no rules. The enemy is not clear any more and the fight is not one of black against white. It is rather a choice between diminishing shades of grey, and all cats are grey in the gathering dark that storms against my closing mind. Should I destroy all my writing? I won’t be the first to do so; nor would I be the last. And I won’t be the first or the last to destroy myself either. Intellectual, academic, and creative suicide: as total as the suicide of the flesh.
I carry on my back the names of those who have gone on before me as if they were a pile of heavy stones packed into a rucksack that I carry up a steep hill, day after day, only to find myself, next morning, starting at the bottom once again. But this is not the point: the point is that if I cannot write like the great writers, how can I write?
I think of Mikhail Bakhtin and his cronotopos, man’s dialog with his time and his place. I have no roots, no memories, and that is where my stories must start: in the loss of self, the loss of place, the loss of everything. I was uprooted at an early age, soon lost my foundations, was sent into exile, and only survival mattered.
I look at the first page of one of my manuscripts. My writing manifesto is clear before me: “And this is how I remember my childhood,” I read. “Flashes of fragmented memory frozen like those black and white publicity photos I saw as a child in the local cinema. If I hold the scene long enough in my mind, it flourishes and the figures speak and come back to life.”
I am aware of the words of T. S. Eliot that “every attempt / is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure / because one has only learned to get the better of words / for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / one is no longer disposed to say it” (East Coker).
Are my stories an exercise in creativity or are they a remembrance of things past? How accurate is memory? Do we recall things just as they happened? Or do we weave new fancies? In other words, are my inner photographs real photographs or have they already been tinted and tainted by the heavy hand of creativity and falseness?
The truth is that I can no longer tell fact from fiction. Perhaps it was all a dream, a nightmare, rather, something that I just imagined. And perhaps every word of it is true.
I no longer know.

St. Christopher: Flash Fiction

St. Christopher

“Well,” I said to Luis, “if you wade through that river and get yourself soaking wet when there’s a perfectly good bridge to walk on, you’re stupid. That’s all I can say.”
He didn’t reply and we both stood there, glaring at each other. Then I looked down at the cobbled road that led to the bridge. The stones, turned on their edges and woven into herring bone patterns, looked as though they had been there since the beginning of time. The bridge was clearly the work of the Romans rather than the Devil, the Devil’s Bridge, as the locals called it, built by the Devil himself and joining the two banks of a river that God had placed there to separate one side from the other.
“I’m going over the bridge,” I said.
“And I’m wading through the river, however deep it is.”
“It’s not that deep,” I replied. “It’s only up to the waists of the fishermen in their waders. You’re not taking that much of a risk.”
“It’s not a question of risk. It’s a question of honor and loss of honor.”
“What do you mean, loss of honor?”
“You know what I mean. I have lost my honor and somehow I must win it back.”
“By wading across a river, barefoot, with your clothes on, when there’s a perfectly acceptable bridge set here especially for pilgrims?”
“If necessary, yes; that’s what I must do.”
“Necessary?” I exclaimed. “There’s nothing necessary about it. You’re just being stubborn; and stupid.”
“I don’t think I’m being stupid.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if you are even thinking.”
Luis looked at me, hard, then started down the little path that led to the river.
“I give up,” I said. Then I turned away and walked to the bridge. I stopped when I was half way across and looked back. Luis had descended to the riverbank. He was talking with a young child who stood there, gazing at the moving water. Then I watched him as he picked up the child, placed him on his shoulders, and waded slowly into the river.
There was a sudden shout from one of the fishermen, and a washerwoman, washing her linen on the far side, to which Luis was headed, ran to where Luis was forcing his way slowly through the waters with the child on his shoulders.
“My son,” she cried out. “¡Hijo mío! Where is he taking you?”
“Everything’s fine,” Luis shouted back. “He just wants to visit his mother and I’m bringing him across.”
Just then, Luis stepped into a pothole in the river. He stumbled and the child almost fell from his shoulders. Luis staggered for a pace or two, then straightened up and continued across the river.
“A saint,” the child’s mother called out. “You stumbled yet did not fall: you must be a saint.”
“St. Christopher has come back to us,” another washerwomen crossed herself and the two of them knelt. I looked at Luis, wading through the river, and I knew for certain that if he wasn’t mad now, he soon would be. I watched as he reached the shore and handed the child over to its mother. She asked for his blessing, but he shook his head and refused to bless her saying that he was neither a priest nor a saint but just a poor sinner who could give a blessing to no one.
I walked down to the end of the bridge and waited for Luis to catch me up. Ahead of us, the cobbled road led to the church and to another cruz de harapos. We walked forward together, him with his wet clothes and his watery footprints, and me with my clothes all dry. When we got to the stone cross in front of the church, Luis stopped and gazed at it, raising his eyes up from the base and looking up towards the heavens. Then he moved forward, climbed onto the cross’s plinth, and stood there, just below the level of the stone arms. Three of the washerwomen had followed him. One was the mother of the child that Luis had carried across the river and her child was beside her.
Luis turned to face the cross. Then he raised his arms above his head, jumped upwards into the air, and clung on to the cross with both hands, his feet suspended about six inches above the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.
“I’m hanging myself out to dry.”
“You can’t just hang there.”
“Why not? Jesus did.”
“You’re not Jesus.
“And the cross isn’t wooden and nobody has nailed me.”
“You’re going mad,” I told him.
He raised his eyes skywards muttering a prayer and refused to look down at me.
“Father,” he said. “Father: why hast Thou forsaken me?”
The three women stood at the foot of the cross, gazing at Luis who was hanging there, dripping his drops of water onto the stone.
“Send someone to fetch the local priest or the doctor,” I said to one of them. “This man’s gone mad.”

Casa Rosa: Flash Fiction

Casa Rosa
Rosa placed four glasses on the bar, poured three fingers of Cuban rum into each glass, produced as if by magic from under the old wooden bar two old‑fashioned bottles of Coke, and threw one ice-cube into each glass. She filled the glasses with a foaming, bubbling liquid that didn’t quite spill over the edge.
“Aren’t you going to join us for a drink while we wait?” Danny asked Rosa.
In reply, Rosa poured a large glass of dark rum, scowled ferociously, and chugged it. We gazed in wonder as it vanished silently down the dark tunnel of her throat. Rosa held out her hand and Danny placed a one hundred dollar bill in it. Rosa poured herself another drink.
“I thought they shut you down last week,” Larry took a careful sip from his glass. He preferred wine really, New Zealand Pinot Grigio for preference, and this in Spain where the white wine flows like water and drowns you in an instant.
Rosa downed another glass of rum and looked at the boys over the rim of the glass. They were so young and innocent. In what might be generously called the imitation of a knowing wink, she covered a porcine eye with a flabby eyelid.
“Only one policeman,” Rosa winked again. “Very young, he was, quite pretty really, and in civilian clothes. I might have fancied him myself, a long time ago,” she paused, poured herself some more rum and drank it. “‘Special duty,’ he said, and showed me his ID.”
“What did you do?” Larry sounded interested. He might have been taking notes for his next book.
“I invited him to sample my newest acquisition,” Rosa tightened her lips in what might pass for a smile. “You can all sample him yourselves later, if you want. He’s quite attractive.”
Danny proposed a toast to the latest acquisition, the savior of the human race. He hummed as he sipped cautiously at his Cuba Libre. Danny and Larry clinked glasses with Rosa and I allowed my glass to join them.
We sat for a moment in silence, our elbows rising and falling as we sipped, or pretended to sip, our drinks while waiting for permission to ascend the stairs.
Rosa waddled over to the wall and fiddled with the dimmer switch. The room became even darker and a red light flashed on and off as a soft and suggestive wailing noise came from the jukebox. “Better have some music,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling you might be in for a long wait.”
Danny looked around. The door and the open street were to his left. People walked constantly past the entrance, glanced in, and saw us boys sitting there, waiting.
Larry sat motionless, staring straight ahead, looking for inspiration. He inspected his feet. They were resting, about a foot above the ground, on a dull, brass foot rail that ran the length of the bar. Down there, on the floor, lay paper serviettes, cigarette butts, shells from peanuts, heads of shrimp, crusts of bread, all the debris of men who spend Sunday in a certain type of bar and throw what’s left of their meal on the floor at their feet. Suddenly, Larry raised his feet from the bar and cursed.
In the space between the foot rail and the bar, where his feet had been resting, a large cat, foaming and spitting, ran towards him. Behind it, red eyes glowing, white teeth snapping at the end of the cat’s tail, was the largest rat Larry had ever seen. It was at least twice the size of the cat.
“Jesus Christ,” he cried.
The cat pursued by the rat raced beneath the arch of Larry’s lifted legs and vanished into the street.
Rosa didn’t blink.
“Chinese ship in town, from Shanghai,” she said. “Lots of big rats around. What you expect?”
Loud cries from the exterior marked the animals’ exit. Two loud pistol shots followed almost immediately and a very young man ran into the bar. It was Luis. He wore the uniform of the local police and held a still-smoking gun in one hand with his police identity card in the other.
“You’re all under arrest,” he screamed.
“Don’t be so silly, Luis,” Rosa smiled at him. “She’s upstairs, waiting for you. I knew you’d be here early tonight. Look, if it will make you more comfortable, I’ll close the bar.”
The young man put away his badge and nodded.
“Get them out of here, Rosa,” he said, dismissing us with a gesture of his hand. “Back door. And tell them never to say a word. Or else …” He waved his gun towards us, blew the smoke from the end of the barrel as if he were John Wayne in a cowboy movie, then tucked the pistol back into its holster.
Rosa nodded and waddled to the front door, turning off the lights as she went.
Danny, Larry, and I looked at Luis, nodded agreement, pressed our index fingers to our sealed lips, ran out the back door, and vanished into the night.

Print: Wednesday’s Workshop

Print, Printing, and Prints
Wednesday Workshop

Tuesday evening’s Gents Night Out started with John and I, on our own, and after our usual jovial salutations, we talked about putting things into print.

Print

John visited me last week and guided me through the placing of Monkey Temple on CreateSpace at Amazon. Then, when it was up, he talked me through the placing of the same text on Kindle. Now both are available online. He has read Monkey Temple and was kind enough to give it an online review (and a 5 star rating). He tells me it is his favorite among my books. Julie Gordon, another good friend from an online writing course we shared, has also read Monkey Temple, and she gave it another 5 star review, so it is doing well. Only one poem from Monkey Temple has appeared on this blog, Monkey’s FAQs. With it already in print, I may add an occasional poem to the blog, but I will not run through the whole text.

Though Lovers Be lost is also available on Amazon. John’s teaching was good, as I told him in our conversation, and I put TLBL up on my own. However, it is not yet available on Kindle, but it will be available soon. Now, Though Lovers Be Lost has appeared here on the blog in toto, so, if you, dear reader, have followed the blog and would like to contribute a review online … well, I would be very grateful.

Printing

I am just tidying up The Empress of Island and that manuscript, together with the flash fiction of Bistro, should go up on Amazon very soon. Two separate books, I should hasten to add. Again, with the amount of text from both that I have posted on this blog, if you have followed them, then please consider posting a review.

John himself is preparing yet another novel for publishing. We discussed the timeline and the structure of this novel, his twentieth, or twenty-first. He is trying to schedule gaps in the text of five years and ten years and is working out a plan to have all the characters age over those time spaces, not an easy task, as you can imagine, but then, John is a very good novelist. He gave me a signed copy of his novel, The Caroline, available online at Ex Libris, and Clare and I will be reading that, one after the other, if not together. You can find John on Amazon at John K. Sutherland, incidentally. You can find me most easily under my name and the book title: Roger Moore: Monkey Temple … that gets me every time. If you just type in my name, there is more 007 material than even James Bond and 100 secretaries could account for, all paid On Her Majesty’s Most Secret Service.

Prints

A knock at the window of The Second Cup, right behind me: John points over my shoulder, it is Kevin, come late, with the most attractive … now, you really don’t know what I am going to say next, although you think you do, … nine week old Habanese puppy in his arms. Of course, she can’t come in, so we go out to greet her. What a darling … I refused to touch her. Puppies are catching and I don’t want to catch one: too much bending and house training at my advanced and creaky age. If I can’t tie up my shoelaces, I can’t clean up after a poo-pee — that’s the French for a puppy, la poupée, oh no, my mistake, a poupée is a little doll — just what Kevin’s puppy is.

Kevin left the dog in the car — in the shade, windows down to give air circulation, cool evening — John and I lectured him — he didn’t need the lecture –. and we discussed Kevin’s week. Things are going well and he is juggling work, writing — he is finishing his first manuscript and has a contract — wow! — I look forward to giving news of the publication of his book on a future Wednesday Workshop — and he’s also working on a new and very secret PROJECT — about which we can say nothing except ssssh!

Footprints

Kevin didn’t want to leave the poo-pee in the car for too long, especially since she was fond of climbing her way into the driving seat — remember Clyde? — oh no, not another Clyde! — and so we all soon made footprints. Alas, Chuck’s were covered with dust and sand and we didn’t see him this week. He is busy with a building project and also with his fourth novel — The Underwater Road — for which he, too, has a contract. His other novels are doing well. I have only read Steal It All … but I must say that Chuck Bowie is a master of mystery and intrigue, as I said on my online review.

So, this Wednesday’s Workshop is a potpourri: lots of announcements, friendships, changes in momentum, new editions, and new additions, and not so much literary criticism and theoretical musings. Ah well, life’s often like that.

See you all next Wednesday!

A question and an answer

Question: I am curious if you’ve ever had any of your short stories/poetry published in any lit. mag? I’m wondering because I am travelling down that publishing avenue and looking for advice when pitching to literary magazines. Although the general consensus seems to be that it’s a wholly tough market to get into!
Tales from the Trunk — https://trunktalessite.wordpress.com/

Answer: I have published about 135 poems in literary magazines, mainly in Canada. This happened mainly in the ’80’s and ’90’s when the market was probably a little bit easier to break into. I have also published 14 or 15 short stories (and won some awards and honorable mentions, same with poetry, too, incidentally). It seems to me that there are two distinct ways to go: (1) Submit, submit, submit: paper your walls with reject slips, keep going, keep improving, no matter what, don’t give up, ever. You must be stubborn and believe that your work is worth continuing with and BETTER than what those who are rejecting you think it is. Mind you: listen to them, keep reading, check your markets, revise your work in accordance to what editors think (if they make suggestions), and, above all, be as stubborn as a mule or worse. I did that for years and then I started to take route #2: (2) Go Indie and publish your own work. With route #1 behind me, I knew who I was and what I was writing. If other people didn’t like it, that was their problem. Sure: I am a Welshman, writing in English, in Canada, about Spain, Mexico, and Wales … duh … so, as they keep telling me, it’s just not marketable. Why not write about the Maple Trees turning red and Maple syrup … duh … going Indie led me into two further directions. (A) I published my own collections, paid for them myself and, in a fit of pique, gave them away free to my friends, “because my poetry is too precious to sell for money”! NB I had a full time job and could afford to do this. (B) I am now publishing via CreateSpace (Amazon.com). This is for free and easy to do. There are other options out there. Some ask you for cash up front …. I wouldn’t pay for their services. Others are free and excellent. I also recommend Smashwords or is it Wordsmash? Anyway, it’s also free and you can control where your books go and what they do. I chose Amazon because I had a persuasive friend who talked me through the process. If you have someone who can talk you through the process, any process, of publishing online, that helps. If you have a writing group THAT IS HONEST WITH YOUR WORK — that is essential. You must have some reliable readers who can step up and say: “No, that is not up to your usual standard” or “No, you can do better than this.”Good luck and best wishes, and yes, if I can answer your questions and help, I most certainly will.

Empress of Ireland

15 May 2002 Pre-Rimouski 109.jpg

Photo: Museum and Monument to the Empress of Ireland, Pointe-au Père, PQ.

M Press of Ire

Background and Dedication

The poems that have come together to form the M Press of Ire were begun in Ste. Luce-sur-mer, Quebec, in May 2002.

It was off shore from Ste. Luce, in the early hours of the morning of the 29th of May, 1914, that the Empress of Ireland collided with a Norwegian collier whose bows had been strengthened for ice-breaking. There were approximately 15 minutes between the moment of impact (1:55 am) and the moment the ship caught on fire and sank (2:10 am). Although the disaster has received little international attention, more passengers were lost in this incident (840) than in the loss of the Titanic (832) or of the Lusitania (791).

I read these poems, for the first time, at the University of St. Thomas at Houston, Texas. The Virginia Tech shootings took place on Monday, 16 April, 2007, and I read these poems on Wednesday, 18, April, 2007, while memorial services were taking place on university campuses all over North America. I dedicated that reading to the victims and survivors of the shootings. I now re-dedicate these words to all those who have been touched by sudden loss, shock, and / or grief, and especially to those who have suffered loss under extraordinary circumstances.

Introduction

I first heard those voices in the cries of the sea birds on the beach at Ste. Luce.

Borne on the wind, over the sigh of the waves, they seemed high-pitched, like the voices of children, or of men and women in distress. These were lost voices, the cries of people alone and frightened by the dark. I heard them calling to me.

That night, there were knocks at my cabin door and finger nails scratched at my window. Tiny sounds, almost beyond the range of human hearing: the snuffling of puppies when they turn over in their sleep and tug at each other, whimpering in their dreams.

“Who’s there?”

I started from my sleep. But there was only the wind and the waves as the tide’s footsteps climbed a moonbeam path to ascend the beach. When I walked on the sand next day, at low tide, there was a whispering behind my back. Little voices crying to be set free.

“Who’s there?”

A lone gull flew past my head and battered itself against the wind’s cage with outraged sturdy wings. That night, the mist descended. The church stepped in and out of its darkness and shadows gathered, persistent, at my door.

I walked out into the night and I saw a lone heron mobbed by gulls. It was as if an adult, surrounded by clamoring children, was standing guard over the beach. Then I saw the shadows of little children searching for their parents, the shapes of mothers and fathers looking for their off-spring, lost in the tide mark, among the seaweed and the grains of sand.

Beyond them, on the headland, the church stood tall above the shadows. I saw family survivors, their lips moving in supplication, kneeling before the granite cross that stands above the sea. As I approached, they turned to me, opened their mouths, mouthed silent words, then disappeared.

When I went back to bed, faces and voices visited me in my dreams. When I got up next morning, they came to me in the speech of birds hidden in the foliage, in the words dropped by the osprey’s wing, in the click of the crab’s claw as he dug himself deeper into the sand.

“Release us! Speak for us! Set us free!”

The words of the Empress of Ireland are not my words. They could never be my words. Foundered words, they are, rescued from the beach, and dragged from the high tide mark filled with its sea weed, carapace, charred wood, old rusted iron, and bright bone of long dead creatures polished by the relentless action of wind, sea, and sand.

Dialogue: Wednesday’s Workshop

Dialog / Dialogue

The Tuesday night writing group that I meet with is very small. It currently consists of four members (Chuck, John, Kevin, and Roger), though it was larger. Several members dropped out for sundry reasons, but we four get on well and we have continued our Tuesday sessions for a long time now. We usually concentrate on discussions, sharing ideas, and encouragement rather than on anything else. We also share work in progress by e-mail for commentary online and we throw out current writing difficulties for discussion by the group. We also indulge in other activities. For example, on Monday last, John, one of the group members, visited me at home and kindly showed me how to process a manuscript for publication on Amazon’s CreateSpace. This was a first for me, though John, a very accomplished writer, has some twenty novels published in this fashion.

I thought it might be of interest to set out elements of the discussion that took place yesterday evening at The Second Cup Coffee Shop. Here are the notes, slightly amplified, that I sent round the group.

We began by asking Chuck if he had benefitted from the previous week’s conversation, when he had set out a problem situation from his novel that we had all explored. He outlined briefly how he had responded to our suggestions.
He then noted that some people can write dialogue with ease, others can’t, and illustrated this with info from a workshop he had given in which 13 of the 14 submitted manuscripts were narratives without dialog, and only one contained dialogue.
This led us in several different directions and we opened with using telephone messages as a means of conveying information and also as a back up to “mysterious” dialog –can you hear both ends of the conversation?
This in turn developed into texting and tweeting and electronics and from here we talked about the potentially deleterious effects of social media on conversational skills, and hence lack of dialog in society.
Computer techniques and knowledge at a cross-words + game play + thought play + voice interaction to rival or replace writing novels came into the conversation and we added some comments on writing by dictation and computer transcribing of voice.
The question of the historical development of the Dialogue form was opened: can Plato’s dialogues be considered monologues since many of the responses to Socrates are of the ‘yessir, nossir, three bags full sir” variety. We talked about creating action via dialogue and compared the modern newscast to the Medieval visitor who tells his audience what happened ‘over there’ and answered questions set by them. We also mentioned some dialogued novels of the 15th 16th C.
The transition of the Quixote from single character (I, 1-5) to double character (the rest of the book) and the important role that dialogue played in the development of Cervantes’s novel also came forward. This led to the use and development of dialogue in other novels. We discussed dialogue on TV with reference to As Time Goes By and the Midsomer Murders. We discussed dialogue as a composite of what is said, how it is said, how it is delivered, and we emphasized the importance of timing of dialogue.
We ended with a brief discussion of the age effect and development of narrative and dialog in children, especially in light of the effects of electronics on young developing minds and the substitution of screen for dialog.

Kevin was absent last night, but John and Chuck agreed to contribute a paragraph each in which they show their use of dialogue. I have added a poem in dialogue, just for the fun of showing a different usage. These are by no means state of the art models of how to proceed. They are examples of the type of work we are doing. Electronic links follow each example where appropriate.

Chuck Bowie: Steal it all.

“You know you got off lucky, Hendricks. It would have been so much easier, and given me so much more pleasure to have put the two slugs through that melon of yours. Now, get up. I want your seat.” While he spoke, he drew the blind closed. Walking over to the side of the small room, he turned off the ceiling light, leaving them with just the desk lamp to view one another.

Ace hauled his massive bulk out of the chair and shuffled around to the side of the office nearest the door. He eased into a dusty metal chair, taking care to avoid touching anything with his right arm.

“Tell me this.” Donovan waved his gun at the arm. “Why is it when a guy hurts his arm, he limps? I never figured that out.” This elicited another curse from Hendricks, and his attacker tossed him a roll of paper towels, which he failed to catch. Both ignored the useless roll as it found its way into a corner of the office.

“I’m very interested to hear your story, Ace. You’ve hurt a lot of people, some of them my friends. Want to talk about it?”

“You go square to ‘ell. My men’ll be here in a minute, and that’ll be the last of you, mate.”

Donovan shook his head.

“You have no more men. They’re all dead. Twelve separate industrial accidents, is how I heard it. Plus the scum you sent to kill Gemma. She weighs one hundred-fifteen pounds, by the way. Just before she killed him with her bare hands, he probably apologized to every woman and child he ever bullied. Nope, all you have left is that old

man, tied up by the garbage bin outside. And your millions. Um, nope, you no longer have that, either. Shit, you’re not really in good shape, my friend.

“But here’s what I can do for you. I can kill you, to save you the mortification of seeing your failure in tomorrow’s headlines. Is now a good time?”

Hendricks shook his head, unsure if Donovan was serious. The cloth around his elbow had darkened, and a drop or two had begun to puddle on the floor beside him.

“Okay, then. Here’s what I’m willing to do. I’ll name a name, and you’ll tell me the story. The more names you chat about, the longer you get to live.”

Buy Link for Steal It All:

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Chuck+Bowie

John Sutherland: Convergence of Fates.

Before he drove off he decided to make another call. He’d better report what he had learned, to the Park Rangers in the Clark National Park. They’d had a bear go missing a couple of weeks earlier. The phone rang a few times before it was answered.

“Is Scott there, please?” Then, he recognized the voice.

“Melissa, it’s you” He identified himself. “Charlie Easton. Hudgin’s Mills. Remember that bear you told us to watch for, about ten days ago?”

He didn’t need to say any more, and nodded in response to her suddenly pointed questions, interrupting what he had been ready to say. Why anyone would nod into a telephone seemed a strange thing to do, but it was a reflexive action.

“It might be here. Hudgin’s Mills. At least, close to it. I just took two people into hospital. One of them had been attacked by a bear.” He listened for a while and responded as far as he could, giving her more details about his injuries. She seemed satisfied that it had been a bear attack.

“Yes I can show you where I picked them up.” He listened further. “I don’t have a clue who he is, but I know the young woman. Susan Whitcomb. She’s….” Melissa seemed to know her, but of course she did; they were related in some way through her grandmother. He continued to nod.

“The Rollins road, ten miles out of town. The young man was pretty torn up, and bleeding like a stuck pig, but….”

Melissa cut into what he was saying and asked those questions important to her, getting the responses she needed to hear.

“It must have happened not long before I picked them up. Ten, maybe twenty minutes before. He was still bleeding. He didn’t say much, but he was conscious all of the drive in. I couldn’t see any injuries on her.

“It could be your bear. I thought I’d better tell you. From the looks of them, they should both be in the hospital for a day or two at least, maybe a week, for him, so you have time.” He listened further, and looked out at the weather.

“Rollins Road,” he repeated. “Where the river comes closest to the road and before it joins the main channel. Ten miles out, where it’s fordable. There’s only one place it does that. They were both wet, so they had waded across that river.”

He saw a flash of light and then heard a rumble of thunder about five seconds later (his subconscious told him it was about a mile away), and then responded again.

“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to him to find out where, exactly. You could probably follow his blood trail back on the other side of the river and find out, except for this rain. There’s only that one shallow place where they could have crossed, but it might not be passable by morning if we get the amount of rain they’re forecasting.

“If you call the Hospital in a couple of hours, they might be able to tell you something by then. Ask for Doctor Lewis. That young man I brought in might even be able to talk to you, if they let him. I’ll be home about midnight. You can call me there in the morning if you need my help to show you.”

From what Melissa said, Scott, her husband, the man to hunt that bear down, was already fairly close to Hudgin’s Mills on other business, so he’d be on his way as soon as she talked to him, and she wouldn’t be far behind.

“In the morning then.”

Charlie rang off, and decided that he should make one more call before he headed out.

https://www.amazon.com/John-K-Sutherland/e/B007C8DCCQ

Roger Moore: Monkey Temple.

Monkey FAQs
(with apologies to all those who draw them up
at their work place, knowing they will never be read)

“What news from the ark?”

“Only the dark waves pounding the hull, the wet winds blowing.”

“Who placed the whale ribs on this mountain
and called them a cathedral?”

“Sunshine blossoms through hollow vaults and shadows shimmer.
The day is striped across my back
and I bear its weight like a beast of burden.”

“When the anvil rings out, will the armorers appear?”

“When I snatched a blade of grass, its fine glass sliced my finger.
Yet, when I grasped the nettle, its swan-song perished in sunlight.”

“Who will forge chains for sun and moon?

“The peregrine falcon slices my eye in two and I am a mole,
blind with a weather’s wind.”

“Who will carve a cell door for errant stars?”

“I snuffle round the tightness of the temple clock:
its legion of Roman numerals marches to the beat
of a dull, dry pendulum.”

“Why are there no birds in last year’s nests?”

“The ox tongue sandwich on which I snack
talks back to the lettuce and salt clogs the tomato.”

“Why are you avoiding these questions?”

“Speak up: the wind is high. I can no longer hear you.”

This Kevin Stephen’s excerpt from DiAngelo: Revelations

“Can we talk Mel?” asked Caitlyn.

“Are we not? What is your mind?”

“I’m getting bad readings, like all the time, but you’ve been busy or gone for the last couple of weeks so I couldn’t talk to you.”

“Why not talk on our road trip?”

“Because. Everyone would think I sucked if I said that Tarot reading was confusing. Alex wouldn’t let me live it down.”

“Well, things are being… Vse ne tak. Crazy? For me lately. I have this moment. Ask your question.”

“For the last few weeks the Moon, the Hanged Man, and the Seven of Cups all came up in the same three positions, six, nine, and ten for everyone.”

“It is not impossible for people to be having same cards. Who is saying people do not have same outlook?”

“Well, in the last two weeks more than sixty people have had the same reading. You think that’s normal? I thought it might the sign of an impending natural disaster but then Roan came along.

“I thought the shared experience had passed when Roan pulled different cards but then he pulled the Death card in position nine time and time again. He even had that card face up when he drew a second copy of it. I didn’t have two Deaths in the deck but he really did look as surprised as I was. It had to have been a prank right? That’s what Fran thought.”

Somnambulant Flash Fiction

Somnambulant
Bistro 25

Tommy has started to sleepwalk. Not that he really walks in his sleep, but when he gets up in the night to go pee he no longer wakes up completely. They told him it would be like this, the going pee. “Every hour or so,” they said, “probably in time with your emergence from deep sleep.” They were right about that, but they never told Tommy about the sleepwalking.

“It’s the injections make you pee,” they said. “But you’ll get better when the effects wear off, in about eighteen months time.” Well, it’s been a year now, and Tommy still goes pee every ninety minutes, as regular as clockwork. He’d say as regular as a train, but the trains he knew never went anywhere on time and Tommy can set his watch by his middle of the night aquatic meanderings.

It’s funny really. If he wakes up properly, there’s no problem. But if he’s only half awake, then who knows where the pee’s going. Sometimes he wets his pajamas, just pees on them, half-asleep. There’s nothing like warm urine rapidly cooling in the cold night air to shake Tommy from his dormant state. When that happens, he takes his pajama bottoms off and hangs them on the bathroom door. They are often dry again a pee or two later and then he can put them back on.

Tommy tries not to turn on the light, because it wakes his wife and she needs her sleep even more than Tommy does. His wife has started to become used to Tommy’s schedule and about four o’clock, every morning, they both wake up and pee together. On April the First, last year, Tommy wrote a poem about it.

April Fools

When we were young
we used to wake up
at night and
come
together.

Now we are old,
we wake up
at night and
go
together.

It’s quite funny, really. Tommy and his wife now use separate bathrooms. Tommy uses the en suite while his wife walks down the corridor to the guest’s bathroom. Tommy remembers to raise the seat by repeating to himself: “Gentlemen raise the seat” like they used to say in the old railway trains back in the UK. Tommy has come to think of it as a definition: “Gentlemen raise the seat.” Sometimes, though, he thinks of it as a sort of toast: “Gentlemen: raise the seat.” It all depends on the punctuation and the intonation, and Tommy can never say it quite like they did on Beyond the Fringe. At Tommy’s age so much depends on so many things.

Tommy wishes he knew what the direction of his pee depended on: it seems to have a life of its own. While he usually remembers to raise the seat, he sometimes forgets and then of course he does his best to wipe the seat clean and dry. He’s usually pretty good at it, but it’s difficult to be certain in the dark. He found the high-pitched shriek that followed when his wife’s warm cheeks hit the cold wetness very disturbing, especially when attached to a roar of anguish turning rapidly into rage. They never said anything in the hospital about that either, but that’s the real reason why Tommy and his wife now use separate bathrooms.

And he’s started sleeping with his teddy bear in his arms. Teddy’s very good for Tommy. Tommy clings on to Teddy and Teddy never complains if Tommy wakes him when he gets out of bed to go pee. Teddy doesn’t complain about the night sweats either. Oh yes, they told Tommy about those in the hospital, too. Every time Tommy gets out of bed and goes into the cold night air, he starts to sweat. When he gets back into bed, Teddy is nice and warm, like a hot water bottle. Tommy gives Teddy a squeeze and a cuddle and Teddy never wakes up and never complains.

Tommy likes Teddy

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