passednote

[passednote]

Iwan on Halsted Street

This story is a bit more on the recent side. Please note that this is an adaptation of events, and therefore details have been altered or recontextualized. I am not an impartial actor in this or any story, and will not pretend otherwise.

Iwan is an architect, and the youngest son of Lucjan and Francesca. His two brothers are Tymon the Eldest and Marcel the Middle. Born in the city of Chicago, Iwan was twelve years old when the first cases of HIV were reported in the United States in 1981.

Tymon, Marcel, and Iwan were taught to play baseball, go to church, and never watch the news. The baseball diamond was just about as sacred as ground would get for the three brothers, whose heads were filled with promises of future greatness, given enough practice. Unfortunately, Iwan found himself unable to focus long enough to remember to catch the ball.

In class, Iwan would be distracted by the improper mixtures of colors on wallpaper, the ever so slightly crooked arrangement of desks, the incorrect distribution of windows to classrooms. He would dream his way into detention once or twice a month. He was fickle and flighty, with a tendency to prefer the company of his girl classmates.

When his English teacher told him to shape up or he’d catch the gay cancer, Iwan knew better than to ask Lucjan. Instead, he brought a book of medical conditions home from the library. After skipping dinner to pour over its contents in search of answers, there was a gentle knock at the door. Francesca always thought it polite to knock first, though she never waited for a reply.

She asked Iwan what he was reading while commanding him to eat the green beans she had brought from the kitchen. Iwan ate, but refused to tell Francesca what he was researching. All he had learned of defiance had come from Francesca, and she was unused to seeing it turned against her. Grabbing the book from her son, Francesca skimmed its worn pages. Iwan looked at his toes when she asked who was sick.

Tymon graduated from high school that spring, and asked his brothers to play one final game of baseball before driving to Sioux Falls for college. It was at this game that Iwan met Husam. He was as clean a pitcher as they come, and as dirty a lover as Iwan would ever know. The memories of that summer with Husam would linger in the middleground of Iwan’s mind long into adulthood, particularly the lush feeling of fingertips on his back and the bitter euphoria of each night's goodbye kiss.

Lost in the sea between his brothers, Marcel began to invite himself along to movies and bike rides with Iwan and Husam. When he was there, the hand-holding and the glances of intimacy were tucked away as a polite secret. Before long, there was no oxygen between Iwan and Husam and their lust withered into a cordial friendship, two points on a triangle deemed never to intersect. At summer’s end, Husam moved back to Akron. Neither he nor Iwan would recall their last kiss, or when it was that their spark fell away.

Many years later, Husam would marry a beautiful woman named Adrianne. Marcel and Iwan were both too busy to attend.

Now in his freshman year of high school, Iwan quit baseball and began discovering a world of arts, culture, and current events that flooded him with indignation and inspiration. He would drift silently through his classes, sketching his best impressions of Atwood or Wright, whose architecture dominated the city. More and more, he snuck out at nights to Halsted Street, drinking up liberation at Opal and the North End. There he began to see a world brimming with context and vitality, and learned the feeling of yearning.

It was Iwan who first discovered the lumps in his mother’s neck that would not go away with tea and a long night’s rest. He had been taught the first signs of HIV by a group of men on a sweaty night at Sparrows, and implored Francesca to get tested. By the time she listened, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and worsening fast.

Marcel and Iwan grew cold and harsh in the following years, accusing the other of abandoning their mother. Marcel would follow Iwan out at night, stalking his brother on crowded trains, only to lose him in the evening rush. Both siblings avoided Francesca’s company, lest their bottled up terror and hope and tears fall out in front of her. She would sleep by herself as Lucjan took the living room couch as refuge. They were each as far from home as they had ever been when Francesca was brought to hospice.

Tymon took a break from school to visit. All four boys were given their time alone with Francesca, singing half-remembered songs they’d made up years ago and squeezing every bit of memory they could into those final days. Iwan came in one afternoon carrying a model he’d built for class. A delicate contradiction of foam arches and garish cardboard asymmetry held up in defiance of gravity, the tiny house that garnered him scholastic praise remained at Francesca’s bedside for the rest of her stay. Before passing from her body, she remarked that we would all be so lucky to live in Iwan’s inconstant world. She thought the colors were funny, too.

Francesca’s funeral took place just before Iwan’s senior year. Tymon remained for a few weeks to help Lucjan sort the affairs before returning to school. For the second year in a row, Marcel attended a score of baseball tryout camps without success, and had gotten a job selling cars. His cheeks flushed bright red each morning when Lucjan dropped him off at the dealership in his ‘75 Pacer on his way to the office. Iwan too entered the daze of affecting life, dancing with his father and brothers around an abyss of loss.

As the months dredged on, Iwan and Marcel’s simmering reached a constant, never-ending breaking point. Distrust seeped onto their skin. Their room became a space thick with loathing, neglect, and unspoken pain. Both began spending nights in far away clubs and on the couches of friends. Lucjan quietly continued to sleep on the living room couch. So it came to be that the house’s four beds lay empty.

The first lonely Christmas came and went without much flare. After New Years Marcel announced he would not be trying out for teams in the coming season, and Lucjan softly nodded before commenting that his office was hiring. Iwan saw that what his brother had really wanted was a father to tell him anything beyond the passive acceptance of life washing him deeper and deeper into its tides.

That January was an especially dark and cold winter, and the three men found themselves trapped inside for several days as the snow beat down relentlessly. Exhaustion overtook them as the two brothers found themselves unable to sustain their anger throughout the storm. Annoyance at the other’s idiosyncrasies turned to nostalgia, and the card games they played served to bring a crack of a smile on their faces rather than simply another knife to slice past the time with. Lucjan presided over the tepid reconciliation of his sons, two men whose capacity for hurt had been well and truly spent.

Marcel became the first member of his family Iwan came out to, shocking himself in the process. Marcel said it didn’t change anything, which as far as responses go was better than feared and worse than hoped. Lucjan’s response was more to be expected: a horror quickly deflected but that crawled up inside him and squirmed throughout his heart. He was a stone of Hades, for whom even the lyre of Orpheus could not shake him awake.

Lucjan silently vowed never to speak on the topic again. In turn this led to very little speaking on any topic for the remainder of the school year. Iwan waited for his father or brother to give him a response, even the hint of an opinion that never came. Graduation came in silence, and the following day Iwan loaded up all his belongings onto a bus to Providence, where he would begin classes in the fall.

​​

Many years later, Iwan returned to Chicago to begin drafting the remodel of Comiskey Park, then called U.S. Cellular Field. He found it difficult to focus on, as inevitably he would wander into memories of playing games in backyards and tiny parks with his brothers. Exasperated and nearing his deadline, he dialed Marcel’s phone number.

They sat on the rickety bleachers deep behind third base. Neither man had grown to have much use for small talk, so they waited there until something was ready to be said. After some time, Iwan said that Marcel would have hated being a baseball player. Marcel agreed, he didn’t like traveling. Iwan wondered aloud what Marcel did like.

Sundays in October. Driving down LSD as it bends around Lake Michigan. Ice cream in the wintertime. The feeling of waking up in the middle of the night and knowing he had four more hours he could sleep.

Of course, he didn’t say so. Instead, Marcel murmured that he liked his family, which was also true. After a moment he added that he hoped Iwan was happy and liked his family too. (Iwan had just broken up with his boyfriend of ten years the month prior. Not that Marcel knew that.)

There were many nights since leaving for college that Iwan wished his father and brothers told him he’d burn in hell, to stay away from their funerals. He’d fantasize it’d be easier that way, to know that they cared enough to hate him.

Indifference is as bitter a poison as any to swallow.

It was not in Lucjan’s nature to take so great an interest in the damnation of others. Far safer to just bob along and see where the river ended. Marcel, on the other hand, found the current far too fast for his liking. How could you possibly have the time to care?

They sat. The sun’s last light had fled the sky, but the field’s fluorescent lights stayed off. Marcel asked what the new park would look like. Iwan confessed he didn’t know. Marcel suggested leather seats for the lower box. Unable to help himself, Iwan blanched in horror.

​

Suggestion after suggestion poured out of Marcel’s mouth, and the gears in Iwan’s mind unstuck, ready to parry each idea with a retort of palettes, shapes, structures. He began to see the new stadium, making mental notes to himself to include in drafting. Marcel joked that Iwan never found a subject he didn’t have an opinion on.

For a few more minutes they talked, starting points crystallizing in Iwan’s mind for the next day’s work. A jab here, some nostalgia there, and then Marcel and Iwan caught sight of something in the other’s eye. A softness of some sort. All of a sudden, both men realized the lateness of the hour. Iwan contemplated offering to buy Marcel a late dinner, but thought better of it. Marcel feared the look he’d seen from his brother, and feared even more that it might disappear forever if he asked Iwan to come meet his kids.

They shook hands, promising Christmas calls and birthday gifts next year. It would have to be enough for now.

[passednote]

The Glass Mountain

Adapted from the Polish legend as told by Hermann Kletke

He strode in on a black-bellied mare, whose hooves were caked in the clays of a hundred villages, a thousand battlefields. The muck dripped to the ground and clung there, where it clashed against the pristine, gleaming landscape. I had to look away, for atop the gorgeous creature, his golden armor glinted harshly as the light bounced from the sun to the breastplate to the glassy earth and up again in an infinite repetition.

“Boy!” he called, coming to a halt at my tent. “Know you the path to the summit?”

“Ay, sir. Though ‘tis treacherous, and within dwells a monster.”

“So it’s said, but I must pass.”

I dared to glance up, and was met first by the pools of sorrow in his eyes. He seemed a powerful lad, and carried himself with the cocksure posture I’d seen times beyond count. That look, however, arrested me. It held within it the pains of a short life racing toward a dark fate. I pointed to the northbound path.

“This is your home?”

“For now, sir.”

“Not much food or drink on a mountain of glass.”

“No, sir. But I get by.”

He turned to depart, and I watched a jolt of resistance from his steed slightly pull him. He tenderly rubbed her and as his long, pale neck crane down I imagined him murmuring sweet, impossible promises in her ear. I found myself unable to help from calling out:

“I hope it’s you, sir.”

He turned back, those tawny eyes piercing through me once more. I pinkened.

“My father hoped it was him, and my brothers after. Now I am all that is left, and can only pray the same.”

With that, he passed on.

I rode in the saddle with my mother as we made the long trek to the mountain. Where we came from or whether it took weeks or months, the faint memories no longer can tell me. I was shorter then, and could not reach the stirrups as I can now. My mother and brothers would spend nights by the fire regaling me over and over again of the legend of Glass Mountain until I could recount each dramatic pause by heart.

It was promised that whoever could reach the summit would be greeted by an orchard of apples more delicious than the sweetest honey. In the orchard waited a princess whose mystic kingdom would be granted to them the mountain saw worthy.

Knights and princes beyond count have tried only to be snuffed out by the cruel peaks and the monster that call them home. It’s said that at night it can take whatever form it wishes, and delights in the hunt of the gallant and foolhardy. If anyone were to reach the orchard and taste of the golden fruit, the beast would be banished, and the princess would restore to life all those whom the mountain had claimed.

So it was that my eldest brother began the climb. After a day, the next oldest followed after him. A week of silence passed, and finally my mother and the last of my brothers argued over who next would venture up the cliffside. My brother won out, vowing to leave the following morning while she stayed watch over her youngest son.

That night I dreamt I was Mother, weaving across a battlefield clad in her armor of elegance and cunning matched only by her sheer strength. I lost myself in the grace of her form, feeling each muscle interlock with one another in a state of absolute presence. I slept, envisioning her remolding me in that image. She could teach me the notes of. that inner harmony.

But in truth, Mother was a proud warrior. Whether the glory of the mountain called to her or fear for her sons’ lives, she slipped away in the middle of the night. My brother awoke and gave chase, leaving me still fast asleep in bed.

When I came to, I threw open the tent flap, ready to race after Mother. However, sitting there was a pile of berries and a cooked rabbit. I ate them greedily, for it was far tastier than anything on our voyage. By the time I had my fill, I felt the exhaustion of our journey wash over me, and went back in to rest.

Each day I woke to find more food waiting for me. For a time I spent the days exploring all across the slopes, dueling invisible opponents using my mother’s technique. As her I towered over the sleek wasteland, fearing only the moon and the monsters it might bring.

The years crept by as I watched for a sign of my family’s return. In time I grew, and with each day my body felt less familiar to me. My legs grew thicker, my shoulders tougher, and I feared my mother wouldn’t recognize me when she came back. I meticulously plucked the hairs from my chin using my reflections in the glass to guide me. I stopped eating the food given to me, believing it was the cause of my changes.

I grew so hungry that I accepted I had no choice but to eat. But the mountain is wise and harsh. I pleaded in the night but no food came. Desperate, I went out and learned to gather food, and in time, to hunt. Each day I would strike out and see a thousand copies of an unfamiliar face staring back at me wherever I turned. Again my body grew, and again I felt wrong.

Travelers would pass from time to time, the latest hero eager to sweep a princess off her feet. Many were kind to me, promising they’d save my brothers and mother. But they did not know the terrain’s laws like I did. Whether by the perilous cliffs or the mysterious beast, they were swallowed up. As each new champion rode to conquer, I would be reminded that the mountain always wins.

Hours passed after the shimmering knight and his midnight-colored compatriot departed my company. I’d resigned myself to another fallen hero when a thunderous clap shook the mountainside, forming tight fissures in the glass. I turned back and faintly saw a black horse plummet from one of the taller peaks, a twinkle of gold behind her as they dashed upon the rocks below. So went another hero.

I awoke that night to a cry of anguish. I curled up tight, prepared to shudder in my blanket until the morning came.

Then came another shout, this one much closer. I plugged my ears.

“Please, boy!”

Bolting up, I listened to his shallow breaths, growing softer and softer. I entered a stupor as I felt my body rush from the tent. He was splayed across the ground a few paces back. Even in the dark, I could see the blood gushing from his crushed legs reflected in the cliffs behind him. Rushing over, I grabbed his shoulder and began to drag him to the safety of the tent. That was when I heard the snapping of a branch behind me. I froze.

Crouched between us and safety was an enormous lynx-like creature, with fire for eyes and talon-like claws. It eyed me with the mildest of curiosity before resting its gaze on the knight. On his belt, a karabela rested in its sheath.

The lynx and I both saw what came next. Racing toward us, the cat pounced. I grabbed the sabre and ducked, sweeping under the initial attack before swinging. Sword met bone as the creature tumbled to the ground. It lay there in a daze, bereft of two hind legs whose reflections were splayed all along the uneven glassy mountainside.

I dropped against the knight, ignoring the cat’s whines as I listened at his chest. A faint be, growing fainter.  The man whispered:

“You must save them. Please.”

“I’m just a boy.”

“No. You’re not.”

His weight suddenly collapsed onto me, his head drooped against my chest. The beating of his heart stopped. In his eyes, that beautiful sorrow had dissipated, leaving in its place a blissful, empty reflection of hazel.

It is not easy to bury a body in glass. Instead, that morning I sheltered the knight in the corpse of a fallen tree beside the path. Grabbing the hay from my bed, I bundled him up before setting off that morning. Perhaps the creature was well and truly defeated, and the orchard lay waiting to save all those lost. And if this mountain indeed held my doom, I would no longer wait to receive it.

In addition to the karabela, I carried with me the severed legs of the lynx-beast to ease my climb. When I approached a cliff-face, I dug the talons in to climb up safer paths than others could tread. I entered a pattern of reach, hook, reach hook, and all direction and doubt fell away.

I began to see the last flecks of daylight dance through golden leaves as they peeked over the edge of the summit above me. There I rested, surveying the ravines deep below me, and the bodies beyond count that filled them. I closed my eyes as the world fell to night.

A shriek pierced the lonely cliffside. I rose just in time to make out an enormous pair of feathered wings beating down toward me, carrying with them a hideous vulture’s face. Where its legs ought to be there were only dried stumps. It catapulted at me, stretching its beak wide to grip me as it launched us into the air.

We rose higher and higher, and I saw the murderous look in its eyes. I managed to draw my sword, hacking at the creature to no avail as its grip squeezed tighter and tighter. Up and up we climbed, passing even the apple grove and the mountain’s upper limits. I felt its wings waver a moment just before its beak snapped open to send me plummeting back down to the mountain’s cruel embrace.

I plunged my karabela deep into the creature’s wing, tearing right through it as I fell. We wrestled against one another, hurtling down together into the orchard. I landed first, pillowed by a bed of leaves atop a tree. The monster fell upon me a moment later, knocking me from the branch down to the hard summit ground. I looked into it, expecting to see in the glass my death racing toward me.

Instead I saw the creature grow limp, impaled upon the tree’s knotted arm. Its screeches softened into silence. There I sat until the morning light tickled my eyes open once more.

The orchard was a silent sort of sacred, holding its breath in anticipation. I rose, examining the prized fruit hanging perfectly in place. I could not bear to pluck one away from its parent, instead finding one on the ground, split open during the previous night’s clash. The apple melted in my mouth, soothing my scrapes and sores and overflowing me with a bubbling warmth.

In time, the feeling dissipated and I was left with only echoes of sweetness.

“Princess!” I cried out. “I’ve come to end the curse.”

There was no reply. Again I called out, and again to silence.

“Is that your wish?”

Bolting my head about, I searched for the icy whisper’s source. I knew that voice.

“You are our child, and we will not deny you this request.”

I looked down to the glass earth, and was met only by my reflection.

“I am no child of yours.”

“True, you are a child no longer. But you are ours, and today you may claim what is yours.”

A low rumble began to quake, though the trees stood firm. Glass crackled in fissures, and the area about me began to rise, forming spires and ramparts of glass. Before I knew it I stood atop the battlements of a magnificent castle, whose walls ringed around the sacred orchard until it became a splendid courtyard of gold. Where there was once only unforgiving jagged peaks, a clear path now led from the castle far down to the foothills below.

“The legend told of a princess. I cannot take what is hers.”

“A princess?”

There was a pause, as if the mountain thought this over before replying:

“Is that what you would like to be?”

For a moment I was struck, unable to see past the white-hot lights that ignited all around me. Like the dream so long ago, I felt harmony within and without. I fell into the peace that lasted just a moment before fading back into life.

In the glass beneath me, I saw her: a princess clad in crystalline armor. She looked exactly as I pictured she might— long streaks of shimmering, ashy brown framing a pair of cautious, piercing amber eyes. My mother and brothers’ eyes. As I reached a hand to touch my cheek, so did she. I felt the silk of my hair slip across my fingers.

The mountain rumbled. “A princess will need subjects.”

Speechless, I watched as the path below began to fill with travelers of all sorts and sizes. There were caravaneers whose riches, once lost to the ravines, now piled high in their carts. I recognized more than a few of the warriors whose quests for glory had ended in death, now making their way up to my castle. The gates swung open to meet them as they poured into the courtyard.

I scanned the multitudes for my family, searching desperately for a sign of my brothers or mother. A squire caught sight of me, and doubled over himself in reverence. The bows spread like wildfire among the princes and merchants alike, til all the courtyard was on their knee.

It was then that I spotted a glint of gold among the sea of people. The knight, still wounded, braced himself against a steady woman’s shoulder. My mother guided him to his knee. They looked up to me, my three brothers beside them, as I took my place before this odd array of subjects.

I bid them welcome, recounting to them the very tale I tell you now. In their faces I saw astonishment, disbelief, admiration. When it reached its end, all were silent. The golden knight stood up.

“She is no princess. She is my queen!”

He raised his sword and the crowd joined in, crying out celebrations and oaths of loyalty that lasted far into the night. After a time I retreated into my chamber, still hearing the revelries through my window. I stood at one wall that had been carved into a perfect sheet of glass.

In its reflection I examined my hands, arms, shoulders, chest, waking up to myself as the outsides of my body took shape to hold all of what was within.

[passednote]

Passing Notes

Hi all! I’ll be using this tumblr to post any and all content from my blog, which you can also visit at:

https://passing-notes.wixsite.com/blog

For a little background, Passing Notes is dedicated to short stories thematically revolving around transition, transformation, and evanescence (and also maybe at some point the band Evanescence.)

My writings are typically adapted from material found through research, as gifts from others, or by way of familial memory. While many of the stories I’ll be exploring with Passing Notes have been told to me many times over since childhood and are deeply entrenched into my bones, some will be brand new to me as well as you. I will focus exclusively on source material I feel appropriate for me to examine and which have shaped my history.

Should I fall short in my characterization of heritages, cultures, or other axes of identity such as race and gender, please be welcome to call me out or in as you feel appropriate. Know that it is nobody’s responsibility to do so other than myself. I am in process and will listen with an earnest strive toward evolution.

I’ll be posting my two first stories now, with more to come in the future!