#januariad

[portersnotebook]

On the Street, There Is a Corner

He played every day at 4 o’clock.

Laundry dried, paving stones listened, coffee in small cups chilled on windowsills, on cafe counters, on streetside tables. Cigarette smoke wafted, blown by breath or breeze, dogs were held and hushed and narrow streets cradled his music. School children quieted their shrieking, ran around him like a stone in their river, his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched around a battered violin. On the body was a scratch, on the neck a name half-carved, an A, two N’s and another A. Play to the streets, old man. Play to the stones. Play to the children and the laundry drying overhead. Play to the ladies leaning on their windows and the other old men with black coffee cooling in small cups by their elbows. Play to the empty air and the casual wind. Play to the corner just behind you, the one you haven’t looked at in years.

At 3:30 every afternoon, the old man walks backwards from his home just a few doors away, sets down his case and takes out his violin. Tunes and plays and keeps his eyes closed to never catch an accidental view, not in puddle or carried mirror, not in sunglasses or the glossy surface of a green or brown eye passing him on that narrow street. A deep breath and shaken fingers, he sets the air on music and plays his gentle flames up and down the buildings. A corner never looked at, a turn taken only once. On it there is no storefront, no window. There is a crack in one of the stones, on another there is carved a heart, and at the base there is a rusty gutter wrought of iron and damp with light morning rain. He never looks but sees still the footprints on that street made by small shoes that stepped in a puddle, wetting small socks, small ankles. They are always damp, those prints, always just seconds from fading in the sun that comes out at 4 o’clock.

Ear cocked, head tilted, fingers nimble upon the strings, he listens for small footsteps, excited clicks upon the stone, a sing-song voice calling out his name. He barely hears the music that he plays to the corner he never looks at, to a street full of people that, like him, have not forgotten the reason that he plays.

Not yet.

Photo Credit: The violinist, by Tony Vaccaro. Venice, Italy, 1947.

[laurenpapot]

It's the last day of January, and the last day of the 2017 Januariad. As is the case most nights, I sat at my wooden table, reviewed my ever-lengthening list of creative ideas, found them all unpalatable, and chose a new subject. It was hard to start a creative project this evening; I felt really angry about some mean acts I saw at school today, and angry about the unbearable state of my home country. Eventually my anger spilled over towards the mischievous red pigment that wouldn't quite behave. If my first Januariad was looking defiantly into the New Year, this last one is gathering the rage of all the strong women who came before me. I avoided feeling angry for much of my life, but now I appreciate how it forces me into action, which leads to change. Inspiration for the eyes came from @41.9_ 's recent photography project. At the risk of over-justifying my choices, I'll say that "red eyes" felt like an appropriate symbol for the past month. At first I imagined my hair as wind-swept; as I kept painting I imagined my hair rising on its own like the many snakes of Medusa. I'm still a bit angry, which seems to have stoked my creativity, though I'm not sure it's good for producing my best level of skill. That said, it's nearly ten. Time for me to put this down and cool my hot head before February arrives. Goodnight and sweet dreams, Januariad readers and Januariad makers. Until next year. #januariad #watercolor #hothead #portrait

[jackrusher]

A thousand years before the machines took over, her ancestors already dreamt of sacred geometries.

[thejanuaryist]

Januariad Stats

Among the invented worlds, the far-flung characters, the carefully turned details of the month-long Januariad project, we inevitably find common threads that can be spun into statistics. I’m taking a stats course right now, so I thought I’d pull out a little math on the Januariad as a wrap-up. This month, we have 42 images and by my count, we log 115 works that I’ll call "Januariad Fiction." (No exposition or factual image captioning included here.) Among those numbers we see the following individual trends: portersnotebook Likelihood of a story …that contains a monster: 35% …placed in a wasteland: 30% …in which a city figures prominently: 25% galalc Likelihood of a story …that features a bar: 25% …that contains a murder/untimely death: 15% …that features a father/son relationship: 10% mollyculetheory Likelihood of a story … that features a witch: 10% … that contains an apocalypse/dystopia: 20% … that features foreign or obscure English words: 65% thejanuaryist Likelihood of a story … with a geezer protagonist: 30% … featuring an untimely death: 20% laurenpapot Likelihood of a drawing … that features a portrait: 63%* … that contains coffee: 19%* … that features one or more helmets: 19% jackrusher Likelihood of an image … that contains a landscape: 25% … that contains a portrait: 29% Likelihood of a fiction work … that contains aliens: 16% … that contains an apocalypse/dystopia: 16% kayseerights Likelihood of a work … that features the natural world: 27%* … that contains a talking animal: 6% mmichaelmcelroy Likelihood of a story … that features an implication of cannibalism: 14%* … that contains a mug or glass of a beverage: 86%* There’s some fun in the aggregate data here, too. Based on the group of fiction writings, I count 43 works in which we can read a clearly female gendered or presumed female protagonist, which gives us 37% female protagonists for Januariad 2016. While this is nowhere near true equity, it’s vastly more gender-equitable than Hollywood (In the top grossing films of 2014, only 12 percent of protagonists were women) or in gaming (traditionally), or in literature in general. mollyculetheory led the way here, with 70% female-protagonist stories, followed by kayseerights, with 62% likelihood of a female protagonist. I was actually making a considered effort this month to include more gender equity, and I hit a decent balance with a 50% chance of a female protagonist in any given story. When jackrusher chose to add writing to his imagery, he showed a 43% likelihood of writing a female protagonist, but if we take into account the gender of the writer overall, the female Januariad writers were much more likely to produce a male protagonist than the male Januariad writers were to write a female protagonist. Again, interesting, but unsurprising, given the way that gender balance has been represented in fiction across history. So I’ll wrap this up, but nice work this month, everyone! Congratulations on finishing the project, and enjoy your extra free time! Methodology: Presumption of “monster” includes god-like monsters, and outsized lizards, but not humans with monstrous behavior. Presumption of “female protagonist” is based on a reading of the work that produces no overt reference to the protagonist’s masculine gender. Works containing no specific protagonist or a gender-flexible protagonist were excluded from the presumption of feminine protagonist count. Seeing as how simple calculations for probability are based on independent events, it’s highly unlikely that we can refer to a given Januariad post as "independent" since most of us are reviewing the work of the others across the course of the month. Thus, there’s no randomness and no indication that these percentages will predict future work. Standard count of works was 20, but some contributors produced more or less than 20 posts. Individual percentages are based on the total 2016 Januariad works for that individual. * rounding

[kayseerights]

What’s Next

I was watching a slug. God’s ugliest creature slid slowly across the maple leaf that met me at nose level. I wondered briefly if it knew where it was going or if it had any inclination that its sidewalk was about to end. But then the sun hit the leaf at just the right angle and my attention was brought to something else entirely.  This slimy little guy left behind him a beautiful trail of sparkles. He didn't need a purpose for where he was going.

This is it for me, Januariad, I am leaving for holiday for the rest of the month and no laptop is coming along:) Thanks for letting me join you and I hope to meet with you all again next year! I will be checking in next week to read your beautiful words - you all are inspiring and so very talented. Cheers!

[mmichaelmcelroy]

The Bootsmith Hates He Can’t Draw or Sing

If you draw back far enough, nothing matters; that’s the problem with perspective. Hell, you don’t even have to go into space, just look at your walls. What gleams between them fades with just a step outside. Consider: You’re home alone with your child, she’s napping , you’re catching up on the countless things that aren’t her. You notice she’s been down for a long time. What a great nap, you think. Soon you get worried because she’s not moving. You go up to check on her and she’s blue and cold and you start screaming. The whole world has changed, burned, crumpled. You gibber blind and lost between your walls.

But, outside them? Sunshine. Clouds. Ants and wasps and flowers and trees with roots a hundred years old. Two streets over, you don’t exist, your kid doesn’t exist and she never existed. The person in the car who passed your house just as you learned what had become of your daughter, just as you realized there’d never be a graduation, that you’d never teach her how to sing, or draw or throw a ball, or dance, who’d never have another birthday? That person in the car drove right on by, his car filled with his own world, his mind filled with his own troubles. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Maybe he’ll read about it in the paper and say that’s too bad and finish his coffee.

The sky is the sky. The leaves on your trees are rattling softly in a breeze that doesn’t know your name and will never care that you’ll now need to decide whether to bury or burn the dead thing that you had once held, comforted and given a name.

Beyond that sky, 62 miles up, there is no terrorism, war, malaria, cancer, rape, incest, genocide, buzzards stalking a starving child in Africa, a dead boy face down where the sea meets land, your daughter as nothing but weight in your arms. These exist only as fragments of one hot place, as meaningless to the entirety as the ravings of one fevered mind are to the next.

This is called perspective. Frozen rocks loop eternally in the mass-seized currents of burning gods and only on ours do we weep for the Holocaust, or slavery or our own treasonous cells that can beteeth themselves and devour their own. Only here can we watch mothers and grandmothers wither and shrivel in strange beds like plastic set to flame. These horrors we’ve engineered are prisoners of earth, just like we.

But, for most of us on any given day, these things don’t happen. At least not at the now.

The final brutality is due us all, but probably not today. We will very likely find our daughters lovely and beaming when we go to check on them after their naps. The lingering cough is probably just that. The bomb-filled pack will very likely be placed at someone else’s feet. Today, anyway.

But, deep in the darkness of our minds, where we can’t control or alter the primitive swirls, we know these monstrosities, no matter how imprisoned, stalk us by day and lope toward us by night, and so our hairs stand and our shoulders clench and we fill our fists with stones  to hurl instead at the slow man in the car ahead of us, the idiots in office, the strangers fleeing strangers, the oppressive banalities that sour our moods when things don’t go our way.  We cannot drag the ghosts from our minds so we glower rather at our mirrors down the street who’ve built their own walls to die behind.

The worlds that crash, crumble and burn behind them are as meaningless to us as we are to them. This is perspective. Sixty-two miles up, the Holocaust never happened and yet still we fury over slights, gorge ourselves with outrage and smear its effluence across our faces and scrolls. We warm our pallor in the glow of our screens and infect our minds with certainty, spreading its plague in ejaculate screeds and unwashed hands.  Though we froth and snap with it in one plane, in this fever we also dream of hope, courage, grace, kindness and love, and reach for them only to flail and kick through them instead. For they are incorporeal mists and live only in our minds. Racing racing racing racing racing and cliffs in the distance. Scattershot and distant stand and true grace yourself for the sake of someone anyone someday someday someday you will be dead.

What lies. What lies in wait. What lies in wait for my loves will one day take them. The best I can do is hope to be dead by the time it does. But, if I am not, and it springs upon them and feeds while I can only watch ...  if I am left to tear down my walls. With my raw, bare hands. Frozen rocks will still loop in the deep open above us, mad and mindless and pitiless. Just as they always have and just as they always will and that’s the problem with perspective.

[northpaw78]

Grippy Socks

There were flies on the wall.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Fruit flies. Five of them.

Five fruit flies behind a magnetically sealed door in a room with no windows. And no fruit.

I watched their plump black bodies take flight from the dingy wall painted in what I supposed was a soothing baby blue. They would meander around in that strange hovering fashion that only fruit flies seemed to employ, alighting on the baby blue then bouncing back off into the air. Their motion was disgusting to me. They looked…juicy. Occasionally, one would get too close to my face, close enough that I could see the shiny red of its insect eyes, and I would swat it away. My hand would make contact with a tiny body, but seemed unable to inflict any damage or deter a return. Seconds later it would be back hovering before me until I had no choice but to swat it away again.

Maybe it was the moisture from my tears that drew them. Or the sweat. I was soaked in sweat despite the chill I knew was in the room. They had tried to wrap me in a blanket when I arrived, but I’d refused with a mumbled, “I won’t be here long…”

Covertly, I looked around the room, making certain to avoid eye contact – everyone knows you never make direct eye contact with dangerous animals. There was a row of lavender colored recliner type chairs on the opposite wall from where she sat. Two soothing rows of lavender facing each other. The chairs could pull out and recline into a single person bed. One guy or girl or who knows, was buried under a pile of sheets, seemingly asleep. The guy in the recliner next door sat upright on the edge with hands clenched into fists on his knees and eyes closed. I couldn’t tell if he was mentally struggling to keep it together or trying to explode the room with his mind, but I could feel the waves of effort breaking all the way across the room onto the lavender shore where I sat. A younger guy puttered around the room with his light blue scrub pants hanging just over the curve of his buttocks so you could see the culrly brown hairs that grew there – vacant eyes, slightly confused grin, and no awareness of his dignity falling down around his knees in soothing blue ripples of hospital cotton. Every few minutes he would putter too close to me and an attendant would intercept him on a rolling chair and swat him away with a quiet but authoritative, “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

He was right. I didn’t want to talk.

I sat up straighter in my recliner and crossed my legs. They’d confiscated my shoelaces. For the safety of the “others” of course. But I’d refused to give up my sneakers. They’d offered me a pair of standard issue socks with the treads on the bottom, but I’d refused those as well.

It was best to keep myself separate from the rest of them. I wasn’t one of them.

Better still to focus on the flies.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Five fruit flies behind a magnetically sealed door in a room with no windows. And no fruit.

When a nurse strode purposefully down the aisle bearing a handgun shaped barcode scanner and calling my name, I was almost unable to break free from my count and take ownership of the syllables I had always thought belonged to me and me alone. But they’d taken my cellphone, my coat with all of my identification and cash, and they’d taken my shoelaces.

“Here,” I finally spoke up and sat up even straighter, “that’s me.”

The nurse came over and grabbed my wrist, pulling up my sleeve to inspect. “Where’s your wrist band?”

“They didn’t give me one. I’m not staying.”

“The doctor ordered this medicine for you and I can’t give it to you without a wristband. I don’t know who you are.”

“But I’m leaving soon.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be right back.” And she strode purposefully back down the aisle with her handgun shaped barcode scanner.

137 fruit flies later, she returned to clumsily wrap a plastic band around my wrist. She then scanned it quickly and nodded to herself. I was now me.

“Here.” And she passed me a small paper cup with a single white pill at the bottom. “Take this.”

I threw back the pill and the subsequent small paper cup full of tepid water.

“Thank you.”

She left me there sitting ramrod straight in my soothing lavender chair and I returned to my fruit fly count.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

I looked down at my wrist.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The plastic band was laser printed with a barcode and only one other thing:

Admitted 1/1/16

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Excuse me?” I called out to the nurse who was now attempting to barcode scan the person under the sheet.

“Yes?”

“Do you think I could have a pair of those grippy socks? It’s cold in here.”

[logodrome]

Januariad 2014 Favorites

As tradition dictates, I have chosen three favorite stories from each of my fellow Januariad 2014 sufferers participants.  Here they are, in no particular order:

Jack Rusher

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/72814692041/blue-eyes-flashed-hot-leaving-every-pink-part-of

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/72911907459/the-program-started-off-with-a-bang-a-big-bang

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/75092408355/mortimer-had-a-common-new-york-problem-plastic

Marde and Arbiwale

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/74998410279/claim-your-dead

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/74192009294/a-bow-and-arrows

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/72711696955/my-wife-in-her-garden

The Januaryist

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/73263206430/spring-chickens

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/73569368071/i-know-who-you-are

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/74011005695/the-red-planet

Porter's Notebook

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72599335534/you-could-be-sentimental

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72684385557/you-could-be-sentimental-part-ii

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/74150562638/just-one-line-hed-aged-years-past-friday

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72826584498/a-quiet-place-just-to-sit

Mollycule Theory

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/74134347518/2014-she-ducks-head-into-fur-collar-and-cuts

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/73368502856/mollycule-and-the-three-bear-stories

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/74912254929/do-you-remember-what-it-feels-like-to-be-cold

Januariad Barnacle

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/72647276322/izmirs-coal-fog-is-lithe-and-gray-and

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/72479004026/inspiration-came-to-him-in-dreams-not-by

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/75199223651/in-favor-of-winter

[portersnotebook]

Chains

Chains are a funny thing. My daddy used to talk about ‘em all the time. Chains. We got these fascinations with them, Daddy used to say that when I was just a tyke. I’m old now, but don’t you look at me like that, there was a time when my hair was meant for bows. Metal bent and worked and linked into other metal, flexible and strong. Armor, bondage, criminal, jewelry, sailing, battle, loss of freedom, slavery. We humans love, love, love our chains. Love our limitations. Sometimes we hate them. Sometimes for the good of all they have to be broken, just split and beat and melted to slag. If they’re just a metaphor or not.

But other times you gotta build ‘em strong, build ‘em big so they’ll never get snapped, never get broken. So they’ll hold forever. Heh. Nothing holds forever.

When you gotta chain up a monster, you need strong chains. When you gotta bind down something so big it’ll destroy you if you let it, you build those chains so big and so strong that the weight of ‘em’ll hold that thing down no matter how sharp its teeth or how long its wings. We broke the chains on god because we needed the iron. Let that go. Let that big old love-and-punishment-for-all float off into the ether of idea and imagination where it belongs. It’ll still listen if you ask right, but I hear results are unpredictable when you go speaking to the sky.

My daddy told me about that. He was there when they clipped the chain, when links fell to earth with a noise like nothing else. They rust now, deep at the bottom of the canyon they made when they dropped. God chains. Daddy told me and I know it’s true because he built the chains that hold the truth after we lost our grip. After it grew too big and strange with all these people tugging and cutting and carving and stretching. Iron. Iron rusts eventually, but iron is best he told me. Pure iron. Hammered and shaped and with the other lads in the mill. No more boats, no more guns, no more horseshoes. We mined the earth until it would never turn red again and when my father coughed and hacked on his deathbed it smelled like a smithy in his room. If it was iron, it went to the chains and leaders talked in panic and people called the house and my father wiped the sweat off his brow and put his hat back on and simply said.

“It’ll get done.”

Solid people to build solid things. We needed that then. We still need it, but people are forgetting so you listen good here while I take these last sweet breaths. You smell that in the air? Sharp? Salty? High in your nose like tall sky, recent failure and creeping fear? That’s it. You smell it. I can tell, youngster. You smell it. Good. Hold to that smell, and I’ll tell why.

That’s rust.

My daddy built those chains heavy and he built them strong, but they’re rusting just the same. You better see to them. If they snap? If they break?

You’ll never get them back on again.

Photo Credit: Workers at Taylor, Pallister Ltd., Dunston, England, 1900.

[laurenpapot]

It's the last day of January, and the last day of the 2017 Januariad. As is the case most nights, I sat at my wooden table, reviewed my ever-lengthening list of creative ideas, found them all unpalatable, and chose a new subject. It was hard to start a creative project this evening; I felt really angry about some mean acts I saw at school today, and angry about the unbearable state of my home country. Eventually my anger spilled over towards the mischievous red pigment that wouldn't quite behave. If my first Januariad was looking defiantly into the New Year, this last one is gathering the rage of all the strong women who came before me. I avoided feeling angry for much of my life, but now I appreciate how it forces me into action, which leads to change. Inspiration for the eyes came from @41.9_ 's recent photography project. At the risk of over-justifying my choices, I'll say that "red eyes" felt like an appropriate symbol for the past month. At first I imagined my hair as wind-swept; as I kept painting I imagined my hair rising on its own like the many snakes of Medusa. I'm still a bit angry, which seems to have stoked my creativity, though I'm not sure it's good for producing my best level of skill. That said, it's nearly ten. Time for me to put this down and cool my hot head before February arrives. Goodnight and sweet dreams, Januariad readers and Januariad makers. Until next year. #januariad #watercolor #hothead #portrait

[jackrusher]

Today was a hard day, technologically speaking, so I've got nothing much to show for hours of work. In lieu of today's piece, I offer you this thing that I made last weekend to experiment with 3D graphics in the browser.

More art tomorrow.

[thejanuaryist]

The Shining City

When the house burned, taking her dear mother with it, Caledona cut her hair and left her village behind. She’d heard stories about a shining city, across the pass, beyond the plain. A place of brilliant people with lives somehow different from the sad little soil and timber town where she’d been raised. Dressed in the clothes of her forgotten father, she walked as a man, talked as a man and adopted the name "Cal." While slender, Cal turned out to be a clever, hard-working boy, and he didn’t lack for farm work along the path. Many families offered a meal and a bed of hay in the barn. At one such stop, Cal was adrift on the hay, but woke as he heard a noise in the night. He rose in readiness. At the doorway, he met the widow, hushed in shadows, her soft breasts loosened to meet the moonbeams. She was the first of Cal’s women, and the memory of her scent never failed to stir his hunger. But there was always the call of the road. No matter how sweet the smile, how soft the lips, he couldn’t stay long. In the forests, Cal was a forester. On the sea, a sailor. Along the lonesome lands of dry weed and scrub, there was no work, no trade, no life but for those few who passed along through to something better. Cal told stories of the forest and sea to hard-eyed travelers and children crusted in salt and grit, crowned with oily locks. In return, he always asked if they’d heard of the shining city, across the pass, beyond the plain. Answers varied, depending on the speaker. All through the years, Cal walked as far as men can walk. He saw wonders: mountains that snagged the clouds, deserts that devoured rivers, dunes that walked, mighty cyclones of sand, spirals of water. A forest of rock carved down into columns. All manner of birds and bugs and beasts, dragons and ancient-eyed leviathans. Age brought silver hair and failing joints. Shorter days, slower progress, but still, Cal sought the shining city. And one fine morning, the air heavy with birdcall and the damp scent of ready soil, Cal peered across the crest of a hill and saw a shimmer emerging from the mist. With a charge in his chest, he quickened his step. By noon, he approached the edge of a shining city, alive with the noise of people, carts, animals. Cal entered the market, a blur of tents set with pyramids of spice, mountains of dates and nuts, garlands of hanging meats, tables of cheese, pails of crabs, fish and frogs. Tall buildings, rich costumes, packs of schoolchildren in tight formation. He walked the streets in wonder, admiring fountains and statues. It had taken a lifetime to find, this jewel of bright energy. Grinning, dazzled, he soaked in the splendor. And then, as he turned a corner, agape at angels in the lintels, he recognized a wooden church. Humble, crooked, dwarfed by its neighbors, it sat, alone, on small flat of green, a piece out of place, out of time. Settling pack and body onto a bench at the edge of the green, he turned to face the building of angels, a stone behemoth set on the place where he was born, eighty years before, a girl named Caledonia. The city he’d sought, grown up all around. Cal closed his eyes. He laughed. The end of the journey. The fool come home at last.

[kayseerights]

If I saw you alone, I would ask if you wanted company. Oil pastel drawing

[mmichaelmcelroy]

Rose Part 3 of 3

Rose Barnfly, the widow of a stone, stood beside the nervous chef looking out at the hungry faces and warm smiles.

The chef’s hands shook, or twined around each other, or nibbled at her hair or scraped over her eyes. Rose reached out and took her hand and held it. It was a clam in her hand and she patted it. The chef turned her darting eyes to Rose. There was gratitude in them. And love.

Rose smiled.

They stood behind a long cafeteria table, stocked with three large bucket pots of chili, which burbled and pouted on their hot plates. Behind them, stood five teenagers in white, ready to load the pots onto the carts and start wheeling them to the tables, whenever the word was given.

The crowd sat before empty bowls and watched them.

“Go ahead, hon,” Rose whispered. “They’re ready for you.”

Louissa squeezed Rose’s hand. She took a sip of water from a small, styrofoam cup, and cleared her throat softly. She spoke.

“I’d like to thank y’all for coming. I know you’re hungry and I just can’t tell you how honored I am to be here in front of y’all gettin ready here to feed you.”

Smiles widened in the crowd.

“And I just want to say a few words of deepest, heartfelt thanks to my dearest friend, my Rose here. I may have won the ‘Yes-You Can Drive’ so I could cook for y’all on Eat Night, but I sure as Sam couldn’t have done it without Rose. She helped me every step of the way, calmed me when I was anxious, and I was anxious fit to fry, but she stood right by my side when I doubtin, and said, ‘No, Louissa, you can do this and will do this.’ And she was right. I sure did do this, didn’t I. My goodness I just can’t believe it. Well, I’m so happy y’all are here and I do hope you like it.”

A small scatter of applause.

A sustained, ravenous round of applause and whistles, as the servers began wheeling their carts toward the tables and ladling the steaming chili into the empty bowls.

A few eagers set to their bowls as soon as they were filled, blowing on their spoons and shoveling them into their mouths.

“Hey, Hey,” Rose said. “I know you’re gonna wait til everybody has some,” and the spoons returned embarrassed to the bowls.

When all 150 bowls were filled, Louissa raised her hands,

“All right Y’all -“

“Hold on hon,” Rose interrupted.

“I think Louissa should bless this chili before we eat it,” she told the room. “In the olden times, the reverends and all would sprinkle one final lay of salt on the food, kind of like a toast. Louissa, why don’t you sprinkle some of the Better Pepper on this last pot here and give it all the blessing it deserves.”

Rose handed Louissa a narrow, tin container and smiled.

“Oh y’all,” she said laughing, “Rose turned me on to this new kind of black pepper. Better pepper, she calls it, and I must have used 200 shakes of this already. That seems plenty Rose.”

“Just one more shake,” Rose said, “as benediction.”

Louissa laughed.

“Go ahead Issa,” a man called out. “Bless this mess,” came another and the room laughed and the smell of the chili rose thick and meaty in the wide room.

Loussia laughed with them and put her hand on Rose’s shoulder.

“Such a doll,” she said and leaned over to kiss Rose on the cheek. Tears dappled in Louissa’s eyes and she wiped them with her sleeve.

She took up the tin container and held if over the last pot of chili.

“Why not,” she said. “With this spice, I bless this chili, Eat- Night and all of y’all” and she turned the container over.

Its lid fell off and a full heap of ash flumphed like a pile of black snow into the chili. The ash clouded up and onto Louissa’s hand and up her arm and onto the breast of her apron, smearing like a toddler’s first painting.

The laughs and chatter in the room cut off and Louissa drew in a ragged breath and stepped back.

The ash swirled and gummed in the chili. It dusted up and she drew her hand over her face leaving a long black smear across her cheek and forehead.

She gaggled down at the chili and blew small puffs of air from her mouth, trying and failing to catch her breath.

Buried in the heap of ash and browning in the chili was a perfumed letter. It soaked into the chili and disappeared beneath the surface, one white corner poking out of the ash and chili like an exposed bone.

The tables were full of white moon faces. Soon the faces looked down at their own bowls. Dale-Lee shot back from the the table sending his chair skittering like a crab across the room, as he noticed the gray gruel collecting in Lilly pads on the surface.

Mary Bodem flung her hands to her mouth and stood and then the whole room was standing and cursing and seats were knocked over in the haste to move away from the bowls of chili and the floating ash.

A riot of 125 no -longer -hungry people jostled and darted for the bathrooms or the exits. The tables clattered over and 125 bowls of chili fell to the floor. Grove Tanner slipped and fell in the ruin. Larry Teence knocked over Mrs. Robust Fords who cried out and hit her head on a spinning bowl. The teenagers took out their iPhones.

Louissa stood like a stone behind the long table and watched the room implode. Her eyes were a loose bull’s. Her hands perched in claws at the sides of her open mouth, and small wheezing breaths escaped her.

She slowly turned her frenzied eyes to Rose as the room continued to fill with sobs, and gags and cries of pain.

Louissa saw in Rose’s face springtime fields of purple and green and her eyes bulged in understanding. Rose caught them and held them. And smiled.

[logodrome]

Someday my son, who is about to turn three, will be grown. He will find this website. (Perhaps he will click on a bookmark that survived several generations of family computers, preserved by faithful backup utilities; perhaps he will google something that he heard from me and stumble across it; perhaps my very memories will be indexed and searchable at that point). He will find this site; he might even read it. Afterwards, he'll come to me with questions.

"Did you really write all that, papa?"

Yes. Some of it I probably shouldn't have, but it's too late now.

"Was it hard?"

It was a pain in the ass. But I did it, on and off, for ten years, ever since a Saturday brunch in long-gone cafe on the Lower East Side in December 2003, where myself, and J. and P. egged each other on to the point of an actual resolution. One story per day for a whole month. Of all the stupid things to try...

"Why did you do it?"

Just for the hell of it, initially. Because it was a dare, and I was young and had free time on my hands. Because I imagined a reader, a bright-eyed pretty girl somewhere in the digital ether, engrossed in my words, smiling. Don't tell your mother.

"Did it turn out okay?"

More than okay. I have learned that I could write faster, better. I have learned that I could write. And I have met some cool people along the way.

"Why did you stop?"

I wouldn't know what to think in response to that one. Perhaps a slight pang of regret will go through me. Perhaps I'll be indifferent. After all, the roof of the condo is leaking, and my retirement account has taken a hit in the bear market, and my cholesterol is high...

Perhaps later that day, I will sneak away to a quiet place, pick up a pen and a piece of paper, and sit, and stare at the white space with the same dread that paralyzed me always. Except, that is, in those hateful, wonderful months that left no room for it.

In the meantime, my son will log into a parent rating site and maybe, just maybe, upvote me for this.

We end this tale by writing Fin The subtlest ending known to man

R.K.

[portersnotebook]

He Was Ours

They found the egg in a basket between the Twin Towers, the ribbons tied to the handles ruffling in the winds that met and mated and procreated through the glass, stone and steel canyons of the Financial District. Speckled with pink, purple and peuce, the egg would vibrate when complimented and went still near loud noises. They kept it swaddled in cotton blankets knitted by the scientists’ and naturalists’ grandmothers and aunts and even uncles. They bathed it in heat and warmth, and encircled the egg with their arms. They lay their cheeks onto the smooth, warm shell and hummed to whatever was growing inside. They would say ‘you are safe’ and they would also say ‘you are loved.’

It hatched.

It let its first screech onto the world, the warbling sound nothing like the deafening, bowel-loosening roar it would grow into. The women and men who cared for it held it and kept it from the cameras and attention and made sure that the first thing the beast felt was safety.

An evolutionary breakthrough, a walking, living bit of proof.

No, not proof. A loved one.

It grew and ate cows. The city put forth a subsidy for farms to raise more steer.

It was New York City’s monster and no matter the government writ or national pressure or lines of impatient scientists who wanted a chance to poke and prod, they did not allow it. The beast grew and grew and grew. It stalked the streets and tourists came from all over to meet the tame monster of New York and offer it chunks of raw beef sold skewered on long sticks so they could feed it safely. The monster was a delight for small children. Other leaders expressed fear. The Pentago quietly trained a team of pilots in case the beast developed a taste for buildings and pedestrians. Their generals watched monster movies over and over again. The president took pictures with it.

Then the monster knocked over a building.

It’s handlers shouted at it and it cowed its great head, and lowed and was sorry, hiding behind its paws. What was wrong with, they asked? Nobody had ever seen a lizard the size of a skyscraper. Nobody knew what to do.

Then they hit upon it.

They cleared half of Broadway. They built buildings from cardboard, cheap wood and tin. The entire city pitched in for the month, it was a celebration. When it was time, they unleashed their monster and ran screaming and laughing before it. The beast bellowed and smashed the fake buildings in delight and was tossed meat by the crowds running in mock terror.

Their monster wriggled, jumped and danced.

At the end it curled up in its place between the great heatlamps they’d built for it and fell into a deep, happy slumber.

It was their monster, and they were never going to give it up.

The Nantucket Sea Monster on parade in Times Square, New York City, 1937.