Category Archives: Fourth Monday

Red is for Go

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This Fourth Monday we’re trying something a little different. Instead of featuring three artists we’ll be reading one longer story by Dr. Suzanne Conboy-Hill here on the main page. I do hope you enjoy the piece and leave your comments. This is a puzzle I’d love for you to unravel.

‘The seats are elegant,’ she said, stroking the plush upholstery and leaning slightly forwards to avoid creasing the cream lace antimacassar draped behind. A proper lady would just lean back, take it for granted, stretch her creamy throat and tilt her chin upwards to look down on the porters lugging heavy cases and bags into the carriage. But she wasn’t a proper lady, she was pretending, masquerading, like everyone else who embarked at Brighton and paid a little extra to feel posh. Although she could not quite remember actually getting on the train. She hunched slightly, away from the lace fancy, and tried to look down her nose at the shining plates resting on the starched linen that was draped over the mahogany and leather dining table. She couldn’t see the table but she could feel it there, humming with deep polish, antique cigar smoke, and ladies’ lavender toilet water. A menu stood to attention in a silver grip: Tea, per pot 1/3, coffee, per pot, per person 1/8, bacon (portion) 2/8, kippers …

‘From the gentleman, madam,’ the waiter said, inclining his head a little and proffering a small box on a silver tray.

‘The gentleman? Where? Where is he?’ she asked, startled by the intrusion and now casting her eyes around the carriage for a sign.

‘He was on the platform, madam. He didn’t have a ticket for this train, today.’

‘Today? Was it him?’

‘Perhaps, madam. The box?’ He edged the tray closer.

‘Thank you.’ She took the box, put it on the table next to her coffee, and turned it around to see each face. It was blue and it had a rose coloured ribbon neatly tied up the sides and across the lid, so it looked as if it were held in a silk cage. There was a cream tag with filigree edges tied to the ribbon: it said Victoria. She touched the ribbon with a reticent finger tip, ‘Do you think he might have been a parallel?’

‘I really couldn’t say, madam.’

‘What year is it?’ she asked, pushing up the lid of the box a tiny fraction, as though a ghost might bolt out suddenly and rattle around the carriage breaking the crystal lamps if she opened it wider.

‘Nineteen sixty five, madam.’

She nodded, tapped the lid closed and handed the box back to the waiter. ‘Put it with the others, please,’ she said, ‘in date order.’

‘Are you not going to open it?’ the waiter asked, hovering in a slight stoop, ready to give the box back.

‘It’s not time,’ she said.

‘Right you are, madam.’ The waiter turned, walking with measured steps accustomed to the hitch and roll of a carriage in motion, to a stack of storage cupboards so deeply burnished that the orange oil smelled of centuries, not decades. He opened one and began to shuffle the line of boxes along the shelf a little to make room for the new one. She watched as he moved them with reverence: the pink one, the seashell, green for a wet Spring morning, umber –smoky evenings and garden bonfires, one black as night, and one glittering and glowing with stars and sunbursts. The new box came chronologically after the sparkling one and he eased it into place, but it was a squeeze, and he had to jostle it a little. As he did, from the far end of the shelf came tumbling a deep red round box which jingled and chattered and thumped as it fell onto the carriage floor. Its lid came off and rolled over and over, dancing along with the speeding diddley-dums of the train, and coming to a halt at her feet.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘When is this one?’

The waiter picked up the red box. ‘You should look inside, madam,’ he said, stepping back.

‘I don’t want this one.’

‘There’s no choice, madam.’

She curled her fingers about the box, held it up in front of her to examine the exterior. It had a pattern; one of those that didn’t quite resolve while you looked at it directly but hid in the corner of your eye instead. Deep red, almost tactile, like flock. It was heavy, as though it contained more than its size allowed, more than anyone could know. She brought it down under her chin to peer inside; it was like looking down a telescope the wrong way. No, a kaleidoscope with brass and candles, chandeliers and velvet. No, not even that. She felt dizzy.

***

‘Tickets please.’

Tickets. Did she have a ticket? Her hands were grappling with a ham sandwich that felt like cardboard and smelled of nothing, which was probably fortunate. No grease to wipe off, at least, she thought, as she patted at the pockets of her raincoat. The woman next to her was doing the same while juggling a large shopping bag on her knee and heaving in massive mouth-breaths so she sounded like an over-worked vacuum cleaner. The bag fell off and dropped onto the feet of the man opposite, who apologised in that peculiar way the British have of conveying affront. He fluffed up his newspaper and poked his ticket over the top between two casual fingers, as if to say this is how to do it. She thought it looked like a Punch and Judy show. Maybe he had a crocodile behind that paper –

‘Tickets please. Have your tickets ready.’ The inspector was coming closer and she had still not found her ticket. Did she have a bag? A wallet? She cast about for a clue, hitched sideways to check under the seat.

‘This your bag, lady?’ A man with small round glasses, a wet anorak, and two missing front teeth shoved at something with his foot. ‘You want to keep that out of the aisle, someone could break their neck tripping over that.’ He was holding a beer can in one hand and a plastic carrier bag in the other, and he seemed to have nowhere else he wanted to go.

‘Oh, yes. Yes,’ she said, and leaned down to pull in the bag. It was brown with fake leather straps, a bit frayed, and a broken zip. Maybe the ticket was in there. She tugged the strap to bring the bag under the bench seat, folding herself over sideways to reach down without touching the pair of American Tan knees opposite that tapered down to the pair of neatly aligned navy shoes with stubby heels. Just behind the shoes was a heater that had been clicking and clacking and belching fumes but had not yet belched out any heat. Perhaps as well, she thought, or this place would smell like wet dogs in a workhouse laundry.

She leaned further and pulled harder – here it came, another inch. Ah! She heaved it up onto her knee next to the ham sandwich.

‘Open it then.’

‘What?’

‘Open it, what do you think it’s there for?’ The man with the beer and the missing teeth had gone. Instead, the ticket inspector loomed. He peered down at her from under his peaked cap. ‘Look sharp.’

‘Oh.’ She pulled on the broken zip to open up the top. ‘Is my ticket in here?’

‘Nope. One of the others, on the top.’ He flicked a glance at the overhead racks where briefcases, boxes wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, small scuffed suitcases, and a few coats juddered against the nicotined paintwork of the carriage as it creaked and clattered over points and sleepers on its way to –

‘What’s our destination?’ she asked.

‘Same as always, Miss. Now look in the bag.’

She withdrew her gaze from the man with the peaked cap and let it fall towards the open bag. There were some small items within; an embroidered purse – green, a cosmetics bag with gold tassels and stars on it, a pencil case – blue fake fur, and a jewellery box made of black plastic.

‘It’s the black one, isn’t it? Do I have to open the black one?’

‘Up to you. But I’d go for the pencil case, if I were you.’

‘The pencil case.’ She stroked the pale fluffy material, then picked it up. ‘It’s empty,’ she said. ‘No pencils.’ She turned it over to look at the other side. This side was different because someone had used a fluorescent pink marker all over it and dotted bright pink hearts into the blue acrylic fabric. They had given it a label too, across the top by the zip – Victoria.

‘Look inside then, or we’ll never make it.’

She probed the opening and slid her fingers through to the interior. Were there ghosts? Probing a little deeper, she found the edge of a scrap of paper and pulled it out. It was lined, ink blotted, with doodles all over it and a heart with an arrow through it at the top. There were initials inside the heart, blurry due to someone having spilled something over it. In the centre though, and just clear of the tidal edge of the inky water mark, were some numbers 221020121330 221019821230

‘What are these? What do they mean?’

‘Do I look like Sherlock Holmes? Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘So they’re not important?’

‘Didn’t say that.’

‘It might help if you were a little more – helpful.’ She cast a critical eye at the inspector and then examined the scrap of paper again. Were the initials important? And the numbers? The train jumped and jiggled, swung this way and that, screeched and whoooed, and thundered into a tunnel. Noise crowded the air so that speech retreated and fell silent. A small bag also fell and tumbled onto her shoulder, then into her lap. Deep red patent leather with a gold fastener and a velvet strip running under the clasp.

‘That’s the one,’ the inspector said, mouthing exaggerated syllables and nodding at it. ‘Time to open that one, we’re nearly there.’ He tipped his cap at her, straightened up, ‘Next stop, London Victoria, thirteen thirty – that’s half past one in old money,’ and moved off down the carriage. ‘Next stop, London Victoria, thirteen thirty – that’s half past one …’

***

The train hurtled along, thrumming and tilting and righting itself so that styrofoam cups slid back and forth along shiny tables to bump into the laptops, tablets, netbooks, and iPads people were pretending to work on while they tapped on links to videos and updated their status — we’re on the train, LOL! She gathered her Tesco backpack to her and stuffed it under her arm to keep it out of range of the man whose girth threatened to escape his shirt and assimilate everything within reach.

‘What year is this?’ she said to her phone.

‘NOW,’ it said, in large font, and pinged a text message into her notifications: See you at Victoria <3

‘Is this a parallel?’ she said, asking the screen out loud and jumping as the man next to her spoke in response.

‘There are always parallels.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I meant, is this a bridge?’

‘What colour box did you have last?’

‘Red.’

‘Hm.’ The man inclined his head side to side and pulled the corners of his mouth downwards. ‘Might be a bridge, might not be. Have you checked the others?’

‘No, where are they in this, this…?’

‘Segment? Here.’ The man pushed his tablet over to her and swiped the display to show the apps loaded onto it. There were more than before; along with the blue one that she’d opened earlier, didn’t understand, and closed again, the glittery silvery one, and that black one. She shuddered. The black one opened once at a bridge and she had tried to get rid of it by throwing it out of the window, but it was re-delivered at the next stop. It was here still, innocuous, innocent, velvet black, night black. She wanted the glittery one again. The dancing dizzying headiness of meeting him and everything else standing still around them.

‘The red one’s updating, better get to the doors,’ the man said, huffing his legs towards the aisle to let her by.

‘There was a bridge in 1985,’ she said, hovering over the glittery silvery icon. ‘That was our time. It looked like our time’

‘Time? Relative – ha ha! No going back, up you get.’

‘He’ll be there this time, won’t he? At the next stop?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. What do you have?’

‘He sent a text. It said, ‘See you at Victoria’.’

‘One of him sent a text to one of you. Might not be the you that’s here, if you get me.’

‘But I haven’t changed.’

‘Tracks change. Points change. Sometimes you get shunted into a siding or your schedule is delayed or re-jigged. Sometimes your train crashes, or arrives at the terminus.’

She stopped at that. ‘I’ve looked in all the boxes, the files, they’re always the same.’

‘For this you, not for all the others.’

She watched the red icon; its update was nearly loaded, she should go to the door. ‘Does he have a black box too?’

‘Have you looked in yours, checked the contents?’

‘No,’ she lied. She had been half standing to move out of her seat but the thought of that box brought fear to her knees and she sat again. ‘Do you know what’s in there?’ she asked, wondering if the man had seen what she had tried not to see. ‘Do the others all have black boxes too?’

‘Some do but the contents are different, depending on their choices.’

‘But mine will always be mine?’ She realised that she had never really looked, only tried to destroy.

‘Yes.’

‘Which one of us died?’

‘He did. Back then.’

‘And now?’ She looked up at the ceiling, at the bright carriage lights that cast unforgiving shadows under the sleep deprived eyes of its hot-desking passengers. She looked down again; the red icon was updated and ready to be opened. It seemed to pulse like a slow heart beat and she hovered her finger over it.

‘Tell me about the blue box,’ the man said. ‘What was in it?’

She pulled her finger back and curled it lightly, out of danger. ‘Just a card with some numbers. They didn’t make any sense.’

‘And where did it come from, this box?’

‘I don’t know – they always just appear on a table, under a chair, in the middle of a drinks trolley, or on a – ah, this one was delivered, the waiter said it was “from the gentleman”.’ Her hand’s memory made her pat the prickly velour of the train seat. Not plush this time, but a train seat nonetheless.

‘Well then, let’s take a look at the card.’ The man tapped on the blue box and brought up the splash screen. ‘Here we are, 221020121330,’ he said, ‘Any ideas?’

‘Well no, it’s nonsense,’ she said.

‘Not if you look at your phone. Date, time?’

She studied the digital display; nearly half past one, October 22nd. ‘Oh.’

‘And Victoria station is what?’

‘It’s the terminus, the end of the line.’

‘Where all the lines converge.’

‘Parallels don’t converge.’

‘They don’t, do they? Mustn’t be parallels, then.’ He winked, dabbed at the digital display with both thumbs – swished and dabbed, swished and dabbed – then handed her the tablet. ‘Better get a move on.’ The red icon sat on its own at the top left of the screen. It pulsed, and with each pulse extended out a little over new wallpaper that looked silvery in the darkness of the dimmed carriage lights. ‘Everything you need in there,’ the man said. He winked again, ‘Mind how you go, madam.’

***

 Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill has been all sorts of things and expects to be all sorts of other things before she finally stops bothering everyone. She’s slowly racking up published stories.

Fourth Monday: August Coffee and Pastry Special

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For the closing of summer we’re putting up our feet on the patio and watching the last school-free days slink away tucked in the back pockets of scurrying children.

Our featured latte comes from Lisa Rivero with a side of William Faulkner in Book Love: It’s Complicated.

“Like almost all writers, I cannot remember a time when books and stories weren’t a big part of who I am, of life itself.”

Pair the latte with our special Roadside pastry by Sezin Koehler in The Sidewalk Ends.

“The nights are the worst. He doesn’t come home until early morning. She can’t sleep in the house yet. Every noise she’s sure is an intruder. Someone with a gun.”

Our contributors love your comments and I love your contributions. If you are a writer, artist or musician interested in appearing at V’s Place, please send an email to e.victoriaflynn@gmail.com and we’ll try to get you up on stage.

Cheers!

-V

 

Book Love: It’s Complicated

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by Lisa Rivero

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-54231]

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” ~ William Faulkner

Like almost all writers, I cannot remember a time when books and stories weren’t a big part of who I am, of life itself. Some of my earliest infatuations were with titles as varied as the Little House books, the Hardy Boys series, Heidi, and anything by Stephen King. I read in my bedroom, outside on our farm, in the car, late at night under the covers with a flashlight, anywhere and everywhere I could. Keep in mind that on the edge of the Badlands, where I grew up, books were not always easy to come by. Thirty miles from the nearest library and hours from a book store, I received most of my reading through Scholastic book orders and weekly visits from the county’s bookmobile, a van that served as a kind of roving library for rural school children. (Years later, when I had my own child who loved to read, I was giddy every time I walked into the Milwaukee County Central Library with its spacious children’s room and row after row of every kind of book imaginable. Who could have known that such marvelous places existed?)

Frank and Joe Hardy, Laura Ingalls, Jo March, and Heidi’s grandfather may have been my girlhood crushes, but none was my first real book love. Not until I was a freshman in high school did I know what it’s like to lose myself completely in a narrative, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. For that I have to thank William Faulkner and my high school freshman English teacher, Mr. Maher.

It was not love at first sight. The other students had their choice of two or three novels—I don’t remember what they were—but Mr. Maher, a bright-eyed Texas native in his first year at our school, took me aside and said he had a different book he wanted me to read: As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. I had never heard of William Faulkner, but I was willing to give it a try. The paperback felt thin enough. How hard could it be?

As I Lay Dying, set in Mississippi and told from not one or two but fifteen points of view, is the story of the death and burial of Addie Bundren. The book begins clearly enough:

“Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cottonhouse can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head about my own.”

As the chapters continue, however, each titled simply with the name of the corresponding viewpoint character, the voices and perspectives become more complex, the relationships and motivations more tangled.

“I would let him come in between me and Lafe, like Darl came in between me and Lafe, and so Lafe is alone too. He is Lafe and I am Dewey Dell, and when mother died I had to go beyond and outside of me and Lafe and Darl to grieve because he could do so much for me and he dont know it.”

Faulkner’s use of dialect and stream of consciousness were new to me, the depth of religious symbolism was beyond anything I had learned in summer Catechism, and I was taken aback by the colorful language that made me blush and fear my parents would ban the book, should they be curious enough to open it. By the time I finished, I was not only confused; I was convinced that I “hated” As I Lay Dying, and I told Mr. Maher as much. What kind of author writes a one-sentence chapter: “My mother is a fish”?

Being the excellent teacher he was, Mr. Maher didn’t blink. He told me to read the book again (and again, if I needed to) and offered some guidance for what to look for, what questions I might ask.

This was 1979. There was no Wikipedia to turn to for a quick plot synopsis or background information, no works of literary criticism readily available to serve as analytical training. As I wrestled with the story and the style and the characters, by turns arguing with the words and listening to them, I did so on my own, page by page, chapter by chapter, and that, I’m convinced, made all the difference. For you see, during one of those re-readings, familiarity bred a kind of understanding possible only when I could place the various parts in the context of the whole, in the same way that we may not be able to appreciate or enjoy a piece of classical music until we have heard it several times and know how the current melody leads into what comes next and builds upon what came before.

The essay I eventually wrote focused on the relationship between Addie and her illegitimate son, Jewel. I don’t remember exactly what points I made, and I’m sure they were rudimentary at best, but they were hard won, and Mr. Maher made me feel as though I was the first person ever to have discovered them.

As I Lay Dying marked my coming of age in terms of reading, when I realized that we can have deep, sustaining relationships with books, relationships that require effort and that grow with time, relationships that both challenge and change us and that often haunt us for decades. It’s why when I’ve led book discussions for children and teens, I never mind if they complain about “not liking” a book worth reading, or even hating it. That doesn’t matter, and I’m not really interested. They might like it later, or they might not, and the books they “hate” are usually the ones they talk about the most. What matters is whether they come away from a work still thinking about—even obsessed by it—regardless of whether they would deem is worthy of a Facebook like. Only then have their minds and hearts been involved in a new relationship, not just with words or an author, but with life.

And life, as we all know, is delightfully complicated.

When she’s not falling in love with books, Lisa Rivero is a writer and an adjunct associate professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering. Her website is http://lisarivero.com, and you can connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

July Fourth Monday Menu

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July is swirling away with the left behind smoke of sparklers and bottle rockets. This month V’s Place is reprinting a wonderful essay by Jolie Breeden about a parking lot brush with literary fame in And So It Goes: How a literary hero showed me he wasn’t all that–but I was.

“As we approached our ancient, primer-patched Volvo, who was standing next to it but Vonnegut himself! From his casual stance at the end of the car, one might have even thought he had been waiting there for us…” Read more here

Today’s Roadside Attraction is a timely piece of flash fiction of universal proportions by Suzanne Conboy-Hill, titled A Very Particular View.

“The heretics, smug bastards, have been banging on forever about how, all the time we were busy putting together some flat-out awesome scene, like the aurora borealis for instance, they were niggling away at the cosmic onion and peeling bits of it back to get to the core.”

Andrew Morrisey hangs his stark No Words photography in the Gallery

I hope you get something unique from each of these artists. Please leave them your thoughts in the comment sections, visit their websites and follow them on Twitter or Facebook.

V’s Place is always looking for artists, musicians and writers for future Fourth Monday installments; send an email to e.victoriaflynn@gmail.com. If you like hanging around the place, leave your email over there <– in the Take Out Menu to get updates via email or like V on Facebook or follow on Twitter or Pinterest.

Fourth Monday: June Menu

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Welcome to June’s Fourth Monday Specials!

For a savory taste of memoir and journal writing expertise visit Lynnette Benton’s article Reflecting on Reflective Writing. “These forms invite us to on a journey of inner exploration. Instead of just a glimpse into the writers’ minds, we get to meander there as they figure out, and sometimes even discover, how they really feel about an issue by examining it, engaging with it, on paper.”

As a second course, Arvid Berge meditates on a brief moment in Guatemala with his essay The Other in the Mirror.  “There are times in my life when I have moments of pure joy and contentment. My heart swells and I feel connected to every living soul. As connected to my fellow man as a child embraced in the arms of a loving parent. These moments come with the realization that in all humanity there is no “other”…. no one who is not fundamentally just like me.”

Dessert is a cool blast of flash fiction by Rob Brunet titled The Ride. “Parties packed with city kids tweaking their summers away, hammering to deep house, howling at the midnight moon. Money to be made. But it was against the rules.”

Check out these writers along with past contributors to V’s Place and remember to leave your thoughts in the comment sections. We all love hearing from you!

If you are a writer, artist or musician and would like to strut your stuff or know of an artist you’d like to see featured, please drop a line to e.victoriaflynn@gmail.com.

Write Hard, Die Free

 

 

Reflecting on Reflective Writing

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by Lynette Benton

In her post, No Man’s Land, Victoria raised intriguing questions about time periods in diaries and memoirs. She wrote that it was her understanding that diaries address current events, while memoirs record the past. Seems straightforward enough.

Diaries = present

Memoirs = past

But here’s a complication: She also mentioned seeing some memoirs that cover events as they unfold. (And I’m not even going into the idea held by some physicists and many mystics that time doesn’t really exist anyway and that everything’s actually happening in the infinite, illusive Now.)

Among the excellent memoirs written about events currently taking place in the writer’s life are those by Eva Hoffman (efforts to assimilate into American culture); Ann Morrow Lindbergh (desire to simplify her life); and Kate Millet (bouts with her own certifiable madness).

However, even journals written about the present include references to the past, or how else would we have meaningful contexts? The present always arises out of the past. Even if we’re suffering from amnesia, we have a past—and it’s likely that someone, somewhere knows that past.

So, since both journals and memoirs can be written about the present, it could be possible, as EVF stated in reply to the comment I left, “to get these forms all muddled.”

That’s because diaries and memoirs, along with personal essays, are all reflective writing genres, and share a number of trademark elements.

Self-disclosure is a major ingredient in these genres.

“Without meaningful self-disclosure, the memoir will lack authenticity and honesty,” says Linda Gartz, a family historian, who is also working on a memoir.

Further similarities among diaries, memoirs, and personal essays:

  • They all lend themselves to journeys of exploration.
  • Most cultivate an intimate, conversational tone. (Think: Eat, Pray, Love.)
  • The writer is firmly present as the “I” in the writing.

Another trait these genres have in common is a certain inconclusiveness. Gartz says her memoir “will end not with hard facts, but rather with reflection . . . .”

These forms invite us to on a journey of inner exploration. Instead of just a glimpse into the writers’ minds, we get to meander there as they figure out, and sometimes even discover, how they really feel about an issue by examining it, engaging with it, on paper. One idea leads to others.

Joan Didion’s graceful essay, “In Bed,” begins with a description of her suffering from migraines and ends, almost as if the idea suddenly struck her midway through her writing, with the insight that the migraines might serve a purpose for her.

One significant difference among these forms is that in general, journals are addressed to the self, whereas essays and memoirs are addressed to an audience.

Journals = private
Personal essays and memoirs = public

But every rule’s got an exception, right? Michael Kinsley, editor of The Slate Diaries, invited a variety of people to write diary entries for that excellent anthology. Did the fact that the guest writers knew their journals would be made public influence what they wrote?

In each of these forms, the writer shepherds readers through their personal feelings and perspective to universal experience.

***

Lynette Benton teaches creative writing all over the place—to teens and adults. She is also an editor. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and online venues, such as Skirt.com and More Magazine online. She uses her diary as a feeder for her memoir-in-progress, My Mother’s Money. You can reach her at Relief11@verizion.net.

 

The Other in the Mirror

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by Arvid Berge

A shirtless man stands in the light of a Guatemalan morning. He has a straight-razor in his right hand and shaving soap on his chin. He peers into a cracked mirror hanging from a nail in the doorjamb of his house. I watch him as I walk slowly past the gray unpainted structure that sits on an embankment, its foundation of rough stones rising up to meet the door sill six feet above the rocky hillside below the house. If there ever was an elevated porch to compliment the doorway, it is gone now. The man and the mirror occupy a doorway that exits out into Guatemala’s eternal spring air.

There are times in my life when I have moments of pure joy and contentment. My heart swells and I feel connected to every living soul. As connected to my fellow man as a child embraced in the arms of a loving parent. These moments come with the realization that in all humanity there is no “other”…. no one who is not fundamentally just like me.

I watch the man squinting into his cracked mirror, his nut brown Mayan features reflected in the equatorial sun. I recall my own morning ritual; shaving my face in an air-conditioned motel room, a Norelco electric shaver with AC/DC converter attachment buzzes against my chin, my pale features in the smoked mirror with its row of incandescent bulbs lighting my sleepy image.

I recall, also, my thoughts. First, there is the unavoidable recognition of my own mortality. Who isn’t confronted with such thoughts when taking stock of his or her image after a night’s sleep?

Then, of course, the thoughts, sometimes exciting…more often mundane, about the day ahead; the “must do’s, might do’s, should do’s and so on. Since I’m vacationing and a first time visitor to this little village in Guatemala’s northern province of jungles, jaguars, and Mayan ruins, my mental prospects for the day tend toward excitement. I tell my image in the smoked glass, “nothing mundane about this place”.

I’m thinking that same thought as I stumble along the rock strewn street and listen to the roosters crowing and dogs barking. I jump over a little stream of sewage flowing along the edge of the road to avoid being run over by a taxi coming from the one-lane airport that serves two flights a day from Guatemala City. The sound of the taxi diverts the attention of the man in the doorway away from his own image in the mirror and he turns his head toward where I stand. It is in that moment when I feel the joy.

This man in the doorway and I on the street, we could not be more different. Yet, we are the same. His world and my world are, as the saying goes, “worlds apart”. Yet, we inhabit the same world. He shaves his chin and I shave mine. His skin is my skin. My thoughts, no doubt, mirror his thoughts. I cannot see him as something other than myself. Everything I see in my mirror is also reflected in his. I can love him or despise him, envy him or pity him, dismiss him or embrace him, but I cannot see him as an “other”.

He smiles. And, I smile back.

.

Am Is Was Were

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photo by Maurice Kessler

by Kellie M. Walsh

After 20 years, I am selling my guitar. Am I no longer a musician? I only ever played—truly played—for a handful of those years. Was I n/ever a musician?

How many times must one X to be/come Y? When do/es I become synonymous with the doing, the am equal to the act? I am a musician, or I was a musician, or I may have been a musician, but I am not now, nor may I n/ever have been, a musician. I was what I did; now I am what I am not.

Yet I am where I am: [town]er, [state]ite, [metropolitan region]er, [coastal region]er, [abbreviated country]n, [continent]an, [planet]ling, citizen of the [whole damn galaxy]. And I am relative to whence I come/came: over here, native or local; over there, foreigner or alien. I even am where I no longer be: “Once a [city]er, always a [city]er.”

I am how I got/get t/here: on two feet: pedestrian; two wheels: cyclist; four wheels: skater; eight wheels: roller skater. On four wheels (motorized), I am a driver; on ten wheels (motorized), a passenger; on three wheels (airborne), a(n in)frequent flier. And balanced atop dozens of wheels coupled together by arms of steel and metal alloys, hurtling deep through the earth or high through the tops of trees, shifting between who/where I was and who/where I will be, dreaming into the moving black or to the (not-)far off mountains beyond of being elseone, elsewhere, I am, alas, a commuter. I think therefore I am, but I am not what I can think.

I am names and nicknames, identities and categories, truncations, abbreviations, diminutions, initialisms, neologisms, and at least three concepts appended with “mistress.”

I am (race) white, (reality) beige-peach-pink, sometimes (feeling) blue or yellow or green. I am what I eat (vegetarian/omnivore), how I buy (consumer/ist), whether I believe (a/theist) and what (myriad). I am innate: female. Cultural: woman. Sexually oriented: flexible.

I am relative, gender-neutral: spouse, sibling, child, grandchild; and relative, gender-specific: wife, sister, daughter, granddaughter. I am goddaughter, niece, first cousin, second cousin, third cousin, eventual fourth cousin, and daughter-sometimes-sister when my father can’t keep his sibling/’s name and me/mine straight.

To my mother, I am surviving; had she lived, she’d be a survivor. I may be/come a widow. I’ll likely be/come an orphan. But I am not. Yet.

I am not you, nor you I. And though you or I may be he or she or him or her, you and I are we, and we are not them—nor they us.

I am not a brand.

I am what I am not. I (y)am what I (y)am. But that’s not all that I am.

I am, indeed, what I do. Titular: Writer, Editor, Web Content and Development Manager. Procedural: writer, editor, Web content and development strategist. Spatially challenged: writer, editor, Web strategist. Verbal, easier: I write, I edit, I build Web sites. I am how I do: essayist, journalist, interviewer, playwright, copywriter, (generally bad) poet. I am that I do, whether when or why or if. Writers exist in the spaces between words, else they’d never exist at all.

Many older guitars are finished with a clear nitrocellulose lacquer that naturally yellows with age. Two decades ago, I bought a (then) new Pearl (powder) Blue guitar. By the time of this posting, I will have sold an old (to me), new (to her) minty, seafoam green one. Green/blue, old/new, mine/hers: it is all of these things, and none of them. I am becoming. And so am you.

***

Kellie M. Walsh is a (procedural) writer, editor, Web content and development strategist, and organizer of all things. Her writing has appeared in PopMatters, The Rumpus, and Creative Nonfiction, among others, and on the sites of Fortune 500s, nonprofits, and seven-piece jazz bands. In her spare time she is working on a book about a flag that stalked a drummer around the world.

You can find more Fourth Monday action with Pam Parker’s flash Roadside Attraction, “Unroped,” and Chris Miscik’s sci-fi and fantasy images in the Gallery. If you’d like to contribute your writing, art or musical talent to the pages of V’s Place please send an email to e.victoriaflynn@gmail.com, and remember to sign up for future installments straight to your inbox by entering your email address in the take out menu to the left.

Love Wraps Round a Wrist

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By Lisa Marie Brodsky

Dedicated to my mother, Sheila (1954-2006) and Aislyn, Gabrielle, and Atrus – most definitely, my kids

I didn’t notice until it was already happening: such a simple gesture which had such monumental meaning. She had no idea what it meant to me and I don’t know if she ever will. Perhaps if she ever experiences a huge loss she can understand. Today, though, she is eight years old and she merely fingers my bracelet, the one I’ve worn for years.

It is not a fancy bracelet; it doesn’t sparkle or catch a jeweler’s eye, but it is so simple in its beauty that I get generous comments: “Oh, what a beautiful bracelet,” someone will say. “Is that tiger eye?”

And I answer, “It was my mother’s.”

Besides her wedding band, this is the only piece of my mother’s jewelry I own. I wear it every day; I never take it off. My three stepchildren look at me, their mother-figure for the past three years, and they don’t see my much-missed mother who passed away two years before I met them. No matter how much of a lost child I may feel like inside, they see an adult mother-figure and I just hope that they love me half as much as I loved my mother.

A stepmother’s role can be very confusing. Do you step in or let Dad take care of it? If “Mom” is in the picture, how much mothering do you do for the children? In my case, we find ourselves having to unparent a lot of damaged parenting that went on. There are fights, crying, yelling, struggle, but the thing I try to remember is this:

There are moments like that above, where my 8-year-old girl (yes, I call her my girl) lovingly touches and discovers my mother’s bracelet. She sits on my lap and snuggles close. I can smell the fruity shampoo scent wafting from her hair. I kiss her on the top of her head and watch her intently investigate this bracelet – so nondescript and ordinary, yet something intrigues her. What is it? I wonder. Can she sense the generations behind this bracelet? Can she sense the love that my mother had for me and the love I had for my mother? I imagine she does.

I feel comforted imaging that.

So on days when kids cry and scream and we yell and grunt, I picture again and again my kids touching generations of love wrapped around my wrist. I imagine my mother touching her grandchildren, never meeting them in the flesh, but definitely, most definitely, loving them through me.

***

Born in Chicago, Lisa Marie Brodsky is a published poet with several books of published poetry and one about her mother’s death forthcoming from Salmon Publishing. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, always focusing on the semi-autobiographical, has been nationally and internationally recognized and published. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Loyola University of Chicago and her M.F.A. in Poetry from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lisa forgetfully blogs at http://memoryspeaksintongues.blogspot.com, but you can also find her a bit more regularly at her faith blog, http://dovechronicles.blogspot.com. Lisa is the Wisconsin Director of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (http://alzpoetry.com) and works as a Job Coach for disabled adults, a true honor. In 2009, she married and became an insta-Mom to three stepchildren, ages 13, 8, and 5. She and her family live in Evansville, Wisconsin, the first small-town Lisa has ever lived in. The holiday parades down Main Street amaze her.

Check out more Fourth Monday action with flash fiction by Jillian Kuhlmann in Roadside Attractions and original music by The Kate Morrissey Band, now playing on the Music Stage. Also, remember to keep updated on all Fourth Monday activity by subscribing to V’s Place or submit your own work to e.victoriaflynn@gmail.com.


Examining Walker Evans

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by Fred Osuna

An asymptomatic condition of some concern to my primary physician found me sitting in a specialist’s examining room on a recent morning. Pushed up alongside one wall was the examination table: a well-worn piece of equipment with cracking leather corners, faded paint on its legs forcing a resemblance to an abandoned pommel horse base circa 1977 – a crackling, long sheet of tissue paper strategically placed in an apparent effort to conceal those details. The table occupied the length of the wall, and led my eyes, upon entering the room, to the plate glass window that occupied its perpendicular neighbor. The window was adorned with aluminum blinds, half-opened to afford a panoramic view of the hospital campus from the room’s fifth-floor perch. After spending a few minutes taking in the sights, watching the green lights at the intersection turn to red a number of times while three shuttles performed their drop-off-pick-up duties at the adjacent building’s entrance, I turned around to face the door – now closed – through which I had entered. I sat down in a stiff chair with my back to the window.

Centered on the wall opposite the examining table, to the right of a small sink and above a rolling stool that, I assumed, the specialist would soon be occupying, was a large framed photograph.

Peeking out from the bottom of the print, almost obscured by the frame, was the photo credit: Walker Evans Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama 1936. I leaned back on my heels, in front of the picture, and soaked in the details: the hand-painted signs, the telegraph poles, the onlookers in the background, the weight of the melons in the boys’ hands, the price of eel, the fish face frown, the outdated phone number configuration, the oddly-placed apostrophes, the stacked fruit orbs in the window.

Presently, the physician entered and sat squarely where I thought he might. He rolled to the center of the small room and faced me. The Walker Evans photograph was between us, off to the side of our avenue of communication. We discussed his concerns. I mentioned my asymptomatic state. He proposed a plan of discovery to rule out his concerns. I gave my consent to go forward. During the discussion, I occasionally glanced to my left, toward the Walker Evans photograph. When we finished this stage of my visit, I gently detoured with an observation.

“That’s a fascinating photograph.”

He turned toward it and lit up. “A Walker Evans, yes. That’s an exhibition print. It’s a rather famous photograph.” He seemed to hold this particular picture in high esteem and had obviously spent some quality time admiring it. “You know, for that exhibition – in the 1980s, I think – they went to all of the sites of the original Evans photographs and recaptured them in the present day. That fish stand is just right outside of town,” meaning Birmingham, the largest “town” in the state of Alabama, where we were meeting. “The updated version of this photo has two boys holding fish, not melons. And that building is gone now.”

I asked if he had been the one who had selected this print to adorn the walls of the exam room.

“No, this is my partner’s print,” he said, referring to the other physician whose name was on the office door. He then paused, anticipating an explanation of my initial observation.

I turned my eyes to the print. “I was wondering if you thought that there was something maybe a little odd about the picture.”

He turned and made a cursory scan of the picture he’d glanced at hundreds of times before. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but, mm, it’s oddly fitting that in the center of that photograph is a pretty obvious representation of, you know, for this being a urology practice.”

Puzzled, he took another look. It took him no more than a couple of seconds to see the central image – the watermelon phallus – and he laughed. “I’d never noticed that,” he said, to my disbelief and his quiet amusement. Then he swiveled back toward me. “So. Now. Stand up, facing me, and let your pants drop to your ankles.”

***

A native of the paradise that is the San Diego County coastline, Fred Osuna lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where ceiling fans provide scant relief from the relentless heat and humidity. He writes not nearly as much as he would like, though constantly generates tweet-length vignettes in his head, throughout the day; some of these have landed in the pages of Creative Nonfiction under both his real name and a pseudonym. He struggles to maintain three websites: Spitball Army (www.spitballarmy.com), Cryptich (www.cryptich.com) and Laser’s Edge Leftovers (www.leleftovers.wordpress.com). You should ask him sometime about his collection of World War II letters, but now you’re probably more interested in figuring out his other name.

***

For more Fourth Monday posts check out flash fiction by Jane Hammons in Roadside Attractions, Camille Swift’s sublime fantasy portraits in the Gallery, or participate in a mini blog tour of The Dead Shoe Society author readings, beginning at the Open Mic. And if you haven’t seen them yet, don’t forget to check out past contributors on the Music Stage, Rumors, and elsewhere on the Blog.