There’s a change in the weather I didn’t notice before. I can taste it. On the teeny hairs on my cracked tongue. Dry musk – bergamot. No. More of a stale smell like a cedar closet that hasn’t been opened for ages. Dank. With a hint of old lady’s muskrat fur coat, not evident yesterday. My senses. Piqued. I look-see over at the stream of light punching through the crack in the window and recoil like a Bela Lugosi vampire. Too much. Too soon. The filmy glow unfamiliar after an eon spent in isolation. There is much to revive. Restore. I emerge like a bear from its den. Famished. I don’t remember when I gobbled up the last ramen pkg. Empty cans, soiled take-out cartons, dehydrated and junk food foils, cellophane, and Styrofoam packaging punctuate the countertops, marking my itinerary and grazing practices of the last few months. No sense in rummaging around in the cupboards, I know they are bare. I hear the tiny brown mouse scurrying. Again, behind the sofa. Sounds like he’s found something to eat. Carrying it off through the fissure, in the dry wall. He’s darling. But I do need to eat. I reposition the trap a little closer. To the hole. It’s hard to tell what season we’re in, now. Is that snow I smell. I’ve been self-isolating. For so long. Last time I checked the president was behaving like a Sith Lord. Soon after, my internet connection went down. Something about non-payment of fees; the last mailed invoice said. But honestly. It’s been a welcome reprieve to be without cable. And Wi-Fi. I mean after all the sparring with the press, a break, does a person well. This social distancing thing is taking a major toll. My skin has lost its healthy sheen. More mayonnaisy than tanned, and the granular flaking is not a pretty picture. I desperately need a strong dose of Vit D. I peel back the edge of pasted newspaper pressed against the windowpane. It has done an excellent job keeping the winds and cold at bay, but, in, the, process, I, had, to, sacrifice, sunlight. I turn the door handle, but it doesn’t budge; rusted stuck. From disuse. I can hear the wind rattling the branches against the side of the house and can feel the daylight warming the door. If I call out, I wonder if my neighbour Milosevic will hear me. Come to my rescue. Let me out. I open my mouth, but a pitiful sound emerges – not my own. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken. To anyone. My voice has shrivelled from disuse. I remember once when I lost my voice from laryngitis and had to nurse it back to full decibel with hibiscus tea. And manuka honey. What I would give for a teaspoon of that delectable nectar now. Well, that’s not going to happen – since all the bees went extinct long ago. I decide that when this is finally all over, I’m going to get a dog. I’ll call her Mercy. Pitié for short, to remind me… I’ll be better prepared for the next pandemic. I grab my n-95 and head for the door. I take another gander out the window – heavy clouds, chalky. I decide I can wait for a change in the weather. 551 words Published in 'Life in the Time of Covid', December 19 2020
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We pause in front of Léger’s eight-foot-long canvas we had been hearing so much about. The colours sharp and lacquered. The subject modern, energetic, and self-possessed; a bit more downtown than we expected. “Curious that it was painted in 1921”, Julie recites, “when at the same time…”, I know what’s coming, and brace myself. I pull in a short breath. Julie lets her peacoat drag on the marble floor, the tip of her suede bootie catches in the jacket’s pocket. She’s distracted, excited to add layering from her encyclopaedic reserves. Nothing else comes into her field of view… “when at the same time, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, Coco Chanel launched Perfume No. 5, the Spanish Flu infected 500 million people, Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party”…. I tune out, staring intently at the figure on the right. I could swear she just took a sip of her tea, lifted up her cup to her lips, supped, and set it back down on its saucer. I peer. Intently. There is no after image, no tell-tale. I glance at Julie, she is motoring on, no change in diatribe, so I shake it off, decide I must be feeling light-headed from her droning….”when it was the Roaring Twenties, a decade of prosperity and debauchery—the era of bands, bootleggers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers”…. Gobsmacked now—the figure in the foreground is turning the page in her book, forefinger and thumb lightly grabbing the corner tab and folding it over—she’s looking directly at me, do I register that I just saw her do that; how crazy, as if she’s waiting for me to react…. I shake my head, ridding the image. Julie continues obsessing about laying down context, but I’ve heard enough. I inch a few paces left to read the Exhibit Label, and she follows my lead: *** Fernand Léger Three Women 1921-22 Oil on canvas 6′ 1/4″ x 8′ 3″ (183.5 x 251.5 cm) Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund MoMA, Floor 5, 514 The David Geffen Wing “Fernand Léger’s precursor to California Valley Girls, in his large-scale, Three Women 1921-22, excites all the senses in this stylish salon setting. The three nudes depicted here in ochre, kasha, and sand, with ‘sideswept hair gleaming like sheet metal’ reflect the hidden recursive impulses of the then modern-day subjugation of gender norms while offering a nod towards an indeterminate centrifugal binary world. Colours and lines are clean and sharp resisting autumnal dissection. – An honest piece.” *** “What the hell is that crap?” she tousles her hair, removes her boot from her peacoat, and slides on to the next painting and the next history lesson. I don’t dare look back at the canvas. The three beauties roll their eyes and settle in for the next viewing. Published in The South Shore Review, July 2021
On the outskirts, follow the path a ways; the variegated cracks, verdant-grey and heliotrope, twist into a deep fissure, the opening still ahead. Pace yourself —one tiny step in front of the other —before the pungent stink assaults you; you’ll know you are on the right track. The door is a hinged movable barrier that allows ingress into and egress from the enclosure. The created opening in the wall, a portal. Push it, hard, it creaks and groans like violin practice; scratchy like when the bow is placed too close to the bridge. Cover your nose and mouth with your other hand, the smell of carrion, decay, rotting death, is in bloom, and overwhelms. Stop coughing, you will attract the Shoebill. It too overwhelms when aroused. Look down at your feet. Be afraid of black mamba snakes, the ones that coil and writhe and slither. They are all around you. Follow the widening groove until the light dims through overhanging branches. The canopy above is filled with trumpeted song, Spotted Pardalote, Northern Flicker, Bushtit, and Dark-eyed Junco flitting from limb to nest, secreting notes; deafening in the radiant hour. You do not have much time, hours at most. The legs of the giant huntsman spider, long compared to its stumpy body, twist forward in a crab-like fashion; it will guide you. Continue on past the grey-buff statue, its whale-head, shoe-shaped beak is awesome. Notice it does not move. If it does, let it pass. The Shoebill is prehistoric. It only wants to know you are here in good faith. Offer it a tidbit of cracker, handful of seed. Do not make mention of nile monitor lizards, serpents, or baby crocodiles, you will only arouse its darker impulses. Notice the mound of dung beetles, flesh flies and armoured carnivorous insects; the procession clamouring toward the central phallus-like structure, surrounded by the spathe, a pleated skirt-like covering that is bright green on the outside and deep maroon inside. The spadix has grown into a large club-like head of blood-red seeds. It is gargantuan. Magnificent. Erotic. A single bloom the size of a small tree, stinky and putrid like rotting death, shooting up ten feet in height. Its leaf structure towering to twenty feet tall and sixteen feet across. Behold—the Corpse flower. This is why you have come. Witness its majesty. It is over much too quickly. Do not mention this place. It will be our secret —every seven years. Now go. 410 words Published in 'New World Writing', December 13 2020 Reprinted in The Journal of Radical Wonder January, 2023
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