here's to

yet another New Year. May it be brighter and better than the last.

[previously]

Playing Mahler

When I play Mahler, I see expanse; a markedly Teutonic expanse. I see snow-capped mountains bordered by dense woods and rolling fields of green, sitting upon the brow of the land in desolate majesty.

I perceive distance; I hear the keening and pipping of birds, riding upon the crisp briskness that is the freshest of cold morning air. It is a distance that the birds observe cautiously - so as to be heard, but not seen.

The feathered polyphony is joined by the chortling of the brooks and the rustling of leaves. It is a celebration of nature in all of its stark beauty.

Nature is not alone; humanity is never far away. I hear a cowherd's song. A mother's lullaby. Rounds from the tavern. The strident call of horns from a nearby city or the passing entourage of a burgher. Maybe all of that at once. They are enchanting and distinctive aromas, bubbling forth from a rich, auditory stew.

I never knew that playing Mahler could be quite so liberating.

in the spirit of the season

I give to you... the essential selection of "snow art" from Calvin and Hobbes!

Kurt Vonnegut: Requiem

photo credit: ESA

Whilst noting the failure of the climate conference at Copenhagen, I was reminded of this gem from "Man Without A Country":

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do."

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
''It is done."
People did not like it here.

[fin]

Nike

art by Andrea Joseph

I came to know her on the first day of school. She wore grey sneakers which sported swooshes of bright magenta.

"Just do it," they encouraged - I couldn't.

The experience was as fleeting as the others that were to come, and my few successes with her were similarly transient. I never caught up with her chariot.

To this day, I am sure that the sneakers were portentous.

[fin]

----
flash-fiction in six sentences

so it happened

that I chanced upon a post by a friend of a friend. I do not always agree with what he writes, but his work is always insightful, and occasionally, illuminating. The following provided me with much-needed warmth and encouragement in the cold wake of my recent failure.

"Two of the greatest tragedies occur when a person's expectations are incongruent with his abilities, or when the circumstances that life deals to him are incommensurate with the potential that nature has endowed him with. But the protagonist in either case need not be a tragic hero, like a Macbeth drawing arms against morality and destiny, nor like a Miltonian Satan falling further into a darkness not of the Deep but of his own creation. A person of real ability would take life into his hands, and not crush it, but shape it into a design of his own choosing."

It has helped put me in perspective, and I've taken the latest turn of events remarkably well. Or so I hope.

I suppose if there is anything at all that I am sorry for, it is that I have now cost Rayner a bottle of Baileys, and, well, broken a promise to someone whom I could conceivably call an old friend.

see you sometime

art by Audrey Kawasaki

Where are you now
Are you in some hotel room
Does it have a view?
Are you caught in a crowd
Or holding some honey
Who came on to you?

Why do you have to be so jive
Okay, hang up the phone
It hurts
But something survives
Though it's undermined
I'd still like to see you sometime

I'm feeling so good
And my friends all tell me
That I'm looking fine
I run in the woods
I spring from the boulders
Like a papa lion

I'm not ready to
Change my name again
But you know I'm not after
A piece of your fortune
And your fame
'Cause I tasted mine
I'd just like to see you sometime

Pack your suspenders
I'll come meet your plane
No need to surrender
I just want to see you again

We're in for more rain
I could sure use some sunshine
On my apple trees
It seems such a shame
To start off so kind
And end so heartlessly

I couldn't take them all on then
With a headful of questions
And hypes
So when the hopes got so slim
I just resigned

But I'd still like to see you sometime
I'd sure like to see you

-- Joni Mitchell

The Janitor

photography by Jeff Rinehart

I once knew a man who, whilst in search of broken pieces of time past and life lost, settled for picking up behind others. He was as wise as a man could be, acquainted to our offal as he was; what better measure of humanity than its detritus?

He was a janitor; I came to know him as a friend. For my benefit, he swiped food off counters. Unseen and unheard, he was a great eavesdropper, a Listener, if you will; he always told the best stories.

Never turn your back on a man who has the keys to everything.

[fin]

----
flash-fiction in six sentences

Remorse

art by James Jean

Remorse is the inspector who comes to call when you're snorting a line. In your rush to flush the drugs back into the sewage of your memory, you trip and stub your toe against emotion.

Remorse is the pale gloom of age and waste, descending upon a life which you realise you've been living for nothing. Soiled by easy sex and stained by watered drink, you've danced your youth away into the seductive maw of night.

Remorse is the boy whom you turned away all those years ago, now mature and mocking; once sticky-sweet and sentimental, then platitudinous and pleading, he offered you religion - you did not convert.

Remorse is the rack upon which one's spent soul is stretched, remorse is the unforgiving whip which flagellates the self; remorse is the punishment for living lost, and lost lives, lost living.

[fin]

----
vignette in six sentences

It's official.

I will now be supporting Cambridge for the annual Boat Race - as I always should have been!

Eggs

Light begins where darkness ends, Sophie knew that much; much like how she knew that the right side of town began where Beggar's Alley ended, or how a new season had begun once the last had run its course.

But what did she know? Knowledge nestled in her mind after ignorance had taken flight, and that was a fine thing, but as soon as it had made its home, Sophie found that she knew more about what she did not know, than what she newly knew. Within the wild jungle of Sophie's young mind, to Sophie, ignorance was a cuckoo of sorts which left not one, but an entire clutch of eggs in the care of its unsuspecting rival.

An indignant Sophie then decided that in spite of all that she could learn, lest she become more ignorant than she ever was when she first began, she would try her hardest to learn as little as she could.

Little did she know.

[fin]

----
flash-fiction in six sentences