The Watch Maker

She was the Watch Maker. Every piece came to her, on her marble seat, where she took each precious piece of living soul and wound it carefully together; fitting and caressing, sanding here and there. She looked at each piece with hope and sorrow: for each clock there was a time to run, and a time to stop. She put the times within each heart, she set the motions running, running down the sands that would count them each to their death. And she sent them down, down the line toward where they would tick away. She sent them with love and sorrow.
Until one day she could not send one. It came to her one morning after breakfast. And when she looked upon the time pieces, spread out before her, her fingertips trained in infinite care brushing each spring and screw, she saw the strange beauty. This watch was too lovely, and too odd. And she swept it up quickly, unused to such a movement, her arms jerked, and she put the pieces behind her, safe away, and dared not look at them all that day.
It was some months before she surreptitiously began to care for the pieces, caressing them together until they clicked and bolted, until the function was but a breath away. But for this little mechanism, she couldn't bear to see the days click away. She withheld the watch, and kept it brave and bare within her pocket, without the crystal of a face, the hands twitching mightily when she breathed. It seemed eager, but calm, against the warmth of her.
And when the watchmaker had gained a century, two centuries, three centuries, each time piece clicked and cared, breathed into life until it sprang to being, still she felt the little function against her, the watery fountainhead of its sinuous pieces flowing, still eager, still burning to run, yet calm and sedate, warm and fine and satisfied.
The sun came up red that day. The watchmaker watched it from the oval cglass above her bench and made a frowning noise in her chest. The watch jumped, and she felt it click. It ticked. It had begun, and so she hurriedly fit the perfect crystal of the face upon it and she sent it quietly away, with tears.

There are old souls and young souls. Some souls seem unready to meet the world, and others tired already. And there are the souls both aged and energetic, ancient yet awake. A liquid pair of eyes opened on the world, quiet and sleepy and glad. And a family embraced it, a young family, unsure of what it was, yet thinking they already knew.

Collaborative Poetry, Work 1, Architecuture/Life

Concepts and shadows of history, architecture and lives, (GL)
Can make for structural deficiencies (NH)
Prices not paid and sprockets still cranked, (JL)
Something good contrives. (JL)

But life and art are never sweet together, (GL)
Dancing a house for a roomful of chairs. (GL)
Our blurry focus wears. (NH)

Left alone, the sweet sounds of hours gone by, (KL)
Whispering the echoes of dream sweet sighs, (MR)
Ride on the winds of one's internal life. (JB)

Damn, I have stepped in a cow pie. (KL)

Yet life's weary focus with keen eagle eyes, (MR)
Is never brighter than in the morning rays (GL)
Of those who do not wish to sit, learn, and stay, (GL)
The firedogs of university. Never wanting to burn. (GL)

Credit of authorship to: Gillia Lambert (GL), Naraelle Hohensee (NH), John Lambert (JL), Ken Lambert (KL), Merri Rosado (MR), and Jon Barrows (JB).

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 30, Remnants

There were the remnants of the day on the kitchen table, like any day. And she looked at them, and sighed, and wished they would all be put away, and thought: perhaps tomorrow. The empty milk carton, the product of a week of cereal eating by her and her love, and the cash he had left her for the tolls, the ipod he had attached to the computer and forgotten upon the table after it was charged, his ever-present concern to have music around him surfacing again after a week of stressful, time-consuming work for both of them.
Books, her contribution, constantly inundating surfaces in waves of new releases and old favorites, always toppling between the two boundaries of her life - from the library and back to it like the tides. And the shopping list and its notepad, yellow and crumpled, with the every-day memories written on it like a palimpsest, sheets and sheets of the memories of hours and days, the have-tos, duties, and needs that they planned and fulfilled together.
The things she sighed and wished would be put away.
Until the day she realized it was the very thing she loved so much. The day she realized he wouldn't come home again, and she left all the things there, like smears of life and love, until they became dusty. She picked up the money and his ipod, she turned them in her hands, and felt the ghost of his placing them there, carelessly, carefully for her. And she cried and wished it all undone, but it was done, and so she sat at the table, like sitting at a piece of art, a memorial. And wondered why so much of her life had been putting things away.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 29, Heartache

There was once a woman who wanted a car. She really wanted it. It was the one thing her father had never let her have, that feeling of independence. And so she waited and waited for it. When she was twenty, the picture of the car was on her refrigerator, shiny and new and red, a beautiful Ford, and though it was outdated, when she was thirty, and working in the city it stayed there, on her refrigerator, looking at her. She kept wanting it, and though men would ask her out to dinner, or lunch, or a drink, she thought about the car and she just kept working, saving, hoping someday she would make enough to get it.
When she was forty, she went looking for it. It was a twenty-year-old car by now, they said. It wouldn't work very well. But she found it, she found it in a junkyard, but there it was. She had it towed to a garage. She painted it bright red. She invested in every accoutrement. Finally, after a year, it was ready. The garageman called and told her it was ready; she smiled. Then she paled. She had never learned to drive.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 28, Cold

There was once a beautiful queen. Her skin was white as pearls, her eyes the color of the sky, and her hair as dark as a starry winter's night. She was the wife of the most awe-inspiring king; he was from a hot country, his skin was as dark as his wife's was fair, and his eyes the color of honey. His hair, like hers, was dark as the coal when the fire has burned. They lived in his kingdom of plenty, and they prospered. Until the summer came. It was the hot time. And this was when the queen became unwell. She began to get colder. The more intensely shone the sun, the colder she became; while others sweltered and ran to the baths to be wet and cool, she huddled beneath her silks and shivered. The king, large and warm, came to her and held her, but she was as ice in his arms.
He called the best physicians, and the best magicks. He went to far away places himself, to bring her unctions and syrups. But nothing did any good. As the summer deepened, so did her pallor, and her hair, thick and shining, began to fade to almost gray. At night he held her, because he did not know what else to do, and he wept over her freezing form.
They knew her time was close, she could no more recover from her state, and she asked, her voice faltering, to be taken back to her home land, so that she could see and taste the snows once more before she died. He protested the temperatures, but she asked, and the pleading of her blue lips convinced him. That night, without preparation, they left for the snowy lands Northwards.
After many days of travel, they arrived at the lands of snow and ice, and there, clad still lightly as for the heat, she descended her elephant and walked, barefooted on the snow. "Oh how it burns!" she cried, but delightedly, and her cheeks, before so blue, had lost their deathly pale. They shone with warmth and health.
They went to see her father, who lived far up the mountains, on a craggy cliff. And there they stayed for some weeks. But just as the heat did so much bad to the lady, the cold did the same to the gentleman; he was eaten up by fever. He could not be touched, hardly, for fear of heating him yet more. His queen, weeping in desperation, ordered him back to the Southlands, and accompanied him.
The summer was fading, and as winter came, the queen recovered her spirits somewhat. But the cold within her could not help but come out in the temperate climes. And so it was, of course, with her husband and the heat of his lands born within him, too. They looked at each other, but knew the answer lay somewhere neither of them loved. Would the love for each other be enough?
They went to the midlands. Beautiful though they were, where flowers beckoned spring, and summer was swept with delicious breezes, both sighed for their homelands, and the homeland of the other. The sands and the snow were the same, somehow, so different from the lands between them. And though they lived healthily in the grass-covered hills, the hills were very foreign.
But they loved one another, and in that love they realized for love and happiness to be together, so must there be suffering. And so it was. Each winter the lived within the heart of the Southlands, and the Queen suffered; each summer they spent in the North where the King was nursed from his ever-weening fever; and in the spring and fall they kept to the midlands, where their good health bloomed, but their kingdoms and people were not. And in the cycle of the seasons there was balance, and in the marriage there was justice, and in the hearts of the king and queen there was love, and pain, and love again.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 27, The Weaver

There was once an old, old woman. She did not speak, but she was invaluable to her family and her tribe. She lived in the mountains, beyond the reach of modernity where trucks and cars passed. She kept to old ways and old habits, except, of course, for her beloved electric stove - for she could cook and clean like she never had been able before with the contraption. And she wove. That was the way she told her stories. She wove and wove. And each work was a story.
When Violet had a fourth, miracle child, at fifty-two, that went into the baskets. The weave was beautiful, and complicated, made of many different subtle colors. It told of passion and of pain and of the inestimable complications of birth and life.
And when the sky clouded up and it rained for what seemed like months, the dark wool wove together under her fingers into stories of homes lost and cars ruined, paintings and beds molded, and refinding, the good silver jewelry, the love for one another; the baskets and the mats were alive with straining vines.
And always, in the deep evening, with the stars beginning to shine through the veil of day that was being drawn back to reveal the depth of night, she would weave quietly, humming to herself, a different thing. No basket, no mat. A long thing, a thin thing. A box, a large one, with sides of reeds.
They found her the night after the full moon. She looked peaceful and lovely, her eyes were closed. She lay on her bed, at ease. Her feet looked strangely placed, but what does not sometimes look strange about death? The coroner called her official time of death, and they thought that would be the end of it. But Cassia, the store clerk, couldn't let it go. She walked up the mountain, she let herself into the old cottage and she nosed around until she found what she was looking for. The project, the old thing, sides and a bottom. The size of a small woman. And unfinished. The basket told a story - a story perhaps only the old woman could read - but the story was not finished. The weaver had stopped, but in a way the basket told on. Cassia called the police. She reported it a murder, she laid out her evidence, the town stood behind her.
And why? Why? There was little to it; death by poison, culprit unknown. The story was unfinished, with it the basket.
Many years later, an old man came to the town. He was very old, and worn. His eyes were hardly eyes any more. He looked about the town, he asked and he nosed. The basket weaver? She was dead. And her baskets? Gone, gone to the little city museum, where she was held a living - now dead - part of history and of heritage. He walked slowly, achingly to the museum. It opened like an old basement, and smelled of it, from lack of usage. He touched the weavings, he traced his fingers. He put his nose to an old basket, shiny with the oil of her hands. He ran a thumb over the raw edges of the last basket. And then his fingers made odd movements, like a weaver.
They wove and wove. They wove a story of a man, driven mad with frustration and a woman, who would not yield. A man who wanted the woman away, away from the darkness of the forest and the danger of living alone, and a woman who wanted her life and herself. And the hands told of the hatred that built in the pain of the loss, and the fear of the discovery of a relation so unmodern, and the fear of the loss of an inheritance, many years older than either of them. And as his hands moved, rusty at first, but then more sure, he wove in the strands of the basket with another plate of reeds, and they formed, together, a patchwork history. And then he left, and he did not come back. And he did not look back. But his hands were there, in the weaving, and his warmth, and his life.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 26, Betray Me

There was once a young couple, kind to each other, but kinder to themselves. And though they both felt marriage was quite the thing to do - and it was quite a lovely wedding, in the style of Barbie and Ken or perhaps, better still, Cinderella and the Prince - they felt after they had done it as if it was, in a word, done. The next item on the list must of course be children.
It was a time when the house and the family was the world of the woman, the female, and office and the road and all the other places of danger and sexual exploration, and any sort of interaction at all outside of tea parties, socials, telephone calls, was the universe of the man. Little oases, the home; or little prisons. Alternately, Elizabeth felt about her home as such. A haven, and a prison, and sometimes, vaguely, a place she hated. But those sorts of ideas were soon squelched.
Charlie was a good man. He was nice to his wife, he rarely had a mistress at a hotel, and he never embarrassed her, at least not in front of others. He was kind to dogs, children, old women. And she loved him. As love is wont to do, though, it tended to wane in the light of the days spent away from him, and the moments when it really came to her that the strange smell upon him was the product of other lips and hands than her own. So it was a wan sort of love, something like the perfume of a distant flower that would come and go as the winds blew, or as often as she saw him in his nice suit, smoking a cigarette and looking like a mixture of Clark Gable and John Barrymore.
It was all well enough. Two years of quiet socializing, and fondness, and firesides with a book or two, and very little talking. Until he came home, broken, and he collapsed upon the sofa and he wouldn't look at her at all. The roast got cold. The jello began to melt slightly, but he didn't want any, and she felt funny eating by herself. She offered him a drink, trying to pretend that all was usual, and everything was just as it should be; but she couldn't help feeling she was missing some amount of wifely knowledge. This was outside bounds.
"Oh, Shelly," he said - he called her Shelly because he always had teased her that Elizabeth was the name of an ice queen, and that Shelly was so very much more her, like the happy sunny feeling at a sandy beach - he said her name again, and couldn't look at her.
"Yes?" she answered, tentative, really not sure what to say at all.
He just stared at the clean, tiny, empty fireplace, his face wooden.
"Would you like another drink?"
"NO!" he screamed at her, and went face down on the couch.
Two days later, he hadn't gotten up or gone to work. He was a mess, she tentatively called the doctor, who came, and sat with him a long time.
He came out, saddened, but with a smile for her. She fluttered around him, her large skirt rustling, her eyes worried, but still prettily so. "What is it, doctor?"
"I'm afraid he'll have to tell you himself, my dear," said the doctor kindly, and walked out of the house, purposefully, as if he had something better to do.
After another day of silence, and worrying, she finally entered their room (she had been sleeping on the hideabed in the study) and sat by him, her face hard. She asked, in a stiff little voice, what the matter was.
No answer.
She cleared her throat and asked again.
Silence.
Finally, quite deliberately, she upended the jug of water by their bed on his head.
He popped up, his eyes sad and horrified. "How could you?" he demanded!.
"How could I? How could I?!" She screamed back at him. Ladies always kept their voices down, but ladies' husbands didn't do these strange things, either.
"You have lain in here for four days, Charlie! Four days! No word to me, no eating. Drinking. You disgust me."
"I disgust myself," replied Charlie, surprisingly.
She turned to him, astonished.
He looked right back at her.
"What happened?"
He looked like he was trying to put up that painless facade, the one he had presented her so seamlessly for so long. "I slept with the boss's wife," he stated baldly.
She yelped, and sprang up from the bed.
"How could you do anything so stupid!" she cried.
And in that moment, they both knew they had always known. And he looked at her shocked, and amazed.
"You are so smart, Charlie. This was a stupid, hurtful thing to do."
"I was fired."
"You betrayed me."
"I'll leave."
"You'll stay."
They stared at each other. That night Elizabeth went to the bar. She got drunk, she kissed a man who was not her husband. She came home smelling of liquor.
Charlie was watching tv.
"You stink, Shelly."
"Don't call me that. My name," and she drew herself up to her full height, swaying on the strong winds of alcohol, "is Elizabeth."
"You," she said, pointing at him, "betrayed me."
And she went upstairs to bed, and she stayed there for a week. When she got out of bed, Charlie was still there. And so was she. And the world had changed.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 25, I'm Sorry

The note lay under the bed for ten years. She realized this when she finally moved. The room had been abandoned the day he left, and the day that she honestly came to herself that love wasn't for her. And so she had waited, in that corridor, between decisions for a decade, and when she finally moved to the new house, the one on the shore by her grandad's old place, the one she had played in as a child, the one she had slowly rebuilt and repainted, she found the note, absentmindedly picking it up off the dust on the floor, thick as it was, like a gray carpet.
She smoothed the brownish paper, the paper of a lined spiral notebook. And she thought about nothing but the oddness of visiting the room again, like an old hospital ward, now empty. And she glanced down at the piece of paper with a start of recognition, something like the feeling of throwing up, but as if the feeling had aged on a shelf for many, many years, and now was a searing sort of sick pain. But just for a second. Until she read the words.

there wasn't one thing i didn't love about you
however, the same could not be said for myself
and when the lights went out
i wrestled dark embraces
reaching up to me from
underneath the bed.
my gift was words
and yours was embraces
my gift the movement on and on,
and yours the methodic sort of
waiting for change.

anyway, i wanted to say
i'm sorry

i really wish.

It hit a lot like thunder, a little like a mudslide, somewhat like fire. It built in her, the strange emotions all wound up like old, old, vines, the fine buds of shame and still-banked unsettled emotions rearing up, quiet and tired, but still alive, ever so little. And then she crumpled up the paper and threw it away - away on the wind. She was sorry too. But a note was not his body next to hers.
picture, Vilhelm Hammershoi, The Poetry of Silence, Royal Academy of Arts, London

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 24, The Psalms

The day his mother died was the first day it happened. In his sad reflection, the tears upon his childish face, a pencil near his hand seemed to come into it of its own accord, and in his little five star spiral bound notebook, he wrote the lines of love and longing and pain that haunted him somewhere deep within. He really wasn't aware of the words, until they rushed out, like flames, onto the page, so many many words, repetitions and swirls of them, unlike anything he had read or seen. He hid his notebook underneath his mattress and went to school, but at night he picked out the worn pages again, looking at them, longingly, and the love they evoked. Because at those moments, he didn't feel anything at all.
The next time he experienced that feeling was the day that he lost the baseball match for the school team. He wanted to leave the team altogether; never wonderful at sports, he had ruined it all. The pentel pen lay by his bedside, left over from some plane-drawing project he had begun before sleep. And out of him again, mountains and rivers of words. Ashamed, he closed the notebook, exhausted by emotion.
He remembered clearly the times when it didn't seem to happen, too. The moments when Cherry didn't want to go to prom with him, the moments when all he wanted was to swim but the pool wouldn't let him in without permission, and his father, petrified now of water, wouldn't allow it. He remembered the moments when he dressed in black with his friends and thought it would be cool if he could write 'poetry' to some girl. But at these times, the darkling waters never took him, and he couldn't summon the words for the moments, for the feelings he felt. They were confused and angry and anxious, and they weren't for writing.
He went to university, and experienced those parts of life we never think we're going to; the parts that aren't as pretty as they should be, and the parts that are much more so.
When he was 27 he met a young man, a man who was his friend and like his brother. And when he sat on his bed in his apartment that night, the fountain pen of his last sojourn to the bookstore by his hand, he grasped it suddenly, and in a gasping moment of discovery, the waters of his soul broke again.
Darkness and light, altogether. And realization.
picture, Lucy Hennessy "Little Boy Lost"

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 23, The Night Garden

There was once a woman who planted a rose bush. She watered it, she fed it the best of mulches, and she cared for it year in, and year out. And yet, though she went to it every day to see, it never bloomed. The buds lay, closed, in their blushing shells and never burst forth. She was very sad, but tended it still. Until, one night, she woke from her dreamless sleep to find that outside her window, the rosebush was blooming with the scarlet roses of her undreamt dreams.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 22, Bird of Paradise

There were once two lovers who dwelt in paradise. They were, as one might suspect, deeply in love and in a state of wonderful happiness. Until the day the bird of paradise fell in love with the woman. Large, colorfully and beautifully plumed, as beautiful as all the things within paradise, the bird spied the woman asleep, and as she woke and kissed the man, and in that moment his feathers rustled in a way he had never known. That night he stole her from the embrace of her lover, leaving one long, green feather in his wake, and flew her far outside the bounds of paradise, to an island of feathery trees and the bluest waters, white turreted towers of ivory enclosing rooms of carved splendor.
And there she sat, and white with rage, she would not love him.
He brought her a great grey pearl from the depths of the sea, where he had dived deep and long to steal it from the sharks and the whales and the monsters that guarded it.
But she wept, and would not love him.
He brought her the endless fire from the top of the highest mountain of the world, the fire that never went out, but lit, eternally, that which it touched and kept it always warm, and dry, and alive.
But she sat in silence and would not love him.
And he brought her, finally, the most beautiful silk that was ever made, embroidered with thread that had been spun from starlight and worked over with the rays of the sun. And it saddened him to see her form, so beautiful as it was without covering, to be covered by even such a raiment as this.
But she looked at him with the largest and saddest eyes he had ever seen in her lovely face, and she told him, quite simply, that she did not love him. She did not. And she would never. She loved her lover in paradise.
The bird of paradise fell deathly ill. his long feathers lay, wilted, upon the counterpane of silk and satin that he had prepared for her. His long neck tossed this way and that. He was ill with love.
She bent over him, and she nursed his head, she gave him water, she soothed his fever, and she sang him lullabies.
But when he awoke he saw she did not love him.
She bent over him, her eyes warm and kind. "This day," she whispered in his ear, "you have become a man. You have suffered the pain of love, and you have survived."
When he glanced at himself, he saw, there on the bed, the form of a man, and he looked at her with his still green eyes, the eyes of a bird of paradise, and a soul who had loved.
He returned her to paradise, and began his journey alone.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 21, The Barrel Flats

The Barrel Flats lay on the South side of Downgil town, flat and dry and never a soul had gotten out alive they said. But for Cargill Watts, that's just what he was going for. His life had been hard, and he was ready for it to end. He had wandered for the last year and a half after his wife had died. Nothing had changed, and the ache in his heart had only worsened. He wondered often why it didn't kill him, and as he had grown
skinnier and skinnier with starvation, the dingoes seemed to have gotten closer and closer to giving him his wish.

Now wherever he went their footsteps and sniffing noses and calls of greeting seemed to follow him like so many reminders of the life to come, and he accepted their presence the same as he had eventually accepted the death of his wife: as the reality of the situation, and yet the dream of life he was trapped within and not really the
life he remembered living.

Noone had ever crossed the Barrel Flats, they said. And so he decided to give it a try.

His beans were low and he couldn't work this late in the year to stock up for a long, dry
winter to come. His whiskey, moreover, had run out.

He started across in the late afternoon. People got stuck out there, driven mad by the flat of the landscape, but he soon realized, as he had realized with his own sadness, that it was not flat as it looked. Actually, it sloped inwards. Probably the whole thing. The ground definitely sloped down under one foot and not the other. Again, like his misery, it probably also sloped toward something very deep in the middle, and the unsuspecting, therefore, were bamboozled into endlessly circling the packed dirt and sand.

Cargill kept straightly heading. He took two steps to his left every twenty steps forward, and by his innate sense, he felt that was just about right. And then the ground, the whole thing, began to slope down. Damn. Now it would have to slope back up again. He hated a climb in the dark.
He could cover, now, about four miles every hour. It had been about three when he realized the slope just started back up again. He began to pant, slightly, and heard the panting of the dogs
behind him. Hah. And they wouldn't be long now. His thighs were sore, he was thirsty, his
alcohol was gone, and more importantly, his wife would never return. That sadness bore him to the ground like no dog could have done.

He sat on the dirt and scratched, very slowly, her name on the ground in front of him, bending his fingernail and breaking out in a sweat as he said it slowly. This must be the first time since she had died.

"Maria," he breathed into the thick, deep silence, only lit by the radiance of his own eyes.

He heard the sound, like deep thunder, rumbling in the distance. Surely no storm had blown up? He wasn't sure, but stood and climbed quicker, a flash of lightning would be something akin to his mood. The dogs, he heard chirruping and keening to themselves no more than a quarter mile behind. He waded up the slope, and cast his sight beyond, to the North.

Nothing. Except... a band like silver was wending - here and there, he saw it in the dark. Shining in reflection...of what? The stars? He peered, and climbed a little higher to get a better look. Strangely, it reminded him of one of the ribbon she had worn in her dark, dark, midnight hair.

He climbed one step higher, and then, the first dog was upon him. Before the pack, young - yet he was there, and he was biting Cargill like nothing else.

Cargill fought him half-heartedly, knowing a full pack was too much for one man. The thunder was nearer, now. The thunder and a shaking. And then, after a few seconds of struggle with the angry dog, who ran off with a yip after a shove by Cargill's shoe, the water was rushing almost right beneath the toes of his shoes. Water like he had never seen before.

He looked at it, stupefied. Then he scrambled a few feet higher, until he could see it, stretching down below him now. Flash flood water. Muddy, dark, shiny, dangerous. It had saved him. He trudged to high ground wearily, and with a sigh, collapsed on safe ground.

The brush was growing, and he saw, beyond him, a tree. And he went to it, and in the morning, the shade of it sheltered him from the blazing sun, and he saw, there in the water, the shine of fish and the lifewater of plants, and behind him, the same, reflected by the end of the Barrel Flats.

30 Days 30 Stories Installment 20, Red Ribbons

I was six when I started seeing the red ribbons. Blooming knots of the most beautiful scarlet ribbons on people. Their chests, sometimes decorating their heads, once I even saw a young girl with two ribbons tied artlessly around her wrists. I used to point and look, and even talked to my parents about it. They would just assume they couldn't see what my childish eyes had seen, or that I had imagined it.
It wasn't until later that I realized what they were.
I remember the exact moment. I was eleven. Until then, I really hadn't worried about it much. But one day our older next door neighbor came out to leer at us as we were playing at the toys outside our apartment building. I didn't like this much, nor did the other kids, but what I noticed today was that he had a large and burgeoning knot of particularly scarlet ribbons gathered on his chest, and I wondered at that, because it seemed specifically odd. He was, to put it nicely, a slob. I had realized by now not to mention the red ribbons, that they were just for me, but I hadn't worried about it much.
But I saw him and later that afternoon, an ambulance had come to our door. It came out through the apartment gossip that he had died in his apartment of a massive coronary. Ah. It came with a sickening and very certain thud in my stomach. And then I knew what they meant.
I tried not to let it worry me. I dropped hints to some of my friends that their parents should see a doctor sometimes, when I started seeing little red ribbons floating somewhere. But it usually didn't work. I was really sad when I realized that the little red bow in my grandmother's hair was a brain tumor. But we had a little time to say goodbye, at least. She was very old, at the very least.
But when I was dating a guy - seriously - in university, and saw the red ribbons, I was absolutely floored. And devastated. I went to a psychologist, not feeling there was anything better to do. Predictably, it was little help. My boyfriend had red ribbons over his chest, his stomach, his arm. I thought it would be a shooting. I warned him not to go anywhere without me. I wouldn't let him out of my sight. The red ribbons continued to flow and sway in the wind like they always did, like seaweed under water. I hated them. At night, I saw them and I would begin to cry. He would hold me, not knowing what to do. I tried to break it to him. I had a feeling of dread, I said. I wanted him with me always, I said. Please don't leave me, I even said. It was a testament to his love that he didn't actually run out - because I sounded rather deranged. But finally, I broke down and just told him. He did leave then. For a little. But he came back, and asked me if I had seen a psychologist, and I broke down into tears again. There was really nothing I could do.
I stuck with him, though. I really did follow him everywhere. I had my cellphone on all the time. The red ribbons were looking angry the following morning. I thought "this is it." I wondered for a split second if we should call his family to say goodbye. That was crazy. But this all was crazy!
I went to class that morning with a sinking feeling.
He went to class that morning whistling. I lingered with his hand in mine outside his classroom. Then I went to mine. I had a midterm that day. I hurried through it, I remember that, then I sprinted back to his classroom and waited outside. It was a big lecture class. I decided to slip in. It was dark at the upper doors, and few people would notice. I said a whispered apology to the professor. There was my boyfriend, with the red ribbons. And many, many others I saw. All with angry ribbons flaring from them. This couldn't be about to happen. It couldn't.
Crazy? Or dead? Or...? What the hell was I going to do?
I sauntered down the stairs to the large area where the professor was lecturing (quite expertly) on biophysics. I went to the professor. He had stopped, midspeech, his mouth hanging open. I approached him, quietly, and went to his ear. I told him I had reason to believe someone had a gun. He didn't react well. But I wasn't joking. He started dialing his phone for security. The break in the lecture had upset everyone - things were not going according to plan. Who could it be? I followed my eyes to all of those without the angry ribbons. There were quite a few (thank god) but too many to know who the culprit could be. And he could very well want to commit suicide after.
At that moment, the shooter got up and started shooting.
I had never heard so much noise in my life. And then I realized, as a red ribbon bloomed on me, I would never get to hear it again. I looked at the red on my stomach. The ribbon looked exactly like my blood. Everything was very fuzzy. At that moment, there was shouting from outside and the doors burst open, well-armored cops came rushing in. I passed out.
I woke up in the hospital. It was full of college students - at least near me. I closed my eyes. I certainly had changed things. Perhaps this sense wasn't so certain. Maybe it was just a risk. Red ribbons still floated on some. Others looked to be ok. I couldn't see my boyfriend, which was really what I wanted.
But I did understand something, with a start. I was alive. My stomach was bandaged, my clothes somewhere else. I was on oxygen and an IV. I realized, perhaps, that things might be better than I imagined.
It was a few hours later, as I drifted in and out of conscious thought, that I found out how my boyfriend was doing. He was alive; but just. He was in a coma. I had changed the course of events. But for the better? I didn't know.
They said that the phone call saved lives. I'm glad if it did. But I still blame myself for my boyfriend's coma, his eventual waking, his slow and painful recovery. He is still here, but he is not the same. The person I loved did die that day, of gunshot wounds. The red ribbons were right about that.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 20, The Pale Sisters

A tapestry hung in the large dining room. A unicorn, a rainbow, a lion, and two ladies with the strangely white-ish silver faces of medieval embroidery lay, as they had for ages, upon the wall. It was a very old tapestry, it was not a copy. It had come to the lady of the house through her relatives; her great aunt had left it to her in her will. The dining room was large, but fairly humble. It was the meeting place of the family, and sometimes a broader set of people from the community at large.
The pale ladies hung upon the tapestry, one in the front, looking toward the edge of the hanging, and the other, behind her, peering curiously, somewhat possessively, over her shoulder. They were a pair; they seemed to relate to each other silently, without really having to acknowledge each other's presence.
They had hung on the lady's wall for ten years now. They were not a new addition. And they had watched the proceedings in the lady's house for that whole period. They had watched, observed, and thought about it deeply.
It was the eve of the day that the lady's daughter left for college. There was a strange sort of mood in the household. She had been a good student in high school and now she had been accepted to a high-ranked university in the region. She was angling for something in engineering.
The ladies had watched, perturbed.
The daughter was a good and studious girl. She was positive and popular, and over everything, quite confident. She wanted to help others, but she also wanted a good paycheck. She wanted security, and she knew the best way to get this was through a good education, a good job, and a steady career.
The ladies watched, perturbed.
The problem was - and perhaps it was not a problem to her mother, or to her mother's good friend, Steve - the girl had no passion, and she had no great desires. She liked engineering: she was good at it, and that was natural, she supposed. It was like showering. But noone had a passion for showering, at least not usually.
And so the ladies, when noone was listening, whispered to each other, concerned. How was she to find herself in thirty years? (And to the ladies, this was quite a short period of time - just around the corner, in fact.) How would she like a life she realized had not been lived? That was seriously upsetting.
They didn't know what to do. But Adelaide, the one behind, had a sudden idea. Katherine, the one in front, nodded in mute agreement. Adelaide climbed down from the tapestry that night. She rolled it up, she put it in the girl's large duffle bag.
Noone noticed the absence in the great shuffle that was the girl's departure for school. They left the house, and they arrived at the university. Adelaide hired a cab, and paid with the gold from her belt. The cabbie nearly didn't take it, but he thought it better not to naysay a woman who looked so crazy.
When the girl was finally in her room, her parents gone, that evening, she was surprised by Adelaide at the door. Adelaide was tall, and winsome, but not particularly beautiful. However, she had the same glowing confidence in her brown eyes that the girl had, and a definite sense of mischief. She asked if the girl had found the tapestry.
That night, the girl did not know what to do, but Adelaide and Katherine decided that a good rolicking party was just what was in order; so they went out and found one.
The girl trailed behind, watching the two - conversing almost wordlessly - both dressed in her best party clothes. She was bemused, uncertain, and rather irate.
They decided, as a group, to go the arts building to do some mischief. Adelaide and Katherine, though both having a wonderful time, were keeping a close watch on the girl. If the chance for passion was going to come, it would come now. They slipped in through the cracks of the closed windows (tapestry thinness did have its pluses from time to time) and unlocked the doors. Then Adelaide very carelessly fell into the girl, just as she was passing.
Katherine ran and angled a light into the great, windowed halls.
All around her, paintings and sculpture met the girl. There had been painting classes at high school, but nothing like this. Nothing like these sculptures, done by students and non-students alike, nothing like any of it she walked like she was in a dream.
That night, the two sisters climbed back into the folded tapestry, again dressed in their medeival garb. But on Katherine's wrist hung a bangle of the girl's and Adelaid had carelessly left a tell-tale shade of lipstick upon her lips.
The girl awoke the next day and put the tapestry in a corner, carefully, to return (gingerly) to her mother. But eventually, due to the lack of decorations in her suitcase, the tapestry made it up onto her wall. And the sisters figured, prominently in many of the following pieces that the girl created - engineering and art are really so close to each other, and when at university, there is no reason not to try for two goals at once.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 19, Bejeweled

She had never dreamt of such excess as she saw in his house. Involved with a man twice her age and three times her intelligence level (she was certain), she found herself on a long weekend with someone who she barely knew. And his house was a palace - a castle wonderland of rather atrocious size, she was a little afraid and very, very overwhelmed. There was nice and classy in that hotel that has five stars by its name way, and then there was this... loads of antiques, ancient game heads littering the wall, stiff finery, and many many priceless pieces. It was beautiful in an upsetting way and not very comfortable. She woke up in his bed, with him gone, and a slight smell of must and cologne. The house was centuries old.
She wandered out into the grounds that day. Peacocks were kept there, she could hear their cries, but did not see them. It was an overcast day, and the gardens seemed stifling. Well-planned, or well un-planned, they were artfully artless from time to time, but it was easy to see the touch of the gardeners everywhere, from hothouse rareties transplanted for the warmth of summer out into the open, to perfectly pruned trees. She meandered through the garden, bespelled. She looked around, but eventually got lost. It took her a long time to find her way back.
The weekend, she knew, was just a weekend. And she was ok with that. That was the way it was in the movies, in the tv shows. It was the social norm and she was well aware. A weekend on a yacht, in a mansion, in the glamour of richness and then it all went away, and one was cinderella again, without the slipper and the pumpkin smashed. However, this time, she was looking forward to the pumpkin smashing. It seemed a little frightening to her at the moment - too big, and too sparkly, and too magical. She couldn't wait to get back to her spare and clean little apartment in the neither clean nor safe neighborhood in which she lived. She hoped her cat was alright.
That night she met him for dinner. Even while on weekend he was busy, and had been making telephone calls and sending emails all day. He looked stressed, and tired - older than even usual. He was like a lion, you know, but all silver. He had really entranced her with his sense of being alive - his sense of living. And he still had it. How he kept it in this house, she didn't know.
He asked her about her day, and she told him it had been leisurely. She also told him bluntly, that she was rather lonely. She understood he had business affairs, the weekend was lovely, but she did not think she would be coming back. He looked at her, startled, and then smiled a brilliant, breathtaking smile. He was most assuredly one of those men who got more handsome as they aged, not less. She wished wistfully that she was the same.
He laughed and threw back his head and seemed to accede to this, and she smiled and they did have a lovely night. He was older than her by far, but his experience was therefore greater, and so her enjoyment was also.
He returned her to her apartment on Monday morning, in time for work that afternoon. Her waitressing job didn't pay much, but she did her best, and worked a lot. She went to the gym that day, dressed for work, and headed in.
She was angry to see he was at one of her tables. She had cut him off; this was indeed one of his favorite spots to eat (how else would they have gotten to know each other?) but her table? It seemed slightly tactless. And he was looking more brilliant than ever. How did he endlessly look like the most intelligent person in the world?
He looked at her with sparkling eyes and she melted at him. She did like him a great deal. Here in town they were not so far apart as when they were at his "country house."
The weeks flew past, and he was courting her, without a doubt.
The ring came in a few months. He had not met her friends, she had not met his. But she looked at him, and saw a future of rosy, glowing moments, held in his very certain and self-assured arms, and let him slide it onto his finger.
She tried to take it off that night for a shower, and it wouldn't come. But she didn't worry too much.
The wedding was being planned for some months hence; she was quite happy, though nervous and worried about their social groups. But when she was with him (in his town car, at the opera, in his flat high above the city), she felt beautiful, endlessly sexy, and self-assured. Like she had never felt before, in fact.
He showered her with jewels. Earrings: diamonds studs, bracelet: tennis and VERY expensive. Every time she put them on, she didn't want to take them off, and since he was paying her rent now, it really wasn't necessary.
Except, of course. THAT night. After another rare and overpriced trinket, they had a fight. She wanted kids. Why had they not discussed this? He didn't. He definitely didn't. She cried, and she walked away from him, and she didn't want to talk to him. She tried to take off the jewels, but they stuck, like glue. It was as if they were holding onto her. She didn't want them any more. Not only had they fought, he had been very, very cruel. He had asked her quite clearly why he would want to have children at his age with someone like her. Like her? She was just a toy was a clear and blinding realization.
But the jewels wouldn't leave, and neither would he. She didn't want either of them - at first. Until the stress of losing him, her job, her life, all swept over her. She returned, like a puppy, happy at least to be his plaything.
The jewels grew over the years. They built upon her. She literally became laden with them. They were expensive, and beautiful, and they wouldn't come off. And she learned to live with the weight of the rings on her fingers, and the pearls around her neck, and she learned to live with other things, too. Many things she had not thought of, she had not anticipated.
She was, quite literally, bejeweled.
The night he died was a solemn one. He was old, and decrepit, and his eyes were fierce now with anger at his fate, not self-assured. And he looked at her, bejeweled in his wealth, and he began to cry, angry tears.
He cried at her, and beckoned her close, and looking at her, he said quite clearly "I hate you."
She staggered back, and as she did so, she saw his eyes soften. A ring loosened and dropped from her finger. "You didn't make me happy, and I made you miserable," he said, clearly again, and the tiara fell from her head. He was smiling now - he looked light, elated. He continued on, with every word, a weight fell from her.
Finally, she was bare, and felt herself for once in the twenty years they had been wed. She came to his bedside. She clasped his hand.
She was not crying, but she looked at him with a small smile. "Thank you," she replied to all of this simply, and he patted her hand calmly, and drifted off to sleep. He never awoke.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 18, Why the Basil Plant Lived

It may not seem like very much, just a life. But for me the day the basil plant lived was a wonderful day in my life. It meant mercy, and it meant redemption, and it meant that I could go on.

I wasn't doing very well. My boyfriend, who I had been living with for some years, had left me, and I had been laid off in a horrible economy. I wasn't sure what to do, and I really wasn't sure how to do it. But somehow I did - I was looking for a job, I moved in temporarily, with a friend for some minimal rent and took up a temp job. And I stopped crying and eating ice cream for dinner every night after a few months.

My cat was old, but she was loyal. She would often sit on my lap, and purr, and be generally nice to me when I was sniveling with self-loathing. It took a while of cat/ice-cream/movie therapy, but I did start actually making dinner again. Finally.

And so I bought a basil plant. They are simple, easy plants (usually) and I thought it really wouldn't be very difficult to care for. I watered it, I fed it with some mulch. That's all they need. But then my ex called. Everything shut down for about a week. I forgot everything. My cat is really lucky she even got her food dish filled a few times. He was getting married, and I was miserable, and everything was absolutely horrible. And I had killed my basil plant, I thought.

I sat there, looking blankly at it, my eyes filling with tears (again). This wasn't possible. Everything gone with a few horrible words. Well, wonderful for them, I guessed. But not for me, now hidden in a little sterile corner of never-ending gloom, accompanied by my dry and dead basil plant. It's leaves looked completely wilted, and the stems drooped horribly. It was like a spider that had curled up in the corner, dead.

I realized suddenly that the horrible noise in my ears was my cat's loud meows, so I filled up her empty water dish, and moving back to put it down, broke it. I swore, my cat ran, and water was everywhere, it seemed to have splashed on every possible surface in the kitchen; I even saw drops of it on the window pane. I didn't have the heart to clean it up. I left the pieces where they were, and filled up a shallow cereal bowl for Lucy, set it down in the clear, and went back to bed.

The next day was Sunday, and when I went to get a drink of water, my feet crunched on glass in their slippers. I nearly started crying again. Then I looked at the basil plant. It was perkier, it was happier, it needed water, but it was altogether doing much better. It seemed back from the dead. And so, perhaps, was I.

The reason why the basil plant lived, of course, is pretty clear - water can do miraculous things - but it is also because I think I needed it to live. It lived and so I had some hope. And a little hope, like a little water, can do quite a bit.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 17, The Laughs Column

She was in charge of the laugh column in the newspaper (as well as a few other mundane ones, such as the cooking beat), but she wasn't really a humorous person, as it turned out. Her life wasn't made up of anything particularly laughable, except, perhaps, her need to constantly do a dish after she got it dirty. She mainly scanned through lesser newspapers, through comics, and sent things to print that she thought would appeal to the masses. It was not, actually, her sense of humor, but rather her knowledge of what was normal that made her a somewhat successful editor of the laughs column. Little stories, vignettes, cute and American things, things about silly dogs or cats (animals always went over well) and childhood mishaps, spilled soup. Nothing really important, nothing on the edge. Everything in its place.

Except one day she went home and everything was NOT in its place. She had been robbed, and everything had been stolen, everything. Her mother's silver, which she, being the last of her mother's line, had received, her computer, her tv, her other unimportant technologia, but many of her beautiful books, her vinyls which had been her father's, and a collection of lovely and somewhat valuable knick-knacks from her grandmother, as well as the one important piece of art she had ever owned; a small study by Monet, which she was quite sure was real.

She looked about, stupefied by the chaos, a chaos like she had never known before. Was it really possible, in HER apartment, in HER little corner of everything? She sat down by the telephone, and eventually called the police.

It was quite a few hours until the policeman came, and he wasn't very excited about it. He was actually a little rude. And his mustache bristled just like a policeman from those comics of the early 1900s. That was a little funny, she thought, as he stood there huffing like a giant rhino after climbing her steep steps. He really didn't care, and the travesty of it all struck her as rather funny. The next day, she wrote up a little description of what had happened, all rhino and thoughts of him in a bobby's hat with a large wooden club and running fruitlessly and angrily after her gang of poor, probably low-income thieves who were (most likely) fencing her few belongings for drugs. It struck her as rather funny, and she giggled to herself - a little bit of a rusty sound, really, but very pleasant in her throat - and then sent her email to the pagesetter with the day's column.

The next day, it was clear there had been a mixup. The wrong story had gone out, and instead of her gathered rights to story about a Christmas gone wrong, her story had been sent out. She was not pleased, and neither was her editor. However, noone said anything here or there, so she didn't worry about it much.

The next thing that happened was a little strange. She was unlocking her apartment door when a young man came up to her. He seemed awkward.
"Hey," he said, quietly.
"Hello," she replied, hoping very much that he wasn't going to try to sell her weed. Did she really look like the type? She held her purse imperceptibly closer.
"I... uh... I read that story."
"What?" she was quite shocked, really.
"I..." he looked up at her "you know, read your story, that weird column."
"Ah. And... um... what did you think?" She asked the question as if asking whether she should ask the question.
"Well, I think I know the guys who did it, you know - just telling you. Anyways, they're not around her anymore, but they used to live in this building."
"Ah," she didn't know what to say. Was there a reason he was telling her this story.
"I... just really liked your policeman."
"Ah," she said again. "um... well, would you think about maybe telling the police you have a tip? Or phoning one in anonymously?" she proffered.
"No way," he said. "I... don't think so, anyways." He turned, his hands in his pockets. He was the twenties caricature of a man, a young man, smoking hard, trying to be a man. His pants were baggy, his hands thrust into them as if trying to get out the bottom, like there might be gold underneath the pockets.
"Ok," she said. "Well - thanks!" She went up her steps, and then turned around, uncertain. "Hey - could I get your name?"
"uh... Steve," he said, noncommitally, and she didn't really believe him.

Another day, another column she wrote herself. This time, she didn't send it to the pagesetter. But she was approached at the end of the week by her section editor, asking her to pen another column. Apparently there had been vaguely positive feedback, which was a vast improvement on the completely nonexistant feedback before. She nodded, and quickly submitted her page on the poor boy with the grim, older-than-himself expression.

He came back the day after the column was printed. He was upset that she had written about their encounter, but she quickly apologized - she really hadn't anticipated he would care about it. Then he said something rather strange - he asked her if she wanted her little painting back. He had found it around the corner, where there were a few other of her things, dumped. She looked at him, dumbfounded. "Yes," she said without hesitation.

The painting was slightly begrimed, but generally not worse for wear. The next day she asked Steve to go out to coffee with her, and tell her about him. It wasn't long before she found him a good scholarship to college.

The laughs column dried up the next quarter - apparently not interesting enough with its drivel to really inspire anyone to keep it going. But she did get a chance to write more, as her set of bookend experiences - the old cop and the youth gang, the youth who resembled an older age - were bought by a magazine with the prospect of more in the same vein. She felt she could do that, perhaps. Especially now as she was sure to visit Stephen at college one of these days, to see how he was getting on in his dorm, and doubtlessly buy him a much-desired full meal.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 16, The Piers

There were once five daughters of a fisherman. They were all lovely, tall and graceful. They lived by the sea, and the sea was their life. They each were sworn to love their father, and had each taken an oath never to get married to men of the sea, for the sea was a jealous mistress, and never returned her lovers to the arms of their wives. And yet, inevitably, each one succumbed to the souls of sailors, each began to love and after beginning, could not stop.

They waited always with unease when their lovers went to sea, and held each other in fear when storms blew up. With their waiting hours they didn't know what to do, so they finally began to go down to the sea, and wait upon the shore. But the shore often receded, as tides came and went, and the water might almost drown them if there was a storm. And so, slowly but surely, they began to move toward a dusky part of the beaches, where the rocks went down to meet the sea, and there they perched upon the great boulders, which acted as piers when the men came in in their fishing boats, wet and sodden and carrying fish. They came to the piers, and the women leapt to the unsteady vessels, and they came to shore to unload their catch after a night upon the water, or an evening in the wind.

The boulders, as they cascaded down to sea, became known to the girls as the Piers, and there, on their five chosen rocks, they would wait after the cleaning and the sewing and cooking was (mostly) done.

The youngest had fallen in love with a pearl diver. It was dangerous work, and he was a dangerous soul. But she loved him, and he her. And when he found his cache of pearls he would be very rich, and they would buy a large ship and sail around the world together. So they had dreamt, and so, of course, it would be. The night was rough, but the moon was out. The coves were full with water, but the tide was out. These were the nights he left to dive for pearls, and these were the nights she moved down to the Piers to wait upon him.

She curled there, in the grasp of a damp rock, her wraps about her to ward off the chill, and listened to the dangerous rumble of the waves upon the rocks. There, deep in the deep of it, the ocean had stolen her mother - her mother, who when her father had not returned from a fishing trip for a week, had thrown herself from one of the high cliffs in despair. And there, too, lay her uncle, her grandfather, and his grandfather. Their bones mouldering. Perhaps it would be her fate too, someday, she thought, but tucked the thought away, as the feeling of being on the edge of something very high, with the water crashing out so deep and strongly, came upon her. She was on the edge of the world here, on the edge of the thing deeper and greater than the highest mountains and the lowest valleys, and within it her lover swam.

She was finally lulled to sleep by the crashing waves, unwisely, as she had been admonished not to do so many times by her sisters. She was trapped upon the rock, as the waves buffetted about her, and she would not last here. She knew the tide came up above the rock, and in such waters she was not safe with the currents. She realized that perhaps her thoughts were right, and fear gripped her; great fear, demon fear, running through her veins like acid and fire, and then, just as quickly, icy numb. If she was to survive, which of course she could not, she would have to swim. And that as quickly as she could. The tide was going in, it might push her toward the shore - and if she washed up broken, she would at the very least be broken upon the shore.

She undressed, the full moon shining upon her white white skin as if it was a reflection of the moon itself, smiling at her, as if she was a night sea creater like all the rest the moon watched. But she was not a sea creature. She was alive, very alive like a human. And nothing else.

She dived into water like a silver fish, at once pulled by the currents out, and then pushed, mercilessly, back in. She had waited so many hours on the Piers, but nothing could have prepared her for what was below them. Black and dark and fear. And through the water she made out the moon, and her own hands like ghosts against the dark, drowning waters. It was as if she was already dead. What was below? Nothing. And above? Impossibility.

She was pushed against the ragged edge of a stone, which felt like torn metal in the cold, and she surfaced for a moment, the edge of the sea that met the air seemed more frightening for a moment, like another world of unknown, the blank mask of something that from underneath looked huge and unfathomable, but from above was covered as if by a wall of silver, from which anything could erupt, from which anything could arise - and into which anything could fall and never return. She began to swim, terrified, toward the dark shore, shining where the surf hit it, but showing little else.

After minutes of struggle, she realized dumbly that she would not make it. But she did not stop. Better to die fighting... better to die... she slipped beneath the waves more and more, sucked down by a fierce tide, until she only had sips of air between long hours of water. Until, fighting like a fish on the shore, she drank instead of breathed, until she felt herself dieing, the white moon still smiling upon her white flesh delightedly. Her pearl diver nowhere to be seen.

Her head banged the rock of the Pier, she could not raise it. A voice called to her, but she couldn't hear it. A dark hand lifted her onto the rocks, a dark seaweed-covered hand lifted her, and gasping in the air as if it could not breathe, it put her high upon the Pier, where the moon reflected her like silver. And the dark face, covered in mire, with it's waving hair and its eyes, just like hers, crying seasalt tears, ducked beneath the surface, breathing there, and then, crawled upon the stone, to caress her hair for one moment, her hair the color that the creature's had once been. Until it slipped, quiet, back into the water, and disappeared beneath the Piers, until the waves crashed up to the rock, where the girl lay, but could not touch her with its foamy fingers.

The pearl diver came home that night to find her upon the rock, not quite dead, and tenderly, he laid his pearl on the bottom of the boat, and rowed home. He put her in his bed, and covered her with his body, and she woke that morning in the arms of him, in the arms of life.

He left the sea that day. He left the sea, and they moved to another shore, where he did not dive for pearls anymore, but instead grew wheat and corn and other things on the edge of the sea, on the edge of the water, planting in the ground the pearls of life, instead of harvesting the pearls of things by death, and watching with wonder as the pearls became the food and the houses and the clothing of his family, the happiness of his pearl, his wife, the sparkling eyes of his children and the sweet-smelling fur of their cat.

30 Days 30 Stories Installment 15, Embroidery

There was a piece of blank white muslin sitting on a chair. At the mouth of the room, by the door, the black chair sat shiny and dusty, over which the white of the muslin was folded neatly, untouched by gray. The woman was lying upon a counterpane on her bed, pale and wan. She had lost the love she had so desired, the love she had wanted, and the love she had found. It was far from her, from anyone. And she bled the bleeding of those in love, the bleeding of volcanic and burning pain within that only a lover lost can cause. Her dress was dark green, her eyes were black of a widow. And she whispered moans, small noises of pain, like an animal weak that has been caught in a cage. She was burning up inside, with the acid of heartblood. And she didn't want it to stop. She wanted to feel every drop - a tattoo of her lover's soul, the scars of love. She wanted to bear them with her until she went into that other world, where perhaps she could spend her time more happily, searching the endless wasteland for him.

The maid came into the room to set up the fire. The mistress had been like this for days. For days now, and no change. And she had dressed her and changed her, patient and loyal, wondering if she would ever eat. Ten years her mistress's senior, she had not the authority to try to tell her love would heal. And she hadn't the heart. Her mistress had been a joyful thing, but the light had been turned searing inward and came out no longer.

Margaret whispered something. Something loud enough for Mary to hear. "Listen," said the growling voice, the voice rough like wood that hasn't been sanded, and Mary moved closer. "Listen," plead Margaret, and Mary, happy to have something she could do, sat down on the counterpane and watched Margaret's lips move, red and cracked as they were.
Margaret began to speak in lines of poetic license, and Mary watched as line after line left her.

The snows are too deep here,

The fires are far below

But both burn incredibly

And never numb

When all I want is the cry

Of someone lost,

And can never have a word again

Help me leave this,

Help me

Don't mock my love

It was like the sun, yearning

Ever to be near and watch

The earth

And bring about the seasons

The flowers and the birds

Beasts and woods

And seed, and now it is dark

All life must stop,

Yet breathing continues...

Mary was transfixed, but as Margaret spoke, it was as if the life was pouring from her. What could Mary do? She glanced at the door, and was startled to see the white muslin, the muslin that had been planned for Margaret's undergown for her wedding, speckled with red. Speckled not only with red, but with what looked to be twining designs.

Where is he?

How can I breathe when he cannot?

Margaret's voice was timorous, but smoother, and Mary watched, somewhat horrified, as vines began to grow upon the muslin, quickly, to the rhythm of Margaret's voice, every flower seeming to steal from Margaret a day of life.

He was the one whom

My soul comprehended

And when I could contain him no longer

He held me, within him instead.

Bursting love seemed unable

To really even speak our relation

There was too much

To much to write, and say and understand.

The journey is dead before I have walked it

I have come to its end, and it has killed me

But not killed this body

This body that was to be ours,

Not mine, not his

We shared them, both of ours - or were to do so.

Keep me,

Keep me,

Let me go.

Let me be with you.

Margaret was crying now, but the tears that ran her cheeks were not splattering her dress, but seemed to be absorbed by the muslin on the chair. Mary reached to take Margaret's hand, but she moved it, quickly for one so weak, and continued, her voice now clear, carried away.

He moved in me

Like my own soul

How can it be gone

And I still here?

Whole future world

Is no more, now,

But I am left barren

Of my own love,

And without love,

Where is life?

How can I continue it?

There is nothing.

The vines on the muslin were twining faster, the cloth was nearly full. Mary was horrified, and saddened. She wanted to cry, but it wasn't possible, she was too frightened.

Nothing...

Nothing...

Love is nothing more than me

And I no more than it.

Margaret was silent, the muslin was full. Mary stood up, suddenly. She couldn't take any more, and moving to the curtains, flung them open. The sun poured in, but it only lit the death pale of Margaret's face. And the embroidery of the muslin, scarlet of blood.

The muslin still hangs in that palazzo, now a museum. You may see it - the whirls of whole universes are painted there, within the fabric somehow. Perhaps it is a map to that other world, or more importantly, a map to this one.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 14, Over the Water

I have a fear of water. I hate it, and when it's deep and flowing, and far beneath me it's almost unbearable. Ticktock seconds ticktock by while I decide if I'm going to let myself get on the bus that goes over the bridge. But I can't live in Manhattan, and unfortunately, I have to go there from time to time - in fact, more than that. I attend my counseling there. Yes, I go to counseling, not just for the water phobia but for other things, too. But that's beside the point.

One day, I was facing the bridge. I had the bridge in my sights. I was going to conquer the bridge. This was a weekly ritual - on Thursday usually, though it varied, I would have great expectations of conquering my fear. This never happened. I was used to it, it was an old friend, this ritual and the cycle of hope, fear, hope, fight, pain, loss, and self-abnegation, then the recycle the next week. It was like a personal crucible. I was sure that once I crossed this thing, I would be done - done forever. And I would be happy. I was sure I would be absolutely content with my life, confident, sure, after I accomplished it.

It was a Wednesday. The hope had come early that week. I had thought about it on Monday, in fact. The bridge faced me, I faced the bridge - and the humiliation of being stuck out in the middle of it, stranded by my fear as capably as I could be by a boat leaving me on an island. I was rocked, as usual, with visions of bridge collapses, drownings, cars full of children trapped inside...

And then I saw the dog. It was wandering out on the footbridge, all by itself. It was definitely meandering, young and starstruck with all the sounds and sights and smells. I grew up with dogs, I loved dogs, I wanted a dog, and I knew how to read dogs pretty well. I looked at it, and it's meandering steps. What was it going to do? Go all the way across the bridge into Manhattan? What would it do from there? I could only imagine a bad end. In any case, I saw the dog begin the meandering walk across the footbridge, like a misguided flower picker, smelling here, there, everywhere. He was definitely in the bike lane. I saw the bike crest the bridge, not paying attention, ipod lodged securely in arrogant bike-messenger-like ears, eyes staring out into arrogant I-know-where-I'm-going space. The dog was low, and sniffing. The biker was going fast. I could rush out, I could grab the dog. I could. But I couldn't. The water was lapping and raging in my mind, the height of the bridge was terrifying every muscle in my body. I saw the biker hit the dog, and go catapulting off of his bike. I saw the dog hit the ground, unconscious. It had been a fast collision, and it was a small dog. The biker was lithely stirring. I turned away.

I worried this for the next few days. I worried it and worried it. I walked to the bridge, I stared at the bridge, I summed up the angles of the bridge. Was there an easier way to walk it? Could I walk it without having to actually see the water? It was impossible. Water was everywhere, it was like getting in the shower and expecting not to get wet.

It took me two weeks after that before the hope bubble crested the waters of this depression. I walked slowly out to the bridge. It was afternoon, as always - but this time I had gotten off work early. It was the hour of children getting out of school. Mothers and strollers and toddlers and small children swarmed everywhere, tall laughs of small children reaching up to excite the eardrums and frission the spine. Something is electric about babies, children - something immediate and very alive. I watched the bridge, trying to look like I was just waiting for someone. How could they all cross so nonchalantly, as if it was nothing? Didn't they feel it's power, it's terror? How could they?

And then I saw it, a small child wandering away from his mother, who was busily carrying on what looked to be a vehement argument on her cell phone. He was on one of those baby-leashes, but it was pretty long, and he was wandering into the bike lane. I saw it all again. I saw it all happen in my head. I felt the guilt. And I weighed the guilt against the fear, which I must say is probably one of the most despicable things I've ever done - but that may be because I've been pretty clean and ethical all of my life. Anyways, I weighed it and I jittered, and then, because I was absolutely certain that the mother would turn, I didn't do anything for about a minute. But he was in the bike lane, and I knew that bikes were definitely coming.

I walked onto the bridge. I walked onto the water, and I walked toward the child.

There weren't any stories about it in the newspaper, but the child didn't get run over by any bikes. And I walked over the water that day. All the way. I haven't repeated it since, but I'm hoping... one of these days. Hope bubbles now - but a little more cautiously. I might actually act on it, you see.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 13, T he Red Dress

God she looked so amazing. Every curve, every little indent of that perfect body completely sculpted and draped in that red dress. He eyed her from across the bar. She was perfect, her hair was perfect. It swathed in satin across her shoulders, brown and gleaming, like some sort of hair ad. And the way she smiled. She was happy. She was seductive, and she knew it. Every man in the bar had looked at her at least once, and he couldn't look away.

She never noticed him, but she always turned up at his bar sooner or later on the weekend in that damn red dress. The dress made his blood boil. The woman was stunning.

One night he couldn't help himself. He sent her a drink. She wouldn't really be interested, he thought, but he sent it to her anyway. How could he get that red dress off... his thoughts continued as he looked into gin. It was lust, pure and simple. She was beautiful, and the weekends were long and lonely - no work, no society. He wanted warm, human girl with him, he wanted her next to him, and in other places. Lust. Lust. He knew it was absolute lust.

She accepted his drink, and actually politely sent one back. He tried to catch her eye, but couldn't quite - she was giggling to a friend who was a girl. Damn. Girlfriends were the worst.

The next weekend she was there again - hair pulled up this time but the dress was the same. He bought her a drink, she returned it again. And then he caught her eye. He had been thinking about her all week. All week. And now, finally, she was laughing into his eyes and drinking his drink, and he hers... it was all a little surreal, but he moved toward her anyway.

She wasn't in any mood to chitchat. She had always left alone from the bar, but tonight - tonight was different. Her hand was brushing his shoulder, his upper arm. When he leaned toward her, their thighs met. He read the signs, he new the numbers. He had never painted by these particular ones before, but he had seen it done. He knew it was his turn to pick up the brush and paint something red. Or rather, unpaint something. That damn dress was fiddling with the anchors of his mind again, and he was imagining unzipping it without even a second thought.

How exactly did these things work out? He thought vaguely, smiling at something she had said as he stared into the depths of his whiskey sour. But he put the thought away, and went home with the woman in the red dress. It was a night of passion - strange passion. Passion with a stranger was different and rather odd, and slightly embarrassing. It was somewhat titillating and very ego-boosting as well. But when he woke up, she wasn't there. There was no note. He felt relieved - he could leave the apartment without any awkwardness. Not that he wouldn't see her again, but that was just really against protocol... wasn't it? He wasn't sure.

When he left the apartment, it was as if nothing had happened, as if the encounter hadn't existed. He wanted it to exist - he needed it to have happened. That was the whole point. He saw the woman in the distance. He needed this to be... something. A scene, a weird awkward silence, some kind of contact. He let out a little breath and walked toward her - she was coming from the direction he had to go in any case. She got closer, and he noticed that she was wearing a dress just like the one last night at the bar - but blue. Gossamer blue, silvery and contented and perfectly normal. Nothing to stare at, nothing to put down. It looked calm and elegant.
"Hi," he said.
"Good morning," she replied, and smiled at him. "Going home?" she asked pleasantly.
"Yes," he replied awkwardly. "Change and shower and stuff for work, you know." And then he realized it was Saturday.
"Oh," she said.
"Yeah... well bye," he finished awkwardly.
"Mhm!" she smiled somewhat tensely, but warmly, and passed him to walk away.
He turned around, but then hesitated and turned back.

The next weekend, she was at the bar again. This time her dress was black - but again, that same cut, that same hemline. Somehow it didn't look so hot this time. It looked solemn, and tired, and sad.

"Hey, Vinh," he called to the bartender, and when the guy came up, nodded to the woman in black. "What's up with her tonight?"
Vinh looked at him measuringly, and then poured another whiskey sour. "Husband died yesterday. He's been in the hospital awhile, I guess."

He gulped, spilled his drink, and walked out, shaken. A little human contact. A little human contact, and a red dress.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 12, The Typewriter

When my Grandad died he left me his typewriter. It might not seem like much, but he was a journalist by trade when he was young he did a lot of writing on it, which always made it really special to me. When he wrote me letters from abroad with his corporate job (sometimes he went to London, and I even got a letter from Paris once) they would always be neatly typed on the typewriter, addresses in the corner and everything. I thought it was so cool - it was like receiving a note in a murder mystery. Of course, the content was usually pretty standard, but when you're eight everything foreign is exciting. I honestly don't know how he lugged it all that way, but he managed to. There was no weight limit on baggage those days, I suppose.

So when he died after battling lung cancer for two long years, I was amazingly happy to receive the typewriter. It sat in a place of honor in my office, looking smaller than I remembered. I tried to keep it neatly dusted, but I didn't like to put the dust cover on - I preferred to look at it and remember him and the days before laptops and wireless internet.

Almost a year later, I realized it had been a long time since I talked to my grandmother; she lived in another part of the country. I thought it would be a really nice gesture to write her a letter on the old typewriter, as sort of a remembrance, and talk about how she was doing, and what it meant to me that grandad had left me his typewriter, etc. She lived alone in a small, close neighborhood and there was always lots going on. I thought she might like this quiet gesture after the year of change.

I sat down with the typewriter and some new inktape I had ordered online. I changed out the rolls, and then put in two pieces of paper as grandad had showed me when I was really young (if you put in just one, the force of the letter stamps make indents on the roll). I let my fingers adjust to the strange, detached, bouncy feeling of the keys, and then I began to type. It was odd - like skating on a mattress, or bounding across bubblewrap. The first lines came out quickly - lines like my grandad had written me. Address, date, salutation line. Neat, formulaic, simple. Dear Mathilde, well that was rather strange - but I must be getting used to this grown up thing or something. But then something began to happen. I went to hit a key, but it seemed to be forming into something else in the transition. My first sentence - how are you? Turned into how I love you. The second, I hope all is well for you, stayed the same. The third, I am writing upon grandad's old typewriter, became I am writing on the typewriter like all the times I wanted to, but never did. As I wrote, the sentences continued, black and very very real.

The letter continued on, thusly: The days were long without you, but I thought of you and the kids when I was away. Sometimes I wanted your arms around me so much I thought I would break into a million little pieces and end up a bloody mess on the floor. I tried to put up walls around me when I was away, but one glance at your photograph and that smile always made me melt.

You always had the most amazing eyes (this was true, grandma's eyes were absolutely livid blue, and they were the most arresting sight I had ever seen. She said her eyesight was bad due to this - but I think it was worth it for her). When I saw you the first night, it was at the hair salon. I never told you, because I thought you would find it a little embarassing. I kept it secret all our years! But I realize now that that's the memory you need - the memory of how I saw you, how I loved you.

You were there, with your sister and your friend, you were all getting rollers. And I saw how they tried to talk you into something. But you shook your head, wrinkled your nose, and laughed. That laugh. You laughed at the idea of changing anything, and that's what I fell in love with. You were so certain. How could you be so certain? I love you, Mathilde. I love you still. And I am so certain. You were always my heart, and now it beats inside you as certainly as it did me.

I'll always be yours, even now.
George.

What was I to do? I had never seen anything like this in my life. By the end of the letter, I was crying, but I didn't know how to deal with this letter. Shakingly, I picked up the phone to call my grandmother. Noone picked up the phone, so I called my mother, wondering if she knew where my grandma could be. Mom picked up the phone, breathless. "I'm sorry, honey, Grandma's in the hospital, she's had an episode... they think it was a heart attack." I didn't know how to handle this news, but I knew that as far away as it was, the letter and grandma needed to be together.

It was the next day when I arrived in town. Grandma was stable, but serious. The doctors just didn't know - with these cases it went either way. Should I give her the letter at such a time. Maybe not. Maybe so. I waited outside her room - and I wondered, the letter in my pocket. It might seem like a cruel joke, or a sad reality, or a reminder of sorrow. Grandma was resting, but when I came in she perked up, looking at me, and taking my hand, she said hello in her Grandma voice, and I couldn't help it. I needed to share the weight of the letter with her. I hoped her wizened hands could bear it.

"Grandma..." I began, not really knowing how to start.
She smiled at me warmly, and I sat down on the side of her bed.
"I brought something for you," I said. "I think that Grandad loved you very much, and when I saw his typewriter, I... I thought how much he must have missed you. And I wrote this for you. I think maybe I'll let you read it later. Maybe when you're better."
She smiled at me again, and lifted her hand weakly. "Why don't you let me see it honey," she said. "I know he's gone."
And so she took it, and she read it, and when she looked at me, her eyes were tearful.
"You did a wonderful job, sweetheart," she said, and looked down at the letter again. Her eyes were bright and amazing, like they used to be before he died. "A wonderful job."
"I'm sorry it made you sad," I offered, helplessly.
"It didn't make me sad - it made me... happy," she replied, with a brave look.
"I think it was rather cruel of me..."
"No, no." She shook her head strongly. "This is just what I needed."

And it seemed to be. She continued on for many years after that - she saw the birth of her grandchildren, her pride and joy, and she was cared for until she died peacefully, in her sleep. When we went through her things, the letter was tucked in the front page of her Bible, next to her bed. And on the bottom, written next to his signature, she had written in light pencil, I love you George, and with your heart, I'll go on.

30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 11 The Pirate

She was in love with a pirate. He had his ship and his crew, and he was, more than anything a hero to them, for he brought them money and goods when there were no money and goods to be gotten. Together, they had come from nothing just with his dreams. He had romanced her, he had swept her off her feet. Before him she had been a good schoolgirl, a good little girl going to church, helping her mother. Until they had met near the harbor, he with his stylish good looks, his rogueish smile, and his confidence. He had been just a sailor then, a fisherman from time to time, using his small ship to make the money he could in a place that had few rules - a place where only the tattered nets of a culture, and it's colonists, remained. But that smile, and those gifts, and finally, his lovemaking had won her. And now she was his. She was married to a pirate.

They lived in a grand house. She had two beautiful children. They were well-fed. They were well-clothed. They gave, almost constantly, to the needy. They ran companies with the money, they ran charities with the money. Their coast was so lovely, and so poor. They brought money where it was needed, where it was deserved. And they had little choice. It was this, or drown in the sand of their own country. He came home, his smile addictive, and kissed her with a flourishing bow. And he took her to bed, and he draped her with diamonds, and then he fed her meat and wine - wine!

She walked the halls of her palace. The corridors were neat, sparklingly tidy from the efficient and silent maids. The place echoed when it was not full of the children and the almost godlike presence of her husband. Her husband, the pirate. His closet was full and the fabrics of his suits shone with quality. She glanced in the mirror, and saw a person she never could have imagined. She was neat, and elegant, and well-shod. Her hair shone like his suits, her skin shone like the sun. She was neither ill nor starving. Her children were safe. It was a paradise. It was a fairy tale. She sighed, and went to her balcony. She stared at the trees draping the ground around their estate. She heard the birds, and felt the wind. And she sighed and wished he were safe, and said the prayer she always said for him, the thought, like a worn bone, so many times had she pressed her breath to the words, so many times had she caressed them with her tongue. They were her bed and her house, those words were her home.

The news broke across the capitals making little ripple. Piracy was constant these days. Everyone new some waters were dangerous. She had learned English early, being lucky in that. The satellite television, as always awake in the background, silently protested that there had been a rescue of a captain. There had been a rescue of a captain, and less importantly, two pirates had been killed. She stared. She blinked. She was sick in the bathroom.

The city wouldn't be the same without him. He was their hero, he was a good pirate. He had been her pirate. She lay on the floor, she felt as if she had been eviscerated. She wanted to be eviscerated. She wanted to walk into the sea. She was not a pirate, he was not a pirate - had hadn't been a pirate. Not like that. Not like that. How could it be illegal if it meant survival?

30 Days 30 Stories Installment 10, Dancing Shoes

There was once a woman who bought a beautiful pair of dancing shoes. It was a whim, really. She was walking by a store, she had been given money for her birthday, and she wanted them very badly. They were on sale, and they were so very very beautiful. One might say they lured her in, but that would be giving the dancing shoes a mind of their own - and as everyone knows, this isn't really possible.

She bought them, and she put them in her closet, and she looked at them. Every time she dressed for work, or undressed and put on her lounging clothes; every time she put away her folded laundry she looked at them and sighed. But she was a lonely woman, and she never did take them out for a spin. She looked and admired, but she never danced in them.

Well, it was a late Friday night. The city was hopping. Everywhere, revelers made reveling noises with other noisy revelers and reveled the night away. The dancing shoes were safely in the closet, the woman was on her couch, asleep over a book of recipes. She didn't cook. The dancing shoes did something no dancing shoes should do - they got up, they walked out the closet door, and they headed outside through the open window. They were red-sparkled tango shoes, all straps, and sexy as hell. They made their way out, they made their way to the nearest dance floor (about 11 blocks away) and they quietly made their way inside. Noone believed it when they saw them moving, and if seen they would immediately stop. They went to the dance floor, they waited by the purse rack and the shoe-changing benches, and soon - very soon - a woman surreptitiously put them on. They were magic. They made her dance like never before. She danced and danced, but when she took them off to change into her other shoes again, they left. They made their way, happily, back to the apartment of their lonely owner, and placed themselves quietly, but noticeably by her bed. When she woke up on Saturday there they were, shiny and almost-new, with just a few scuffs.

She looked at them. She had not left them there. Maybe tonight she would take them out for a spin. But when night came, they found her, all over again, hunched in front of the television, looking for all her might like she was trying to block out the noise of a partying city. They made a mad little hop and when she wasn't looking headed for the door.

They ran into the same woman again. Young, lovely. She wore them, she danced in them. They both enjoyed themselves immensely. They met every weekend - she found them, she wore them, but when she turned to put them in her bag to try to take them home, they would slip away, back to the lonely apartment. They loved the girl, but they wanted the woman to have some fun.

But she was stubborn, the lonely woman, and set in her ways. It would take more than a pair of shoes to get her out. She tried them on one day (it was a Thursday), she sighed, she modeled them. Had she bought them scuffed like that? Was that the reason they were on sale? She couldn't tell. She sighed again, and put them neatly back in her closet. But that day, she struck up a conversation with a man at work. Did he like to dance? She asked. Yes, he did on occasion.

Another month of weekends passed. The shoes found another girl. She liked to salsa. She had a partner who usually danced with her. Together they made beautiful moves. But every night, the shoes went home to their lonely owner.

After about half a year of this, the shoes were getting beat. Their spangles had gone, their lustre wasn't as it used to be; they were worn, they were content. They had danced until they could dance no more. But the woman brought them out of the closet, and gave them a look. That day at the office, the man had brought her a daisy from a vendor. He had put it on her desk, and when she found it told her it reminded him of her, so he thought he would get it for her. It had been offhand, but it had reminded her of her shoes. They looked spangly and lovely still. Perhaps she would go out dancing this weekend.

A few months later, and the shoes were very tired. Every weekend a different girl, every girl a different partner. They had been stubbed and danced and twirled to their hearts' content. They still wanted to be on the feet of their owner, but having despaired of this, they had enjoyed themselves. They were spangle-less, they were scuffed. They settled themselves in the closet, exhausted.

But the woman had a date. She had finally decided to go on a date. And so she looked through her closet, and forgetfully, came upon the pair of shoes. "Oh!" she cried, quietly. She didn't remember them looking so old. She couldn't possibly wear them now. And so she put them back in the back of the closet, and that day bought a really quite elegant pair of sensible heels. The dancing shoes just relaxed their worn straps slightly, drooping. They had enjoyed every step; they were really too tired to go out anyway. They snuggled back into an old pair of leather boots. They would just rest here, until the dust and the cobwebs covered them in sleep.