Those Safe Nights (from ellipsism)

 Almost nightly I would take that bike ride from Perth St. over to Ann St. to that small two story house with the flaking white siding. Risking his disdain, I'd get her father to call her down from her upstairs bedroom so we could walk together again to the park. There, we'd sit and listen to the music of the creaking swings or, in the cloak of those safe nights when the sun had descended, hide away from that single streetlight that illuminated the corner of William and James and sit in the grass at the opposite corner of the park, where the light wasn’t attending, where we would talk in hushed tones. The neighbours could look down on us through their backwindow curtains and chainlink fences, but they would never hear a word we said.

Sad Kapteyn (by Alastair Reynolds)

        "Hello, Earth. It's me again.

        I hope you're receiving my signal loud and clear.

        You'll be glad to hear that I've warmed up after the long centuries of my interstellar cruise phase. Having run a complete health check, I can confirm that all aspects of me are performing nominally. Better than nominally, if truth be told. At the risk of boastfulness, I'm actually in excellent shape. Propulsion, AI core, long-range sensors and instrumentation, navigation and communication assemblies - I couldn't be in better condition.

        Not bad for a piece of space hardware which has already visited six solar systems, without ever needing to return home. Of course, I can't take credit for myself. I was just well manufactured - built to endure for thousands of years.

        All the same, thank you for making me.

        Onto business, anyway - and I can't begin to tell you what I've found, out here around Kapteyn's star! This really is an extraordinary place - a solar system unlike any that I've already visited. I wish you could be here with me, seeing things through my eyes.

        I've dug into my background files and I understand why you sent me to Kapteyn's star. Unlike the other systems I've visited, this sun and its little family of worlds aren't part of the normal family of stars orbiting in the disc and bulge of the galaxy. This is a halo star - a member of a dispersed population of stars and star clusters, enclosing the Milky Way in a great thin sphere. It's entirely possible that these stars were not originally part of our own galaxy, but were torn free of another one after a kind of gravitational collision. And some of these stars are unmeasurably old - more ancient and venerable, perhaps, than any disc stars.

        Kapteyn's star is so slow-burning, so settled, that even my instruments can't put an upper limit on its age. It could be nearly as old as the universe.

        And its planets?

        Just as old.

        Make of this what you will - put it down to failing programming if you like - but I feel the age of this place in my bones. All right, my main bus chassis. I don't have bones; I know that. But believe me, this system feels truly time-haunted. The silence and the stillness are almost unbearable, like an endlessly building pressure. Nothing has happened here for entire turns of the galaxy; nothing will happen. Kapteyn's star simmers, eeking out its nuclear lifetime. The dead worlds tick around their dead orbits.

        But once, there was something.

        I know, I've taken liberties. I should have transmitted my wake-up signal before doing any investigations. But I couldn't resist myself. You made me to be curious.

        I found signs of civilisation.

        The first planet - Kapteyn b - still lies within the habitable zone of the star, orbiting once every forty eight days. There's nothing living there now, not even an atmosphere, but once there was a technological culture.

        Yes, the first I've found. The reason I was made in the first place.

        How's that for a discovery?

        The fact is, it wasn't hard to detect. Cities cover almost the entire surface of that world. Enormous structures - they must have reached into space! Dishes and towers and the remains of what I think must have been space elevators, climbing all the way to synchronous orbit. A moon, its surface covered by the same kinds of architecture. Evidence of colonisation of the second planet, Kapteyn c, in its much colder orbit.

        Wonders beyond comparison, but scoured into a kind of tomblike grey uniformity, after aeons of micrometeorite and cosmic-ray bombardment. Cities as mute as sphinxes.

        And nowhere the slightest sign of life.

        Continent-sized craters mar Kapteyn b, and I wonder if they speak of some truly awesome catastrophe - a cosmic accident, or something worse? Whatever the case, the builders of these cities are long gone. Perhaps they were dead even before Kapteyn's star was snatched from the clutches of its mother galaxy.

        At the risk of inferring too much from too little data, I can't help indulging in a little speculation. I too was the product of a technological civilisation, with the capability to transform a planet, to colonise other moons and worlds, to build daunting structures. The people of Kapteyn b were clearly more advanced than you, my own builders - but given time, you too could have transformed a world in this manner.

        Something to think about, isn't it?

        Well, that's me signing off for now. I'm going to do some more exploring of this system, and perhaps drop some instrument packages down onto Kapteyn b itself. There'll be a risk in that, since I'll need to come in on quite a tight orbit, and who knows what will happen? Still, that's a hazard I'm prepared to accept. You made me for this, and I'm grateful for all that I've been allowed to see and do.

        But look.

        I know it's a small thing, and I really shouldn't bother you about it. But it's been quite a long while since I heard from you. I put rather a lot of effort into these transmissions, and it would be good - just once - to know that there was someone at the other end, listening in.

        Just a word, to let me know that you still care?"

(Copyright remains to Alastair Reynolds 2014)

Camouflage (from ellipsism)

 Before Leah, I was unfathomably shy. I don’t know where it started; my social anxiety, but the rabble, the bright and cheerful storm of considering people terrified me. I didn’t want to participate. I didn’t want to contribute.  I dressed in dark or earthtone clothes, almost to camouflage me with the walls, the crowds, anything I could disappear into without being seen. I wore my hair long so my bangs could obscure my eyes, especially when I kept my gaze at the ground. If I could get away with wearing a hood over my head, I would, cloaking myself in as much anonymity as I could find myself. High school especially was a wilderness to me, a black forest of predators with a wide and varied food chain. Socialization was the drive for us all back then, setting social norms and adhering to them, sometimes with a rigidity that made them as brittle as glass. So in that jungle, many would get ravaged, one way or another, from different pursuers, for any kind of deviancy from some unspoken, shifting abstract mean that floated aloft like an invisible spectrum of light.

Review of Even So by Lauren B. Davis

 Lauren B. Davis is acutely aware of the growing divide in the United States between the haves and the have nots, and has written a novel which tackles this issue and many others with her new novel "Even So". In the novel's preface, she points out the lack of wilful understanding in the privileged of the ever-increasing difficulties of the materially poor, providing the premise of a novel that sweeps through many levels to deliver on many lessons on faith, empathy and love. 

She embodies her thesis in her main character Angela, the pampered and vain wife of a successful businessman in affluent Princeton, who volunteers at a food bank in low-income Trenton, in an attempt to ease her own guilt over living with ample means while others struggle to make ends meet. There, she meets Sister Eileen, the strong, but embattled nun who struggles to negotiate with a painful past and fears of a growing chasm with the God to whom she has devoted her life. The two main characters orbit each other, sometimes with tidal pull and friction and other times with genuine affection and appreciation. When Angela meets with traumatic events that alter the path of her life, she turns to Eileen and both women entwine to co-pilot a rocky path towards self-actualization and redemption.

There is much sage wisdom in this novel’s pages, examining the complexities of both sin and faith, but Lauren B. Davis does not pool only from the pages of the Bible. Rather, it draws proverbial wisdom from many texts, Christian and otherwise. Like many of today’s theologians, Lauren Davis did not concentrate on just one faith, but researched many other philosophical and spiritual sources, thusly enriching the book with a broad diversity of thought. Lauren B. Davis considers much, dives deep, and comes up with a wonderful work of gorgeous depth and dynamism. Indeed, it is like a dive that takes you from shallow to deep, with all pressures that mount on the way, and the result when you surface is exhilarating.

The book also plays into the human drama and latches onto the soft but powerful laws of empathy. For example, she negotiates a beautiful assertion on the question of being pro-life on the issue of abortion. With the powerful salve of empathy, Davis maintains that a girl who has gotten an abortion should still feel that God loves her, that she is still valid as a person, not a sinner damned to hell for the murder of her unborn child, as so many pro-lifers would prefer to opine.

As a work of fiction, “Even So'' moves along a mounting pace that builds tension and drama artfully, which has always been one of Lauren B. Davis’s greatest talents. The disaster that befalls Angela takes you by surprise and the moment is inescapably brutal. It is the watershed of the book and of the protagonist’s life as a ruthless consequence of her own vain recklessness. Davis handles this with precision. This is not merely a feel good book, not a flowery perfumed Hallmark production, this is an incisive work of literary fiction.

And though there are many dark and ugly scenes in this book, the light still overtakes the darkness; the light of hope, strength, trust and love. For example, Sister Eileen counsels Angela to remain true to her whole self rather than the parts that she loathes. Later, in a discussion with a superior, Sister Eileen intimates one of the most beautiful lines in the book; that wherever you find your whole self, this is “Where God waits.”. Think of it. God waits where you will find your whole self, blemishes and all.

“Even So” is a book of deep understanding of the world from both spiritual and human perspectives. Although there is much wrong with The Church today, there is actually much more good being done by people that are completely separate from the ones doing the damage. Volumes exist of good words with a great consideration of the spiritual universe and its relationship with the chaotic and fluctuating human soul. These words are not exclusively from a Bible that so many quasi-Christians like to thump. Rather, this understanding comes from something more global and conglomerate than that. Davis pools from this great resource and in turn presents a great, well-thought-out and well rounded novel about faith, sin and the intricate dance between them. In it, we learn that God loves and cares for us with all our faults and blemishes, even so. That human dignity is fundamental in everyone, regardless of who they are, even so.

"Even So" is due to be published by Dundurn Press in September 2021

from Uvula

     Pa was a ruddy-faced farmer who I would always remember walking to the greenhouses, stopping to hork and spit a throat oyster onto the ground, then pinching one nostril and blowing a jet of snot out the other, stooping over so as not to hit his pants, though wiping his nose on the sleeve of his work jacket.  I can remember how he would pick up a shovel and work at the soil, forceful and purposeful, unquestioningly at work.  He would stop occasionally, straighten and stretch his back, heave a deep sigh then begin his work again.  I remember the sounds of his exertion, always a breathy grunt to pair with each thrust of the spade.  The sounds and smells of the greenhouses return to me, the earthy, humid warmth, but most of all there is the dominating impression of my father, hard at work, hard at life. With that always comes the echoing rings of a battery of slaps upside my head, the hails of judgement and disapproval, the constant storm I would incite for never working fast enough, often accented with an expectorated “Godverdomme!”, a gutteral religious curse whose first sound skids from a throat-clearing, angst-purging consonant. These are the things I think of when I remember my father.

Feb. 15, 2021

The last month and a half has proven to be a period of intensity for me. Intense learning, intense change and intense creativity. During a recent lockdown thanks to covid-19, I was able to work at home with both my work and home laptops open in front of me, which allowed me to finish 5 short story drafts to add to my Virtus manuscript, which now ups the count to 18 complete stories.

With more time at home, I've also been able to sit with various stories by other authors, those that had won contest competitions and some by my most favourite writers like Mark Jarman and Joseph Boyden. I would read through them with a pencil in hand and dissect them with a critical eye, pointing out different devices that they would use, how they executed transitions in non-linear ways, and how each sentence was always a step towards the finale of the piece. It was an eye-opening exercise for me and as a result I was able to look at pieces that had been troubling me for a while and suddenly find the mode in which they would work as a cohesive finished piece. I had been writing so long in a strict linear way, almost chronologically arranged and had been looking for ways to escape that approach. The result of this study give my writing a dimension I had always felt was missing and I wholeheartedly believe I'm writing better than I ever have before, with more creativity and a greater confidence.

And the final new thing to boost my writing is my participation in the Sweetwater Aspiring Writers' Workshop, run by Joseph Boyden and his wife Laura Vukson. Through this workshop, I've been able to meet four other writers and we've been able to share stories with one another while Joseph has given us exercises to help us find a balance between exposition, setting and dialogue to help our stories flow, as well as advice on how to create dynamic and realistic characters to drive our plots.  I have always admired Joseph for his courage in facing the controversies that had dogged him in recent years, and I see no change in his wisdom and generosity, which I have always known to be the true measure of the man. I hope to become friends with him through this because I really do find him immensely interesting to talk to.

So here I am, obsessively writing with abandon, totally okay with the 'stay at home' order and riding this creative wave as far as it will take me.  I'm hoping to have a completely replenished and energized short story collection to be sent out by the spring so I can concentrate once again on my LefTturn novel during the summer break. 

Each new year, I like to think that I am going to stuff the time with as much adventure as I possibly can with road trips and live shows and joining in with the social rabble. I was hoping that I would be able to return to that with 2020 being such a washout. But as the pandemic lingers like an unwanted guest that refuses to leave, I find I can fill 2021 with another kind of adventure with the same or even more satisfaction, which is to really expand my writing career into something successful and rewarding. I am healthy and strong and excited to see where this will all lead. Wayward Ho!

 

footlights: illuminating the metaphysical

 In these times of isolation and uncertainty, especially through the shutdowns that occurred earlier this year, room has been given for contemplation upon things that exist and happen in our own backyards.  So many of us have been given an opportunity to turn our gaze within, to familiarize ourselves with the things that had long awaited for our attentions.

Through the thick of this global pandemic, poet Pearl Pirie brings a collection of introspections and meditations that she has called “footlights”. The source of the title comes from another title in the book- ‘the saplings are yellow as footlights in the forest’.  Through this poem and others, she is able to capture moments of light, when something turns full frontal to the sun and seems to illuminated brighter than its surroundings, as she has done with the opening lines of ‘honey locusts shed gold at whippet dawn’:

“along the cracked sidewalks

dog, bright as a mote

translucent as a glass fish.”

Pearl lives in the wilds of Quebec’s Gatineau Hills, close to nature, immersed in its quiet, peace and microcosmic dramatic plays.  In them, she sees the synchronicity between the natural and the human, the artificial.  She sees their metaphysicality, their metaphors. Everything literary runs on metaphors, acting as a lubricant for us to move through our lives.  Pearl has a sort of sixth sense when it comes to seeing these devices, as if she sees a dimension few people can see.  A penny for her thoughts indeed would be an investment with high returns.

As an empath, she carefully considers everything, observing from afar, yet her affection never diminishes with the distance. Her observations of nature are subtle, as she tries to not be obtrusive, in ‘what is set in motion’

“aware of my indelicate

predator eyes,

through its reflection, 

I watch the loon.”

Or in ‘ant by lamplight’

“Pausing, head tilted

    we, despite ourselves,

      cheer.  she’s started down:”

She writes with a powerful candid sensuality, as in ‘the ligaments hop over one another’ 

“here, put your thumbs

(each deserve an Order of Canada)

into my waiting shoulders,”

Or she uses powerful corporeal metaphorical imagery as you may find in ‘in the park’s verges’

 

“Will our ribs find they can intermesh like fingers

In a bit of scrub and cedar verge?”

And again in ‘house with you’, we see a lover as furniture, an accessory for your decor where we seek the comfort of human contact, sinking into the contours of your lover’s body.

“you would make a wonderful wingchair

my back to your stomach, your jaw for my temple.”

“footlights” covers so much ground, touches so many different things, oscillating from a lighthearted play on words such as ‘a flannelette’s flannel’ or the life/death drama of watching a cooper’s hawk attack a pigeon while she orders pho in ‘waiting for menus’.

Even her titles tell stories solely on their own, such as ‘pollinators think the bouquet is for them’ or ‘old habits are hard as a boiled egg to beat’.  Still, all of them comment on the human condition through so many transparent layers, like looking into a lenticular picture, where what you see depends on the angle at which you view.

In the end, “footlights” is luminous with the energy of Pearl’s bright and brilliant mind.  She illuminates so many different questions and reflects back the answers through beautiful imagery and lush metaphors.  In what seems to be dark times, she lights us a pathway with which we can traverse safely and confidently through the theatre of life, grateful for her vivid poetic projections and music.