Tag: family

Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

“There won’t be any children, Mrs. White. It’s summer holidays,” Lona said with a smirk. Paul rolled his eyes skyward.
Jennifer felt a little sheepish. Lona was probably correct. However, it was irritating the way she always ensured that everyone knew she was correct. It was time to change the subject. “How did you happen to study Russian, David?” she said, leaning back in the grass, ignoring Lona and fixing on the young man. He had an intelligent, open face with sparkling white teeth but even at the age of 25, his hairline was just starting its slide toward the back of his head. She knew that his family was of English descent, not unlike her own history on her father’s side.
“My father’s in the Air Force,” said David, “and I guess we’ve lived on a dozen different bases as I grew up—Germany, Italy and NORAD in Colorado. I picked up a little of every language but never Russian.”
“So why Russian?” Lona asked.
“Well, six years ago I got chosen along with a lot of other army and air force brats to go on a teen cultural exchange to the U.S.S.R. I had no knowledge of the country before that. We were just supposed to be shining examples of North American kids. It was sure different than this tour. It had been organized by Sputnik—that’s the youth tour group—and we had cocky Komsomol leaders not much older than us in charge.”
“So you have more than a nodding acquaintance with Lenin?”
“And Marx. And Brezhnev. The Komsomol is seriously political, and this was before the signing of the SALT treaty so east-west tensions were high. Believe it or not, it’s more relaxed now.”
“But how did you learn the language?” Paul asked.
“Oh, we had a crash course before the trip. Then we stayed in a dormitory for four months and ate with the Eastern European kids, so we learned a lot that way. We didn’t visit the churches back then because they tried to pretend that they didn’t exist. Instead, we had to study in the dorm a lot and debate the class struggle or dialectical materialism with our team leader. Most of us didn’t have a clue!”
“My god, I’m not sure I could define them now,” laughed Jennifer. “But I bet we’ll know by the end of this trip.”
“Well, that was what sparked my interest in Russian. Learning by talking is the best way. That’s why I didn’t pack my Ozhegov.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Gospel of Silence

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Excerpt

At first, the face of love for me was the humiliated, broken,
rejected barefoot beggar. Later a quiet rebellion nested itself in my
heart; by then I had grown irritated by helpless love that endured
everything, by the sour stench of passivity, by the endless swallowing
of humiliation. Instead of the hermits’ Christ who resigned
himself to everything, I chose the rebellious Christ.
When I arrived home on the day of the awards ceremony, I found
my mother crying. My father was delivering one of his endless
monologues in a pitch far higher than natural, intoxicated with
himself, circling endlessly around his own words.
“Where were you?” my mother asked.
Silently I handed her the certificate.
“What’s this?” my father tossed out indifferently. “Be first in
your studies!” Then he threw it aside.
That same day, when I was supposed to leave for the reward excursion,
my father attacked me with the long wooden ruler for some
reason — today I no longer remember why, perhaps there was no
reason at all. He beat me until the ruler shattered into pieces. I had
only one aim: to keep the blows from reaching my face. I endured
it without a sound. I looked at him with cold hatred and with a cruel
kind of pity, watching the shameful, helpless rage pouring out of
him. That only enraged him further. He could not bear that I never
humbled myself before him, never begged forgiveness the way my
siblings did. I could not ask forgiveness for something I did not feel
was a sin.
It was around then that the desire to escape awakened within me.
I stepped outside my body, and from then on observed the entire
inner and outer chaos from a distance, the world struggling with
its external and internal laws, and within it my own self, stripped
of meaning. Instinctively I kept away from artificial intoxication
— alcohol, drugs, anything of the sort — not out of virtue but out
of self-defense: I was terrified of losing sight of myself even for a
moment.
Later I tried to direct both myself and my surroundings through
carefully planned or improvised scenarios. At first it was a game;

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763874

Water in the Wilderness

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Excerpt

…ently held out his hands to her. His missing fingers did not seem to faze him; he appeared to be learning to compensate for the loss.
“An’ you know what, too, Auntie Tyne?” He gazed up at her when she stood, his eyes like saucers now. “Rachael says we’re goin’ home on the really biggest old bus she’s ever seen, with a long dog on the side.”
Tyne chuckled. “You sure are, Bobby. And when Uncle Morley and I come home you’ll be able to tell us all about it. Okay?”
Solemnly, he nodded his head then offered his hand to Tyne’s mother. Shoulders erect and head held high, he escorted her through the door.
A few days later Emily Milligan brought the children back to the Holy Cross, to say goodbye before starting their trip home to Emblem. Tyne took them to see Morley. Following Sister Carol Ann’s gentle instructions, they approached the bed quietly, and stared in wonder at the man they scarcely recognized as the jovial person whom they called Uncle Morley. His hair had grown a little so that he didn’t appear bald anymore, and the bruises around his eyes and cheeks had faded to a pale yellow, tinged with blue. But Tyne knew that he must look strange to the children who were seeing him for the first time since the beating.
She had been of two minds about bringing them to his room, but Morley had asked to see them. And when he opened his eyes and smiled at them, she knew she had made the right decision. There was something she and Morley wanted to do together before the kids left for home.
“Do you … have the gifts, hon?” Morley asked haltingly.
Tyne removed a large bag from the bottom of the bedside table. Opening it, she drew out a brightly painted dump truck followed by a Shirley Temple doll. The looks on the faces of Rachael and Bobby brought tears to her eyes.
When they had gone, Tyne took Ronald to a quiet waiting room. He had tried, without success, to hold back the tears. She wanted to hug him, but knew he already felt embarrassed because of loss of control over his emotions, so she sat quietly by his side and let him talk.
“I wish I could go with them, Mrs. Cresswell. Do you think the doctors will let me go soon?”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562884

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

In Turbulent Times

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Excerpt

Last year at Brodick was a disaster. It should have literally been the last. But back they came.
‘This year will be even better than last,’ his mother had written. ‘Morag is her old self again after that awful experience in August and Rowena is just such a sweet little doll. We are going to be so happy showing her off to all the other guests and visitors. She will be the Little Belle of Brodick this year. If only your dear father could be there in flesh instead of in spirit. But how proud he must be in any case, as I am. Hamish has continual headaches these days and Alec is pale and liverish from working so hard. They both need the holiday at Brodick, as you must too. Could you not take the earlier week off and be with us the whole time? After all, you are the boss of that firm of yours. And Morag never sees you through the year. She misses you. She says you are becoming more a stranger than a brother.’
This year the changes of last year were twelve months worse. Mrs Anderson’s whole body was turning to steel, like her tiny, ball-bearing eyes. Morag was no longer pregnant. She was anaemic and tired and bitchier than ever. Rowena ran away every time Ian approached and screamed that he was going to beat her. This invariably brought Morag or her mother or both of them running to the child’s side, yelling at Ian to leave the little dote alone, to act his age and stop bullying a mere infant. Hamish and Alec sat all day every day in the stuffy sitting room, playing cribbage almost interminably. There were no walks, no golf, no drinks. Only the boat-trips were continued, apparently for Rowena’s sake, but Ian had missed those during the first week of the holiday.
‘Never mind, Ian; we’ll all enjoy the return trip to Gourock at the end of the week,’ his mother said. ‘It’ll be so lovely to have us all together again, the whole family, sailing up the Clyde towards home. I bet your dear father is sighing so contentedly if only we could hear him.’
‘I won’t be going back with you at the end of the week.’
‘What do you mean, Ian; you won’t be going back with us at the end of the week? Of course you will.’ His mother’s voice grew shrill, like the high-pitched squeal of scraped metal.
‘I won’t be. I’m leaving this morning. I’m catching the boat back to Belfast tonight.’
‘But Ian, it’s only Tuesday,’ Morag pointed out. ‘I’ve hardly seen you.’
‘Look your fill,’ said Ian, glancing at his watch. ‘You’ve got one hour and thirty-five minutes.’
‘Oh you insufferable, inhuman monster,’ Morag yelled. ‘You’re making a mockery out of family feelings and affections.’

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Prairie Roots

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Excerpt

The picnic brought out most of the people who lived in the vicinity
of the school or whose children attended the school. As
well, because it was a Sunday, people from other school districts as
well as relatives and friends of the parents came to gossip and to
munch on a few goodies. It was usually a relaxing day for the
adults and their only concern was to avoid sunburn and prevent
their children from consuming so much food that their little
stomachs would rebel and reject the contents. Which frequently
happened. They came on foot or in wagons and some even in cars.
Those who arrived by wagon would unhitch their horses, lead
them into the barn for the day and join their friends and neighbours
beside the school and the confectionery stalls. They stood
around in circles or brought out chairs or sat on the grass in the
shade to smoke and talk. Thewomen watched their children, compared
notes and exchanged information on various women things.
We found out in the evening whether any of our school indiscretions
had been leaked from the loose lips of our friends, then
through their mothers to our mother, and were relieved when no
accusations were made or suspicious questions posed to us.
The children did what children always do; they began by
spending some of their money on the various goodies before gathering
on the sports field to play games, as they waited for the official
program to begin. On a nice warm day, the merchants would
be very busy selling pop and ice cream, not to mention a variety of
candies, suckers and chocolate bars as well as items such as oranges
and hundreds of hot dogs. Even though the prizes awarded
to the winners were chits for food items, the children could not resist
the temptation of the smells and sights and just had to have
some of the good things before the races started.
At approximately 1:00 PM the main organizer, usually the principal,
would get his teachers and other helpers together and they
would walk out to the sports field to begin the various races.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562900

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

The Qliphoth

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Excerpt

She kicked the crotch of the guy who always calls me Fuckbeard when
Jago’s back is turned, but they managed to hustle her out,along with tearful
Cedric who’d turned his back on the whole scenario.
Now that all is quiet in the dorm, with Wolfbane locked away in solitary and
his supporting cast tranked down safely in their pits, I can safely itemise matters
relating to the Order of the Brazen Head. I’ve gobbed out today’s input of
sleepy-time, thanks to Simba throwing a shrill tantrum that distracted Jago at a
crucial moment of the dosage ritual.
So now, around midnight, in the little cone of bedside light, I am the only
sentient being in the Creation, an archivist of the Akashic scrolls.
Pol Pot’s revolution may have destroyed my artifacts but not the cellular
structure of my memory. Of course she ransacked our home, looting, pillaging,
laying waste . . . But I have the Lore by heart. I’ve copied it out laboriously
over the years, filling a whole series of these black books. Jago pretends to
humour me in this, but I still won’t reveal my stash as his own humours are far
from consistent.
For example, only last month he had a sudden pre-breakfast purge of our
“traumatic memorabilia”, our “hoard of faecal souvenirs” as he called the contents
of our bedside lockers. “This is the dark body of the Madonna you must
destroy!” he shouted at Eamonn and Cedric, sweeping away their framed photos
with his fat hand, grinding the pics underfoot, those saintly mothers and
martyred wives, whoever, it’s all the same to Jago whenever the neo-Freudian
fit hits him.
Yet he was only inches away from a lost knowledge more subversive than
any of his primal infantile soap-operas. I declare this is the Gnosis of the Brazen
head and these are the lost letters of its Lore:
73 Harsnett Road,
London SE 27
March 8, 1943
Dear Firestone,
What a pleasure to receive your letter! It displays a grasp of occult scholarship
which is impressive for someone still in their first year of undergraduate
studies, albeit in the shadow of the Bodleian Library, near the banks of Isis. I
myself took my first degree at Cambridge before my brief scholastic period at
the seminary in Rome and my later researches in Vienna. But the cloisters of
Oxford must still be charged with ancient potency, even in these dismal times.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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Thrush

A
House Near the Sea

The houses I had they took from me. It happened
that the times were unpropitious: war, destruction, exile
sometimes the hunter meets the migratory birds
sometimes he doesn’t. Hunting
was good in my time, lots of people felt the shot
the others roam around or go mad in the shelters.
Don’t talk to me about the nightingale, nor the skylark
nor about the little wagtail
inscribing numbers with its tail in the light;
I don’t know many things about houses
I know they have their own race, nothing more.
New at first, like babies
playing in the orchards with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider the colored window shutters
and the shining doors over the day;
when the architect finishes they change,
they shrink or smile or even become resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who would return if they could
or those who vanished now that the world
has turned into an immense hotel.
I don’t know many things about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow
sometimes, when I stop
even when
sometimes, near the sea, in empty rooms
with an iron bed with nothing of my own
looking at the evening spider, I contemplate
that someone is getting ready to come that they dress him up
in white and black cloths with plenty of colorful jewels
and around him venerable ladies
with gray hair and dark lace shawls talk softly
that he gets ready to come and say goodbye to me;
or a woman with quivering eyelashes and slim waist
returning from southern ports,
Smyrna, Rhodes, Syracuse, Alexandria,
from cities closed like warm window shutters
with perfume made of gold fruits and herbs
that she climbs the stairs without seeing
those who slept under the stairs.
Houses, you know, grow easily resentful, when you
empty them.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4279077#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

The Gospel of Silence

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excerpt

The sandy stretch beneath the Mureş River embankment served
as the beach. In summer we went there every day on foot, enjoying
the water, the sunlight, watching the girls and women as though
the order of the world might remain unchanged forever. Back then
the watermill still functioned for a while, the one that had once
belonged to my maternal grandparents. And the Rákóczi-Kornis
castle had not yet collapsed into ruin — it operated as an agricultural
school.
At school we committed every prank imaginable. Teachers were
still permitted to use corporal punishment. We received hard slaps.
Șerban’s method was the cruelest: he grabbed the hair beside one’s
ear and lifted until the tuft remained in his hand. Others struck our
palms with rulers. If we jerked our hand away, we had to stretch it
out again until the blow landed properly. Our hands throbbed for
days afterward. That was why the favorite punishment was being
thrown out of class. Then at least we could find something to occupy
ourselves with.
It was a mixed-language school, with Romanian and Hungarian
classes. Back then the balance was still more or less even. Later the
proportions shifted; the Hungarian secondary school disappeared,
and even in the elementary school fewer and fewer Hungarian
pupils remained. At that time there were no dramatic ethnic tensions.
It amounted to little more than the strongest Hungarian boy,
Józsi Türke — who later became my brother-in-law — testing his
strength against Grecu, the Romanians’ muscular champion. The
children circled around them, each camp proclaiming its own warrior
the victor.
Church holidays meant something slightly different to us children
than to the devout believers. At Christmas we went caroling.
For weeks beforehand we practiced Christmas songs, sometimes at
our house, sometimes at my friend István’s. Amid the many false,
whining voices filling the streets, our singing was beautiful, and
those who welcomed our carols praised us for it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763874

He Rode Tall

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Excerpt

…those comments, the meeting blew up. Joel could understand that
all Mr. Johansson was trying to do was help, but if there were two
things you wouldn’t want to be telling Edward Hooper, it would be
suggesting government help and calling his child underprivileged.
There was no doubt that the Hoopers could sure use some help to
finance Joel’s education, but the last thing that was going to happen
in the hills that night was for Edward to admit it to any fancy
dressed school teacher.
Later, the school year came to an end. Joel graduated from high
school, and Mr. Johansson, after once again encouraging Joel to
consider the possibility of going further with his education, left
town for wherever he went every summer. Joel spent the next few
weeks working for his father, riding the high ridges, checking the
cattle, counting cows and calves, and making sure that all was
well in the pasture.
Back then, on July 20, 1969, as seventeen-year-old Joel rode
along, he thought of the hurt that he had experienced at home,
especially during the last few weeks of high school, the brutal treatment
of his mother by his drunken father, and the hard way that his
dad treated him. Back then, the Circle H was not a healthy place for
this seventeen-year-old boy to be; and really, not a healthy place for
anyone, and certainly not a place with a future.
That hot summer day back in July of 1969, Joel found himself
a long way from home at the end of the afternoon. Feeling mighty
hungry and needing to water both himself and his horse, Joel
dropped down out of the hills to the Ladners’ place. Larry Ladner
and his wife Erica were a dirt-poor young couple trying to eek out
a living for themselves and their four children on a small patch of
rented land. Their dream was to one day be able to put a
down-payment on a place of their own, but the way things were
going it looked like it wouldn’t be long before the Ladners would
be forced off of the land. Larry had been coming in from a day of
fieldwork on the tractor when he welcomed Joel. He knew the
Hoopers were good neighbors. As Joel sat with the Ladners and
ate his evening meal, he heard some exciting news on the radio.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562862

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897955

Ken Kirkby: A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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Excerpt

…the hall where Karen and the crew were putting the finishing touches on
the exhibit. He was led to the Speaker’s office where Michael was sitting
on a desk, his feet dangling, telling stories to the staff of his adventures
in the Arctic.
John led Ken into his office and a photographer arrived to immortalize
the occasion. He posed Ken and John in front of the Karsh portrait of
Winston Churchill and for the next hour shot Ken with various members
of Parliament. Jean Chrétien, leader of the opposition, offered his congratulations,
as did Joe Clark, who was standing in for Brian Mulroney
who was otherwise engaged.
In the hall at the foot of the stairs people stood or sat shoulder to
shoulder. Not an inch of space remained.
I had the most amazing feeling. It was a feeling I have never had before
or since. It was a feeling that I was standing at a point in the universe where
for some minutes and seconds reality was different. This was the magical
moment I had been seeking my whole life. Usually, I had foreseen important
moments in great detail. But this one – this was different. This one had
somehow manufactured itself. It was not the vision I had had in my head.
John Fraser stood on the podium and spoke. “Almost fifty years ago
a young boy sat at the feet of his tutor – an old Portuguese fisherman –
and heard tales of whaling in the Canadian North. These tales were so
wonderful that the boy vowed some day to see Canada for himself and to
clarify his mental pictures of the land.”
“In his late teens, circumstance found the boy and his family living
on Canada’s West Coast and several years later he set out on his boyhood
dream to see the great Canadian North. For five years, he walked
from one end of this great land to the other, travelling with families of
Inuit as they pursued their nomadic lifestyle. Often he was alone, walking
endlessly – experiencing first-hand Canada’s Arctic North, all the while
sketching thousands of miniature drawings of what he saw.”
“Toward the end of his journey, like a great mirage in the desert, he saw
a giant of a man standing on the distant horizon. It was a stone Inukshuk,
an Inuit guide to hunting and fishing grounds. Try as he might for the
next twenty years, his efforts to portray the splendour of this vast and
spectacular landscape resulted in dissatisfaction and personal frustration.
Finally, he realized that only a painting which was larger than any ever
painted could properly depict the unseen spectacle which he felt compelled
to bring to the rest of the world.”
“The result of five years of trekking and twenty years of painting was
completed on June 21, 1991, the longest day of the year. It is the largest
original oil on canvas portrait in the world, measuring one hundred and
fifty-two feet long by twelve feet high.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562830

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573