Tag: writing

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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excerpt

Then he reached to the side, and turned on the
tap of the small bar sink, and filled a pitcher with water. Lastly, he opened
another cupboard, lifted down two tumblers, poured a goodly measure
of whiskey into both, and splashed water into the glasses.
“This is how you and I are going to do business,” he said. “We’re going
to drink.”
‘In the middle of the day?” Ken asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything? We’re going to drink.”
“Why do we have to drink?” Ken eyed the whiskey with revulsion. “My
guess is it’s to do with, ‘get a man drunk and you’ll find out who he is.’”
“Who told you that?”
“My father.”
“I’d like to meet your father.” He took a large swallow. “So, tell me
about yourself.”
Ken told his story, while he watched Fraser drink until the bottle was
empty. He drank a bottle every day, he said, and he was as proud of that
as the fact that he was a one match a day man. He struck a match in the
morning to light his first cigarette, and every subsequent cigarette, for the
rest of the day, was lit from the stub of the last. “It takes discipline to do
that.”
“I want you to come to the gallery two or three days a week. I want to
hear your story. I want you to tell me your feelings, your thoughts, your
understanding of the universe – everything. I want to listen to you. I want
to hear you.”
For several weeks, Ken visited and talked, while Fraser downed a bottle
of rye and smoked an eternal chain of cigarettes. “You have a passion that
is white-hot and I love it,” he said. “We have all these artists around, and
they’re all limp. I want to see a man with a paintbrush in one hand and a
sword in the other. That’s you.”
One day, Ken asked Fraser why he never saw the paintings he sold to
him. “Where do you put them?”
“I’ve sold them.”
“All of them?”
Yes, all of them.”
“Oh my gosh. Well, that’s terrific.”
“You look surprised.”
“I am.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to me. Of course, they’re sold. So,
bring me some more. Go and paint.”
“There’s a limit to my speed.”
“I’m sure there is and I want to find it. I suspect the faster you paint the
better you get. You’re thinking too much. Don’t think. Painting isn’t about
thinking. This is not an intellectual exercise.

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

Arrows

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excerpt

Tell him I promise his village won’t be damaged, nor his
fields touched. Tell him.”
Losada dismounted and the others followed suit, but he stopped
them with a gesture of his hand. “Infante, Ávila, Galeas,
Maldonado, Pedro and Rodrigo Ponce, Gregorio de la Parra, with
me. Ten harquebusiers and ten pikemen, come forward as well.
Carlos.”
He snapped his fingers, then turned to me. “Friar Salvador, if you
please, come with me. The rest of you, stay where you are, don’t let
your guard down. It wouldn’t be the first time they welcome and
then betray and kill. Keep an eye on your surroundings. At the first
sign of trouble, Juan Suárez, sound the charge. All of you! Diego de
Paradas will command in my absence. Camacho! You are second.
Good luck and may God be with us.”
“Harquebusiers, check your priming!” yelled Diego de Paradas.
Losada put a hand on the hilt of his sword at his hip, as if to
reassure himself. Behind him, the harquebusiers grabbed their
powder flasks and rammed the charges down the muzzles. A flock
of parrots cawed overhead.
“Take good account of everything, Friar Salvador,” said Losada.
“I have a mind to have you write a record of this expedition.”
Recording the expedition would be considered a great honour and a
great responsibility. I nodded. But I knew immediately it would be
impossible to record the truth.
I admired the orderly arrangement of the village. The streets were
smooth under my feet, the houses skilfully made. Earthen pots
steamed over the embers of fires; hammocks were neatly
distributed; baskets and heads of plantain hung from the wooden
structures. Strings of yarn were stretched over primitive looms. On
the sloping thatched roofs, dozens of round cassava cakes dried in
the sun. Human and animal skulls and bones hanging among the
baskets and plantains reminded me of macabre tales of cannibalism.
The Indians stepped aside as we entered the village. They stared
at my feet and then at the rest of me, for I was the only barefooted
Spaniard, let alone one wearing a frock.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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Dyadic Automation
Careful! Cover yourselves! Be careful! The blowing winds have already brought the mysterious messages to our ears. Everything around us is just another threat. There wasn’t any neighbourhood not blanketed by fear, each object hides a soul inside it. Come, let’s go. The time is now. The rusty weathercock calls us wildly in the night. The draw-well stopped and the blind horses became one with the begonia flowers. Let’s go, march! To go far away to Galvana. The saviour plank is hidden from the wind harbour of forgetfulness, peace is there. Sacrificial victims of love, ascetic wanderers of the night, proud dawn walkers light up the sea lamp. Whoever has the strength, whose heart truly dares, let him come. But let us not delay in futile reviews of the past. The time is uncertain. The roads aren’t safe at all and the flood drenched many places. The Caryatid girls have crowded erotically the dark ditches, the lustful maidens of our erotic years. Their famous smile flew away and now it blooms in some abandoned islands. The thunderbolt shows us the way. Let’s go! To the Lycaonian Galvana, there we shall rest. After our kind foreheads are decorated with rose flowers, we offer the libations due to the birds. There, in the graceful wooden temples of the old capital, we shall slaughter the young bull and a fiery column will spring out from its shed blood. There, wrapped around phallic banners, girls are more beautiful than sudden conclusions of dynamite. There lives the Hellene Pantelas among the wild Soudanese. The flowers there are wise and sunlit leftovers of dead beauties. The tears of the shark and the enigmatic prayer of Zacharia are useless there along with the frosty embrace of the penguin.
The erotic spasms of the last emperors and their fiery tears belong to the same person. The offer of the boatswain to the footprints of the hypotenuse of anomalous attractions is accompanied by the angelic harp, and our imposing stature means the spread of freedom and the longing for freedom all over the globe.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734

Water in the Wilderness

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excerpt

for a long, long time but she had heard her mom say that if he got upset about something, he was sure to wet during the night. She hoped and hoped he wouldn’t do that tonight. What was it Uncle Morley and Auntie Tyne said if something was bothering them? Oh yes, they always said, “Let’s pray about it.”
Rachael had forgotten most of the praying words she had heard them say, but it still sounded like a good idea to talk to God about Bobby. Quietly, she moved her hands so that the palms were together. “God, don’t let my brother wet the bed tonight,” she whispered. “He’s so small and afraid. And please, God, don’t let them send us to an orphanage. Make Daddy come for us soon.” She started to move her hands apart but then realized she had forgotten something. “And, oh yes – Amen.”
The house had gone quiet, so she eased herself from the bed and, in the faint glow from the street lamp on the corner, she made her way carefully across the room to the closed door. In the hallway, she tiptoed towards the bathroom, but stopped abruptly when she heard the baby whimper. Rachael waited, but Maybelle must have only been fussing in her sleep because, once more, the house was silent. She just hoped she wouldn’t rouse anyone when she flushed the toilet.
On her way back to bed, Rachael was a little less cautious. Apart from her uncle’s snoring, she heard nothing until she had almost reached her bedroom door. Then she stopped short as a sound from the boys’ bedroom across the hall caught her ears.
Crying. Someone in the boys’ bedroom was crying. Bobby!
Without even a second thought, Rachael pushed the door open and started towards the child’s cot near the far wall. She stared when she saw him, still fully dressed, lying quietly with gentle little snores coming from his slightly open mouth. She stood still and listened.
“What are you doing in here, Rachael?”
She swung around, every nerve tense, her heart pounding. Ronnie lay on his side, his head propped on his bent elbow. Even in the dim light she could see his swollen eyes and traces of tears on his lean cheeks.
“I … I thought Bobby was crying,” she whispered.

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

The Circle

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excerpt

and then when they retire, most often they collapse from the stress of the
years they spent at work and away from home, like Matthew. What have you
been doing all your life, sweet Emily? What have you been doing for Emily? You
said the other day that you would like to get into underwater photography. How
are you going to do that being married to a man who has no time for his wife, let
alone for what his wife likes to do?”
Emily looks at him, but is at a loss for words. She knows he’s right, although
she’s afraid to admit that even to herself. The world is a scary place without
money, she knows. She also knows Matthew and Emily hardly make it on his
salary.
“It’s scary to think of being out there without the means to survive, sweet
Talal,” she utters, as if to convince herself that that is the most important thing at
this time.
“Yes, I agree. But what will you do to survive is the question, my sweet Emily.
Do you sell out what counts for the security of having money? This is a call we all
have to make.”
“That’s right, my love, do you sell out what counts?” she asks, instead of
answering his question.
He smiles brightly at her as if trying to see into her very soul and says, “No, sweet
Emily, you never sell out, no matter what. Because if you do, how can you face
yourself in themirror and say you have been true to yourself; I have been true to my
integrity, I haven’t sold out. That is what counts in life and that’s the reason I would
never sell out.”
“Perhaps you are right. But it’s different for a man than for a woman.” She
points out.
“No, my love, there is no difference. It’s only a matter of personal belief, a
matter of effort, a matter of achievement, a matter of commitment, that’s all!”
She lays her head on his shoulder and says nothing more, as if listening to the
gap between two words or two breaths, or two of her heartbeats that sound like
the song of a woman in love with this Iraqi man with the sweet voice and the sad
eyes. He’s very pleased that he has made her aware of Matthew’s work, because
he knows that, later, all this will sink in and the result is going to be exactly what
he wants. Talal sits listening to the song of the wind through the small park
where they sit, a song that unfolds slowly and methodically like a majestic eagle
spreading its wings to the heights of the sky.
They begin walking once more, holding hands and observing nature all
around them. They see the bright colors of the trees and flowers, and the shining,
splashing water of the pond where the sun’s rays reflect like crystals. They come
to a smaller pond filled with ducks making all kinds of sounds

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

Poodie James

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excerpt

His mother’s elderly cousin and his wife were
the last in the succession of foster parents. They resigned themselves
to raising the boy in their drafty little house at the water’s
edge. Then illness sent the old man to his bed. In a panic, his wife
arranged for Peter to enter the state school for the deaf, a collection
of brick buildings in the fog on a bluff at the edge of a forest of
dripping firs and sodden undergrowth. In seven years at the school,
Poodie learned to read lips and use sign language. He studied
Latin and French and spent hours each week in the library. He
learned shoe repair, leather working, carpentry and printing. He
swam on the school’s team, stroking endless laps up and down the
big pool in the natatorium. He was one of the happiest children
ever to have lived at the school, and one of the most independent,
so hard-headed that he countered all efforts to channel him into a
vocation. Other students went off to jobs in shoe shops, apprenticed
themselves to carpenters, found work with printers. After he
was graduated, Poodie used part of his stipend to buy a ticket east
to the dry side of the state, fleeing the drizzle and mist. The train
came out of the mountains into the valley lying in the spring sun
under apple blossoms as under a snowfall. The river ran broad and
gleaming past the town. He turned to the other passengers,
laughing and pointing out the window.
“He must be home,” he saw a woman say.
“Home,” he repeated, the only word they could understand in
his stream of sounds as he got off at the depot. He walked around
the town with his canvas suitcase, smiling at everyone he met.
Home, he thought, home.
Poodie slept on a bench in the depot. After three nights, the station
master gave him a note. He would have to stay somewhere
else, it wasn’t a hotel. Struggling through the scrawl of Poodie’s
reply, the station master saw that he had nowhere to go and only a
little money for food. “Home now,” the note said. “This is my place
now,” it said, and “Need work.”
“Ruthie,” the station master’s brother said to his wife that evening,
“that young fella out there is Poodie James.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Savages and Beasts

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excerpt

They walked back into the emergency waiting room.
Nothing was different in there. They walked into the hallway
and reached the area where Dylan was kept. The attending nurse
told them to stay only for a few minutes since the patient was
due for a few tests. They nodded their understanding. Dylan was
breathing a bit easier since they had hooked him on an oxygen
tube. Upon seeing them he smiled.
“They’ll do a few tests soon, and then I’ll go back home,”
he mentioned.
“We’ll wait to see the results of the tests,” Anton said.
A few minutes later the nurse came back and told them to
leave. They walked out to the grounds again. They found a bench
where they sat. A multitude of birds were flying from tree to tree
from branch to branch making their presence known with their
fluttering and with their chirping.
Time passed with the bird chirps and the flying from
branch to branch, Anton and Mary enjoyed their morning as
they sat for a while, chit-chatted for a while, walked around for
a while, until an hour later they went inside to check on the old
man. He wasn’t in his partition, obviously having a test. They
walked to the waiting room again. Mary used the public telephone
and informed Sister Gladys about the progress they had
made up to that time. She told her that soon as they’d know the
results from the test she will inform Sister Gladys and then they’ll
return to the School. Sister Gladys understood and said there was
no rush for them to return before they would be informed about
the issues pertaining to Dylan.
One hour later the doctor came to the reception area and
called them.
“Based on your description of his symptoms, his own narrative
we suspected a heart attack in fact his oxygen level

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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excerpt

While he studied, he periodically found himself distracted by the
thought of the one art gallery in Vancouver he had not approached with
his paintings – the Alex Fraser Gallery. Stories of Alex Fraser, and his
treatment of artists in his London and Vancouver galleries, had circulated
through the art community for years. Ken was angry with himself. He
was rarely afraid of anyone and had met no one in Canada yet who had
intimidated him. Alex Fraser’s reputation did.
He had heard that the man was irascible – so what? He had heard he
was powerful. Was it in his power to judge his work? What if he found it
wanting?
The only thing worse than his fear was the prospect of his disappointment
in himself if he refused to face it, so one day he screwed up his
courage, loaded his truck with paintings, and drove to 41st Avenue near
Boulevard in Kerrisdale.
He walked into the gallery, where an attractive middle-aged woman
asked if she could help him.
“Yes, I’m here to see Mr. Fraser if he’s about.”
“Mr. Fraser doesn’t see people without an appointment.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. I’m here and I have some paintings. Please, can
you ask if he’ll see me?”
She smiled and walked into a back room. A few minutes later, a small
man with slicked-back hair and icy, blue-green eyes walked out. He was
dressed in a perfectly fitted gray pinstriped suit, with knife pleats in the
trousers and shoes that shone like mirrors.
Exhaling a great puff of smoke, he lowered himself into a big armchair,
and placed two packages of Players unfiltered cigarettes and an ashtray
on the little gate-legged table beside it. Taking a fresh cigarette from one
of the packages, he lit it from the one in his yellowed fingers, and crushed
the stub in the ashtray.
Turning to the woman who had followed him out of the back room he
called, “Doreen! Doreen, I want you to tell the young man about manners.
Ask him does he understand the meaning of manners?”
“Mr. Fraser would like to know if you understand the meaning of manners,”
she said, turning to Ken.
“Indeed I do,” Ken said. “And I apologize for coming in without an appointment
but I was nervous and I managed to screw up all my courage
to come in – and here I am.”
“Doreen! Doreen, tell him he is quite right to be nervous in approaching
me. Ask him what it is that he wants.”
“I have some paintings and would like to show them to Mr. Fraser.”
“Tell the young man that I can’t bloody see his paintings, anywhere.
Where are his paintings?”

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

He Rode Tall

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excerpt

He needed to dismantle the walls that kept others out. He
needed to use words to heal rather than hurt. If he was able to
accomplish these three objectives the new Joel Hooper would
appear, he thought; or, maybe the real Joel Hooper would surface
for the first time. Whatever it was, it would be quite a
transformation.
After a light lunch and some very thorough horse grooming,
Tanya and Joel saddled up their mounts and led them to the
warm-up arena. Over the last few months, Joel had been
reminded that saddling up was much more than simply throwing
a saddle on the back of the horse. First, Joel brushed the buckskin.
For the show, Tanya had told him to pay special attention
to brushing the gorgeous black mane and tail of the buckskin
gelding. Then, he placed a riding pad on the horse’s backs, and
over that, a show blanket. It was only then that the saddle was
placed on the horse’s back. Next came the boots, not Joel’s but
the horse’s. First, Joel placed the bell boots on the front feet of the
horse to protect the coronary band, just above the hoof. Then he
added the splint boots above each of the bell boots. Splints boots
were intended to protect the area between the knee and the
ankle. Moving to the rear of the gelding, Joel fastened the skid
boots to protect the horse’s fetlocks from burning as they come in
contact with the ground during the sliding stops. It was only once
that the pads, blankets, boots, and saddles were in place that Joel
loosened the halter and gently positioned the bit in the buckskin’s
mouth and quietly moved the bridle into position.
Joel had been wearing his spurs for most of the morning. He
had come to love the sound of the rowels jingling as he walked.
Despite his early years on the ranch, Joel had adopted an urban
attitude toward spurs, seeing them as something that was harsh
and unnecessary. It was once he had returned to the ranch and
worked the horses with Harry that he quickly came around to the
reality that spurs weren’t the weapons as others had seen them.
Rather than weapons, the spurs were tools, and the last thing he
would want to do was aggressively spur a horse.

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

Still Waters

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Tyne held her hand and coached her to breathe through the spasm.
Before the contraction was over, the student returned with a middle-
aged nurse Tyne recognized from her time on Obstetrics. Miss
McMurtry immediately took charge. She lifted Jeannette’s gown and
gently placed the fetascope on her protruding abdomen. No one
spoke or moved while she listened intently to the baby’s heartbeat.
When Miss McMurtry raised her head, Tyne detected a glimmer
of concern in her eyes. Jeannette must have sensed something, too.
“Is my baby all right, Nurse?” She gripped Tyne’s hand. “I want my
husband. Oh, Tyne, can’t you get him? Where’s Dr. Kendall, Nurse?
Is he here?” The words tumbled out of the distraught young woman,
her eyes darting back and forth between the three nurses in the room.
With her free hand, Tyne stroked Jeannette’s forehead. The skin
felt hot and feverish. She tried to keep her own voice calm, but her
heart was thudding in her throat. “It’s all right, Jeannette, it’s all right.
I’ll go see if Guy is on his way. You’re in good hands.” She glanced at
Miss McMurtry and could tell from the expression on her face that
something was wrong.
“Dr. Kendall is on his way, Mrs. Aubert. He’ll be here any minute.”
Miss McMurtry nodded to the student, who began moving the bedside
table and chair out of the way. “We’re just going to wheel you
into the delivery room. It won’t be long now, dear.”
Tyne gently freed her hand from Jeannette’s grasp, and watched as
the two nurses moved the bed towards the door that led into the case
room. She took the opportunity to slip out to the nurses’ station.
After ascertaining that Guy Aubert had been notified that his wife
was in labour and almost ready to deliver, Tyne spoke privately to
the head nurse to obtain her permission to be with Jeannette in the
delivery room.
“Yes, Miss Milligan, I’ll give you permission to stay with your
friend because I understand you are now a graduate. Congratulations.”
The young, attractive head nurse smiled at her.
“Thank you, Mrs. McLean.” As she turned to leave the desk, she
noticed someone walking towards her. A young woman, so much
like Jeannette Aubert that they could be taken for twins, approached
timidly.
“Excuse me; I overheard someone call you Miss Milligan. Are you
Tyne?”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763068