island⁹⁴

I recently had an idea for a story and upon going through my other drafts, realized I already addressed it, though differently. So here they both are. Also, the second story is not a criticism of the Buddha—though if you asked me, “Surgeon General” is a more apt description than “Great Physician”—or Jesus for that matter (or anyone else that calls themselves a physician).

The Disciples

A wanderer entered a town to find a most pious people living there. In the market center he found a man in simple dress surrounded by disciples.

“Who is this man that attracts such a following?” the wanderer asked. …read more

Wrote this a while back and it’s been floating around my drafts pile. The story is a little light, but mostly I wrote it to remember all the arcane details my landlord’s handyman told me when he came to rehang our doors.

Monday morning; my girl was out of town on business. Her business. I was watching the Price is Right: dolts with nothing better to do with their time either. One knocked at my door.

I wiped the spent food refuse and old files towards the far end of my desk. The desk is a large one and sometimes that’s needed. Today it wasn’t.

I called it, her, in. …read more

A girl was betrothed by her father to a man whom she had never met. Her mind shone with an uncommon light and she was ever seeking out tales of love: chaste and reckless, rich and unrequited.

Into her house she called the most upstanding matrons and the lowest whores, regal queens and barren slaves. To each she said, simply: “Tell me of the men you have loved.”

This intense interest worried her father. Though he had found a most suitable bridegroom for his dearly loved daughter, he feared such tales would influence her against any future husband.

She reassured him: “Father, please do not worry. I trust in you that I will live happily with whomever you have chosen for me. I seek these stories so that I may separate the qualities in him that are exceptional from those that are mundane. Knowing this, I can love him.”

One evening, not far earlier than today, I was sitting upon Boston Common enjoying the last sloping rays of the day. As was my habit, I blissfully blocked out the city around me to better enjoy the feeble warmth of a setting sun.

Sometime in this I was taken unawares by a man I did not know. His face told of a race not estranged from these shores and his eyes shone with long familiarity to the world. He sat beside me and from his mouth came a string of words I willed myself to make sense of. He told me of something most wonderful, most horrible, and from which I am forever changed.

Boston is a city of gross extremes: poverty and wealth, light and dark, high and low: the crumbling triple-deckers of Roxbury and the affluent brownstones of the South End, the Irish enclaves and the Haitian Mass, the deep tunnels of the T and the airy heights of the JHB.

Boston has not always been this way. …read more

A week and $300 I barely had later, I got my MacBook back with most of my files (including last week’s comic) intact. Dead hard-drive.

So this comic was originally #2, now it’s #3. I hope you enjoyed last week’s low-tech make-do.

The hard drive on my two-month-old MacBook up and kicked the bucket and the whole darn thing is at the shop. So this week’s comic is done with a borrowed Sharpie and some watercolor paints I found on trash-day.

7-10 days they say. 7-10 days…

Running fast, flat out, is the best feeling on earth.

When I run my legs are big pistons driving my feet against the ground. My heart sticks up into my throat and beats against my chest. My face drips sweat and my nose burns. Sometimes I think if could get just a little more speed, lift myself just a little higher off the ground, I’d up and fly. I know it.

All the other kids bring their bikes out to Richards Field. It’s not that I don’t have one, I do. I’d rather run. Last summer Nate learned from his brother how to put a baseball card in the wheel. Now everyone’s done it. You tie it right across the fork and it sort’ve pops till you’re going fast. Then it hums, like you’re riding a motorcycle.

The field is two blocks over from my house. It’s a real airfield, or at least it used to be, back before there were jets and all. Just one big flat grassy field where planes would land. No control tower or even a radio. There wasn’t so many planes back then, so nobody must have minded much.

There’s even a pole for where the windsock used to be. It’s lying right out in the middle of the field, split in two. If you roll it just right, there’s all kinds of bugs and worms underneath. But that’s Richards field, all bugs and grass and hitchhikers that stick into your socks and hair. They’ll itch if they don’t hurt. Spiders too.

You can find things in Richard’s Field. Old rusted bolts and bits of metal. Nothing big, just little things from the planes. Maybe a lock-nut, or a retaining screw, or some of piece of bailing wire. I’ll pick them up sometimes and wonder where they’ve been.

When I’m running out in Richards Field and no one is around, sometimes I’ll start humming, real loud-like. Maybe it’s not that I’m running too slow, maybe it’s the sound. Maybe that’s why I’m not flying. Sure, I’ve got plenty of baseball cards. I do. But when I’m running, there is nothing to attach them to.

The wind blew off the North Sea with a chill and the beach stones were flat, dark and round.

The Dutch holidayers on the beach were in sharp contrast to those whom we had ridden out with on the morning train, yet immutabily they were the same. The quiet politeness with which they interacted in the cramped cars had been replaced with open smiles and shouts on the brisk and windswept sand. Shirts and pants had disappeared, replaced by bathing suits and wide sunhats that could only have been carried in the close confines of the train.

Lisa and I walked side by side down the beach; jeans rolled up and socks balled into the shoes held in our hands. Lisa’s jacket flapped back and forth against her side; water raced forward and sucked back into itself. A man and woman emerged, dripping and naked; his pubic hair glistened the same as the water on her breasts. Couples, we smiled to eachother as we passed.

Above, the sun shone weakly in a pale sky. Soft rays cut through the darkness beneath the clouds rolling in from the sea. Shadow and light alternated across the sand, swooping across roped-off deck chairs and the long tents with their own colorful stripes. Beyond, light and shadow flowed up the dunes and over, out of sight.