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TRANSMISSIONS: Writing The Rapids

August 6, 2024

Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles podcasts.Joe bielecki is the host of the podcast Writing the Rapids, the author of the novel Tired from Alien Buddha Press, as well as several pieces of flash fiction that may or may not still be on the internet. He currently lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Writing the Rapids can be found at the website, Spotify, Patreon, Instagram, Youtube and X.Rebecca Gransden: How would you describe the podcast to someone who is unfamiliar with what you do?Joe bielecki: Writing the Rapids is a podcast where I talk to writers about writing. I’m not really clear from one day to another exactly what that means, however. I try to have conversations rather than interviews. I tend to warn my guests that I may simply muse about their writing without asking a question, for example. RG: Does the podcast have a mission or manifesto? JB: Not particularly a manifesto. I pick my guests based on the recommendations of past guests. Some of my goals when starting the show was to read more indie lit, meet new people, and see how people are connected. RG: How long has the podcast been in existence, and how have you seen it grow over that time?JB: My first episode was posted on February 13, 2018. I went from being a guy with a few pieces of flash fiction floating around, to a guy with a podcast. It is clear there are people who are capital F Fans of the show. Based on my Spotify metrics, the show is growing pretty steadily. When I tell people at work my follower count, how many average listens an episode gets, they seem impressed. It’s a niche subject, so I don’t expect it to get huge, but I’d like to think that I’ve helped a few books get sold.RG: Where did the idea for the podcast come from?JB: I wanted to talk to some of the indie writers I was reading that didn’t have lots of interviews available. I’m pretty shy, but wanted to make friends in a so-called scene that I enjoyed reading from. I wanted to explore publishers putting out books I like, etc. It’s hard for me to walk into a room of people, so to speak, and insert myself into a conversation. Creating a podcast seemed like a good way to give people a reason to talk to me.RG: How did you decide upon a title for the podcast?JB: The name came from a segment I did a few times for the morning show of the local NPR member station, I work for. I live in Grand Rapids, Writing the Rapids sounds like Riding the Rapids. When I decided to do the show on my own, and in a different way, I kept the name. Thinking of names is hard.RG: Are there any podcasts that influenced or encouraged you to start the project?JB: Not particularly. I’m a long time fan of Scott Johnson and the Frogpants Studios family of podcasts. I started listening to The Instance back in middle school or so and found the podcast format fascinating. Beyond that, I spent a lot of time in college watching late night talk show interviews with writers like David Foster Wallace and Harlan Ellison. RG: What episode of the podcast would you recommend to someone who is new to what you do?JB: My most listened to episodes are with B. R. Yeager, Sam Pink, and Jackie Ess, so probably one of those. RG: How do you go about selecting what to feature on each episode? If your podcast features guests, how do you go about finding them?JB: As noted above, I have a list of people provided by previous guests. From that list I look for someone who seems like they would say yes, and is writing something that seems immediately interesting to me at the time.RG: If you are a writer, has the podcast impacted your writing life? and conversely, has a writerly disposition influenced the podcast? JB: Having a writerly disposition is kind of the whole reason the podcast exists as it does. I wasn’t even sending my novel, Tired, out when I started. You hear me on the show mention my writing, ask about editing, ask about the publishing process. I ask this not only because I think it’s interesting inside baseball that people might want to hear, but because I largely still feel like an outsider as a writer and am trying to figure out how to get inside.RG: Do you listen to podcasts?JB: Not as much these days as I’d like. My listening time in general is lower than ever due to life circumstances, and what time I do have has largely been spent listening to the Horus Heresy audio books and music.RG: What is the best podcast out there at the moment, the one you are excited for when each new episode drops?JB: When I was listening to podcasts more regularly my favorite was Film Sack, by the aforementioned Scott Johnson. RG: What do you dislike about podcasts?JB: The low barrier to entry allows for a lot of saturation, so a lot of bad podcasts, which seems to have caused a lot of people to write off the medium entirely, which is a shame.RG: Who is your dream guest?JB: Someone very famous who would make the show blow up. Beyond that I’ve had a lot of people say yes who I thought would say no. I’m actually very content.RG: Is there a theme or subject you are burning to cover?JB: More ARGs, more Hypertext Lit, that type of thing. TTRPG guide as literature seems to be a creeping idea, I should look into that more.RG: Is there a podcast that doesn’t exist, but you wish did?JB: I have a couple ideas I’ve wanted to do for a while. That’s not in the spirit of the question, I understand. But it is my most honest answer.RG: Is there a podcast that exists, but you wish didn’t?JB: Yes, for sure. I won’t name them because I don’t want to draw people to them.RG: For techheads, which single item of kit do you consider essential for the production of the podcast, and what would you say are the basics needed for those new to podcasting?JB: Get a decent mic, get one with an XLR connection, not a USB. Get a mixer and learn signal chains. It’s much better to have more control rather than less. Maybe google meeting or zoom will record for you, I’d rather take the sound coming out of my mic and computer, and mix it myself. I also record into a Zoom H4N rather than my computer. That feels safer. RG: If someone would like to support independent podcasts, what are the best ways to do this?JB: As I say every intro, Patreon, Paypal, buy the host’s book. Or just talk about it. Spend more time talking about the things you love rather than hate. People remember what you talk about, so talk about things you want people to pay attention to, please.RG: Looking back on the podcast, are there favorite episodes, episodes that stand out to you, or episodes that didn’t go as you would’ve liked?JB: I just did an episode with Stacy Hardy, she was amazing. Jackie Ess was such a great guest. M Kitchell was so patient with me and informative. I really love talking to guys like Mike Corrao, Mike Klein, B. R. Yeager, John Trefry. A few episodes are out there where I feel like I could have done a better job. That’s life.RG: What are your plans for the future?JB: I plan to just keep going. I really like the show the way it is, and I don’t plan to change it. I’ve been threatening to make a YouTube channel for a while, and I’m really close to actually doing that.RG: If you liked that, you may also like this. Are there any podcasts on a similar wavelength to your own that you would recommend to a listener who appreciates what you do?JB: Wake Island Pod seems to have a lot of crossover fans with me. I’m not sure if they’re making new episodes or not though. I was recently on the Not Worth Living podcast, and I really like the conceit of that one.Writing the Rapids can be found at the website, Spotify, Patreon, Instagram, Youtube and X.

FRUIT AND FRACTIONS by Taleen V.

August 5, 2024

On the table apricots blush, sliced to their stony seeds. A faded bowl of walnut brains sits untouched and long wet spears of cucumber sweat beside them. Goods grown right here in Fresno, just like you. The professor picks you up by the waist and sets you next to the spread.His beard is silver spangled and his brows touch. He resembles your uncle Varouj who plays the piano at Christmastime, except this man doesn’t smile as much. Until his grab, it had not crossed your mind to be afraid.“You can always trust Armenians, they’re family,” your mom once promised. “But Turks and Azeris, you must never speak to. They cut your great grandfather in half. In. Half.” That was third grade.The man rips free the hard pit and holds a piece of apricot in his fingers, where hair sprouts above the knuckle. “The mother tree is from Hayastan,” he tells you, so you’re aware it is special. His wife, who is tutoring you in pre-algebra so you can earn a scholarship to a private high school, so you can get into an elite American university, so you can break the barrier into sky-high economic mobility, is supposed to be home. She ran out when she got a call that her son broke his leg on the parallel bars. Her husband, the history professor, stepped in and said he could tutor you instead—how hard could pre-algebra be? First though, he insists, we must nourish the stomach before we can nourish the mind. He sounded so fobby with his accent that you dismissed him.“Eat,” he demands, and pushes the orange pink flesh into your mouth. You expect summer sweet, but the apricot is sour and tough and you feel like a fool, knowing you’ll never be able to swallow it. When his finger broaches your lips, fingernail scraping your tongue, you are thankful there is no extra taste but the apricot. Perhaps a light salting. Your eyes fix upon a thickly framed painting of Khor Virap Monastery, the peaks of Medz Masis and Pokr Masis looming above the lone cloister. You remember seeing the real thing two years ago on that charity religious trip to Armenia. Wandering the fruit market, your mother bought carton after carton with a moneyed hunger, collecting fragrant raspberries from a pail, larval mulberries in black and beige, and a pound of the treasured golden orbs. This is what a real apricot tastes like, she said, mouth full, eyes half closed. You weren’t sure what to make of the foreign fruit. Flavorful, sure, but so soft your mind feared rot. Picked too close to the beginning of death. Americans were terrified of letting anything spoil and you’ve grown accustomed to eating produce before its prime.That afternoon in Yerevan, you and your mother gorged yourselves in the art-less hotel room save for the window giving you a full view of biblical Mount Ararat. You had washed the fruits with tap water, so the following day you developed a fever and vomited every sweet thing you’d eaten. Your mother screamed at you for wasting her hard earned cash.Paused, awaiting your reaction, the man stares past his finger into your split mouth. He seems to be giving you a choice. You are too ugly to have been kissed before. You are, honestly, equal parts frightened and flattered. With your tongue, you roll his sandpapery digit to your teeth and chew to test, like a puppy. He appears delighted. Last month, your class watched The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, and you forgot most of it except the little boy who was stretched apart on the bed, then the clink of Talaat Pasha’s belt unbuckling. A traitorous part of your heart always wondered if the horrors of the genocide were exaggerated, but today you realize, they weren’t. Few believed them, none will believe you. His finger swims against your budding wisdom teeth, expectant, moving toward an answer. The apricot mush sags in your cheeks.You vaguely wonder if your great-grandfather died quick enough not to feel anything. He did not have the option to run away and pretend to forget. This man who moments ago squeezed his hands into your nonexistent hips and lifted you up, his ancestors were also tortured or killed or escaped. Every Armenian has a similar sad story. Even when you are betrayed, you are lucky.Your eyes wander again to the eternally icy caps of Ararat. Miss Froonjian’s Tuesday pop quiz may have revealed you do not understand fractions, but now you feel you have received new insight.Fruit is meant to be picked at, taken apart: halved, quartered, devoured. You reassure yourself, that’s the only way a new seed can grow. Still, like the math problems on paper, you cannot solve this one.

VISIONS: A Beautiful Poisoned Addiction by SDL, with words by Adedapo Adeniyi

August 4, 2024

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VISIONS: SAMO: The Poetic Recital by SDL

August 3, 2024

Temidayo 'SDL' Arise, preferably referred to mononymously as SDL, is a dynamic visual artist currently based in the city of Ilorin, Nigeria. He's known for his captivating artworks with thought-provoking concepts and a diverse range of themes, each piece telling a unique story. With his keen eye for detail and his passion for creative expression, SDL's work captures human emotions fused with the mysteries of existence. His portfolio reflects his evolution as an artist, as a human, showcasing his dedication to his craft and the raw energy he puts into each artwork.

BUD SMITH by Z.H. Gill

August 2, 2024

My brother Max told me about Bud Smith. The writer, not the baseball player, the one who’d pitched a no-hitter in his rookie year for the St. Louis Cards.For a brief time, I thought he was the baseball player, who’d pitched a no-hitter in his rookie year—on 9/3/01, eight days before fair Seth MacFarlane missed his plane at solemn Boston Logan—for the St. Louis Cards. But he was not him. Who else was he not? Bud Smith was not Indiana Jones*. He was not Jerry Springer, Bud Smith. He was not Josh Hartnett, nor Josh Hartnett’s character, Captain Danny Walker, from the film Pearl Harbor, which my parents brought me to on Christmas Day at CityWalk, in Universal City, CA—not so long before this other Bud pitched his no-no. (Do you think he saw Pearl Harbor in theaters, too? Bud Smith?)Back in the present, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bud Smith. The writer, Bud Smith. The author. Bud Smith. Bud. Smith. I looked up and ordered his novel on Amazon dot com, the book Teenager by Bud Smith. Bill Callahan—Smog himself!—had blurbed the book. He must have been thrilled about this, Bud Smith. I began talking to him in my sleep, Bud Smith. I asked him, Do you approve of me, Bud Smith? Back in New York City, Bud Smith’s apartment began to quake/shake. He stuck his head out the window and realized it was only his place quake/shaking, not the whole world, nor the city around him. He looked up at the ceiling, and he saw me, and I said, Bud Smith? Who’s asking? asked Bud Smith. I’m Z.H., I told Bud Smith. You’re a floating head, Z.H., said Bud Smith. Amazon dot com said your book’s coming tomorrow, I let Bud Smith know, Your book Teenager? Oh hey that’s nice to hear, Bud Smith replied. I’m sure I’ll like it, I declared to Bud Smith. Let me know if you do, Bud Smith said, Perhaps through more conventional means? My brother Max says you’re the nicest dude, I told Bud Smith. You know Max? He’s a lovely guy, said Bud Smith. If you’re ever in LA, could we have a catch, maybe? I wondered aloud, though I couldn’t hide my jittery excitement from Bud Smith. Catch? Can I think about it? requested Bud Smith.You know, I’m not the baseball player Bud Smith, he added, That young buck who pitched that no-hitter days before—I know, I acknowledged, Trust me, I know. And could you maybe send me a PDF of Work? It’s way out of print. Sure, kid, decided Bud Smith, Why not? I gave him my email, and then I said I’d check back in. Expect my floating head, Bud Smith, I said.I'll await it eagerly. Now if you don’t mind, I must get back to bed—and he turned to his side and fell asleep in an instant, Bud Smith. (Bud.)(Smith.) I did the same.__[*Later on, Bud Smith will tweet about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny being the 2nd best Indiana Jones movie. This will be the only time I disagree with Bud Smith. This will be, as far as I’m aware, the only time Bud Smith has ever been wrong.]

NINE by Matthew Feasley

August 1, 2024

A week before mom’s clinic burned to the ground, my older brother Sam brought home an octopus from the Greek grocery where he worked. After his shift, he had set the octopus on one of the shiny tables in the back and studied it beneath a wash of fluorescent lights. He looked at its hollow head, its body, and its missing eyes. Everything seemed ‘normal’ until he noticed its arms. Sam counted them again and again to be sure. Then he threaded the animal carefully into his backpack and hobbled out of the store to catch his bus.At home he staggered in a hurry toward the bathroom and I followed, certain something was up. I watched while he filled our tub and poured in the salt he’d retrieved from our pantry. He stirred the water with one hand and adjusted the hot and cold with the other, finally tasting a finger he’d dunked into the brine. Satisfied, he lowered the octopus gently into the water and it settled on the bottom. Sam rested his chin over the edge of the tub and waited. Later he slept there, snoring, both arms limp at his sides. I snuck away to the garage. I pulled Dad’s fishing net away from its hook, thinking I would fetch the limp creature from the tub, toss it into a trash bag and dump it into one of the neighbors’ cans. When Sam woke and it was no longer there, I would say he must have revived it. I would tell him that it probably escaped down the drain, that I had read this could happen with them sometimes, however unbelievable. But when I returned to the bathroom, Sam was no longer there. I stared at the octopus beneath the water before I heard a familiar sound behind me––it was Sam’s twisted foot as it dragged across the linoleum floor, followed by his good one coming down in its dull thump. Hissss...thump. Hissss...thump. The kitchen light sparked on overhead as I turned. Sam stood beneath it and rubbed both eyes clear with his large but frail hands. He gave an awful look, trying to figure why I held the garbage bag, dad’s net. Then without a word he shuffled slowly past me and up to our room.Sam slept through the morning and the next couple that followed. No one could wake him. The grocery owner called and our parents offered the excuse they had settled upon. “Well either way, he’s done here...and not sure we’ll hire another of them anytime soon.” He was still talking when dad hung up. A few days later, finally out of bed, Sam demanded to see it but dad told him he’d already buried it in the back. There was a mound of freshly turned soil in the garden but I wasn’t convinced he had. In any case, Sam drove a wooden stake through the ground there and painted the number ‘9’ onto a styrofoam plate he’d asked me to attach to it. Rain would wash the number gone only a few nights later as we slept. “A lot can come from messing with a wish or prayer or whatever you wanna call what your brother was doing with that thing,” mom told me in her car later that week. We were parked at her work, or what was left of it. Mom told dad she wanted to see it for herself and I asked to tag along. The metal parking signs were curled from the heat and letters that once spelled her name had bubbled and peeled away onto the asphalt. News trucks surrounded the blackened rubble while a large group waved signs and droned-on like insects. The news said someone had entered by smashing the front window with a large rock. Then there were kerosene-soaked rags stuffed into the open mouths of gasoline containers––eight in all. “Even if you meant well?” I asked.Mom rolled down her window. The swells of the opposing crowds filled her car as she lit the only cigarette I would ever see her smoke. The way she did it, I was sure it wasn’t her first. “Especially if you did.”

LOOK FOR A WHILE by Lamb

July 31, 2024

LILING, 66It is not wise to swim so soon after a meal, I know, but I have never experienced anything quite like the sensation of floating in a swimming pool with a full belly, which is—and I didn’t realize this until I lay here pushing my pale legs down into the water, watching them spring back up like ice—in essence, just another pool containing smaller bits of floating flesh. And all this occurring on the deck of a cruise ship floating in the Pacific, Earth’s largest body of water? Well. I may go again tomorrow after lunch.DAN, 37When I get to the pool there’s still some vomit on the surface. I was planning on draining the whole thing at port tomorrow, but Yuri said the guests are complaining, so I need to have it ready by five. Complaining. On a cruise.The lido deck is already closed for cleaning, so I throw Europe ’72 on the system while I search for the treatment protocol in the stack of loose manual sheets in the maintenance closet. When I asked the last guy how much chlorine solution to use for this kind of situation, he said to just blast it. “He’s Gone” comes on. I love this song. It reminds me of my father, the one I never knew but feel close to in this job, in any hard job, really. His image in my mind is always my age.Excuse me, says a small voice that hits me like a big one.A kid stands in the doorway with a bigass Shirley Temple. He’s shirtless and completely bald.I say, What’s going on, boss?Is the pool closed? he says. Kids do this—ask questions they already have answers to. I think it means they just want to talk. I’ve never been good with kids, but if the kid wants to talk, I can do that.Yeah, I say, should be good in a few hours.What’d he eat? he says.What? I say.The guy who ranched, he says.Oh, I say, I don’t know.Well, could you find out? he says.Sure, I say.The kid sucks down his soda as I attach the arm to the skimmer. I catch myself staring at his shiny head. In these situations, it’s best to just assume it’s cancer. “China Cat Sunflower” plays as we walk the pool’s edge to the deep end, where the juice is. I feel suddenly aware that I’m over thirty, working a summer job, listening to The Dead. I’m embarrassed. I don’t even like The Dead that much. I do, but not so much.I use the skimmer to push the water just behind the spill, directing it closer to the edge. Take a look, I say. He hands me his cup and gives me this look like, Don’t drink my friggen Shirley Temple. He lies with his belly on the sun-warmed tile, pulls himself forward till his head is just over the water. His face is solemn as he studies these remnants of a meal: a cream-streaked swirl, oily and orange, bits of unchewed chicken skin, translucent strings of celery spinning slowly outward.It’s beautiful, he says.It really is, I say.Like a galaxy, he says. BENJI, 11I’m taking a shower when Mom and David get back to our cabin. The bathroom door is shut, but I can hear them right on the other side, so I try to be quiet as I wash the shampoo out of my hair, drink some water from the shower head, dry off. I wish this was a tub. I asked David why they can’t have tubs instead, and he said they are too big for the bathrooms, and I said the shower is almost as long as the tub at home, and he said even a few inches longer would mean they couldn’t have as many passengers, and I asked what’s wrong with that, and he said it costs a lot of money to power a cruise ship like this one, to pay the staff, to feed everyone, and he asked if I liked the food and the entertainment and the clean facilities, and when I said I did, he said then I should be grateful that the showers are the size they are. I wish I didn’t ask. I’m quiet, but I’m mad. Well, not mad, just disappointed because David said he’d take me up to the pool after lunch, but that was two hours ago and now they’re fighting, Mom and David, so I probably won’t even get to swim on our last day. Which is today. Technically tomorrow is, but we get back to San Diego around noon, and Mom wants to go to two standup comedy shows in a row tomorrow morning. One of the comedians is a dwarf, David says, like a midget, but he’s got a big personality and he says the wildest stuff when he roasts the crowd. I can tell David wants to get roasted. I hope he does. Mom keeps saying they will be appropriate for me, the shows, but I don’t care if they’re appropriate. I just don’t want to spend my last hours at sea doing something I can do on land. I mean, I can swim on land, but not in a pool out on the open ocean. And I can’t go anywhere on the ship without one of them, not even the buffet, or the arcade, or Kidtopia, which is for five-year-olds. And Mom put our phones in the safe and said she wouldn’t tell us the combination, so we could be more in the moment, present, she kept saying, but somehow David got his phone because he said he had a work emergency, and when I asked him how he knew about the emergency before he checked his phone, he called me a smartass. I turn off the water and just sit on the hard floor of the shower waiting for them to calm down so I can come out and get dressed, but it’s a pretty bad one. The fight. I make a mohawk with my wet hair, then I shake it out, then I do it again, but it doesn’t hold for very long, so I smell all the soaps. I taste the one that smells like pineapple, but it tastes like original soap. I look under the sink for mouthwash, but I can’t find any, just some small bottles of body wash, bath salt … what do you even do with that? Like, to make it drugs … some toilet paper, and a black plastic case with a cutter inside. Like, a nice haircutter. It’s David’s, I think. I see some curly gray hairs caught in the little teeth on the blade. It’s 100% David’s. I wash the cutter in the sink till I can’t find any more of his hairs, don’t worry, I didn’t plug it in yet, I’m not stupid, then I wash the soap taste from my mouth, then I plug in the cutter to see if it works. When I turn it on it shakes my whole body, and my wiener tickles a little bit, and it feels kinda good, kinda weird. It struggles for a second like it’s choking on the water, the cutter, then it runs fast and smooth and vibrates even harder. Then I do something savage. I shave my whole head. I just go for it. My hair falls into the sink in big wet chunks. The thing sounds like it’s eating. Sometimes it stops working, but it’s not broken, you just have to clean out the hair that’s jammed in there and keep going. Mom cuts my hair in the tub at home, or she used to, and she told me that. She always said my hair was so hard to cut. She always said it’s coarse, and I always said just buzz it, and she always said I have no idea how much money people pay to get hair as blonde as mine, and it’s not right to just cut it all off. I finish a pretty good first pass on my head, but there are still a bunch of little strips of hair like when you think you’re done mowing the lawn and you look and see a bunch of little strips of uncut grass you didn’t see before. Even with the cutter buzzing in my ears and through my head, I still hear Mom crying to David. She’s hyperventilating too. David keeps saying, Seriously? Which is rude, and pisses me off, but forreal, I get it. Mom does this when she’s too lazy to make a good argument for why she’s right, or why Dad is delusional, or why David isn’t trying hard enough. It’s a lot. But I think she thinks she needs to do it. I do another pass, then I do one more until the cutter makes the same smooth sound all over my head. When I accidentally go at a different angle, it makes a different sound, because it’s cutting, and I realize that not all hair grows in the same direction, which makes sense, and which I already knew, but I guess I forgot. I turn off the cutter and run my hand over my head, and it’s giving velcro, I love it, and I sweep up all the hair I can with my hands and I throw it in the garbage can that doesn’t have a bag in it. There’s a bunch of shiny square wrappers in there, from condoms, and I wonder if David wears a condom when he sleeps. I look under the sink to see if there are any condoms to see what one would feel like on my wiener, but there’s not. I stand up and look in the mirror for a second, then I do something really savage. I go in Mom’s black zip-up bag sitting by the faucet and get her curvy razor and her mini can of shave gel. I pump some into my hands and rub them together till they’re foaming white, then I make my whole head creamy. Then I start to shave it. Only I’m very careful. I go over every part of my head very slow and I’m soft because my head is a weird shape in the back, like, it feels like there’s nothing between my skull and my hair. I cut myself when I’m curving it around my ear, and I touch where it stings with my fingers, and there’s hella blood, so I press the towel hard on it till it stops. I cut myself again where my hair meets my forehead, but no, there’s barely any blood this time. I double-check my work because it’s hard to see if you missed spots. You have to rub your fingers all over and if it’s not 100% smooth, like, if you feel any scratchy parts, you know you have to do it again, with the shaving cream and everything, just running the whole thing back from the beginning. It’s smooth, so I wash and dry the razor, then I put everything back. I look in the mirror. I look kinda weird, kinda sick. I didn’t know my ears were that big. Mom calls David an asshole really loud, then I hear the door slam, then it’s quiet, then I hear the TV turn on. I open the door. David’s on the bed choosing a show. I ask where’s my mom. He says she left. He doesn’t even look at me, so he doesn’t see my bald head. I ask if I can go swimming. He says to ask my mom and I say, Okay I will, thanks, David! but I’m lying. I put on my trunks and leave the cabin. I think I’ll stop by the bar and get a Shirley Temple before I hit the pool. Yeah, that’ll be good.

TRANSMISSIONS: Art of Darkness

July 30, 2024

Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles podcasts.

Brad Kelly is a writer from Detroit, Michigan. In addition to AoD, he has recently published HOUSE OF SLEEP, a work of literary psy-fi, and is currently developing a novel to be released in 2024 and an experimental text investigating the Tarot card-by-card. He is a former Michener Fellow and has been widely published in literary magazines.Kevin Kautzman is a playwright living in St. Paul, Minnesota. His award-winning plays have appeared around the UK and US and are available in print at Broadway Play Publishing. His dark social media comedy MODERATION was adapted for an online release and can be found at moderationplay.com. A past fellow of the Michener Center for Writers and the Playwrights’ Center, he is a co-founder of Bad Mouth Theatre Company.Art of Darkness can be found here, on Patreon, and on Substack.Rebecca Gransden: How would you describe the podcast to someone who is unfamiliar with what you do?Brad Kelly: Art of Darkness is a podcast about the dark side of creativity, hosted by a couple of very online writers and featuring biographical profiles of dead artists. My co-host Kevin and I cover filmmakers, theater-makers, painters, musicians, architects, writers—anybody creative, influential, and dead for longer than a year and a day is our purview. In our Core Episodes, we go through a person’s life, work, and cultural context, taking as much time as we need to tell an artist’s story. Some episodes run over five hours, and we each take turns leading one another through an artist’s life. These thoroughly researched profiles, presented in a conversational way, are the heart of the show.We also host guests to talk further about one of the subjects we’ve covered in Dark Room Episodes, and we run a Zoom book club for our Patreon supporters called Bookends. Additionally, we record an “After Dark” bonus episode for Patreon, for every episode we do. These typically go for 20-30 minutes. If you’re interested in the arts, biography, and history, Art of Darkness might be your show.RG: Does the podcast have a mission or manifesto? BK: Our goal with every Core Episode is to create the go-to piece of online media about our subjects. Kevin Kautzman: One major meta-thread of the show is an interrogation of what drives creativity, and we hope to inspire living artists and creatives by reflecting on the great artists of the past, warts and all. There are a lot of warts.RG: How long has the podcast been in existence, and how have you seen it grow over that time?BK: We released our first episode in February 2021. The show has grown fairly rapidly since then and regularly appears in the Apple Podcasts charts around the world in the Books category. We knew we had something when people started asking to come on the show, which is why we host the Dark Room interview and discussion episodes.KK: Over the past few years, we’ve brought quite a few guests on to help us with our Core Episodes, but we’ve moved away from that as the Core Episodes have gotten longer. Guests can’t always commit four to six hours to a recording, and it’s a lot to ask of someone. So we have the Dark Room for guests who want to come on and discuss Aleister Crowley’s obscene poetry or all things Virginia Woolf.RG: Where did the idea for the podcast come from?BK: We conceived of Art of Darkness during the pandemic. We’d had other podcasts, together and apart, but we’d never quite found our “thing.” Kevin had an interview show called Get This, on which guests would share their enthusiasm about something—a movie, a writer, whatever. In hindsight, that show is not dissimilar from what we do with our Dark Room episodes. After I came on as a guest on one of these episodes—talking about Philip K. Dick or Harold Bloom—the wheels started turning and a few weeks later we had Art of Darkness, and I started to prepare my first episode, on Burroughs.KK: Brad is going to revisit Burroughs early in 2024, since that first episode is woefully short relative to our format now. If you go back and listen to the show from the beginning, you can see how the concept evolved and grew into what it is today.RG: How did you decide upon a title for the podcast?BK: We think people are desperate for earnestness and authenticity, especially online, and we believe there’s an audience for stories that perhaps tell us the most about what creativity actually is. This requires a complete picture of an artist’s life, including the darkness: abuse, drugs, mental illness, violence, war, betrayal, outright murder, sexual angst—the good stuff, in other words.KK: Sturm und Drang. We knew we wanted to explore that angle, thinking maybe we could answer the question “why do artists tend to be so screwed up?” The tortured artist is a cliché for a reason. It’s worth noting too that we don’t wallow in the “dark side,” or suggest living artists cultivate or surrender to theirs, but we give the darkness its fair due when it inevitably arises, and that sets our show apart and provides us with our driving theme.BK: After we had the show concept, we played around with title ideas. We’re both fans of Heart of Darkness, and we opened Season III (2023) with a Core Episode on Joseph Conrad. Just before landing on Art of Darkness, Kevin pitched the name “Heart of Artness,” which we laugh about because it’s so terrible. We have the receipts in WhatsApp.KK: Never go with your first idea. You gotta spitball.RG: Are there any podcasts that influenced or encouraged you to start the project?KK: It’s fair to say the show is influenced by Hardcore History and The Last Podcast on the Left, tho we’re tonally quite different from each of these. We’re both Rogan listeners from way back and dabbled with the idea of podcasting as early as 2011. It only took us a decade to figure it out and make something people seem to want more of. I’m also a big, three decade fan of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which probably won’t surprise listeners. I’m almost always looking for the laugh as we record, because it’s fun and it leavens things. Each of these stories ends the same way: the subject dies, sometimes young, sometimes at their own hand. It gets heavy. On Art of Darkness, we laugh so we don’t cry.I think too we’ve been influenced by various biopics, not least Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters and even something like Walk the Line. Our show is a show, and we try to weave a narrative that’s entertaining and informative or at least not inaccurate. We also have to credit the many biographers whose work we lean on for the core episodes. Without their labor, we would not have a show, and we always note our sources on a given episode. We buy a lot of books.These days too, as the show has matured, we’re more influenced by the idea of “evergreen content” generally, and I know we’re both motivated by the growing catalog and feedback we get from listeners, who binge the show and take away motivation for their own creativity or just enjoy learning about all these great figures we cover. At this moment, we’ve covered 61 core subjects. Our dream is to continue doing this show as long as we can and to have 300 or more core subjects and a massive, high-quality trove of content as a free resource for our contemporaries and posterity. It’s a hell of a project.RG: What episode of the podcast would you recommend to someone who is new to what you do?BK: We take turns leading our core episodes. Kevin prepares to talk about a subject and presents it to me and then I take a turn. Here’s an episode on Edgar Allan Poe, which I led.KK: And here’s an episode I led, on Dante. RG: How do you go about selecting what to feature on each episode?BK: For Season IV, starting in January 2024, we had a retreat at my property in northern Michigan and hashed it out around the campfire. More directly, we come up with a list of subjects largely based on our own instincts about what will make a good subject. We try to cover the artists we love, the artists we think our audience wants to know more about, and sometimes we cover a subject—say Aleister Crowley or John Milton—because we think they are essential to understanding cultural history—they tie many currents together.KK: We’ve yet to argue even once about who would cover a given subject, or “called dibs” or whatever. It all just kind of comes together.RG: If your podcast features guests, how do you go about finding them?BK: Our Dark Room episodes are a shorter format, about an hour, in which we take a closer look at some aspect of a subject we’ve already covered. For a Dark Room episode on Franz Kafka, we hosted Ross Benjamin, the translator of a new English edition of Kafka’s Diaries.We find our guests by being very online, and we frequently reach out to people we want to talk to. Dark Room episodes are a fairly low commitment: ninety minutes between the main episode and the After Dark we do for Patreon, all done via Zoom.RG: If you are a writer, has the podcast impacted your writing life? and conversely, has a writerly disposition influenced the podcast?BK: Kevin is a playwright and I’m a fiction writer. Speaking for myself, I learn a lot about the process from studying a writer like, say, Edgar Allan Poe or Emily Dickinson. You learn that they’re human beings, even if tremendously talented. That they struggled. That they were unsure of themselves and imperfect, haunted sometimes. That their triumphs were simultaneous with tragedy. And you see how their talent develops. How they make use of their lives. Also, of course, as the podcast has grown, new opportunities have presented themselves.KK: Doing this podcast, I learned quickly from subjects like Kubrick and Woolf and Cash that you cannot and must not wait around for permission to make your art, or for some ex machina blessed anointing to fall upon your career. You really have to go and get it, make it happen, just do the thing you imagine, and try not to kill anybody or yourself or alienate too many people.Kubrick wrestled money together from a local dentist and neighbors and family, went to California with a small production crew, and nearly killed his actors with insecticide while making his first feature, Fear and Desire, which then helped propel him into a “real” career. If he’d sat around in New York griping about what a racket Hollywood is, he would have not been wrong and we wouldn’t have Barry Lyndon and the rest of his oeuvre. Impossible to imagine but plausible. Artists do the thing.The show directly inspired me to start our theater company here in St. Paul, called Bad Mouth. Through that, we now do an interview podcast and radio show for the Twin Cities arts’ scene, through which we’ve released a number of play readings online. As for Brad and my writerly dispositions affecting the show, I’d say it’s all over what we do. As writers, we’re both obsessed with narrative form and are earnestly interested in all our subjects. There’s a mysterious Venn diagram of interests, aesthetics, humor, sense of history, educational backgrounds, and approach between us that just seems to work. And the fact we both have our own artistic practices and projects prevents us from being passive observers of our subjects. We’re really invested in understanding what drives creative genius, and how it might be harnessed or cultivated.RG: Do you listen to podcasts?KK: Before Art of Darkness, I listened to far more hours of podcasts than I do today. Now, between regular working life, running a theater company, writing my own plays and screenplays, raising a family, and Art of Darkness, I don’t have as much downtime, and when I have it, I usually throw on music or a film.When I do listen to podcasts, it’s often after a search for one of our subjects, to saturate myself further in their life and see what media already exists about them, or I’ll listen to a show one of our guests is on or does. We have our own little heterodox podcast network through the show, which is a fun consequence of making Art of Darkness. I’m the resident extrovert, so I love it.RG: What is the best podcast out there at the moment, the one you are excited for when each new episode drops?KK: We like Weird Studies and were happy to have Phil Ford on to talk about MF DOOM in an episode.We’re also fans of author Aaron Gwyn, who is a frequent guest on our show and who has a notable Substack where he covers Blood Meridian in exhaustive and illuminating detail. Aaron is joining us for our book club this December to talk about that great novel, in light of McCarthy’s passing.RG: What do you dislike about podcasts?KK: We sometimes joke about “vibecasts,” which is our little term for shows that don’t really have a driving concept and consist of vain chit chat, gossip, and maybe some cul-de-sac politics. Who has time for these, and how many such shows can the Internet sustain? You can feel the series of tubes sag under the flab of all this chatter and pseudo-political kayfabe.Art of Darkness is vehemently not a vibecast. I also really dislike overproduced podcasts of the NPR style, where everything is squished together and there’s not a second of downtime, or any sustained authenticity. The beauty of the podcast format is that it doesn’t need to be heavily edited. It can be rough, and an antidote to overproduced, agenda-driven corporate media.There’s an audience for the real, raw thing. There’s an audience that wants to listen to six unedited hours about the life of Aleister Crowley, with all the umms and uhhs and occasional mispronunciations. That isn’t to say your audio quality should be garbage if you can help it. But you don’t need to labor over editing to stitch a “tight” Frankenstein episode in order to satisfy an audience, with perfect diction and all the verbal fumbles smoothed out.I also get annoyed at how astroturfed social media and the Internet writ large seem to be—a capricious nerd’s Hellraiser box that makes very little sense in terms of who the algorithm picks up and signal boosts and who stays in the digital dark. Little things, like Twitter/X deboosting threads with links, can be pretty aggravating, as can mysterious plateaus of reach on social media, never mind outright censorship. Those platforms are certainly not “organic,” and if they’re the “town square” the town square is a carnivalesque hall of mirrors. There is far more hands-on moderation happening on these platforms than I think most people imagine, as well as obvious pay-to-play, which we don’t do (in terms of advertising, paying for clicks, whatever). All that said, we’re thrilled with the audience we have and we’re sure it will grow over time as we press on and release more episodes.I also have to say that podcasts as a whole are a massive net positive for free expression and “the little guy.” We’re just two obscure Midwestern writers who had an idea and some consumer-grade equipment and computers, and now we have devoted listeners all around the world. We’ve made real friends and authentic connections through the show, both with guests and our audience. It’s genuinely pretty cool and would have been unthinkable twenty-five years ago. I suppose maybe we could have done this as a cable access show in the 90s, but it’s hard to imagine how that would look and sound. Party on, Brad.RG: Is there a podcast that doesn’t exist, but you wish did?KK: I wish David Lynch had a podcast, but I’m also glad he doesn’t. He needs to be making films and another season of Twin Peaks. Please, Lord, give us another season of Twin Peaks.RG: For techheads, which single item of kit do you consider essential for the production of the podcast, and what would you say are the basics needed for those new to podcasting?BK: A real microphone, not just whatever is on your computer. We use Blue Yetis, and there are a lot of good, reasonably-priced USB mics. You need a good internet connection, and you need audio editing software like Audacity.KK: I do the audio engineering for Art of Darkness. A proper mic is essential. Our formula is:1. Blue Yeti microphones with boom arms and pop screens.2. Ethernet connections, not WiFi.3. Zoom, which has an outstanding noise gate. We each record, so there’s a backup if there’s an issue.4. Audacity for post-production, with some special sauce.5. WordPress for hosting and distribution via RSS.6. A Mac Studio, which is optional really. You can do all this on a decent laptop, tho it’ll take you a bit longer to do the work in Audacity.7. Brad edits the punched-up audio into the video file and posts to YouTube.I typically post an episode within 20 minutes of recording. You really don’t need much to produce a professional-sounding podcast, which is part of the charm.I will say too: if you’re going on a podcast as a guest, do the bare minimum and get a Blue Yeti with a boom arm and a pop screen, and find a way to connect your computer directly to Ethernet. It’ll cost you maybe $150 and more or less last forever. The hosts and audience will thank you.RG: If someone would like to support independent podcasts, what are the best ways to do this?BK: The podcasts will usually tell you. For us, it’s our Patreon. Subscribers not only materially support the show, but they get a bunch of extras for the money, including the bonus “After Dark” episodes and book club access. Maybe the most important thing you can do to support an independent podcast you like is to simply tell people about it and share links. Don’t be shy. If you love an indie podcast, share it with the people in your life who you think might appreciate it. That’s how media spreads and gets more support. It costs nothing to share a show and consciously signal-boost truly independent media.RG: Looking back on the podcast, are there favorite episodes, episodes that stand out to you, or episodes that didn’t go as you would’ve liked?KK: The Kubrick episode was something of a breakthrough for us, when we realized we could stretch toward upwards of three hours and still not exhaust a biography, and our audience would come with us. As for episodes that had issues, I’d moved some cables around and mistakenly recorded into my webcam microphone when we did our Disney episode, which was extremely aggravating to discover after the fact. I punched up the audio as best I could, and it’s listenable, but that haunts me. Always triple check your settings before you record.RG: What are your plans for the future?BK: We’ll continue to release roughly two Core Episodes and two or three Dark Room episodes each month for the foreseeable future, and run our book club for Patreon. We also have a second live show in development, which will take place in Detroit sometime in the back half of 2024. We hope to do more live shows and more exclusive content for Patreon as that audience grows.KK: If the show grows enough to support it, I’d love to do a proper tour and really figure out our live show format. We’ll keep grinding and see how it goes. Art of Darkness could theoretically go on forever, because artists keep dying like everybody else. We’ve said on the air that if one of us dies unexpectedly, the other needs to find a new co-host and go on, after a respectful hiatus of a few months. And wait a full year and a day to do the episode about the unexpectedly dead co-host. BK: That’s the rule.Art of Darkness can be found here, on Patreon, and on Substack.

ON THE OFF CHANCE THERE ARE BONES IN THE SOUP by Emilee Prado

July 29, 2024

Last month, Robert Ladlo was accidentally promoted at work. He’d been standing in the empty head office, glancing around covetously when one of the new employees asked if he’d be taking over for the boss who was away exploring concerns about early onset dementia. Ladlo said yes. When everyone began treating Ladlo as if he were the new boss, it became true.Ladlo took this stroke of luck as divine right, a fated ascent. Over the next few weeks, he began to stir the pot just to see if anyone would stop him. Once, he spat his gum into the bushes in the courtyard even though a trash can was right beside him. He farted in the elevator, blamed it on a stranger, and everyone believed him. When he autographed a napkin and gave it to a barista, she blushed and said thanks. Ladlo began internalizing that if he acted with enough conviction, people wouldn’t question him or challenge his destiny.When the old boss returned to announce her official retirement, she assumed that higher-ups had Ladlo filling in. She left him with her blessing as he basked in the slotted sun that streamed through the blinds in his new permanent office.

***

Robert Ladlo brought his rise to autogenic glory home with him and began frequently boasting about his success to his husband, João. But Ladlo’s office-related-pot-stirring soon reached their home too. João’s expression slid from pride down through dubiousness and landed somewhere near disgust when he chatted with Edna, a mutual friend who was also now one of Ladlo’s subordinates.One evening, the couple idled on their apartment’s balcony, listening to thunder murmur in the distance. João sat unusually far from Ladlo, and eventually, he set down the copy of A História Trágica do Doutor Fausto. He turned to regard his husband.“Berto,” said João. “I don’t know how else you’ll listen unless I just say it, all of it, right out. First, I am so proud of your hard work. Second. Second, amor, you’re being—and I think a few people would agree with me on this—a big fat jerk. You never used to be like this. What happened?”Ladlo blinked. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am not a jerk.”“I see your new aura. And I’ve talked with our friend, Edna. You have been stirring the pot, no? And for what purpose—to show that you can?”Ladlo doubled down. “You have to take what you want in this life. You of all people know that. You picked up, left your home country, put yourself through university here, and took. That’s how you conjured success.”“No, that is where you are wrong. Taking is not the same thing as creating. I built my architecture firm—well, metaphorically. We work from a rented space. Oh, you know what I mean—I created something that wasn’t there before, and I’m still indebted to everyone who helped me get here. Plus, I once experienced this too, this ego. After I designed the national aviary and I got to be a bit of a star at the opening gala, I got—well—a big head and all puffed up. And what I’m sensing around you now is a noxious poison cloud, Berto. I can barely come close. Soon, I worry, it will poison you and its effect will be permanent.”Ladlo’s expression collapsed. “Do you really see me that way? As a contaminant?”“Wait here,” said João. He stood and kissed Ladlo on the forehead, coughed, and went inside.When João returned, he handed Ladlo a wriggling fish. It looked to be a salmon in its spawning phase, but instead of being powered by life, Ladlo saw a 9-volt battery inside its mouth. Ladlo raised an eyebrow at his husband.“You have to take it to the address printed on the tail. It’s a different experience for everyone, so I cannot say what you should expect, but they’ll tell you what to do.”“The Warehouse of Contentment,” Ladlo read from the tail. “I take it there and they will cure me of being a big fat jerk and dispel this noxious cloud I have around me?”“I hope so, amor.”

***

Ladlo’s GPS indicated that the Warehouse of Contentment was that enormous building in the distance, but on the road in front of him was a gate and security booth that prevented him from entering. He slowed the car and pulled up to the window.It slid open.“Good evening, I’m The Fisherman. How can I assist you?”“Fisherperson, you mean,” said Ladlo.“I haven’t gotten the okay to change my job title yet, but I’m thinking something like Reelcaster, Lineleader, Luredangler, or maybe Chumchucker? Anyway, what can I do you for? Do you have a fish with you?”The spawning phase salmon lay wriggling on the passenger seat. Ladlo handed it over.The Fisherman said she’d be right back.Ladlo saw the back door of the booth open. The Fisherman emerged. She held Ladlo’s fish in one hand and steered a kick-pedal scooter with the other, heading in the direction of the warehouse.Fifteen minutes later, she returned in the same manner, except instead of holding the fish, she held a small cardboard box.“Your bosses should look into a more efficient mode of transportation. A golf cart, or a conveyor belt even,” said Ladlo after the Fisherman returned to the window.“That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.”“What?”The Fisherman didn’t respond. Instead, she opened the box and pulled out a handheld mirror. It was the cheap plastic-backed kind that could be bought at a dollar store. She handed it to Ladlo.Ladlo took the mirror, looked it over, looked at his reflection, looked it over again. Ladlo asked if it was a magic mirror. The Fisherman laughed, called Ladlo silly, and said that magic doesn’t exist.“How is this going to fix my problem?” said Ladlo. “And don’t you even want to hear my circumstances?”“We got them from the fish.”“It was my husband’s fish.”“But you brought it here.”“I—”“I’m sorry, there is a car waiting behind you. And remember, I’m just The Fisherman, I don’t have any answers to give you.”Not knowing what else to do, Ladlo pulled forward until the lane U-turned toward the exit, which led him back to the road.At home, Ladlo showed the mirror to João who looked it over and had no advice to offer other than that Ladlo should carry it with him and wait and see.

***

Later in the workweek, Ladlo was washing his hands when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He shook the water from his hands and pulled the handheld mirror from his satchel. He held it near the large mirror until he could see himself from several angles. Then he understood how he could unstir the pot.What he was lacking was self-awareness.Ladlo tested his theory when the shorter of the two Tonys came into his office. Ladlo held out the mirror to where he could catch his own expression with a sideways glance. After Ladlo explained what he was doing, Short Tony got on with his question. Ladlo noticed that the mirror was reflecting a beam of sunlight down onto Tony’s papers, so he adjusted the beam away. How self-aware of him. And when Ladlo saw that his face was growing harsh and critical in response to Short Tony saying something less than competent, Ladlo knew to change his expression.Then it hit him: this sort of awareness was too limited. He could see the front of Short Tony’s face, and with the mirror, he could glimpse his own profile, but he could not see Tony’s profile. Surely there would be micro-expressions he was missing. This made him worry he was limiting his access to observation and thus thwarting his capacity for total self-awareness. After work, Ladlo went and bought three more cheap plastic mirrors. They came in neon colors.

***

As he navigated his day-to-day life with two mirrors in each hand, Ladlo understandably ran into some difficulties with doors, utensils, and gestures—and, well—most daily activities. But worse was the continued lack of angles; there were points of view that were still hidden from him.Determined that self-awareness would be his, Ladlo bought dozens of colorful mirrors and he linked them together using duct tape and wire until what he held became wing-like. Mirrors atop mirrors, all angled in slightly different directions, branching from his two arms and curving toward the front so they enveloped whomever Ladlo was talking to.When Ladlo met with the head of another department, and several times he bonked and jostled the poor woman with his spread and reflective plastic feathers, he decided to re-work the self-awareness thing again. She was irritated with him; he could see it from a dozen angles. Ladlo also saw that his own face was not apologetic, that is until he and his reflections adjusted their expressions. Still, the whole thing was a nuisance because he had to constantly set down one of the wings to use a pen and he couldn’t use them at all while typing. This caused him both blind spots and exasperation.Ladlo went into the storage unit below his apartment and found the boxes they had been storing for João’s nephew. From one of the boxes labeled Sports Stuff, Ladlo pulled out a pair of American football shoulder pads. He attached his colorful mirrors to the skeletal plastic. He was so busy sitting on the concrete outside the storage unit, using more tape and wire and other supports, and adjusting the angles of the mirrors, and being so totally focused on being one hundred percent self-aware that it got very late. He finally set the wings aside until morning and went to join his husband in bed, but João was already asleep.

***

Ladlo arrived at work wearing his new wings and as he rode the elevator, he appreciated the metaphor of rising to new heights—perhaps to ultra-cognizance, maybe even enlightenment. He thought that this just might be the peak of self-awareness. He did a tap dance glide out of the elevator and that’s when he was caught. His right wing hadn’t cleared the elevator when the door closed. Some sort of mechanical sensor was completely un-self-aware and utterly unengaged at the exact moment he needed it to sense him.The elevator began to descend, hailed by someone below and Ladlo let out little yelps of panic. He face-planted with a whump, but then the elevator stopped. His wing was wedged between the inner roof of the elevator and his floor’s floor. Ladlo could neither stand nor wriggle out of the shoulder pads, so he remained there on his belly on the ground.The intern had seen all this from his desk and was holding out his phone, presumably recording. Soon all of Ladlo’s subordinates gathered and stood looking down at Ladlo.Ladlo could see every one of their faces in his bent left wing and after he finished yelling and swearing at those faces, he began to cry.Ladlo saw his former friend Edna make a phone call, but still, no one moved to help him.He lay there for a long time and then a sob caught in his throat as he heard the stairwell door bang open behind him. It was his husband. In his wing, two dozen Joãos appeared, each of them holding a toolbox. In his head, Ladlo fought hard to find the right words as all of the Joãos began to pry him free.

LITTLE CLOUD by Magda Phili

July 26, 2024

Wouldn’t it be good if I could for a moment close my eyes and find myself in a new scenery where nature plots towards a personal renaissance, a scenery in which I would be able to switch off this painful backlog of asymmetry in my life; lack of funds and lack of kindness, and lack of this and lack of that, lack of that mesmerizing color of the sky like in a Vermeer painting, or any sky of any painting or any sky on earth under which I can walk free from tormenting clouds of thought that make me a prisoner and a punisher pressing me to provide solutions that I don’t have. I can only be responsible for my own actions; but then again, that is the problem. Actions can have devastating, dramatic repercussions even with best intentions, even with love and because of love. Gallantry buried with bare hands, puzzle pieces that won’t fit anymore in a puzzle that was once immaculate.Wouldn’t it be good if for a moment I could be a seed buried into new soil where the grass is freshly cut, and the water masks the green with delight and lucidity or perhaps I could be given a new chance and become a little cloud over your tears or a birdhouse for the little warrior that is you who got its wings halved in its attempt to fly through ferocious winds.