stewed tomatoes

"The Adventures of Horatio and Clown Boy" by Grace

2009-03-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

PART ONE

Horatio sat back in his wicker chair and puffed on his pipe, surveying the landscape around him. It was the spring of his third year in the mountains of Alaska and he knew it was time to return to the south. He missed his wives, as he realized that his clothing was disintegrating and he hadn’t had a decent meal since he left home. In the first two years his assistant had done most of the cooking and foraging but a run-in with some of the many grizzly bears in the area had rendered him legless. Horatio turned his thoughts to his companion, who he had dubbed “Clown Boy” due to the hobbling around he had to do after the incident. The bears had eaten most of his legs but the left one was a few inches longer than the right, causing Clown Boy to stagger about the camp with a comedic limp. At the moment of Horatio’s contemplation Clown Boy was readying the caravan and horses for the journey south. They had built quite a neat little camp on the banks of a river. Horatio had initially undergone the epic journey from the frontier of southern California in an attempt to find peace from his wives and have the chance to kill the infamous Sasquatch of those parts. After he left however, his attempt at solitude had been ruined by the stowaway, Clown Boy, who had escaped from jail in their small town the moment before Horatio’s caravan passed him and he had lashed himself to the back of the caravan. Horatio did not discover him for several miles and was annoyed to have his solitude spoiled. Clown Boy had proved useful over the years and they became inseparable companions. Horatio finished his pipe and stood up, stretching from hours of inactivity.

“Clown Boy,” he began, “you’ll have to pick yourself up some new legs from JJ General Store when we get home, I’m sure they can fix something for you.” Clown Boy nodded appreciatively, although Horatio knew that he had been sent to jail in the first place from stealing a sheep from the owner. “I suppose I could pick something up for you,” Horatio suggested benevolently, “seeing as how you’ve been such a help around the camp.” Indeed he had. Clown boy had packed the entire caravan and hitched the horses to it, ready to go. He and Horatio did a final sweep of the ground to see if they missed anything and while Clown Boy was occupied, Horatio took a small embroidered purse from the hollow of a nearby tree. He fingered the beadwork on the outside. The purse had been his mothers when she came to America from Romania before he was born. She had purchased the purse on her honeymoon in the small village of Řęćtăł, which was renowned across the country for its exquisite purses. Inside Horatio’s purse was the most valuable thing he had found on his voyage, an herb, that when smoked in small quantities caused the smoker to become invisible for a short period of time. Horatio had used it to escape harm when Clown Boy had been attacked by the grizzly bears.

“I’ll be glad to get home to my fiancé you know,” Clown Boy said to Horatio as they bounced down the uneven trail to the south.

“Right, right, I suppose Grendel will be missing you sorely,” Horatio said disinterestedly. He had heard many stories of Clown Boy’s Grendel and didn’t believe a word of any of them. Grendel, he assumed, was a figment of Clown Boy’s imagination. Even if she was real, Horatio thought, she sounded far too pure and magnificent to bind herself to a man with no legs.

“I suppose you’re missing your wives too, sir.”

“Yes, yes, I hope they haven’t let the old place go to the dogs,” Horatio said, steering the horse through a small stream. Horatio and Clown Boy’s trip back to the desert was blessed with good weather and sturdy equipment, mostly due to Clown Boy’s careful maintenance of the caravan. They arrived in their frontier town in the fall of that year and Horatio used his clout with the sheriff to have Clown Boy’s sentence repealed, and even invited the lad to live with him and his many wives. Grendel, Clown Boy explained through a mask of tears, had married a Dutch tulip magnate and moved to Holland, where she was killed in a tragic windmill accident shortly after.

PART TWO

“What century is it?” Horatio bellowed at six of his wives who sat at the table in the kitchen chatting about sewing patterns. They recoiled from his voice, which was angry.

“Th-the 19th?” one of them said submissively.

“THAT’S RIGHT!” Horatio paused, “So why are the women not making dinner and doing the dishes?” the six at the table snapped to attention and began to prepare dinner, even though it was only shortly after lunch. Horatio had been home for several months and had spent much of that time re-training his wives, who he felt had grown lazy in his absence. The women, in actuality, had grown much more efficient in their child care and running of the household and even had time to engage in leisure activities. Many of them had become quite adept at horseback riding, which Horatio forbade. They had also had free time in which to get to know each other and had developed many romantic bonds with one another. Horatio frowned upon his wives camaraderie and only allowed two in his bed at once, as long as they didn’t interact with one another and only focussed on his satisfaction. As the six wives cooked and did the dishes, four others entered the kitchen, and Horatio sent them to go milk the four milking cows: Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars. After most of the work had been delegated, Horatio sat in the kitchen and began smoking the pipe that Clown Boy had packed for him. Clown Boy had remained unmarried, not so much for mourning of Grendel but for the fact that most of the few women who actually lived in the town were married to Horatio. One night, after Horatio had gone to sleep, his wives met secretly outside of the children’s wing of the house. There were 21 in total. They decided that that night was the night that they would make their escape. Horatio was deep in an opium induced sleep and Clown Boy was holed up at the bordello above JJ General Store. They donned their rainbow of coloured cloaks that they had sewn in their spare time during Horatio’s absence. Silently, they crept out of the house and towards the stable. The horses, relieved to see the wives instead of Horatio were coming to ride them, cooperated in their saddling and clopped away from the ranch and into the night.

PART 3

The wives of Horatio rode that night into the mountains surrounding the village and camped for several weeks near a mountain stream. They grew strong and their bonds cemented in that time. The worked together to feed themselves and their camp became quite efficient. Every night they built a fire and plotted their revenge against their captor. It was decided that they would attack early in the morning, while Horatio was bound to still be asleep from his opium induced hangovers. The ranch was still the morning they struck; some of them were armed with guns, others with knives and some yet with sticks and threatening rocks. All of them had on their colourful cloaks, creating a spectrum of female power streaking across the desert on Horatio’s prize horses. They arrived at the ranch, prepared to engage with the unarmed and asleep Horatio, but he was warned by his dog, Gump of a disturbance before they arrived at the ranch and raced for his Řęćtăł purse and shortly after was completely invisible to everyone but Clown Boy, who had incredible eyesight. Clown Boy stood on the porch, prepared to trick the women, telling them that their husband was gone to look for them and pretending to aid them in stealing supplies. When the wives arrived, they found Clown Boy, who they had always had a soft spot for, and believed his tricks. Several of the wives went to check on the children and the rest raided the pantry and the preserves, all of which they had baked and preserved themselves. As they were filling their sacks and preparing to depart once again, Horatio, who had been standing the middle of the kitchen unnoticed to all but Clown Boy, began to lose his invisibility and materialize in the kitchen for all to see. The wives who were in the kitchen looked with bewilderment and horror at the inexplicable appearance of the one person they didn’t want to see. He and Clown Boy each grabbed two of the wives in the kitchen, who told the others to run ahead and warn those with the children and escape. The two wives restrained by Clown Boy simply knocked him over and he floundered on the floor of the kitchen. They all ran out towards where the horses were tied up only to find that they had come loose from their posts and become entangled in some gorse bushes. They were ruined. Horatio led them all into the barn and locked the doors behind them. That was their punishment. They were left a week in the barn to think about their crimes against him.

“I’d rather die than go back to that monster,” one exclaimed.

“Can’t we make it on foot?” asked another.

“How did he go invisible?” one wondered. That was their wonderment, what existed that could make their husband invisible to the eye and yet, still physically there?

“I think maybe it has something to do with whatever’s in that sack thing he has with all the beads on it.” One wife said, “He smelled like that bag today and he’s never let any of us touch it.”

“Maybe you’re right” said another, “I only saw it by accident, and he seemed really angry after.” Many of the wives had never seen the purse but it was decided that whatever it held was the key to Horatio’s invisibility. When their week of confinement in the barn had ended, they all hung their heads and returned to the house to labour for their tyrannical husband. They stayed positive, realizing how lucky they were that there were so many of them to split the hard work.

PART FOUR

In the days following the women’s return and release from the barn, Horatio remained vigilant and watched them constantly, until one day when he needed to go to the next town over. The next town was a half day’s ride away so it was assumed he would be back by dinnertime, possibly with wife number 22. He always preferred to have an even number of wives. Clown Boy was under strict orders of course to maintain a careful watch over the wives and quash any potential coup. The wives however were tricky and numerous. They had planned, through their week of confinement in the dark, foodless barn their means for salvation. So as they were preparing the cake for Horatio’s return (his favourite, Romanian Chocolate) ten of the wives stole off into the hills, while ten remained in the kitchen preparing dinner.

“Woe is me!” Clown Boy pined, “What am I supposed to do now? Horatio will throttle me if he is ten wives short upon his return!”

One of the wives, who Clown Boy had always been rather fond of (he thought she looked a bit like his beloved Grendel), assured him that they would not stray from the kitchen and unlike the rebellious ten they had learned their lesson. Clown Boy didn’t account for, before leaving to bring back the ten and save his own neck, the remaining wife. She had slipped through the hallways of the house unnoticed and picked the lock to Horatio’s bedroom door with a pin from her hair. As one of the few wives who had seen the bag she knew exactly where to find it, in the hollow bottom of a drawer in Horatio’s bureau. She took the contents and hid it within her apron pocket, replaced the bottom of the drawer and dashed back to the kitchen. Silently the wives who were preparing the batter of the cake exchanged a look of knowing as she tossed the lot of the herbs into the mix. The wives who had taken off, as per the plan eluded Clown Boy for less than an hour. He brought them back on the agreement that neither party would reveal their indiscretion. It was the perfect evening in the desert, the sun set a deep red over the mountains as Horatio returned, surprisingly alone.

“Where’s number 22?” Clown boy asked as Horatio dismounted and entered the house.

“Didn’t look like she could work, and wasn’t very pretty.” He said, disappointed from his long fruitless day. He sat down at the table and the wives began to serve him dinner. Seven courses in all but they made sure to make the first six small. Horatio was thrilled to see his favourite Romanian chocolate cake was for dessert and even went as far as to offer praise to his wives for their creation. He gorged himself on the cake, ingesting much more of the herb than he had ever been exposed to before. He began to change colours and flick from visible to invisible every few seconds. He stood up, too confused and ill to rage, and staggered about the kitchen. Clown Boy stood up too, trying to calm Horatio. Clown Boy tried to get Horatio to vomit up the cake which had poisoned him but in the process caused him to soil himself and the floor around him. With a loud popping noise, Horatio disappeared completely.

“He’s gone!” Clown Boy exclaimed, “I could see him even when you couldn’t but now he’s gone!” He was shocked, but felt strangely liberated.

“He’s really gone?” many of the wives asked.

“Yes,” Clown Boy answered.

“We’re free.” The women sighed.

“You better get cleaning up the mess” Clown Boy said, in his torment, Horatio shat all over the place. The women, feeling their liberation looked at each other, then at Clown Boy. One of them handed him a rag and another handed him a bucket. He sighed knowing he would always be the submissive one in a relationship and began scrubbing the floor.

....
This story is dedicated to the lovely James. When this topic was assigned she sent me a list of extra requirements…

It is to be about a gipsy cowboy taking drugs to make him invisible. In those moments, only his trusty side-kick clown-boy can see him. He has to defeat his arch-nemesis, that team of motorcycle riders from the Peel Carnival.
at least one obscured reference to each of the following:
gorse
mars milk
Jurby junk
grizzly man
lesbians
rainbow bicycle contraption
Gump
Grendel
special chocolate cake
shat all over the floor
Other than these references and whatever quotes you'd like to reminisce, it should not be clear that this has anything to do with this summer. Neither "the Isle of Man", nor the name of any person from there, shall be used.

"Pay Attention" by Emily Nudge

2009-03-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

there around me - holding life in its hand
i see it only if i pay attention
it spends 90 percent of its life invisible
it sure doesn't cost me to pay attention
what kind of attention is needed for me to pull the wool from my eyes?

there around me - "my" life is in its hand - why don't I pay attention?
i see it only if i paid attention
is there a class I can take in "pay attention"
would i get an A?
what would the syllabus read like? a long list of anti-excuses?

nature, you are invisible but always there - around me
do you pay attention to me?
do we need to pay attention to each other in order to keep life in your hand?
how long will the hand stay there holding life if no one pays attention?

holding life in its hand - invisible to the naked eye - PAY ATTENTION

"From the Train Window" by James

2009-03-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

Most people prefer to sit facing forward on a train. The seats are often arranged in clusters of four: two facing forward and two facing back. When an average person boards the train and walks the aisle to select his seat, he will give priority to selecting a seat that faces in the direction that the train is travelling.

The girl in the brown skirt preferred to sit facing backwards. She liked the dreamy feeing that it gave her to watch the scenery slowly disappear in front of her rather than the queasy, blurry feeling it gave her to watch it speed towards her. She felt she could make better sense of her environment in this way.

Even so, today she was sitting facing forward. The backward-facing seats across from her were vacant; she had chosen to sit in this direction. This girl with brown hair and brown shoes was usually slightly shy, but today she felt particularly closed to the world. She didn’t feel sufficient energy to interact with anyone, and especially not to struggle with this foreign language. Today she just wanted to be invisible. So she had chosen a brown skirt and a grey sweater that would allow her to fade into a crowd. And she sat in a forward-facing seat with her bag placed on the forward-facing seat beside her so that her cluster of seats would be uninviting to a chatty stranger. She careened her neck around so that she could still watch the scenery as it disappeared behind her, which had the added advantage of allowing her to avoid eye-contact with any of the other passengers.

About forty minutes after she boarded the train, a couple boarded her car and sat a few seats away from her. They were speaking in loud voices, which made it sound like they were arguing. Nearly every conversation in Italian sounded like an argument to this quiet girl. She didn’t turn her head from the window, though it was an effort to keep from looking. Some of the other passengers were glancing up from their newspapers or poking their heads out into the aisle. She smiled slightly as she realized that the couple’s loud voices allowed her to fade to almost complete invisibility.

The train pulled out of the station and the scenery quickened its pace past the window. The brown-shoed girl kept her neck turned tightly and watched the countryside recede into the past. The couple continued to speak loudly, but the girl had nearly managed tuned them out. Just then the woman’s passionate voice broke into a sob and she uttered words common enough that the girl could understand them: “Ma ti amo…” But I love you.

The girl felt a pang of empathy for this crying woman: her pride at her feet, her heart on display for strangers on a train. Clearly she was suffering. The girl regretted feeling grateful for the couple’s argument. She thought for a moment about the way the woman pleaded her words. But I love you. It had been a while since she told anyone that she loved them, and she could hardly imagine saying it in such a desperate way. She spent a few minutes thinking about the words, what they should mean and what they often actually mean, now and at various other moments when a person might say them. She finally abandoned her contorted window-viewing position and pulled a green journal from the bag at her side. She found a blank page and began to make a list of the meanings of I love you that she had come up with so far.

I want to own you
I want you to be happy
You are special
You make me feel special
I can talk to you
You make me feel good
I want to have sex with you
I like to open myself with you
Stay with me forever
I am comfortable with you
I am accustomed to you
You are adorable
I want you to love me
Tell me you love me too
I am addicted to you
With you I forget my problems
I enjoy you
I respect you
Give me your attention
I think of you when I hear sweet songs on the radio
You are important to me
You are like family to me
I feel completed by you
I think you are wonderful

She turned the page to continue her list, and a folded letter slid out from between the pages and tumbled into her lap. It was from her closest friend; she had received it several months back. She opened it now to reread it.

…Even though you are so far away I can feel you with me, and me with you. The other day I was working in the garden with William and we found a patch of forget-me-nots growing there among the weeds. Neither one of us said anything – we just smiled at each other. I love you more than I’ve ever known how I could love a friend. I know I am going to be yours forever as you will be mine forever…

She felt tears welling up in her eyes as she read, so she folded the letter back into the journal. She knew she could not remain invisible if she were to cry publicly; the arguing couple had demonstrated this a moment ago. Even silent crying – the type she felt building up inside of her as she thought of her friend so far away – draws attention.

The arguing couple had since lowered their voices and were leaning their heads together as they continued speaking. Now the train was approaching a station and they began to get up from their seats and walk toward the doors. They walked very close together and slowly, and his arm cradled her back tenderly. When the train stopped and they stepped onto the platform they did not rush into the chaos of the train station; instead they stood still just outside the train, holding one another silently.

The girl with brown eyes shining with emotion went back to looking out the window. The train whistled and pulled away, and the embracing couple grew smaller and fainter. She suddenly realized she was uncomfortable twisting her neck around like that, so she switched to the backward-facing seat and from there watched the receeding couple until they disappeared compltely.

"Preemptive Email", by Jason Vickers

2009-01-15T11:00:00.001-08:00

editor's note: this "preemptive email" was received one week after the due date for this month's submissions.

Here is a preemptive email, as long as you haven't written about poop you should rescind that as the topic. I was half testing you half joking half trying to extend my deadline for coming up with a prompt. That was all before I realized that there is actually only two halves in a whole, so in reality I was doing a 1/3rd of each of those. Regardless, any word is sufficient, and my guess is that not one of your friends has written anything about poop (you could argue that i was actually a 1/4ing everything, the last part being to upend any pretentiousness that is involved in overly creative endeavors, but that's more of a stretch than the latter three options).

"Spicy Poop", by anonymous

2009-01-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

electric Indian music
lecherous coke-heads with hoes
not really spicy shrimp but sticky smells on myself
hiding Disney smut
SPICY PUKE

"Smells Like Flowers", by Bushfinger Music Project

2009-01-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

"Smells Like Flowers" - listen
Bushfinger Music Project - learn more

"Good Enough To Go In", by Emily and William

2009-01-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

Just touch it
Nothing wrong with it
You need the fuel
Ingest the food
It isn't rude
It all comes out
There is nothing wrong with No. 2

"Thoughts From the Commode", by James

2009-01-15T03:15:00.001-08:00

When a lamb is born, one of the first things a farmer must do is to check to see if it has an asshole. A lamb that is missing its asshole is a rare but devastating problem, and it can be corrected if the veterinarian is called out quickly. A lamb cannot survive without an asshole.

I would venture to say that this aspect of the birthing procedure is the same for all livestock, and for humans as well, however I can speak only of what I know. But I'd be surprised to know of any creature that could live more than a few days without their asshole. As much as we may despise this part of the body, as much as we may refer to it for the most part only when hurling an insult, as much as we may wish or pretend that this small opening does not exist on the civilized, cultured, educated, refined bodies of polite humans in the first world, it remains the case that we depend for our very lives on the functioning of this one-inch pucker. What goes in, invariably, must come out.

....

I can remember a story my mother told me when I was very young. It was about a girl who would not poop for a very long time. I do not remember for how long, or what the reason was, but I remember hearing that her family finally discovered the problem because her tummy became distended and lumpy with all the backed up poop. I remember my mother telling me very gravely that it is important to poop, that this girl could have died if she did not receive help. My mother is a nurse, so I believed her.

For a while after that I would periodically observe my tummy in the mirror to see if it was distended or lumpy. I never saw a problem in it, so I knew that even though I didn't poop every day (as I heard some people did) I would not die.

....

Also when I was young, I once overheard a woman say of her daughter who was traveling, "She is so ladylike - she cannot make poo if she is not at home." Somehow this must have entered deeply into my conception of what it means to be a lady, because I have always had trouble making poo when not at home.

This was enough of a problem to scare me was when I was traveling in South Asia for several months. Twice on that journey my asshole ceased to function for ten full days.

In the first instance I tried: eating copious amounts of fruit, eating papaya salad, drinking water excessively, bringing interesting reading material with me to the toilet, going for walks, and encouraging myself with gentle self-talk. Finally what worked was an herbal laxative tea. It was recommended by a Laosian naturalist. And it worked very very well.

In the second instance I tried acupuncture. I went to a Chinese medicine hospital in Bangkok. I brought along a Thai-speaking friend who was interested in trying acupuncture for an entirely different reason. The hospital was very basic in its set-up, and there was no private room for speaking with the doctor; I simply sat at a table in the middle of the crowded waiting room. The doctor spoke only Chinese, and I spoke only English, so the story of my stubborn bowels was told first in English from me to my friend, then in Thai from my friend to the nurse, then in Chinese from the nurse to the doctor. The waiting patients, who each must have understood at least one version of the story, were polite and did not once snicker. Even so, there was nothing left of my pride by the end of the interview.

The doctor placed needles in my tummy and in my ankles, and then hooked the needles up to some kind of device that gave an electric jolt to my muscles every second or two. It didn't hurt at all, but it made my muscles twitch and dance for about half an hour. After the needles were removed and I was allowed to get up I went immediately to the toilet. Acupuncture worked even better than herbal tea.

....

I've since learned a few things about how to keep my asshole functioning without resorting to such extremes. Pooping regularly is so pleasurable, sometimes I can't keep myself from calling a friend to share my good news. Occasionally I'll challenge myself to poop as many times as possible in one day. My record is six. Here I will share with you some of my strategies:

Fiber, I have discovered, is quite important to "regularity". And you really can't overdo it in the fiber department. If you're backed up, fiber will get things moving; if things are moving too quickly, fiber will temper your output. Basically fiber is always a friend to your asshole.

A few flax seeds (also known as linseeds) with hot water poured over them create an oily tea that works wonders.

Ground flax meal with warm milk and an excessive amount of sugar will put you on the toilet within 40 minutes.

I was on a kick for about two months where I ate nothing but uncooked fruits and vegetables. I've never been so regular.

Once I did a fast for about a week where I ingested nothing but lemonade made with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. They called it "The Master Cleanse". It was certainly cleansing, so much so that one day I had an embarrassing situation while at work. I'll leave the details of the story to your imagination.

Drinking lots and lots of water helps. Drinking lots and lots of water helps pretty much everything.

And then of course there is coffee. Sometimes I think I could live on coffee alone.

....

I've been told that using laxatives is dangerous because your body will become dependent upon them and you won't be able to shit without them.

So I don't use laxatives.

But then I think, isn't my body going to become dependent upon coffee or water or raw fruits and vegetables or lemonade made with maple syrup and cayenne pepper or flax seeds or fiber? What is the difference?

But still, I don't use laxatives.

....

If your poop won't come out, you shouldn't push to get it out. This will cause hemorrhoids.

....

Have I mentioned that I wrote most of the first draft of this essay while on the toilet? I do my best thinking there.

....

When I went to South Asia, it took me a little while to get used to the toilets there. You have to squat, not sit as I had done all my life. You are upon the ground, not a hollow chair. It is a bit of a humbling experience.

Once I got the hang of it, though, I quite liked using squat toilets. Squatting puts your body in a more natural position for emptying the bowels.

I was traveling with a guide book, and I noticed that although this guide gave a lot of detailed information for how a person accustomed to life in the first world could get along well in South Asia, there were no instructions for squatting, even though this is a compulsory regular activity. So I wrote an article for them on how one could most efficiently use a squat toilet. The guide book company was pleased with my contribution and rewarded me with a voucher for a free guide book. They included my name at the back of the next printed version of the book amongst the credits.

Basically what I said is this: While one should squat facing away from the wall (the same direction as one sits on a first world toilet) while pooping, women will find it more comfortable to squat facing toward the wall while peeing.

When I returned home from South Asia I was so accustomed to squatting that I found it difficult to adjust back to the hollow chair toilets of the first world. So instead I would perch my feet upon the toilet seat and continue with the squat. One time my mother walked in on me doing this. It was not easy to explain to her what I was doing, even though my actions made sense to me. Somehow her response, "But this is America" was enough to convince me that I was being ridiculous. I went back to sitting.

....

I heard a story of a girl who traveled to India. She was staying at a place where the toilet was separate from the house, and she went out to use it in the middle of the night. There was no sewer system, and no flush; shit just fell through the hole in the floor. And this poor girl ... while she was squatting, the old wood floor gave out and she fell through, down into years and years worth of accumulated shit. She couldn't get out. She called and called for help, but no one could hear. She had to stay there all night. She went a little insane.

I have never traveled to India.

....

I have used many toilets where there is no sewer system, and no flush, where shit just falls through the hole in the floor. Some are better than others. Some are stinky. Some are gross. But I've been to some that had no smell at all. One strategy is to throw a handful of peat moss or sawdust down the hole after your shit. Another is to plant willow outside all around the toilet - the plant will eat up the shit almost immediately and there will remain neither smell nor a pile of poo.

....

If you travel to a third world country, one of the first things you might notice is how differently it smells there than what you are used to at home. This may have to do, in part, with a different level of sanitation.

Most folks don't use the term 'third world' or 'first world' any longer. Maybe these expressions are politically incorrect and insulting. I believe I should say 'developing country' or 'developed country'. Forgive me, I mean no disrespect.

When I say 'third world country' (and I believe it is the same when more polite people say 'developing country'), I mean 'a place where I regularly have to step over shit while walking in a city.'

With this definition in place, my brother's walking route from his apartment to his office in downtown San Francisco would qualify as third world.

....

Funny how shit in the city is viewed so entirely differently from shit in the countryside. A farmer can charge money for another person to haul away the shit of his animals.

Sheep shit, in particular, is very good in a garden. It has twice as much nitrogen as cow shit or horse shit. Its not so messy because of it's neat pelleted form, and the form also allows its nutrients to be released into the ground over a longer period of time.

Maybe that's the real reason the farmer carefully checks each lamb to make sure it has that all-important asshole.

....

"LUCK", by Stephanie

2008-12-27T15:55:00.000-08:00

I don't believe in Luck. Good luck, bad luck: I've found myself falling into both categories without perceiving it as "luck" per se. The events that encourage, bombard, whisper, promise, deny, appear in dreams, are all part of the larger wholesomeness of life itself. That we have given these forces the name 'luck' is curious and most probably something that our ancestors referred to as a need to explain what could not be easily understood. There is still the same need to identify and define, unexplainable mysteries remain and shall always exist in everyday life.

Good and Bad happen all the time, every day, in all settings. Is this due to luck? Is it due to nature and our small standing in the universe? Is it just random junk that rains down? What to we do with it? ... turn it into an opportunity, or recoil from it damningly? It all depends on our outlook, background, previous encounter(s), whereby we mold it into what it becomes, if we can. Sometimes it feels as though we are getting some kind of divine assistance or help from an unknown source. And we give thanks, gratitude and feel "lucky." Sometimes it feels as though we are marked and something or someone is simply out to get us, and we ask "why?" I like that we're here for such a short time really, and whatever comes is relative to what happens to the next person. Our grumblings about being unlucky may be something deeply wished for by another. Our good fortunes may be small change to another type of person elsewhere.

Luck is a kind of reference made up in our mind that shoots us through all kinds of opportunity or obstacle. We may "feel" lucky or unlucky, which is a fleeting period of time. The next moment will bring us a new and oddly different series of thoughts. It's a remarkable facet of living that so much is set before us and that we have to sort it out in our own particular way! Seneca wrote that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” So it comes from US. It's a recipe. Go out and make your own luck! In this, I do believe.

"Recipes for Four-Leaf Clovers", by James

2008-11-28T07:09:00.000-08:00

When I made my plans to venture out of Copenhagen to take in the Danish countryside, I thought that I would spend my time exploring forests or riding horses. But as luck would have it I had caught a bit of a cold before leaving the city, and so my energy was low and I didn't want to do anything except sit and relax in the sunshine. The little cottage had a small, untidy garden. There were more weeds growing within it than planned plants, but in the Scandinavian springtime no living thing is ugly, and I was content to sit and drink in the sun alongside this emerging patch of life.

I wasn't looking for luck. That’s strange for me, really; usually I remember to keep my eyes open for some trifle, some silly small excuse to feel lucky. But at this moment I was enraptured by the feeling of the sun and breeze upon my bare arms, the sound of the birds in the nearby forest, the faint smell of roses in my one unclogged nostril. It was only a coincidence that my eyes fell to rest on a place that had something special to show me. Could it really be …? I bent close to investigate. Yes! Yes it is! It was a clover with four leaves.

I had never seen one before. Really I had always thought they were something made up, a piece of mythology, or perhaps an excuse for lovers to lie down side-by-side in a field. But here I held one in my fingers. I sat for a moment and stared at it in wonder. Three of the leaves were strong and broad; they held the classical heart-shape that one associates with clover leaves. The fourth was smaller, asymmetrical, slightly withered, as if it had hesitated before finally deciding to grow. But there were four leaves, unmistakably, and I felt like the crowned Queen of Luck.

I got up from my garden seat and took my treasure inside to the kitchen. There I heated some water and stirred in my charm along with a bit of honey and ginger, hoping this infusion would ease my cold. Then I went back into the garden sunshine to drink my tea.

I thought a bit about good luck charms and how they might work. I've found face-up pennies before, but I don’t remember any bringing me extraordinary luck. Face-up pennies are perhaps the most common of good-luck tokens, though, so maybe they don´t have such great power. I've seen plenty of horseshoes but I've never found one, and it is the finding of it that makes it lucky, I've been told. But a four-leaf clover … that must be something exceedingly rare. I wondered briefly if I had squandered my chance to win the lottery.

Maybe there are some rules for how a four-leaf clover should be handled in order to harvest as much luck from it as possible. Maybe eating the clover is less effective than, say, tucking it into one’s hat band or pressing it between the pages of one’s diary. But I've never read any instructions for a situation like this. I figured I was still carrying the clover with me, albeit inside of me, so I hitched a ride into town and went to a convenience store where lottery tickets were sold. I bought a scratcher and scratched it. And I won. As simple as that. I won twenty krone, which is about five bucks. I thought of buying another ticket so I could win some more, but I've heard that when one has luck one should not push it, so I just walked back toward the cottage, whistling to myself.

Along the way home I was thinking about what it means to be lucky. I knew that my winning lottery ticket was nothing momentous, and that someone might say that winning such a small amount was not luck, yet it still felt special to have experienced this and the four-leaf clover discovery alongside each other. I knew also that someone might say my win had nothing to do with the clover. But it seemed to me that the clover did make me lucky - by reminding me to be lucky. I wouldn't have tried the lottery without it. I wouldn't have found the lucky clover in the first place if I hadn't had a cold, and my countryside activities hadn't been derailed, so the cold was lucky too. But I began to wonder: was I lucky because I found the four-leaf clover, or did I find the four-leaf clover because I was already lucky? I thought that maybe being lucky and finding a symbol of luck caused each other at the same time, chicken-and-egg style.

I figured that if that were true then I’d be all the more likely to find another token of luck if I looked for one at that moment. So when I returned to the cottage I went back to the garden spot where I was sitting earlier. My eyes easily returned to the patch of grass where I found my four-leaf clover. It took only a moment of scanning the ground to find another one. Soon after that I found another one, and then another. It wasn't long before I had a tiny bouquet of clovers with four leaves pinched between my fingers.

My reaction to this bounty of four-leaf clovers was mixed. At first I was confused and I doubted that my eyes were telling the truth. Could all of them really have four leaves? I counted again, looking at each one carefully. Yes, there was no mistake. Then it occurred to me that they could have been planted there purposely, or that maybe some weird chemical had been dumped out in this spot, causing the things that grew here to mutate. I looked at the small plants in my hand and wondered if there was anything special about them at all.

A moment later I was back to smiling. Of course finding these little plants was something special! It was a beautiful and unexpected discovery; it colored my day and made me feel extraordinary; it gave me something curious to tell a story about and equally it gave me something wonderful to keep a secret; it carried with it an element of mystery; it was something I had wanted to experience since I was a little girl. For these reason I was lucky – there can be no question.

I’m lucky very often. By that I mean that very often I have moments of awareness of the abundance of beauty and kindness and health and security and enormous potential present throughout my life. Of course I also experience moments when I am more aware of ugliness, hatred, disease, fear, and limitation. But I choose to focus on what brings me up rather than what brings me down, and that makes me feel good. My word for that good feeling is lucky.

A glance at the clock pulled me back to reality. I had to get my things together and return to Copenhagen. I had an invitation for a dinner party that evening. I was assigned to bring a green salad and I still had to buy the ingredients and put it together. Buying fresh veggies in the early spring in a Nordic country is a bit of a splurge - just a head of lettuce costs over five dollars.

I didn't know what to do with the four leaf clovers in my hand. Before they even had a chance to wilt I had changed my ideas about what constitutes luck. They were no longer magical, although they remained something significant. I couldn't just throw them away, and yet I couldn't justify treating them as something exalted.

In the end I threw the four-leaf clovers into the salad. I figured it was a cheap way to beef it up a bit. Plus there was a cold going around; I figured everyone could use the extra luck.

"Nice to Meet You", by Emily Nudge

2008-11-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

I was born in 1971. I am 37 years old. I have met a lot of people in my life. I have been to many places and have interacted with many different types of people, both young and old. I am blessed with having been influenced by many and have had the honor of influencing many on my own.

Sometimes I will see someone who recognizes me. They will say, "Hello Emily!" I will look at them with a blank stare and wonder how they know me. I will have no recollection of when we might have interacted long enough for them to remember my name; let alone remember my name in connection with who I am physically. I will say "hello" back to them and try to not have a conversation with them for fear of showing that I have no idea who they are.

However if I know that our paths will cross numerous times after this first encounter I'll fess up right away that I do not remember them or how we meet. The person will inform me and I'll have to trust them that they know what they are talking about. Most of the time I'll do some research and figure out that what they say is indeed true. I'll ask around or look in a photo album from that time period and sure enough there they are.

I wish this phenomenon wasn't the case – I wish I remembered more people who have walked the same path as me. I know that if I saw someone who worked with me in 1989 at Camp Hoover I'd have a hard time remembering his or her name. I know that if I crossed paths with someone from college I'd not know who they were at all. I know this.

I also know that there are many people I remember and when we see each other I try to make eye contact with me and I can see in their eyes that they know who I am but refuse to acknowledge me. They look away and the line of the mouth changes as if they are holding back what they might want to say. They quickly get busy with what they are doing so they don't have to look back. I try to keep looking at them so that if there is a chance they want to change their minds that I am there to receive them but this never happens. I know that sometimes the past is best left in the past.

I firmly believe that humans cross paths for a purpose. Our journey as a human on this planet does things for each other. My interactions with one person might cross someone else's path when I'm not even physically there. I know that we smile and cry and kiss and hug and stumble with each other or against each other and that all this makes an impact on our lives.

"Luck is in the Eye of the Beholder", by Carol Weintraub

2008-11-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

I believe that any time I speak with someone, no matter how small the interaction, I come away a changed person. Everyone I encounter has an effect on me, from my next door neighbor to a clerk in a grocery store, or a lifelong friend. So when I sat down in the emergency waiting room, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me.

This annoyed my daughter to no end. She didn’t say a word, but she flipped through the pages of her magazine faster than she could read them, and tapped her foot impatiently. I ignored her

The woman next to me was tiny and frail, with thinning grey hair in tight curls cut close to her head, and deep creases around her eyes, nose, and mouth. She was rubbing her right arm. Despite my own thinning grey hair and prominent liver spots on my hands, I still feel forty inside. Maybe fifty, on a tiring day. I had to remind myself that this wrinkled, feeble old woman was about my age.

“Did you hurt your arm?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she responded. She smiled at me. “Just cold.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Everyone keeps their place like a freezer in the summer. It’s lucky we don’t all get pneumonia."

“Why are you here today?” the woman asked.

I sighed. “Bad luck. I’m visiting my wonderful daughter,” I gestured towards Deanna, “Having such a lovely time, and then my blood pressure has to start acting funny.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “High?”

“No. Low. I fainted a few times. I tried to tell Deanna not to worry, but she insisted that I come here.”

Deanna closed her magazine and took a deep breath. “Mother, we talked about this. You could fall and hurt yourself badly. Plus, it’s not good to leave such low blood pressure unchecked.”

“Such a lovely visit we were having,” I repeated. “Let me show you pictures of my grandchildren.”

The woman looked at the pictures while I told her about each grandchild. “This is Sandy in the yellow dress. She’s thirteen, and her brother Brad is fifteen. He’s the one playing football. We went to one of his games yesterday, and he scored two- what are they called… goals, touchgoals, something like that… he’s very good. This is Jonathan, my first grandchild. I haven’t been able to see him this visit since he’s in his first year at Yale, but he’s such a good boy. He sends me postcards from school. It's Ivy League, you know. My daughter did such a good job raising her children, didn't you dear?"

Deanna smiled briefly but returned to her magazine, declining to get involved in the conversation

“My grandchildren are all grown up now,” said the woman. “In fact, I’m a great-grandmother three times over.”

“Mazel Tov!” I cried. “What a blessing! I should be so lucky to have great-grandchildren before I’m gone. I had my daughter when I was almost 35 years old, and she didn’t have children until she was nearly the same age, so I’m an old lady with young grandchildren.”

The woman chuckled, but Deanna stiffened with embarrassment. She put her finger to her lips, and motioned for me to lower my voice.

When she had been a teenager, and gone through that awful stage where everything I said or did embarrassed her, I had been very patient. I had read that new Dr. Spock book. Dr. Spock said that teenagers were searching for their identities, and pushing away from their parents in favor of their peers was an important part of finding themselves. So I didn’t get upset that Deanna was embarrassed by my very presence in public. I was calm, I waited it out, and just like Dr. Spock said, that phase that quickly passed.

Recently, though, it seemed like it was starting all over again. I had noticed that during our last few visits, Deanna was beginning to grow impatient with me about everything. She seemed embarrassed all over again about what I wore, what I said, and what I did. This time, I didn’t have the patience myself to wait it out. I don’t think that Deanna was doing it to find her own identity at 50 years old. I think it was about ME. And I was getting irritated.

“Do you have any pictures of your great-grandchildren?” I asked, turning away from Deanna.

“No,” said the woman, quietly. “Some old ones at home, but nothing up-to-date.”

I figured I should change the subject. “So, why are you in the emergency room today?” I asked.

She slowly lifted her foot from her shoe. She had no sock, and I could see an infection on her big toe, right near the nail. “I need to take another round of antibiotics,” she said.

“Couldn’t you get an appointment with your regular doctor for that?” I asked. “Why come to the emergency room where you’ll have to wait for hours?"

Just as she started to answer me, the triage nurse called her up to the registration desk. She took her walker and began to trudge up to the desk. Thank goodness I didn’t need one of those, I thought, crossing my fingers in unconscious superstition.

“Mother.” Deanna whispered sharply, her words like a cat’s hiss. “You can’t keep having these conversations with strangers.”

I tilted my head. “What’s so bad about conversations?”

“You don’t need to tell everyone you meet all the details of your life!” Deanna exploded. “This woman isn’t interested in hearing all about you.”

I was out of patience. I hadn’t told Deanna, but my neck was bothering me from my fainting spell last night, and I hadn’t kept much food down with the low blood pressure. I was hungry, in pain, and tired of having Deanna judge everything I did.

“That shows what you know,” I snapped at her. “I saw that woman when we came in. She was lonely and she was waiting for someone to talk to, so I sat down next to her on purpose. Stop treating me like a wayward child. I’m old, not stupid.”

Deanna’s mouth opened in surprise, and her eyes widened. I rubbed my forehead. We usually got along so well. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had raised my voice to her.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” said Deanna. She started to say more, but the woman came back from the registration desk, pushing her walker and readjusting herself back into the chair.

“Seems like I’ll be here for sometime today,” said the woman. “Cases like yours need to be seen before they’ll look at me.”

“Does it hurt?” I asked, pointing at her foot.

“Not really,” she said. “I would go to a regular doctor, since I only need the antibiotics, but I didn’t have a ride. The bus will take me right here, no transfers.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Do your children live far away?” I asked.

The woman bowed her head down and closed her eyes. “No.”

Deanna and I exchanged glances. I wasn’t sure what to say.

The woman licked her lips and hesitated. “I don’t want to burden you with my story...”

“It’s not a burden,” I insisted. “I should go maybe go out bowling instead of listening to you?"

The woman straightened up and leaned towards me, peering right into my eyes. “About five years ago, my husband died.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Well, he was very ill. He had a pension, and we had been putting a bunch of money into a good life insurance policy, so I had a little nest egg. My sons urged me to sell the house, and buy one of those assisted living condos nearby. I wasn’t so crazy about leaving the house, but,” she gestured to the walker, “it was getting harder to get up the stairs. So I moved into the condo. It wasn’t so bad.”

I held my tongue. I had told Deanna a million times that she should shoot me rather than leave me to die in one of those assisted living places. She would always laugh and tell me I would move in with her when the time came.

“The social workers organized a lot of group things. Lectures, social events, you know how those places are. They even got together a collection for the state lottery. I had never played the lottery before, but I did it to be sociable, you know. After a few weeks, we won a large amount of money.”

I whistled a long, low breath. “Really! How much did you win?”

“When we split up the money after taxes, each of us got over 100,000 dollars. I felt like my ship had come in, so they say. I decided to go to Poland, where my parents were born, for a trip to see the family still there.”

“How exciting!” I said.

“My eldest son, though, told me I should wait. He was doing all my financial paperwork at the time, and he wanted me to invest the money in the stock market. He said that I would get enough dividends after a while that I could take the trip and not have to touch the principal.”

“I see,” I murmured

“I didn’t feel so comfortable doing that; I remember all too well 1929 and how everyone in the stock market lost their shirts. Plus, how much time should a woman of my age wait to take a trip?”

I laughed, but she looked glum. On the other side of me, Deanna was now listening attentively to the story.

“We started to argue about the money. Finally, I put my foot down. It was my money, and I could make my own decisions. But my youngest son is a lawyer, and he told me that they could have a judge make me give them the money if he thought I wasn’t doing the right thing with it…”

There were tears in her eyes as she trailed off. There were tears in my eyes too. The woman blew her nose and slumped down in her seat. “I didn’t want to have to go to court, so I let my sons have control of the money. They send me the dividends from the stock market by check every month, but we don’t talk much otherwise.”

Before I could say anything to comfort her, the admitting nurse called my name. I pulled myself out of my chair, and Deanna took my arm to steady me.

“I’m so sorry for your troubles,” I told the old woman. “I hope your foot heals quickly.”

She nodded and smiled weakly. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. There was nothing else I could do but go where the nurse was beckoning.

As we walked to the examining room, Deanna kept a steady arm linked around mine. “Ma,” she said softly, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings before. I don’t think you’re stupid.”

After a brief silence, I spoke. “Your father, God rest his soul, and I, we used to talk about what we would do if we won the lottery. Before you were born, we would buy a ticket every once in a while, whenever we had an extra quarter. We thought that it would be the luckiest thing that could ever happen to us." Deanna helped me onto the hospital bed. "This woman made me remember that having a caring, loving daughter like you was the luckiest thing that could ever happen to us.”

“Oh, Mama,” said Deanna, wiping away a tear with her hand.

A nurse entered the exam room, and pulled the curtains closed around my bed. It didn't do much to shut out the noise of the rushing doctors and moaning patients in nearby beds. She stuck a thermometer in my mouth, and wrapped a cuff around my upper arm.

"It's so tight," I told the nurse, referring to the cuff.

"Mouth closed please," was her only reply. Deanna stroked my arm above the cuff.

“55 over 75,” the nurse said disapprovingly, as she noted my blood pressure in a chart. The thermometer beeped, and I took it out of my mouth. The nurse glanced at it. "Temperature 95 degrees. You’re lucky that you didn’t do more than just faint before you came to the emergency room!” Deanna clutched my hand.

“All the luck I need is right here,” I said to the nurse, gesturing at Deanna. “It’s all right here.”