Write... Edit... Publish... April 2021 : Freedom Morning

 

Keeping to the broad idea of 'fractured' for Write...Edit...Publish... Lite still. Another old hat of mine (from 2012!) repurposed for the prompt -  tad over word count this time, sorry.

Not Exactly a Fairy Tale

Cindy came into the room limping a little, her feet were killing her.  This particular pair of evening shoes was wickedly uncomfortable, she really didn’t know why Rex insisted on her wearing them on every possible occasion.  She didn’t know why she continued to pander to his wishes in this either.   She sank down thankfully, glad to take the weight off her feet. 

 

Mannie was still waiting up, bleary-eyed. She moved in to help, but Cindy was irritated beyond measure just now by her subservience, by her toeing the line unquestioning, much as she, Cindy herself, was used to do.  That’s all they did, each woman of them, from top down to the last poor female chit in the staff.

 

“No, leave it,” she said, rather roughly, ”Go to bed now.  Leave me alone.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Mannie looked like a whipped puppy,” Are you sure, ma’am?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Go get some sleep, you do look you could use it,” and when the girl still hesitated, ”Don’t stand there, my dear.  I’ll be fine.”

 

“Good night, ma’am.”

 

“Good night.”

 

God, she was exhausted.  And angry with a vague rage.  She wiggled her toes, folded her legs to tuck her knees under her chin and massaged her instep with the tips of her fingers.  Her feet were still lovely, beautifully shapely and small, though not as narrow as they once were, the long toes with their delicate whorls of fine skin on the knuckled joints still ridiculously pretty.  She wished she had asked Mannie to run a footbath, a good soaking would do the trick.  Splash away her blue funk.   She got a basin, filled it with hot water and a dollop of shampoo, she couldn’t find the gel she wanted, who cared what went into the water so long it was hot? She brought it back and wriggled out of her dress. Leaving it pooled in a minimalistic mass of silver lace on the floor, she curled back into the sofa with her feet immersed in the foamy hot water. 

 

How had she landed up at that gala this evening? Wearing those uncomfortable old shoes that sparkled coldly and beautifully, and pinched her now coarsened feet; that Rex was so insistent that she wear everywhere, as though she still needed to prove anything.   Why did she go to the gala even? When all she had wanted to do was to spend the evening in with her children, play at a board game, get some vastly greasy, sinful meal eaten together off trays, huddled in the boudoir while watching trashy telly.  But no, she had dressed up in that silver lace, done up her hair and looked mind bogglingly elegant. 

 

Rex had said in his typical mild voice, "You look your usual beautiful self, my dear.  I hope you’re wearing the Timmy Woo shoes?  They are just made for that shade of silver grey.” And soured her pleasure in the dress. 

 

But she hadn’t protested.  Or to coin a bad pun, hadn’t put her foot down.  She had set aside the exquisite grey and emerald suede statement shoes she had had custom made and worn those cruel old heels again and gone tripping out on his arm and stood and danced and made small talk as though her feet were resting on fleecy clouds.  It was beyond stupid.  She couldn’t imagine the conversation even in her head.  It’s been 15 years, my feet are 15 years older, have you noticed? I have had three babies, life threatening illness, minor and major surgery, chin hair, moles, wrinkles.  I don’t want to wear Timmy Whoever shoes, I’ve evolved beyond them. Jeez, whoever heard of a marriage becoming stifled because of a pair of shoes? It was insane!

 

Cindy sighed and got up.  Best go to bed, otherwise she would fall asleep here.  She changed into an ancient nightdress, the fabric worn and softened with many washes.  She slipped under the covers, but still couldn’t sleep for the wound up thoughts in her head kept going round like clockwork mice.  Except for his blind spot about this shoe business, Rex was otherwise such a good egg.  He’d been a caring husband and father, within his constraints.   He loved her passionately still.  She couldn’t imagine her life without him, what trajectory it would have followed had he not sought her out the way he had, had she not been out that evening at that specific dance, or not worn that specific pair of shoes.  How tiresomely random it all was; and how tenacious habits became; and how impossible to go on for 15 years wearing the same inflexible shoes grown uncomfortable over time. Old shoes that didn’t wear down to accommodate ageing feet.

 

Rex came and climbed into bed just as she was drifting off, but he touched his lips to her forehead and she bobbed up, instantly awake and fully lucid, picking up the threads of her anger from where she had left off. 

 

“Rex?”

 

“Yes, my dear?”

 

“I hate those shoes! I just hate them, I always have.  I’m not going to wear them one more time. Not one more time!”

 

He remained quiet for a long moment before speaking, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Well, what’s there to tell? It’s bloody crazy to make those shoes in the first place, or hasn’t that occurred to you? My feet were dead sore the first time I wore them too.”

 

“No need to get excited. Chuck them if you don’t want them.  I wouldn’t want you to wear anything you aren’t comfortable with, you know.”

 

“Really?! You mean that?!”

 

“Yeah, of course. They’re only shoes, not your wedding vows.”

 

How strange! It was suddenly done, in the wee hours, just like that.  She had broken the spell of the shoes, though now she was no longer sure that there had been any spell at all.  All these years. Putting up with so much discomfort, and all for nothing.  She got out of the covers and walked to the closet.  The shoes twinkled up at her, as dainty as they were on that far off day when she had first slipped her feet into them.  She took them out and holding one in each hand, moved to the window.  The summer darkness was balmy and a million stars winked at her.  She threw out the shoes one after the other – each curved a high arc in the air and fell on the paving far below.  A satisfying tinkle of glass shattering wafted up into the room. Cindy stood for a few moments breathing in the summer fragrances.

 

“Come to bed now, Cinderella. It’s almost morning.”

 

She turned then and ran across the room and leapt into bed beside her king, as light of foot and heart as she had been once upon a time.

 

WC - 1140

FCA

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Write... Edit... Publish... + IWSG February 2021 : The Kiss

 

Keeping it spare for Write...Edit...Publish...  Lite as we start off year 2021. Back to fiction with a fractured something...an old write repurposed because it fit the prompt. 

The worst ever

He had stalked me for days. His lips were rubbery, too large, too wide open, hot-wet and slimy.  Gross didn’t begin to describe it.  He was taking his time too, as if he was wooing some swooning heroine in some crazy version of a Brontë romance.  The worst kiss ever. And his limbs were like bloody suckers, I pushed at him hard but he hung on like one of those tree-huggers. How could this be happening?  Why had I allowed it in the first place? I groped for the knife, found it and slashed upwards. He broke away with a repulsive sucking sound that made even my toenails curl. 

 

I sat up, my chest heaving, my heart beating a frantic tattoo against my ribs.  My head swam with a potent mix of emotions – disbelief. disgust, outrage, abject terror.  I shut my eyes and tried to get a grip.  When I opened them again, everything was quiet.  Moonlight came in through the blinds and lay in deep slices on the floor. I could see vague dark stains on the bedclothes, they were twisted around my torso in a python-coil.  The rest of the room was strangely and chillingly untouched by the upheavals I had just experienced - my clothes were still on the pegs, my books as I had left them on my desk.  Only Toddy had fallen out of the cubbyhole and lay spread-eagled on the papers. 

I untangled myself slowly from the snarled sheets.  Piled the pillows behind my back and half-lounged against them.  Not to sleep for the rest of the night felt like a sensible decision.

 

***

 

“Oh look, aren’t they cute?!” Aditi exclaimed.

“Now don’t start that again, Dits,” I was not particularly taken with the clumps of teddy bears and alligators and giraffes the vendor was hawking in the train.  She was obsessed with soft toys.

“Aw, c’mon,” she cajoled. “Just look at them.  Let me get you one, please. One for you, one for me.  Just as a souvenir. Just one last time, okay?”

“Oh, yeah? One last time?” I was skeptical. She said that every time. On every trip.

 

The vendor meanwhile had spotted a pushover and made his way to where we were sitting. He pointed out the awesomeness of his wares with exaggerated, faintly effeminate gestures, adding fuel to an already blazing fire.  I gave in, it was useless to resist.  Deal done, Aditi sat back with a sigh and a smile clutching the toys as though she were five instead of twenty-five.

 

“Oh, they’re just too cute. Don’t you love this vest?”

 “Hmm,” I really couldn’t match her enthusiasm.

  “What shall we call them?”

 “Froddy? Frodo? Freddie? Anything.  Your choice, really.”

 “Are they frogs or toads?”

 “I don’t think frogs come in that muddy colour.”

 “I know,” Aditi said with the air of someone having an epiphany, “Toddy! Let’s call this one Toddy. And this can be Muddy.” 

 

***

 

I woke abruptly.  Daylight was streaming in at the window. The clock on the night-stand read 6:16, the dots pulsing each second, like a pair of blinking evil eyes. A flock of crows had started up their raucous commotion somewhere just outside.

My mouth felt like a dozer had smashed into it.  My whole body was a disaster zone, as if it had come through a wringer.  Every bone ached. I flung the bedclothes back, there were weird dried stains on them.  There was no time to change the sheets.  If I didn’t hurry, I would be seriously late, the pick up came at half past.  I briefly wondered what kind of night Aditi had had. I pushed away the thoughts that wisped unbidden into my mind.  No, that was beyond crazy. I shuddered. Was I going out of my mind? There was little time to ponder, and the workday soon pushed the night’s events out of sight if not completely out of mind.

I saw it when I came back from work and went to lay my bag down as usual.  He wasn’t on the desk, not inside the cubbyhole, not where he had fallen on the papers last night, nor on the floor underneath.  Not anywhere visible in the room. Scrunched up on one side was the vest, slashed open in a ragged cut where the knife must have gone in and caught the seam.  There were dried bloodstains on the vest too. Mine? I swatted away the thought they could be anyone else’s.  I picked it up and smoothed it out.  The front, I had never really noticed the front. It was the back that was constantly on view as he sat low, squat and fat on all fours.  The writing glittered, still undamaged, the words gleaming in the last of the daylight.  Prince, in disguise. I read them again.  Mouthing the words like a child learning to read.  Prince. In. Disguise.

WC- 814

FCA

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Write... Edit... Publish... December 2020 : Unmasked

 

For this month, Write... Edit... Publish... is  taking a much needed break and getting its collective breath back. No winners, no comment counts, no prize badges this month - no pressure. This posting is for the spirit of community only - which is what has kept me going through this annus horribilis. The online and offline support of my various communities. A huge thanks to the WEP members for all that you did.      

Mind. Mandate. Missteps.

Sometimes it’s not the people who change, it’s the mask that falls off. ~ Haruki Murakami.

 

This year has forced nearly all of us to wear masks, like it or not. Masks are often associated with extreme attributes - positive and/or professional (health workers/firemen/anonymous benefactors) or massively negative (robbers). The pandemic has shown how uneasy we are when we cannot access facial cues to communicate, for all that eyes are said to be the windows to the soul. A mask is really a trade off - between power, protection and concealment, and we're not always outwardly comfortable with the balance struck. 

Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG October 2020 : Grave Mistake

 

Cutting straight to the chase without the usual preliminaries, in keeping with the spirit of WEP Lite...

Blind Mole in a Black Hole

To be or not to be, that is the question…

~ Hamlet, William Shakespeare.

 

Mistakes. Grave ones. Yes, the mind makes them. The shape-shifting wondrous and wondering mind, capable of morphing from a homing pigeon to grasshopper and bulldog, capable of holding the most unimaginable thoughts, the most inexplicable, avantgarde visions, the most speakable and unspeakable ideas – that exact same mind can summersault and do a strange blind-mole-in-black-hole on itself. The same mind, which can drive the body to achieve peak success, can also torment it and goad it to blow its brains out or immolate its living self on a pyre. It can, in one catastrophic, grave moment, destroy its own housing and so annihilate itself.

 

Suicide - it’s as old and as human as civilisation itself. The first recorded suicide note goes back to 1900 BCE to Ancient Egypt (even this started in Africa, why am I not surprised?) – it is housed in a museum in Berlin and its title translates as The Dispute with His Soul of One Who is Tired of Life. Attitudes to life and death and the taking of life, whether by own hand or by some other means, were different in antiquity – some would call it more callous, some fatalistic, some maybe relaxed. It was not abhorrent in many societies. The pagan world was generally less hassled about suicide than we are now.

For instance, some Ancient Greek states allowed citizens to end their own life with a state sponsored cup of hemlock, if the said citizen dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s correctly in the application form. In general, suicide was frowned upon if it was uneconomic for the society, such as slaves or criminals prior to trial (criminals forfeited their property to the state). But suicide was perfectly acceptable if the alternative was a dishonourable death. 

In North Western India, Rajput women followed the practice of Jauhar, a ritual mass immolation, when defeat in battle became inevitable for their menfolk, so as not to be taken alive and abused by the enemy.  The first Jauhar is said to date back to Alexander’s time when some north western tribes committed mass suicide to avoid certain capture by him. Similarly insurgent Jews in Masada committed mass suicide rather than face capture and enslavement by the Romans in 74 CE. Famous individual suicides from antiquity include Cleopatra VII and Seneca the Younger.

With the rise of Christianity, attitudes towards suicide hardened and the practice became unacceptable. Suicide became stigmatised. The church excommunicated those who attempted it and the bodies of successful suicides were not permitted burial on consecrated grounds.  That started changing again during the Renaissance and by 18^th/19^th century the cause of suicide had stopped being perceived as sin and instead shifted to insanity, though it remained illegal in most of the world. Suicide was decriminalised in most countries in the 20^th century. However, there is still much stigma attached to it.

***

It is better to burn out than to fade away.

~ Kurt Cobain.

Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, John William Godward, Mark Rothko, Robin Williams, Sushant Singh Rajput. Is there something within the artistic temperament that predisposes it to suicide? Does the creative brain come hardwired with the seeds of its own annihilation? There have been reams of studies out to prove or disprove this premise. No definitive answer, though. What has been established is a connection between mental health and suicidal behaviour. Our understanding of so called ‘insanity’ has deepened. But it has also become equally clear that mental disorders are not the only cause, the reasons are varied and many. We now know that there are signs of suicidal tendencies long before the person takes any definitive action to end life. Suicide prevention is possible if communities are sensitive - they listen and act proactively.  

 

Worldwide, there are around 800,000 lives lost to suicide annually. These are only the recorded deaths, many are suppressed due to the stigma or to avoid legal issues, so likely the actual figures are much higher. A majority are males, it is estimated that twice as many men take their own lives as women.  Not all have any history of mental health issues and/or substance abuse, although it is thought that in more than 50% of the cases depression/mental health/drugs have a role. Other causes of suicide include financial distress, romantic and academic/professional disappointments, terminal disease. In nearly all of the cases, the suicide is to avoid the resulting torment rather than to end life per se.

 

In the last decade or so, suicides among younger people have shown a disturbing, upward trend globally. The current pandemic has created its own horrific spike as well – in India for instance, suicides have risen among the youth in all segments due to job losses and academic uncertainties, for all that the public has been obsessed with the particular high profile suicide of Bollywood celebrity Sushant Singh Rajput recently. 

In some ways, a suicide of this kind opens up a whole can of worms about the wider society it happens in. What it has revealed about Indian society is not pretty. What is even more regrettable is that there were hardly any serious conversations on any of the underlying issues, instead the whole spiralled into a misogynistic witch hunt, trial by social media and an avalanche of hashtags. 

It is not just the suicidal mind that makes grave mistakes, unfortunately. The mindless public in many cases makes equally grave ones. A picking over of things in which all sense of privacy and decency are lost. Shameful!

***

Each one of us leaves an unfinished life.

~ Mary Oliver.

But that’s neither here nor there. Because this here is not about an error of the present, but one of the long ago past. A grave mistake that robbed the world of a genius. Whose mistake was it? And how did it come to be made? We still don’t know (WC 1000. FCA.)

Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG August 2020 : Long Shadow

Write...Edit...Publish... is sticking to its Lite version for now...and I am sticking to the essay format...

Breath and Shadow

A human being is only breath and shadow. – Sophocles. 

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The mind is a shape shifter. Like a shadow – squat at midday, long by sunset. One minute it is a grasshopper, all chirpy multitasking cheerfulness, juggling a million thoughts per second, leaping off one to the other, unable to stick with just a single. The next it is a bulldog, just lugubrious folds and salt-of-earth tenacity, focussed sharp and a serial stickler for one at a time.  Yet again it is a pigeon, slicing through the fluff and zooming home to what matters.  As mercurial as a drop of water on a lotus leaf, huddled into its own rounded self, concise and self-contained and tiny, unable to wet anything yet reflecting a whole skyscape of clouds above it.

The mind can contain a whole skyscape of grief and loss and stressful pandemics, yet go about working cell by cell on spreadsheets, or writing word by word, an essay sparked by a prompt. It can imagine the universe is its oyster, it can blithely go about seeing multiverses in a grain of sand.  Smoothly glide back and forth along the continuum of time from history and art history to sci-fi and fantasy. Between truth and fiction, between the abstract and concrete, between the painfully personal and the monumentally universal. There is no end to its skittering about.

Today it’s vaulted back to the first seat of Western higher learning, to Athens. That’s where the history of the cast shadow in Western art goes back to - ancient Greece. They were the first to develop and use ‘a geometry of light’ and cast shadows in art. Apollodorus, an Athenian artist, introduced a shading technique called skiagraphia (lit shadow-painting) to create the impression of volume, depth and space on a flat plane. However, in the Allegory of the Cave, Plato set up a shadow-reality dichotomy that continues to influence all spheres of Western culture even today. That Greek perception of shadow was negative – associated with ignorance, illusory, unreal. 

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A counterpoint can be found in the Natural History  in which Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian, recorded the Greco-Roman origin myth of Western art: a young woman – the clay modeller Butades’ daughter, who captured her lover’s shadow on a wall as he slept on the night before his departure as a romantic keepsake. This was a far more positive angle, a love story, but it could not throw off the Cave’s, um…long shadow. Cast shadows in art dwindled from the classical period onward, with their dodgy impression of ugly, gloomy, negative, deluding the viewer with trickery and deception. Shadows in art remained a no-no for centuries. Till the Renaissance upended everything. 

***

Darkness is the absence of light. Shadow is the diminution of light. – Leonardo da Vinci.

The grasshopper meanwhile, as is its wont, has leapt down a rabbit hole. What exactly were the Easterners doing to their shadows? Eastern art, the Chinese, Japanese and Indian traditions are deep and ancient, but they always were more stylised than Western art. No space for cast shadows there historically. From the Renaissance onward Western art explored the exact representation of experienced reality through linear perspective, shading and shadows.  Eastern art by and large remained moored in tradition however, and experiments with realism came later, mainly due to European colonisation. But the converse is also true, Eastern art diffused into Europe and inspired Western artists too. In particular, Japanese art crossed the oceans and left its indelible mark on one particular, much celebrated artist.

A landmark Renaissance work, where  linear perspective and cast shadows were first used, was a fresco in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. The artist, Masaccio (1401-28) was one of the pioneers in Renaissance art - he used cast shadows masterfully. 

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In another Masaccio artwork – St Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow, the shadow of the saint dominates the core message, but visually the shadow does not hide the sick. 

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The vocabulary of shadows continued to develop through the work of later artists - Caravaggio, Bernini, Gianlorenzo and others.  By the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the techniques of perspective, chiaroscuro and cast shadows were quite established. And then Impressionism with its soft brush strokes, stunning colours, subtle movement and shimmery reflections  shredded all the rules again.

***

Like a shadow, I am and I am not. – Jalaluddin Rumi.

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An evolution of light. Looking at the body of work this artist left in his short career, there seems to be a progression from the shadows into light, both literally and figuratively. In his early works, he used chiaroscuro to marvellous effect. His palette and perspective changed radically midway when he came to Paris. There he encountered two forces which would change his art. One, the Impressionists, and second, Japanese woodcuts. His palette became lighter, brighter, more colourful. His perspectives became flatter, and his art avant-garde,  by repurposing the ancient.

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Japanese art was a major inspiration for Vincent, he wanted to find a take-off point for a more modern, more stylised vibe, and Japanese prints – with their bold patches of colour, prominent contour lines, lack of horizons and shadows, truncated frames and focus on nature – fitted admirably. He went south to Arles looking for the “clearness of atmosphere” and “colour effects” of Oriental prints. Even his idea of an artist’s commune was based on Japanese monks living and working together. His painting of his bedroom at Arles is the epitome of the Japanese influence – bold colours, a subtly distorted perspective and removal of all cast shadows. 

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Unfortunately, what happened on canvas did not translate into personal life. The more his external work exploded with colour and creativity, the greater was the turmoil in his inner workings. The artists’ commune did not materialise, Gauguin came and left after a major disagreement. Vincent had a series of mental breakdowns. His neighbours petitioned for him to be removed on account of ‘insanity.’ An abject sense of failure dogged him. Like some Gothic horror story come eerily to life, for every burst of brilliance on the easel, his life seemed to become a couple of shades darker, regress into the terrible shade of mental illness. Despite his efforts, he was wholly unable to shake that off. Till all that remained was a shadow, without breath.

WC - 1051

FCA

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