Open Wide: The Stories

Plan/nt/ing

Yesterday, I did two things. First, I canceled my plane ticket and hotel for a July trip to London. I was to be presenting at the International Creative Writing Conference, which is not happening now. I was also planning to do some research for a few essays about when I lived there for a few years in the eighties.

Of course, I’m bummed not to be going this summer. Slowly, all my plans for the summer are dying as are most folks’ plans. Of course, planning is all about the future. Through one lens, the future gapes: a black hole of uncertainty.

The other thing I did yesterday was plant vegetable seeds: arugula, spinach, carrots, basil, yellow squash. Seed sowing is inherently chancy. Soil conditions, seed quality, fertilizer, sun, water – all have to balance for anything to grow. Some seasons, you stare at dead earth, wondering what happened. Other seasons, fruit hangs heavy on the vine.

This morning, I said to my husband, Paul, “Here’s the daily sprout report. No sprouts yet.”

Today, a couple of windows into the future.

–KLB

Inevitable

“I blame the quarantine”. Everyone said it. “Keep yourself safe” they said, “stay inside”, they said. And everyone agreed without question. And regrettably; so did I, at the time. But now 2 years on, as one of the world’s leading journalists I have uncovered the ultimate truth. I know it may seem far-fetched, but this is more than a theory, more than a concept. In fact it’s a revolution.

It was in summer of 2021 that they discreetly made the decision to leave democracy as a thing of the past. And now in this new reality of dictatorship, I write the sad story of how the world crumbled and fell into the hands of the corrupt. 

The government manufactured and unleashed the virus onto Wuhan, China. It was developed to spread rapidly, becoming fatal to a portion of humanity after a year. Little did we know, quarantine would fix nothing; it was to continue until humanity was cleansed of anything considered impure by the government. This shocking possibility came to me back in 2020 during a time where it was nothing but “just a harmless flu” to most.

A lawyer called, informing me of my newly deceased father. A will came days later,  stamped with the official government crest. The symbol of my age old enemy. A letter was enclosed in the envelope among heaps of files. The letter revealed that even after our years apart, he still entrusted me with the most important information on the planet. “They intended to wipe out all who are weak and vulnerable, it was their plan from the start”.  Those who were deemed impure would die…and they still are. This needs to be shared with the world; we must cease this sickness before it is too late. We must prevent the seemingly inevitable. 


–Olivia Page, age 13 & Emily Lincoln, age 13

THE NASDAQ JUMPED 200 POINTS YESTERDAY

I wouldn’t say I blame the quarantine, but my roommates and I are digging a grave in our basement. We won’t need it right away (we’re young and strong and still able to create value for shareholders), but eventually it’ll come in handy. The concrete was the hard part. Chipping away at it with pickaxes like railroad workers of old. We brought a TV downstairs and put on the news to motivate ourselves. Death toll, community spread. Pundits speculating about how many Americans should be executed to boost the Dow.


I should clarify that the grave has little to do with the virus and more to do with what the folks on the TV aren’t saying. About a nation-sized machine that feeds on blood. About the scale on which our hearts are weighed against bars of gold and the hearts are always heavier.


We hit a pipe and cold water sprayed out, smelling of lead. I think it would have drowned us if it had kept flowing, but someone shut it off before it got the chance—a kindness which muddles the metaphor a little, but I guess I can forgive it.


We switched to shovels then. Dredging thick muck and tossing it aside. Water sloshed against an outlet and the TV died and the cord caught on fire. We were all thankful for that.


We’re nearly finished now. The hole isn’t six feet, but should be enough for the three of us. We thought about separate graves, but what’s the use in that? When it’s our turn to feed the machine, just dump us in the hole and cover it so we don’t spread anything. But please remember to put coins in our mouths to pay the ferryman. No room in the afterlife for freeloaders.

–Shane Inman

Mask No Mask

I live in what’s called, by real estate agents, an aspiring neighborhood. It’s a racially, linguistically, economically mixed neighborhood. In the Guatemalan or Salvadorian or Peruvian bakeries, restaurants, and stores on my neighborhood’s main street, most folks smile indulgently when I sputter out the few words of Spanish I know to try to convey that as a white woman I recognize I am the interloper here. I like it when they laugh in my face at my efforts. Usually it’s good-natured, but even if it isn’t, theirs is exactly the right attitude. I hope they’re thinking, and saying among themselves, “Learn the damn language if you’re going to live here.”

I drove down my main drag recently, which is less than a mile from the public college where I teach, and the college itself is now a covid testing site. Every person, big and small, tiny and tall, every person, to a person, was wearing a face mask. Of course, over 40% of the covid positive tests in RI are from the Latinx community. Another significant percentage is from the African-American community.

I had to be on the upper-crust East side this week too, around Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, where stately homes, fashionable restaurants, and the beautiful “Boulevard” reside for the joy of predominantly white folks. I found myself raging that, to my eye, 95% of people on the very-peopled East-side streets couldn’t be bothered to wear face masks.

“What, do they think, their spit don’t stink?” I raged. “What, are these too-cool-for-public-school richie-riches waiting for their goddamned, diamond-studded masks to be delivered to their doors by one of the front-liners working for Prime?”

“Put on an effing face mask!!” I shouted through my car window.

Neighborhoods matter. Neighbors matter.

–KLB

Essential Window

“No. Stay right there. Don’t come any closer. What do you want?”  I asked the question, directing my frustration at the man.

“I just need a dowel rod.”  He answered, his lips quivering. This man is going to cry over a freaking dowel rod. I thought. 

I had blocked off the aisle of the DIY hardware store.  Denying him access to the items he sought. Before travel restrictions I was a manufacturer’s rep, servicing items in this establishment.  

Considered an “essential business” I was angry that this company had tagged me as an essential supplier.  So I was stuck. Don’t get me wrong I was happy to be working, but I felt frustrated that possibly my life or at the very least my health was being jeopardized by people who don’t understand what essential needs are. 

Maybe the Governor should have been more clear as to what essential needs actually are.  Food, fuel, medicine definitely. In this place plumbing and electrical supplies, sure. But dowel rods.  Come on.

“How are dowel rods essential, man,”  I screamed at him. “I’m not catching this thing for a stick, stay there until I’m finished. Forty five minutes then the aisle is all yours.” I returned to my work.

The man broke down completely. Fell to the floor and began sobbing.

“My mother is in ICU, they won’t let me in her room, the only way I can communicate is by signs and I thought I put it on a dowel so she could see it… I don’t… I…”  

I just watched for a moment, stopped what I was doing and walked the box of dowel rods the length of the aisle and handed them to him.  I apologized.

I guess someone should have been more clear on “essential items”.  I blame the quarantine.

–Clarence Miller (Butch)

Wrong Answer

Just as the police led the man across the street away in handcuffs, a coroner’s van drew up. Beside me, Deborah sucked in her breath.

“So he killed poor Kim. I told you I thought he was abusing her.”

So she had. For some reason, it irritated me. “Hindsight is twenty twenty. Besides, we don’t really know what happened over there.”

She stared at me, and when she spoke, shock made her voice shrill. “You’re not defending him, are you? It’s pretty obvious he must have killed her.”

Weeks of confinement together had frayed my nerves. Something dark and violent inside me craved validation. “These are difficult times. We don’t know what happened, or why.”

She sighed. “No, I suppose we don’t know the exact reason. Does it matter, though? He’s alive, and she’s dead. That has to tell you something.”

Did it? I considered my answer. As I thought about what to say, I watched the fear grow in her eyes. They were fixed on me, as if she was trying to read my thoughts. Seeing her so nervous made me feel powerful, in control. She took a step back from me. It was exciting, knowing I could have such an effect on her.

Even as I spoke, I knew I was destroying everything we had together. At that moment, it didn’t matter. With all the tension which had built up inside me, I couldn’t help myself. Swallowing against the sour taste in the back of my throat, I said the words.

“I blame the quarantine.”

–Ray Beere Johnson II, Woonsocket, I am legally blind and on the autism spectrum – although not diagnosed until well into adulthood – so I am a bit out of the ordinary, even under better circumstances.

And in Other Windows . . .

Today, the biggest news is not the virus but a shooting in Canada, in which, last count, 23 died.

Bad news. Bad news.

It may be twisted that it comforts me to remind myself that there are plenty of other dangers out there besides Covid, plenty of other sadnesses, losses, reasons to feel bad.

Maybe this is because it also reminds me there are reasons to feel good out there too as some of today’s posts remind us: spring and fresher air, sunlight and baby birds learning to fly, clouds, rain, smiles behind masks.

These posts.

Feel better.

–KLB

2017
2020

Texas Window in Boston

I blame the quarantine for my broken heart. The first two weeks were not so bad. I wrote music, poems, and finally had the chance to be creative. Then the third week hit and classes came back. Slinking out from under my bed came depression

And his sidekick panic attacks. Deep sleep became a memory. I allowed my adamantine heart to bear the weight but not break.

A call from a friend brought a knocked my stone heart and a crack appeared. I cried with another human being for the first time in years and I didn’t want anyone to put me together again. The crack widened as my distance from friends and family was realized more each day. Each call from mom where the laughter of my sister and brothers was carried on the wind widened the crack as it pierced deeper and deeper into the rock. Each zoom hangout, though comforting, served to remind me that it’s been weeks since I’ve felt any human contact.

Yesterday I lost my job. I wondered how I would pay rent (my family came and saved the day) and my heart hit its limit. I cried all day today. At the madness of it all.

But then my heart revealed the geode within. I cried and laughed that the birds were back as I walked to the store. The trees are in bloom, The sky bright blue and the frigid crisp air all reminding me that I was still drinking in life. The crystal center of my heart, now brought to light, refracted a living rainbow of this moment – terror and joy and sorrow all together. And I know when the world returns, that will stay. I blame the quarantine for that too.

–Gregory Petershack, From San Antonio Texas originally
Studying for and MA in literary theory and pedagogy at Boston College

Window from Puerto Rico

Once upon a time, in a tiny planet named Earth, creatures, named human beings, built big cities and powerful armies. These messy creatures infected the planet… Planet Earth sent humans multiple warnings… humans didn’t listen. 

Planet Earth decided it was time to stop the infectious and irresponsible actions stubborn humans were taking. Human actions infected it’s own. Human being actions created a perfect environment for a microscopic virus. Humans got sick, also paranoid… humans, started blaming each other. War erupted and humans burnt almost all of the human living creatures from the face of.. yes, from the face of the Earth. 

Long story short… now, Planet Earth live happily ever after… Again!

 Moral in the Story… If humans don’t help each other and help take care of Planet Earth, Planet Earth will “allow” humans to start All Over Again… FROM SCRATCH..

Planet Earth, God, Mother Nature, call it whatever you want, but get it for once and for all…

They, (or is it HE?), ALWAYS WIN!!!

–JC Cruz-MassasSan Juan, Puerto Rico, March 2020