Response:

Lone Survivor by Heitzi Epstein

Once I lived within a house of rough planks. The home revolved around my warmth and flickering orange light. I watched my families’ lives unfurl before me. Couples arrived at the house in pairs and were joined over the years by babies who crawled toward me to be swept up by a mother, then toddlers who played in the ashes by my feet, then youngsters who grumbled as they hauled wood to fuel me, then young courting lovers who nestled in each others arms as my flames relaxed into embers, crackling in bitter blasts of wind drawn down my chimney.
The house grew with the family, one room at a time. Then the great illness came to our home, brought one Christmas with visiting relatives. First the littlest baby died, then the oldest son, followed by father. Mother stayed on through that summer with the remaining two boys and the little daughter. I watched them grow thin, making do with garden vegetables and small rabbits and squirrels the boys brought home. Mother stopped singing while she cooked. The children no longer argued over their daily chores. As autumn approached they huddled around my flames silently, frightened eyes focused inward. The first snow arrived early, trapping us all in its depths. The meals cooked in my ashes were thin soups and corn bread.
That spring, Mother loaded what furniture they could fit onto the cart, and they trudged off. The house rattled and whined in its loneliness. A few hunters came to stay for a night or two from time to time. They brought wood and lit small fires within me, just enough to last the night and warm coffee and porridge in the morning. Years passed and we became accustomed to the quiet of the woods around us, and the visits of small animals who nested in my corners and within my chimney. As the roof began to crumble, little trees popped up through the floorboards.
Then, one summer, years after the family had gone, lightning from a summer storm struck a nearby evergreen, which came crashing down on the house. The old rotted wood caught fire. I watched helplessly as my house erupted in flame, then gracefully collapsed into a bed of smoking ash.
I don’t know how many years I have stood here, a solitary monument. The sun bakes my stones and mortar, the rain washes me, and I remain, the last survivor.

Linda M. Rhinehart Neas
“Best Friends Forever”
Photo enhanced with Faststone
Response

Friend
By Heitzi Epstein
Inspiration piece

Two in the morning you and I would email “Go to bed!”
Tonight three o’clock finds me aimless, waiting for your reminder.

We were to grow old together
Each other’s ace in the hole.
If our spouses should leave or die
The two of us would remain, each for the other –
Live together in the cottage on the Cape,
Raise foster children,
Bake whole grain bread.

I stand here alone
Giving your eulogy.

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Linda M. Rhinehart Neas
Spring
Photo taken with Galaxy 5s, enhanced with GIMP
Inspiration piece

A Cabin in the Woods
By Urmilla Khanna
Response

I am an A-frame cabin situated in the woods, in Blue Mountain, Linden, Virginia. I came into existence in 1976. Initially when I met my custodians, Dr. Jacob and his wife Zarina, they appeared to be good people. Zarina drove up from McLean, Virginia everyday to overlook the work being done by Eddie, the construction man. She stood beside him when he placed his compass to set my location. A couple degrees this way or that would not do for her. She upgraded every part of me as I continued to grow and take shape. From the outside I am a little cottage in the woods; but inside I am voluminous. I am fitted with a full sized range, a refrigerator, a dish-washer and a wood burning stove that was shipped to my address from Maine. I loved being pampered. None of the other cottages that were birthing in my neighborhood were getting this kind of special treatment. They all looked at me with envy. I could tell from the way the trees around them did not smile, swerve or dance. The trees on my property were tall, straight, lush-green and very happy.

As soon as I was born, I was furnished and decorated with tender care. I loved those days of my infancy and toddlerhood. Zarina brought in furniture, matched the colors, hung pictures on the walls and invited her friends over to admire her workmanship. Then one day Dr. Jacob was standing on the deck with vodka in his hand. He was shouting so loud that the trees began to quiver. Zarina was also snapping back. I pretended to be a snail and tried to shut down so I would not hear their banter. But it was hopeless. That night they slept in separate beds and I knew it was all over between the two of them.

Next time Dr. Jacob came to Blue Mountain, Zarina was not with him. There was another woman named Sandy. He told Sandy that she was his only love. She was, after all, his soul mate. But things did not go well for the two of them in the Blue Mountain. They may have been in love but they certainly did not like me. She said she heard Zarina’s voice coming from the bowels of my stomach. She has a gun, she told Dr. Jacob. She pleaded with him that they must leave right now. Come on, I thought. We are somber, peace loving folks in the country. We don’t fight with each other. We don’t carry guns. Look around— the trees, the bugs, the snakes, the birds, the crickets, the trillium and the daffodils— we all live in harmony. This is Blue Mountain, not McLean, Virginia or Washington D.C. People come here to discover the language of the trees. They whisper softly. You’ve just got to stop fighting so you can hear that rustling melody.

They did not listen to me. They continued to fight and brought their battles to the bedroom. Now they were throwing things at each other and it hurt. I could not tell them how badly I was hurting. I did not have a voice, but I certainly had feelings. If they wanted to understand me they had to quiet down and hear the unsaid and feel the unfelt. I begged them to sober down. They did not listen. They came back out and he was pounding so hard that it made the whole deck tremble. She was screaming too. In the middle of the night when all the trees had gone to sleep and the crickets had slowed down their chirps, the car in the driveway spewed dust and sped away. They left, never to return and I was glad.

I stood quiet and regrettably lonesome for many months and years. I felt neglected. Then in 1989, I heard new voices on the deck, the voices of Urmilla and Kris. I liked Urmilla immediately. She spoke softly and admired me greatly. She gave me a good clean up. All the belongings that were left behind by Dr. Jacob and Zarina and Sandy were pitched and I felt refreshed and clean as if I had just had a bath. You should see my foundation. Isn’t that what holds up everything? She painted it in a shade of yellow, a sort of Thai-curry-yellow, not turmeric, not lemon, just a sunshine-yellow with a hint of brown. It made me stately and handsome all over again.

One evening she stood on the deck with Eddie, the construction man and asked if there was any way he could provide her a view. She could see the crimson sky faintly beyond the lush green oaks. Sure, he said. I can bring down six or ten of them trees. It will make a narrow path and you will see not just the setting sun but the valley below.

The trees in Blue Mountain are so tall that for a few minutes at dawn and dusk when the light is just right, they appear as if they were touching the sky.

But that will be very painful; it will hurt, she told Eddie.

He smiled.

The oaks and maples swayed gently, thankful for escaping their ill fate.

Soon, I became a respite for Urmilla and Kris; an escape from their busy lives in Washington D.C. They spent a lot of time on the deck. They did not talk. She reclined on the chase and listened to the birds. Bird-chirps are also different at dawn and dusk, you know. In the morning their cries are energetic and melodious. In the evening it is a hotchpotch cacophony as they flutter their wings and try to settle down for the night.

Urmilla and Kris loved to have their tea on the deck. She read her journals, sipping and savoring the freshly brewed tea. Kris on the other hand drank his quickly and went off into the woods. He cut and split the big logs and collected bundles of sticks for kindling. She loved the smell of oak and hickory that emanated from the cast-iron stove.

I have seen many pleasant days with my new masters. From time to time, they have brought bunches of family and friends from the city. Some have come to party, others to sit in a circle and discuss books and yet others to just chill out and enjoy the peaceful green. Urmilla has sat many long hours in the loft looking out the glass front of my A-frame and dreaming. Then I see her thumping on her laptop hoping to record a few words of creativity. You inspire me, she says to me once in a while. I do, I am not bashful to admit.

At times she has performed match-making duties right here on my deck. Young people have fallen in love and later married. I like providing that kind of service. Those are the subtle functions of my life—to make people happy. I have witnessed pajama parties when girls sang songs in Hindi and in English. I have seen some of them sit in meditation and others perform Tai-chi in the early morning sun. All of this is encrypted in me and can be retrieved if you just allow yourself a few peaceful moments in the Mountain.

It is midnight. Today, Urmilla is here alone. She pulls up the chase and makes herself comfortable with cushions and covers. She muses about the bygones. Her husband has passed almost twelve years ago and life has changed. She thinks it is time to move on. She watches the twinkling stars in the dusky sky; she listens to the last chirping of the crickets. It’s time she decides. It’s time to say good-bye to the little cabin in the woods. She turns to look at the tall trees for one last time. They sway in the gentle breeze exactly as they did the first time she stood on the deck and admired their stately beauty some twenty years ago.

Next morning she hands the keys over to the realtor.

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Tribute to My Teachers
By Urmilla Khanna
Inspiration piece

My teacher Joanne has treated me to a great celebratory lunch at an Italian restaurant in Fairfax. My class of 2014 is over. In this class—which we had dubbed as the Master’s Class—five of us met with Joanne once a month, and, under her guidance, critiqued each other’s full length manuscripts. I learned a lot. Now, entering into 2015, I feel alone. There is no one to critique my writing, no one to nudge me to write and no one to give me directionality. I am without a guru, without a teacher.

I ask Joanne if she will take me on as a student in a future class. I wish to write another long manuscript, another book.

“You are now an author, a writer. You can do it on your own,” she replies.

She means well. She is trying to instill confidence into my ever fickle fingers, sever that delicate umbilical cord. I however feel like a chick whose mother has deserted her. I need to muster courage to leave the comforts of my nest, find food, combat predators.

I try to answer the fundamental question: Who is a guru, a teacher. And as I try to untangle that dilemma, I pay tribute to Joanne and to some of the teachers of my past.

Once, my husband Kris and I took a trip to visit his family in Amritsar, India. When we got off the rickshaw, my father-in-law was sitting on the front porch, relaxed and comfortable in his well-worn brown leather chair. A man dressed in a white dhoti, cotton shirt and a turban sat on the floor next to him. His face was rid with wrinkles. He was smoking a bidhi. He was Kris’s teacher from grade school.

Kris got off the rickshaw hastily and proceeded to greet his guru-ji with a namaste, and touched his feet. “What a pleasant surprise,” he whispered in my ear, introducing the old man to me. Out of respect, I did the same. I bowed to him, said namaste and graciously touched his feet. He blessed Kris for his becoming an accomplished scientist in America and marrying an educated girl.

This humble man sitting on the floor next to my father-in-law could have been my guru-ji in the village, Durg. I was three years old when I was introduced to my first guru-ji. He had had an education up to fourth grade and was therefore a qualified teacher. As I sat under the shade of a peepal tree, he taught me my alphabets and multiplication tables—the stepping stones to my education.

Later when I went to an English school, St. Joseph’s Convent, I met Sister Rose. She was round faced, slim, a little dark complexioned and really human. When the bell rang at 3:30 to announce the end of the day’s classes, I accompanied her as she walked out of the classroom and down the long corridor. I felt a sense of calm just walking beside her and playing with the soft black tassels that hung from the cords around her waist. We did not talk during these walks. When we reached the end of the corridor, she turned the corner and took the stairs to her living quarters. I was sad at the thought that I would not get to see her until the next day. I said good-bye to her as if I was bidding farewell to a beloved boyfriend. I had not had any encounter with boys and knew nothing about that kind of love at the time. But it just felt that way. I let my thoughts wander as I walked away silently and proceeded to the massive iron gates of the school where I waited for my bus. I imagined her changing into something else and going for supper and wondered what that something else might be. I wondered what kind of a bed she had, what night clothes she wore and what might be the décor inside her room.

When I was thirteen, I got sick with typhoid. When the fever did not subside for ten days, my mother began to give up hope. She thought I was going to die. As a last resort she admitted me into the local government hospital. She had found out about the availability of the magical drug penicillin. They were giving crystalline penicillin injections as an experimental treatment for almost all serious infections.

Half life of crystalline penicillin is three hours and procaine penicillin which is much less painful and has a much longer half life was still in the making. I learnt later in my medical studies that the bacteria that cause typhoid are not susceptible to penicillin. For the want of other alternatives, I was subjected to these injections every three hours. I was to get them for ten days which added up to eighty injections.

The excruciating sting in my butt lasted exactly one and half hours after the injection. I let my tears soak my pillow in order to numb the pain. Then I cried one and a half hours in anticipation of the pain that the next injection would bring. I cried in my sleep and had dried salty powder around my eyes when the nurse woke me up to give me my shot.

The news of my hospitalization reached my school. Sister Rose came to visit me. Generally the nuns were not allowed to leave the convent. This must have been an exception. Perhaps Mother Superior had a calling to send me The Word so I could go to Jesus when I died. Or was it Sister Rose’s love for me? I will never know.

My bed was situated in the veranda on the second floor—Mother chose that location because it was open and airy. There was a constant warm breeze that brought the smell of pakorras and samosas being fried in the stalls below along with the melodious chants of their vendors. A bed in the dark and dingy ward was not appealing to Mother. I would be sandwiched between the twenty or twenty-four beds arranged in rows dormitory style and would breathe the stagnant infected air. I counted my blessings.

When Sister Rose arrived she greeted me by taking my hand in hers. Her touch was reassuring. As she released her grip I found that she had placed a tiny little medallion in my hand. “Have faith,” she whispered. She stroked my arm and talked about the classes I was missing. She did not ask me to pray with her. When she left I caressed the little oval medallion and placed it under my pillow. It made my pain bearable. I had to get well so I could go back to school and be with Sister Rose again.

Looking at it from the eyes of my 13 year old self, I knew even then that the little aluminum oval was not going to convert me to Christianity. In fact I did not think seriously about religion in those days. I was a Hindu at home and a Christian at school, and that was that. I liked it then because it was given to me by Sister Rose. Today it is a tribute to my teachers.

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Yin and Yang

(Photo – Nikon Coolpix 4300
and photo enhanced with Gimp)

Robert James McCoog – Inspiration

Untitled

He fell. As he fell he thought. He thought how that was a paradox. He thought how his life was a paradox.

He remembered seeing her in class and asking her out on a date. She was gorgeous and he wasn’t. He figured it couldn’t hurt. He was almost shocked when she said yes. They made plans for going out for coffee the next night.

“Flowers,” he thought as his body sped to the ground and his nose caught the smell of a nearby garden.

They had met at a local bistro downtown. They spent most of the night filling the awkwardness with the fear inspired chat that so often accompanies first dates. However, they seemed to have hit it off quite well as the next thing he knew, he was being invited back to her place for drinks.

“Laughter,” he thought as he heard the sounds of a nearby outdoor bar.
They sat and talked for a while. He told her about the last break up that he had with his psychotic ex-girlfriend. She told him of the last time she broke up with her boyfriend and how it was horrible. He had left her with a five month old child that she eventually had to give up for adoption. He thought about his own mother that he never knew.

Didn’t she have raven hair like hers? Didn’t her laugh sound exactly like hers? He knew this was his chance. He was her son. She was his mother.

She excused herself as she went to slip into something ‘more comfortable’.

“Steel,” he thought as his head connected with the trunk of a passing car.

He decided that this was his chance. Fate had brought him to his mother’s waiting arms. She lay in bed dressed in a negligee. She called him close to him. Like a dutiful son, he crawled into bed next to her. She undid the straps on her clothes as he undid the safety on the gun he carried with him.

BANG.

Unfortunately, he was not her son as that would have been a coincidence and the universe abhors such a thing. However, her son was in the trunk of the car his head had connected with at impact. The police report later would report that the son was killed due to a drug deal gone wrong.

Somewhere in the world a panda bear laughed.

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Sun and Water

Linda M. Rhinehart Neas  – Response

In the Beginning

 Out of darkness

Came light

Out of light

Came life

Heat rising

Droplets forming

Thunder lightning

Pools gathering

Streams flowing

Into rivers

Into oceans

Life forming

Squirming, swimming

Crawling, climbing

Walking, talking

Out of darkness

Came light

Out of Light

Came life

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Irene Plax – Inspiration

He found it difficult to be in the same place with all those relatives, but he knew it would be rude to retire to the other room.

He saw a broom propped against the wall. He began sweeping, as if asking people to step out of the way was his only means of interacting with them.

He reckoned blood was about all they had in common, and he swept their crumbs under the rug as only a family member could.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Liz Mathews
iPad Art Rage Experiment
Inspiration piece

Wild Horses
By Linda M. Rhinehart Neas
Response

Across the terracotta sands
they flash —
part wind, part dream.
Black manes and tails
etching the buttes
with whinnies
like the screech
of eagles in flight,
hooves beating out the rhythm
of a life once known –
now, gone –
lost to iron horses –
and time…

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Linda M. Rhinehart Neas
Super Nova
(Nikon Coolpix 4300 photo enhanced with GIMP)
Response

The Universe Within Us
By Ana Goncalves
Inspiration piece

Within you I stand,
And within,
You stand before me.
We are a mirror of the same thread,
And we live within each other.
Welcoming love,
That guides us into the world
Of Universal wisdom.

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Lisa Pimental
“Soft Sea”
Acrylic and netting on canvas
Response

Finale
By Linda M. Rhinehart Neas
Inspiration piece

The roll of waves over the rocks created the sound of applause. The silent figure stood like a lone actor, slighting bending in acknowledgement to the unseen audience.

“Life’s a stage,” the Bard wrote. The actor here seemed aware that this was the ultimate evidence of the statement.

The great swan song would be given for sea and sun.

Slowly slipping off each shoe, and then deliberately placing them together above the tide line, the actor stepped into the finale.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.