Acne brought them together. Their greasy snow-capped flesh mountains glistened under the flourencent public-school lights. Their embarrasment melted away into relieved jokes of cottage cheese and volcanoes.

One would say they looked like the unlikely combination of a slug and a rhinoceros, if two such animals existed.  One would also have reason to think them dumb grumps.  This is a common misconception.  Mords are, in actuality, just about the smartest, friendliest, most chivalrous large-herd-animals you are likely to meet.  They are just terribly slow, which sometimes comes off the wrong way.

For example, if you were to inquire of a Mord concerning his position on, say, affirmative action, you would probably be met with an eyebrowless glare (judging glares without brows is tricky business).  But what you would likely not know is that roughly two and a half weeks later, said Mord would utter a brilliant dissertation on the subject, with no one present to hear.

It is said that Prince Gesundheit got his name when King Fatpan and Queen Leafnut, unable to come up with a mutually satisfactory moniker, vowed to go with the very next suggestion they heard.  How were they to know that the Mord whom they asked was not answering their query, but responding to his nephew’s sneeze from three weeks prior?

A fortnight after the Prince’s christening the same Mord, when asked about his stance on global warming, was heard saying “Mortimor Von Belt-Whip!”

Meow Meow (Remake of the Austin Parker Classic)

Meow Meow is the coolest guy in Maritime High School. At the lunch table, no one but Garry seems to notice that he is a sock-puppet cat on the hand of Marcus. While everyone else hangs on Meow Meow’s every word, Garry (along with the audience) only hears a series of “meows” that obviously are coming from Marcus’ mouth.

OTV

The Rising Cost of Oil is the top story on every major news station as Hank flips through the channels. The media’s obsession with oil gets more and more ridiculous as a bewildered and frustrated Hank stumbles across a weather report predicting “oil storms,” a cooking show presenting recipes featuring crude-oil as an ingredient, a news feature about a group of kids who start a business which started as an “oil stand” (like a lemonade stand), a soap opera in which Dame swoons over a container of oil, and other such nonsense.

Facetious?

Brandon is known for being a tease and faning offense at the smallest criticism, usually to comic effect. But when boss Ned and he get in a fight that starts out playfully but gets out of hand, both have to decide whether they were serious or kidding and how to best resolve the trivial episode without damaging the other’s pride.

Three Thirty

Mom Cheryl (39) is up at 3:30 AM making pancakes before she hops on a bus to the hospital where she is a Physician’s Assistant. Daughter Jane (19) is home at 3:30 AM from hanging out with friends and is getting ready for bed. Mom and Daughter seize the opportunity to share a meal at this odd hour. They reminisce about years passed when they were best friends (recalling how they used to call pancakes “Flap-Janes”) and briefly bemoan their diverging lifestyles which afford them fewer and fewer encounters.

Pick-Up

The director of a kids camp (Derek) sits on a bench to wait with a misbehaving child (Ben) for the parent to come pick him up early. Derek delicately attempts to lighten the mood by playing a game in which Ben has to lift up his shirt – giving him an opportunity to look for bruises from a parent in question. No bruises. As they continue waiting, mostly in silence, Derek ponders on who’s to blame for Ben’s situation and feels helpless to find out. A stressed-out father shows up, a feat of great difficulty in the middle of his busy day in the office, and seems to be genuinely pleasant.

The slope of the earth was reminiscent of a large green glacier. It came down from Northwest Peak like a rumbling tear drop. Beyond The Edge there was nothing – how could there be, it was The Edge?

Only three colors existed in this peculiar realm; The Birds were red, The Trees were green, and The Mords were gray. Every once-in-while, a precocious pelican, or perhaps a keen kiwi would take a break from his red apple with a green worm inside and imagine how wonderful it would be to eat a different colored worm.

“Whaddaya mean ‘different color’?!” a pessimistic pigeon would inevitably say with a thick Brooklyn accent (as pessimistic pigeons do).

“Well, it would look kinda like… You know when you sit on a Mord’s back and you get so comfortable you fall asleep and then you wake up and realize you could’ve been killed and start to panic but then see that the Mord’s asleep and everything’s okay… you know that feeling? It kinda looks like that.”

But shortly after the words “it would look kinda like dot dot dot” all but a few patient penguins would return to the business of exhuming green worms from red apples. And let’s face it, the penguins’ puny brains couldn’t keep up with such a run-on sentence.

What a ticklish notion to think the first time they would actually glimpse this indescribable color, it would be the last thing they ever saw.  And hot – O, so hot!  But that won’t be for a while…

The morning was dark, the early sun fighting against a thick canvas of clouds. Slowly the stars blinked off and nodded into the hazy gray, ushering in the dawn.
The mother had been awake for hours, tending to the hearth as she plaited her hair up in a tight braid. She glanced at her daughter still sprawled snugly beneath the blankets. She always slept wildly, arms and legs bent in rigid forms. The mother could only wonder at what kinds of invisible demons her daughter was fighting.
She left the hearth, sat lightly on the bed’s edge.
“Sigridur, my star”
Eyelashes fluttered with a quiet moan.
The mother reached out, trying to ease her gently from sleep. Her hand cradled cheekbone. “The boat leaves early”
Sigridur stirred, lifted her head, “you go to sea mother?”
“Today, we will both go.”
Sigridur blinked in surprise, peering through her tangled hair. “To sea?”
“Yes.” Her mother nodded and held out her arms. Sigridur climbed into them.
“Now, let us do something about this hair.”
She pulled the golden strands away from her daughter’s face.
“Shall I plait it like my own?”

“How shall I know that I am home?” asked Sigridur

Her face was tilted in the lamplight—partly obscured in the shadows like a flickering half-moon. She sat in a nest of soft blankets, bunched and tangled about her feet. Her eyes were wide and questioning, her hair in a knotted halo around her face. With her tattered nightdress her mother thought she looked rather like a poor starved bird.

“You’ll know,” her mother assured, “home is something you can feel.”

She reached out for the lamp, ready to shut it.

Sigridur scrambled from her perch atop the thin blankets and pulled them over herself.

“Mother,” she called, “let your hair down.”

Her mother moved softly, her head tilting forward just slightly as one hand reached for the knotted bun at the base of her neck. Her sheet of long golden hair tumbled down.

“Goodnight my star”

She shut the lamp, and climbed into the bed beside her daughter.

“Mother, what if I can’t find it?” asked the girl. The night was dark tinted with her fear.

The mother turned to her, and stroked her pallid cheek.

Sigridur grabbed for a handful of that soft hair and pressed it to her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in its gentle scent.

“I already told you my love. It is not something you can find, it is something you must feel.”

Inspired by actual events:

——

In a tangle of sweat, blankets, heat, she struggled to lull herself into a quiet sleep. She kept her limbs still, unmoving. She slowed her breathing, and tried to focus on the steady rhythmic pumping of her lungs. Inhaling, exhaling. In and out.

But her mind was wild, suspended madly between worlds. She hovered on the brink of consciousness. As she drifted through these shadowy midlands she struggled to calm her senses–to let the comforting darkness of sleep wash over her.

But she was unable. Waking dreams, unpleasant incarnations of faded television stars and crusty characters from dime novels. She counted them off as they materialized before her. Suddenly she was no longer sleeping for just one, she was sleeping for seven. Seven frantic minds to calm before she could ever rest. They smirked at her, snickered and stared. “You will never sleep,” they mocked, “you are stuck here forever.”

Despite the affectionate nickname that had been bestowed upon her, Zaan didn’t feel like a “Young Bride.” Apart from her age and the fact that she was shortly to be wed, Zaan didn’t feel like anything that resembled young or bride-like.

Militi, Zaan’s future sister-in-law and favorite member of the tribe, was put in charge of the ears. It was very important the ears be decorated exactly right, lest the union-to-be prove unfruitful. The trick was not to be too extravagant nor too plain. Militi, as expected, did a splendid job; deftly ordering around Mela and Farci who were to be Zaan’s step children. They crushed the blood-colored cherry stone with their feet and mixed it with water for paint. Yellow was not a hard color to come by but it took a good four moons of preparation to save up enough bug berries to yield that perfect night-blue.

The pattern was Zaan’s idea; the wings of a magical creature she had seen once as a young calf in a far away land. It was extremely brave considering its ridiculously small size; landing right on the tip of her trunk without so much as a buzz or a chirp. Zaan’s eyes were small enough then to focus on its delicate body, an event that for some reason struck her as a privilege. Her adult-eyes, now a good half-a-tusk farther apart, meant that her point of focus was now too far away to allow her reentry into this miniature world. Adulthood marked not only an anatomical transformation, but a shift into another dimension where only normal-sized things matter.

The ceremony was simple and beautiful. Trunks sprayed arches of water that framed the newly weds. Zaan blinked her dotted ears at the men who were probably making crude remarks about their size. They had no idea what they were looking at.

So Friday I had exactly 0 minutes and 0 seconds to write and then I was stranded in Provolone over the weekend so I haven’t had a chance to post. But I feel bad that I keep missing so here’s my really late post.

Would they remember? How could they? It was almost 15 years ago that the Dust Bomb Club adjourned their first and last meeting. How had it stuck in his nine-and-a-half-year-old mind so well? In fifteen minutes and 47 seconds it would be exactly fifteen years since that muggy summer day when the four of them hopped the fence out of embassy housing and into their chirping wood.

That summer was spent leisurely making “dust bombs” to combat an enemy that never materialized but whom it seemed it was imperative to destroy. Or at least make really dirty.  Dirt/sweat mud filled the creases of their hands.

They each knew their mutual affection would be short-lived; a fact of life for military kids.  And so they made a pact, a solemn vow that would ensure their eventual reunion.

Now a grown man, Crislen sat in his $200 dress pants on the same dirt mound that was the cause of so many spankings. So many scoldings for getting his Osh Kosh BaGosh dirty.

As the fifteen year mark came and went, Crislen realized the real reason he heeded this childhood summon. He knew all along none of the others would show up. But now he knew what they were fighting.

So I’ve been thinking about these characters lately and I think I can feel a story developing somewhere.

Marko is a retired professor of philosophy.  He moved from the Ukraine almost 40 years ago but still has a strong accent.  Unlike most Ukrainians, he is warm and jolly.  He is very accomplished in his field but is quite humble – always willing to learn from those around him.  Judith his wife of 38 years, an American he met while getting his PhD at Berkley, recently died of cancer.  She was a simple woman who didn’t understand most of the thoughts that constituted her husband’s livelihood.  The role she gladly accepted was one of support – dealing effortlessly with the trivialities of life whilst Marko wrestled with the ”big questions.”  After her passing, Marko was left unprepaired to face the insurance and the payment plans and other aspects of adult life he had been postponing for the passed several decades.  And so, he decided to go back to school and take those GE credits he never got around to (Berkley really doesn’t care about that when you’re published at age 20) along with his two kids Daniel and Liz.  The other students in his Math 1030 class never would have guessed the extent of his scholarly claut by the way he freely admitted when completely lost in the most simple of linear equations. 

A natural flirt, after the sting of his wife’s death wore off he fired his guilt and could be seen in various stages of wooing with all his female professors, married or not, although always with the most gentlemanly of intentions.  He began to give his company freely to a blind and brilliant professor of Literature named Edith, whom he suspected of being in love with him starting several years prior to his wife’s death.  Although a man of complete physical fidelity, Marko on occassion admitted during his marriage what now seemed like an elephant in every room they shared: that they (Edith and he) seemed perfect for one another.  “How unfortunate,” faculty members would often say in the absence of parties involved, “they didn’t meet before Marko married Judith.”

But after giving love a formidable second chance, Marko was forced to break Edith’s heart when he realized two things:  1)  He liked Edith’s seeing-eye dog more than her (“Marko, be honest – are you using me for my dog?”  “Yes.”) and 2)  He loved his wife more than he would have ever suspected while she was alive.  Her simple sweetness was a kind of brilliance few women possess in academia.

He retires from flirting and surrounds himself with dogs as his life fades into the memory of his unlikely soul mate.

more on Liz and Daniel later…