"The Big-E"

New England States Exposition

This, my latest assignment has a point, if perhaps a slightly vague and accidental one. After four years of semi-bumming around (in between frantic bursts of  “productive” activity) doing stories or taking pictures of the most random things I could find, I realized that this simple curiosity was taking the form of something deeper and more personal. I wanted to study culture in some depth as I write, and to understand what makes any place I may be in tick. I wanted to eat the food, meet the people, do what they do for fun, listen to the same music, and go to the same parties.

 Basically, I wanted to pick up my camera and my laptop and document the ways different people around the world choose to live. When my latest trip to Central America got cut short I was upset I would not get to continue this research (if one can call having a good time research) , but soon realized that being in America did not mean that I was deprived of cultural activities I could report on. It was Britt who suggested that I should capture a huge slice of New England culture in one go and contact the Big-E to obtain a press pass with the aim of documenting the event. I agreed readily, and it was only when I finally received the necessary O.K that I realized I had NO idea what the Big-E actually was…

Meredith, Brit, and Christen  

I was slightly worried a few days later as I sat in the car next to Britt, with our friends Kristen and Meredith in the back. We were stuck in a line of traffic that stretched along the duel-carriage way passed the town of Springfield and massive road-side billboards showing men on undetermined ethnicity trying to sell carpets and life-insurance in such a sleazy manner that I decided they had to have been stolen from the 70’s. At this point, as our little road trip ground to seemingly decisive a halt as that of Hitler’s in Russia I still didn’t really know what the hell I was doing. The Big-E, defined by their rather precise website as “…” was a virtual mystery to me. Britt had told me that I could get maple-sugar sweets inside, and that was almost all. My friend Amanda had made me promise on fear of death to hunt down clam chowder and baked potatoes, and my teammate Murph had suggested that I’d have more fun if I went drunk. 

            With the advice people had given me still fresh in my mind we finished inching down the highway and after a chaotic, Bangkok-like adventure around swerving Mass-Hole (the name given to describe the peculiar set of behavioural instincts that make Massachusetts drivers attempt ritual suicide and the utter destruction of everything around them every five minutes as they swerve into oncoming traffic or shoot gaily past red lights) we arrived in the press car park and entered the Big E. 

Billboards on the Way There

I was lucky enough to be able to obtain a quick interview with Rita Moore, Information Manager, Educational Coordinator, Food Contest and all around Matriarch of the event. She kindly explained that in essence, the Big-E, or Eastern States Exposition, is a time for every state in New England to celebrate their individual customs, traditions and culture over two and a half weeks. Every state owns property at the event, and many different groups and societies are showcased. Rita was an amazing source on all things Big-E, as she has worked there for an incredible fourty-three years, since 1965, during which time the event has changed amazingly. During the 60’s before the rise of the internet, journalists flocked to the festival, and there was a special press room set aside for them, where they would all sit working on type-writers. Now, times have changed and most papers get their pictures and press releases direct from the Big-E without the reporters being there at all. Another development has been that in this age of suburban living and instant entertainment many “youngsters now have no clue what the farm animals are like, or what their uses are, or their value” and she seems to feel that the entertainment value of the show is second to a deeper, educational aspect.

Rita Moore

Talking to Rita, I was impressed by the pride she felt working for the “expo” for seventeen “fulfilled days” a year.” A tribute to the amount of time she has worked there is a quick antidote she was kind enough to share with me: “A young man came up one day, and he had his son with him, and he said [to his son’] ‘I just want you to see this lady, my mother and father used to bring me here when I was your age and she’s still here.”

 Outside one of the States Buildings

Once inside the festival I was overwhelmed by a thick mass of people that trudged slowly round a giant circle of shops, an experience probably akin to being thrown into the manic hubbub around Mecca. I shielded my camera as best as possible and pushed through. Everywhere there were food shops selling anything from fried dough to gourds, pulled pork to lobster sandwiches. Normally I am a snob where culinary America is concerned and shun many of the cultural cornerstones of U.S food much to my girlfriends annoyance (meatloaf, cheesy fries, fluff etc.) but I will say one thing. Americans DO festival food.

Food and produce

 While in the U.K we still find it acceptable to attend an event and, when lunchtime comes, stand in a barely moving queue for two hours in the poring rain only to be given a burger patty the consistency of cardboard. In the U.S this would not be considered acceptable and so when I went to eat I confess that I stood stock still for ten minutes looking at about twenty different stalls, trying to make up my mind between clam chowder, pulled pork, baked potatoes, Mexican food, fried dough, various different roasting meats and who knows that else. In the end Britt was forced to lead me firmly by the hand like a nurse escorting a mental patient and shove a huge greasy pulled pork sandwich into my grasp. 

One of the things that seemed to be renowned was the state exposition areas, basically large houses individually owned by the individual New England State in question, (that would be New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut for any Brits reading this) and guarded by their own state police, sort of like mini embassies. They sold whatever it was that the state was famous for, and I was amused to see (but not brave enough to photograph) the fact that Vermont had a whole section devoted to flannel lumberjack clothes.

Guarding the Mass. State Building

Later, I explored further afield among towering, gaudily painted carnival floats that looked like gods from some strange, 80’s bad-taste cult. 

Slightly Random Carnival Floats

I saw people with small children waiting in long lines outside of really grubby trailers advertising such amazing entertainment as “PORKY, THE GIANT PIG” for a dollar. Some inner twelve-year old within me was interested, so I used my accent to slip past the very nice little gypsy-like lady but was not very impressed when I stood in front of a heavy metal screen through which I could just glimpse what seemed to be a slightly fat pig, asleep. I’d hoped for some sort of Pigzilla, looking at me through bars with evil intent in its red eyes before being tranquilizer darted and cattle prodded several times, and if I hadn’t blagged my way in I would have been upset.

Porky, the Worlds Most Disappointing Pig

Animals seemed to be a prominent theme at the exposition and I was particularly impressed by some of the more legitimate areas in the fair. There were beautifully looked after Clydesdale horses that made me nostalgic of home, confused looking emu’s and one of the only, slightly worrying things I found was an unconscious kangaroo that I think must have been drugged. There were Lemurs, Elephants, bears and a “giant” snake that would have been a let down had I been conned into seeing it. Below are some pictures of the best:

Animals at the Big-E

A very posh looking camel

Brit, Lama Hunting

Evil looking Lemur 

Hundreds of Evil Looking Lemurs 

 LAMA!

There were also a group of five magnificent sea lions and I was lucky enough to grab a quick interview with their head trainer, Jessica Zimmer, about what its like going to the Big-E with animals, and why it’s so important. The article posted below was for consideration in the school paper:

As fall approaches the East Coast, many New Englanders flock to the Big-E, the largest fair in new England, where among the carnival rides, variety stalls and many eateries they may find themselves looking at what appears to be a large swimming-pool tank full of seals.

On closer inspection the graceful and rather dog-like Spark, Zoey, Kim and Alicia are actually sea lions, an entirely different breed though they look similar, with thin fur, long sleek otter-like heads, and long thick whiskers over a mouth filled with sharp teeth. They are gentle, rising out of the water to look around inquisitively before diving down again, keen people-watchers who will avoid anyone with strange coloured hair or heavy piercing. Casually a young woman appears and stands by the tank, looking down. Instantly two inquisitive heads shoot up from the tangy saltwater, one nestling in the woman’s hair, the other resting on top of her head. She laughs, and smiles for the camera.

            The woman playing with the two sea lions, Trainer Jessica Zimmer has been working with the animals for more than two years. She says that her primary aim is to teach sea lion awareness and conservation to people “who have never seen a sea lion” and remarks that in some areas, “you’ll actually get people who will call them dolphins.” They have come to perform at the Big-E, a crowded festival full of rides, stalls and exhibits with an attendance rate of roughly 150,000 a day.

The four sealions with Jessica are just some of the animals owned and looked after by Squalus, a private company out of South Florida set up to provide beached Sealions with a new home. In return, the animals perform tricks and stunts for large crowds and take part in demonstrations, which teach Sea lion awareness. With the current issues America has with conservation, education is a key issue, and Jessica’s role in teaching recycling and conservation “is not just for the animals” but for people as well. She finds that often times the best way to reach parents is through their kids. As the Big-E runs through its 17 days, the sea lions will perform in front of thousands of people. Though most who attend the fair are there for the other, grander entertainments such as the roller-coasters and huge amounts of shops there is a good chance that many people will still find time to visit the sea lions, and maybe learn something in the process.

Finally , overwhelmed by the hubbub of the Big-E, we pushed our way to the exit, just as the feature parade was getting started. Lines of bag pipers (Britt was not very impressed, having been Scottish’d out the previous weekend by the Highland Games), crowds of people with trumpets and cars full of veterans inched their way past as we made it to the car and fought our way back to the main road. 

The March Past/Parade

Below are a few pictures that didn't seem to fit anywhere else and which illustrate a little bit of the Eastern States Exposition. 

Further Photos 

Editor’s Letter

10th Oct. 2009

 I have never been pretentious enough to write a Editor’s Letter before but as I’m in the midst of changing the direction of the blog for a few months at least, it’s probably necessary. I’ve recently decided to start writing a series of planned features on modern culture in America. I want to capture the good, the bad, and the utterly bizarre that make this country into the virtual paella it has become, and experience it as I go. I want to meet the citizens of New Orleans as they struggle every day to rebuild the houses destroyed literally years ago and the volunteers that work tirelessly to help the entire country’s poor and hungry. I want to be chased down streets by the KKK, Black Panthers, Scientologists and even Amish. I want to be on the first American tank into a foreign land, and beside the first man or woman who shoulders a sign and marches in response to that tank. In short, I want to know what it feels like to be American, whatever that may mean and to dispel or clarify some of the very clear stereotypes much of the world seem to have about the U.S of A.

As those who have lived/visited the U.S should know, Americans are a people who seem to wilfully play of their stereotypes, for better or for worse. Often, unfortunately it seems that this tendency is negative and I find myself almost constantly amazed by such sights as shops that sell copious amounts of flannel shirts and Miller Highlife baseball caps or people that really do seem to eat fast food for every meal and wilfully defend the idea that this practice is sensible. After seeing confederate flags daubed onto the cabs of rusty pick-up trucks, and condemned-looking inner city slums that looked like they were straight out of televisions The Wire, I found that I was in desperate need of something positive that would even the scales and remind me more of the America I have grown to love rather than the one I find myself often times loathing. The election of President Obama helped greatly with this and I could see the point in Michelle Obama’s controversial remark about being proud to be an American for the first time.

            Still, the new president aside, I needed something American that I could latch onto culturally. I needed to be appeased, to have an experience in the U.S that was vivid and happy enough that I would keep my American Passport in full view when buying beers, and even join in singing the Star Spangled Banner whilst wearing a Redsox baseball cap if ever that was required. I needed to be Positively Americanized. To accomplish this I took the opportunity of a few hours in the day where I was bored and unoccupied, and trawled the Internet looking for interesting opportunities that I could document.

With the above in mind, most of the articles that you will find on the Blog in the near future will focus on general United States awesomeness, from an experience bat-hunting in the woods, to time spent watching the New Hampshire Highland Games, and the Big-E festival. Hopefully they will be joined by an interview with the owner of the world’s most powerful trebuchet, an experience at the largest display of lit-pumpkins, several sports events and more. There will be an occasional more negative entry on law enforcement, poverty or the drug trade to give some sense of comparison, and my only hope is that you the reader will find both sides interesting, informative and entertaining to read.

Thanks, Tom

The New Hampshire Highland Games, 2009 

Loon Mountain, N.H, U.S.A

            The rattle of snares, deep pulse of bass and the unmistakable throaty bellow of the pipes. The thud of hundreds of shoes upon the pavement, echoing against the stillness of anything else as a mass of marching figures step forth, their kilts swishing gaily in the wind as they come. The noise of their pipes is high, fierce and very archaic and carried on the back of the tenor, snare and massive bass drums which transport the listener right back to the days when whole Scottish armies would rally around the pipes and storm off to bloody battle.

There cannot be anything much more terrifying than seeing legions of bagpipers and drummers march towards you. When playing the nicest accountant, green grocer or teacher is transformed into a kilted heathen and the entire band takes on the shape of a war party. The pipe major, marching always at the front, swings his baton and is nearly always a white bearded brute and is often decked out in a finery of broaches, medals, tartan sashes and a giant feather hat that makes him look about nine feet tall. The pipers and drummers that follow him, both male and female, are resplendent in fitted waistcoats and Glen Garrys (small, Scottish hats with red bobbles.) Their faces are serious, they march straight and true, their eyes are focused and there are roughly three hundred of them, marching together as one.

This is the scene that greets me at the annual New Hampshire Highland Games, a celebration of Scottish culture that has been running for over thirty years. For one weekend many average New England citizens drop their drawers, pick up kilts, bagpipes, cabers, swords and anything else Scottish before marching on the New Hampshire ski resort of Loon Mountain. They come in huge numbers; over the three day event roughly 26000, many of the competitors in the myriad of sports and events offered. These include sheepdog trials, piping and dancing contests and many others. The festivities go on late into the night with drunken reels and general Scottish partying accompanied as always, by someone with the bagpipes.

There is something about bagpipes that always makes the hair rise on the back of my neck and reminds me so strongly of home that I often times need to sit down after hearing them. Since moving to America I have acquired an almost uncanny ability to detect the pipes and will often head straight towards the noise, no matter how faint or how badly they are being played. It was thus a certainty that upon finding out that there was to be a New Hampshire Highland Games held in Loon Mountain, I would gather my camera and head up north with Britt.

            On the road north, as we headed to Loon, I began to worry. I spent many Scottish summers of my childhood at the Highland Games, dressed in a thick coat and wellies, standing in a muddy field watching the heavies, tug of war, and the massed pipe bands. I understood things there, the strange clan hierarchies governed by peerage, the chieftains tent with its flag flying proudly, the faces in many tents familiar ones to me. I knew what to wear, what was expected of me, how things would definitely proceed. At Loon I knew that I would not have that luxury for however Scottish the games proclaimed to be, they were sure to be a very American affair.

            The minute we climbed from the shuttle bus that had ferried us from the car park, I realized I was both right and wrong about my above fears. Around me I could see dozens of very American people milling in crowds and wearing the usual attire of jeans, baseball hat and sports hoodie or t-shirt. Standing next to them however were at least three pipe bands that I could see straight away, fully outfitted and playing almost perfectly. Everywhere I spied kilts, and even some people who had gone so overboard that they were carrying broadswords or flintlock rifles. It was clear the games was not going to be completely Scottish or American.

            To get my bearings I launched straight into the fray, Britt following behind. This was her first experience (beside braving Spain with my brother) of Scottish culture, and so we stopped at the food tent to pick up Irn Bru and lamb sandwiches with huge wedges of something potato/cabbage based called thumps that I decided was an invented name. Fully hyped up on Bru we headed through the clan tents to find the Gordon’s, only to find out that it had been blown down due to harsh winds and replaced by a empty car. Moving on we passed the heavies and watched the caber tossers for a while, before chatting to some British squadies on tour with their band then hitching a free ride up the mountain on one of the ski lifts.

            It was amazingly beautiful on top of the mountain, and we stood for a while looking down at the valley below, the leaves on trees all around us beginning to change, crackle and wither as fall approached. Finished with this respite we headed back down in time to quickly chat to the president of the games, Jon Lang and this years honorary Chieftain, well-known Scottish musician John Wallace about the games. While Jon briefly explained the technicalities of running the festival, John shared with me what he feels makes this festival shine far above it’s Scottish competitors. “The weather” he laughs in his Glaswegian accent, and explains that apart from this Americans can stage a show with constant entertainment value, something he feels is missing from Scotland.  

            Personally, it was the prize giving and massed pipe bands that I found to be my personal highlight. Britt looked aghast as we stood in the central arena and watched band after band appeared and promptly marched straight towards with seemingly no intention of stopping. One after another they came, their coats and kilts every colour imaginable, their heads held high and their playing surprisingly almost perfect. One by one they halted, and more followed till there were dozens laid out before us.

            As Britt’s ears finally started to fail we left and journeyed back to Ringe and in the car I tried to work out what I thought of the games. Unlike John Wallace I think that they can never beat the Scottish Games because though these are perhaps more glamorous most of those present here have never been to the country they come to represent, and thus cannot surely have the true pride that I think many Scott’s have when they enter even a small Scottish games. The American bands can surely play well enough to hold their own but there is something bigger lacking in the whole atmosphere that makes it feel like a theme park rather than a traditional event. Whatever the reason people come though, I found it deeply moving to see so many proud to be Scottish.

Picture Gallery

Views from the Chieftains Tent

John Wallace's Monkey. A perfectly normal Scottish symbol, surely?

The President and Chieftain

A true blend of Scottish and American

The Lads from the British Army

On the Hunt for the Gordon's

A unsuccessful quest that led me to an abandoned car and a rather sad note

Tossing the Caber

A true Scottish Sport where the aim is to throw a massive log into the air and have it balance upside-down on the ground.

Sports

Throwing a heavy metal ball up in the air and over a stick

Young highland dancers

A slightly lost looking Irish themed pipe band

Massed Pipe Bands

The Essence of the Festival

 Casa De Salvador Dali

Port  Lligatt, Spain

A Stuffed, snarling polar bear covered in jewellery, giant plaster eggs and a swimming pool shaped like a penis: It must have been interesting for guests who visited Salvador Dali’s house during the decades he lived there. The renowned surrealist artist bought a collection of small fisherman’s houses in Cadaques during the 1930’s and gradually combined and enlarged them into a structure  resembling Wonderland, with warrens of small rooms filled with unlikely objects and winding terraced gardens.

Nothing at Dali’s is to be taken at first glance. Everything has a story. The three stuffed swans leering down on the library from a shelf, those belonged to Dali as pets and would swim around in the bay in front of Port Lligat. Upset that he could not see them at night, Dali fitted candles mounted on small helmets to their heads and would sit with his wife, Gala and watch the small yellow lights float past his house.  

Likewise, his narrow swimming pool turns out to be crafted in the form of a giant misshaped phallus, surely a thoroughly unsettling addition to any garden though at Dali’s it does not seem out of context among the giant, misty-eyed snakes and empty thrones that adorn the giant veranda, and where the king and queen of this surrealist kingdom used to sit before their court. Though both Dali and Gala have been dead for many years, this place lingers on, full of their eccentricities and a strange and unsettling energy that is hard to explain. Over the years I have visited Dali’s house many times, taking groups of friends and relatives and acting as a de-facto tour guide through the cool streets and dusty roads that lead up through the town and into the countryside to Port Lligat, and yet never am I completely comfortable there.

I could put the above feelings of unease down to the obvious bizarreness and insanity that is basically daubed upon the walls down to those staring black-and-white eyes of his that look out from dozens of photographs around the house. Certainly, it is hard not to feel shivers down ones spine when walking past a giant plastic couch shaped like a pair of luscious lips, or that silent stuffed polar-bear standing guard by the door.

Maybe though, it is that I find Dali not an amusing and eccentric buffoon with a talent for painting as I feel he tries to portray himself but rather a sinister creature who’s perversities were window-dressed enough that he has gained a cult status around the world. His sexual deviancies (which were many) led him to lust over very young men and women and photograph them naked in his garden. Watching a documentary about this recently, I found myself hearing Dali’s drawn-out, deep voice for the first time and seeing his strange face with its blank-eyed leer in a series of short videos. For me, seeing his lurching mannerisms as he droned huskily on about strange, senseless subjects I formed a deep dislike for the man.

That I think Dali was by all accounts a twisted pervert does not mean that I don’t harbour a certain cautious admiration for his work and indeed his house. The tacky shock value in everything he creates, from the décor of the rooms he lived in to his most famous works in all their strange glory, it is hard to explain but the effects work and do not look half as bizarre as one would expect. One can look at said art work and is confronted by a painting of Christ that when you stand back turns into the face of Abe Lincoln, or strange drawings of melting clocks and elephants with stick legs and recoils instinctively but at the same time something draws you in, compulsively. At his house, the same effect is created in each bizarre room, and always, as I walk home in the evening it leaves me slightly confused.

The Famed Penis Shaped Swimming Pool

The area Dali used to shoot many of his pictures involving young men

A member of the very relaxed Catalan security

Hay Tools and Dovecot combined

A sculpture above the entrance to a folly, Dali's garden

Dali and Gala's beds (a series of mirrors reflected the sunlight towards them in the mornings) where they slept separately 

Statue, Dali's Studio

One of the windows in Dali's studio, looking out to the bay

A half finished Dali, sitting in his studio

The Chair Dali painted from when he became too elderly to stand and work

A Window to the Beach

Bridge to America from Spain, a symbol Dali saw himself as

Two of the pet swans Dali had stuffed

Charlotte and the stuffed bear in the coatroom

Owl in the coatroom

The guardian bear in the coatroom that Dali took from France on a train, paying a ticket for his furry accomplice 

The outside of the Dali House at midday

Two Lovers? Statues on Dali's wall that can be seen from the road, or possibly sea

The Moustache

who is he that he can see what I cannot

that staring out to sea he comprehends

not stars but burning golden dragons

the sea a blanket of razor blades,

fishing boats wounded bloody geese wearing torches

for helmets while smooth white heads look on unflinching

from a churning shore of black ants

his very face a canvas to his history

 

Black moustache hanging, defying gravity

Twisted wooden cane connected to white knuckles

Staring, staring eyes seeking out sanity to destroy it

With a paint brush as King Phillip’s sword

 

I have no sword, but like everyone else

I know his secret

Pick an axe up from the ground

Weigh the thing upon your palm

Balance wooden handle on callused hand

Breathe deep a moment, pull air to lungs

Eyes shut firmly, then open

 

Strike a mirror; bring point of axe to silent glass

watch the furnace collapse

as simply as

a rock

in dark sea

 

His brain is that glass, jagged edges and warped shapes

twisted yellow vines climbing a crumbling mansion

ants around a rotting carcass, searching for some way in

I have been that ant, stood with both feet upon his tomb

melting eyes and noses watching me from white walls

wondering how to think like this.

 

 

The Euphoric Nature of Fresh Produce

Food has the peculiar quality of being influential in almost any aspect of human development. Aside from the obvious biological aspect, what we eat can play a huge roll in who we become mentally, influencing us for good and bad. Today, a disturbing lack of regard has surfaced towards what we in the first world will consume and, though definitely not the only culprit, America seems to lead the way. Fast food outlets have pervaded almost every large town and in the home-prepackaged goods are consumed with abandon.

Personally, I consider myself to be a “foodie” and at university often times I find myself appalled by the quality of our meals. Though one could counter my distaste by reminding me how fortunate I am compared with the majority of the world’s population, I don’t believe that would constitute a relevant argument. I have spent my fair share of time in the developing world and seen much worse BUT at the same time I have seen much better and know that it would not be too hard to prepare something palatable for us, especially when taking into account the amount we pay for the privilege of eating lines of cooked-to-death hamburgers, piles of greasy pizza and hunks of unidentifiable meat. We are students in AMERICA, historically a land of opportunity and drive yet the watery cabbage and bean soup we eat suggest more Slovakian prison than New Hampshire College. At the end of the day, food is obviously not a huge priority for those in charge and yet we are expected to perform well in class and have enough energy left over to play sports or take part in extracurricular activities.

Ok, I’ll agree that maybe I’m idealistic in the extreme and have no comprehension of running of viable university cafeteria. If I was to relinquish my claim that our food is needlessly crap, I would hang onto but one small annoyance. Standing in line for the school salad bar, or rummaging through the piles of apples and oranges I am foiled in finding good food even there. The lettuce is either soggy or crunchy with ice, the carrots are the tiny type sprayed to death with chemicals and the one time I saw a peach it was like steel grapeshot.

Now, compare that with the produce found at a Spanish market like the one in my adopted hometown of Cadaques. Before I continue though, I must quickly say that although bias towards Europe and most things European or foreign I am not oblivious to my home continents failings. I see our rising debts, our immigration problems, our huge desire to be American and the other shortcomings that we share with almost everywhere else today. I know we are definitely not perfect but mainland Europeans undoubtedly know about food, having improved and tweaked their knowledge for thousands of years. Though Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds and dozens of other chains have crossed the Atlantic and now lie in almost as many European streets as American, food is still relished in many places here.

Anyways, walk up the concrete drainage tunnel that serves to hold the local Cadaques market every Monday and the food stalls come into view behind the pirate C.D shops. Piles of fresh apples, peaches, grapes, mushrooms, tomatoes and garlic sit beside plastic vats of olives and legs of cured ham. The fruit is picked nearby and very ripe, so that eating a peach you get the sticky juice and pulp over your fingers. True, most is not organic but still, it has to be said that even sprayed with chemicals it is a world away from iced lettuce and soggy tomatoes. If the school could at least find me some fresh fruit and veg. I would shut up instantly and never complain again. Even just give me permission to go out into the fallow land by the schools water tower with a spade, some seeds and enough fencing to keep the deer away and I would try to at least plant and grow some addition sustenance. The food mentioned above and photographed below is enough to make me happy for a long time.

Now, I am on occasion a realist and I understand that there is little chance of my dreams turning into reality. Either the administration would be too stingy or even more worrying, perhaps most students would actually prefer the current university cuisine to anything I would consider remotely edifying. What I would say though, is that they should take a look at the photos I've posted below, imagine the real thing then tell me that we shouldn’t at least ask for something remotely resembling this. Just because we are students DOES not mean a healthy and yet amazingly good option should be denied us. 

Forbearers

 

With hand and foot they built this land

Bleeding palm on chipped rock, they carved these steppes

Dusty sole treading silently up narrow paths

The sea behind, and only dust rock sky ahead

 

Some heaved and groaned and pulled

Fish from blue waters

Fingers chafing on worn lines and canvas sails

Watching their flopping pray die upon the wooden deck

 

There were constants with all, holding them tight

In their gods’ hands

Backbreaking work that dulled the soul like a knife

Upon the rock of mountains

 

Salt lay heavy in their hair and in scales upon their backs

Eyes grew blotchy from uncaring sun, lips red from cheap wine

Pipe smoke and anchovies in small houses

Blackened from sun like those who lived there

 

Women, waiting in mock silence, necks like trucks of olive trees

Brown and twisted from carrying pots

Of oil along the polished stones of the shore

While seagulls cried and children wept at being left alone

 

They would sit in black on bleached slate

Palms of hands there to speak

Days of labour on the nets, the scars still present

The same palms to bury a husband, rear a child

End a life or bring one screaming, into the world

 

Now where are they? These men with bent backs

And women with hard faces

Buried in unforgiving rock or lost,

in unforgiving sea

 

 

We sit now in that square, drink coffee by well-fed dogs

And Germans clutching tourist maps, children throwing sand

Locals selling trinkets in whitewashed shops with bright awnings

These, decedents of the  men with bent backs and women with hard faces

 

Faded photographs of their fathers long past, stacked quietly in a drawer

Do the children of these faded photographic figures

Sit on sofas with dogs and T.V, wondering quietly

who built these hills and planted trees?

 

 

 

 

 

Endings,

Tartan Heart, 2009 

 

Tartan Heart ended in a sudden change of pace, if not a pause of action. Saturday night had seen minor classes of violence, drug overdoses, wild parties, and all that stereotypes the dark side of music festivals until suddenly the sun came up and exposed a barren landscape of collapsed tents and rubbish-strewn fields. The policemen massed in numbers and grew more forceful, and those festival-goers whose mobile phones had run out scowled and searched in vain for a charging socket.  Lines of hung-over lads waited for bacon sarnies, shivering from early morning cold weather and the alcohol that was slowly leaving their systems. Emerging from destroyed tents, a few unlucky campers blinked in the sunlight and wondered glumly how it was that someone managed to break their tent poles during the night.

During that night of drunken chaos and into the next day as bags were packed and hoisted into the back of cars and the festival ground slowly to a halt I wandered the campsite alone, my camera in hand. The following are a few shots of frenzied bedlam, drunken revelry, relieved celebration and exhausted acceptance:

Interview with Washington Irving

Tartan Heart 2009

Something that has really worried, or dare I go so far as to say terrified, me as a writer is the prospect of conducting a formal interview.  Sitting at the opposite side of a table from your subject(s), one is compelled by general expectations to obtain certain information in a specific way. For me personally this has long been a scary prospect, for to get the “right” answers, make sense of and collate that information into a readable format and meet print deadlines requires such a large and intricate body of work that I feel it is insurmountable.  What was truly brilliant about interviewing the Glasgow-based band Washington Irving was that they were extremely willing to talk with me informally and therefore bypass a specifically designed interview. Talking about who they are as people and why they choose to do things may not have overtly revealed the mechanics of their music-making but it gave me a better feel of why producing such music is important to them.

 

The five band members, Joe Black (Guitar/Vocals), Martin Anfield (electric guitar), Roslyn Potter (flute), Ryan English (bass), Chris McGarry (drums) chatted to me for half an hour, unedited and completely candid about who and why they are.

Washington Irving was started as, and has remained, a Glasgow band though several members grew up on the West Coast, playing gigs in Oban recreation centre, a building that was by all accounts “sliding into the sea.” As past and present students and budding musicians, Glasgow appeals to Washington Irving. Talking to them now the entire band seem to be enamored by the amount of venues and drunk people one finds there, explaining that “drunk people like music” and generally help create a positive environment for performing. Aside from playing in Scotland’s biggest city, Washington Irving has done gigs and shows all around the country, something that is very important to them as a whole.

 

 That term, “as a whole”, is perhaps the best way of describing Washington Irving. Though every band member I talked to had their own quirks and idiosyncrasies they seemed to be very close and throughout my time there they talked to each other as much as me, swapping ideas, one-liners, suggestions and quips back and forth constantly. Chris explained that this closeness stems from proximity, as either current or ex-students they are used to helping each other out, either by cooking for the group or spotting one another money.

 

 

From a music perspective they draw a lot of inspiration and some influence from bands as far ranging as The Pogues, Talking Heads, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie and a host of small, current Glaswegian bands. Almost all their songs are written by Joe, who is currently studying English literature in Glasgow, and his studies in this field are evident in what he writes. “Her Majesty”, the song I was particularly drawn to, focuses on the last Empress of Austro-Hungary and is a sad lement for a woman who would eventually be murdered along with her husband in a event that would trigger the First World War.

 

 

As I talked further with Washington Irving, discussing everything from their favorite television shows to the places they’d most like to do gigs (Nashville or Rio beach in front of two million people) I began to appreciate the band, as much for their calm, friendly personalities as for the music they make. I hope that whatever success they achieve does not change the bond between them, or the way they behave towards the outside world.

More Photographs of Washington Irving

 

Mix of Music

Tartan Heart, 2009

            But what of the majority of the music? Though it is the case that, in a very small festival with such strong community sentiment like that found at Tartan Heart, music will take a step back, it is still after all a “rock” festival. T.H. annually caters to well over fifty band groups and other performers performing loads of different musical styles. Some are young and ambitious, coming from obscurity to claw up a ladder rung, others are older has-beens searching for a comeback, and a rare few are established musicians whose immediate future seems set in stone.

‘09 saw all the above, and as the sun shone and rain fell bands went and came and music played. Everyone has their favorite moments from any concert, a song that means something, says something, captures a precise moment in our lives as clear as any photograph. The idealistic, romantic ones among us would say that playing back that track in ten years time one would be reminded of the past for a second. We would feel wet mud against our jeans again, the slop of excess beer spilling from our cups onto dirty, unwashed hands, remember the roar of the music and screams of those around us. More likely our children will shake their heads sadly, walk over and change the C.D.

 

Below are just a few pictures from some of the bigger acts at Tartan Heart 09:

Noah and the Whale

The Editors

British Sea Power






The Saw Doctors













Unknown




Kid Unicorn

A Very Scottish Festival

Tartan Heart, 2009

 

If you’re driving through the Scottish Highlands near Inverness to reach the annual Tartan Heart Music Festival, it comes as a surprise to actually find it. Without much warning sheep fields, cooperage yards full of whiskey barrels and stunning vistas of bare, brown and purple hills give way to what at first glance appears to be a musical refugee camp taking place in someone’s garden. Lines of cars crowd  cow fields, policemen on muddy farm quad bikes roar past a requisitioned walled garden and everywhere there are crowds and crowds of people setting up tents and waiting eagerly for something to happen. This is Tartan Heart, one of the Scottish music scenes best kept secrets.

Driving through sheep-fields 

 Piles of Whiskey Barrels

View of  Northern Countryside with Mountains in Background

Catering to just twelve thousand people Tartan Heart is far from a large festival but it has amazing energy stemming both from what I would term its “invite everyone who loves music and socializing” ethos and the chilled out location described above. People of all ages and socio-economic groups come to T.H, many in large family or friend groups. 

 Arriving at the Festival

As it takes place in the middle of a highland estate, T.H has space enough that there are really no unmanageable crowds, even for the popular acts, and there are enough trees around that there is a strange sense of peace contrasting heavily with the music. In many ways the festival is a loosely held bundle of contradictions, what with shady garden paths leading to huge strobe lit stages, quiet family camping sitting down the hill from a tipi V.I.P section and the sprawl of the general campsite. Posh teenagers in flat caps stand next to those from low income Glaswegian families, the police patrol in force but there is really no trouble. 

The performers that attended in the past have included a strange mixture of folk heroes, Scottish quasi-traditionalists, has-beens, wanna-be’s, start ups and some very, very good bands that have been favourites of mine, such  like Idlewild etc. This year, the line-up included Noah and the Whale, whose hit Five Years Time has been a really big tune of recent, the Saw Doctors who currently have a song at number 2 in Ireland and the Editors, a great band with a powerful stage presence and a long list of good tunes.

Noah and the Whale

The Saw Doctors

The Editors

As I was officially covering T.H for Student at Large I was able to conduct interviews with twoup-and-coming bands, The Lost Brothers and Washington Irving and obtain some good photographs of the headliners. To save overwhelming the reader by throwing a hundred page colossus of an article at you I’ve split up the festival into manageable, relevant sections and I hope this makes it easier to read.

Belladrum Crowds, 

Tartan Heart 2009

From the tent ally’s of the so called “Little Beirut” to the Victorian Sprawl of the Garden Stage, Tartan Heart is stuffed to bursting with memorable figures. People dressed as horses, dogs and even jellyfish clash with teenaged girls in sunglasses so big as to cover their entire faces, drunken lads in kilts and members of almost every fringe group imaginable, from aging hipsters to rude boys and aristocratic viscounts to students. Everyone seems to be dressed up or down in some way as to make a statement about who they are. At Tartan Heart the normal humdrum of daily existence is suspended for a weekend as everyone transforms from drab caterpillars to the equivalent of butterflies on acid.

 

Below are a few of the best outfits, costumes and faces from the crowds of Tartan Heart 2009:

Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Aboyne Highland Games

The sound of massed bagpipes and drums echoes through ones soul. Warlike and heathen, the noise makes the hairs on the back of your neck rise and shakes the very ground. Ancient and dangerous it tells of bloody fields where armies smashed together, of men belonging to a older, simpler world of principles so often trivialized these days. Standing in ones kilt as the pipe major walks past followed by the pipers and drummers it is hard not to be proud of being Scottish.

The Gordon standard flying above the field

The Cock of the North, head of the Gordon clan, inspecting the pipers as they march past.

Braving the drizzle, many come to see the marches and games

The Pipe Majors trading salutes

Lord Chuck, my self, Jamie,  the brothers Maitland

The tug-of-war, the best (in my opinion) event at the games for the shear simple, almost polite brutality and Sumo-esq simplicity. 

Pipers

The march-past

More Pipers

Lord Gordon and Mr. Remp, Standing Tall
The Field
Piper at Rest

 Tessa and I

Going Home

Cadaques, Spain

Photographs from a land both new and old, summer 2009

Boudreau as Dali, Portlligat 

New Friends, Izzy and Cat, Old Quarter- Cadaques

L.

Angry looking cat basking in the sun outside the Dali House, Portlligat

Flower

Rusty bars on churchyard window, Portlligat

Stone wall, Portlligat

The detritus of modern fishermen, Portlligat

Olive groves above the Dali house, Portlligat

Spanish ash tray

Traditional Sardanas Dancing, The Plaza, Cadaques

Plaza De Estrellas

Suz, Tesha, M.

A musician at the Sardanas

Old fishing boats lined up by the shore, Portlligat

The Procession of the Virgin Mary, Cadaques

Gwen as Audrey

Dog looking out to sea

A family of traditional style boats, Portlligat

Lobster traps, Portlligat

Stone Wall, Cadaques

Grumpy old dogs, Old Quarter, Cadaques

Window, Plaza De Estrellas

Radom, Tessa, Alice

Musicians leaving the Church, Old Quarter, Cadaques

Mari

Rusted Bike, Portlligat

Old Boat, Portlligat

View of the town from the shore, Cadaques

The Estrella in the Plaza De Estrellas

G.

Stone and Wall, Old Quarter, Cadaques

Gwen, Izzy, Mari

Old Friends

The Casino of no gambling

Memories of Central America, 2009

The wonderful girlfriend with the $1 dollar photo-copied map we bought on the bus and which came with a free guide to local poets and a lot of dodgy jokes.

The shady, dog-strewn corners of Antigua.

The main Plaza of Antigua is a bizarre mixture of the old and the new, where among the leafy trees, shady columns and bubbling fountain Mayan women in traditional clothes mix with sweaty western tourists, maimed beggars, sullen shoeshine boys, cunning pickpockets, suave locals, armed bank guards and backpackers.

A beach restaurant in El Salvador, positioned on stilts far above the ground in case of hurricanes/ rabid dogs etc...

Wendell, from Wisconsin. Working in a small El Salvadoran town for a year means you don't often see tourists, and when you do they don't often give you Poptarts. In this instance, Wendell got lucky.

Britt waiting by a Chicken Bus (notice roof-rack and the death trap of a ladder). There were several times where I managed to get stuck on said roof-rack and had to cling onto the ladder for dear life.

The inside of a chicken bus, strangely empty by local standards...

Washing Windows, El Salvadoran Style

An Old Central American marketing ploy as signs like this popping up on run down cantinas such as this. My favorite was the "Mr. T" welding shop in Costa Rica.

“Guate… Guate…Guate…Guate…” scream the conductors clinging to the side of the gaudiest busses in the world, blending the words together. These so called Chicken Busses are old American school busses shipped down to Central America for another several decades of service. Sometimes they have shrines glued to the dashboard, just to make one feel comfortable.

Cross and Church, Antigua

The clock tower and Irish bar in Antigua, one of the most photographed spots in the continent.

Antigua was once the capital of Guatemala and one of Central America’s most prosperous cities till a series of earthquakes rose up and battered the city to destruction. Though brightly painted stucco and more modern concrete has began to replace regal colonial stone a few ruined cathedrals sit forgotten down shady avenues.

One of many old people in Central America, who always dress straight from the 30's.

Cobbled Street, Antigua

Virgin-M in a window, one of millions in Guatemala which is the least catholic country in the area at %65.

Stray dogs litter the streets of every Central American city and town, mongrels and half-breeds of every kind. Though some have collars and seem far from skinny they never appear to belong to anyone and are regarded mainly with indifference by the local population.

Almost a Lonely-Planet worthy shot (annoyingly, the person in the background moved their head a second before.)

Cadaques, Spain

Morning comes

and the sea awakes in bright flashes and ripples,

white waves on blue sea,

crashing against black rock.

 

fierce sun beats down hard,

on packed earth, and the kaki skin of twisted trees

all boiling

 

fish writhe in anxious waters,

stirred up by the thrashing of swimmers,

while old men like shrunken tortoises

sip cups of coffee in the shade

 

The hours between

warm darkness, sickly sweet as spilled booze

on a bar just now silent, fag smoke making spirals

in long tainted air

 

seagulls asleep now, waiting for the sun

drunks climb tired up cobbled streets like old arthritics.

within the bakery by the square,

a local shovels round bread into ovens

 

Cats fight in darkened windows

scratching and biting

playful children

I sit alone upon a rattan chair

watching

Flat blackness

slither out to sea

beyond the bay, Rocamar Hotel

squat, yellow, Mediterranean Lhasa

Shining lighthouse to insomniacs

 

El Salvador/Guatemala Border

The Guatemala-El Salvador border is one of the places I think people go if they die and both heaven and hell are full. Drab soviet style drabness has remained on the walls of the local houses where once bright colours were seen and the wear and tear of 3^rd world living has made the people there seem somehow hunched and tired by the rigours of life. We arrived by bus in the early evening and climbed wearily down into the reserved pandemonium of such borders, where large trucks waiting in the shade, weary children selling fly-covered tortillas out of stained plastic bags, stray goats and men with large guns slung over their shoulders jostle for position. The border itself was far removed, hiding somewhere in the distance, it’s exact dimensions unclear to seemingly everyone including the border patrols. 

Into this world we marched, Britt glad that I had persuaded her to buy a scarf, which she used to block out dust and rancid smells of engine smoke. Walking towards the passport office there was a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach as there always is at such times, some vague racist undercurrent that makes me uncomfortable to be white in a place where nobody else is. Nobody else but Britt of course, who handled herself with quiet dignity as locals followed her down the street with dark and sometimes troubled eyes. We walked together through the passport office where the walrus of a customs offical on duty tried to make a show of not being useless, and his scrutiny made me feel even more anxious. In the end he nodded abruptly, motivated mostly by a well placed smile from Britt and we were allowed to pass.

El Salvador loomed somewhere ahead across a massive bridge spanning a slow flowing river. The bridge was crammed with rickshaws and in their midst patrolled a skeletal vulture of a man in a open white lab coat who checked everyone passing for swine-flu. Britt held her breath and we slipped through into a country more desperate than that which we had just left. A drunk looking whore with dirty hair and glazed eyes regarded us as we dumped our bags down in a small roadside restaurant where the old Abuela’s stared wide-eyed at Britney and appeared with piles of warm flour and bean papusas and two bottles of chilled Pepsi for the price of a dollar and twenty five cents. Leaving my girlfriend in the capable hands of these matriarchs I set off to secure a ride into the interior.

“Fifty?” I asked later, disgusted and the small weasily looking man shifted about uncomfortably and nodded, “Si, Fifty…”

            “FIFTY DOLLARS?”

“Si.”

"FIFTY DOLLARS, FROM HERE?" I looked around at the emaciated goats and rubbish strewn carpark, "can you give me a better price?"

"It's a good price" the man said with a air of finality that frankly scared me shitless.

I stared back as if he’d just told me he was from Mars.  He had just asked for fifty U.S dollars for a hour long truck ride in a country where that could probably keep one in papusas, beer and accommodation for a week. It was unusual to even have to pay for a ride people were so glad to have tourists in their trucks, and here was this crazy man requesting $50.  Instead of arguing I walked away, hoping he’d call me back and lower the price but no such thing happened and when I reached the next man leaning against a pick-up truck I was more hopeful,

"How much to the next town?"

"Eighty dollars, it's a good price!"

This time I didn't even balk. Instead I stormed off and appeared by Britt’s side looking sweaty and upset. After a few minutes of running around asking questions it turned out that as the sun had gone down slightly the local buses had stopped running and a friendly local suggested I wait till morning before carrying on the journey.

Repulsed by everyone and unable to advance we retreated, back across the bridge and through the border into Guatemala once more. Passports were stamped, the same overweight official gave us a bizarre glance and tried in vain to understand what we were doing. Together we stood for a minute in the manner of the English couple from film/book, The Painted Veil, our bags at our feet, alone in a world we didn’t understand and sensing that were far out of our depth. After a time Britt made friends with the border police and they escorted us to a Mexican prison-like hotel where we barricaded ourselves inside by pushing a bed in front of the door, venturing outside only to pick up a dinner of shoe-leather and syrupy-sweet soft drinks.

In the morning we were up early, Britt took a shower, came rushing out to tell me that (A) there was a frog perving on her and (B) there was only quarter of a loo-seat. Desperate to escape the dive we carried on the day as usual, packed our gear and re-crossed the border to perplexed looks by (yet again) the same officials. This time we were in time to catch a $2 bus, and happily took off, leaving behind us groups of dodgy looking locals angry at not having tricked us into spending all our money. 

Ockley, England

Me and Britt.

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge

This week

In Franklin Pierce

Feminism marching

togas and cheap whiskey

finally a picture of me and B.

I sort of wish I understood baseball

We played rugby but I had no camera on me

Beards

Walk a Mile in her Shoes

Marching Against Violence to Women

Baseball

The Twins on the Town

Britt and Nephew, Easter 

Lads Marching

Lemmy

Keegan

More Baseball

Luke

Chicken Bus

35 hours

from nowhere

to nowhere

old American school bus

possibly stolen

riding hard

bad road

no suspension

bumpy shit

drunk driving?

cant write

or think

watch

your

bags

man

thieves here

suck balls

…

Did you see?

the driver

only

has

one

eye

shit shit shit

…

is that a shrine?

on the bus?

in case

we

crash

and

die

shit shit fuck

crazy ass Catholics

…

guidebook says

fucking

chicken

bus

part of the experience

the thing to do

the man hanging

from the side

when we got on

threw bags on top

said

two dollar fair.

por favor

amigo

…

two dollars fair?

fuck no

let

me

of

to walk?

here?

Guatemala?

Alone?

fuck no

They have machetes

Crazy Mayan Bastards

stay on

…

hell

stuck legs crushed

no suspension still

constant ache

Guatemalan heat

sucks

sweating balls

must

we

wait

for

the

rain

to

come?

Shit

Shit

shit

Pickpockets took my fucking bag.

 

The war was over, in the land of the river

 

I thought of the butterflies today, bright shattered glass

 leaping from the road to hit against the red

 of my Khmer scarf

As we thundered through the jungle in our truck

 

I sat in class on a plastic seat, in America Now

with views of pines from closed windows

No longer perched on a pile of landmines

Defused, broken, abandoned, to eat my lunch

 

Cambodia when I remember it now

The conflict dried up

The children still maimed

Homeless dogs on dusty streets

 

 

Of the Killing Fields

There is small sign, if one cares to look

In the thickets of palm trees

Where white skulls sit still in the shade

 

This is no longer the country

Of death and decay

Where schools were prisons

And doctors knew nothing

 

Instead the land of the River

Spreads itself down tired

As if the war was a day of work now over

And goes to sleep in the shade

 

The fact remains however buried

That I am forever scarred

Those feeble traces of the Shadow Death

Coming through night and dream to meet me

 

Of colours and smells

Of sounds and loud voices

Raised and lowered like waves

I think when at last sleep reaches me

 

Cyclo drivers peddling

Ever faster on hard concrete

On the roads that the Kmer Rouge

Once marched down, guns triumphant

 

The soft sound of your padding footsteps upon

 Wooden floors in old guesthouses

Where little old ladies

Sit silent

 

Sitting with you, outside Tol Sleng

with open mangos held in dust coloured hands

As we eat, and laugh, even after seeing children’s writing

On the walls of the school, then prison, now shrine

 

Hammocks swing in the shade,

Sleepy buzz-cut soldiers

Of a New Country

Their guns held tight as infants

 

Plates of rice still steaming,

Whole courses of food,

Waiting beside a politicians family

As they laugh, baking in the sun

 

There is a pagoda now,

On the sight of the death pits

Many small levels inside

Stacked full of human skulls

 

Frozen glasses of beer,

Behind which lies the balustrade

Of the Foreign Correspondents Club

Where once the talk of death was heard

 

We walk there together, in my thoughts

Though you were never with me, in the land of the River

And if you had been, hand in mine,

The skulls in the pagoda would not haunt me now

 

above it all the sky

beneath it the mighty river

My Mekong, in dream

Holding a country, together

 

The Forgotten

 

Lonely rusting hulks resting on what once was prosperous

Baby birds in a nest of barely used bin bags and cigarette butts

Rocks left behind from the metaphorical glacier WE choose to travel on

While they growl No in silence.

Used up, Washed Up, get-a-job

Grey-fleshed and demanding that WE give,

Out of guilt or pity but never without cynicism

For who knows if

 The want of the blue–veined-silky-sweet -relief

is somewhere in the decaying mansion

of their consciousness?

 

Spring

 

Trees sprung, upwards

From mulch and decay

 

Ice receding, backwards from blue water

Buoys, white plastic, freed from entrapment

 

To bob alone and quiet, until

They are used again

 

By boats, and boys

In brightly coloured swim shorts

 

Soon though the still and sluggish

summer will be here,

Then fall of leaves

And crunching quiet

Before winter

Settles in once more

 

 

 

The Affair (Fiction)

I was waiting for her for three hours before she finally arrived back in the apartment. I smoked a cigarette till it burned my fingers, then another, and another, and another… Poured myself a stiff gin and walked around our home, looking at the detritus of our joint life. Silver picture frames lying on the grand piano showing our wedding photos, sailing photos, party photos, skiing photos, summer photos… The list went on and on, a series of petty, mindless events illustrating our marriage perfectly, showing it for what it really was. There are no pictures though, of my infidelity. There are no shots of Hyacinth and I on the balcony overlooking all Paris, none of us having dinner in Rome, nothing. I’d been so secretive for so long, and now I was about to rip that shroud away and force both my lives together in one second of confession? Well, I’d promised H. and so I would do what I would do.

Hearing the engine of that taxi broke me from my reverie. I swallowed half my drink in one go and made another, hearing the elevator whirr beneath my feet as I did so. She unlocked the heavy door and walked in, wearing a fur coat, tight red dress with a black belt that I didn’t recognize and a huge hat that shaded her face just slightly and showed her lips perfectly…

The effect was stunning, she radiated physical loveliness as she always had though in my heart I knew that deep down she was as twisted and vile as anyone I’d ever met.
‘Darling’ she said, the coat falling off her shoulders if on accident, ‘I’m sorry I’m back so late.’
She said this warmly, as if she was still as in love with me as she’d said she’d been when we’d first met at Oxford. It made me falter, perhaps I had made a mistake?
‘Did you put the supper in the oven?’ she asked, hanging the coat up and moving closer, the smell of her perfume intoxicating, ‘I left a note for you.’
I was made almost speechless by her, as I often was, and all I managed to say was a quick thank you and ‘I found it.’
She looked at me strangely, almost seductively and looking down I realized that I had finished my drink. I walked over to the sideboard, seeing her still standing there in the corner of my eye, unspeaking as I poured another drink. Suddenly she spoke,
‘Charles’ she said quickly, almost garbling her words, her voice husky, ‘don’t you have something to say to me?’
At that moment I suddenly realized that she knew about H. Why else the silences, the strange aura I was seeing like a chimera. She had found out, somehow, and had planned her move perfectly so that she could surprise me absolutely. What else could I do, I had to continue with my plan.
‘So’ I breathed deeply, ‘so I guess that you know already…’ I said, half expecting a slap but nothing came but a sharp intake of breath, her eyes widening in sudden fear and she seemed to glance around nervously for a second before speaking,
‘What should I know Charles?’ what I perceived as fake innocence throwing me for a second, her usual cockiness so ridiculous in this circumstance that I yelled at her, tried to force a confession of her knowledge, as if she was the guilty one,
‘‘Don’t play games’ I snapped at her with venom, ‘how long have you known about me an Hyacinth?’
She laughed, filling me with uncertainty, and then said primly, like the bitch she is
‘Actually, Ididn’t know about you and Hyacinth, and I guess you didn’t know about me and Seb.’

A Bad Situation in Beautiful Place

Franklin Pierce, Rindge, N.H

A few months ago a mammoth ice storm ravaged our campus and half of New England, destroying power-lines and leaving us stranded for days. Though the damage has mainly been repaired around school, the nearby woods are still littered with dead trees. I went out with my camera for the first time since the snow fell to see things for myself.

Frank Runs Away (Fiction)


So, you want to hear my story? Well, there is some time till the boat arrives from up river, and my feet are sore from walking. If you fetch me a black beer from the vender in the shack over there by that tree I’ll split some of this papaya and rice with you, it’s a good trade. Anyway, my story. Sorry to sound like such a prick about it, but it is a good tale, I can assure you.
Anyway, so I was eight when I ran away from home. I’ve heard that a lot of kids this age do something like that. They leave their houses and hide in the garden or down the street, returning two hours later in the hope that their parents will appreciate them more. In part I was like them, I grabbed a strange collection of things I presumed I would need and stuffed them into my schoolbag: Two oranges, an apple, a banana, some colouring pencils and paper, also my older brothers Discman and a family photo in a black frame. I even managed to steal a wad of ten-pound notes and my passport from my fathers desk. Then, like the other children I set off down the street wearing my best raincoat on my back.
Me though, I never turned back. When I reached Poland and was cold, wet and hungry for much of my tenth year I thought about it a lot but I never did. It was tempting for a while, when I sent postcards back home, to ask them to fly out and pick me up, but I never gave in to that temptation. Instead I kept going, racking up cities, countries, regions, and continents till the soles of my wellington boots fell apart and I had to scrounge a spare pare (two sizes too large) from a building fire escape in Prague. My hair got long and body got taller, I grew from small boy into gangly teenager, drinking a Starbucks coffee on the train to Beijing from Ulaanbaatar and Moscow before that, the open road my only home.

As a reader you’ll ask why and I wouldn’t blame you. People expect answers these days, I read from pieces of magazines I find that scientists are trying to make some machine underneath Switzerland that will smash and bump a bunch of stuff we cant see together and somehow explain what makes everything in the world. Anyway, that’s a tangent but people do seem to want answers, they can’t just be content with the idea that my parents were normal. They seem to insist against everything I say that my Mum and Dad were somehow bad, that I was abused, that my family werecrack heads that left me in a gutter to fend for myself. The truth is much more mundane but people can’t seem to accept that.

My parents were perfectly normal and quite boring. My father was an insurance salesmen or something like that, my mother worked in an office before I was born and occasionally afterwards. They were nice people, what I remember of them, my father smelling of cologne and my mother with her hair tied back as she listened to the radio and made me dinner. They didn’t drink really and when they did were never drunk, hardly argued about anything and even went to bed at a reasonable hour. My brother, five years older than I, was “wild” in that he smoked the odd cigarette and drank cans of Strongbow underage but that’s hardly a crime any more. They were nice people, they cared for me, clothed me, fed me and put up with all the priggishness a child can offer their family.

In the end I guess it was just destiny that led me to the road. I was bored. I got home one day from school, mum went out to do some errands and so I turned on the T.V. There was a program about Easter Island on BBC showing the huge stone heads sitting there with the sea and the sun and something in me just clicked. I wanted to leave the grey drudgery of Britain, the monotony of primary school, the playgrounds with their health and safety, their stifling political correctness that didn’t even make sense… I wanted to see things, countries, experience the world… I couldn’t articulate all this of course, but that’s how I felt. So, I wrote a brief note to my parents in green crayon that read:

“DEaR, Mumm and Dad, Thanksyou for bing good parANTS but I am borred and am going to run away. I LOVE YOU AND SIMON MY BROTHER AND THE KAT. KISSES, FraNk xoxx
P.S. I am taking MY dog.

Oh, I havn’t even got round to writing about Pip, have I? Well, Pip was the puppy spaniel my parents had given me for Christmas that year, all fur and boisterousness and I adored him more than anything else. Well, I put a piece of long garden twine around his little neck and he came with me. Together we walked out of the house and down the road, got on a train and for some reason nobody stopped me! Perhaps the attendant was tired or ill, maybe I just looked confident enough that people presumed I knew what I was doing. Whatever, I made it to London and took a few days seeing the sights before I moved on. Even then I was smart enough to dodge peoples questions, when they asked me “where are your parents” I’d simply point in a spurious direction and then say, and this I was proud of, “Mummy says I shouldn’t talk with strangers” and run away, Pip bounding behind me.

Using the above skills and utilizing a lot of luck I somehow made it across the Channel on a ferry and into France five days after running away. I remember standing by the boat rail with Pip licking my face and looking out backwards at a choppy sea as we left England. Amazingly, and some don’t believe this, I hid Pip under my coat and just ran through a crowd of peoples legs and through immigration. Believe it or not, I made it to France and mainland Europe.
I love Europe. So many antiquated small villages in France and especially Spain even now, where if you avoid the mopeds and German tourists you can find peasant-like women living in total Franconian 1950’s style. Some gave me food and looked after me for a few days, very few called the police and those that did were rewarded by the sight of me and Pip bolting down the street away from them and out of sight. Those were good days, that first year of learning to survive. I ate tomato and mozzarella salad in a old grandmothers house while her ancient husband puffed on strong smelling cigarettes and cut my hair, showing me how to trim Pip’s ears and even going so far as gifting me a pair of scissors for that purpose. I avoided two police cars when I was drinking a hot chocolate in café outside Barcelona by running along the street and jumping into the town river, Pip complaining as we rocketed down stream. I saw true beauty in the Mediterranean, brightly coloured Latin sail boats off the coast, groves full of olive trees where I’d find somewhere to stay among the hay of an abandoned stable.

When the police presence started hotting up with people looking for me I went east, and those times weren’t so good. Nobody gave a shit in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia or any of those countries of course, they didn’t care about me travelling alone with a dog, didn’t care that I looked like a street urchin with scruffy hair and dirty face. The problem was they mostly didn’t care if I was half-starved, coughing and blue, delirious with pain from when I fell off the back of a truck in Bratislava and almost killed myself. Somehow, and I really don’t understand how I did it, I survived and grew stronger. Pip made it too, just. A tramp once tried to eat him and I had to throw stones at the old man to make him go away.

Eventually I made it to Africa via Russia, the Caspian Sea and part of the Middle East before trucking down China and finally here. You might ask at this point if I was ever lonely, and the truth is I very seldom was without good company. The tramps that ride freight trains, the great unwashed of Eastern Europe housing estates, truck drivers, hitch-hikers, migrant workers, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. These are among my friends. People from every country I’ve visited and of almost every background, profession sex and age bracket have accepted me at some point, and been a part of my journey. People either travel with me for a time or offer me help in some small way, often they do both.

People are kind. From a young female college student who saw me sitting next to her on a park bench in Berlin and gave me and Pip the sandwich she didn’t want to eat, to a group of rugby players on tour who paid for all the drinks at the French pub where I spent my fifteenth birthday, to the sweet Dutch whore in Amsterdam who took my virginity for free that same year while Pip slept in the corner, much of what I need to survive and be happy has been provided for in some way by total strangers, just out of love for humanity and maybe more than a little pity. As I got older I travelled more in groups, usually helping backpackers find their way around in exchange for company and maybe the odd travel expense and with this I came to appreciate the power of having friends.

It’s getting late. Soon I should think about catching the barge down river from here but there are some things I need to say first, some questions you will have that are yet unanswered. To start with, OF COURSE I have regrets, these even I cannot outrun though I’ve tried hard to do that before. Sometimes when it’s raining and I don’t have money or anything to barter I’ll manage to sneak into a cinema and curl up warm and snug on the seats. When the films are about “romance”, that’s when I get sad and think about my possibly misspent past. Seeing American actors hugging, kissing, standing on manicured lawns with perfect teeth, perfect families, perfect lawns. Who in my position wouldn’t be upset by all this seemingly accessible love? I sit there and I admit I cry a bit sometimes, eating popcorn and feeding the odd piece to Pip, who’s head is perched up through my jacket, which is how I smuggle him in to the theatre.

I miss my family. I think about them all the time but haven’t had the balls to contact them. Frankly, I wouldn’t know how. Would I pick up and say” Hey Mum and Dad, Its Frank… Long time no speak…”
No, I think the occasional post card is fine, it lets them know I’m alive at least. Please don’t judge me on this by the way… I consider also that I’ve always been conventionally single and , that a girlfriend, companion on my travels, would be a welcome relief. There are nights alone spent sleeping outside with Pip at my feet that I dream of familiar arms around me, somebody who can laugh at my jokes and understand my everyday struggles.

The question is, who would that be? What do I know of modern culture, of living a quote “normal” life that most would find appealing for more than a few nights? The women I have had, those nineteen year old backpacker girls yearning to get off the beaten track, to experience life at its fullest for a year, the bored Slovakians popping gum and drinking vodka from the bottle after sneaking me from their bedrooms, the subtle French girls drunk after a night clubbing and yearning the same thing as I (Proximity), what do they really mean to me? I meet them all the minute I stop for the night, and something about me attracts them, some invisible aura I seem to emit. We begin talking, and if they don’t believe me my story they leave without a backwards glance and if they do… Well then the female hand leads me to a warm bed for the night, and for me there is no greater luxury.

You may think me a chauvinist perhaps, but I’m not. Some of the most brightest, most amazing people I’ve met are women but what hope do I have with them, why would they want me for more than mere enjoyment? I have no home, no life other than Pip and the road, no future further than the next meal. As you could perhaps understand, it’s not a very appetizing situation for a single woman.

Moving from that painful subject I can say that there are times though, that cancel out my melancholy. When I’m on the road I’m happy, truly happy. The wind buffeting the Cambodian scarf I wear, the roar of cars, mopeds and trucks beside me, Pip barking merrily as we hitchhike together. Pip is getting old now, but he’s as good a pet as ever, brave and loving to me. We’ve experienced more together than most people would in several life times! You know I looked at a “1000 places to go before you die” book and saw that Pip and me have done well over half? That and many more that they’d never show in a book like that.

So, I guess that’s that I guess. I’ve told you a lot, and look! That’s the boat, that’ll take me right down the river and out to sea to some nice islands I heard about. I hope you liked the papaya and rice, and cheers for the beer! Help me with my backpack a second… That’s it, thanks! Come on Pip, time to go. Bye mate, take care… Oh, and to answer your earlier question I’m seventeen years old!

Edmond and the Tiger (Fiction)

Edmond tiptoed down the darkened stairs in his pyjamas, clutching the banister and feeling the creak in each aged plank of wood beneath the bare soles of his feet. The hall was bathed in a soft moonlight and as he reached the last step he took a deep breath and put his food down on the floor. Nothing happened. The housemaster, a terrifying, buzzard-faced figure Professor Mr Moore did not appear, nor did his dour and equally terrifying wife. After a second Edmond padded quietly across the floor, past aged pictures hanging on the walls that showed haggard faces of head masters long passed, and cricket teams long graduated.
Along he went, until finally he stood by the huge bolted door to the outside world and turned slightly so that he was facing a small alcove set into the wall. Even with no electric lights he could see the eyes, bright orbs of orange glass caught by the moon. The head of a tiger, mouth open in a last silent, angry roar faces him from the safety of a glass fronted case smeared with the handprints of Edmond and others.
‘Hello Henry’ he whispered, smelling the musty smell of the dead animals fur as he presses his small nose against the glass, ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came to see you.’
It was no different from any other night, for there was little space in a dorm of eight snoring, farting boys for one who couldn’t sleep. Always, as the others were tossing and turning, consumed by dream, little Edmond would lie under his white duvet with eyes wide open until he was sure they were all asleep. Then, climbing softly from his bed he would sneak down the wide stairway and stand engrossed in one-way conversation with the stuffed animal head until he couldn’t keep his eyes open and he was forced to retire upstairs.
‘School was hard today’ Edmond continued, ‘Mr Whelks got me in trouble because I was picking my nose in prep, and Poppy Morgan came into the dorm and told us to stop jumping on the beds and throwing pillows.’
As he looked at Henry he caught his reflection in the glass of the display cabinet. He saw a seven-year-old boy with wavy blonde hair and owlish eyes wrapped in a huge blue dressing gown, hardly tall enough to look in the display cabinet without standing on tiptoes.
He stared at the tiger with inexpressible longing, and for a moment scrunched his eyes tightly shut, willing the huge animal to come alive and bound out of the case and curl up on the end of his bed. It didn’t, so after a moment he began talking again,
‘I had Mr Prufrock for Latin today, we call him cabbage because he smells strange, and he hit my fingers with the ruler because I was looking out of the window. He has hairy fingers and one big eyebrow, so sometimes they call him The Ape. Also Henry, I tried Semolina today at lunch but I didn’t like it and I had to throw up in the flowerbed but Charlie, the old gardener with the glass eye, got angry and said rude words… I think they were rude words. Oh, and Mummy rang, I miss her…’
This last he brushed over quickly, worried about bursting into tears because he knew one should never cry near a tiger, because they were the bravest animals of all. ‘I skinned my knee in cricket, but we still won…’

As he stood talking a slightly older boy of perhaps eleven, a prefect badge clipped onto his dressing gown, approached down the stairway and stood looking at Edmond for a second, shaking his head. After a few minutes he walked down and tapped the other child on the shoulder, grimacing slightly as Edmond jumped and turned around with huge mournful eyes, sensing punishment for his actions.
‘You know you can’t be down here Edmond’ the boy said, not unkindly ‘you’ll wake everyone up.’
‘Sorry Jack’ Edmond replied, ‘I was talking to Henry’
‘Well’ Jack smiled, ‘you can always sneak back down tomorrow when I’m not looking, ok?’
‘Yes Jack’ Edmond nodded and quickly padded back towards the stairway, leaving Jack alone to talk to Henry.

On the Edge (Independent Fiction)

Chapter One

Thirty years before, New York City, the office of the editor of a prominent arts magazine. An open magazine lies on a desk amid ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts and half finished drinks, all of them alcoholic. The magazine in question is the New Yorker, the arts section. Double paged picture, Joaquin standing with brush in hand, a dozen paintings on easels around him, like petals on a flower of swirling colours and bright blotches, paint thrown on canvas with a blasé almost approaching distain.

“Why should I give a shit, its art?” the headline reads in black font, a statement rather than a question, bold in type and content.

A man stands behind the desk looking at it, short and fat, large glasses below a sweaty brow and receding hairline. He exudes pomposity with his large chest stuck out in what he presumes is a look made to impress and intimidate despite braces over a shirt vaguely stained with gravy and gin.
‘I am the editor of the second largest culture magazine in America’ he is saying, his voice a fog horn that emits spittle and globules of food as he talks, ‘the second largest. The first largest, this shit’ he points in anger to the offending item, the open magazine with its picture of Joaquin, ‘is the bane of my existence, topping the ratings continuously, thwarting my every effort.

The truth, Shaw, the terrible truth behind what we journalists do, is that sex, drugs and fucking debauchery of every twisted kind, that muck sells like hotcakes. We might say we’re a culture journal, or whatever name the assholes up top choose to call us, but we’re really no different from any two dime magazine on the street with its shitty gossip and fabricated lies. The art is just to make it look like we sanitise the filth, like chlorine in a swimming pool, just because’ it’s there doesn’t mean nobody is peeing in the goddamn water.

Now, the problem is Shaw, that while I’ve accepted this my counterpart in the fucking New Yorker has too, and he had a fucking head start of a year. He’s got his people, your counterparts, out sniffing through the garbage and muck of every two-bit so called “famous person” in the art and literary world.’

He took a deep breath and glanced up with eyes like needles at the man standing on the other side of the desk, slouching slightly in a baggy suit too big for him. Jeff Shaw watched the senior editor, his boss of seven months and twelve days, with forlorn curiosity. Shaw was a man of stark contrast to the editor, or simply Ed as everyone in the office called him, more in touch with the times they were living in, and there for that very reason. His hair was left long and untrimmed so that it passed over his ears and reached the stiff collar of his pastel yellow shirt, flecks of premature grey, he was barely twenty-five, showing in the nest of unruly brown. His eyes were light blue and curious though his mouth was set in a look of impartiality. A pair of aviator sunglasses was shoved onto his shirt, held in place at the neck and a pack of Marlboros peaked out of the breast pocket. He stood still and unspeaking till the other man impatiently gave up waiting for a response and carried on, obviously loving the sound of his own voice,

‘Now Shaw, I’ll make it clear. I don’t care for your type, you modernists with the way your never content, always shaking things up. In my day it was different, but I’m no fucking idiot and if I can’t move with the times I can at least pay some smuck like you to do it for me, and make us all some fucking money. You see Shaw, celebrity is my fucking bread and butter, it’s the filler in the magazine and this guy’ he pointed one meaty finger at the picture of Joachim, ‘is pure gold dust, and taking off faster than Marilyn Monroe. His paintings are worth more than either you or me make in a year (but how much does that say) and every famous person knows him or spends their time pretending to… Over all this one fucking article has sold ten thousand more copies and its only been out two days…’

As he ranted on and on, one finger still tapping, Jeff glanced down and saw the mans fingernails were bitten to the tip and yellow from cigarettes, a repelling combination that made this repugnant dwarf more hideous.
‘So boss’ Jeff asked, his accent lazy but cultured in a East Coast America way, produced straight from prep-school and a overly decent university, ‘you got a job for me? I can do an piece on this Westfallen painter guy, if that’s what you want.’
‘A piece’ Ed spat, ‘what the fuck do you think we are, the New York fucking times? I don’t want you to sit down with this guy for twenty minutes so he can bullshit you a fake shit story and then fuck off to do some more blow and fuck some more cheap French hotel hookers, I want you to get in his life, and do it better than the competition.’
‘Sure’ Jeff nodded, smiling slightly at this news, ‘I can do this.’

‘Shaw’ Ed continued, raising one fat hand, ‘you’ve only got that stupid shit eating grin on your face because you don’t have a fucking idea about what I want you to do yet. You think its easy, do you in your idealistic fucking brain, living with some celebrity in his life of sex and drugs while we pay your way? Wise up son, its hard work, you’ve got to keep one eye open while you sleep. These people are animals; they’ll eat you alive if you give them cause. If that’s not enough, you won’t be the only one desperate enough to be doing this. The New Yorker has had a man trailing Joaquin Westfallen for six months, six months Shaw. He’s going to be in favour in Westfallen’s court, and he’s going to be hot on the story before you even arrive.’
‘The story’ Jeff asked, not smiling ‘what is the story boss?’
‘How the fuck should I know. This guys rich and famous, he spends more money than everyone else and paints pictures when he’s not snorting and fucking that are thought so good everyone wants one. All I give a shit about is that the fucking bastards in the New Yorker think he’s big enough to have one of their best young guys cover him, so I’m going to put you in there to make things a bit more even. Your young kid, but you’re a good journalist and I want you in on the action. Trust me kid, Shaw, there’s enough shit in this fucked up character’s life that you should have no problem digging up a nice pile of juicy dirt. Now, check with Janice in accounts for your passport and flight tickets and get the fuck out of my sight until you’ve got a story, that clear?’
‘Yes sir, crystal’ Jeff said deadpan, ‘I won’t let you down but shouldn’t I have more info, I mean I’ve never even really heard of this cat, and now you want me living with him and writing about him?’

‘If you want more information, take this’ Ed said, throwing the magazine into the air and watching with amusement as Shaw grimised and took a step back, fumbling as he caught the magazine. With that the embarrassed journalist about faced and headed to the door, Ed calling out after him,
‘You’ve got a month, starting from tomorrow morning. Know this though, whatever you do Shaw, don’t fucking fail me.’

*

‘So’ Janice, the secretary told him later, ‘Ed gave you a job abroad. That’s big for a guy like you, he must like you, if that man has the capacity to like anyone. Has he even told you where your going yet sweetie?’
‘No’ Jeff shook his head, ‘he didn’t say anything apart from this cat’s your guy, tail him and get a story.’
‘That’s Ed’s way Honey’ Janice smiled, all crooked teeth, black-dyed greying beehive and huge winged glasses, ‘he’s old school, from before the war. He learned fast, and expects you to do the same. Now, moving on sweetie,
I spoke to one of Mr. Westfallen’s assistants and arranged everything for you. you’ll be flying into Marrakesh, Morocco, get picked up at the airport and go straight to Mr. Westfallen’s house there, it’s where he’s spending the summer to paint the nice assistant man told me. Now, what about your finances. You’ve got a lot of money, you’ll need it if your with this crowd, so don’t worry too much about accounts but please, honey, keep receipts because it’s a pain in my ass if you don’t.’
She chuckled dirtily and Jeff stared back expressionlessly as she gathered herself and continued,
‘You’ll figure the rest out for yourself I think, oh and do watch out for the New Yorkers man, he’s good.’
‘Who is he’ Jeff asked, ‘just so I know what I’m up against.’
‘He’s a Brit I think, speaks with a very funny accent. Not too old, few years on you though, …twenty-nine…Twenty-eight, something like that. He’ll be the one in the tweed, so keep an eye out honey and you’ll be fine.’
‘Thanks Janice’ he smiled and kissed the woman on the cheek, ‘you’re a saint, I’ll get you something nice in Morocco.’
Bounding slightly with joy as he walked Jeff left the small office, swinging round the door and into the press pit where he kept his small nondescript desk, amid a hundred other similar ones, each with a journalist straining at a keyboard or writing reams of notes on pieces of paper.’
‘Hey Joey’ he shouted to a tired looking hack in shirtsleeves as he passed, ‘I got a job, I’m off to Marrakesh.’
‘You bastard’ the man said, ‘good luck, and have fun.’

On the Edge (Independent Fiction)

Prologue

Joaquin Westfallen. For thirty-five years he was famous. Then he was dying and nobody gave a shit. For those three and a half decades though, he was god. His face in black and white and later colour, plastered in newspapers, magazine, billboards and on television. His thoughts and ideas scrawled in two autobiographies and splayed upon a dozen canvasses a month. The labels assigned to him were endless and contradictory, painter, artist, author, alcoholic and drug addict, roué and womanizer, bastard, con and gentleman. Perpetually wasted and to some, boundlessly talented, he moved with grace through social sects of the high and mighty in their playgrounds, Paris his favourite, Monaco a drag.

By the spring of 1987 though he sat alone, hair growing grey, hands shaking from the daemon drink and cut cocaine, carpet slippers on his feet and thick dressing gown wrapped tight around his very frail and thinning body, emaciation not far way. He sat alone in a wicker chair on a balcony outside a crumbling monastery on the coast of Spain, a thin cigarillo gradually burning down to embers in one hand, a half finished gin and tonic floating languidly in its glass as still as the waters in the bay far below his vantage point. He sat looking at it with tired eyes, fingers tapping steadily on the armrest of his chair, thinking deeply.

Beside him, resting on a side table was a picture, a portrait of two young men in their twenties, one dressed in a tweed suit, the other in linen, both with hats perched low on their heads and arms holding each others shoulders. Behind them were palm trees and the corner of a church, blurry and out of focus, the photo tropical and old. Joaquin sat looking at the picture, throwing the cigar on the ground as if it were poisoned, picking the photo up and feeling its age in the weight of the thing, staring close at the faded faces of the two subjects, remembering taking the shot himself so long ago and laughing at the effort of forcing poses from the awkward and modest. As he put the picture back on the table, his mind began to roam.

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, N.H
2009 Dance Concert Review

So-called modern dance is a difficult genre to be preformed at any university, let alone Franklin Pierce. With dance companies, theatre schools and more prestigious colleges snapping up the most talented dancers, choreographers and theatre managers it stands to reason that a relatively unknown institution such as ours would be at the bottom of the metaphorical food chain as far as talent goes. With this in mind I was therefore slightly sceptical about attending the Franklin Pierce Winter Dance Concert. Overall though, its fair to say I was presently surprised by the quality of the performances. There were a few flinch worthy moments of course, but also some amazing and very talented appearances that made the former barely noticeable.

The concert was held in the warehouse theatre, a simple location without pomp or flair but this was in some ways appropriate as the darkness helped accentuate the simple moves of the dancers. The first dance to be shown was the very French Avec la Gauche, choreographed by Wendy Dwyer. Beginning with a group of dancers dressed in a European style with berets and black summer dress, running across the stage dragging behind them roller suitcases and choreographed to catchy French music it was snappy and feisty dance with some very clever moments. The girls behaved as if they were waiting for a train, criss-crossing the stage and miming meeting each other. There was a brilliant moment where they lifted the bags above their heads and pirouetted, then lay down with the bags on their chests. Unfortunately the overall effect was hampered by a severe lack of timing among the performers that rendered parts of the dance almost unwatchable.
The mood changed with the next dance, Shell. This was much darker, the music more trance-like. Making use of modern lighting techniques the stage was flooded with a green glow aimed through the blades of a rotating fan. Unfortunately the dancing itself was mainly of a lower quality and this really impacted the piece. Though I may sound like a image obsessed chauvinist the following has to be said: If a dancer is overweight to the point where she is audibly out of breath, something is wrong! Also the choreography was for me too erotic, the performers were forced to drape themselves over each other in a slightly unsettling fashion and it made the whole thing slightly unnerving.
Following Shell came Armee de Plastique. The performers were dressed in all black except for bunny-tail like pink ribbons tied to their bums, and this simplicity really worked to extenuate their movements. Set to music by Moby the dance itself had the girls moving mostly as if mechanized, stiffly but then suddenly fluid. I found myself really enjoying this piece and its simplicity.

The next dance however was very poor indeed and lived down to being called simply Untitled. The girls were good dancers, have no mistake on this, but their consumes didn’t mach and were in many cases too small which gave them a slightly comic appearance. The choreography was boring which was hardly mediated by some slick lighting, and the music was unmemorable.
If I have shown the low point of the concert then I am about to show the high. First Sight, a so called work in progress for later projects, was stunning. Utilizing just two performers it began with (and please forgiving me if I’ve muddled the two girls up) the brilliantly talented Gabriella Aufiero, who for me stole the whole show, sprawled on the stage and contorting herself slightly in moves similar to that of the dancer in Pearl Primus’s Strange Fruit. The lighting was very simple, as was her costume and the two played off against each other perfectly. Suddenly Ms. Aufiero was joined by the almost as good Amy Dilks and the two performed a world wind of spinning, almost ballet-like, movements that culminated with Ms. Dilks spinning Ms. Aufero around the stage by a simple red ribbon tied around the latter’s waist, controlling her movements through this as if it was the leash for a dog. This dance was completely brilliant and I have no complaints, save for the fact that the two young women performing it should consider looking for more prestigious appointments in the world of dance.

The finale of the concert was the maddening The Haunting. I use this verb because in the roughly 15 minutes it ran it soured and plummeted with both very high and low points. Though it was slightly too long it employed impressive visuals by having the lead dancer backlit by a black and white movie of a house and cast iron gate that I found slightly chilling but VERY edgy indeed. The dancing was both brilliant and drudgery, the best part being a walze conducted by four couples, each carrying a large lamp between them. Unfortunately one had failed to work so the whole image was lost slightly.

So, in just one hour the school Theatre and Dance department has shown us the best and the not so brilliant, showcasing some real talent but illustrating the areas where more work needs to urgently be done. Overall I’d say I was very impressed and even pleasantly surprised, and will hope to see further concerts in the future.

There was no closure for us going back. Splintered tree branches, the ends lily white from where they’d split from their trunks, lay festooned around the campus we loved so much. The paths to the doors were covered in thick snow, brambles crawling over a splintered Adirondack chair that I remembered from my days there, a thick chain fence now stuck crudely like a thick scar across from the old farm house. Even the trees around the Buddha garden were in pieces, the statue itself hidden by ice. We parked behind the old educator housing, cracked a beer and walked into the school like explorers stumbling upon an ancient city.
Around us were the signs of decay, rot on the wooden siding of the buildings, a tattered blue plastic rain jacket hanging from a tree. It was this last that brought back memories, images of teenagers walking up a path through icy mountains, of standing in that very spot and packing and unpacking our heavy backpacks in unison upon huge tarps that probably still gather dust in one of the school’s locked sheds. Looking at the rain jacket Zach pointed, we recognized the type from when we had been here years ago.

I had not seen Zach Orme for almost two years when we met yesterday. Old school friends from Shackleton we had been reunited just once after the closure and a fierce argument had sent us on our own paths from there. Yesterday though, was a time to put our differences aside, embrace old friendships and go back to the start. Ashby Academy, the autistic school that had followed Shackleton when our doors had so abruptly closed, had gone bankrupt under a cloud of fraud allegations alleging to the founders penchant for buying sports cars with tuition fees and was now under investigation by the F.B.I . With this in mind we had decided that the buildings would be empty and that we should visit for old times sake.

To this end we had lunch and drove back up icy roads, past forests snapped in half by the ice storm, the landscape looking to us as if a Bosnian warzone had intruded into our quiet New England existence. A giant tree had smashed through the shed of a house on Spring Hill, and as we finally mounted the hill an abandoned and tragic looking campus faced us. My eyes widened and I was lost for words, instinctively I turned off the radio and forced us to deal with the silence.

Zach led the way after we’d parked the car. We sipped our dark beer, trudging through the snow and posing for pictures outside the abandoned buildings. All around us, the place was like a horrible nightmare that had taken root in my darkest subconscious for nowhere were there signs of improvement or progression. Seemingly nothing much had changed since the last day of school save for a single fence standing pointlessly by the entrance, shining a light into Elephant Island we saw furniture we recognized and the same beds gathering dust. In the dining hall the kitchen had been ripped out but everything still looked like the same old Shackleton. Even the emergency lights were still on and I was reminded of a scene from the film "Shackleton" where the Endurance lies sinking in the ice and yet a single light blinks on and off like a "heart beat" to tell the crew she is still alive.

The hardest part of visiting was not being welcomed back into a loving community. Even now I remember being a first year in Sua Sponte and giving out blankets to Boaz, Danny and Rob Bessler as they visited, our alumni but still part of our family. For me and Zach it was different. We were alone in what felt like a pure white thought consumed with bitterness and darkness, the buildings that had played such a big part in who we are covered with brambles, snow and rot.

In the end though, as I drove away with eyes sore with barely suppressed tears I remembered that Shackleton still exists, however cheesy that sounds to you who were not part of it. Though our campus has succumb to nature, like the Endurance did when it buckled and sunk beneath Earnest Shackleton, like him we are not beaten. We keep in touch, many of us, share news of our journeys and when we meet, however rarely, we share much of the hope and optimism that bound us together in the first place.

"Zak"

"Me"

"Abandoned"

"Then"

"Lights still on"

"Dorms"

"Memories"

"Buddha Garden"

"Many years Ago"

"When we were young"

"Simon, then"

"Paint Peeling"

"Empty"

"The Next Expedition"

"Overgrown"

"The sun sets"

"In the end WE are still Shackleton"

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, N.H


…Walking across the frozen lake and meeting new friends on the ice, getting a bloody nose boxing secretly with gloves in a back room, seeing Simon again after so long, watching deer scurry through the field above the school and geese meander across its wide lawns, sharing a moment of honest conversation with good friends, struggling to get an A in class…

These are things I remember now about Franklin Pierce, looking back from yesterday to the first time I walked onto campus as a student, months ago. When I am greying and aged, I wonder what I shall remember about this university. Will I idolize the good times and expand them so that they cover all, the memories like a think blanket of snow lying over a slum? Shall I dwell constantly on the dark, seeing only monotony, boredom and stress?

I hope not…

I hope that I have the good fortune to remember both, to balance this grand experience in my mind and examine it for both the positive and negative. I would like to look back and see with clarity, recall the snowstorms that buffeted our tiny community and brought us somehow closer together by necessity, the dear friends who went out of their way to help me, the fights and arguments but also the banter and laughing which are equal parts of this place.

Mostly though, if I could choose what to be able to remember, it is the other students. The good and bad, the perpetually drunk and the always sober, the shambolic and the organized, the hyperactive and the quite boring, they all weave together into a tapestry of balance that lends F.P.U the positive and negative memories I am constantly assailed with even now.

If I could, I would remember their faces…

(Robbie, Daria and Jess)

(Walking On the Frozen Lake with the girls)

(Lauren)

(Daria)

(Pam)

(Cooper)

(Dan)

(Lads)

(Bobert)

(Cooper)

(Trouble)

(University on Ice)

I, Tiger No More (Fiction)

I used to be the talk of this school, once. This may be hard for you to believe, having seen me as I am now, flea-bitten and dusty eyed in my display cabinet that still sits in the great hall, but I can assure you that it is true. Years ago, back when this great pile of towers and minarets was a stately home of the slightly aristocratic the mighty Queen Victoria trampled around the earth with her gunship diplomacy, giving to the natives of captured lands all that is British… Afternoon Tea, Cricket, English … She took in exchange, me…

“Oh, it’s a Tiger” stately women would exclaim upon my arrival in this building, covering their mouths with dainty hands in white gloves, capitalizing my species and giving me undue importance

“How terrifying.”
And indeed I was. My glass eyes were bright then, fiery with a look of malice that I never remember possessing in life; my teeth bared as if I, the stuffed animal in a glass case, would at any moment SPRING to life and with a crash of glass come hurling at those who had slain me. Of course, no such thing happened and soon enough I was regarded as a mere oddity, an expensive bauble that frightened children but left others unperturbed.

This last was deeply ironic, the fact that my countenance provoked such feelings in the pre-pubescent members of the human race only, for one day this house with its graceful ladies and pompous gentlemen became a school. Oh, how I remember being terribly agitated as bags were packed and heavy furniture carted out past my vantage point. Would I be left behind? I asked myself, and as the master of the house closed the doors behind him and left the empty shell of the building for the last time, I realized that the answer was of course, YES.

Much later I remember faces staring at me, some with noses covered in snot, and others pushing bifocals up to their eyes so they could see me better. They were small faces, pink, round and plump with youth and I realized with a pang of discomfort that as I had lain in sullen depression over my family’s departure, many of these small people had arrived to live in their place. As masters in dark robes bustled past to scare the children who had been regarding me with such rapt attention into activity I exulted in this new found fame. I was king of a boarding school.

True, the times have not always been good, but I have guarded my flock with care. As the First World War began I watched the older boys leave for the front, showing off their uniforms to the younger ones, wishing more than anything that I could leave this glass box and journey out with them to France. What a sight that would have been, a majestic tiger bounding at full speed towards the Bosh trenches, dodging artillery and machine gun fire to finally reach those who would hurt my children. What a sight that would have been…
By the time the Second World War ended over twenty five later I was no longer of this simplistic mindset. A plaque they placed next to me gave the body counts from the twin conflicts, many many fine names printed there. OH, how sad I was at their passing. I comforted the smaller boys you know, they would appear late at night in pajamas and press their noses as close to mine as they could, praying that they could be as brave as I appeared. I would try to give them this courage, will my thoughts to reach their brains and make their fears and worries disappear. Perhaps it worked, I would like to think that it did.

My biggest contribution however, was stopping the thief. He came in at night, dressed in black and with a crow-bar forced the door wide open. Armed with an electric torch he looked about the room nervously, searching for objects to steal. Instead the beam of light caught my face and he screamed, terrified at my presence. His shout, though not horribly loud, awakened masters whose ears were ready for such noises from their students. Lights went on and he fled, forced away from the school by me.

Finally, there is the matter of the gift my boys gave me. I remember hearing it for the first time long ago, in the time when all the children wore scratchy gray shorts, scratchy red socks, and a scratchy hat, shirt, tie and blazer. A figure approached me, one of my favorite children, Sam if I remember rightly. He stopped for a second, and looked at me with compassion. He was dressed in a smart black suit and I understood from this that his time was up, that he would be leaving to join the real world.

“Thanks Henry” he whispered, looking straight at me, “Thanks for everything.”
I have a name I realized, and as clarification I began hearing it again and again as more students filed past over the preceding decades. I had become their talisman I realized, but more than that, I had become more loved and respected than any live tiger could hope to have been. I, Tiger no more. Please call me Henry.

Those That Share the Same Road I Do

To write about ones friends is dangerous, for sentimentality often trivializes the feelings they inspire and makes them into mere characters of their former selves. For years I have wanted to portray those closest to me on my blog and indeed I have, though was never quite satisfied with the effort for they never seemed to resonate in print the way they do in life. Out of brutal frustration I have decided that now is not the time, for I am not yet a good enough writer and I should instead allow you to see them in pictures. Through these snapshots they are caught in a brief moment of their lives, alive and vibrant.
They are truly some of the best people I have ever, or will ever know and I am truly blessed to call them my friends.

(Dave)

(Rakan)

(Roy)

(Drew)

(Sean and I)

(O.G Derek)

(Beth and Jade)

The Best Man (Fiction)

The church was even more terrifying for Greg than the airport had been. He stood in the white entrance hall for a second, alone now his taxi driver had dropped him off, heads turning to stare at him. Some of the faces he recognized, others he knew by proxy, still others he had to guess at. Those he knew had aged since he’d been away, most of them badly. The women, most one-time bouncy cheerleaders sneaking a quick cigarette behind the sports hall before practice had become, in the space of barely a decade, worn out husks of their formers self’s, peroxide blondes wearing too much make-up and clothes bought on the cheap. The men had fared as badly, many having obviously stashed their baseball caps in the cabs of the many pick-up trucks waiting outside, their suits shiny and mostly rented from the Mr. Tux in the Regal Mall.
‘Hey’ he heard someone whisper, a jock he remembered drinking beers with in a dirty basement, ‘No fucking way… Holy shit, that’s G.’
‘Who’ someone else asked and the Jock replied in a hushed tone, ‘Some kid we went to school with, him and Ethan were really tight. After graduation he bounced, went to Columbia or some shit…One of those countries down there…became a doctor, if you’d believe that…’

Greg looked right and left and started walking down the isle, feeling self conscious in his suit, which he’d had tailor-made in a town outside Huehuetenango by a ancient Mayan man with no teeth and skin as wizened as a dried apple, who spat brown tobacco juice onto the ground and shouted throaty commands in Mam at his pretty daughter who would bustle in and out of the room in the thick fabric of her traditional ethnic dress, carrying small bundles of material for Don Gregory to feel between finger and thumb. In the end he had selected a piece of quite good linen that the man had somehow acquired as part of a successful barter over a goat, and a length of silk lining taken from a abandoned suit that the owners cousin had found in the Salvation Army shop in Guatemala City.

The result, Greg and the Mendoza family felt, was positive. He had lived with them for five years as their guest, and eventually adopted son and sibling. The thought of him being dressed up and looking like a “Proper” Gringo had been so exiting that they had all stormed into his room the minute he had returned from the tailor. The family had watched him put it on in the mirror and turn around to show them, just before he left and caught the chicken bus to the airport. Mama had clapped her large calloused hands together with her brood of five following suit, all except Ramon who was up in the highlands with his machete and the goats.

They were an odd combination standing next to the tall white man, Mama and her daughters in their long embroidered, multi-coloured dresses and the sons in their red and white striped pants and heavy collared white overshirts, the traditional belted hats of the village on their heads.
‘b’á’nxsa’ Mama had said in Mam, repeating the phrase in Spanish as she always did around him, even though his Mam was almost perfect now, ‘Bueno, Bueno’ and Sylvia the oldest daughter had giggled and looked up at him with her large brown eyes,
‘Tu es Tom Cruise’ she said, ‘James Bond.’

It was common for the Maya to get Hollywood actors and their film muddled up and this joined with the comparison had made Greg roar with laughter, as he realized how much he would miss them all for the week and a half he would be gone. As he turned away, feeling a bit self conscious and blushing she had said a word in Mam he didn’t understand.
‘Que significa Shíwel?’ he asked, ‘Yo No Comprende.’
‘Zorro’ Little Alfredo answered, using the Spanish word for fox.
‘Gracias’ Greg had smiled, tears in the corner of his eye, ‘Gracias’

Now Greg walked between rows of people he had less in common with than a family of Mayan Guatemalans who lived with no running water and constant power outages in a harsh land of mountains and tough, backbreaking work. These Americans were, at least in terms of skin colour, his people, but even on that issue there was little similarity. His face was dark and slightly leathery now, from summers spent vaccinating children against polio and dengue in the hills outside of Todo Santos, and a livid scar ran two inches down his right cheek where a machete had caught him by surprise in a drunken bar brawl when he’d first arrived in Guate. Never the less he had aged well due to Mama’s every effort to keep her ‘Doctor’ well fed and nourished in the mornings before he rode his bike down the hill to the clinic, piling beans and corn torteas onto his plate with reckless abandon.

‘Jesus’ a voice said, cutting him off from his reverie and a familiar figure stood up and rushed in to hug him in an embrace of muscle and relatively expensive cologne,
‘You actually made it you bastard’
‘Yeh, I said I would’ Greg grinned, pleased but slightly awkward, as he had still not entirely got used to speaking English again.
‘Let me look at you’ Ethan smiled, stepping back to look at his friend, ‘do you look the part...’
After a second he nodded, pleased ‘yeh, you’ll do, for a jungle man. What about me?’
Greg looked at his best friend, noting the clean-shaven chin, the still broad shoulders he’d had playing football, the dark blue eyes and crew cut hair just starting to grey around the edges. ‘She’d be crazy to turn you down, I always said that, when you first asked her out in middle school.’
‘Thanks man’ Evan smiled, his manner slightly brushed up from his years working as a car salesman, ‘It means a lot you being here, Cheryl is exited as anything.’
‘And her sister’ Greg asked, slightly dreading the answer, ‘has she forgotten me?’
‘Ha’ his friend laughed, ‘that girl will never forget you. She’s still looking quite good, she’s the maid of honour of course so you’ll see her in a second. She’s mad nervous about seeing you, Cheryl says. Had she not been such a retard and got knocked up by Hal White, I bet she would have stopped being stupid and gone for you in the end.’
‘But she didn’t…’
‘No’ Evan agreed, lowering his voice and whispering in Greg’s ear, ‘But you’re a doctor, in Guatemala man. Think of the shit you do, your one in a million bro, I’ve read your blog and seen the photo’s. Whole villages depend on you to keep them alive and shit, and she’s stuck at home with a drunk for a husband and three kids to look after when she’s not watching daytime t.v. I know your still pissed but you don’t need that shit, and however much I miss you, leaving was the smartest thing you ever did. Now’ he said, straitening up to look around the crowded church,
‘Now that the best man has arrived I wonder where my damn girlfriend is.’
As if on queue the fat priest appeared and waved at the two men to walk to the side of the alter.

Later, as the organ started and the bride walked in, followed by her sister and the bridesmaids in their pink dresses, he knew with a sharp pang that he could not live in America ever again.

The Colour of Snow

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Franklin Pierce University, Rindge N.H

Looking out of my window I can see the light spread over the pine forests, though the sun is blocked from my view by the concrete monstrosity of the freshman dormitory, a grim soviet-era block more reminiscent of a Russian prison than any facet of an American university. Now my roommate has left I’ve shifted my bed to the window and look out at the dirty snow and the sliver of timeless pines, not a gorgeous view by any means but one that has everything I need. I’ve got my computer up and I’m typing, a must since I transferred my major to creative writing, endless half-finished stories already cluttering up my memory barely a week into the semester.

This new development means I am constantly busy, but the material it generates is enough that I can transfer my better and more interesting material straight to Student at Large on a regular basis. Coupled with the fact that I have been using my new digital SLR for more than taking pictures of drunk frat parties, this means I may actually be able to be consistent about updating the blog, though this is not the first time I’ve said that…

So, from now on Student and Large will have more varied segments. When I need to write about something I will, but fiction and creative non-fiction as well as some better shots will be integrated and I’d be grateful for any comment.

-Tom