creative ramblings & reverie

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Kachinas: A Christmas Story

 


I'm pleased that my short story "Kachinas" has been published in the December issue of Grande Dame Literary Journal—an appropriately seasonal tale, making me terribly nostalgic for New Mexico and its incomparable way of being.

 

 "Lil didn't know the meaning of the intricate rhythms and steps, since no outsiders were allowed to know, but she felt it somewhere deep within, encouraged by the drums. The story being told and prayer offered. The waiting clouds they danced into being, and quickened into hope. Nimbus, nimbostratus, the fertile, undulating clouds Xavier painted with abandon, with enormous swooping strokes of not just fingers, wrist, but his whole body—in a way becoming cloud himself, just as the dancers in their masks became the spirit-beings they embodied. Kachinas." 

 

This story is part of a thread also including "The Persian Warrior," "Day of the Dead," and "L'inconnue de la Seine."

 

And I, henceforth, would love the honorific "Grand Dame."

 

 

image:  Kachinas, photographer unknown

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