How fun! I’ve been given my very own Valentine’s mini-issue by Poor Yorick (A Journal of Rediscovery). It’s Santa Fe being rediscovered in this story, as well as a high school romance, and besides some mischievous exchanges between the old sweethearts (an author and an editor, no one I know), I enjoyed remembering my own Spanish class trip to Mexico City, back when—especially Chapultapec and Teotihuacan.
See here, for some travel back into past places. And even some cockatoos!
“On beautiful October days with brilliant leaves and skies, she sat in her new second bedroom/office with its rustic trestle table in a pullover that had been Julian's, and skinny jeans, and as the month went on turned up her ancient writing files. There were a few old stories that she thought weren't bad, from early classes in college, all of them exploring the insatiable aches and hungerings of female adolescence. That fateful trip to Mexico City with her Spanish class. The story of the pyramid she hadn't finished at the time, suddenly catapulted into her future instead. Maybe, she thought, something worth rescuing? A little personal—but so much time had passed, she knew it couldn't make any difference to anyone, including her.
She fiddled with the language of the stories, changed a name or two, and sent them off to various journals she found online. She hadn't published anything for years, since her two lesser novels, and thought she'd like to find herself writing again after too long just helping with Julian's papers and reports. It would be one more step towards rejoining the living. Last week she'd been persuaded by a coworker at the Library for the Blind where she'd started volunteering to buy a pair of cockatoos whose owner (the librarian's mother) had just gone into care. The birds, Salsa and Mambo, did add some whimsical color to her days.”
image: Christie B. Cochrell, figurine from Teotihuacan
