Marbles

Another story, "Marbles," has been published by the excellent Typishly (who, as I've said, I love not least for their perpetuation of the serif!).

This is a new addition to my collection of stories inspired by aphorisms, which includes "Swallows" and "Moss" (co-winners of the Literal Latté short-short contest in 2012), "Pishing" (published by The Walrus in 2013), "She Who Hesitates" (published by The Wild Word in 2019), and "Milk" (to be published by Minerva Rising this spring). 

Its heroine, Tess, is accused of having lost her marbles, and she agrees that "she had lost quantities of marbles, more than she could count," but "in some incalculable calculus all of the losses added up to make her what she was."  And what she wants now, instead of marbles, is the fairy tales she's illustrating happily,

"animals with magic powers, gray ocher wolves and burnt umber owls; women healers in carmine cloaks; genies curled like unctuous snakes in natural sienna pots; flying Turkish carpets of blackcurrant red with Rumi verses stitched around the edge, ready to dart off on transforming quests.  She wanted Fionnoula, their soft-coated Wheaten terrier, at her feet as she worked; to drink white peony tea from the stoneware noodle bowl she used as a teacup; to see the cottage garden out her window, with its leggy chives and echinacea, lamb's-ear, Russian sage, wild indigo, and pale pink hollyhocks.  To be at home, finally, fabulously, after so many years being somewhere else."

Writing Spaces

A favorite bookshop in Monterey.  

Windows, inside and out, a place of reflection, liminal and transportive.  The writing's not on the wall, but in and on the window.




image:  Christie B. Cochrell, January Window

January Term

"January Term," a story started long ago and finished recently has been published by Typishly, a stylish online literary journal (which, true to my own heart, believes in serifs, in this heathen age of sans!).

It all begins with Ariel, named for Shakespeare's "tricksy" spirit—

         "As Lucy fought her way out of the Super Shuttle outside Meadow Hall two days after the New Year, a great gray cat quite nearly landed on her head.  In class last fall she'd learned that Coleridge called drama a willing suspension of disbelief, the audience agreeing to set aside their critical faculties in order to be entertained.  And so she chose to be enchanted by the falling cat, all fur and canny turquoise eyes, as by a blazing comet foretelling the coming of kings, and didn’t mind that it almost hit her.  (Missed her by a whisker, as her Grandma Verna waiting tables back in Des Moines would have said.)

         The cat in turn was perfectly oblivious to Lucy, as to the cry of 'Ariel!' directed at it from above, and sauntered off with imposing disdain into the emerald-green grasses in front of the old dorm."

image:  Collage, Christie B. Cochrell