1707 c/o Wes Schofield

Mount Fuji Erupts

 
 
The last time Mount Fuji erupted I was ten years old. That morning my mother filled my bowl with ramen and warm broth and told me to hide under the mat. She climbed the mountain and stood at the mouth of the volcano. Her skin turned red and blistered. Black ash settled over her head and shoulders till she was completely covered. The rock beneath her feet cracked and a strong wind blew her away.

The next time Mount Fuji erupts I will be three hundred and forty seven years old. In the evening I will climb to the top of the highest building in Japan and watch the lava shoot past the stars. Ashes will rain down I will hold out my bowl capturing the face of my mother. When the bowl is full I will add warm broth and ramen and drink her soul.

1666 c/o Wes Schofield

  

Newton vs. Satan
The battle for 1666

 
  
Newton awoke the first of January, 1666, at an o’clock of the a.m. At precisely the same time but in an alternate dimension, Satan, a.k.a the Lord of all Evil, rose from his slumber with a massive splitting headache. Identical in tone and timbre to the pounding drum housed inside the mind of the as yet to be named Sir Isaac Newton. Headaches, both the result of imbibing too many drinks the night before. Newton finished off an entire case of last year’s vintage with a few friends he was entertaining at the Salon. Satan, meanwhile, had been sipping a heady brew made from the fermented souls of hell’s most tortured victims while watching the ball drop at Times Square on his new plasma TV. The pair of them having personalities prone to self-indulgence, especially when under the influence, each spent the last hour before midnight denouncing their opponents and boasting of the great things they had in store for the New Year. Yet, come the light of day, neither felt up to even the slightest amount of greatness and spent the whole afternoon into the evening deep beneath the covers vowing never to drink again. Only Newton awoke at midnight to discover Calculus.

Down in Hell, come springtime, Satan had yet to come up with anything which might fulfil his promises of the New Year, while Newton had gone on to split light with a prism and prove a rainbow is held within. If Satan wasn’t careful he was going to lose the tenuous grip he held on all the Demons of the underworld. Already he could tell they were beginning to suspect he had nothing to do with the great plague that had ravished England of at least a million citizens in the past year. If he didn’t do something soon to distract them he might have an uprising on his hands.

His chance finally came when, at end of a long hot summer, a fire broke out in London and quickly spread to engulf almost the entire city. Seizing the opportunity to lie his way into the forefront he took all the credit. Even the most murderous of his minions could not fail to be impressed by the complete lack of compassion required to take an already embattled city down to its ashen foundations.

Crossing his fingers, Satan went to visit his nemesis that evening hoping to find the house burned the to ground and Newton’s charred remains. Instead he found him hard at work in his study, seemingly unaware of the chaos spewing forth around him. Satan peered over Newton's left shoulder and saw pages of numbers and symbols all, to him, incomprehensible mathematical scribbling. But at the top of the page was written a word he could actually read, “Gravity”.

Furious, Satan returned to hell and locked himself away in his room. He could not allow Newton to show him up again; perhaps he might be able to discover this Gravity first. Three days he spent watching the Discovery Channel and carrying out crude experiments involving a bowling ball and a feather. By the end all he could come up with was F is equal to M times A. Where “F” is the amount of Fritos consumed, “M” is the number of times he would murder Newton if he had the chance and “A” is absolutely how little he understands what the hell he is talking about.

After the third day, he began to hear the rumbling of growing mob outside his door. He blasted the volume on his surround sound until it pierced his eardrums and he could ignore the screams of hell’s fury no longer.

“What? What do you want?” he asked. “I was about to find out how much feces ends up on the average toothbrush.”

“Fraud,” the crowd chanted at him. It seemed the fires of London were now under control, and through there was a lot of property damage, only six people died. Worse than that, however, the fire had put an end to the plague by cleanly disposing of the corpses and killing all the rats that had been spreading the disease.

Satan could think of only one person to blame: “Newton”.

Satan found him sitting under an apple tree reading a book. Typical. Climbing the tree, Satan hovered over him whispering hushed threats and vulgarities. He wanted to strike him dead with a bolt of lighting but pride stopped him. He had to get one over on this pedantic dork. Looking over he spotted an apple hanging just out of reach. Inspiration struck. The old apple trick, it never fails, no one had yet been able to resist the temptation of all the knowledge in the universe. Satan smiled and leaned over to snatch the fruit. But as his weight shifted the branch he reached towards snapped.

The apple fell.

1598 c/o Wes Schofield

Notes Concerning the Night Sky

Jepp fell asleep every night counting the stars. He would count them on his fingers and his toes, his mouth, two eyes, two ears, and his nose. Twenty-six was the largest number he knew, so after counting his nose star, he gave them names instead.

Astrid, Anne, Ariel, Ashley, Betty, Bonnie, Connie, Cara, Delilah, Denise, Gertrude, Penny, Polly, Wauneta, Yola, and Zoe, names of all the girls he once knew. Then having run out of human beauties he would count the sky’s brightest lightest by his favorite foods. Spaghetti, Chocolate Cake, Scrambled Eggs, Ice Cream, Coffee, Lamb stew.

Once he had turned the hottest suns of the universe into an earthly smorgasbord of tasty delights, he counted by shades of green he had passed earlier that day on his way into town to buy a stack of fresh paper. Deep green grass, Fresh leaf green, Fallen leaf green, Baby bud green, Caterpillar green, Mossy green, Painted green fence green, Darkest black dirty pond green.

He counted by games he knew, he counted by cities he’d been to, by the rhythms he could dance soft shoe dance steps to.

It was around a quarter to three in the morning when he finally had wracked from his brain every possible notion, entity, name, or miscellany he could use to tally up the points of fire dotting the endless black of the night. It was also usually around this time each night he would be sent by his master to brew a fresh pot of coffee or tea. So, once having set a steaming mug on his master's table, being most careful not to spill a drop on one of the sheets filled with precious calculations, he would reclaim his spot in the tumble of hay below the massive tube containing the lens and other fine instruments capable of refracting from deepest darkest depths of our universe a small dot of visible light, and return to his sleeping ritual starting this time with pure nonsense gibberish.

Bock, Tock, Wick, Wock, Spic, Spoc, Trink, Zock, Zum, Grum, Plim, Trum, Voe, Koe, Krue, Cho. He rhymed like this, in a sing-song way, as a warm up to more complicated bit of meaningless twaddle. It was too difficult to carry on with monosyllabic rhyming gabble for more then five minutes without repeating oneself.

Chinto-soramorainian, Yegaldinarin, Togosh-myincantarue, Flimall, Duckrald, Nickra, Waza-ra-ra-ra-ru-hingto-clo-clu-bymaruchybabou.

Now although Jepp - a simple, uneducated, midget-servant-jester to master astronomer Tycho Brahe - had no precise way of knowing it, Waza-ra-ra-ra-ru-hingto-clo-clu-bymaruchybabu was also the last entry in his master’s catalogue listing the positions of 1,004 stars published early that year.

Tycho Brahe gave star one thousand and four the name three-k-Centauri, noted its location as two hundred and eleven degrees, three minutes, zero seconds and marked it’s dimness as a five.

Jepp noted the location of Waza-ra-ra-ra-ru-hingto-clo-clu-bymaruchybabu as 'two hand spans next to my nose over the biggest Fresh leaf green tree'. Its colour was that of a stack of fresh clean paper delivered on a Wednesday. He also made note of its twinkle, something Tycho Brahe had not. A very pretty blue sparkly twinkle, not as dim as Scrambled Eggs, but not quite as bright as Ashley on a dark snowy night.

1547 c/o Wes Schofield

Simple Words

Martynas Mažvydas wrote a book. Some other guy printed it. I don’t know his name.

The book Mr. Mažvydas wrote was the very first book printed in the Lithuanian language. It also happens to be the most prominent example of syntactical-intonational prosody we have today. Whatever that means.

It used to be a lot of work to print things. It involved plates. And presses. And little tiny metal letters placed on plates and set into presses where they were covered with ink and stamped against pieces of paper. Then it had to be taken apart, cleaned up, and all the little tiny letters re-arranged, and the whole process repeated again many times because that was only for the first page.

Or something like that. I’m not a doctor. Nor was I bothered to enter the thirteen keystrokes it would have taken to have the Google search engine elucidate me on the history of the printing press complete with color diagrams and a proper bibliography. It’s not that I wasn’t interested, but this is a fictional story so I’m okay with just making things up.

It was also some guy’s job to make the little tiny metal letters. His name was Betty and he was a smelter by trade. He poured molten iron into little tiny metal casts shaped like little tiny letters in order to form the little tiny metal letters. He made the little tiny metal casts too, a completely different process, but it’s pretty dull so I won’t get into it.

So thanks to Betty and a whole slew of people, most of whom have names more appropriate sounding for their chosen profession, we have this book, The Simple Words of Catechism, by Martynas Mažvydas.

And because there was this book, there is now this very short story, which although not completely bereft of effort, or certainly, I would guess anyways, considerably less effort than it took for the twenty-seven various individuals, who all together devoted approximately five hundred hours of their time, to make Martynas Mažvydas book available to the Lithuanian public.

However, I would be neglectful not to mention that this very short story was itself crafted upon a computer using a word processor, two inventions of technology which themselves were created over a period of many decades by countless teams of individuals, working at times independently and at other times in tandem, for a variety of different organizations, often in separate countries but not always, improving upon the work of their predecessors, until these instruments for creation finally reached the level of sophistication they are at today. So while it may be very simple for me to type this story out, giving it whatever font I desire from of a vast number of typographical options, fonts that in and of themselves were designed by some third party, then print numerous copies of this story to be handed out to family and friends, or otherwise distribute it widely over the internet where is can be ignored by millions of people, these things are possible only as a result of the various contributions of hundreds, if not thousands of people, the likelihood of which is that at least one and perhaps even a few share the name of Betty.

So while it might be said, whether it is completely inaccurate or not I cannot say, as I have already explained I’m not a doctor, that this very short piece of fiction based upon the real life creation of Martynas Mažvydas' book, The Simple Words of Catechism, is only now possible to due the efforts of the sum total of all the individuals previously mentioned as well as the compound efforts of numerous individuals I have neglected to mention, not out of malice or any particular feeling of ill will towards any of said people, simply because this is a story and not a grocery list.

Suffice to say nineteen of them were named Betty and each one holds a place in my heart.

1537 c/o Wes Schofield

Asunción

Today we founded a city. We found a city. It was found. It is found. Founded.

The foundations were laid and parameters set. Maps will be made. Establishmentarian guidelines met. All this will be accomplished through no shortage of effort from the participating factors, yet always simply, quietly, efficiently, surrounded in love and character.

Asuncion will be her name. Named after her mother, the virgin, to whom we all pray and owe the greatest portion of ourselves for without her there would not have been and if that had not had been then we could not have seen and without our eyes we could not have found the city that lay beneath our feet waiting to be drawn up from the dust, ascending towards the heavens.

We will be populous with the ones who know their own dreams. Dreams glimpsed between the buildings and the street. Behind the shop doors and inside the homes where live our burgeoning families. We make bread and drink wine. These will be Sunday rituals for centuries. There will be no laws to govern our traditions. We will act in accordance to what pleases us with ease.

Do not come if you shelter any doubts. Leave all that you do not know on the shores you leave behind. Only the faithful will survive here. We are no longer waiting. The Assumption has arrived.

1507 c/o Wes Schofield

Mona versus America: the battle for 1507

Lisa Gherardini received a letter in her mailbox the morning of December 18th of the year 1507. She slept late on this day and didn’t retrieve her mail till late in the afternoon. When she finally pulled the yellow unmarked envelope from the box and knocked down the little red flag she tore the paper open and read the words written there and here is what they said.

Lisa, I finally finished the bloody thing. You’re gorgeous. Just thought you should know. I think I’ll sell it to a king or something.

Leo.

“So the dirty old man finally finished it. Well, that’s something I guess. It’s news at least”, she thought.

She wanted to tell someone. She might be hanging in the same room as a king.

“Amerigo, Amerigo!”

Lisa had just spotted her neighbor, Amerigo Vespucci, coming out to water his lawn.

“Mrs. G, lovely day isn’t it?”

“My portrait was finally finished. I just got a letter from Leo saying he finished it.”

“The dirty hippy?”

“Says maybe he’ll sell it to a king.”

“You’ve been immortalized.”

“I guess you could say that, yes.”

“That reminds me. You know that new continent that Columbus discovered a few years back.”

“The one they thought was India?”

“Right, well my buddy Martin was the one to draw up the new world map. Guess who he named the new continent after.”

“No!”

“I was pretty surprised myself.”

“I’m so happy for you. What’s it called, “Vespucci-Land?”

“Nope, America”

“America.”

“It’s a pretty big one too, you know, a lot larger than they first suspected.”

“America, that’s not really your name though, is it? It’s AmeriGO”

“It was probably typo.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I’m really happy for you Amerigo. That’s awesome.”

Amerigo sprays his grass with a fine mist from the green garden hose.

“I don’t know why you’re doing that now. You should wait till the evening. You do it now, it’s so hot out, and the water all evaporates. You’re just wasting water.”

“What do I care? There lot’s of water.”

“I know, it's just kind of pointless that’s all. In an hour or so. It’ll all be dried out again.”

“So I’ll do it again later. I don’t mind. I like it.”

“I’m just saying.”

It when then that there arose between our two heroes a very long and very awkward pause, that, however much they tried could not be filled with more than a haphazard sign or the incomplete raising of an eyebrow. And so it was until the silence between them was so unbearable they could no longer restrain themselves from asking the impossibly obvious question percolating inside their skulls.

“So what do you think is—“, Lisa started.

“Better?” Vespucci interjected. “ To be remembered throughout the ages as—“

“A masterpiece painting hung for all times in the grandest museum—“ Lisa tried to finish.

“Or be the name of a country, whom everyone fears and admires, a world superpower.”

The question now complete its philosophic weight hung between then like that giant boulder that that Greek (or was he Roman) fellow had to push up that mountain for all eternity. Most heavily.

“It all depends on your point of view.” Lisa smartly stated.

“To each his own, the eye of the beholder, good for the goose.”

“But not for the gander. Etcetera, etcetera and yadda, yadda, yadda. But what do you really think. That is what I would like to know.” Lisa pried Vespucci further.

“Well they each have their merits that is to be sure. To hang in a museum gawked at for centuries, criticized, mocked, analyzed, scrutinized, mined of all your meanings, and not just by the academics, aficionados and critics, but also the bubble gum chewing public, the family vacationers with their whiny teenagers and babies covered in spit-up, backpacking college graduates off to find themselves and have promiscuous sex in hostels all over Europe, these people will all debate your merits and say to themselves, ‘gee, it's kind of small.’”

“A master artwork has a simple grace that no matter how much it is viewed or debated or mimicked or whatever, it will always retain the purity of its essential self.” Lisa chimed back.

“Even when its likeness can be found on anything from posters to postcards, t-shirts, and novelty underwear. A great piece of artwork like yours becomes watered down through the ages but the spirit of a country can be rejuvenated with every generation.”

“Possibly true. But what of a country? Admired and feared, like you said. The land of the free, maybe, a place of which people would dream of one day reaching only to one day finally arrived and find that their Doctor’s License or PhD only qualified them to drive a cab or work at KFC, or some other dreadful immigrant cliché. Maybe a country where the favorite pastime is to stare slack jawed at some sort of flashing light box with Surround Sound watching Blu-ray high definition DVDs of the latest and greatest big budget blockbuster superstar action thriller comedy scored with the director’s inane self-aggrandizing masturbatory audio commentary.”

“I prefer to think of the grand scale of things. Of a country that will be the first to plant their flag in outer space. Of a country that will elect a member of the minority to their highest level of office. A place where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed in the constitution. And a country that strives endlessly to bring those same rights to people all over the globe. Spreading the hope of democracy and peace to all nations.” Vespucci prophesized.

“Those ideals are never the reality. The truth is that such greatness always comes hand in hand with corruption and greed. And in the attempt to spread the hope of democracy and peace as you say it, well that only comes at the expense of those other cultures you are so arrogantly trying to save from themselves. How many wars are you willing to wage and lives are you willing to sacrifice in your efforts at peace? Nobody will ever die because a painting hangs on wall.”

“Nobody will ever die for a painting on a wall because such a piddling piece of entertainment would never warrant such a sacrifice.”

“And I say that speaks very poignantly to the greater power of a work of art.”

“But who’s to say Leo’s portrait of you will be such a masterpiece?” Vespucci simply stated.

“And who’s to say America will ever become the country you imagine.”

“Too true, too true. This, I will say however, is certain: That it is emphatically better to be remembered for something no matter what, great or small, than nothing at all.”

“Yes, those poor sods that don’t have portraits drawn of them or countries named after them are really pitiful creatures.”