“For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.” O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi.”
These stories are presented for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme.
Drop down this menu to see my contributions to this extraordinary Substack.
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For some reason the images no longer show here, but when you click on the question mark, it links to my books on Amazon.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.--James Joyce "The Dead" From Dubliners 1914
We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel
Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life
Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see
I don’t know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Songwriters: Nathan Connolly / Gary Lightbody / Jonathan Quinn / Tom Simpson / Paul Wilson
Chasing Cars lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I can but imagine.”
Dusk embraced us now, at the window here in the blog cupola. The Blue Deer lifted its head, sniffed the air, and then walked off into the woods. I pulled the window shut, picked up my purple and white iris the Phantom had picked for me and we headed down the winding staircase, I behind the Phantom. In case I stumbled I hoped he would catch me. If I went first I feared he would push me. I didn’t want to flatten my iris.
When we reached the foot of the stairs, I thanked him again. We parted there. I lifted the iris to my nose. The stem had a nutmeggy smell, like his hand.
“What is your name?” I called after him.
“Moriarty,” he called back.
S.M.
I spent seven years in the 1990s binge-cashiering at a farm stand on a 30-acre farm in Naples, Florida. While strings of cashiers came and went, during the intervals I often worked nine days straight. I loved my job and the customers. Some became enduring friends and plenty produced sundry stories for my amusement. I wrote down the stories and saved them. Now, as thoughts poke through of gardens and rows of strawberries, corn, tomatoes, lettuces, herbs, peppers, eggplant, squashes and melons, I offer you samples of my stories and expert citrus advice. For your binge-reading pleasure, I am gathering these stories into a book called FUNNY FARM STORIES. You can find some of these stories up above, in the menu headings under the header photo, across the top of this page. Don’t know an orange from a melon? Check out WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THIS GREEN THING…? I hope their flavors delight you. –Carolina Gringo, as told to Samantha Mozart.
Founder, Publisher & Editor
Carol Child
Storyteller
Samantha Mozart
Consultant
T.J. Banks
The Phantom of the Blog
Moriarty
Click or tap the image to travel to my Journalism Portfolio, Carol Child Communications.
Gatsby
In my capacity as publisher of Scheherazade Chronicles Classics I have formatted for ebook and published for sale on Amazon F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This is the link.
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