Does a ghost make sense in June? No. I guess not. But do ghosts care about calendars? I wouldn’t think so.
And since my dad moved in, I haven’t had time to make much of anything. These wood samples came into my life, and I’ve experimented with drawing on them. Obviously it’s not finished. Maybe I’ll try carving into the wood. I have no idea how! So if you want to recommend some wood carving tutorials, please do. (I know I can google that on my own, but recs are more fun. I like knowing what you know.)
I am still working on an anthology—The Fairy Tale Asylum: Stories, Spells, and Questionable Wisdom. Edits are moving at a glacial pace. The plan was to have rewrites finished by the beginning of May (so that I could take part in Story-a-Day), but here we are, unfinished and exhausted.
Here’s a tiny story included—The Astonishing Flight of Fabio McGill.
Fabio McGill, trapeze artist, fortune-teller, and airplane pilot, was afraid of heights. He thought learning to leap through the air at the circus would cure him. Every time he reached for the ladder in the tent, his heart crashed into his breastbone and he burst into sweat and palpitations. He also still went on with the show.
Then Fabio realized he could tell fortunes. He knew the fortune-teller who traveled with the circus. She’d been reading cards since she was 7, and she’d told him one day while he searched for his anxiety pills that he would not die from a fall. “You’re meant to be in the sky.”
He took her words with many grains of salt. Besides, she didn’t say he’d avoid bodily injury. Death wasn’t his only fear.
He thought being a pilot might do the trick. Every turn he took on the runway shook every nerve in his body. His bosses said he had the best focus of any pilot they’d ever seen. It was amazing what a constant search to conquer his fear did for the senses—though he kept that thought to himself.
He was in the air when the first vision came. He glanced at his co-pilot and knew she was going to break a bone though he didn’t know how or when.
The next day she called in from the ER. “Having a bone reset,” she explained.
Coincidence, of course, he told himself. But more glimpses into the future came true—the young man spilling the hot coffee, the flight attendant about to receive terrible news.
What triggered the first vision? The day before he’d burned his tongue and stared a long time at the full moon. He’d dozed off while sitting on a park bench. He’d had his birthday and turned 41. Visions, he learned, didn’t appear with the flick of a switch. Visions appeared after a formula, just the right events, large or small, in the right order.
Fabio returned to the circus and the fortune-teller, who was expecting him. When he saw her, he knew.
She gave him her cards and a velvet scarf, and he went to the boss to explain the impossible.
“Back for the swing, are you, boy?”
Fabio flinched.
“Fine. I know what’s going on. Penelope told me you’d be coming. Don’t worry. I’m right chuffed. And we’ve got everything ready.”
It was true.
In the big tent as high as you could go was a platform. It stood above the crowd and the trapeze. A setup of levers and pulleys had been devised to lift a platform into the air. A hand painted sign welcomed customers: The best fortunes are closer to the stars.
From his perch, Fabio, still afraid as ever, saw everything and the longer he stayed, the more he saw and as the full moons rose and set, he saw further and further, no longer just a coming broken bone but the heartbreak in 10 years, the corruption in 20, the end of a life in 55.
A few more turns of the calendar and he saw where a passing breeze would go and the aging of the earth.
The decades wound by and the boss’s grandchildren continued to care for the circus. Their fortune-teller was a great success. People came from miles away to see Fabio McGill.
One evening a teenage girl who’d taken the lift to the fortune-teller screamed. Clowns and trapeze artists and fire-eaters looked up to see her looking down. “The fortune-teller!” she cried.
Everyone stared, baffled.
“He jumped, you idiots!”
But there was no body. She they brought the girl to the ground. She was flustered and wide-eyed. Her voice quaked. “He told me…it’s time…and then he jumped.
But the girl told only a fraction of the story. She’d thought he’d jump, it was true, but what she’d seen was impossible. Fabio gave her his cards and a velvet scarf. “These are yours now, girl. I’ve been expecting you.” With that he faded into points of light. They spiraled and went up. The lights found a tear in the tent and out they went up into the sky.
And as far as we know, he’s flying up there still.
In life B.D. (Before Dad), I shared three books I’d recently read. Y’all, I’m barely creating much less reading. But here are two books anyway. One, I read last year, and for those of you who love collage or journaling, you might find it motivating. The other was a recent gift, and since it is a poetry collection, I can read a wee bit every day. That’s balm for the soul.
Layers of Meaning: Elements of Visual Journaling by Rakefet Hadar. After watching her YouTube videos, I bought some art supplies, but I just haven’t done anything with those supplies yet. With any luck (focus), I’ll be able to say otherwise in the next newsletter.
Le Guin: Collected Poems by Ursula K. Le Guin, ed. Harold Bloom. Looking up the links led me back to the podcast Crafting with Ursula. Obviously I have to listen to more episodes. If you haven’t seen the documentary about Le Guin, you should!
Fill your life with more art and stories. Heck! Fill the world. Or, more specifically, fill your mailbox because I mail things. Support my work on Patreon.