Food is Love

By Lisabet Sarai

Let me start by admitting that I stole my title from Garce's amazing story “Miss Julia's Cake Club”. As I pondered how to address Kathleen's topic, “Soul Food”, this is what came to mind. I believe that Kathleen hoped we'd consider “food” from a metaphorical perspective, but I found myself stuck on the idea of real food and how it acquires meaning beyond its role as nourishment or sensual pleasure.

I've been living overseas for nearly nine years now, with annual visits to see friends and family. Six years ago, my planned trip happened to coincide with my step-mom's mastectomy. Needless to say, it was not exactly a happy time for her to welcome guests. She was exhausted from the surgery and the subsequent medications, not to mention nervous about the chemotherapy that she knew faced her as soon as she'd healed from the operation. My dad, not in the best of health himself, was practically paralyzed with anxiety. As for me, I felt helpless. My words of cheer sounded false even to my own ears.

So what did I do? I cooked. Nothing fancy, just the sort of things I'd make at home, if I were still living in a temperate climate. Pot roast. Meat loaf. Grilled fish. Scrambled eggs. Lentil soup. I spent most of the two weeks I was there either shopping for groceries, or in my step-mom's well-appointed kitchen, assembling meals for anyone who happened to be around.

I couldn't really express my fear. I didn't want to add to the general atmosphere of gloom. Instead, I contributed in a practical way, since, as my Jewish grandmother used to say, “No matter what, you've got to eat.” Preparing and serving food was my way of telling my dad and step-mom how much I loved them.

I do enjoy cooking – and eating. I'd much rather have people over for dinner than take them out to a restaurant, even though it's a lot more work. Food is a sort of gift that I offer our closest friends, tailoring my menus to what I know about their culinary tastes. Food is also a mode of creative expression for me. I'm not the sort to follow recipes. A recipe may provide a framework, but what actually goes into the pot will depend on what I have in the refrigerator, what I'm missing, and my own preferences. (For instance, there are very few dishes, in my opinion, that will not be enhanced by the addition of garlic!)

If food is love, though, how can I explain my years of anorexia? From my senior year in high school until I graduated from college, food ruled my life – through fear. In starving myself, was I actually indicating that I felt unworthy of love? I don't think that was it, exactly.

I craved food. I remember dreams where I'd be walking through lofty halls, past banquet tables heaped high with sumptuous delicacies – all my favorites. I knew it would be fatal to reach out and take what I wanted, yet it seemed so very easy... What I truly feared, I think, was my appetite – and perhaps this could be extended to an appetite for love, or sex. Certainly, during those years, I felt insulated and immune from sexual desire. I did have one or two lovers, but there was a kind of wall between me and them. That wall only began to crumble near the end of my period at university, when I'd recovered from the worst of my odd and dangerous psychosis.

And what about food in my fiction? I've never written a Tom Jones scene, where food becomes a stand-in for a lover's flesh (though I recently read a great example of this, in K.D. Grace's story “Eddie's All Night Diner”). Still, my characters tend to connect over food – frequently my favorite dishes – and I have a special fondness for a hero who cooks. And I have written at least one infamous food scene, in which chillis are employed for their sexually stimulating effect.

Somtow opened another bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. They continued to nibble on the exotic delicacies he had provided, sitting half-naked on the cushions in the balmy night.

Katherine found her gaze drawn again and again to his smooth, muscular chest. The folds of the sarong around his waist hid his penis from her eyes. She wondered what he would do if she reached down to touch him, as she longed to do.

Somtow was talking about Thai cuisine, the two thousand royal dishes and the hundreds of other, ’country-style’ recipes. Suddenly, it seemed, he noticed her looking at his body. She blushed a little. He said nothing, but reached across the table to pick up a bowl of raw chillis.

“Did you know, Katherine, that Thai chillis are considered to be among the hottest in the world?” He picked up a bright green pod between his thumb and forefinger, and raised it to his mouth. Instead of eating it, however, he ran the pepper across his lips, almost as if applying lipstick. Then he leaned forward, and kissed Katherine lightly.

The chilli oil made her own lips tingle and burn. “Mmm,” she murmured, as she returned the kiss with enthusiasm. She felt him untying her sarong, and then, his lips were on her nipples again, first the left, then the right.

She was not prepared for the sensations that assaulted her as the pungent oil touched her skin. Her nipples were still hard, sensitised from her recent arousal. They burned and throbbed, almost painful, as Somtow deliberately anointed them with the remnants of the pepper. The near-pain was overwhelmed by the pleasure, though, as a delicious warmth radiated out across her breasts.

“Oh...,” she sighed, closing her eyes and savouring the heat. “That is incredible.”

A light touch between her legs caused her to open her eyes. Somtow had another chilli in his fingers, brilliant red this time. With one hand, he parted her lower lips gently. Then, holding her open, he began to stroke the rigid little pepper against her equally rigid clitoris.

The effects were explosive. Sensitive though her nipples might be, the delicate tissues of her sex were much more so. Her labia swelled and ached; she rubbed herself against the fingers that held her open. The little knob of flesh directly in contact with the pepper pulsed and flamed. Part of her thought she could not bear it—and she knew he would stop immediately if she asked. Still, another part of her craved even more of this pleasure/pain, hotter, fiercer, consuming her flesh. She groaned.

Somtow made some soft sound in answer. Looking at him, she saw that he had crushed the pepper between his fingertips. Now he was rubbing the red pulp over his penis, up and down its stiff length, over the bulbous top. Katherine understood, suddenly, that his cock must be burning with the same almost unbearable intensity as her labia and clit. He looked into her eyes, without a word, and she knew he understood her wordless consent, as he plunged his fire-laden member into her vagina.

Katherine gasped and dug her nails into his shoulders. Intense sensation nearly overwhelmed her. She was still wet from their previous coupling. He moved easily within her secret cavities, spreading the incendiary chilli oil inside and out.

From Raw Silk by Lisabet Sarai

****

Re-reading this, I see the connection between food and lust, as well as food and love. That's probably what I was trying to escape, by depriving my body of nourishment, until I was as skinny and sexless as a twelve year old (though actually, when I was twelve I was well-enough developed, as they say, to pass for fifteen or sixteen).

I'm fascinated by the way the human imagination associates new meaning with something as fundamental as eating. Abstaining from certain foods becomes holy. Gluttony becomes a mortal sin. A meal can be an apology, a celebration, or a seduction.

No wonder we talk about “soul food”.

I Could Have Died: Red Flags

by Nikko Lee

Have you ever contemplated jumping out of a moving vehicle? The movie stars do it all the time. Just before the car explodes or drives off a cliff, the hero opens the door and jumps without hesitation. Lacerations, road rash or broken bones are nothing compared to the certain doom he or she is narrowly escaping.

I'm no movie star, action hero or daredevil and by no means do I have a death wish. In fact, the likely injuries and sheer desperate insanity of the act were all that kept me from doing it. One beautiful Sunday afternoon a few years ago as my then boyfriend and I drove through a serene national park I pictured myself undoing my seat belt, opening that car door and escaping. There was no bomb or imminent cliff, but the certain doom I was facing in that car could have just as easily killed me.

I had met him online years ago in an online role playing community. His character was known for being quick-tempered and a womanizer (red flag #1). After years of role playing together and getting to know each other out-of-character, we finally decided to meet in person. He had just left the military on a sour note (red flag #2). With no place to stay and no job, he needed a few dollars for the flight (red flag #3) to come meet me. Naively, I offered him a place to stay as he got back on his feet. Almost immediately he started talking about our future together (red flag #4).

The attraction between us was intense, overwhelming and all-consuming (red flag #5). I was fascinated by every aspect of him and accepted his faults along with his qualities. He seemed supportive at first, but soon he started in with these sexist and demeaning jokes (red flag #6). It only took a few arguments before he stopped that. I was a strong and independent woman after all – or so I thought.

We had a rocky relationship from the start. When we argued, it was an all out battle (red flag #7). He never laid a hand on me. He didn't have to. Instead he would yell at me, insist that I had mental problems or even laugh at me when I expressed my feelings (red flag #8). In many subtle and not so subtle ways, he undercut my opinions, beliefs and feelings (red flag #9). When something went wrong, the fault rested with someone else (red flag #10). Each time I tried to end the relationship he would always vow to change(red flag #11).

Little by little I was losing myself. He had me convinced that I was being selfish, neurotic, or unreasonable when I expressed concern about his online activities – infidelity was a recurring theme with him (red flag #12) – or lack of stable employment (red flag #13). It always came down to his word and against my perception. I no longer trusted that little voice inside that kept telling me how wrong things were. My friends and family couldn't understand why I stayed, and eventually I stopped talking to them about my problems (red flag #14). I was isolated and worst of all didn't even trust my own judgment (red flag #15).

The red flags just kept piling up, but by then I was in so deep I didn't see a way out. I believed that relationships involved working through the hard times. But there were always more hard times than good times. When I was dragged into yet another argument that Sunday afternoon, all I could think about was jumping from that car just to get away. I wanted to escape from him, my choice in staying with him, the sadness of feeling like a failure, the hopelessness of a never ending cycle of pain, the loss of a relationship that never was, etc. I was willing to pay almost any cost at that point, except my life. That's when I realized that this relationship was killing me.

I spent several more months nurturing the false hope that he had finally changed, followed by the inevitable agony of finding out he hadn't. Little by little my own life was changing for the better. I started taking martial arts classes again. Medication for depression and seeing a therapist helped get my brain out of the darkness that was consuming it. Eventually I developed the fortitude to end things for good the last time I found evidence he was being unfaithful. At the time, all I could think about was hiding away from the world and healing.

For months, I had nightmares that I was back in that eternal relationship loop with him refusing to leave. If he had hit me, I would have left immediately. Emotional abuse is just as insidious as physical abuse. It rots a person from the inside out. There are no bruises or scars to show anyone. Slowly, but surely, it eats away at your very sense of self until there is nothing left but the husk of a person.
Now I can see so many red flags and how ignoring them could have killed me. I'm just glad I found my way out before the damage was permanent. Saving my life didn't take anything as dramatic as jumping out of a moving vehicle. It just took regaining trust in my self and valuing myself enough to do what was best for me.
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Lucky Me

by Kristina Wright


I had a childhood fascination with Joan of Arc. I read everything I could about her, rereading the same biographies again and again. I had a similar fascination with Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey and other royal women who died tragically. I lived a safe childhood-- I really wasn't allowed to do anything that wasn't under my mother's watchful eye-- so I was intrigued by the adventures (and untimely demises) of historical women. I didn't want to die, of course, but there was something fascinating about reading the fates of those young women while safe in my bed.

My high school years were a different story. By the time I was fifteen, I was getting into bars (it was South Florida, the drinking age was 19 and the beach bars were lenient), playing stupid pranks, going where I wasn't supposed to go. But even my teenage rebellion was safe-- I rarely did anything that would truly qualify as dangerous. Getting into bars was more to see if I could than to get drunk or flirt men a decade or more older than me. (Ewww!) I was the DD more often than not, as well as the voice of wisdom when the pranks started. Generally, I kept my friends (and myself) out of trouble. I was a mother hen even then, it seems.

Like a lot of creative types, I've had periods of depression, dark valleys I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to climb out of, starting during those teen years. I did climb out, every time, but probably the only truly dangerous times in my life have been when I was tied up tight by the darkness in my own head. Sleep was my only comfort and sleeping forever seemed preferable to the pain of waking to the perceived darkness I was living with. But I didn't sleep forever-- I woke up and sun was shining. Eventually.

My adulthood has been relatively injury and accident free. The only scars I have are the result of birthing two large babies, the only hospital stays have been for those babies and a bad asthma attack. I've driven a sports car for the past twenty years, but I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since before I owned this car. I have no dangerous hobbies and my health is generally sound (though less so of late). There have been no near death experiences for me. I guess that's boring.

And yet, and yet. I have always believed in intuition, luck, fate, serendipity. I have indulged those instincts that say "turn around," "go home," "take this turn instead of the next," "walk faster," "don't go there today." I have come close to potential disaster a few times and only by the benefit of being in the right place at the right time have I avoided having an interesting story to tell. I've also avoided death, so I'm okay with being boring like that.

Once when I was a kid, maybe thirteen or fourteen, I made a milkshake in my mother's blender. Milk, ice cream, put the lid on, press the button, walk out of the room for a second to get something. Loud noise. Then, a louder noise followed by milkshake gushing out the side of the blender. I was confused. What had happened? I pressed "off," carried the leaking blender to the sink, poured the milkshake out and looked inside. There was a gash in the hard plastic blender and the blade was gone. It had come off while blending and penetrated the plastic blender. But where was it? I looked around and saw it lodged in the wall across the room. It was an utterly freak accident-- one that you wouldn't think is possible, except I saw it. I still remember feeling bewildered as I watched my failed milkshake trickle out the side of the blender and wondering how that could be happening. And seeing the blade in the wall-- sharp enough to penetrate hard plastic, fly across the room and stick in the wall-- or into me, if I'd been standing in a different spot.

Similarly bizarre situation last year-- driving down a dark road after midnight and having two deer dart out in front of my very small sports car. One deer got by me, but the other didn't move quick enough and I was going fifty miles an hour-- too fast to slow down in time and nowhere to go but straight into him. A jarring shudder on impact, but that was all. The car kept going, the deer was nowhere to be seen. The only damage when I got home was a broken light casing with just a bit of deer fur to prove that there had been impact of some sort. My husband insists I didn't hit the deer with my car, but that the deer kicked my car as he darted across. It's possible. Hitting a deer in my little car would be sure death for me.

I have dozens of stories like that. Near misses and almosts, potentially bad situations that turned in my favor before they were a real threat. I'm lucky. Really lucky. Or I have a guardian angel who's been really busy keeping me safe. I don't question it, I just trust my instincts and believe I will be okay. So far, I have been. Lucky me.

My Date with the Snow Queen

(Imagine an image of the Snow Queen here: a beautiful, serious woman with blonde hair, ivory skin, a white robe, and eyes that glint like diamonds. I couldn't upload the drawing.)
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We were in The Club, the only gay bar in town. The sexual tension between us was still hotter than a firecracker, but our incompatibility was becoming obvious.

Outdoors, the wind howled and the ground was covered with three feet of packed snow on the footpaths where sidewalks would emerge during the spring melt. It was the 1980s, when Canada still lived up to its image as the home of winter.

She looked Mediterranean. The love of her life had been a girl of Italian descent who had taken her to Italy on a marvelous family visit. “Connie” loved to reminisce about the wine, the sunshine, the family she wanted to join. She had thrown her relationship away by picking someone up at The Club, telling her girlfriend, and not forgiving herself. The girlfriend had married a male co-worker, but Connie still spent as much time as possible in their house, changing lightbulbs and fixing whatever didn’t work, usually when the husband wasn’t home. Connie also continued passing for Italian, playing the accordion (“Santa Lucia,” “O Sole Mio”) whenever she was asked.

Connie had been adopted as a baby. She didn’t want to admit that she was – as she herself put it – a “fuckin Indian.” She tried to make up for her imagined defects and real secrets by being as butch as possible. She had been banned from The Club for six months for fighting.

She usually lost at pool, but this didn’t stop her from accepting every challenge. She leaned across the green felt as though she could control all the balls with her mind.

I drifted out of the pool room, knowing where I didn’t belong. Connie had said she wanted to help me raise my little girl, who was currently spending the night with her grandparents. My little brown angel, the one good thing that came out of my marriage to a Nigerian.

Connie told other people that she wasn’t comfortable around children, not being the motherly type.

Even in the dim light of the bar, I could see Laurel, a red-haired warrior queen of the local Left. She was past president of the organization that lobbied relentlessly against uranium mining, despite its appeal to the government as a cash cow. Luckily, Laurel was alone, and she was always willing to talk. I asked her what was new, and settled in for a sermon.

Connie came looking for me as soon as she lost at pool. Her eyes were red, and barely-visible sparks seemed to shoot out of her aura. She hovered outside my conversation with Laurel like a visible threat. The more I tried to draw Connie in, the more sarcastically she pointed out that some people are full of shit. Laurel looked uncomfortable.

I drew Connie away. I was shocked to see tears spilling out of her eyes and down her face. She told me I might as well be with Laurel, since we were both Fancy Educated Women who were full of shit. “You have to stop putting me down!” she told me. She didn’t care who heard. She was drunk, pickled in beer and grief. Lightning bolts from her eyes showed me how much she hated everything she thought I stood for.
“I’m going home,” I told her. The Club felt too small to contain both of us.

“You can’t go out there!” she called after me. “It’s after midnight and it’s forty below.”

“Watch me,” I answered. I had no driver’s license or cash for a taxi. There were no bank machines in our town at that time. My apartment in the single-parent co-op was about two miles away.

What I was doing was suicidal, but I felt as if I had no choice.

Just as I had hoped when I barged out the door, my rage kept me warm enough for the first block, even while I wondered why no one had seriously tried to stop me from stepping out into air that felt brittle enough to shatter.

By the third block, I had to slow down. Breathing air into my lungs was painful, yet I had to take deep breaths to get enough oxygen to keep going. I settled into a rhythm of shallow-breath, shallow-breath and inhale-two-three-four. It was like the rhythm I used to breathe and push down when I was giving birth.

I was walking down a street near the centre of town, yet I might as well have been on the deserted prairie. The night was dark as hell and as cold as outer space. No one drove by. (Would I have begged for space in a stranger’s car?) All decent people seemed to be asleep in their warm beds.

Inside fur-lined mittens, my hands turned numb, then thawed, making me aware that I still had nerve-endings. Damn, it was cold. The sound of my boots on snow was hypnotic.

I was passing the large park that took up much of the south end of town. Sleep and warmth were trying to seduce me, and the snow banks looked like rumpled sheets in a big, welcoming bed. The wind had died down, or so it seemed. I could just curl up in the snow and take a nap.

I remembered the Snow Queen of Hans Christian Anderson. I could feel her all around me.

I gradually understood what was happening: hypothermia, the first phase of freezing to death. Part of me thought that was an excellent goal. My parents would raise my child. It wasn’t as if I played a necessary role in the universe.

And then my common sense kicked in. My child would be an orphan, and she would probably blame herself. In any case, my sudden absence was almost guaranteed to mess up her life. And I knew so many people with messed-up lives, usually because of something that happened to them in childhood.

It was past 2:00 a.m., but I would have to pound on the door of the nearest house and ask (with frozen lips!) for medical help. It was the only thing to do. If I could keep walking to the nearest house.

A car pulled up beside me, and a young man with a concerned face asked if I needed a ride. I remembered all the warnings I had been given, starting at puberty. Don’t accept rides from strange men!

Or what? I asked the parental voices in my head. Or I might suffer a Fate Worse Than Death? Really? I was tempted to laugh, but my face-muscles were locked in place.
I accepted the rescue. The warmth in the car felt like love, and it entranced me as we rolled quietly over the snow-covered street. Somehow, I managed to let the Good Samaritan know where I lived. And all he wanted was a chance to save someone who needed it.

I stumbled into my apartment, knowing the thawing-out would be worse than the freezing-up. I knew I would see my daughter the next day, and for many days to come. I would see Connie again, and we would both have to make some decisions. For better or worse, it wasn’t my time to go.
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Pack Nothing

LaFourche Parish, Louisiana 1981

It doesn’t feel right, the pickup truck coming down the road in my direction. It’s not doing anything wrong. The cloud of road dust behind it. The guy with the baseball hat in the passenger seat with his arm out the window. The driver looking at me and slowing down. I’m already wondering what’s the right way to play this. Look straight ahead. Keep it on the low down. Look at the road, look at the trees, look at the levee. Just keep walking to the next house.

The fund raising team captain dropped me off here a couple of hours ago. He won’t be back until long after dark. I’m getting low on brandy snifter candles which is what I’ve been selling or offering for donations for my church. There are certain vocations that give you the opportunity to talk to people you normally wouldn’t get to meet. A writer researching a book. An investigative reporter or a detective. Or in my case, a member of a Mobile Fundraising Team for my church, some would say a cult. Whatever it is, its mine and I’m here now.

The truck is slowing down and my spidey sense doesn’t like it. Not at all.

It’s almost night. The sun is delicately dying, the sky changing to sapphire flame giving the levee banks a muted monastic beauty. The air turns to smoke blue space and a shroud of silence covers everything except the tree frogs who have begun to sing. This is country dark and there aren’t any street lamps out here.

The truck stops in front of me, waiting, and I guess I can’t walk past it.

The pickup truck is this orange and white Ford with a gun rack on the rear window which is as standard as a spare tire around these parts. There are two rifles in the gun rack. The guy on the passenger side is definitely looking at me and chewing something. He has a mustache and his hair sticks out on all sides under the cap which says “Paddock Lounge” and has a green clover leaf. He smiles and waves. Hey, boy. A head comes around from the tail area in the back and looks to see why they’re stopping. Three guys. I wonder if this is how a black man feels walking around here alone.

“Need a ride?” says Mustache, smiling friendly.

“Naw, I’m good thanks,”

“You sellin’ them?”

“It’s for my church,” I say in a big voice, toughing it out. I give him my best big shit eating grin and grab a green candle, the least appealing in the box. It’s supposed to smell like Bayberry, whatever that is, but comes out more like Pine Sol. I step right up to the side door and look him in the eye. Thank God I’m chewing gum. Chewing gum is like a lightning rod for nerves, and meeting strangers makes me nervous and it’s all I do every day. Chewing gum hides the nervous tick playing around the middle of my lips right now. I snap my gum loud and he chews whatever he’s got and together we’re just grinning away, perky as rats in liverwurst. I hold the candle under his nose.

“Shit, that’s one nice candle, kid,” he says and take its gently from my hand and shows it to the driver. “Ain’t that a fucker of a candle?”

The driver recoils from it and waves. I silently agree, the Bayberry’s aren’t that great. “Get the fuck away from me,” he says

“Hey,” says Mustache. “I get my old lady one, think she’ll suck my dick?”

I try to laugh. “You’ll just have to find out. But we don’t give refunds on that.”

“She don’t like candles. What you sellin’ candles for anyway?”

“Helping my church.”

“Ain’t you supposed to be selling Bibles or cookies maybe?”

“I like cookies, me.” says the guy in the back.

“Sorry buddy, no cookies. Ever eat a candle? Little hot sauce, they’re great.”

That gets a big laugh all around. Maybe it’s okay.

“You got change for a . . . fifty?”

“Naw,” I say, trying to get my voice just right and failing like a rich Yankee politician trying to win white trash votes. “It’s been bad. Nobody likes candles around here. Guess the Baptists got here first selling Bibles.”

Another good laugh. Hell, I’m a riot.

“Fuck this,” says the guy in the back. “Let’s go.”

Mustache hands the candle back. “Sorry, kid. Come back with some cookies.”

I feel relieved he didn’t just drive off with it. I drop it back in the box. He holds out his hand for me to shake.

I don’t know what to do. Guys get dragged this way. I slap his palm, sort of shake thumbs quick and take my hand back but he doesn’t seem to be up to anything. He’s looking at me, but the smile’s gone.

The truck goes back into gear and sprays a little gravel, pulling away. I hear it leaving. I want to look back over my shoulder, but I don’t want to look scared.

I walk a little ways and I don’t hear the truck. I kneel down and pretend to tie my shoe.

Down the road the truck is turning around. The rear window reflects against the sunset and I can see through it. The rifles aren’t on the gun rack.

If this were a movie this is the moment some poor sucker would run down the middle of a well paved road trying to out run a truck while carrying a load of candles. I know better. I run like hell for the trees.

The mosquitoes whine in my ear and now even nature is after me. I toss the box of clattering glass candles overboard in some bushes near the road. I feel a funny pang of guilt as though I were abandoning my duty to God, like a soldier throwing down his gun on a battlefield and running away. When the van comes around we can come back and look for them, but right now I need to travel light.

The truck has stopped and I hear them whooping back there. A flashlight beam is spanning the trees and I hop through the bushes trying not to make too much noise. But these guys are coming.

Far away I can see it, a house or a building or something with lights on. People. Witnesses. But there’s a dark wide stretch of fallow field between me and there.

I stay close to the tree line to prevent showing a profile. The light is almost gone and I can’t see my feet down below anymore. If I stay in the woods, running blind I’ll twist an ankle or run my face into a tree and I’ll be dead meat.

“Hey little buddy! Gimme me a fucking candle!”

I start running on ground I can’t see, fall on my face and jump up fast. They track my noise and I hear the sounds closing in. We’re all navigating by radar in the country dark. Those lights way over there are all I’ve got going. Maybe these guys live there, what do I know right now. It’s insane to realize that somewhere kids are doing homework and grownups are washing dishes.

I can hear them thrashing around on all sides of me, trying to flank me. I don’t think they can see me, they just know where I am. I take aim at the house lights and launch myself across the field and feel my feet sinking and squishing in the wet ground. The mud grabs my shoe and yanks it off me and my sock sticks in the gunk. It’s like running in a dream where you never get anywhere. I drop down on my face, press down flat on the ground and wait.

One of the guys is coming up beside me. I can’t see much of anything now, but neither can he. The moon comes out from behind a cloud and he’s standing in the moonlight about the length of a dining room table away from me. I hold my breath. As he turns I can see the shadow of it on his belt. A leather sheath. A deer hunting knife. What folks here call an “Arkansas toothpick.”

A mosquito whines in my ear and I feel the sting of it on my neck. I can’t slap. I don’t even dare shake my head. I have to take it. Another on my arm. Sonuvabitch. I have to take it. My nose is pressed against a thistle.

He moves his feet. He turns his head. He’s looking right at me.


Joy is usually thought of as a kind of intensified happiness. But in theology “Joy” is defined specifically as the relationship that exists between a person and God. It’s the presence of God, the confidence that you and God have a bond of love between you. If you pursue God, the image you have of that God is everything, for all Gods are idols in the end. But an idol has power. In the life of Joy, our every moment is bound to our image of God, walking with God, chatting and sleeping with God like a lover and unfailing companion. If your God is a God of love, the heart swells and blooms. Your God will give you wings and show you the beauty of other people. If your companion is a God of fear, that possessive God will clip your wings. Such people live in a world constantly swatting away demons and living for an afterlife of reward shared with no one. Such a person will never be at home anywhere, having forsaken this world and will always be in a state of exile.

The historical Jesus would not recognize himself as he’s presented by preachers today. He’s the fodder of politicians and every imaginable agenda. What gun would Jesus buy? Who would he vote for? The Jesus of the bible told his followers to just go, to pack nothing. Give all you own away and live as the lilies of the field and dwell with all your heart on Joy, on the love of God, to step away from the known and predictable and throw yourself boldly into the unknown. This is the ultimate spiritual alchemy that transforms the heavy iron chains of reality into the gold of that interior world of the resurrection where Man can still walk in the Garden with God. If you have the privilege of living in that interior, movable, mutable Garden, like Adam, or as I once did, you will never be healed of it when you cast yourself out to wear the chains of realism again. This is the secret compulsion behind the making of fiction and poetry and myth. All myths are ultimately our myths. It’s why the myth of Jesus’ resurrection resonates through the ages and inspires the best and worst in Mankind. It gives us the power to bend reality.


I lie in the mud with my God and I’m not afraid anymore. I throb with Joy. I am thrilled by Joy. He casts the shadow of His hand over me and the man turns away, unseeing. I wait a long time listening, following the direction of their voices. They’re looking in the trees. I get up slow, put my shoe on and slink away across the field and into the weeds.

I hop over a barb wire fence, get my balance and run up to that building with the lights. As I get close I can hear it, a rocking gospel choir, the people inside are having a prayer meeting. I put my hand on the knob and turn. The door opens and I’m flooded with light and the weight of human warmth and voices.

As I come down the aisle clods of top soil drop off my clothes to the carpet. Every eye turns to look and the music staggers to a stop. The preacher I guess, a man in a maroon seersucker suit says “May we help you, sir?” They know I’m not coming down the aisle to be saved, not by the likes of them. Though I surely have been. These are all black people.

“Yeah,” I say. “Um. May I use your phone, please?”



C. Sanchez-Garcia

Rip Tide

By Kathleen Bradean

A wave, translucent and gray, stippled with foam, curled above my head. I ducked and went through it. With my back to the beach, I could pretend that I was alone in the world, if I ignored the white triangular sails of sailboats or the deep gray hulls of tankers lurking off the coast.

When I finally tired of swimming, I looked back at the beach. The blue lifeguard hut was tiny and people were small blobs of color and motion. I hadn't planned to swim out that far. I didn't think I had.

That was my first inkling that something wasn't right.

So I headed back to the beach with my less-than-perfect Australian crawl. My swimming instructors always mentioned my lazy left arm, how I never got the most out of a stroke, how it made me drift in lane so I wasted energy correcting my line rather than on forward motion. I didn't care that much. I wasn't built for speed and would never be on a swim team. Besides, I was aiming for the edge of an entire continent now. Accuracy wasn't an issue.

When my arms got tired, I treaded water. It didn't worry me since I'd been swimming for a while and I wasn't in the best shape for a twelve-year old. I could tread water forever in a swimming pool, but in the ocean, it takes a lot more energy. When you get tired, you can't float on your back because waves crash over your face and water surges up your nose. So I figured my energy was better used moving toward shore rather than holding in place and I began swimming again.

My crawl might not have been perfect form, but I never lifted my head to spot the beach. It was right in front of me. Or so I thought. When my arms got rubbery-numb again, I paused to tread water again.

That's when the fear hit me. I was further away from shore than before. It wasn't that I'd headed out for sea by mistake. No. I was still facing shore. I was just really far from it.

A couple years before, at science camp (yes, geek girl) I studied oceanography. During the unit on currents and tides, we discussed something called a riptide. The instructor drew pictures, showing how the water returning from the shore caused a current that could quickly drag you out to sea. And he told us to swim parallel to the beach if we ever found ourselves caught in one since they usually weren't that wide.

Yes, I was deeply worried, but I knew what was happening and how to deal with it, so I didn't panic. I turned and started swimming parallel to the sand.

Now I was lifting my head every four strokes to check my progress. I kept my eye on a cliff at the curve of a beach. I was still getting pushed further out the sea. My arms felt like rubbery, useless things now, so I tried to make my legs take up the slack. Then they got tired. Treading water wasn't an option, so I had to keep on. At some point, utterly worn out, I realized that I was still headed true to the cliffs and not moving further from shore. I'd fought my way out of the current. Now all I had to do was get back to shore.

I didn't think I could. I was past my endurance. At that point, death looked like the easy option. That's when I decided to get truly scared, like down to the dusty basement of my soul. And that's when I realized I had no faith. But that's another story. In this story, that's when I resigned myself to swimming for shore one tortured, half-assed, weak stroke at a time. I had all eternity to get there. The rest of my life.

The breath stroke doesn’t work in the ocean. The waves toss you around too much. So no matter what, you have to try a power stroke. And even though near the beach the water is half churned-up sand, you have to keep your eyes open and let the salt water sting them. And even when you've breathed in almost as much water as air, you have to keep drawing into your searing lungs because that's what will keep you afloat. Stroke. Pause. Stroke. Pause. Like you're climbing Everest. The entire world narrows down to the next stroke.

And wouldn't it be lovely if I would just drop dead right this instant?

Stroke. Pause.

I'm not that lucky.

Stroke. Pause.

A long time later, a gravelly-voiced man shouted "Hey! Are you okay?"

A wave trough opened between us. From their haircuts, I knew they were military. On the speaker's shoulder, a fuzzy old greenish tattoo gave him away as a marine. I chuckled to my half-delirious self. Of course he had to be a marine.

He swam over to me from his friends, lifting muscular arms out of the water in flawless crawl form. He probably would have bit a shark if one were foolish enough to attack him, but one close-up look at my face, and his face blanched white under the tanned crinkles around his eyes and gray and black beard stubble. Great. Twelve-year old girl scares the crap out of a hardened marine.

"Rip tide," I told him. It was all I could say.

"She says it's a rip tide," he shouted to his friends.

He hugged me to his massive chest, which is no way to save someone from drowning. He'd once been a prime physical specimen, but now his chest hair was turning gray and his skin had that crepe-paper look. Still, the warmth of his body felt good and he had strength to spare for me.

"The lifeguard hasn't raised the flag," someone said.

"The lifeguard has been hitting on that girl for the past hour."

And they realized that they, too were being pulled out to sea, but we were in shallower water, and he was tall, so he was able to fight his way step by step to shore, with me in his arms. His friends splashed ahead of us. By the time we waded out of the surf, we were both too spent to talk. I had been shifted into the more classic damsel in distress pose, draped over his arms and across his chest.

The lifeguard looked up as his friends charged the hut, shouting and pointing out to sea. He looked over their heads at the water and jumped to his feet.

"Riptide! Everyone out of the water!"

My marine and I burst out laughing. We laughed so hard that tears trickled down our cheeks. And slowly, oh so slowly, he let my feet touch the sand, but he didn't completely let go of me for a long, long time.

Lost in the Urabamba

By Lisabet Sarai

We went to Peru because, that winter, there was no snow in Austria. That fact scuttled our original vacation plans for a ski holiday. Hustling to find an alternative (I'd already secured time off from my job), we found a relatively cheap package tour to Lima. We'd had positive experiences traveling with this tour company to Jamaica. They provided airfare and lodging at a ridiculously low cost, then made their money on extras. In Jamaica it had been easy to use the hotel as a base for exploring on our own. We found out a bit late that Peru was a different sort of place altogether.

It was the early eighties, and quite frankly, the country was a mess. Vicious bands of Shining Path guerrillas made overland transit perilous. Strikes and civil unrest occurred on an almost daily basis. At Lima Airport, we waited three hours for our luggage because the baggage handlers had stopped work. Rolling electricity outages afflicted the city of Lima, many regions of which we were advised to avoid due to the danger of being mugged or worse. Aside from the amazing gold museum, there wasn't much to see in Peruvian capital. In any case, we had loftier goals: Cusco and Machu Picchu.

The only practical way to Cusco was by air, and that turned out to be almost as expensive as our flight from the U.S. Nevertheless, we decided to bite the bullet and bought non-refundable round trip tickets to the old Incan capital nestled in the Andes.

Arriving in Cusco, we were informed that the narrow gauge railroad to Machu Picchu had been out of service for three weeks, due to a combination of rainy season mudslides and another strike. Apparently the strike had been settled, but it still wasn't clear whether the trains were running. We were devastated. Cusco was an astonishing place in its own right, but to come all that way and not get to see the fabled Incan terraces and the Temple of the Sun...!

Two days before we were scheduled to return to Lima, our guide told us we could catch the Machu Picchu train the following morning. We were up at six AM (a real sacrifice for my husband!) and on the train by seven. By ten AM we still hadn't left; there were new landslides blocking the tracks, we learned, that had to be cleared. When the train finally crawled out of the station, we cheered – but prematurely, as we were halted by a slide after an hour. Bulldozers were mustered, mud was cleared, the train proceeded for an hour or two, before our way was blocked once again.

Normally the trip from Cusco to the base of Huayna Picchu (only fifty miles!) takes about four hours. In our case, we didn't arrive until after four in the afternoon. The heart-stopping bus ride up the steep mountain flank, along the Hiram Bingham Highway, required another half hour. And the ruins closed at five thirty.

So we had less than an hour to explore one of the great wonders of the world. It was worth the journey, but way too short. Some members of the tour planned to stay over at the mountain-peak guest house, but our plane back to Lima left the next morning and we were worried about losing our money. In addition, my husband was showing signs of the flu. We climbed back into the bus, trundled down the side of the cliff and onto the train, and – waited.

The locomotive finally inched forward, into the inky darkness. We hadn't eaten. My husband's forehead felt hot enough to fry an egg. Although we were both exhausted, the hard wooden benches on the train were not really conducive to sleeping. I remember that trip as a kind of endless hell – creeping along the tracks that clung to the mountain side, the rain-swelled Urabamba River audible even though it was seventy feet below us. We'd stop for obstacles, wait, move, stop... My husband was hallucinating. I could have believed it was all a dream myself if I hadn't been so physically uncomfortable.

I finally must have drifted off into some kind of slumber, when an awful roar yanked me awake. The train lurched to a stop, throwing us to the sticky floor. It sounded as a building was collapsing around us.

The terrible racket finally stopped. Echoes of the tumult died away. Along with some of the other passengers, I stepped off the train to check out the situation.

A massive wall of steaming mud blocked the tracks, less than ten feet in front of the locomotive. Trees poked out of the muck at weird angles. Boulders twice as large as the stones of the Incan temples lay scattered on the narrow shelf the builders of the railroad had cut into the mountain side. As I stared in disbelief at the debris, a few more clods and pebbles clattered down from the heights on the right. Far below us, at the bottom of the cliff on the left, the rapids of the Urabamba seethed and boiled.

The railroad crew hurried us back into the train. I was in shock. If the slope had given way thirty seconds later, the train would have been buried. We might well have been swept off the track into the river coiling below.

My husband had fallen into an uneasy sleep, moaning and tossing on the unforgiving seats. As for me, I didn't close my eyes. I heard the grunt of the earth moving equipment they somehow managed to convey from further up the route, the shouts of the workmen, the background mutter of the swollen river. I was awake when the train nudged forward, rocking on its earth-dented tracks. I kept watch on my beloved, giving him water, praying his fever would break. I stared out the open window into the black night, not quite sure we'd really survived.

I watched dawn turn the terra-cotta roofs of Cusco from gray to red as we crawled down, back into the valley. We could have died. With a smidge less luck, we might have been lost in the Urabamba.

As the sun rose over the ancient city of the Incas, I found it hard to believe. I still do. Maybe the old gods were protecting us. Or maybe, that time at least, we were just lucky.