The vast engineering feat of terraforming Mars was finally deemed, announced, and celebrated a success. Not by the engineers or the geologists. Not by the scientists.

The planet itself made the announcement with its first-ever spontaneous thunderstorm.

The word success, for those on Mars who had witnessed it, seemed an exaggeration, even funny; the thickening of the atmosphere was still in progress back then and still required the breathing assistance of OxyVents for those who dared to inhale out-of-doors. And announcement seemed a somewhat premature declaration, the thinness of the atmosphere presenting the thunder to human ears four octaves higher than the roar of Earth thunder, as if a real Earth vinyl record had been played on an antique 78-RPM phonograph, reducing a bone-rattling planetary phenomenon to a cartoon sound effect. Nevertheless, the psychological victory went public as a monument to the next step in humanity’s evolution.

And to capitalism and the business model.

For the terraforming of Mars, too expensive for nations alone to pursue alongside the crippling obligations of their societal entitlements, necessitated partnerships with the incorporated rich of Earth –Big Energy, Big Pharma, Big Comm, Big Transport, Big This and Big That.

From the beginning, the terraforming of Mars was a business relationship between nations and the companies large enough to take the investment hit first in exchange for the payoff later. And so it was that the ballyhoo of terraforming was seized and hyped and was as profitable as any insider trading. The initial payoff for corporate investors was inflationary only: stocks rose to new heights and titans of industry towered even higher. Suddenly Valles Marineris was sexier than Silicon Valley and more intoxicating than Napa.

Participating nations waxed idealistic with proclamations of a new sphere of peace in the solar system, destined to host the best that Earth had to offer. Mars vigila, borrowed from Latin literature, was the official triumphant slogan:

“Mars, awaken!”

Meanwhile, the thunder on Mars sounded comically falsetto and anemic, an adolescent’s voice breaking. Mars boasted, Earth cheered, but the handful of colonists remained strangely silent, pressing on in pursuit of real red thunder, which would take another busy sixty years.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,090

This is as good a place as any to begin my journal. By good place, I don’t mean this place—Mars, just the place I’m calling Page 1. But maybe I do mean the place, Mars, because that’s what’ll make it so interesting, right? Perhaps one day it will be a best-seller.

My name is Jon Latorella. I am 85 years old, although that doesn’t really matter. I’m a Telomorph, and because of my telomere and mitochondria manipulation, I should be able to live, well, forever. The Fountain of Youth. We humans were looking for it even before Ponce de Leon, so I suppose this is a golden age that’ll see my own golden years go on to be my platinum years, then my diamond years, then—I’m an engineer, not a romantic. But I know I don’t regret it. There’s been talk of making a law that limits the life expectancy of new Telomorphs to 150, but the way I understand it, I’m grandfathered in, which is a pretty funny way to put it.

As a geologist, I’ve been selected to be one of the observers for the moon crashes. It’s all part of the terraforming protocol. There won’t be anything interesting to write about before then, but if there is, I’ll put it in. Otherwise, I’ll just wait until Sol 4,100.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,100

I still have some ringing in my ears as I write this. Moons Phobos and Deimos were on schedule for their euthanasia. It had been easy to force Phobos below the Roche limit into the planet, and Deimos, although about three times farther away, was only half its size and easier to nudge. For the few colonists here that would witness what would normally be an extinction event, it was a dramatic test for the PoroCement that housed us, like observers huddled in utero. Both moons were timed to impact within minutes of each other, which offered a unique opportunity to observe the seismic overlay of a dual impact, one at each pole. Team Gamma, my team, was hunkered down one half kilometer below zero elevation datum, surrounded by three meters of PoroCement. We were positioned a few degrees north of Airy-0, so as to be as close to 0º/0º as possible. Holovideo surrounded our location on the surface, and it worked well until the fire/shockwall passed through. We saw a glowing barrage of immolation, all of the burning dust carried along the shock wave, as if a meteor shower approached sideways. We estimated its speed toward us to be nearly fifteen thousand kilometers per hour. The sky was red, with countless points of light rushing toward us, their pinpoints offset blue from the reverse redshift. In a way it was breathtaking, until the video feed abruptly ended.

But what was most impressive was the sound. Not the impact—we never heard the sound of the two impacts. Never mind that. There were three other surprises coming.

A sonic juggernaut approached. The thin atmosphere bunched the frequencies together and at the height of the firestorm/shockwall pass, a high-pitch siren made it through the thousands of tons of rock above us. Even though it was very high-pitched, it was very “full.” It was also very painful. It lasted a full two minutes and I had to hold my head firmly with my hands over my ears. Even so, bone conduction continued the torture. The high-pitch knifing through my brain didn’t mitigate until the sound Dopplered lower as it was distancing itself from our site. Many of us passed out from the pain, and even though it would later be proven there were several concussions, there were no casualties. All in all, a very unpleasant experience. By the time everyone was awake and regretting the experience, the sonic attack had circled the entire planet to give us seconds, several octaves lower, but no less painful. Every hour and a half we were subjected to it. By the eighth time everyone was awake and cursing the experience, the sonic attack had circled the entire planet yet again to give us its ninth and last strike at our acoustic nerves. By this time, the sound was a deep rumble bordering on subsonic, but still powerful enough to rattle our bones.

Subsequent passes only produced nausea. Then came the noise of the tornadoes. The vaporized moon debris and Martian ejecta which had vaporized together had been carried along with the shock wave, produced horrific tornadoes of over 800 km/hr. when interacting with the irregular surface features. Even half a kilometer down the cliché of freight trains remained accurate. After that, we weathered the sound of the unvaporized debris and ejecta rain that lasted for weeks.

What the hell am I doing on Mars?

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,155

Mars, besides being closer to the asteroid belt than Earth, also offered less friction from its atmosphere, so Mars’ moons had impacted fairly intact; the seismic data from the moons’ impacts established the extremes that could be withstood should something bigger accidentally wander into Mars’ orbit. This is prudent information, considering what goes whizzing by in the next outer orbit around the Sun. As a geologist involved in Phase I, the sacrificing of Phobos and Deimos was crucial. Already on the outer edge of the Sun’s Goldilocks zone, Mars lost even more sunlight as pulverized dust partnered with the injected radiodegradable nanoreflectors suspended high around the planet. But in spite of the diminished sunshine, the two native moons’ deaths created a firestorm that was debated as the “nuclear option,” when devising the plan to warm the planet up. The moons’ debris created a thermoreflective canopy and raised the temperatures for the nanoreflectors to recycle downward. What rubble that had escaped the upper atmosphere became an equatorial ring around the planet.

And it is stunning. Almost makes the ringing in my ears worth it. Almost.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 19,320

I have to apologize for the boring ramblings of my previous journal entries. It’s just that there have been no big surprises to spice it up.

Until now.

I like birthdays on Mars. You get to celebrate them twice a Mars year. By the time of my 110thbirthday, Phobos and Deimos had ultimately been replaced by the large near-Mars asteroid, Ancile. For a Martian year-and-a-half I and the other colonists watched a point of light grow into a globe as it was reeled in, and when it grew no longer, the spectacular fireworks began. Ancile made quick work of cleaning up the halo reminder of moons past. I loved the ring around Mars. I was there at its birth, and I am grateful I had over 20 years to stand in awe of its nighttime grandeur before it was cannibalized by its replacement. Ancile swept up the billions of orbiting particles from perigee to apogee, rather dynamically, you might say. There were almost twenty flashes a second initially, which made the new moon flare so bright that staring risked arc burns into the human retina. Over another 1,000 sols the flashes slowed to about three an hour, and by 2,000 sols, it was a wrap and the ring around Mars was gone. After that, the pyrotechnics were rare enough to provoke superstitious wishes.

The new imported moon begot the polar magnetic fields that stabilized our atmosphere. Once Ancile was tidally locked with its planet, water could accrue, dust could settle, oxygen and carbon dioxide could assume their rightful positions in and out of my human lungs, and I could finally stow away forever my OxyVents and ARESuits. By the sixty-years after the first spontaneous thunderstorm, the colony population had grown to 2700 persons, including me, and the first compound was ready to bud off into a second. All had gone well until this point. Nice, boring, and poor material for a diary.

Then the ferropods came alive.

Dr. Christopher Cooke, some data analyst at the Mars ṺberCollider, found this out the hard way.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,031

The living and dangerous ferropods were an astonishing surprise that set the entire Mars program back six Earth years. Half a centimeter in diameter, these nearly perfectly round structures, made of primarily iron in an alloy mixture of silicon, zinc, and over a hundred other trace elements, were a presumed natural resource used wherever ball bearings were needed in the colony. They were perfect as far as I was concerned. On top of perfect shape, there was a duplicity in their perfection as bearings: they were also self-lubricating, covering themselves with a non-degradable slick that originated from deep within their concentric layers. We all thought they were inert and non-viable. They were easily available, littering the planet’s surface or just centimeters below the surface in the numerous canyons and calderas. I’m as guilty as the rest of the engineers in recommending that all novel industrial design for Mars use the ferropod’s dimensions as the construction standard for ball bearings. It certainly made sense to me. Why import from Earth what lay around for the picking here, free?

Why the grace period? Why pose as the perfect widget, just long enough for us to complete the entire Phase I and use what we had as the stable platform to launch Phase II? Why be so agreeable and then declare war? Perhaps it was the achievement of an ambient temperature above 40 degrees or maybe a humidity self-sustaining at 2%—or a combination of these and a dozen other man-made Martian corruptions. All of our little ferropod workers in the colony went on strike; they no longer functioned as ball bearings. We suddenly lost environmental and indoor climate control, refrigeration, flywheel use, turbines, transport steering, axles, universal joints, graviton cones, and engines of every sort. All we engineers could do was stick our thumbs up our asses.

The colony collapsed.

When the tightly stratified little balls came back to life and weren’t happy in whatever niches, crevices, or interfaces we had placed them, the whole damn settlement had to be retrofitted. Like one of your body parts rarely thought about until it is missed, something as mundane and unseen as a ball bearing threatened a whole world by abdication. The problem was so devastating that the colony population was halved within four months as evacuees to Earth exchanged with massive crates of ball bearings of the inanimate type.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,102

It’s pretty amazing that these ferropods, simple as they were, ushered in such a cultural upheaval: there was life elsewhere in the universe, and the fact that it was just next door on Mars implied that it was probably everywhere in the universe. Everyone freaked. In typical bureaucratic overreaction, a Cultural Psychology Committee was created, bringing to Mars a panel of distinguished psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to assess and if possible implement responses to the colonists’ difficulties in “grasping the gravity of the situation.” I don’t really get it. Life elsewhere? I mean, it’s nice to know—even exciting—but I wasn’t going to blow my brains out or anything like that. And as far as “grasping the gravity of the situation,” I think that already being on Mars was already as surrealistic a life choice that no surprise could nonplus.

Back on Mother Earth, a lot of philosophers sold books, a lot of evangelists sermonized, a lot mental health workers evaluated, a lot of politicians strategized, and a whole lot of ball bearing tycoons became very rich. I guess Big Balls joined the other Big This and Big That megacorporations.

Since we needed ball bearings, our ball bearing-dependent colony on Mars retrofitted and recovered. Once the population again surged to over 2500, there was new talent: a Botany and Biology Consortium, along with its Veterinary Studies Division, or VSD. The ferropod was apprehended, studied, and also feared; it appeared that when its globular attitude stretched out into a linear, shiny, slug-like shape, snapping back into a ball released enough kinetic energy to make the re-formed ball ballistic. So far, three humans, including Dr. Cooke, had suffered strikes to their heads, with varied results.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,657

We geologists searched for more of these strange little beasts in hopes of determining what they live on, besides that brain in Dr. Cooke’s head. (He had become rather famous on Mars and had given a lot of job security to many scientific departments. There were two more victims, but for some reason they’re Classified.)

Our searches yielded two fantastic results.

The first was the discovery of the Ares arboreta plant, a green flora that had begun germinating from long-dormant spores; again, who knows? The rise in temperature? Humidity? Once sprouted planet-wide en masse, the little bushes quickly grew up to about two meters give or take. As they grew, they seemed to lift up out of the dirt by their tap root, which then split to very weirdly resemble functional limbs. The xenobotanists gained job security.

The second fantastic discovery were the Sonotomes—unearthly songs and vocalizations(?) which seemed to come out of thin air from the mountainous areas. With all the buzz over Ares arboreta, The Botany Division of the Botany and Biology Consortium had swelled to parity with the Biology Division, but a new group, designated Electromagnetic Archeology, came on board in attempts to decipher the mysterious Sonotomes and hopefully find fossil remains of those who sang them.

Actual Martians. Wouldn’t that be something?

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,809

The ferropods brought a lot of changes, but the biggest change was the birth of politics on Mars. I personally think this put into serious jeopardy our mission statement of bringing only the best Earth has to offer. Politics? The Botany and Biology Consortium joined the Cultural Psychology Committee, the Electromagnetic Archeology Council, and the old and long-established Terraforming Maintenance section of my own Geology College of Mars. Together, they made up the New Mars Colony Project Security Council, or MCPSC.

The business interests of Earth were not without representation on the MCPSC. The Nations of Earth—the NOE—formerly the United Nations, were no longer united except by business relationships. They sent an NOE liaison to the MCPSC as a non-voting member. The official function of the NOE liaison was to authenticate that the colony did in fact consist of the best Earth had to offer—philosophically, ethically, and humanistically. The real function of the NOE liaison, if you ask me, was to step in—to intercede—on behalf of the business interests of the NOE. That way, I figure that thoughts of independence—or even insubordination—could be reported back to Earth and, if necessary, “contained.” There were rumors that this person had at his disposal a secret Prestige Guard who would help him secure the colony, should this ever become necessary. The MCPSC welcomed him as an interested guest; he accepted as nothing less than a predatory spy, forever crouched in a striking position.

I guess it was another business decision.

Then Ares Arboreta began walking!

Their above-surface split tap root became the functional limbs they resembled. They weren’t very quick, but they could get around. Weird.

So we all knew business was good. The MCPSC kept administering and no one ever heard about the NOE liaison who obviously kept observing politely and unobtrusively. Any suspicion or intrigue was buried under the wonders of the discoveries thus far—life in two disparate species, spanning flora and fauna, botany and biology, and on the very next world at that! And evidence of a sentient species, extinct, but which left records for study. And now even the Martian thunder sounds right. Mars is no longer comical; Mars is serious.

As they say, “Mars vigila.”

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 26,488

Found a publisher for my diary. He told me that it’s too long already, and he wasn’t pleased when I told him I am still writing entries. He said he’ll put out what I have so far as Part 1, and if it sells, he’ll do the Part 2 I’m writing now. But that’s all irrelevant here.

It’s been over 10 Earth years of MCPSC deliberations and agendas, but our Electromagnetic Archeology Council has failed to find any rusted fossils that were ancient Martians. “Nothing to report,” the routine entry to the minutes, became a joke, and finally a cliché. As a geologist working with the archeologists, I could sense their building frustration over the profitless years that promised—no, teased—us with the initial discovery of the Sonotomes.

All this time, hordes of xenolinguists have flooded into the research divisions of the colony. Under the auspices of Electromagnetic Archeology, xenolinguist Deniz Mickal, DXL, accompanied her husband, Dr. Evan Mickal, to our little colony. Evan was a Ph.D. in both biochemistry and physiology, and he joined the Veterinary Studies Division (VSD). Deniz worked in the Xenolinguistics (XL) Division. Since Evan studied ferropods and Deniz translated the Sonotomes, I often worked with both of them in the field. When I went off alone on an excursion, Evan was back at the VSD trying to investigate experimental interactions between the imported Earth animals there and ferropods, but there were none; for some reason, the globular critters just weren’t interested in “snapping” into any animal’s head. The three humans who had not been so lucky justified a bullet-proof glass barrier that separated the ferropods from the other rooms, hallways, animals, and humans at the VSD, which went a long way in putting me at ease when I’d visit.

Meanwhile, Deniz and her fellow XLs have made great strides with the Sonotomes, thanks to me. More about how in a minute. My find, a crucial one, was unfortunately the last great discovery before the Electromagnetic Archeologist malaise of persistent non-discovery. Nevertheless, what I had found gave everyone plenty else to do, since it opened these oral recordings for the XLs.

“The book from Mars is an open book,” the XLs said, their work allowing even the unscientific to translate the texts as easily as a Greek scholar might translate Homer. It was a fascinating language with grammatical rules that seemed to corral syllables into a choral cadence as if it were meant to be sung by many. Harmonies, centered on the same word, indicated emphasis or nuance. It was if there were several Martians needed to say one thing the right way. The XLs codified it substantially enough to allow almost anyone, so inclined, to work on translation.

The actual recordings had been a different matter, and I’m not too shy to say I’m the guy who figured it out. Rendering them required much more actual geology since they were based on a mysterious recording process uniquely Martian, using rust as a substrate. The canyons played them naturally, but only under certain conditions. It wasn’t until I realized that ferric oxide enantiomers were used differently in recording vs. listening that the musical intonations of the language, as theorized by the XLs, were confirmed. (Levoferric oxide had been used to lay down the audiotracks long ago, but dextroferric oxide was needed to lift them off of the rust.) I got the idea to separate the two chiral forms of the oxide and run each through a magnetometer. I used the Department of Geology one, the one that allows you to plop down large strips of shale for evaluation. That’s when I noticed both oxides had wave forms of intensity which varied over the length of the sample. The enantiomers were mirror images of the same thing in different directions—like a coming and a going. I remember looking at the plotted data and damn if it didn’t look like a sound file. Not coming and going. Recording and playing back, possibly? I used an algorithm to convert the patterns into a playable format and put them through the piezo-quartz transducers.

I had never been lucky enough to hear them produced in the canyons naturally. Sure, I had heard recordings of them; everyone had. But my own transcription that day had a signal/noise ratio that rendered the clarity needed if we were ever hopeful of translating them. I listened. Couldn’t understand what I heard. Couldn’t grasp the melodic scheme. I listened.

And I wept.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 26,914

Water changed everything. Outside in the Martian canyons, the sound made by the ancient recording process played back spontaneously, but rarely, creating the ethereal “singing canyons.” But you needed to be patient, guessing where to be and when to be there, to hear it. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch one for a long time. I still needed electronic transformation to convert the magnetographics into oscillations that carried any song I heard through speakers.

I had always heard that the natural renderings were thrilling—even life-changing—compared to the studio-enhanced final products, because in the canyons the experience was fortuitous and accidental, a fluke by-product of someone having used iron at all, along with the natural processes that fetched the frequencies into the air. They must have been singing for eons, waiting for the right set of ears to be in the right place at the right time.

Then there was water. During the terraforming maintenance phase, it was we engineers who concocted the re-debut of water back into ancient rock. After that, Mars would literally burst into song for me and the heavily armored biologists visiting the canyons to collect more ferropods for study.

The singing canyons! They were astounding! For me, anyway. It was like comparing a mere recording of Wagner or Beethoven to an actual performance by an orchestra and chorus. To an inexperienced listener, the sounds from the canyons at first were heard as musical non-sequiturs, gibberish. In fact, I couldn’t even recognize them to be vocal renderings at all, much less sentient vocalizations. But strangely beautiful, people better and smarter than me studied and decrypted them, using my algorithm to unlock the recordings in a sound lab so the ancient Martians could not only be heard, but finally be listened to. We all had played a part, from my discovery of the recording process and then on to the polygamy of geology, sound engineering, and xenolinguistics; we brought the first authentic recordings to the ears of humans two Earth years after the canyons were first heard singing their postdiluvian songs.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 27,040

After my discoveries related to the Sonotomes, the MCPSC authorized a nine-fold increase in the Botany and Biology Consortium budget. (And I got a bonus, but they called it a stipend.) The new budget allows a Dr. Renée Niemann the opportunity to come to Mars and assume the Division directorship of the VSD. I guess it makes sense that a real veterinarian join the team. She would join Dr. Evan Mickal there. Even though Evan’s assignment on Mars is very different from his wife’s duties, there is still a lot of opportunity for the couple to cross paths with each other and with me—such as in the canyons. Deniz seems very energized with her work. She tells me that the Sonotome translations often refer to an as-yet unidentified symbiosis in the Martian life-epic. She feels that there are instances where “soul” may seem a better translation than symbiosis, but that could be a dangerous and erroneous conclusion. I suppose. I also suppose that shared field work as well as stories and songs of symbiosis give Evan and Deniz common topics of conversation at their dinner table each evening.

Evan’s a pretty bright guy. His primary tool, Magnetic Resonance Physiology (“MRP”), has been a staple of human medicine since the cancer cures and telomere lengthening technology had increased the human lifespan. By the way, the lifespan of telomorphs has now been legislated to a limit of 150 years. I knew that would happen. Sooner or later they over-bureaucratize everything. I haven’t received any notifications, so I guess I really am grandfathered in.

Evan’s MRP has reconciled human life from atoms to organs, so I know Evan is dying to use it when we discover the remains of ancient Martians. Even a fossil could be MRP-scanned for significant results and profitable payback. I know Dr. Evan Mickal dreams of Martian mummified remains.

Just imagine.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 27,153

A little geology for you— Based on the Sonotomes, the extinct Martians had lived, evolved, and died during a range of time from the Late Hesperian to the Early Amazonian epochs, a transition time of three million years when oxygen concentration in their thin atmosphere was greater than 92%. From the songs, Deniz tells me there is evidence they had awareness of their coming demise, but the reason for it remains unsung, so far; their name for it translates as “forgotten,” which the XLs agree can’t be accurate. Forgotten by whom? They sing songs that give every indication that they were the dominant life form.

I’m no poet, but as the details of language are elucidated, the poetry on the subject is being described as nothing less than lofty and brilliant by the most expert translators. The demise, the “forgetting,” always figures prominently. Questioning your mortality is one thing but waxing philosophical on the death of your whole race is probably as beautiful, desperate, and chilling as the sudden wisdom from any last agonal gasp could be.

The VSD, additionally, is assigned the task of pursuing any biological risks of cross-contamination between Earth and Mars. Any new world interaction poses dangers for the sitting ducks—both any exposed natives and we visitors alike. After arrival, we were lectured on the cautionary tales of gonorrhea for Native Americans or, as payback, syphilis for the landing Europeans, which seemed to strike an interplanetary chord. So far, here, contamination across worlds had been a one-way street, the few ferropod attacks offering nothing short of a terrifying and lethal welcome mat for humanity’s second home.

Welcome to Mars. Have a nice sol.

END OF DIARY PART 1

the question of “searching for a road to follow.”

the question haunts me often- most doggedly in mitski’s ‘francis forever,’ in which I am often inclined to replace the line “i’ve been trying to lay my head down” with this one of my own invention- “i’ve been searching for a road to follow.” the rest of the phrase accommodates my substitution actually quite nicely- “i don’t know what to do without you / i don’t know where to put my hands / i’ve been searching for a road to follow / but i’m writing this at 3 a.m.”

and so, the question remains.

why- from where- did i choose this line?

it carries a sense of eerie familiarity, but i have never wanted to probe the matter further- possibly for fear of discovering that someone before me has already made every connection i have.

after all, nothing under the sun is new.

the question grabbed me by the shoulders once again in my perusal of joan didion’s “the year of magical thinking.”

her desperate struggle for the straight and narrow- studiously avoiding every object, place, memory, recollection that might lead her back- back into a divot of her own imagination- the sullied road of grief and mourning, as opposed to the socially-sanitized ‘healing.’

a teatime objective. finally alright- finally safe- to air the corridors of grievance for the public eye.

she quietly shuts off every water main- every breaker- that could lead her back to the mansion of memory that is john.

the question still hovers.

she learns which thoughts are safe and which are not. she learns to avoid sunset boulevard in california and the bend across the pond in central park.

she donates sweaters, books, fine china.

she searches diligently for the road to follow.

but she does not donate his shoes.

perhaps the road has failed her.

perhaps the road was altogether something else- it kept her off ledges and bridges and that could be enough.

is the road to follow grief? is it closure? is the road the metaphor or the objective? what of following it? how will we know which road and when? is the search for the road to follow, the road itself?

the question peers through my eyes.

“searching for a road to follow.”

a road. not the road. any road. any crumb of foam to keep us afloat in our empty seas.

C.S. Lewis, following his wife’s death, said of his thoughts- “so many roads once; now so many cul de sacs.”

“francis forever” is on the radio. the question follows in my footsteps. fumbled words like a toddler first learning to write.

“i’ve been searching for a road to follow.

i end up on a tree-lined street.

i look up through the gaps of sunlight.

i miss you more than anything.”

red

it's the only color They allowed

after taking over

and "uniting" the world

and squashing the rebels.

red is the only color seen anywhere.

we learned about it in school, i think.

something about dna being too complex to control.

that didn't stop Them from taking our melanin.

crowds of people, all different shades of grey.

we look like cadavers.

i feel like a cadaver, at times.

anyway, red.

we can blush.

our eyes can become bloodshot after tears.

our noses, rosy in the cold weather.

we can bleed.

i've held onto that privilege.

the gift of red blood.

it's what keeps us together.

grey is too... lifeless but red;

red is vibrant

and versatile

and beautiful.

i used to get into fights

during the small reprieve

after school, before "recreational" time.

all the kids in my class

would meet up behind the bleachers

and just wail on each other.

rosy, dripping knuckles;

the mark of a child

growing up in this sick, twisted world.

the rite of passage

before They stopped being so lenient

with "continuous acts of rebellion"

and plant guards behind the bleachers.

it was cathartic

while it lasted.

i haven't seen red in years.

nobody feels anymore.

nobody cries

or shouts

or holds their breath

or blushes

or fights

or lives.

it's all grey.

it's all dull.

i miss it.

i can barely remember it,

but i see color every night

in my dreams.

it's not my fault,

but i feel guilty that

the new generations

don't get to experience it.

especially not since

They're developing a serum

that will take away our red.

or kill us.

They don't ever do trials first.

"We live as one.

We suffer as one

We die as one."

everyone gets their shot

at the same time.

...

the room is cold,

cold, and white.

pristine, even.

i'm scared to touch anything.

not that there's anything to touch.

we were all called in

during our "recreational" time.

i wasn't so shocked

at how fast They developed Their serum.

i'm buzzing with nerves

when the representative walks in.

face covered in that eery mask.

"To protect their identities."

to keep our abusers faceless

and powerful.

we exchange no words.

i twiddle my toes

in my shoes,

where the representative can't see me.

the representative brings out a silver tray with

one syringe,

one label-less bottle,

one band-aid.

it's over too soon.

a prick in my arm

with no warning

and a quick

covering with the band-aid.

i'm taken outside

where a waiting room

full of fellow citizens awaits me.

hundreds of rows of seats

with neat tray tables standing next to them.

on the table rests

one small knife

and one band-aid.

to check, i suppose,

if Their serum worked.

the people sitting next to me

keep their gazes forward

and distant.

i do the same.

it's quiet enough

to hear a pen drop.

i think some

hope for death.

it certainly would be

an easier escape.

better than underground

where everyone holds out ridiculous hope

that the resitance still resides.

just ten more minutes

until we'll all simultaneously

cut ourselves

and bleed for our opressors.

to see if we fit Their standard

for a colorless world.

it's over all too soon.

i take a stuttering breath.

years of this dreary existence

and i still haven't gotten used to

this feeling of dread.

shakily i take the small knife

and cut a horizontal line

on my palm.

black

One quote from each president while still in office, save one. Some were funny, some dumb as it gets, and others that may make you want to say. “Huh?”

I was tossed as to put this in the Comedy of Educational Portal since from this perspective it could be see as either or. The presidents are pretty much in no specifiv order. If I missed one or two, let me know but I think they are all here, right up to Biden.

Richard Nixon: ″I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.″

Theodore Roosevelt: “When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ’not guilty.”

Barack Obama: “I’ve been to all 57 states, and believe I have one more to go.”

George W. Bush: ″When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.″

James Madison: “I always talk better lying down.”

Chester A. Arthur: “If it were not for the reporters, I would tell you the truth.”

Ronald Regan: “You know, it has been said that politics is the second oldest profession and I’ve come to realize over the last few years, it bears a great similarity to the first.”

George H.W. Bush: “For seven and a half years I’ve worked alongside President Reagan. We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex...uh...setbacks.”

Harry S. Truman: ’My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.″

George Washington: “This is surprising. I thought Chinese people were white.”

Thomas Jefferson: “I say free all the black slaves and send them back to Africa or wherever.”

John Adams: “That Washington was not a scholar is certain. That he is too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station was equally past dispute.”

Millard Fillmore: “That was a joke so I don’t understand why you aren’t laughing.”

Andrew Johnson: “Don’t stop him; let the assassin shoot!”

Woodrow Wilson: “Birth of a Nation was a great film and the guys with the white hoods looked real to me.”

Rutherford B. Hayes”: “Some of my closest friends call me Rutherfrraud.”

Warren G. Harding: “being president had its upside.. I can have sex anywhere I want and don’t have to pay for it.”

William Henry Harrison: “I shall die a happy man.” (He died 32 days after taking the oath of office, so no one really knows if he was happy about that.)

James K.. Polk: “I will not be a president on Sunday. We can do that tomorrow.”

John Tyler: “What Even Is a Joke, Is It Like a Territory That Might Want Slavery?”

Martin Van Buren; ’I will do whatever it take to keep Texas from being a state.”

John Quincy Adams: On skinny-dipping - “Whatever danger there may be in the exercise – and that there is much danger, this incident offers melancholy and cumulative proof – there would be yet greater danger in abstaining from it, or in substituting any other effective exercise in its place.”

Herbert Hoover: “I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.” Not long after he said this, the Great Depression set in.

Jimmy Carter: “I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery.”

Ulysses S. Grant: “My relatives will do a better job than I could at their posts. They don’t drink.”

Lyndon B. Johnson: ’I’ve had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose.”

Dwight David Eisenhower: On Richard Nixon contributions as his vice president: “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.”

Gerald Ford: “I know I will go to hell because I pardoned Richard Nixon.”

James Monroe: This anecdote regarding the humor of James Monroe appeared in the 1860s. It may be apocryphal, and/or just a bad pun.

A Scotch servant, employed about the executive mansion, who had a broad accent and a good fund of cold humor, had been charged, by certain persons who had projected a monument in honor of something or somebody, with a message to an appropriate official, who, it seems, was not the President. But old Sandy sought the Chief Magistrate, in whose personal service he was, and conveyed the communication to him. Mr. Monroe instructed him to address the message elsewhere, and thereupon Sandy, persisting like a Scotchman, said: ‘Your honor, it is about the monument.’

‘Well, Sandy,’ said Mr. Monroe, drawing himself up erect and symmetrical, ’don’t you see I am not the mon you ment.

John F. Kennedy: “Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.”

Zachary Taylor: I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.” He died shortly after from ingestion from ice-cream. It was later thought by researchers he was allergic to by-products of milk substances.

James Buchanan: This was said after his presidency--“I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them.” He never married.

William McKinley: “Boys, don’t let them hurt him!” He said this as a crowd of people started beating on Leon Czolgosz, the man who shot him twice in the chest and McKinley later died.

William Taft: “I eat to live, and live to eat.” Supposedly, he was found dead, stuck in his bathtub

Calvin Coolidge: “I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.”

James Garfield: On July 2, 1881, James Garfield was shot by a deranged individual named Charles Guiteau. Evidently, Garfield possessed incredible willpower, and the president survived until September 19th before succumbing to blood poisoning. In great pain, Garfield asked his doctor, “Oh, Dr. Swaim, can’t you stop this?” Garfield died moments later.

Donald Trump: “Nobody has better respect for intelligence than Donald Trump.”

Joe Biden: During a 2008 campaign rally, Biden said: “Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S.”

Downton Abbey or is it Downright Shabby Hits The Big Screen: © Worditch News – Film Review By Julian Race

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of that dark yet cozy closet, the fifth TV re-run of the six series had finally finished on ITV3 and your sanity had been restored to “almost normal”, that flippin Julian Fellows comes up with the film version of Downright Shabby.

Being headline news and pasted all over the front pages of Worditch News, I braced myself for the question I knew would inevitably roll off my wife’s tongue. “Can we go and see Downton at the flicks”? Shit, I did not think it would be that quick but fortunately, I still had a few tabs of valium left that saw me through the screening of the full series on TV. For reasons that now escape me, I found my head nodding rather than shaking which is something I must add to the ever growing list of ailments that I needed to inform my doctor about when he had fully recovered from my previous visit! It’s possibly the onset of St Vitus Dance I thought, knowing my current health conditions; however, I’d done it, I’d agreed to go and see Downright Shabby.

Following the agreement, which was quickly set in fast drying concrete, I tried on several occasions to call my psychiatrist, but he had possibly suffered the same fate as I had and was currently residing on another planet!

The following day arrived so quickly and being sufficiently medicinally subdued, we entered screen 8 of the cinema and took our pre booked seats. All in the name of consumer interest I repeated to myself over and over.

Once all the long-term calorie abusing consumers had settled down with their family bucket of popcorn in one fist, their foot-long sausage roll in another, or at least that’s what I hoped it was and every pocket bulging with potato crisps and sweets including a two litre cardboard jug of “diet” coke hooked between their teeth, the introductory music bellowed out of the Dolby system!

The film begins with a letter being signed and then sealed down by some royal equerry or other who then hands it to a servant who then runs it down to the post office where it is shoved uncerimoniously into a sack and loaded onto the night train.

As the train thunders through the night, the post is eagerly sorted by the ever so humble postal staff and the letter makes another appearance as it is put into a pigeon hole. I wondered if it had an equity card.

The scene changes to a Post Office van trundling through traffic free streets with not an E Scooter in sight!

The scene then cuts a postman on a motorcycle heading up the long and winding driveway to Downright Shabby, it could be a BSA but I’ll stand corrected. The motorbike squeaks to a halt and the letter which appears at this point to be the star of the film is handed to Daisy’s dopey love interest Andrew who then rushes it to Barrow who just happened to be waiting for the postal delivery near the tradesman’s entrance, which given Barrows disposition is somewhere he always longs to be.

Barrow or Wheelie as I’ve nicknamed him, hands the letter to Hugh Bunny boiler or Robert Bawdy as he is named in the film who surprisingly looks twenty years younger than when he was in series six and Barrow tells him that it is a letter “from the palace”.

Unimpressed, Bob walks off with it muttering, “So it is”. Barrow who is sporting a new haircut with a tinge of grey at the sides looks bemused and returns to attend to his other duties, no doubt as amazed as I was that it only cost 1d for a red stamp to send the envelope all that way and with so many people handling it! It was at this point that I mentally noted that the gender realignment injections Barrow had taken in series six must have worked a treat as he never tried to chat up the postman!

And so, it came to pass that the royal letter revealed that the King and Queen were to visit Downright on a tour. Was Freddie Mercury to make an appearance I mused; Barrow will be pleased! The story drags on and like Bob did in series six, switches to below stairs for a change of scenery.

Now, bearing in mind the royal couple were a month away from the visit, Mrs. Fatmore, Daisy and the other kitchen staff who never utter a word, were running around with a few headless chickens or was it like headless chickens, never mind, they were eagerly preparing food like the royals were already in residence!

Plans were immediately put in place in preparation for the King and Queens visit to Downright. Unfortunately, the staff below stairs was to have their noses pushed out of joint as the royal duo always took their own staff wherever they went so were subsequently banned from serving the royal visitors.

Surprisingly, yet reassuringly caustic Cora “the borer - yawn” has very few lines in this film but decides at a family meeting to discuss the visit that Wheelie (Barrow) is incontinent, she may have said incompetent, but the ever-expanding person sat directly behind me opened another family size bag of cheese and vinegar potato crisps just as Cora spoke. I quickly ran the scene back through my mind to get back on track and decided that Barrow is either A) going to France, B) requires a few wine corks from Parsoles (Carson’s) stash to stem the flow or 3) is not up to the job! (Did you see what I did there?)

Whichever it was, the scene changes to Mrs. Shoes (Hughes) walking down the long driveway of Downright and into her garden where she catches Parsoles in the garden scraping his prize carrot or that’s what he said he was doing! Following a short discussion and after wiping his hands and his carrot on his pinnie, he launches himself fully costumed in his butlers outfit up to Downright to save the day.

The film reveals that Lady Edith is suddenly married to a right Herbert and funnily enough that’s his name in the film and is wealthier now than any of the Bawdy family put together which is another thorn in the side of Lady Mary.

Apparently, somewhere along the TV series he must have accepted Marigold the “bastard child” as the Bawdy family referred to it as.

The Dowager Violet reveals at the age of 192 she has had the results of tests and they are not good; she cannot go to university after all and even if she did, she’d never pay off the student loan or complete the course as she is ill and will pass away shortly. Did I see Robert check his watch in the background?

The royal servants arrive and imediately take over the running of the house, much to the disdain of the downstairs Downright staff.

Suddenly, and totally out of the blue, the central heating broke down and because Parsoles had cancelled the service contract with British Gas to save money, a local plumber was called in to sort it out.

With his ball cock in his hand the plumber tries his best chat up lines on Daisy which just goes to prove that men can multi task after all! The dope that Daisy is pondering on marrying gets jealous of the plumber and in his rage smashes the central heating system after the plumber leaves the house so that everyone would think the plumber was about as much use as a 12mm washer in a 13mm joint. But people were wiser than he thought and because of it Daisy promises to marry him? (Work that one out!)

The day of the royal visit arrives, caustic Cora warns Bob that he had better not do his duodenal ulcer party trick on the King or he’s banned from the marital bed and back into the spare room.

The next scene cuts to Molsley who is acting as if he badly needs a wee. Obviously overwhelmed at serving royalty, Molsley proceeds to wet himself and as if on cue caustic Cora is not amused and gives him one of her stern looks which causes his reserve tank to empty also.

The devious Downright staff downstairs decide to drug the royal chef with a double dose of sleeping draft and the royal butler is then locked in his bedroom. The result of which sees the Downright staff serving the King and Queen. With Molsley sporting a well placed washing peg to prevent spillage, all goes well.

That is except for Barrow who agrees to go out with one of the male staff that is supposed to be looking after the royals. They agree to meet at a pub later that evening.

Barrow bowls up to the pub, but his male companion is nowhere to be seen. So, being a budding promiscuous type, he is quickly chatted up by another bloke who asks him to go with him to a club.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather boa when they go in to this gay club where men dance with other men for Christ’s sake and when Barrow kisses this bloke full on the mouth and I suspect there were tongues involved, the woman behind me nearly choked on her fifth bag of salted nuts and proceeded to fire a machine gun of salted nuts into my right ear!

Barrow was really getting into the scene and I presume he was aroused and was about to do his “Jake the Peg” impression when in storms the local plod or police to give the finer translation and all the “Perverts” as the police called them were arrested and carted off to clink and not one of them collected £200 for passing “Go”!

The bloke who originally supposed to have met Barrow at the pub turns up at the nick and gets Barrow out without a charge and Barrow gets his first real boyfriend “to write to”! Ahhhh.

Lady Mary, who has only smiled once in the whole six series on TV as far as my memory serves me remains fairly quiet throughout and decides to marry Henry Talbot. Henry, who sports a rather long spoon neck in my opinion is yet another racing driver. However, following some one to one training with Branson in series one, she was fully up to speed with which brake pipe to cut if Henry as much as looks at her incorrectly.

But Branson, what about Branson shouts the person behind me whilst simultaneously showering my head with a mixture of popcorn, diet coke and the half sucked corner of a snickers bar. My wife hands me a tissue without averting her eyes from the screen and as if by magic, Branson appears.

An IRA member is furtively chatting to Branson who immediately gets drawn into a plot to kill the King. Branson, being the full shilling in the brains department sees through the ruse and saves the King from being shot. Branson however had secretly wanted to kill the King himself but had to ditch the idea when two undercover policemen arrested the IRA member.

After all that action we finally come to the finale, Barrow got his beau without the need to feel the full force of a coppers truncheon, Lady Mary agrees to marry Henry and buys some new metal snippers, Dowager Violet is definitely a goner but will miraculously reappear in fine health in the new series and Bob is counting her wealth, Bates still has his limp but has a classic collection of walking sticks under his belt if that is possible, Parsoles retires again to grow cucumbers, Mrs. Shoes refuses to eat his carrots, Daisy is engaged, the plumber is out on his ear, Lady Edith is thinking of modelling lingerie, Herbert is still a right Herbert, Mrs. Patmore invents a new recipe, Cora is promised that she can have more lines to speak in the next series along with several new facial expressions, the postman manages to kick start the BSA and the letter is screwed up and thrown in the trash, never to act again!

The credits roll………….

Go and see the film and tell me this review isn’t spot on!

©Julian Race 16/6/2021

Twitter @JulianRace1

Months

ago

I visited

The Grand Canyon

it was pretty boring

But I got ice cream

so

I

guess

Thats

good

Dundro’s mind was suitably preoccupied all the way back to Hobbiton. The strange article he found returned to his mind even when he wasn’t looking or holding it. The object he found wasn’t consuming him like the Rings of Power though, it was in fact Dundro’s overpowering curiosity that compelled him to investigate and look into this object.

It appeared to be a phial of some sort. The stopper of the phial was stuck fast and no amount of force exerted by Dundro could uncover it. Filled in it was a curious clear liquid that pulsed polychromatically. The liquid glowed dimly and appeared to have an aura of azure. When Dundro put his ear up against it, he could have sworn hearing a choir of Elven angels.

Thus he admired it, making the now relatively short journey back home undisturbed by no Warg nor Orc, though the only hindrance was Dundro’s ever-growing hunger.

And thus he completed his journey. No sooner than he had ascended the main mule-way into Hobbiton, he was crowded upon by a band of Hobbits, some of which were his friends but most of them were the rest of Dundro’s Hobbit-mates who had turned up to investigate the apparent disappearance of one of their kin (which remember, was an unusual event in any case whatsoever). They took one look at Dundro’s sodden tunic, mud-caked feet, and decided that this was a mere characteristic of the Baggins family, leaving to resume their chores. Dundro’s closest friends, Chacko Took and Menez Brandybuck. They all began exclaiming simultaneously multiple variations of: “Where the ’ell were you?”. Dundro patted them on their backs. “No worries. I’m here. But you guys won’t believe what I went through!”

And thus they all walked back to Bag End, Dundro gleefully regaling his friends with his experience.

the dreams of drunks are the strangest

and often most beautiful

It’s what he

came to think this morning

after he woke up with

the empty glass under the blanket

Surely it was that glass

and the liquor in his guts

that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear

as glass

She smiled at him

with diamond teeth and stooped like only

a professional stripper could

next to his limp body

She rolled him onto his belly

and his limpid, numb eyes

watched her grow an icicle from between

her legs

but they closed by the time

she carved a hole into his liver and

began to fuck him until the

ice melted

That was a nice dream,

he concluded

And tonight he’d go to sleep

with two glasses

and a bottle under

the blanket

***

IG: https://www.instagram.com/bogdan_1_dragos/

Wer are not children anymore, staring up at the stars

We have to face the fact, can’t put are feelings in a jar,

Were old enough to know were not superstars

Were old enough to know the world has there scars

We know water and fire makes steam,

We know nothing is as it seems

We know most people don’t get there dreams

The wold in its hole is completly extreem

We know were not made of bricks and steel

Its not fare but yet its real

We have people in our life no need to conseal

We have to face the way we feel

The stoplight blinks.

Rain runs in rivulets across the pavement,

downhill. Slanting towards the drenched

earth, the eventual eternal grave.

And yellow puddles in shining smears,

reflections in the water, runny

memories of the streetlamps up above.

A concrete slab overlooks the river,

with two hands set firmly on the

steel railing, holding on.

Unwilling to depart.

The gurgle of an engine, sputtering.

Turning over and over and over

like their stomach. They watch the

car choke, watch the steam rising

from the exhaust pipe.

Rain has soaked them to the bone,

the car roars and the stoplight

floods the puddles with streaks of

red light. It pulls away, splashing

water, ignoring the light, taking

the sound with it.

Silent, as the reflections of the

night sky blur into the ground,

into the river, into their very

soul. Night becomes the air

becomes their clothes, hands,

neck. They try to keep their

head above the surface as the

unending night slips into a

watery reflection of blackness

and stars.