My kitchen contains two bottles of wine that I have stored at 55 degrees Fahrenheit for nine years; I will store them at 55 degrees for at least another fifteen. I will open them on that undetermined date to follow a meal with an undetermined menu for undetermined guests.

My daughters and wife will be there, certainly, and several colleagues of past and future. I’d like to draft the list now, but life doesn’t work that way. Preparing for a dinner party 15-20 years in advance is an exercise in quixotism—who knows? I could be dead myself—but that’s the appeal, I think.

I bought those two bottles of vintage port first: Quinta do Vale Meao, 2011. I had read of the excellent vintage, and when a conference in 2014 took me to Albany, I shopped at a wine warehouse during a break and found them. I have held them ever since, occasionally pulling them from the temperature control to read their labels and daydream.

In centuries past, nobility bought cask after cask of vintage port to celebrate the births of their sons. By the time the children reached adulthood, the port would be ready to drink. Being a teacher in the 21st century, I have more limited means, but I can manage two bottles for my retirement.

I have not decided on the wine for the main course, but I have prepared a trial to help me choose. My wine fridge contains a quality 2007 Barolo and 2010 Bordeaux. Both remain too young to drink, according to Robert Parker’s vintage charts, but someday soon I will have to uncork them anyway and decant for a few hours. Which aged red will I prefer? My decision must come soon so I can invest in a half case or so of something very good. If I retire when first eligible, I only have until 2038 for the wine to mature. I feel less time pressure for the first course’s wine. I live in the Finger Lakes, one of the finest Riesling regions in the world. I can lay my hands on something good just a handful of years in advance.

Once I’ve made a final decision about my retirement date, I’ll make inquiries and hire a private chef, with whom I’ll meet and share the Riesling and the red. We’ll talk about the dishes the chef favors. I will be open to possibilities, but I’d like something with goat cheese to accompany the Riesling, and I’ve thought of braised beef or roast duck for the main course. As I am Irish, there must be roasted potatoes. A dark chocolate dessert must accompany the port.

If some of my former colleagues live out of state, I’ll offer airfare and a hotel; they will be surprise guests. Local colleagues will meet me, somewhere, and a limo will arrive to carry us to the location so past and present can come together, unexpectedly, as they usually do. When the server brings the first course I will raise a glass and acknowledge those who could not join us. I do not now know the middle bit, but I’ll have notes by then. I only know the closing: “Thank you for being there. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing a meal with me.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A townsgirl was stepping lightly along the shoreline, through an outcropping of trees.

The stand was imposing with new and mature evergreen and deciduous varieties waving within a fine mixed of sand and soil. She appreciated the wildlife that hummed steadily above and below. Yes indeed she marveled at the poetic life... Caterpillars crawled, butterflies and moths took flight, in fleeting haikus... Leaves floated across like Tanka impressing thoughts upon Life's canvas... unidentified micro-writes whittled limbs and roots, and decompressing nonviscera. Elaborate vines of budding thoughts essayed for the canopy of tree tops... lyrics sung with and without rhyme.

She heard birds, but she sensed something else, too. A calling... was it a whispering through the trees? All the branches seemed to beckon so welcomingly: Come here, rest a meter, lean with me.... The wind was playing some kind of mental tricks. She would have swore the surround sound spoke with mostly one voice. And that it was directed at the listener. At her, to be specific. She peered around each trunk. She tried to speak to it, but confusion settled in with the obscurity of long and dark meandering shadows and the real obstacle of underbrush. The path itself took pity on her, and ended, as she followed to the edge of the water. The wind picked up. The sound was lost to the incoming tide.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She turned around and saw the distant woods, after walking awhile. Suddenly she heard it again, unmistakably, but now coming from one direction.... Behind a towering ridge of rock. Curious, as ever, she made the precarious climb and peered over the top.

There, at the bottom of the other side was a person playing an instrument of many voices with just one underlying haunting tone... In its own distinctive way, potent and beautiful... echoing passed the rock, in a deceptive swirl of sound. Her breath caught when she saw the person adjusting his fish tail scales and put the instrument down... Arrested eyes now fully locked.

"Hello"

"Hello."

"I heard you playing all the way through the forest... I thought the trees were singing in chorus..."

"Haha. ... disappointed?"

"No. Not at all... I had the feeling it was something more... orchestrated. Mm... what is that?" He hesitated, and she pointed to the instrument of many buttons, eyelets, buds and mikes.

"A recorder."

"Oh."

...it didn't look like the flutes used to practice on in grade school. It seemed somehow vintage and simultaneously newly minted. She gave ample wait time, while he adjusted his tail.

"It's special. It has ancestral history. My own... Invention. It reaches quite far..."

"Recorder," she mused attentively, "Does it... work both ways?"

"Yes. Yes, it does," he said ...pressing Play

04.05.2023

Water, wind, and sea challenge @adiii_starry

I reclaimed my body by leaving pieces of it all over town.

The piercing parlor here, a doctor's office there. Pieces of "me" left in my wake. But instead of disappearing at the end of it, I sought to emerge whole, to discard the excess and strip myself down to the essentials.

It started long before I transformed it into a journey-on-purpose.

All four wisdom teeth, extracted the summer I was nineteen. The surgery offered assurances of feeling better, being better. I suffered through the painful, swollen healing process and recovered. The pain in my jaw, the headaches - all gone. Better.

Dozens of haircuts, tiny bits of my previous identity discarded to the floor. I wonder how many pieces of me are still out there in a landfill. Did any escape from a torn garbage bag and blow away to fertilize a patch of grass? Are they part of a bird's nest somewhere? Where did I go?

My dentist and his impossibly gorgeous assistants delve into my mouth to repair deep cavities. The drill buzzes and whines, removing layer after layer of enamel, creating larger and larger holes before they are backfilled with specialized cement. Organic teeth, diseased and decayed, replaced by artificial crowns that will never rot from plaque. Better.

I ask the dermatologist to remove a mole that constantly rubs against my bra strap. I find myself wondering where that little piece of me ended up. A waste bin decorated with biohazard stickers? A sterile landfill? An incinerator? But even incinerated, reduced to its primal elements of carbon and waste molecules, it's still out there.

Blood lost during a root canal while the endodontist and his young male assistant drawl about golf. I fall asleep out of boredom. When I jerk awake, my jaw is sore from being propped open, and they tell me that I snore. The doctor says that perhaps I should get that fixed. One "fix" reveals the need for another. This mission will never be over, I think.

Blood donations. Altruism in the form of literally donating a part of my body. The vital fluid will be renewed when my marrow produces fresh cells. The loss will not be permanent. But the sense of having done a good deed lingers.

I'm a better person now that part of me is missing, sucked out through a sterile needle and refrigerated until it is needed. I eat a cookie in the fluorescent-lit kitchen at the blood donation center. I go home and take a too-hot shower and almost faint. Stupid. I should have known better.

I feel like I am not a better person after all, I'm still my regular dumb self. Part of me is missing for a good cause and I almost died by fainting in the shower. I donate more blood as soon as I am eligible, paying careful attention to my shower's water temperature after each visit. If I do this correctly, again and again, I will become a better person.

A tattoo at twenty-seven after nearly a decade of indecision, unable to select a design that I will still love when I'm eighty. I finally choose my astrological symbol, reasoning that the only thing that will not change between here and the retirement home is my birthday. I am electric with anxiety, unsure of what to expect. The artist is a dude, about my age, and seemingly not all there. It hurts differently than I thought it would, but not too much, and it takes ages longer than I anticipated.

The itch lingers in my mind for weeks. I chase the buzzing and the pain of it four more times. Four more sessions with an artist. Four more healing periods of swelling and seeping, followed by scabbing and peeling. Pieces of me falling away, getting better. Closer to the new me.

At twenty-eight I have a child. The water breaking reminds me that I was carrying a whole world within my body, now drained and soaking into the absorbent pads on the gurney underneath my hips. The induction does not produce the desired outcome. My doctor leans over me with her warm, kind eyes and says that she needs to operate. An emergency C-section.

This time an entire human being is removed from me. I grew her myself, and now she can safely be detached to start her own life. Another piece of me - although not a selfish one, not one that was mine alone - is now gone. Pounds and inches fall away from my body while breastfeeding. I cut my hair short and chase the promise of a better me.

It does not work.

I am broken that entire spring and summer. I cry when I drop my keys. I cry when the toilet overflows. I cry when I think of how tiny my daughter is, and how everything that is wrong with her must be my fault. I want to disappear. I want to release everyone from the burden of caring for me. I do not wish to die, I simply wish to cease existing.

Postpartum depression. A medication from my doctor promises to fix the wonky brain chemicals, to make me better. It works. Pieces of my essential self start coming back to me.

More surgeries, age thirty. Severe sinus problems, and I think that my surgeon is soap-opera handsome and entirely too nice of a person to have the disgusting job of digging around in my skull. But the surgery works. Better.

Three months later I visit the ER with severe abdominal pain. My gallbladder needs to come out, but I get to keep a series of gnarly, full-color photos of it. One shows it laying on a blue surgical drape, in the next it is cut open to reveal the pearls that were hiding within. Another piece of me gone. Am I getting better?

I have an empty, inadequate, lifelong need inside. I try to fill it. Drinking. Drugs. Food. Nothing works.

I am forever hoping that I'll fit somewhere, but I'm not a puzzle piece looking for a spot to land, I'm a hungry hole rolling around and swallowing everything I can in order to fill myself. And holes don't fit anywhere.

I realize that the more I consume, the less of “me” there is to give to anyone. I quit the drugs. I quit drinking. I feel terrible. I fight the urge to shave my head, to make a mass statement of discarding "the old me."

Finally, slowly, deep down I start to feel better, and my husband and I decide we’re ready to have a second child. More blood spilled, another C-section cut into me by my excellent surgeon.

Despite the fact that I have “accomplished” things like having my name on a mortgage and birthing two children, I feel as if nothing about me is good enough. I have a career that others tell me I am good at… and sometimes I actually believe them. But even that does not last.

I change jobs and it is a mistake. I make more mistakes. I make one huge mistake and get fired. Twelve years of a "good" career, gone in an afternoon.

I cry about it, but deep down I am relieved.

I throw myself into being a housewife. I stay sober. I learn to cook. I turn forty. My son is about to enter kindergarten, my daughter will go to middle school. This is a good time for a new me, I think.

I go back to school to pursue a long-buried dream, a course of study that has haunted me since I gave it up twenty years before.

I hate that I am finally finding myself long after I “should have” done so. Despite the fact that I am pursuing my dream, I think that it is embarrassing to be back in school at my age, not exemplary. I am uncomfortable when people express admiration for my choices. But I stuff the discomfort down and chatter excitedly about my studies and my plans to go to grad school.

Being an undergraduate student makes me feel competent and smart, as if the promise of who I am “supposed to be” is finally within reach. I throw myself into my studies that first fall semester. I lean hard into the new me. I take extra classes and push myself harder the next spring.

Pandemic hits. COVID. Unprecedented times. Schools shut down, and suddenly my husband and two children are home with me all day, every day. But I can do this, right? I can keep going, study harder, do better.

I continue my studies full-time over the spring that first year of quarantine, losing patience with my children when they interrupt me.

I sign up for three online classes that summer, and study in between continuous interruptions. I make a low grade in one class. I berate myself for it.

August. Everything is still virtual. I sign up for a full course load and oversee my children during their Zoom schooling, even when it interrupts my own Zoom meetings. I stay up until midnight or past it, completing my own work.

Despite my best efforts, we all struggle.

I drop two of my four classes, expecting a sense of relief. Instead I feel worse.

The incessant conflict between my family’s needs and my desires makes me feel as if I am wedged between two boulders, being ground into a fine paste. Soon there will not be anything left of me to scoop up.

I drop another class, down to only one.

I do not like giving up parts of my dream, but my dream is the only part of our family machine that can be cut to keep us whole. My husband must work, my children must attend school, but my dream is optional. It’s better for everyone if I sacrifice.

I try to keep my dream alive. I interview for an exhilarating internship for the coming spring semester. They offer it to me. My husband buys me flowers in congratulations.

A week later I realize how little of me there is to go around. I write a polite email and regretfully decline the internship. I finish my lone fall semester class with a B. I feel like a failure.

I realize that I cannot spread myself any thinner than I already have. Something will have to give, and it turns out to be the remainder of my dream.

I do what is necessary to hold my family together.

I do not re-enroll for what would be the final, graduating semester of my shiny new Bachelors degree. I do not get the opportunity to apply for grad school. I will not become the person who I desperately want to be. The dream I have been chasing for the past twenty months and the twenty years before that is gone.

The new year arrives. There is nothing of “me” left, just blunt shards wet with tears.

I tell people that I am taking a “pandemic pause” so that I do not have to say “I dropped out.” I begrudgingly accept their sympathy and reassurances that someday I will go back and finish. But deep down I know that I am no longer good or smart enough to pursue that dream.

I look at my shelf full of textbooks and I feel ashamed. How stupid of me to think that I ever had a chance. My shame is mixed with the metallic tinge of fear that I will never get another chance like this. The path to my dream career has closed, overgrown with obstacles, and I am now so thoroughly broken that I cannot take any more steps.

I fight the urge to sink into depression, the familiar pull of giving up. But I have no choice except to keep going, to take care of my family and to keep them alive, even if I feel dead inside.

I go through the motions of my routines and my duties.

I read in order to keep my brain occupied. If I am not using that organ for school it may as well be put to good use on fiction and non-fiction, current affairs and ancient history.

I begin to feel skittishly curious about things, and ideas ferment in my brain.

I start to write, another long-dormant habit from more than twenty years before. I write every day, in and around the interruptions of children and housework. A chance meeting online introduces me to a new friend, who introduces me to a writing community. I stay up late into the night writing. I produce pieces that I am proud of, and that other people seem to enjoy reading.

I read more. I write more.

I enroll in a summer creative writing class at the community college. I produce more work, more pieces of me that take shape and go out into the world.

I leave more pieces of myself around town.

Another autumn. I schedule a surgery to remove a part of me that has been causing problems for thirty years. I decide to have my nose pierced, a desire from twenty years before that I denied because of my first career. The surgical center and the piercing shop both accept me for who I am and take away the pieces of me that are hurting.

I am starting to feel whole, more like myself. I have reclaimed some pieces of myself, although there is much more to do.

I spill my brain out onto paper, I refill my fountain pens directly from my jugular.

I start to dream again.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Author: Douglas Adams First Published: 1979

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedic science fiction series created by British author Douglas Adams. Originally a radio drama broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, the story was later adapted into a series of novels, a television series, a video game, and a feature film.

The narrative follows the misadventures of an unwitting human named Arthur Dent, who narrowly escapes the destruction of Earth by hitching a ride on a Vogon spaceship with his friend Ford Prefect, an alien who has been posing as a human while researching Earth for the eponymous guidebook. Together, they embark on a hilarious and absurd journey through space, encountering bizarre characters and situations along the way.

Notable characters in the series include Zaphod Beeblebrox, the eccentric two-headed, three-armed ex-President of the Galaxy; Trillian, the only other human survivor of Earth's destruction; and Marvin, the chronically depressed android. The story also prominently features the Babel fish, a tiny creature capable of instantaneously translating any language when placed in one's ear, and the Infinite Improbability Drive, a revolutionary form of space propulsion.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is celebrated for its witty humor, satirical take on science fiction, and unique blend of philosophy and absurdity. Adams' imaginative storytelling, memorable characters, and distinctive writing style have contributed to the series' enduring popularity and cultural impact.

Comprised of five novels, the series is often referred to as a "trilogy in five parts," a humorous nod to its unconventional structure. The novels include:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)

Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984)

Mostly Harmless (1992)

After Adams' untimely death in 2001, a sixth book titled And Another Thing... was written by Eoin Colfer and published in 2009, with the blessing of Adams' estate. This novel aimed to provide a more satisfying conclusion to the series than the one offered by Mostly Harmless.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been adapted into various media formats, including a 1981 TV series produced by the BBC, a text-based computer game released in 1984, and a 2005 feature film starring Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, and Alan Rickman. The story has also been adapted for stage and comic book formats.

Throughout its various iterations, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has maintained a devoted fan base and continues to captivate new generations of readers and audiences with its clever satire, thought-provoking themes, and delightfully absurd take on the cosmos.

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

Today on the channel, we push some good product, as usual. Pure, uncut, above any street value or money, the words of these writers have come along to us recently, and we wanted to introduce them to our seasoned Prosers. Also, do a shot every time I say Corner Chicken in the first two minutes of the video. You'll be feeling pretty fine...

Here's the link, and we'll tag the writers along with the big crew in the comment below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBfW7WNYZNM

And...

As always.........

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

You and me together

riding through the canyon

blues on the radio

my hand on your thigh

I pull to the side of the road

you lock the doors

we remove our clothes

carelessly thrown about

we’re both highly excited

you’re moist and I’m hard

you climb on top

riding me to the rhythm

of the throbbing blues

we smile together

as we erupt in pleasure

orgasmic vibrations lead to

the afterglow of love

our calculated redressing

we get back on the road

blues on the radio

riding through the canyon

You and Me together

Yes, there's intimacy

and then there's the times you

get naked and drunk

and cuddle in bed

and tell each other things you'd never

tell sober

“Last time I got so drunk,” she

said, “I got my hands on

a poster with

a missing child and called the

number

and got under the blanket with

the phone,

started crying and said,

'Daddy, daddy, I miss youuu!”

It fucked up the guy who answered

the phone but... my crying

was genuine.

I really felt everything I've said.”

He just laughed

and hugged

her tighter

There would be no closer intimacy

than this

***

INSTAGRAM:

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

A warm breeze slid through the sparse trees at the mouth of the Underdark. It would be autumn soon, and too cold to come this close to the caves. Cold seemed to emanate from them always.

Selena tipped her head back and looked up at the clear late summer sky. The cold never bothered her. It must have been the genie blood. For what does the earth care about cold? Next to her, her sister Alyssia shivered.

“Why is it so cold here, Selena?”

“It’s the Underdark. The ‘evil’ in it radiates cold, some say.”

“Should we really be so close to it then?”

“Don’t worry,” Selena smiled. “The evil doesn’t venture out this far.”

Selena’s eyes snapped open as a branch nearby snapped. She sat up, reaching for the sword that lay next to her.

“Relax, ’tis only me,” grumbled Rosie’s deep, accented voice. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright.”

“What were you doing?” Selena rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

Rosie’s dwarven form stumbled into the firelight, his mail jangling a bit as he settled on a stump by the fire. “The horses started to wander a bit, I just wanted to corral them. You get back to sleep now, lass.”

Selena grumbled and lay back down. As her eyes drooped shut, she wondered if she could dream of home again. It was nice to see Alyssia again, so young and happy, as she once was.

Morning came with a long, slow drizzle of rain, and Selena and Rosie rode on in silence.

“Why do you think they sent us?”

The question startled Rosie, as it was the first sound besides rain and dampened hoof beats for more than an hour.

“What?”

“Why do you they think the Besk are sending us here? What do they need us for?”

“There’s no tellin’. Probably someone stirring up trouble. Why else would they send peacekeepers?”

Peacekeepers. What did that even mean anymore? The Besk had eroded so far that it seemed as if keeping the peace was the furthest thing from the leadership’s mind sometimes. They were too busy devising plans to thwart and overcome the Myratir. When had it all come to this? And how did she get here, so caught up in a war that wasn’t hers to fight? Ah, but she knew the answer to that. She cursed its name in the dark of night. Loung.

Selena touched the necklace at her throat. A dragon flower. A constant reminder of her oath of fealty. It was slightly bent and misshapen, almost like some wildflower. But a dragon flower all the same. This was her war now. Loung had commanded it. And there was no escaping that.

It was summer at home, now, nearly half way across the world. The youths would be apple picking and staying up as late as the last traces of light in the sky would allow. Selena wished she were one of them. Wished that she were back home, leaning against Xander, watching the light drip away to the far side of the mountains. But that was impossible, she knew.

Even if she were home, Xander would be indoors this time of day, tucking his children in to bed. Children. Still so hard to believe that reckless Xander was a father twice over now. A boy and a girl, Alyssia had written her. The girl a spitting image of Xander, and the boy just like his mother. Selena thanked the cloudy gray sky above that she didn’t know the mother. Couldn’t picture her face. Couldn’t quite complete the mental image of the life she knew Xander was leading now. It was the smallest of mercies, but it was the only one Selena had now.

I lost control. And that's all she wrote. But then, no joke, I saw poetry in motion. Reality rhyming while I'm mindful of minding business big or small. I came to crawl out of my ego-crib, proceed to promptly sit up straight, witness to reality demonstrate its way with the Way. Okay? And here's what the jam-band would say. It's all atoms dancing, electrons prancing, gluons laughing - but then keep diving, your scuba gear binding, you will get to finding, that there's no separation, just pure space-ness, and upon the amazement and elation that mind-brush will be painting, you will feel the utter and absolute opposite of anxious.

Religion isn't necessary to have a clean conscience. Since religion encourages one to perceive everything as a personal reflection of one's karma, it can be argued to be a source of strife instead of a source of strength. Personalizing what is not in one's control makes the mind more vulnerable to trauma and personal tragedy. Furthermore, while religion provides rules for the game of life and an internal compass to direct one's life, its word is not truly universal in a country that allows freedom of religion. And as it is not universal it imposes contradiction in the relationships we form with others.