The Ring: A Story of Memories and Loss

In the spirit of Christmas and Solstice I wish to share a story with you all. It is not a piece of fiction but is, in fact, very real and very believable and it starts with a ring.

Now, this ring was not gold nor was it forged from precious metals stolen from maidens or has it been owned by an evil king. This was a simple piece of surgical steel engraved with what one would call “tribal designs.” From which tribe this symbol made of curved and slicing lines belonged to, I have no idea. I do not actually believe the design to have had any connection to any indigenous belief systems. Think tattooed arm band from the 90’s and you’ve just about got it.

Now my father purchased this ring in a gift shop somewhere in the Washington peninsula. I saw it, thought it was cool (I was sixteen at the time) and the ring being 10 dollars he bought it for me. It was very nice of him and I was very gracious. I had never had a ring before and I thought it was great. 

Little did any of us know, this ring would be gone from my life in less than a day.

Not twenty-four hours after the purchasing of said ring, it had found its way to the bottom of a glacial lake. The story goes like this.

Scene: Family of four, white, middle-class, stops along a scenic road to view a glacial lake.
Parents are in their mid-forties. Children are teenagers and are throwing rocks the size of bread loaves into the lake.

Mother: Stop throwing rocks.

Teenage boy: One more.

Mother: No.

Teenage boy throws one more rock. The ring he is wearing comes off and is lost in the lake. The water is only two feet deep until roughly 3 meters into the lake where the elevation plummets to a depth so far down it is terrifying to stand that close!

Thus the ring was lost to all time.

End Scene.

That December my sister finds an identical ring online and gifts it to me for Christmas. The ring was worn and loved and periodically lost many times over the next decade. Once it spent the whole of a winter under my friend’s deck. We were hot tubing and it fell off the chair where I had placed my clothes and was not recovered until the snow melted and her parents found it.

Now comes August 2012. I went to Madeline Island, WI for my friend’s birthday (different friend than the one mentioned above but no less lovely and wonderful). We were camping near a beach and when a few of us decided to go skinning dipping at night I took my ring off. Long story short, when the cop told us to put our clothes back on, the ring was temporary forgotten and thus lost to the sand and surf.

Side note: Lake Superior and I have a touchy relationship. I love that lake so much. It is beautiful, calming, and so much fun; and yet once every few years or so it takes something very important to me. My freshmen year of college I went down for a moonlight swim and forgot to take off my glasses. After diving under and resurfacing blind, I knew they were gone forever. I try to be cautious around the lake but mama has her ways and takes what she will.  

The lake has her ways and I had a feeling I would be paying for the weekend in one way or another. A sacrifice was made and that weekend will live forever in the minds and hearts of all those who were there. It was a very special vacation and carries the nine of us through the years to this day. I just celebrated the winter solstice with them for the first time and it was just as lovely and wonderful as that time on Madeline Island.

I’ve been ring-less for a few months now. At first it was really weird not wearing anything on my left thumb. It’s surprising how accustom we become to the clothes we wear or the jewelry we put on every day. I really did/do miss that ring. You can see there was some real history wrapped around it. I really wanted to keep it for a long time. Nothing like a heirloom but something to have and hold for a good portion of my life.

My parents got me two rings this Christmas. They’re like the other one in that they are both made of steel, nothing fancy. No “tribal” designs this time. They are nice and I wear them both, one on my left thumb and the other on my right index. The new rings still feel odd on my hands but in time I’ll get use to them. I don’t really have a good story for them. Never the less, in time I will have written and told tales that include them too.

Perhaps I should name them?

The Queens Final Breath

The Queen was escorted to the brood hives to lay her final egg. Into this prefect and golden hexagon she poured all her royal jelly. For the next six days, she sat besides the future queen and retold the whole of her life. She pushed the story of herself and her reign though the royal jelly spiked with scents like delphinium and lavender, clover and buckwheat, apple and rose petals. It was pungent with salt and mead. It was thick and hot like the ant-oil. It was bright like an epiphany.

She poured the entirety of herself into the cell in hopes that her dreams and her drive would penetrate the soft white body of her truest of children. It was as close as she could get to living forever. Bees like bacterium, whales, humans, and snakes want to live forever and so they do whatever they can to become like the gods and goddesses of old, immortal. They tell stories to their young about themselves and their history in hopes that when their body has released the soul that they might continue to work here on earth. Some do it out of fear. Some do it out of a biological urge. Others do it because they want to see their reflection in their child’s bright and immaculate face. Bee’s fall somewhere in between this triangle of self preservation. Death to a Queen is her final act and she will never again get to the chance to send a chemical message or dance a command in which to enact her will and there for fears insufficient amounts of nectar will be collected. She feels a compulsion to work, being a creature of engineering and industry and hopes her queendom will not fall into rune when her body becomes nothing more than a chitin shell  on the forest floor. In the shining pool of jelly she sees her mirroring eyes and her child all at the same time. And with a final breath like prayer to the new queen, she exhales and the humming of her engine heart halts like the grinding of rusted gears.

The Verb: to Write

What is a myth

but a creation story told at slant;
a skewed eye speaking through its iris;
all the spectral colors of a rainbow
dancing through a space/time matrix
colliding with a web of well formed
malleable, plastic, electric rope mass
we call a brain.

What is a story
but a tale told over fire;
a groove carved into the earth;
an archetype with a thousand faces;
a goat track that everyone can follow
but is fully traveled by those who really know
the words by head and heart and hoof.

What are words
but A,E,I,O,U,
(and some days Y)
strung together with consonants
fastened with punctuation
meant to pierce the skin
and vibrate the flesh.

What is a plot
but catabasis or anabasis;
a series of descents, accents,
and single points
on paper and on air and on the lips of time,
written on the horizon of space;
an old woman with her old dog
wrapped in an old blanket speaking
I feel that’s all I have to say
               for now.

[2011]

STEVE

Steve has arrived… of sorts. 

I feel the most confident I have been about this story in a while. Yes, I sent it into Palooka: The journal of Underdog Excellence but while re-reading Steve a week ago (and catching several spelling errors and grammatical infractions) I decided to go through it once again. So yes, it’s a few hundred words longer, and feels more polished. Of course I could work on it some more but what artist doesn’t feel that way about their creations. 

So in this light I really want to resubmit my work to Palooka but seeing how the dead line is about 3 days away… I don’t know. I think I’ll just take my chances. 

That being said, I’ve run a small amount of hard copies (cover page and everything) of Steve. I want to sell them for $5.00 each cause the print shop isn’t free. I know five bucks can seem like a lot for 30 some pages of fiction writing but here’s my reasoning for charging.

A)     A) I’m hella broke. No the profit on the books won’t account for much other than covering the cost of printing.

B)      B) I need to get my name out there and I want to be taken seriously. In our economy, if a monetary value is attributed it is worth something. So there is that fun piece.

C)      That’s basically it.

Shoot me an e-mail or text or call me it you want a copy. I would love to share my work with you and in turn help spread your creative works as well.

How the North Wind Lost

The north wind came into town one day just before the autumnal equinox. A Shepard boy leading the flock out of the pens into the crisping pasture saw her come down the road in a small chariot pulled by two woolly goats; their hard and ridged horns were adorned with bells of silver.

The Sheppard boy heard the bells and the clip-chopping of hooves from some distance down the road. It was from there that he could see the shadowy figure traveling its way down the road. He thought it queer that someone would be coming down the path so early in the morning. The mountain passes would have been more than cold at night by this time in the year and the next place of refuge was at least a day’s walk from his stables and pens.

But there she came, all billowing and with snapping fabrics. She traveled at a brisk pace, the goats tromping gallantly on the gravel path. The sound of the silver bells rang clear above the gentle breeze which moved tall grasses and over the clapping of hooves which roughed the rocked ground. The boy stood there, transfixed. Even a few sheep with their black and white faces, lifted their heads to see what the strange sound was. Certainly travelers and tradesmen used the mountain passes but none were ever decked in bells like these goats were. They rang high and clear, like metal over a lake.

The boy looked up from his tending to see the goat duo striding down the trail and witnessed the women all wrapped in heavy, dull colored cloaks. A conical hat sat atop her head and was strapped securely beneath her chin. The wind she brought with her threatened to pull it from her head at any minute; its point stretched out behind her along with the ends of her shawls. The fabric whipped and sapped in the space behind her causing consternation in the young boy.

He had heard stories of her from all the grandmothers and grandfathers. These were children’s tales of course and were told every year as the sunlight waned and the best apples became ripe. Oh to hear to hear the tales of The North Wind in the air surly meant that autumn had arrived and the time of winter squashes, sweet apples, and the best preserving spices---cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg--- would be added to every dish imaginable certainly was upon them. The shaggy goats were a commonality in all tales. Once he had been told it was a team of horses with long tusks whose whinnies and bays were said to sound like the winter winds crashing against panes of glass. But this was told by a passer-by who was given shelter for the night and was clearly from other parts of the world. His accent was thick and muddy and was hard to understand. But the man worked for his stay and in the orchard the boy was picking apples along side the him. He got most of the story right except for the sled was pulled by horses instead of the usual goats.

Stories

Muriel Rukeyser, poet, activist, feminist, Jew, wife, mother once said "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." This rings true in every aspect of my life. Just as atoms bind all of matter together, it is stories that bind all of humanity into one great web of life. Everything is connected. That's easy. When we look at these connections we find that they're events, relationships... stories.

When I talk to people about my family or friends, it always comes down to me telling a story or two. About the times at Kaliey's cabin, about the great great grandmother getting drunk on Jewish new-year. About Aunt Kathy's pies and Mom's brain saying she's done. About how i knew you when... or you remember that time....

Everyone has these stories. Everyone has their events, their places... their people. We love these people because of the stories they give us. When we're not near them it's the memory, the story that makes them special to us. We hold it in our heart, and replay it in our minds, and retell the stories to others. These create the connections that hold us together.

Resently at my aunts funeral, I told her that I would never forget her stories. That I'd bake her pies and cookies. That I would write them down so I would never have to forget what a wonderful sister, mother, grandmother, aunt, friend, spirit she was and is. I will have a problem when descibing her for I don't know weither to use past or present tense. Either way, the story will be wrote, read, reread, told and retold. I will tell the stories to my friends. I will share them with my family. I will eat them in her pies. I will live them with my actions.

This blog may contain a story or two of Aunt Kathy. I may contain a story or two about you. Either way it will contain stories that will bring all who know me closer to what makes our relationship, our story, even closer.

Chuck