Love Story of a De-conjoined Twin (excerpt) 1.  We got a cup of coffee and walked in the sand by the sea beneath the red crescent moon.  While the tide lapped at our ankles, we pointed to the stars and spoke of the pyramids. His eyes reflected great sorrow and I gravitated toward him like the moon pulled the tide. William is a gentle and broken soul.  I felt so at ease with him I revealed to him my great secret within the first hour of our meeting. “I have to warn you.  You don’t want to be with me.  I’m cursed.  I’m a black cat,” I told him.  He did not scoff.  He simply looked curious and said, “Maybe I am too.” “No, really, I am,” I insisted, and unfurled the tale before my mouth could close: “I never stay in one place, with one person for long.  When my grandfather’s grandfather fought in the Baltic, he married, then left his pregnant Gypsy wife.  He left her in the deep night, when it broke his heart to think of his wife and children back home, waiting for him without word, year after year.  Since then, every female descendant from my grandfather’s grandfather’s bloodline has thrown love away like a used tissue.  We are empowered by our detachment, yet poor creatures because we never stay with who we love.  Why?  I don’t know, but I’ve ruthlessly left men since I was fifteen.”  He should’ve told me the date was over then, but instead he said, “I was in love one time.  We shared the same soul, read each other’s thoughts, and couldn’t be pried apart.” “What happened?” “He was my brother and he died for me.” This is the moment I fell in love.    2.   Elise knew she would leave him before the date was over and regretted having to.  She behaved like a perfect cog in the greater design of the gypsy woman’s universe.  She collected fragments of conversations that, like truncated love, were never as glorious as the whole she was forbidden from knowing.    On their last date, she showed William her work-in-progress, “Eavesdroppings,” a love story compiled entirely of pieces of other people’s conversations.  The shards melded together as seamlessly as a stained glass mirror.   William knew he wanted to spend his life with the woman who extracted beauty from brokenness.  In love, he proposed.  In love, she left.
Jacmel Greetings Ma’am Ann Landers:               It is an honor to receive your attention.  Please allow me to introduce myself as it is custom in Tierin (where I have lived nearly all my sixteen years).  Tierin is an island walled by a series of tiered waterfalls and pools.  Here dwell coffee plantation families such as my own and the natives who till the soil.  My adoptive parents named me after the city in which I was born:  Jacmel.  Now, it is an old coffee port.  In its days of glory, it was the Paris of the Southern coast.  Beaches of black sand merged with French architecture in the heart of the city.           Mardi Gras in old-time Jacmel and current Tierin are nearly identical.  No sparkle, sequin, and drunken carousing in streets.  We dance with our ass close to the ground against the thundering drums and sing into the night with the fire from our soul.  We roll our body along our rollercoaster spine, lower, lower, even with the ground and shake our grass skirts to the rushing water.  We stamp our feet in clouds of sand to the beat of the drums and gather material for the driftwood sculptors to build a man.  Gas and moss rain on the effigy, soaking him through.  When the shaman raises her torch in the air, there is a rapid hush.  She throws the torch, shouting, "Tierin!" and a blessing, and we sacrifice our wooden man in an explosion of flames to cleanse us of the curses we dealt during the year so it doesn't visit us threefold.                   Of a holy nature, yes, but we also laugh, dance and roll in the sand (by the fire), in the water (by the sand).  It is a cleansing orgy to restore all that is pure.  The festival begins at sundown and dies down when the wooden man becomes a smoldering pile of ash.  For three quarters of a day, we sing, dance, sweat and burn away our curse.  (One year, there was great tension between the visiting shaman and our shaman, so we did not celebrate Mardi Gras three people died that night.  We replace words with definition-less song, chant, and dance, and our body with that of the driftwood man to absolve the sins of words.       Thank you for allowing the opportunity to introduce myself.  The following is an explication of the reason I seek your world-esteemed advice.  During the recently-passed Mardi Gras festival, as I attempted to impress Daihanxi with my womanly hips low to the ground while stamping around the holy fire, a flame fragment broke free and alighted my hair, which was dampened with goat grease.  It was a sin(ge)ful moment when my head became a burning bush.  I ran about in circles, screaming, "Put it out!  Put it out!"  The flames on my scalp sent everyone into a flurry of words - quick, a bucket!, she is on fire!, she burns like the wooden man!      Now, either my hair has been the sacrifice and we are cleansed of our curses or curses will invade Tierin because my burning bush jarred words from two dozen mouths.  I ask you, wise ma'am Landers:  Is there any way to alleviate the injury that may follow my folly?  How do I overstride the humiliation of setting my hair aflame during a holy festival?       By the name of Loresse, our all-healing Shaman-Protector-Warrioress, I extend my utmost appreciation for your attention to this matter. Sincerely:         Jacmel
Six Minutes of Separation (excerpt) Outside the window, on a pebbled dirt road, I'm already lost, so decide to simply walk until I get there.  I never got there, but the air no longer smells of dust and heavy spices for preserving meat.  Now, it's crisp and echoes more and more the further I walk.  This is a purposeful excursion.  I'm searching for the largest Buddha in the world (which a pious few thousand insisted existed) and tangentially discovered this midnight carnival.  I learned of this island through a dead man’s diary.  A  decade ago, my esteemed colleague Tsuang Bai T’ien made a pilgrimage across three oceans on a rumor that on some island in this corner of the world was the Buddha who sat upon the firmament and rested his great stone head on the clouds.  Tsuang Bai T’ien literally translates to “rush the sky” or “burst into the day” or “rush the day” or “burst into the sky” so Bai T’ien was appropriately or consequently named for his adventuresome characteristics.  The exact location of the Eastern Colossus was never disclosed.  Though the islands in this area are scarcely the size of Luxembourg, he, along with every other pilgrim, failed to find the religious monument.  The only explanation the locals, folklorists, and monks can offer is that the stone Buddha is similar to the literal Corpus Christi.  Only true believers eat and drink of Christ just as only true believers can see this statue, the “body” of Buddha.  Only, he will not be stone, but living blood and flesh.  If this version is true, then I am here to test my faith.  Bai T’ien, did, however, have the good fortune of finding his long-lost lover, Lorraine, who had traversed the globe twice in the same search.  Incidentally, Lorraine was also his murderer.
Mocrates' Monkey Mocrates’ disciples considered whether their illustrious teacher had gone mad.  They had the distinct feeling that they were witnessing his fall from prominence.  Several weeks ago the master of philosophy acquired a monkey at the bazaar.  They began to doubt that their teacher had some higher reasoning for making the beast his new debating partner.  Not only did the monkey eat whatever held its fancy, including scrolls that took them many years to painstakingly inscribe, the flea-infested creature also gleefully flung its feces at them while seemingly dancing on its toes.  They didn’t dare kill the wretched beast for their master adored it beyond reason.  The monkey was unusually vocal, which suited Mocrates just fine.  They often discussed high-minded matters until the sun forced the moon from the sky.  “Niocese,” The master called for one of his disciples. They were gathered around the table in the largest room discussing the characteristics of betrayal.  At the sound of their teacher’s voice, they looked up in shock.  He hadn’t spoken to any of them, nor anyone, actually, for nearly a month.  He hadn’t set foot in the outside world for all that time, fearing his monkey would run away.  Currently, three students lived under the roof of his spacious, but sparsely furnished home.  Niocese bolted to his master’s living quarters.  Mocrates’ walked within a few inches of his student and peered at him intently.  “By Zeus, I’d forgotten what you look like,” The philosopher mumbled, studying his pupil’s face. “Ah yi yi yi yi ah ah ah yi,” The monkey chattered, tugging at the young man’s toga.             It happily swished its tail around showing off the new tail-warmer Mocrates constructed by sewing two long lengths of cloth into a tube-like structure.              “Bring Veritas and I some wine, dear boy,” The philosopher instructed.             The shadows of the room concealed the boy’s pained expression at having become a lackey for the monkey.  He dutifully fetched the jug of wine from the kitchen, but stopped cold before entering Mocrates’ living quarters.  His teacher made shapes with his hands in front of a candle.  Said shapes projected onto the wall as a chicken, then a dog.  His pet jumped and swatted at the creatures on the wall, shrieking with delight.              This was the last straw.  The furry little thing was turning their renowned master into a simpleton who played with monkeys.  When Niocese emerged from the hilosopher’s room and re-joined his colleagues around the table, he announced, “The beast must die.”             The next few hours were spent devising a plan to get the monkey off their master’s back.  They boiled the leaves from three plants in Mocrates’ garden until a thick pungent oil emerged.  Humanitas, the eldest of the three, then dipped a spearhead into the goo and inserted it into a hollow reed.                As dawn broke, Mocrates and Veritas had finally grown weary of dancing and singing around the candle like drunken four-year olds.  They collapsed where they stood and quickly drifted into sleep.                 Mocrates sat at the table with his students the following afternoon.  The dead monkey lay rigidly in the middle of the table.  Strangely, the master was not in mourning.             “I did not want to bore you with pedagogy; so, now we will see whether Veritas and I have achieved our purpose.  What have you learned from the life and death of my monkey?”  The philosopher asked.              Silence.             Finally, Niocese spoke:  “Teaching is flexible in nature?  Different tools can be used… such as a monkey.”             Mocrates nodded his approval and prompts them to continue.             More silence.             He threw them a bone, “Well, did you not recognize that the monkey was a great debating partner?  He could tell me what virtue is as well as any of you.”             They all wondered if he knew.  He had compared them to swine once in a moment of frustration, but never a monkey.              The youngest cleared his throat and spoke his mind at the risk of offending his master.             “I learned about options.  There were many ways to handle the fact that the monkey was dearer to you than any of us.”              “Yes,” the philosopher amiably agreed, “For example, rather than killing poor Veritas, whoever did not wish to follow me could simply leave.”             His disciples hung their head.             “The monkey taught you many things and now he is dead by your hands.  However, to learn these things, you had to first kill the monkey.  This is a question of ethics and logic, is it not?”  Go ponder that for a while,” The teacher instructed, retreating to his room with a new jug of wine.