1527 c/o Catherine Maskell

Huáscar

Huáscar is slumped in his Luxury Executive Oak & Leather Office Throne. His chin hangs heavily on his solid gold chest plate. It feels refreshingly cold for the first few seconds of contact but his days-old-stubble stabs back into the tip of his chin like one hundred tiny enemy daggers.

"Everyone thinks I'm an asshole"

He slides his thumb and his forefinger over his eyelids and holds the top of his nose for a moment. The heavy gold man-bangles adorning his wrist jangle downwards towards his elbow like quivering peasants.

Huáscar thinks to himself "I am an asshole"

He repeatedly clicks the left mouse button with his giant right forefinger and jiggles it around the desk, quickly in a roughly circular motion. The computer mouse looks like a small toy version of a computer mouse beneath his big wretched, wrinkled hand.

There is still mud and blood caked under his overgrown fingernails from last week's battle.


Huáscar receives daily pep-talks via e-mail.

He has arranged this with his assistant so he will receive an e-mail a day every morning with an inspirational thought for the day.

This morning's is:

Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.

He also receives a word of the day from dictionary.com but this hasn't arrived yet.


Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.

"Ah too true" he says out loud, as he nods solemnly to nobody and reaches for the cup of black coffee.

He takes a sip, places the mug deliberately back on the table and stands up. He continues to speak aloud, projecting into the empty room, whilst purposefully pacing back and forth behind his desk.

"Only the strong can be truly glorious. And I am glorious and mighty like the sun. I suppose all anyone can really hope to do is follow in my path and bathe in some of my reflected glory. I am the chosen one."

The gold framed photograph of he and his half brother on summer vacation catches his eye. They are 10 and 12 years old respectively and share the same toothy grin. Behind them a strong river rushes along. It is the dry season but the river is high and it's current is strong.

Huáscar stops the reminiscence in mid flow.

"No. I am the chosen one. My brother is an idiot. Probably, the biggest idiot of them all. His wife is an idiot, and an ugly one at that... although she is my sister...

"Still I would rather have married a cousin...

"He will continue to sire ugly, idiot children. His advisors are "Yes Men", peasants the lot of them and his concubines are riddled with diseases. His people are terrible farmers. As a society they will destroy themselves easily enough given time but I will be happy to help them along."

He smiles to himself and sits back down at his desk.

Huáscar opens an e-mail that he sent to himself yesterday.

Clicks reply.

Types something.

Clicks send.

The inbox shows One New Message.

He does this same action for about ten minutes. Like Pavlov's dog, he never ceases to get excited when he sees the arrival of new mail.

Even though he knows he is its author.

And he knows what it is going to say.

1526 c/o Jason Lee Norman

Things You Probably Didn't Know About Michigan

I love Michigan. Michigan is my home. I love living in Michigan. There are so many things about Michigan that people don't know. People of the world don't know anything about Michigan. Our haiku festivals, quality cheeses, our love of skinny neckties and croissant sandwiches.

My grandfather was born in Michigan, my father was born in Michigan and I was born in Michigan. There is nothing that I don't like about Michigan. Well maybe there's one thing.

There is nothing that you cannot do in Michigan. The first girl I ever kissed was from Michigan and the kiss happened in Michigan.

It was a warm summer evening on the shore of Lake Michigan, the only one of the Great Lakes that we don't have to share with Canada.

I was 9 years old when the Spanish invaded Michigan. They tore through the Saint Lawrence Seaway like a thousand angry barracuda. In their galleons they sang Spanish songs and ate Spanish meats. The Spanish are the scariest thing I have ever seen. There is no reasoning with the Spanish. The Spanish take what they want.

As the Spanish death boats darkened the frigid waters of Lake Erie my parents were locking me inside grandfather's root cellar. Grandfather was in the corner loading his shotgun as my parents shut the cellar door behind them. "You'll be safer here," they said, "we'll wait for you in Saginaw." Those words and the images of the last free city in Michigan stayed with me throughout my entire childhood. When I was 12 years old, pledging my undying allegiance to Carlos I with my schoolmates, I was hoping my parents were still alive, still waiting for me in Saginaw. When I was eighteen, the night before I was to be shipped off to fight the Turks, I dreamed of the Saginaw river.

When they send my body home in a box adorned with the Spanish cross I hope they send it to Saginaw and float me down the river like the baby Moses. I hope that my body comes to rest somewhere on Ojibway island. I hope, somehow, my mother is there. I hope she recognizes me.

1525 c/o Ana C.

The bubonic plague fucked me

I'm infected and my skin looks gross. I'm going to die in 3-7 days.

I'm a virgin. My dad won’t let me get close to anyone. He says I need to get married. Nobody wants to marry me because my skin looks gross. I’ve heard and watched people fuck. It looks painful but I want to do it. Nobody wants to teach me how to fuck. Everyone runs away from me.

Nobody wants to touch me. Fuck. My skin is really gross.

My face is still pretty so the other day I almost tricked a man. I think he was going to fuck me in the street. He was doing funny things with his tongue. It felt nice. I was screaming. He told me to shut up. I couldn’t. He lifted my tunic and ran away from me. I think he didn’t fuck me. I’m sad and infected. My skin is really gross.

The other day I asked for help. A whore helped me. She told me to go fuck myself. She explained. She said I could use my fingers. I think she’s crazy.

My skin is gross and I don’t want to use my fingers.

Everyone knows I’m infected. I’m going to die. The bubonic plague fucked me.

1524 c/o Dave Erlewine

Horned Heads

Last summer, a year after my Bar Mitzvah, Dad began insisting I go to services with him on Friday nights. Those were the only weeknights he got home from his law firm before I fell asleep. Fridays, he'd get home by 7:00, eat whatever Mom made for dinner, and have the two of us in the car by 7:45, the synagogue by 8:00.

The synagogue was never lit up enough so walking through the parking lot always felt weird, like someone was about to jump out at us. There were only about 20 of us most Friday nights, including the rabbi and the young guy who played the guitar and stared over our heads while we sang along to whatever he sang. Often, during services, Dad glanced down at the book in my hand to make sure I was on the right page, that I was reading from left to right, that my finger was trailing the words being spoken at us, in Hebrew or English, by the bored-looking, bearded Rabbi.

On the rides home, Dad played classical music and insisted on rolled-up windows and silence. At around 10, when the garage door rumbled shut behind us, he let me stay up, insisted really, so I could listen to him, out on our deck, discuss the Jewish plight.

He told me about his visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC the month it opened, how they had laid out piles of the actual shoes from feet that never walked out of the showers or crematoria, how they had actual soap created from Jewish skin, how their pictures of emaciated people in black and white contained too many smiles.

He talked about pogroms, where Jews were surrounded and murdered by marauding groups, where one of our distant relatives, a 12-year-old named Jacob, was slammed head-first into a brick wall by two other boys, boys who days before had played kickball with Jacob at school, while their fathers screamed at them to do it harder because the kike's horns were keeping the boy alive.

Often I got the sense Dad was disappointed that I didn't get more upset at his stories. So I began shaking my head or grunting or mumbling "bastards." I did this even though I couldn't understand how he talked about things happening to Jews in 16th century India or 18th century Russia like they happened to family friends.

The last Friday night he invited me onto the deck, he seemed sullen and tired. He sat there, looking at the trees behind our fence. After a few minutes, I asked if he was okay.

He glanced over. "Outstanding."

I tried not to look at my watch or think about getting up to my room, locking the door, and jerking off.

"Do you remember the Moers and what they did to us in 1524? Is anything I tell you even resonating?"

I smacked a mosquito on my wrist, killing it. "Yeah, something disgusting."

He pushed his glasses up to his face. "In 1524, on the bullshit pretext that Jews were tampering with the pepper trade, they attacked the Jews of Anjuvannam, burning their homes and synagogues." He cleared his throat. "No doubt, while the homes turned to rubble, the animals raped Jewish wives in front of husbands and children."

I waited an appropriate and respectful time and then hissed, "over pepper, the cocksuckers." The way it came out, the emphasis was on the word "pepper," and I cringed at the falseness of my outrage. I glanced at Dad, seeing a look of disgust pass over his face. He looked back at the trees. A few minutes later, I got up and went to my room. I flipped through all the channels and then turned off the TV. I jerked off halfheartedly for a few minutes. I thought about looking out the window to see if he was still sitting on the deck. I yawned and thought I'd wait a minute to check.

I woke up at 2 a.m., underwear at my knees, realizing for the first time ever I'd fallen asleep in the middle of jerking off.

The next Friday, he didn't come home before services. That night, around 10:00, the garage door rumbled open and a few minutes later I looked out the window to see him out back staring at the trees. I stood there, trying to imagine myself living in India in 1524, eating dinner with Mom and Dad as they broke down the front door and dragged us out by our hair and beat us while others set the house aflame. I closed my eyes to keep the image but couldn't. I tried to remember how it had felt in fifth grade when Mom yanked my hair for getting kicked out of Hebrew class. Then I thought about all the times I'd thanked God for not giving me a real Jew nose or how I'd felt sick for hours after seeing a spray-painted swastika on the side of an abandoned building one morning on the way to school.

I thought about going down to the deck and asking Dad to tell me more about how he'd been picked on as a kid for being Jewish. Hadn't he said something about a girl breaking up with him in junior high after her dad found out she was dating a Jew? I stood there long enough to question whether that story he'd told had been about him or some other relative. Did I want to spend the next few years of Friday nights on the deck? Did I need to hear more stories about pepper shenanigans in 1524?

The next morning, after breakfast, I went outside to play street football, all but rolling my eyes when during a time-out the thought passed through my head that centuries ago in other countries such boys might have bludgeoned me.

1523 c/o Terrence Slumgullion

Two Boys

I am a Flemish painter.
Pleased to meet you.

Also I’m a philosopher.
More of a hobby though.
Like here is an example of my philosophy:
“We want what we cannot have. Ergo I want cervical cancer? Exactly.”

I am a Flemish painter ergo my precursors are imperative.
I must learn from my precursors.
For example: I must learn from Jan van Eyck!
For example: I must learn from Jan van Dornicke!!
Ah, van Dornicke.
His name is so chantable. That is what I like about him.
Just so: “Dor-nic-ke! Dor-nic-ke!”.
I love to chant his name and stand there learning from him as hard as I can.
Man.
Gotta love all of those Jans.

I have learned from my precursors: they have taught me it is within a Flemish’s ability to perform great deeds.
Ergo I perform great deeds regularly.

Another precursor: Hugo van der Goes!
Oh.
You're pumping your fists, right?
Still going with the “Dor-nic-ke!” from before.
Ah.
But you are not a Flemish painter.
He is not your precursor.
Relax.

I hold seminars whenever I can and people come and watch me while I describe or enact any great deeds.
Three hours into a seminar recently, it occurred to me to build a tower of Jenga blocks. A really big tower. Like, let's say 'many feet high'.
But! After that, after I really had people’s attention, I used the boxes that the Jenga blocks came in to build an even bigger tower!
Right?
Thereby, you know, commenting.
Right?!
Making an incredibly meaningful comment is without a doubt a truly great deed.

Yet another precursor, yet another Jan: it's Jan Mertens the Younger!
Mer-tens! Mer-tens!
Hmm.
Not so bad.

Some more philosophy from a recent seminar:
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Unless you only have one basket. In that case I don’t know, seems dumb to leave perfectly edible eggs behind at the market just because you only have one basket.
Let’s see. You could try to hard boil them before putting them in the basket. Seems unlikely, though. Hmm. What about cotton wool? I feel like I have maybe at one point in my life seen lots of eggs in a single basket that was lined and padded with cotton wool or something. So, packing them in nice and tight would actually be a pretty good idea. If there were just a few eggs in various baskets they would all be rattling around, knocking into one another and such as you ride your tricycle home.
Good point. Yeah. Yes. The thing with cotton wool. Try that.”
Seriously.
I was sucked forward by the gasp.

Some theology now:
“It’s not pre-marital sex if you aren’t going to marry the girl, right? Furthermore, if you are for sure going to marry her, God wouldn’t want you to wait around on His account. God is a neat guy.”

FYI: Having a full-time job is important.
I work full-time as a engraver.
Full-time work is important because it helps regulate your natural rhythms.
Vacating one’s bowels at regular intervals is certainly a great deed.
I cherish my full-time job and dance and waggle my unit in my alarm clock's face every morning.

An art tip, which I learned from my precursors:
“When finishing a painting, a portrait or whatever, add in a bunch of symbolic images. For example: ‘piece of fruit’, ‘mean-looking bird’ or ‘skulls, bones, etc’.”
It’s funny to do that maybe.

OK.
Now imagine this in a seminar:
“Don’t upset the apple cart, unless the apple cart is being a brat and you are teaching it a valuable life lesson from which it will definitely benefit in the long term. Some apple carts are real shitheads.”
Basically the house came down.

1522 c/o Rebecca Perry

Last night a pigeon with perfectly clean feet
landed on my shoulder,
pecked at the chain around my neck -
and, little did we know it then,
I was appearing somewhere else entirely
thousands of miles away.

Tomorrow night, all being well,
I will sit and look out of a high window
remembering this time last year,
tracing the silhouettes of buildings for similarities –
the intonations of closed curtains, the sky,
the differences between feelings now
and feelings then – how much whiter scars,
how much tougher feet, how much fixed the broken.

For now I will sit alone in bed and feast.
I will eat beetroot, cured meats.
I will eat strawberries. There will be wine -
until my hands are red to the wrists and shining.
Then how much covered the passions,
coral-still and silenced.

1521 c/o Sue Gee

The Diet of Worms with Martin Luther

Something has been really bothering me. Not Johann Eck questioning me all day. Not being dragged in front of the estates of the Roman Empire by force. Not my ball breaking ex nun of a wife. Not even that any old beggar is allowed to murder me on the street without consequence. What is bothering me is that I’ve been having these dreams where I’m a singer.

At first I thought that Satan had entered the sheepfold (yet again) but now I think this may be the path I am meant to take. I’ve got some lyrics and a tune, ‘Give me the reason to want you back. Why should I love you again?’ I think it’s pretty catchy.

They have laid out the scriptures on the table. To be honest I can’t be arsed. Johann Eck is looking smug, no doubt he will be asking me renounce or reaffirm my views (again, yawn). Yesterday his wife flashed her left boob at me, and waggled it about. I guess she’s one of those women that goes for beggars and criminals. I just keep saying the same thing, ‘I am bound by the scriptures and all that is in them.’ They start mumbling to each other and writing things down.

If I became a singer I could get some new clothes. There would be groupies, Eck’s wife would be on the front row. I have looked through the scriptures but they aren’t giving me any answer. Every night I hear my song ‘Give me the reason to want you back’ as if being sung by angels. I keep telling myself that faith is justification for all but it doesn’t help, my athlete's foot has come back with the stress.

I have been thinking of making a run for it. My wife Katerina says I should change my name and disappear. If I could just keep my trap shut for five minutes. I’ve not told her about my singing ambitions yet, she'll be furious. I’ve always hated my name so changing it won’t bother me. You won’t believe the number of beggars called Martin, it’s dead common, but I like Luther, I want to keep it. I’ve got a name I’d like to use, ‘Luther Vandross’. Katerina says it is a stupid name but I quite like it. Luther Vandross, it’s got a good ring to it. If I grow a moustache these clueless bastards will never recognise me.

Yesterday they let me stand outside. I picked up the dirt in my hands. I thought about the soul, and the frailty of the human body. I let the soil slip through my fingers. That song popped into my head again and you know what I did? I picked up worms, hands full of them and I ate them. Just like I used to at school when I was little. Sometimes when you're sick of heretics there’s nothing like eating worms to cheer you up.

You know what, I have decided. I am definitely going to change my name to Luther Vandross, and make a run for it. I have written the song down and I am wondering if Eck's wife might come with me. It’s mad I know, her boobs are shit but I reckon I might just go for it. I bet she’s eaten a few worms in her time. Just you wait, no more sermons, no more arguing about predestination, just Luther Vandross, the singer with my new life, fantastic.