The sisters of Gamma Beta Pi long held that the goddess was a myth.
That their initiation ritual, the bloodletting under the cover of darkness in the woods behind their house one night in late October every year, was nothing more than simple tradition. That the magic they claimed to call forth, bringing beauty and power to those few worthy women, were nothing but empty affirmations.
But Marsha Hart knew the truth.
Looking back now on all those times Dad died, I’d have to say the first one remains my favourite.
When he was twenty-nine, Dad was working as an in-house solicitor for a now defunct telecommunications firm. He lived alone in Peckham, and clocked in long, unsociable hours. One hot July evening, a little past nine o’clock, he got home and found a dead man lying at the foot of his stairs.
Department of Memory: Statement on Recent Memory NoteTM Upgrades
Memory NoteTM, the alert system transforming our conception of life, has been upgraded, announced the Department of Memory (DoM) today.
Upon completion of the Pilot Phase, DoM has done what it promised to do from the outset: learn. Upgrades to Memory NoteTM align with the system’s purpose: to bring memory to the present by alerting us in real time of which experiences we’ll remember far into the future.
Said Terry Bernham, Secretary of Memory. “The knowledge of what we will remember refines our behavior, changes our future, and adds meaning to our lives. This knowledge is NOTEworthy.”
The boys had gathered for Tristan’s return. Mulligan, a teacher, had driven from Galway through rain that seemed to resent his presence on the road. Rob had taken the train from Dublin. Shaney got a lift from a neighbour in Drumshanbo. And as for Tristan, he trumped them all: there was no beating a twenty-four-hour flight from Australia. (He’d failed to mention the stopover in Kuala Lumpur that broke the journey in two.)
There was no music in the bar. The owner’s son, who normally sang a disorientating selection of country tunes and pop hits, had taken a huff with his father. So the only bit of melody came from excited voices and clinking glasses.
Every day we can’t wait for The Show to come on. We rush through our days, come home, eat a hasty meal, sometimes with our little tin tables in front of the wall screen, salivating for The Show to come on. No matter how bad our days have been our smiles pop, our hearts fill when we see Bobby’s smile and Angela’s poofy hair, and little Max tripping on the dog in the doorway, and our laughter escapes us with no effort of our own. When we see that little Chip the cocker spaniel is okay, we together breathe a sigh of relief, and everything is okay in our world for that moment, that instant. We have our Show, and we know everything will be okay.
I really don’t remember much of anything anymore. And people always get frustrated when I say that, but if I asked you about something that happened when you were a kid, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell me every single detail either. People forget that memories are slippery. Slippery like you and your friend’s sweaty grips on your bikes’ handlebars on a hot day during summer break. But you wouldn’t remember that. I’m going to try to explain to help you remember because I want you to understand why we did it.
For starters, we were ten.
On the train ride home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened that day at work with my boss. Since she’s the director of our organization, I rarely have reason to interact with her at all. That’s my supervisor’s job, so being summoned to her office felt like a big deal. And it was, I quickly discovered. She chewed me out, all over nothing, really. A perceived slight she took personally. I thought she was going to fire me on the spot.
I didn’t move to Malta for The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, but it factored in when I decided to make the move. I’m talking about the painting of course, not the actual decapitation of the man. Valetta didn’t even exist when they were lopping off John’s noggin and the severing of said head happened in what’s now Jordan I believe. I don’t care about all that stuff, the history, the faith, that can all sod off. It’s Caravaggio’s colours, light, sense of space, the still action in the painting. The beauty and the violence. The messages. The blood. The signing in John the Baptist’s blood right there, on the huge, five metre canvas, that’s what gets me. Every time I’ve been to the cathedral, and paid the extortionate 12 euros entrance fee, it has got me.
The repetition of my commuter journey lulled me and took my mind to distant shores, but muscle memory kept my feet on the right path. As every morning I wondered how I got here, remembering nothing of my way. A cold fog swirled, swiping at my ankles as I entered the wide station concourse.
I headed for the usual platform, the first train of the day, busy and teaming with stress, leaching out of the seats and into the air like the haze on a marsh. People streamed through the ticket barrier, carrying cups of coffee, hauling luggage and trailing their anxiety behind them. The herd moved to the next platform, the clomping heels and squeaking wheels diminished, only I walked to platform seven.
Idle Ink 