Nika Harper's Blog, page 3

The Last Time You Asked

Every day, every day, I keep hearin’ it.

What is WRONG with the people nowadays? I just wanna read my magazine and be left alone. A late night job at a bus station and instead I get a whole crowd of rowdies, day in day out. It ain’t right! Do I get the drunk crowd? On a Tuesday?!
It ain’t right.

Yeah it’s stormy out, yeah the bus is late. Of course it’s late, it’s storming! You don’t need to ask me every ten minutes, I don’t know! Nobody tells me anything, I just flash the lights when the bus comes and check bags and that’s about it. My default answer is “in a half an hour” and it’ll keep being “in a half an hour” until the damn bus comes! So it’s late, so what? There’s only one bus to Syracuse, you got other plans to get there?
Shoulda used THEM!
Instead'a botherin’ me.

Yeah I got your bag here, lady, you’ve checked on it twice now. You can see it from where you sit. Nobody else is coming behind this desk, I work nights alone. Though if you’re so keen on bags, maybe I’ll hire you. You just stand there and make sure nobody’s fussing with the luggage, then. Here’s a nickel.

Where’s the bus? You asked that before, then the bus came and you got on it, that’s what happened. How did you miss the bus when you walked right outside and saw it come in? I don’t got the patience to deal with you folk, actin’ like I didn’t call out the name of the bus and tricked ya. I don’t got the humor to trick ya. I just wanna read this magazine and get through it all. The next one is in two hours. Sit tight, and don’t bother me that I didn’t make it clear enough.
I make it clear enough, I tell ya when a bus is here. It’s the only thing I’m here to do.

Yeah, yeah. Disappearing bags, eh? Got a claim ticket? Then your bag didn’t disappear. Wasn’t anyone else in here but you and me. And your stupid hat but I don’t think it’s considered another being, though it looks like it wants to become one. Nasty thing it is.

Sometimes folks like you get nervous and run out, all the better for me. Keeps it quiet in here. Keep hearing muttering of “alternate worlds” and “twins” and I just don’t need it. Well, I wouldn’t say anything against havin’ a twin! He could sit here and deal with you larks and I could be readin’ in the diner with some coffee. A night like this could use some coffee.
The bus to Cambridge is on time, son. Sit back.

The bus to Cambridge is still on time.

I really worry about you kids, is it the dope weed in your brains? The Cambridge bus is still twenty minutes out, the way it was when you asked just a few minutes ago. And two minutes before that. Yeah, go have yourself a smoke outside, and as you enter again I’ll be sure to yell out that the bus to Cambridge is STILL due in twenty minutes, you numbskull.
Brainless maniacs, the lot of them.

Ma'am, your bag is still behind the counter. It’s been here all along.
And I saw you disturbing that other couple, then the couple disturbed me to report that you disturbed them. Let’s just keep it all in-line and not bug anybody we don’t know, alright ma'am?

Ma'am?
Yes your bag is here and I told you not to bother people you don’t know.

There somethin’ in the air around here? Been eatin’ paint chips off the walls, folks?

I got a crossword to do here.

You saw another girl that looks like you?
Well maybe change your hairstyle a bit and stop bringing your identity problems to me, eh miss? I’m no fashion consultant, I wear glasses and I don’t need people jerkin’ my chain night after night talkin’ about people who look like them. That’s all you are, this is just some trick. And I won’t have it.
No other bus folk have to do this. Nobody else has to assure passengers that they aren’t being chased from another dimension. What gets into you folks? Bus riders all gone wacko? I could use another me, I tell ya. Tell your other you to be nicer to the hired help, alright.

Yeah.

Now arriving, bus to Cambridge. Cambridge bus, now boarding out the door. Yes, that’s you, sir. Your bag is on the way out, miss. Yeah.
Bus to Cambridge is outside, all aboard for the bus to Cambridge. Last call.
Flick the lights a little here, there we go, place sure cleared out. Alright then.
Time to dig into the crossword, finally some good time.

Cambridge? The bus to Cambrige? Now son I flashed the lights and called out and saw you walk right out them doors to get on it, yes I did.
If you missed it that’s your own fault, son, I can’t help you there.
I saw you walk out for the bus, I even said a nice goodbye. Well I nodded.
Wasn’t you?
It ain’t my eyes that’s the problem, it’s you kids.
This must be a trick, I ain’t gonna fall for it.
Been weeks of this, nobody else has to deal with this.
Next bus to Cambridge is in three hours, son.
Now, some good ol’ time with my crossword…

A story inspired by the “other side” of the counter in the Twilight Zone episode “Mirror Image.”

If you like this, check out my other work and support on Patreon! 

The Lady Rain: a Sempronia story

(Learn about Sempronia here: http://nikaharper.tumblr.com/post/114425347960/sempronia-of-the-sands)

It started as many good stories did, over a glass of wine.
The women glittered more than she, bejeweled even in their casual moments, some ready for interruption and some at rest. It was not a place anyone but kings could tread, and it was all the more important that Sempronia accept their invitation. The wine flowed and the baths were warm, perfumed like memories of sex and sugar. She soaked, and allowed her feet to be rubbed with fine oil.
They liked her fingers, they wanted secrets of how theirs could be as beautiful. Their kindness was dusted with selfishness, but it made Sempronia smile. No-one else could be in this bath, a long-needed one on her part; no-one else could be allowed this level of sisterhood. They presumed her a skilled witch, and they were not too far off. Below the concept, but not distant.
Her old bones warmed and her young skin steamed.

“They are naught but tales, my dears.“
“But so lovely!” and they entwined their fingers with hers, peering at the glittering galaxies in her fingertips. Her nails shimmered so, like gems! Their chatter was like songbirds.
“The thing that storymen sing of!”
“Surely to capture an eye.”
“Of the King?”
“Or, the handmen of the court.”
They giggled as one, a trill of whimsy.

Sempronia displaced the steam with her words, “Of my hands, I cannot teach you, and it would take you years to realize you’d never want it, but I can share something with you. Will that do?”
“Anything you like, Our Mistress,” they breathed. Mistress to the mistresses.
“To give a story,” Sempronia said, “it is wise to have one in return. Before I begin, everyone, dip your hands into this bath.”
The maidens, named by title and not habit, each dipped their perfect hands into the frothy water. Excitement played on their faces.
“This is an exchange. I will gift a story to you, and have one of yours when the time is right. You will not know nor notice, nor will it hurt nor rob you. It will always be yours, but I will have it. And it will only be one of you.”
She lifted their hands up from the water, which they tucked neatly into their laps, or nestled into Sempronia’s hair. The treatment of a king for a mere storyteller of the stars.
“I shall tell you something of beauty, which you have and so appreciate….”

“The rain is a woman.
We feel her skirt and the train of her veil as she walks over this world, larger than anything we could imagine. It is not her tears that we feel, it is the heaviness of her presence that shields our light and chills our ground. She is not sad either, these are mistruths to discredit her strength. The Lady Rain is not a melancholy soul, when we are saddened in her veil, it is because we dream of love.

“Imagine a world where everything is bigger and we are naught but ants on clovers. Then you may see the scale. The world goes on above us and we don’t think of it, we are close to the roots and what is beyond does not interest us. We interest ourselves. In love, in hurt, in compassion, in trust. But is that not how the skies may live? If the thunder follows the lightening, may we also believe they are not journeying along their own paths?

"It is more than just weather and sky. It is grander. But it is connected, as all things are.

"The Lady Rain is a quiet type, a caring sort. She might have made the decision to be destructive or malicious, but others in her world did that better than herself. The Thunder with its invasive oration, or the dreamy nature of the Clouds. It is a small but tall world, a small family which often argues. Rain keeps to herself, dainty and unable to know her own power. She never shall.
"Imagine her forever in her blooming years, making a statement with her presence and nothing more. Her sister and brother may play their games, their arguments flashing and roaring across the world, but the youngest had watched them and vowed differently.
"And Snow?
Snow is a moth. Pay it little mind, as it pays you none.

"It is a hard life to be in pursuit of the Sun, for it is two people. He of the Sun is distracted and calm, She of the Sun is curious, driven, and speculative. When you meet a piercing ray, you are under the watchful eye of Her Sun. She wants to know about you.
The sweet, even comfort of a warm day, those are His Sun’s domain. He smiles on everything he knows, and is contented to float along with no judgment. His eyes do not pierce, they roam.

"Lady Rain has been young forever, and never older or younger than that. In as many years as there are numbers, she ages naught. When you make friends with Time, everything may change but yourself. The Sun often watches this passage and change, the subtle perspective shift of Time moving out of range. For you see, from the perspective of The Sun, there is no shadow. It is impossible to visualize. The Sun is what causes shadows to be.
"And that impossibly enthralled The Lady Rain. Not only the imperturbable love, but the fierce curiosity. The Sun gazes to the sky, or shines to the ground, and The Lady Rain wishes only to be in that same gaze. Arms await her that turn none away and yet, take such interest everywhere. Could she ever see what they were thinking? Could she ever be worthy to bask in the light they had?

"It is a courtship in the sky. The Sun disappears into the gossiping Clouds, and Rain follows ever behind. Sometimes she waits too long, or thinks too much. Often, raindrops blossom in the sky even as sunbeams shine through them, and Lady Rain is made interesting, she is seen. But no matter where she is in the sky above our world, The Sun has been there before. And where The Lady Rain walks, The Sun shines not far behind.

"When we are sad in a storm, it is because of ourselves. The Lady Rain is merely a traveler along her own path, in pursuit of love.”

Sempronia was enrobed, her soaked fingers grown old and wrinkled as her soul. There were more oils and perfumes, her clothes had been freshened and knitted back into their proper forms. Pity, she thought, I had earned some of those holes. One by one the maidens kissed her cheeks and led her out of their palace, each hand linked with another’s all the way down.
“Farewell, sister!” they called with smiles more beautiful than the sands.
A handsome girl approached to drag the traveling hood over Sempronia’s shoulders, resting her hand on the clasp for but a moment, long enough for the storyteller to notice. Her dainty finger had a sheen, a familiar glitter to it that matched the fierce pride in the mistress girl’s eye. It held a gleam of the Lady Rain.
Clever witch, this one, Sempronia noted. There was a silent challenge in the girl’s smile, an audacity that captured a story from a demi-god. Sempronia smiled back with blood-burnt lips.
“Yours is the story I will take,” Sempronia whispered to her, “so make it good when I come to collect.”

The Maiden of the Palace said nothing as the Star-Teller walked through the gates into the deep night. An intelligent choice, as her life was, from then on, forever watched by the sky.
The next years will surely tell an interesting tale.

ivyblossom:bubblycween:sandandglass:Last Week Tonight...

ivyblossom:

bubblycween:

sandandglass:

Last Week Tonight s02e19

eq

I sort of which these very polite trans people would turn that question around and ask the interviewers about their genitalia. Hey Barbara: let’s talk about your labia. 

After You’ve Stopped Dreaming

Sometimes I wonder if everyone else is real.
Like that man sitting there, in the blue shirt. Is he real?
Then I go back to enjoying the moment.
Sometimes it creeps back up on me though… why would he want to be here?

I am the winner of the greatest academic award on this coast, the trophy is cradled in my arms like a bouquet, and my smile is as wide as the heavens. You see, my research finally worked. Years and hours and missed dates and skipped showers all led to the breakthrough I had been hoping for, with my name printed clearly across it. I am a scientific explorer, happily lauded, invited to the dinner table of the people I’d only read about. I am one of them now. I belong.
The triumphant music swells and it’s nothing compared to the expansion of my heart as I look to the crowd, people on their feet applauding for me, for my work, for all of that time that I gave everything I had.
I have so much to give, and now I get back.
I get this trophy.
I get to belong.

Then I wonder about the blue shirt, front row, clapping. His face is polite and sincere, he is nobody I know. Perhaps I will know him someday, or I haven’t yet recognized him yet, but he seems so gentle in this moment. Nice. A nice person.
But why is he here?
Is he real?

Are they real? The person who presented this trophy, is this really their desire? To present trophies?

I smile.
My eyes are bordered by welled tears, making the bright auditorium lights double in my vision. I can sense that everything has been worth it, and this is where it all changes. This is where I finally get everything I’ve worked for. There are photographers. Coworkers. Journalists. We’re all smiling.

Why are they here? Surely their gladness does not extend this far. Surely they have their own dreams and wishes, more than standing idly by and clapping as I receive the most important accolade of my entire life. If they truly supported me this much, they’d have been more accommodating in the field. I didn’t do this all myself, but damnit I might as well have. Nobody else gave more than me, and yet I see them as I look out there.
As all my dreams are realized, I see them. They’re clapping for me.

That man in the blue shirt, he is clapping for me. Could he know me? Have I really ignored so many people in my life who wanted to help?
…Are these people real?

The award is bulky yet weightless, it fits into the crook of my arm like the children I never had. Not in this life. This time I didn’t clean up spittle, I cleaned up experiments. This time, I didn’t calculate daycare prices, I calculated complex mathematical equations that changed the world.
The whole world!
Not just a simple household.
I always had something so much bigger inside me. More than supporting a family. I don’t support. Others should support me for a change.
And they did, and look what’s happening.
Everything I’ve wanted.

No more diapers and lunch money and parent-teacher meetings and family-style meals for dinner, NO!
All that is gone, a distant memory. All I have here is my achievement. My award. My supporters.
My dreams, and how true they are, how I will feel like this forever.
And ever.
So full of pride, I could burst! So relieved and excited that I feel drunker than a barfly.
My smile could stretch around the world and back to me. It’s so wide, it can’t be mapped.
I made it. I belong.

Yet there’s that blue-shirted man in the front, whose eyes are kind and he seems to care. I don’t know him, or recognize him at all.
I chose to spend my eternal peace accepting this award, from my end to the infinity beyond, being proud of what I could do.
Why would he choose to spend his afterlife applauding someone from the sidelines? Is that really his wish?
These people that clap, their eyes shining with joy. Are they real?

The lights reflect off my beautiful, brassy achievement award. I stand high above them all, finally what I should be. Appreciated. Accomplished.
My smile could span eternity, and it will.
I’m so happy.
I wanted to belong.

Short fiction inspired by The Twilight Zone episode, “Elegy.”

If you like this, read more on my tumblr and please support on Patreon!

To thee who we have forgotten

An ode, a shout-out, a message to thee

Who have wronged us.

They always ask why.

A familiar nod to the those who introduced me to this amazing album, or this song, or this time of my life that I shall never forget. And I shall never forget it, you are always there.

A smile and a wistful sigh to the people I have spent time with, whom I loved and felt will always be there.

Until later when I realized I’m not always right, and when I had to flush you from my life. But the music and the memories stayed.

May you live on in my memory, perfect and wonderful, and may you live on outside them, and without me, and on your own fucking time because I’ve nothing left for you.

My memories were the best part of you, and I’ve kept them. I love who you were, always.

Don’t steal this nostalgia from me.

I’m Too Old For You

How do I love thee?
Let me count the years.

You aren’t Circe, whose bright hair swarmed about her face like a halo. She was improbable, fiery, the first to tell me I was wrong and the last to be right. She was everything I wasn’t… Well, that I wasn’t YET. Her passion, forgiveness, strength, cruelty…. She was her father’s daughter and I learned much from it, as I ever should.
As I left, her hair was grey and swarmed about her face like a halo, like a cloud, like a memory. And she became a memory.
She was my first.

You, glorious you, are not Jullia. She was a small little thing, thin as the grapes she languished over, so passionate she could create poetry on her lips but not within a bottle, and not on paper to prove any of it. I was drunk when I met her and drunker still the longer we existed together, the taste of vinegar strong in my mouth as I struggled to understand what made HER so wonderful but why nothing was able to express it. Some people are kept airtight in the world, capable of such glories that are inexpressible at the time. Well, as was Jullia. I spent years at her bedside, pining for her to be the great poet, the great creator, the vintner, the wondrous maker she had within her, and it never bore fruit. She slept, old and barren and wrinkled for keeping the beauty within her to herself.

So it goes.

You are not Lucia, whose smile shone across a room. I was unprepared, and yet caught in her trap as well. She was a hostess incarnate, any conversation was better for her being in it and the peaks of her hat could not hold her brilliance, she often cast it away in order to talk further by the evening’s end. She was born in a wrong time, for intelligence was prized far less in women than having the right hair and spangled clothing. She had so much, she did, and I gave as much as I could to her, but if only she could have lasted as I did, so deeply did I love, so deeply did I feel her yearnings. Nowadays Lucia could be the Prime Minister. But as it was, she was an old woman in a curtained bed.

I pray for you, Lucia, as you thought prayer meant something.

You are not Francis, who haunted me. Behind every corner, hidden away from every affair, there he was. Delicate as a painter’s stroke, his feathery touches awoke something in me that I hadn’t known at all. Francis, oh Francis, your lust for life was quelled only in drink, in spreading yourself thin as you could while others looked on in glee. You were ever so slight, a wisp of beauty like a feather in our hand, but more like a snowflake as you melted at anyone’s touch. I stood by your bedside, whether you had been in it or not. I saw you flit out of view and into the bedclothes of others. I worried not. Francis, dear Francis, you were not but a dandelion to be plucked and puffed out to its eventual places.
I left before you were truly grey, and I think you noticed not. I cared ever more than you did, my dear Francis, for you never cared a writ for yourself.

But you, magnetic you, are not Claudine.
I’ve never known so many eyes to rush to a person.
I was one of the many, but somehow the last to keep in focus. I cannot say much of myself, only that Claudine found me different and unique. Yet I only lived in her shadow, which stretched like a cigarillo, long and thin and careful. She was ever a mystery, my Claudine. In years I knew her and lived alongside, she would disappear and return. I cannot say otherwise, I did the same. I would be gone, searching for facts and intelligence that paid for the dry Bordeaux and the sweet Champagne. When alas we met, like light and shadow we entwined, all work gone from ourselves, all pretense of loyalty hidden at the foot of a bed lined with silk sheets.
I believe she left me, that one. We spent much time, more than I could account, but her raven hair was still unmarred by grey as she waved a last goodbye on the deck of a ship.
It was a permanent goodbye, I saw it in the wave and how the bedroom felt bare, lacking all of her small fancies.
But it was the last goodbye as the ship sank nearly three hours out of port. I never saw her again, and whether engineered by her hand or otherwise, the end was quite final.

Behold, the true history, for you are not Lily.
Spry and clever, deft and gymnastic, her anxious ways gave light into my life as she traveled from meal to meal amidst carnival colors. She belonged to a circus, made her living as that of rubber. She stretched and pulled herself into such shapes it would be thought impossible, and nightly she was at my side, crooning old songs from thousands of years back that none know but her kind, and I cannot recall to this day. Bright and wide-eyed, she loved a challenge and her joints doubled or tripled themselves as she became whatever was necessary. With me, she was whole, and real, and treated me as a treasured pet. She was always greater, Lily, in mind and body of every way, but in spirit I was older and I knew when it was time for me to leave.
Gustave the Strongman could not be waylaid any longer. Lily and Gustave was destiny, if one tinged with a salt-and-pepper moustache on the latter’s part.
I left with a kiss, to travel beyond. Lily left to be her show-self, every day and night, no longer having a respite with someone who was beyond such a border of showmanship.

I miss her.
More than the others, quite plainly.

You, with your wry grin, are not Clara, for nobody could be Clara but herself.
I’ve searched so many years and rarely found another that was anything like what Clara could be, and indeed still is.
Whatever she had was natural. Whatever her whim or desire was ultimately the next month’s fancy, she was almost a fortune teller of style and chic. Yet she was no more than a sweet little secretary, a wonderful being with a warm countenance and only hoped for a healthy home to decorate. Even she did not know what she was, while never a contestant for the front page of Vogue, she was a trend-setter in a way I considered impossible. The subtlest of changes would suit her, the discarded styles of fashion would flatter her such that it would grace the pages of magazines not long afterward. She was a canvas for beauty, everything looked wonderful with her, including me. I’d rarely been so desired as when I was at her side, this shy, loving soul who felt so freely and dressed as she wanted, and the industry fought to catch up.
Because a housewife could make something look that good.
I had lunch with her not two weeks ago, Clara is still making everything she does a trend. She could have been anything, but she only chose to be a mother. Our children are well, she is well, and our family Sunday dinners are moments I will cherish forever, a true contentment of an ever-independent family, and a mai-tai with an umbrella in my hand.

Now, don’t look so sad, my dearest. I said that my history was a lengthy one, but I hope it has shown that I have more than a discerning eye.
You are none of these people, no matter how stretched the history may become, you are special, unique, yourself. I’ve had lifetimes to contemplate, and I may have many lifetimes yet, but here you are.
Radiant. Coy. Playful as a cat and strong as a lioness, I knew the moment I met you that I would want to call you mine. I’ve so rarely felt equalled, but you had me to my knees in a swift moment.

What sets you apart?
Your determination.
You are a meteor plummeting towards your target, you are a universe shifting its course, you know exactly what you want and have never stopped calculating the ways to get it. You are not a person but a movement. And your legions follow with you.
Now who am I to say that I could be at your side?
I say nothing of the sort, only that you have already chosen me. Lucky, I am, and equally dedicated.
Your story can last as long as you want it to, for there is a time when I may not be enough. But know that I will use all that I can, all in my power to see you through to the awards ceremonies, to the sky-high offices, to the grey hair that awaits you when you achieve all that you want. To be involved with your timeline…. is my privilege.
You would enjoy meeting Clara, if you had a lunch to spare sometime. Next week, perhaps?
My dear, my darling, my lioness.
I shall pick out a ring as ruby-red as your heart, and watch it beat to the pattern of your influence. The world is yours, and yet, it can be… ours.
I am forever and humbly your partner.
Forever being something none else can promise as strongly as I.
Tomorrow we shall reign together, again.
For now, rest your eyes and dream of long strides across a wide world.
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This story was inspired by The Twilight Zone episode ‘Long Live Walter Jameson.’ If you liked this, please share and make things and take a look at my Patreon page and support more writing!

realityinthehumanmind:Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

realityinthehumanmind:

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

I Guess It Really Was… A Softer World

ryannorth:

I started my comic, Dinosaur Comics, on February 1st, 2003.  Joey Comeau and Emily Horne started A Softer World six days later, and not too long afterwards Joey emailed me.  "What are you going to do with your Nobel Prize for Comics money?“ he asked.  "My name’s Joey. I do a comic too.”

I followed his link and read all the comics there in one sitting.  They were hilarious and sad, sometimes at the same time, and I saw stuff done in comics that I hadn’t seen before.  I remember this one in particular, because it is the one where I mentally recategorized the series from “this is good” to “okay, this is great”:

I wrote him back and asked him what he was going to do with his Pulitzer Prize for Comics money.  

That was 13 years ago.

***

I have two friends who are marrying each other, only one of them’s an American, and there’s a part of the immigration process they have to convince the Canadian federal government that theirs is a real relationship.  They have been directed to collect essays from people wherein we swear we know them, and to demonstrate our Friendship Credentials we go over our relationship with one or both of them and explain why this friendship is real and important to us.  

What we have to do, in effect, is write an essay - just like in school! - only the subject is why my two friends who are marrying each other are so great.  It’s a friendship love letter, and it was so satisfying to write.  There’s no time in our culture where we are allowed to walk up to our friends and say “Our friendship is so amazing, and so important to me, and I wrote an essay about it.  I hope you enjoy it,” except for this one, created by an immigration bureaucracy.  I think we should change that.

***

Joey and I emailed back and forth almost daily for several months until one time he was in Halifax while my girlfriend Priya was visiting, and I insisted they meet.  I hadn’t met him in person yet, but I’d already told her all about him.  I told her she had to go meet my internet friend.  They went out for breakfast, and when the bill came, Joey just looked at the bill and smiled wide.  Priya picked up the tab.  Then he got her to push him home on his skateboard.  This story makes sense when you realize how much of a charmer Joey is. Priya said she loved him!  I wasn’t surprised.  "Joey’s so great,“ I said.

I started grad school, which meant moving to Toronto where I didn’t know anyone.  Joey emailed his friends Tim and Ro and got them to invite me to a games night they were having.  Listen: I was young.  I was excited.  I showed up early and rang their doorbell at 6pm for a 8:30pm games night, because I had no idea what I was doing.  

Tim and Ro invited this complete stranger in to join them to dinner that night, and it turned out they were awesome, and now just about everyone I know in Toronto can be traced back to Tim and Ro and those weekly games nights they hosted.  What Joey gave me through Tim and Ro was a friendship starter kit, a way to make moving to a new city easy, and when my books got water damaged during the move, Joey sent me new ones.  All his favourites.

I love him, and we would’ve never met if it weren’t for A Softer World.

***

Emily and I disagree over how we met in real life, but that’s great because now we have a mystery at the centre of our friendship.  There’s a sequence of events where I say one thing happened and she says “no you’re crazy THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE”, but I can’t even remember what our two different versions are anymore.  Mine is absolutely the right one though.

One of my earliest memories of her is of being at Tim’s housewarming for his new place, and in his kitchen he’d left this seltzer bottle: they’re those giant pressurized water bottles clowns spray each other with, at least in cartoons I guess?  And obviously at some point I sprayed Emily a little, because this is what happens when you leave me in my 20s in a kitchen at a party with a seltzer bottle.  Emily sprayed me back in revenge, but it was more than I’d sprayed her, so obviously I needed to spray her back to make it even.  It went back and forth until Tim burst into his kitchen, (understandably) mad that we’d sprayed water all over his new apartment.  He told us to stop.  We apologized.  And as he was leaving Emily emptied the bottle on me before putting the drained bottle in Tim’s hands.

Reader, I befriended her.  

One time she sent me a physical letter.  A real letter!  Nothing is more classy.  I hung it on my wall.  I bought a used typewriter at a garage sale so I could respond in kind.  She moved to Toronto later on, and we started hanging out all the time.  When Jenn and I got married, she photographed our wedding.

I love her, and we would’ve never met if it weren’t for A Softer World.

***

One April Fools’ Day I took down Dinosaur Comics and replaced it with what I claimed was my new project now: A Softer World 2: Better Than A Softer World.  This one was a picture of my friend Eric combined with words I lifted from a conversation that Nicholas Gurewitch (The Perry Bible Fellowship) and I were having about The Incredibles.

A reader emailed me, upset that I would end the comic he enjoyed for “what is effectively just a parody of another comic” and urged me to reconsider.

***

Another time my comic mentioned “truth” and “beauty” and Joey and Emily’s comic that day mentioned “truth and beauty bombs”, so we started a message board for our comics called that.  We don’t post there anymore, but other do.  It’s still running.  People got married because of that message board.  Children exist today from that thing!  There’s a chain of events that leads from today back through our years of comics and friendship, through Joey and Emily and the way our three lives have intertwined, all the way to when we three babies started comics within the same week even though none of us can draw, and Joey emailing me to inquire about my Nobel Prize for Comics money.  Without A Softer World, I never meet Joey, I never meet Emily, and my life is completely different.  Probably worse, too!

It’s almost definitely worse!

***

There’s a dedication in the first Dinosaur Comics collection.  It reads, “To Emily and Joey: the first friends I ever made in comics, and still the best.”  

I’m sad Emily and Joey’s comic is ending - more than I thought I’d be, I’ve got all these big feelings about it you guys - but I’m glad it was there.  I am here to tell you now, and without hyperbole, that this comic and the two people behind it have shaped my life more than any other work of art.  Take that, the Mona Lisa.

In conclusion, A Softer World was so amazing, and so important to me, and I wrote an essay about it. I hope you enjoyed it.

Ryan North

May 2015

***

A Softer World ends on Monday, June 1st, five days from now.  The Kickstarter for Anatomy Of Melancholy - their final, best-of collection - ends at the same time.

Words about this project and those who made it.

The Mountain Who Moves Men

For my dear friend, Sam Sykes on his annual OlderThanMe celebration.

As though stature had anything to do with it.

A trait that nobody celebrated was “impenetrable.” There were no awards for “fortified.” There wasn’t even a glowing nod for “consistency.”
It had birthed the rocks that crested the town center, it had shaded the delicate trees and brushed the harsh winds elsewhere, letting slight breezes tickle the tanned scalps and bare branches that lay beneath. Eternity felt like growing pains, becoming taller, crumbling away and jutting new sharp edges, this was wonderful respite. The balmy days, the sweet drifting scent of honeysuckle. With dry cliffs and hidden caverns, the Mountain looked down on its protected world and felt peace.
People do not see the landscape as saviors or art, but as projects.
The first itch of a pick was shrugged off, until it became many and digging.
The abrasion of stricken resources stung the Mountain’s hulking frame.
It looked as the little things crept up. Economy tied down its left side. Industry scratched at its right. And worst of all, the Mountain could feel it, one driven entity picked its way to its heart.
The honeysuckle didn’t smell so sweet, then. The groves of trees, shaded and flourishing, waved every morning, flinching with picked fruit or gasping with a cut trunk. Being so bound, the Mountain would not wave back. The story was on its way forward, and it was over, around… through.

A Heart of a Mountain is stronger than any tool that can be used on it, more stoic than any weapon used against it. As the saved ones dug deeper and deeper, the Mountain let itself open, unable to fight with cave-ins or botanical stitches. The picks dug deeper, led by a single bright lantern, until it hit and resonated like a bell.
A second clink filled up the cavern with a tone so strong, so deep, that the saved ones crumpled to cover their ears and their innards. It hurt them to feel it, to be close, to scrape against the Heart of a Mountain that loved them.
It was blocked off and deemed as a sickness.
The driven entity slept outside the crack that led into the depths, knowing the Mountain held secrets and wanting to know them, but each yearning thought came with a memory of the enveloping pain. The cavern crumbled in on itself with time, and the saved ones moved across, and over, and beyond.

The trees waved every morning and the Mountain nodded back, for its arms supported a livelihood.
It bled itself back into the hidden depths, hoping none more would push too close. The Mountain would give itself for the world in its shade, but the heart is a place only to be scratched, never emptied.

I WROTE THIS IN 2001

Get ready for some fuckin’ crazy sadgirl poetry. My first boyfriend!

Like sunlight shining through water in mid-day
I turn prismatic when I know he loves me that way
His perfect eyes turn to me and there they stay
The expression in those eyes can never fade away.

But I have yet to see them, you see
For he does exist, just not here with me
And by my side, he will someday be
It’s all just a matter of time to me.

But now, no longer, his memory lain to rest
By myself, for I know it must be for the best
We haven’t spoken, I thought it was just a test
To see if my love for him is ever at its best.