The Tepui Chronicles: South America, Part III

DOS·PIES·EN·EL·SUELO: idiom \dos-Piēs-en-el-Suēlo\ both feet on the ground

He was a reticent, I could tell. He demonstrated a subtle kind of panache, a cool sort of sobriety, sitting a row above the group of chattering maestros engulfing two American girls.

Jess and I had landed in the heart of South America with little more than a touchy four wheeler, two battered suitcases and a bag of foreign coins. And finding ourselves at a local soccer match with new friends, in an exotic, mountainous village 200 miles into a thick, lush rainforest, we swore we had found paradise.

They were teaching us the rules, speaking rapidly in heightened animation. With each phrase we mimicked came an ejaculated si, si from our new friends. Phones were passed hand to hand, pics snapped absent-mindedly, and an intermittent cheer for the goalie.

Words, it became clear, were useless — unnecessary, even. We resorted to other means of communication: hand motions, gestures, a game of charades and a repeated vamos, a word that had come to encompass so many more meanings: yes. now. go. act. move. pursue. ascend. fly.

He was taller than the others and, I presumed, older. He stood apart, speaking only when probed for a translation. He knew english, and had overheard Jess and I when we assumed ourselves beneath the guise of a language barrier.

The way he knew the words both sides needed to communicate but withheld them, gave him an ascribed sort of power, an esteem among the others. Something about that, his insinuating silence, captured my intrigue. I had to make him out.

I entreated delicately: an imploring question — direct, yet subtle. He returned. It became an inquisition: a play of the cards. my draw, then his. a move and a response.

They wanted to treat us to our last night in Monteverde, they said, as we stepped away from the arena. We followed. He kickstarted his bike, calling my name. I jumped on and we flew across the bumpy road of that small, uncharted rainforest. 

I could see the pull of his veins as he held the handlebars of the old motorcycle with familiarity. He weaved in and out of jungle terrain, flying past large, wet foliage and ducking beneath low-hanging bunches of bananas. I lifted my eyes to see a sky full of stars, splattered across the sky like diamonds unstrung. He eased off the gas and I brought my arms outward. 

As he put on the brakes and I beheld a view that made my pulse quicken. There, at the peak of Monteverde, a panorama of a magnanimous jungle stood before me, cocooning the distant chattering of monkeys and whoops of playful birds below the settling mist. A dense, humid wilderness wild with life, with a pulse, its own heartbeat. 

The top of the world, he said easily.

How loosely rang the rhythmic cadence of his tongue in the presence of his own, but here words were sparse and chosen with care, as if the telling itself would cheapen all that the silence suggested.

Words were unconfined by the jurisdiction of a definition, each infused with new meanings and connotations that challenged the mediocrity of commonplace words. Lacking access to verbal communication made it so much the more tantalizing. We were fraught with the need to share, to tell, to let loose the billowing surge of something from within.

I told him I didn't want to leave this place. He said he never intends to. And there in the silence, I laughed. Then he laughed. There was no reason. No witty aphorism or comical remark to warrant it, but there we were snickering into the vast magical darkness purely as a release of uncontainable awe amid such splendor. 

Perhaps the impermanence of it made it all the more magical. And I fell all over again, for not a man but a people on this night in which so much was said, but so little was spoken.

Rachel Lowry, The Tepui Chronicles Part III

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The Tepui Chronicles: South America, Part I

Te·puí:

noun \au̇-ˌyän-tā-ˈpwē\ Land of the Gods

We were mapless.

Chucking our battered suitcases in the back of a touchy four wheeler, my Aussi friend Jess and I whizzed down the streets of Ipis, Costa Rica. The lush, humid air was so dense it felt as if it were combing through our hair. 

Flashes of green bombay shoots whooshed past as I veered along the winding, crooked streets of this model-like village. Locals walked along the mossy canal waterways, disappearing into close-quartered colored houses. 

It was the beginning of our love affair with South America.

We were sitting cross-legged in a small seafood shack on the corner of the street, catching glances and sometimes smiles from passerby's as we feasted on crab legs and calamari. And I realized that this was it. Wholesome living. Caught in the fear of missing out, I had forgotten that at the root of it all was something as simple as deep breaths, fresh food, human connection and, if necessary, words. 

The rest of the night was a blur of faces and spanish phrases didn't understand. It was a mingling of conversation over hymnals sung in a local cathedral, followed by stops at exotic fruit stands and latin dances with men whose hips shake better than any lady I've ever seen. And then I again took the wheel. Where to? The wind would be our compass, our intuition our guide. 

As the miles under our wheels increased, time was measured by thoughts rather than minutes. We ventured into the rainforest terrain. It was pitch black, but beyond our car window there seemed to be a vast unknown something — something that seemed to suggest we were cradled in the palm of some mysterious, immense natural wonder. We drove through tall vegetation and across what had to have been towering bridges. Under the guise of nightfall, the vast rainforest was untouched by the prying eyes of tourists. And at that moment I swear we were in an undiscovered ocean of foliage that was neither East nor West. 

I felt a sense of possession. I wanted to lay claim on it, call it my own, without the dictates of paperwork or the convention of bills. 

The road took us completely across the country in one night, to the Pacific Ocean, where we ran headlong into the waves. We breathed in salt that stung our noses and cleansed so much more than our air passages. We fell asleep in our car, to the gentle lap of water at the edge of this continent.

We had determined it would be our little secret, this place that remained hidden from a cheap brochure. This place touched by the gods — or rather, as I would believe, one God. 

Rachel Lowry, The Tepui Chronicles Part I

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Book Review: Tess of the D'urbervilles

Reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles has been endearing and captivating in its heart-wrenching fatalism. The novel, which is now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel, tells the tale of a young Tess D'urberville, in an impoverished rural England during the Depression in the 1870s. Her yearning to achieve status will lead to questions of what is entailed in purity and innocence. 

Hardy's panorama views of the Blackmore Vales of the English Countryside are most arresting, as is our heroine's tenacity, in her unwarranted desperation. How daunting are those dimly-fixed suggestions that give the reader pause to wonder if  existence itself can be nothing more than a roll of the dice.

The narrator asks, "But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? Where was the Providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awakened."

I yearned to run to her side, to answer as her guardian angel, if none she had. How I wondered how Hardy could do it, could commit the most sadistic, the most unprincipled of acts in permanent ink. What a beautiful, beautiful tragedy.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved

Those of the Wing'd Capacity

It was morning, but the sky was silenced, still, by the dominance of night. She knew well the pull of gravity, the weight of the stars beyond the horizon. But she also remembered dawn.

She slipped her feet from her shoes, slowly placing her toes upon the thin, white sheet of frost that blanketed the dark underlying pavement. Toe, then ball, then heel. She drew them, pointedly, across the   ground, one step, two step, three step. Slowly, the arms around her cold body came to her sides, fingers parting in sudden tremor. The tight knot above her head came loose, locks of tresses enveloping her shoulders. The fabric that once clung to her core blew against her, rising and falling with the heaving in and out of her chest.

And she danced until her heart thundered from within; until her eyes need not remain open; until the ground ceased to meet her feet and the birds be her sole companions.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via vi.sualize.us}

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

While aimlessly and disinterestedly perusing the dusty corner of the abandoned book section, I found an old anthology of american short stories. And it came home with me. I found myself between the covers for the rest of the evening with this book, and after a number of superb stories, I found a little gem, written by James Thurber, which required three, four, perhaps five re-reads. I so love the charm by which Thurber reminds us that the most ordinary of people may or may not be living secret lives of the most daring of exploits. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber 

"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. 

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via vi.sualize.us}

I Salute You

Everyone has a story, a place, a moment, a memory they remember every 11th. Mine? I had walked through the doorway of my eighth grade sewing class when I first knew something was wrong. 

My hand gripped my turquoise plastic backpack, wisps of my messy dirty-blonde hair falling upon my face, as I traipsed in to an empty chair next to my best friend. Her eyes were searching mine, her cheeks devoid of color. All I had to do is look up.

We watched. All we could do is watch as it happened on a tiny little screen that flickered with streams of static, which seemed to remind us of the distance between us and them, the distance which inhibited us from doing anything but watch as the streets diminished behind a cloud of dust and screams.  NYMag put a great article out, if you have a moment.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved. Photographs via GMA's Instagram and Gothamist.com. 

snoitcelfəЯReflections

Her tiny, balled-up fists

pounded my clear surface,

as she stared inquisitively back

at the endearing rug rat

the reflection of her eyes so bright and blue

Everything so beautiful to her,

so full of wonder, so new

Smears of peanut butter fingerprints

smudged upon my glass exterior's tint,

blending between the freckles

of a pig-tailed one with unsteady ankles.

Passing me, she lingers,

her reflection a moving target

for whatever object lay within those fingers.

She had scampered, unnoticed, to mother's closet,

Returning before me with red, off-centered lips

Scooting on tips of oversized heels,

The pearls swayed against her in numerous teals.

She straightened her posture and curtsied with valor

to the girl who stared back;

the girl who had sought to grow up in an hour.

Morning alarms brought her before me again,

but the girl looked back this time in repulsion.

She pulled and tugged at her hair, allowing no assuage,

burying freckles upon her cheeks beneath layers of camouflage.

The wish to grow up still her it did tempt,

but only long enough for her to

stomp out in contempt.

Hours we spent, just her and I

before she left for her friends and the new guy.

Giddily she primped, perfection she sought to mend,

mulling over the length of her hair, the size of her waist, every split end

hair dyes became her everyday composite,

as she was

Consumed between the colors of fabric in her closet.

College brought her to books and intellectual charades

living between early-morning library visits and late-night research escapades.

She spotted me sometimes, before she left the room.

Hand on the doorknob, her trip to campus she'll eventually resume.

Stopping to first peer back at the girl with glasses, hair tossed atop her head,

wondering what this inspired, overworked girl will do with the life ahead.

She cantered into the darkness one Saturday night, smiling like a fool.

She sung off-tune symphonies to me in the mornings, as she danced upon the stool.

She scribbled poems upon me with toothpaste at night,

whispering soliloquies to communicate her delight.

Her eyes twinkled every time she glanced at the girl singing the song,

seeing something she hadn't yet seen,

though it had been there all along.

Frazzled hair, sleepless nights of lullabies and tantrums;

Her reflection ran back and forth daily, leaving me to my quiet pendulums,

On those sparse nights when she slowed down,

leaving the leftovers out, the toys on the ground,

she gazed toward me, no longer seeing herself as the only gem,

but three others within those aging eyes

that began to hold forever in them.

Sore joints, swollen limbs

wrinkled smiles, eyes going dim.

They would forever imprint the mark of something given,

something sacrificed,

the one thing for which she has remained driven.

Parched lips, shaky, frail arms,

at last she eyed me knowingly, under different terms.

Brushing back a whisp of gray hair,

Her body parting with all its wear.

I sensed the end was drawing near.

She would never again search my surface for herself,

for I ceased to hold anything for the woman who at last saw herself without a mirror.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {flickr & vi.sualize.us}

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Pearls And All

“It’s just a choral class. A one credit choral class. I didn’t even have to audition.” Were my thoughts as I climbed over the railing of my apartment complex, onto the ledge of a 50-foot drop. The murmurings of “She’s so brave” and high-pitched shrieks verbalized my inner thoughts and perpetrated what should have escaped my lips, had I not seemed to have swallowed my voice.

The night had begun ordinarily enough. I opened the door to another Friday night first date. I slipped into my heels as I asked him what we would be doing on a James Bond-themed date that I had been forewarned (with no further details) would require a dress for only the first half of the evening. As such an inquiry was in vain, (he told me he could not disclose such a surprise) I remained impatiently obligated to wait before I discovered what the evening held in store for me.

Dinner was fabulous. Our dates had transformed their ordinary apartment into a European-styled montage of sheets and candles. We transcended beyond the stresses of college life, as we trifled with the topic of travel and reminisced about childhood memories. The next portion of our evening, then, came upon us.

Our dates pulled a couple of guns – SQUIRT guns - from a drawer and insisted that we each have one. They then dropped us off at our apartments with instructions that we change into jeans and sturdy shoes.

As we emerged once again in quite different attire, we met the guys in the main area of our complex. I had in mind something having to do with doorbell ditching, or scavenger hunts (maybe, in the most extreme of circumstances, a mini car chase). They began walking up a flight of stairs on our complex. We hesitantly followed as they continued on to two flights of stairs – and up to the top level. Us girls looked around with intense curiosity, wondering what we could possibly be doing on the third floor of our apartment complex with squirt guns and the attire fit for the most audacious rogue in history (while still wearing the pearls I had forgotten to take off). Our attention then became fixed upon our dates, who were pulling a long line of rope out of a bag, and throwing out gloves and carabineers. We both looked at each other, then at the equipment, then down at the concrete ground some 50 feet below us. The guys started checking the railing. As they jiggled the middle, it began (to our horror) loosening up, so they decided to tie the rope to the corner. The first guy whipped himself over the ledge and pranced down with Bourne-like grace. I began telling myself I could do this, until my date went down and landed upside down, almost hitting his head against the brick wall.

Then, people started chuckling when they heard I was a first-timer. “That’s it.” I told myself. “I value my life over my bravery any day.” But then that little voice seeped its way into my argument – the annoying voice that dares you to try the impossible. And it did. It reminded me that this was too good of an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone to give up. That voice always wins out.

And I went for it. I stood on that ledge, with little more than a rope in one hand and fear-induced beads of sweat in the other and plunged. When I reached the bottom, my heart was pumping not only from trepidation, but from a rush of adrenaline that had instigated an unexpected thrill. It was a blast! I was scaling buildings. No big deal. The next time I went down, I was humming my own theme music – Kronk style - with squirt gun in hand, and I learned something. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Once you conquer that, you will find that you were braver than you knew. From now on, I will have no restraints. I will dive head first, pearls and all.

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved.

Timeless

She was timeless, exquisite even.

There she stood in all whiteness, her hair falling against her arms the way light frames a windowpane. Her lips were permanently pressed together, as if it took all the effort she could muster to keep them reasonably down. She saw faces and heard laughter, but it all fell mute as she replayed the way he smiled when she breathed the words, I do.

She had planned it all. A winter wedding, she knew, was not her preference. But she chose. she ordered the crystal glasses so they would catch the light of the chandeliers above, picked the best gouda cheese because no celebration she had anything to do with could be without, kindly asked her brother to perform the music, compiled the jazz sheet music for him. She had gone back and forth: traditional or casual? Red or Gold? Heels or flats? Flower girls or not? Invite Great Aunt Paula? Brunch or dinner? Daisies or lilies?

But at the end of it all, none of that mattered, really. There she stood, looking like a fool trying to suppress a smile, and thinking of nothing else but the way his fingertips brushed her arm behind her.

@ 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo via}

Unencumbered Ambiguity; The True Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Dear Snow,

I write to send word of home, as contact has ceased for over two months’ time. We continue with the usual sunrise-to-sunset working habits custom to the gleaning season here at the mill. We work in hopes that we may relieve the anxiety that once beset dear father concerning the welfare of his children, by coming into an opportunity as good as you have come upon.

Baby Maggie has not yet accomplished the task of walking, but has enough energy and strength within her arms to compensate for the incompetency of her legs. Ben and John have been helping with the woodcutting, and Beth is learning how to read and devours our little library quicker than any of us did.

Dearest twin sister, your other siblings and I thank the Lord for the generous hands of father’s second wife, Lady Darforre, in which you have been placed. We await word from you.

With all our love,

Sunny White

4 Wellgarth Rd

London NW11 7HR,

United Kingdom

+44 20 8458 7196

Sunny,

While I own that the circumstances within which I have been bestowed are due to the good graciousness of God, it seems that trial must be attached to such a blessing. Lady Darforre has taken to treating me with the intolerance deserving of a slave. I do believe she despises me rather intensely.

She has, in the sly name of generosity, consented to take me in for reasons beyond mere goodness. I feel that she wants me close by, in order to keep those with whom she feels most threatened near her, as she endeavors to command upon such victims her full power (only attained, I might add, by a most advantageous union of marriage). 

She has an obsession with her mirror. Each morning, she speaks to it in a thick French accent, asking, “Who is the fairest of the land?”. I believe that she fears my flawless and youthful beauty {something I assure you she can never hope to acquire again, if ever she possessed it} will surpass her own, so she has given me only rags to wear and forces me to work as a scullery maid. 

How I wish, now, that you had been the first of us that Lady Darforre had seen in the streets of London, and it was you who had been offered a position in her household. Wicked, wicked stepmother. Oh, the things I endure. Please come and rescue me.

The princess,

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

You really must stop addressing yourself as princess. While we, your siblings, may bear the result of a sister spoiled by her father, those with which you reside may not fully understand or have patience with your insistence upon such a title. Besides, think of the ramifications that would follow if this letter was intercepted and fell into the hands of royalty? You know the law.

As for the rags, we have told you time and time again, we simply cannot afford to spend two fortnights' work and the starvation of three of your siblings in order for you to have a fine blue and yellow silk dress, especially when you think yourself above the work we do each day. Please understand that there are simply some things more important than strutting yourself across town.

Snow, I understand that you have little experience with persons of a different tongue, but we all had a good laugh when we read about your depiction of the good Lady Darforre as a cruel woman who speaks to mirrors and is threatened by your “stunning beauty”.

Firstly, there couldn't possibly be any competition between an upper-class duchess such as her and a child of a farmer, whom she has kindly chosen to benefit. You were sent to work for her, so she couldn't possibly have made you any lower than you were when you arrived.

Secondly, I believe your contempt towards the possible unworthiness of Lady Darforre’s present station as Duchess is entirely out of order. Father’s death was as astonishing a blow for her, as his present wife, as for us. As she had come into our household just weeks before such a disruption, we must remain conscientious of her need to move on, as we all must. We must remain aware of her continued goodness to us.

Furthermore, Lady Darforre’s French accent is not that difficult to comrehend! The man she recently married is a landowner. I’ve been in their house before. Every morning, as she is getting ready in front of the mirror, she asks him, “Wit ze fareeze on ze land?”, to which he responds with the action plan he has devised to combat the seasonal freeze upon his land. As a woman tirelessly devoted to the bringing up of young ladies of the lower class such as yourself, I hardly think she cares in the slightest who is the “fairest of the land”. Your over-active imagination has once again gotten the better of you.

Also, I must speak of a matter of great importance, a matter I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time now. I met the most charming gentleman, Derek Knightly. We have had long discussions by the fireplace after the children have fallen asleep over the course of a few months. I do believe he and I are quite compatible.

We are to be wed. I love him, sister. I hope you wish me well, for in him I have found much happiness. We have plans to meet in town this week, so I may be able to visit, if I have time after I have seen him.

Yours,

Sunny White

4 Wellgarth Rd

London NW11 7HR,

United Kingdom

+44 20 8458 7196

Sunny,

Such news of a marriage arrangement comes as a shock to me. As your twin, I insist that I meet him before you make such a decision, and that you take me away from here before you run away with him (if such is your plan). They make me work here more than ever before.

I fear I am in a most awful disposition this afternoon, as Lady Darforre took to divulging upon me her entire life story for a horrid four hours after our music lesson. I hardly understood half of it, with the atrocious slurs and rolling hisses most treacherously applied to what I assume was (her attempt of) the English language. I sat there with my needlework, in feigned interest, as she reminisced about her gawky childhood years along the coast of southern France, her dangerous elopement with an English merchant (did I ask to hear all the gory details of her love affair with father – especially concerning his escapades in France after our mother’s death?), ending with her deranged idea of moving on by marrying the count. She even had the nerve of mentioning (as if she were Anne Boleyn herself) her regard for the large sum of money she acquired in such an advantageous marriage to the count, feigning it to be nothing more than a means of charity to the less fortunate. By the end such an afternoon, the pinpricks in my fingers weren’t the only effects of a most painful afternoon.

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

Oh, sister. If perceivably dull conversation and pinpricks are the worst of your “hardships”, I do envy you so. Beth saw you with Lady Darforre at the market the other day, and was quite taken aback by the kindly manner in which she conversed with you. Please don’t let go of such a great opportunity. As most opportunities are only available through labor and hard work, you can only expect that there will be obligations attached.

As you did little work on the farm, it is good for you to be exposed to the character-enhancement that honest work lends. The very intent of Lady Darforre’s taking you in being a refinement of character (and hopes of an acquired sensibility that you lack entirely), I advise you, with the best of intentions, to be mindful of the goodness in whose hands you have been fortunately placed.

Regards,

Sunny White

4 Wellgarth Rd

London NW11 7HR,

United Kingdom

+44 20 8458 7196

Sunny,

I will be saved! I met a man, named Erick, who I know will rescue me from the cruel jealousy of the "queen" {as she basically believes herself to be}. Even though I had never, at this point, seen him, he expressed his undying love to me at the well this morning. It was so romantic! I, of course, became immediately aware of the shabbiness of my clothing and hid myself. He called after me, calling me Sun (did you forget, once again, to divulge the fact that you have a twin?). I hope he will come back to save me from the terrible confinement in which I have found myself.

I am aware that you do not wish me to leave this wretched place, as you deem it to be an opportunity of future security, but you must see my dilemma. I belong in an even higher position than servitude to a woman of such arrogance and jealousy, but I will be ever patient.

I leave today to assist the butcher with his weekly trip to a nearby farm. As I am faint of heart, I don't know why the other servants insisted on making me join him. They say I don't do enough work in the kitchen and might be more useful with him, but I can assure you that is highly unlikely, as the sight of a knife irks me.

I wish you well with your work. Send baby Maggie my love.

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

Why on earth would you contrive to "escape" from a most generous Lady, who has bestowed upon you perhaps the only opportunity you will have for financial security? Unfortunately, not even you, Snow, are exempt from the social system in which we all work to survive. Sometimes this demands humble submission to those above you, in order to obtain their favor. As you refuse to work here on the farm, I fear your position will be far worse than your current state.

Do not despair, sister.

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

I understand the grounds of your opposition to my last response. Forgive me for my blunt manner of speaking. I truly want only the best for you in such a delicate and defining situation. Sister, please don’t be stubborn. Write back! It has been an entire month. We are anxious to hear word from you in London.

Always,

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

Lady Darforre has related to us your state of absence at the Darforre household. She has sent the finest of London’s police force in search of you. As our only carriage has been sold for want of greater necessities, I am unable to join this search party, thus, if you do receive this, write back in great haste to alleviate our concerns and intense worry.

London Bridge

34 Long Lane, London

United Kingdom W1W2156

Sunny,

You would hardly believe what I have endured.

I did go with the butcher to the market after all. As I was taken to the wildflowers for sale along the market street, he harshly ordered me to his side to help. As I had told him I couldn’t stand the sight of blood, he lifted the knife in a gesture that induced such fear as I have never before experienced. I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could away from the market and into the treacherously deep forest. The trees pulled at me. I will swear to this day that they were alive. Eyes followed my every move and creatures moved beneath me when I screamed. After about an hour’s time, I was weak, I was starving and I was cold.

I found a little cottage that seemed so inviting, and I walked in. With the help of many forest animals (you never believe me, but they really are great company), I cooked and cleaned for the residents, and await their arrival as I write you.

Regards,

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

As I read this letter to the family, we all hovered in fear and concern, until you went off about a forest. Sister, the English countryside within which we reside doesn’t have but three trees in a clump for a span of thirty miles in every direction, much less a “treacherously deep” forest. As I assume you are in the heart of London, I can scarcely imagine what you are talking about. Please try to give us an accurate description of your whereabouts and what brought you to wherever you are.

On one note, I must congratulate you. You cooked a meal?! Perhaps your character has, in fact, seen some refinement after all.

Sister, we would not like to pose upon the residents of the unnamed cottage any burden of inconvenience. I have relayed word of our communication with you to Lady Darforre as I hope they will find and take you back, we being unable to travel to the address from which this letter arrived. Please return, if you are able, to the Lady at once.

Still your sister,

London Bridge

34 Long Lane, London

United Kingdom W1W2156

Sunny,

I admit, the cottage was actually already clean and I didn’t really cook anything, but I ate what they cooked. The residents returned. Seven dwarves live here! I have given them names:

They could all be labeled as such, but the first dwarf I met exemplifies to an extreme the name I prescribed upon him: Grumpy. He finds great pleasure in taking advantage of my gullible nature with his dry sarcasm. Cynicism is the language he speaks – more potently in front of me than when I catch him unaware of my presence in the room. He was the only one who believed me when I said the animals could clean, saying “I’d believe a bunch of squirrels cleaned this place over your cleaning it.” I still don’t understand why the other dwarves laughed.

Sneezy is a strange man. Either he detests my company, or he is highly allergic to something I carry upon my person, for he insists, whenever I am near him, that the allergies are too much to handle. I have hardly said but three words to him, and thus am unable to give you a full account of his character.

Dopey is boring. He sits in the corner with book in hand amid our jovialities. I do fear he doesn’t get half of the jokes we utter, for he doesn’t find them funny in the least. He never joins in our laughter at watching people fall in the mud in front of the cottage, and he wears the dirtiest, blackest of clothes. His lack of personal hygiene reveals, to me, a lack of maturity and intellect.

Now Happy is a frightful creature. I’m not quite sure if he’s always on a natural high. He always comes home drunk and unable to walk in a straight line or speak two solid words in one sentence. But he always has a grand smile on his face. He’s constantly muttering things and laughing as if there’s something funny in the most mundane of circumstances.

Bashful, on the other hand, always gets red in the face when I call him dwarf. I think he gets nervous around me, as he takes off his hat, twists it and stamps on it in such an endearing way.

Sleepy is well named. No matter what he’s doing, he instantly falls asleep. The other day, when he was chopping wood, I approached him and began talking to him. His axe was just about in midair when he fell to a position that looked most uncomfortable and began instantly snoring. As I could no longer continue my account of a horrid stepmother, I left. Minutes later, I saw him pick his axe up again almost instantaneously, and continue chopping. How curious.

Now I like Doc. He’s the gentleman who let me stay. He’s a leader of sorts and a most generous man, who convinced the other six dwarves that they should let me stay. I just know that they will start to like me soon enough as soon as they get used to my living with them and understand the meagerness of my position; they cannot deny me the use of their beds to sleep on and my requests of well-cooked meals (which they don’t seem to be able to make), until my prince finds and rescues me. I will continue writing you, as I have, at the moment, no intention of leaving. I beg you not to send me to a woman you refuse to see intends to ruin me.

Your brave sister, 

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

Sister, you are ever so stubborn. We are in the way of making arrangements to send someone to retrieve you. You must return. Mrs. Darforre is away on business, or she would be at your doorstep within a fortnight. 

This situation is entirely out of conduct. If the seven men with whom you reside are good men, I fear your staying with them is of the worst of impositions. Might I also remind you that if these ‘dwarves’ of whom you speak are similar to the miners we met in Yorkshire, you mustn’t use such a term. Have you forgotten how offended he was by such a title as ‘dwarf’? They don’t really like it when you look down upon them as disabled. You just might have a bruise on your left leg to balance the first kick you got on your right leg. Bashful’s red face might not be as endearing as you assume.

If, by a worse circumstance (which I would not find surprising you haven’t been aware of recognizing), these seven men are of a malicious nature, your staying with them might result in a most awful trial of your virtue. I apologize for the boldness of my words, but bold I must be.

As I am too tied up with working the mill, I have sent one of the workers who has a carriage at hand to find you. She will be bringing you some food and help returning you to town, or home. I hope that you accept her kindness.

Yours,

London Bridge

34 Long Lane, London

United Kingdom W1W2156

Sunny,

The wicked queen has returned in the form of an ugly old woman. She has tricked me into eating poisonous produce! As I was eating an apple she handed me, it got caught in my throat. The wretch started hitting me on the back with such force, I do believe she was trying to murder me. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I am weakening as I inscribe these very words…please, come quickly. I send this letter in the hands of Dopey. He will take you to the eastern side of the London Bridge on Piccadilly Square, where I am.

Miss Snow White

Kensington Gardens

Kensington, London W23

United Kingdom 020 7298 2000

Snow,

The children, myself and Derek, my fiancé, are pursuing your whereabouts in great haste. Please send word of your wellness, if you receive this letter.

London Bridge

34 Long Lane, London

United Kingdom W1W2156

Sunny,

Stay where you are. I am on my way to you.

I live still. The women whom I thought was the disguised queen was actually the old woman you sent. She journeys back with us. Also, the man I met - the man I hoped would rescue me and perhaps, maybe, possibly, presumably was madly in love with me – did find me. There was no need, however, for him to kiss me, as he was (he would later tell me) Derek, your beloved. He did awake me with an unromantically cold splash of water, and he held the reigns as we rode off into the sunset….on his way to his real love – you.

My hopes in his return to me were without reason, as he had mistaken me for you when he met me at the well that early morning, and I had misheard him, thinking his name was Erick.

Perhaps I will employ less drama next time. Is it possible that Lady Darforre would remain as kind in her offering to take me in? I do miss our music lessons together.

Always your sister,

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. (photo by fotoblur)