Going to Bed Best not even raise the question how long it will take for the halo of the Late Night Show you’ve just clicked off to fade from the blind of your closed eyes. You keep seeing things in the spectrum of the language in your mind now and then surfacing to the present like a swimmer for air, to pull off your tee-shirt because even with the fan blowing you feel too warm. And to find the low rumble of the plane taking off odd at this hour, perhaps with next-day cargo. Driving down a country road in Oklahoma once you pulled over to take a leak and far away from the city’s lights looked up to marvel at the stars in thick clusters, as probably we would look to heaven if we had fire in our DNA like lightning bugs, an idea that changes positions to find comfort with the body lying here in its nearly nightly rehearsal of death, which would similarly wonder where we are headed, were it not that we are already mercifully caught up in going there. You Only Live Once “but if you do it right, once is enough,” said Mae West to the tall man, looking up, her hand poised on the ample curve of her dress’s hip, which in the day was thought to be sexy. “You know,” she said to him, “I lost my reputation and I never found it.” With a little wiggle, she went on, “Hey you handsome devil you, just how tall are you?” The moment grew very gentle between them, each grinning, his cheek a little red suggesting a rural upbringing. “Why, mam,” he said, “all of six foot six inches.” “Goodness,” she breathed, wiggling again. “You know,” he said, “it’s not easy for a man over six foot, needing to bend at nearly every door frame.” Simmering the saucy dame raised a brow. She said to him, “It’s not the feet that interest me. It’s those inches.” Fire It’s burning down the house from a boy’s wish to be a hero when he grows up, calling his body, breath by breath, forth, in an ash nightmare of itself, with the walls falling in sparks and cinder around him, each step against his will—summonsed by elusive voices of trapped souls crying for help. It sears and blisters straight through his protective gear… His face is that dazed. He’s in the store I’m shopping in. And that must be his wife beside him, her eyes as miffed, maybe more to heart about the argument they’re having. That’s love. It stinks. Mere misreads gone all life or death. So burnt up nothing seems worth saving. Mightier 1940, the 22nd of June— the French have signed an armistice with Hitler. Churchill with Great Britain standing alone this Saturday at breakfast in the Chilterns— clouding with gloom. It’s such an awful scene daughter Mary dashes for her bedroom. With equal resolve, the Missus, Clementine, hearing the tea cups rattle with a slam inside the kitchen—does an about-face for her boudoir. There from a bureau drawer she seizes sheets of floral trim stationary. We’re your family, despite this ugly war… grooved with emphasis from her fountain pen, the message bound for shreds into a bin.
Poet Rui Carvalho and Synchronized Chaos Magazine’s Annual Nature Writing Contest
International Nature Writing Literary Contest 2020-2021 Nature is our mother. It is our baby crib to where we return every time we feel we need comfort and renewed hope. Hope is that feeling that comes from glimpses into a peaceful, happy and green future and present. A tree within the garden casts a shadow that protects us from our stellar parent: the Sun. The Sun is also the source of our energy, he is also the source of our poetry; and poetry, maybe just another part of the natural community. Today, Covid-19 make us feel like prey, having to think in a new way inside a world built by mother nature. To face this reality, hope is needed more than ever and we will move forward, but not ignore this new “map of life” and new mindset. Our Nature Writing Contest for 2020/2021 is a new opportunity that we, as organizers, created to reach the rest of the world. Every Contest is a challenge for the authors who participate. This year we prepare new categories to which people are invited to submit work: Nature and Love; Nature and Ecology; Nature and Energy; Nature and Friendship; Nature and Gardens; Nature and Cinema; Nature and Music and Nature and Family. Family is our fundamental asset during these pandemic times. This year we would like to share with you some inspirational photos and “horizons” and we kindly invite all authors to visit the following places online: https://www.lisbonlux.com/green-lisbon-10-beautiful-parks https://www.proflowers.com/15-best-botanical-gardens-california https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_botanical_gardens_in_Canada https://www.algarvefun.com/algarve-tips/top-beaches-algarve/ https://www.coastalliving.com/travel/california/best-beaches-california https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/amazon https://www.gorongosa.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneda-Gerês_National_Park Additionally, we invite all authors to honor one cinema director of their choice in their piece and to write about that director’s view of nature. For example, Woody Allen portrays various aspects of nature – human nature. You are free to criticize the cinema director’s work in your piece. For example, with Woody Allen, is there actually something called ‘human nature’ that exists and is worth describing in film? Submissions for the contest open Thursday October 15th. Rules for the Nature Writing Contest: 1. Participation in this contest is free. 2. Any person from any country can participate as long as they submit work written in English. 3. Each participant can submit a poem of any length and a short story with a maximum of 3000 words. 4. The works must be sent by e-mail to blogsnat@gmail.com along with the author’s name, country, and email address. The subject of the email should be "International Literary Contest 'Nature - 2018-2019'". Single spaced, 12-point Calibri font, work pasted in the body of the email. 5. The participating authors agree to receive e-mail in the future that advertise future literary initiatives. 6. Award-winning finalists are entitled to a digital certificate. 7. All the selected poems will be published in an anthology, which will be available in PDF format for sale for 2.5 € (over PayPal). Award-winning authors are entitled to a free copy. 8. Author rights: authors have their rights over the works published, in order to publish as they want in any other place. The organization of the contest retain total rights over the published works in the context of the Anthology of the Contest or any other anthology or collection of short stories they want to publish in the future or online in the websites of the organizers. 9. Deadline for participation: April 15, 2021 10. Pre-finalists will be announced on 10 May. 11. The final results will be announced on June 28 at http://talesforlove.blogs.sapo.pt and, when possible, at https://synchchaos.com/. 12. The first prize winner of each category will be entitled to a prize: an original work of art (an A4 painting) sent by mail. We thank you your participation in this literary adventure. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. If you need help with your English or writing skills for your content submission this year we have special external writing help by Shmavon Azatian. Contact: shazzai@yahoo.com Adjudicators Organizers Synchronized Chaos (California – USA) https://synchchaos.com/ Rui M. at Tales for Love (Lisbon – Portugal) http://talesforlove.blogs.sapo.pt/ contact: ruiprcar@gmail.com Word Poetry (Canada) http://worldpoetry.ca/ Inspiring Photography We thank you your participation in this Literary Adventure. Please feel free to contact us if you have any question.
Poetry from Joan Beebe
A Ship of Hope and Dreams
My ship is lazily drifting along the waters of life. Yet, I seem to have a large porthole where I can experience and feel the beauty and love of life. Through that porthole, I seem to be in darkness until the I see the rising of the moon showering it’s light beams upon the earth. Those beams of light can reach into our souls giving strength and goodness to a renewal of spirit. For many of us that gift can bring us to that point of understanding and our ability to withstand the storms of life.
Morning comes and the sun is slowing rising with it’s healing rays bringing beauty to the world of nature. My mind can see the flowing streams and brooks and the wind blowing through the trees. I feel the waves of the water slowing cradling my ship and bringing a harmony between land and sea. There is also a harmony between the sun and the moon giving nature and man a time of health, peace and love.
Poetry from Ike Boat
Gone Are The Days
Gone are the days,
When I never knew what writing pays.
Because, it’s taught solely in the classroom,
With many pupils like the broom.
Gone are the days,
When happiness brought about gays.
Even though some have different expression,
Like one’s view becomes impression.
Gone are the days,
When there’s many rail-ways.
This made traveling alternatively easy and fast,
To some, all are things of the past.
Gone are the days,
When barter became the terminology as some says.
Now, money and currency are used in the daily economy,
This is based on the system and not vasectomy.
Gone are the days,
When I’d no cap nor hat to walk under the sun rays.
Due to careless and reckless life of the hood,
Even when it’s possible to change the mood.
Bed Bugs Story
Bed bugs story,
It makes me feel so sorry.
How they’ve invaded the rooms,
As if there’re no sweeping brooms.
Some have hidden under the soften chairs,
This needs some sort of repairs.
They do their mischief in the middle of night,
When we’ve slept so tight and dreaming under the light.
It a wonder, how they befriend the skin,
And pierce hard like the pinch of a pin.
Bed bugs story,
It makes many feel the worry.
How their blood stains stink,
So terrible red, not pink like the colour of ink.
Of course, some are smaller others bigger,
They’re equal to the gold digger.
One can wear the cloth and feel their damage,
In fact, the can spoil a person’s public image.
By virtue of their painful bite which shake so severe,
They need to be killed without any revere.
Elizabeth Hughes’ Book Periscope
Madam in Silk is an historical romance with lots of adventure. It takes place in the 1850’s, in the infancy of San Francisco and when Chinatown was known as Little Canton.
Ah Toy and her companion Chen are on a voyage from China to San Francisco when her greedy and abusive husband dies of consumption. He is buried out to sea. By Chinese custom she is supposed to go back to China to marry her greedy and even more abusive brother in law. However, Ah Toy along with Chen find themselves finally free of years of abuse and fear. When she looks for some kind of employment, she finds she cannot work any service positions due to her feet. Her feet had been disfigured when she was young so that they would remain small and she could wear lotus-shaped shoes on her feet.
She and her companion find a shanty in Little Canton to live in. In order to survive, she opens a “lookee shop’ where men pay to glimpse her naked. She becomes quite wealthy. When her brother in law sends Lee Shao Kee to kidnap and bring her back, she goes to China. She goes to Officer Wong for help. There he suggest she open up a parlor house.
This novel is based on historical events and is loaded with adventure and excitement. You will be rooting for Ah Toy all the way through. This is the perfect book to read during this time of sheltering in place.
Poetry from James Thurgood
hoarder she doesn’t get it, this noxious undergrowth of plastic bags and containers boxes, guitar strings, magazines bottles, business cards beneath sinks, in closets, drawers but all the hands careful and careless as those of inconstant lovers that touched these things and my plan to master a craft needing endless bags, et cetera while there is despair to them as if they know they’ll never be unearthed to second life in antique stores or museums and my sense each yielding of thing as of person prepares that parting at which you can’t hold anything or anyone vagrant raining to beat hell - under garage eaves on the light over the door it huddles not quite the picture in the bird-book: too plump with feathers puffed up somehow - for warmth maybe, a thousand miles from the tropics on a perch out of the rain crouching though, head down he is spied: a large magpie, plumed natty as the rest, swoops down and scares him off - struts and stares on the light then back to his perch high in the trees magpies have their case: they were here first and you let in one, next it’s a hundred still, you can tell he enjoyed that vagrant: a stray bird far from its normal ecological range last night’s storm left crab-apple and cherry petals spattered over the patio like confetti around church-steps Sunday morning I’d never seen a wedding just flowery cars honking and those festive full-stops littered, damp with dew or rain on concrete and earth the peonies hang their heads at a puddle’s edge a lilac scrag dries in the sun like some dead thing on the shore honour in memoriam S. L. you eyed each grab and punch till I tasted your brother’s fist, blood and damp earth - when you stepped in, grim as your school-play MacDuff: never hit a man when he’s down soon your family moved - a hundred miles and two years out of mind, when the paper said you’d been hitch-hiking home, the body found in Burwell Harbour time enough, two years to join the heroes in a child’s ever-after unemployed this white-haired editor at Dominion House as agreed too polite to see I’m angling for the ghost of a long-gone job - though he allows these kids are good with their journalism degrees travel pieces he says they sell I don’t travel much I say he draws back wide-eyed - you don’t have to GO anywhere we swap beers swill stories then maybe I should stay meet the philosophical welder the dour professor drink and talk go down easy - I’m asked back for next Friday and the next - before last call promises are warm possibility forever but in the bus-stop air fall’s first nip - truth is I’m out ten-fifteen bucks for my rounds – a small price for friendship but too much last bus gone I button my jacket turn up my collar start walking
Biographical Statement
James Thurgood was born in Nova Scotia, grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta. He has been a labourer, musician, and teacher – not necessarily in that order. His poems have appeared in various journals, anthologies, and in a collection (Icemen/Stoneghosts, Penumbra Press). He is also the author of His Own Misfortune, a work-in-progress. (James A. Thurgood’s Word Salad)
Essay from Federico Wardal
Is “digital cloning” of actors the future of movie making?
I have a very positive view of the technology that allows for the digital creation of a person’s image. Therefore I have signed a paper giving permission to clone myself for the purposes of filmmaking. But all the uses of my image, all the films where my clone appears, must be aligned with my values of peace, human rights and anti-racism.
It turns out that I am the first actor in the world to have signed such a consent form, but someone has to be the first. So digital science has assimilated my creative output – my looks, movements and mannerisms – to create and personify ten roles. These include roles created by ancient Greek playwrights including Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and ancient Roman writers including Horace, and 17th century writers including Shakespeare, and luminaries of modern theater, including Pirandello, Beckett, and Schiller. I’m also allowing for my cloned image to play characters in my own stage and screenplays.
So whoever wants to see me, or other actors who will eventually give their consent to being cloned, will be able to see me, first in the role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
My clone will also act in my own play The Creative Mechanisms of Enchantment, a drama that I wrote twenty years ago, using the method of automatic writing, inspired by the spirit of Shakespeare. Finally you will see a very complex work, where ‘Shakespeare’ reveals his creative processes!
The cloned form of an actor perfectly meshes with the person’s real artistic expression on stage. I’ve acted onstage since I was 14 years old and almost always in front of an audience in public stadiums or large theaters. And often I am alone onstage. You cannot imagine how much strength the audience gives me and because of Covid-19, I have had to go without the audience I miss very much. This is the greatest loss that Covid-19 has brought me.
Fortunately, I recently starred in Hollywood on January 19, 2020 to celebrate my hero, film legend Federico Fellini. Now through cloning, everyone will soon be able to see my performance in “Federico and Fellini” in three-dimensional form. Meanwhile, it makes me happy that an artistic short film that I wrote entitled “Cloned Life” has just been made with cloning. It’s not three-dimensional, but it’s perfectly natural.
Seeing myself acting in “Cloned Life” without ever having practiced or acted as the characters of “Cloned Life” was a strange feeling: my self wondered how it was possible to see myself doing something I’d never done.
Time and space are normally linked by means of physical matter. If one of the three elements, time, space, or matter, is removed, the other two are automatically gone as well. Cloning is the first step in overcoming the limitations of matter, space, and time in a revolution on par with Galileo’s discovery of the planets revolving around the sun.
Man is migrating to another world. Aliens are said to have taken this step. There’s a theory that each of our actions is recorded by the universe and that the past, present or future are the same thing. Artistic cloning embodies this theory, muddying the gap between the past, present, and future. There are many organizations and institutions working on perfecting cloning, including some in Hollywood. This is the beginning of a new era.