Thursday

The Winner of the Jacquie M. Balla Contest is W.H. Matlack

Il ya de nombreux Jacquies by W.H. Matlack

In all respects Mme Jacquie was a normale Parisian housewife with one indulgent husband and three small children. Each morning after her husband went to work and her children were off to school, she would gaze contentedly from her small deck at her beloved Paris. To Mme Jacquie, Paris was her very existence. No one understood her life and her place in the world more than Mme Jacquie.

Sometimes, after her chores were done, Mme Jacquie would take a short, glorious walk through her Paris neighborhood for a croissant at the wonderful little bistro a few blocks away. There the contented and happy Jacques would let random thoughts roll warmly through her pretty head – joyeux fois.

Hélas, one day while she was contemplating the beauty of Paris, a small, dark cloud passed over her contented head in the form of a frowning, older man. The cloud’s name was Pierre Basset, a local intellectual whose hobby was disillusioning young people in bistros all over Paris. He thought of himself as a merchant of reality, and loved to see a happy, young face deteriorate into angst after being “enlightened” to the depressing realities that surrounded everyone. He was an Existentialist heavily influenced by Camus’ darker visions.

It was facile to open a dialogue with the pretty, young Jacquie. All the sophistiquée Monsieur had to do was smile so that his eyes crinkled just the right amount and ask, “Madam, do you know why Paris is so beautiful this time of year?” She would meet his gaze and ask back, “No, pray tell, Monsieur. Why is Paris so beautiful this time of year?”  

Thus would begin a series of daily lectures on how France gave Paris to the Nazis for their promise not to destroy it, horrors of the concentration camps, how Existentialism was borne from those camps, and how existence is such a futile illusion, really.

Each morning Jacquie would walk to the bistro, her mind filled with questions she had never before imagined. Each morning Monsieur Basset would answer those questions with more questions until Jacquie’s little head spun with wonder – wonder of things that seemed so obvious to her, but had been so invisible just days before. One day Monsieur Basset gave the impressionable Jacquie a mental challenge. “Jacquie, presuppose to be presuppositionless, and then see if you can experience the raw edge of pure existence.”

Through all of Monsieur Basset’s lectures, Jacquie had remained the dutiful wife and mother. Even so, her husband became increasingly uneasy with the vacant look that would come over Jacquie’s face in the quiet evenings when they sat together and read. Jacquie would read Camus’ The Plague over and over.

Each evening Jacquie felt that she was getting closer and closer to total presuppositionless awareness of, as Monsieur Basset called it, the raw edge of developing reality. Monsieur Basset explained that reality is not a solid, static thing. Rather it was like the bow of a ship that smashes into the formless water and classifies it as right spray or left spray, just as Jacquie classifies every element of her reality without being aware of it.

After that session, Jacquie came home and sat on their little outside deck just looking at everything and trying to not classify it. No longer were the beds made, the dishes done or even the kids kissed off to school. Those were suppositions, and Jacquie worked hard to not make them. Jacquie would just stare and stare.

Next Monsieur Basset focused on the multiple realities of quantum physics – the infinite number of realities and the infinite number of Jacquies. This was a difficult concept to accept until Jacquie realized that it was just another supposition, and she let it go. As soon as she did so, an infinite number of Jacquies began to contemplate the universe in concert with each other.

One day Monsieur Basset told Jacquie to focus on the time distance between her awareness of reality and her perceptions. Jacquie suddenly understood. Her inner awareness was a dimensionless point that existed (totally by itself) in the present. Everything else had occurred in the past before she became aware of it.

As she sat on the balcony, her suppositions all fell away to reveal the totality of pure suppositionless awareness. Jacquie existed alone in the present. There was nothing else except Jacquie’s total, unending fascination with the reality that hit her awareness like a rogue wave every second of the eternity that surrounded her.

The diagnosis reported to her crying family was schizophrenia, but Monsieur Basset knew the truth. He had won her soul.

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I chose Il ya de nombreux Jacquies by W.H. Matlack as the winner mainly because Matlack’s  story had magic realist flair in the vein of films like Amelie but also had something in common with age of Dada and Futurism as artistic movements.  (The painting itself was a tongue in cheek homage to Giaccomo Balla’s Streetlight.)  The references to Camus and existentialism brought me back to the Dada Manifesto and Marinetti’s poetry but also had a little flavor of Herman Hesse’s novel “Steppenwolf.”  

All the stories seemed to deal with the main characters experiencing epiphanies.  These stories were great and I enjoyed how each author shared in the theme of how sensation and thought can inspire changes in consciousness.  Marilyn’s story had a wonderful sense of how nostalgia and recollection can inspire a type of awakening.   A different type of “awakening” occurs in Alexander Slavitz’s tale of a young woman who on waking from a dream is also awakened spiritually. 

Read them all here:
http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.com/2010/12/write-story-about-jacquie-m-balla-and.html


For more contests visit my site:
http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

Monday

Write a story about Isabelle Ringing and Win the Drawing on the Right

Write a story about Isabelle Ringing and Win the Drawing on the Right
The contest closed Monday January 3, 2010
Queen of Hearts by D. Bellenghi was the winner





 
 
Isabelle Ringing  20"x16" oil and 
mixed media 
on masonite panel

 
 
Isabelle Ringing






The story you write should be a "Flash Fiction" which is a complete story in one thousand or fewer words.  Please post the story in the comment section, you will have to provide your name and an email address in order to be qualified to win or you can e-mail me at kmencher@ohlone.edu with your info.  There is a problem with how many characters can post (only about 4,000) so if you cannot post it.  E-mail it to me at kmencher@ohlone.edu

Go to my website for more contests: http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

Winning flash fiction stories will be integrated in with an exhibit in San Francisco at ArtHaus Gallery (April 8th for the reception).

The show is called:
Renovated Reputations: Paintings and Fiction inspired by Vintage Portrait Photographs

The exhibit will include a series of 20-40 paintings and mixed media works ranging in size from 8”x10” to 18”x24” framed with thrift store and vintage frames.  In addition to the exhibited works ArtHaus is publishing catalogs signed by me and as many of the authors as possible.

Catalogs/books will consist of image of the painting with the text of the “flash story” surrounding the image.  If I can get the authors to come to a book signing/party, authors would sign their pages for some of the printed stuff.

We're going to have a photobooth for the show for participants to play with and vintage costumes.

Of course I'll send the authors free copies of the catalogs. I will announce the winners the day after the closing deadline for the competition. I'm planning on doing one flash fiction competition a week every Monday from now until April. 

(If the conditions in the side bar are not to your liking, I'm totally flexible.  Send me a contract that you like and I will mail it back to you.  I just don't want to chase people for signatures when I publish the catalog!)
____________________________________________
 Just sent in by e-mail December 31 5PM

Isabelle Ringing                                   RC Florey
Her parents were hippies.  How they had talked the orphanage into allowing them to adopt her had always been something of a mystery.   When she was in her teens and curious about all that, they just laughed.  Usually she caught a sly wink between them at such times. 
She would often ask what they knew about her real parents, and they would just as often seem to make something up about the circumstances of her being orphaned.  Her parents were in a three car smash-up on an icy interstate on New Year’s Eve.   A tragic apartment fire had killed both her parents as they had heroically tried to rescue her, only to become lost to the smoke.   A fireman had found her just in time, but couldn’t get to her parents.   Another story she got from them was that her parents were unwed teenagers and their families didn’t believe in abortion, but thought she should be left at the orphanage for adoption.   These stories or some variety of them were always presented as truth and she was told she was mistaken if she recalled being told something different.
As you would suspect, her name was pure hippie invention.  “Isabelle” paired with their real last name, “Ringing,” if that was their real last name, was just too cute.  However, later in her life, it was to fit perfectly with her chosen profession.
 They moved a lot, often in the middle of the night, and her “dad” never seemed to settle in on employment.   And of course, she was always being moved from one grade school to another.   Same when she was junior high age.  She was always behind the other kids in the various schools, but no one seemed to care very much.    She never had really nice clothes or made lasting friends. 
By the time she was 16 and in her third high school with no friends once again, she decided it was time to strike out on her own.    The day after the carnival had come to town, she found herself in front of the carnie boss.  Convincing him that she was 18 years old, with no family except an invented grandmother in a far away state, she talked him into hiring her as the ticket taker for the main gate.    She was off to see the world on her terms at long last.
The cards.  Her future was in the cards.  Carnival atmosphere and the card handling ability she had picked up over the years, had led her away from the ticket booth to her own booth on the midway, telling suckers their fortunes.   It took her about 6 months to perfect the list of what the cards would mean when certain sequences appeared when dealt face up.  She liked her system far better than the Tarot card readers she had seen.
 Years passed, and she became very fat, highly skilled at her con, and fairly well off financially.  She stayed with the carnival for the adventure of it and also because she had not really ever known a “regular” kind of life.  She had a lot of friends in the carnival and was always meeting new people.   The life was not like the people had in the towns she traveled to, but it worked for her. 
A day came when everything changed.  Her cards had let her down, so to speak, and the event that was about to unfold was a great surprise.   The man that approached her tent on the last day in the small town was very well dressed; suit, white shirt and tie and looking very prosperous.  Not the sort of person you would expect to be looking to have his future foretold. 
“Are you Isabelle Ringing, a runaway from Elizabeth, New Jersey, thirty- two years ago? “  He began.   “Can you produce identification to demonstrate you are the Isabelle we have been looking for these last 18 months?”
Isabelle was understandably intrigued.     But she was always very wary, being a con artist herself and having learned never to trust others.   “Well yes, I have the name Isabelle Ringing, but say, what is this all about and speaking of identification, who are you?” 
When the man flipped opens his wallet, she nearly fell out of her chair.  This guy was really good if this was in fact some sort of con.   The badge was gold and silver covered and worked into the design at the bottom of the badge were the letters in deep blue: FBI. 
She immediately showed him her identification.  
Well, he said, I’m afraid I have some bad news.   When one of our undercover field agents is killed in the line of duty, we always work to try to locate all family members.    I am sad to say that your father who was about to retire from the Bureau, was killed by a drug lord he was about to arrest.    Your mother passed away from cancer about 5 years ago and your father immersed himself in his work after that.  He had always been a top undercover agent, even as a young man.  He and your mother were a legendary undercover Bureau team.    Yes, Special Agent Ringing will long be remembered.   He and your mother were devastated when you left home.  


 ____________________________________________
Sent in by email:

Navigation by D. Charles Florey
There are few left of her ilk.  
Perhaps she is the last.  
She places her hat on top of her head.  She applies her makeup, but the lipstick, the base, the rogue: it doesn’t quite cover.  She spends hours getting it right.  It must be right.  She plucks around her brows, perfects her lashes.  
She smiles at her reflection and it smiles back, cracked and unemotional.
“Just one more task, Isabelle.”
“Yes I know.”
“Then we can see the Lord.”
“Yes I know.”
She adjusts her hat to the left, then to the right.  Then she touches the mirror three times, then touches her hat, then the mirror, then her hat.  She coughs four times into her left hand and two times into her right.  The mirror, she must touch the mirror three more times, then she won’t die.  Not immediately.  And her family, they will be ok too...as long as she touches the sink with her knuckle.  She raps the porcelain five times. 
There are few left like her.
Isabelle leaves the bathroom and sits down at the cross-legged side table next to her bed.  Shafts of blue light sneak between the window shades, drawing dust filled lines in the darkness, making green the yellow quilt covering her bed, making purple the sepia photo of her parents.  Blue light illuminates the table.  She shuffles the cards, staring at the alarm clock on her nightstand: 3:04 AM.
She turns the cards.  They come easy.  A flush of red.  Once more she must give in.  Tap the table four times so your mother won’t die.  She taps.  Now sort the cards red and black, red and black or your cat will choke on its dinner.  She sorts.
“We must do this first, Isabelle.  Then we can complete our final task.”
“OK.”
“Go to Fourth and Elm, that is where it must be done.”
“Fourth and Elm.”
“Yes.  A man there, you know the one.”
“Mr. Harbinger?”
“Yes.”
“He is next?”
“He is the last one.  Then we can stop.  We can be at peace...after the final task.”
“Mr. Harbinger and then the final task?”
“Yes.”
“OK.”
She stands and taps her left foot four times so that she won’t go to hell.
The kitchen is close by.  She selects a butcher knife.  She puts on rubber, yellow gloves.
She sees her reflection in the knife and she must put it to her head ten times and clear her throat so that the police won’t find her.  She taps her hat with the flat of the knife ten times.  Then eleven, then twelve.  She taps, taps, taps until the thought is gone.  It won’t happen.  The police will not catch her now.
She slides the knife into the pocket of her dress.  It catches on a thread.  She must take it out and put it back in five times.  She does.  That’s better.
She makes her way outside.  The air is crisp, moist.  It smells like rain on dead leaves.  She sniffs the air, it gives her strength and she forgets.  It makes it easier to walk and she feels free.  She steps onto the sidewalk, onto the cracks and imperfections, onto the branches and leaves.
This lasts but a block.  There are few left.  She stops under the street sign.  Fourth street.  She may be the last.  
Don’t look at anything made of metal or you are the last.
If I am the last, then who will do this work?
Others may come.
Don’t look at your shoes or anything concrete or green.  She closes her eyes.
If you hold your breath and stand on one foot, you won’t be the last.
She stands on one foot.  Her breath stays in her chest.
Now you are not the last.  There are others.
She walks down fourth street.  The pearls around her neck clatter.  Her heels click.  The paperboy drives by in an old brown Lincoln and throws a paper onto the porch of the house just in front of her.  
You cannot cross the path of the paper.
She walks up into the yard and onto the porch and around the paper and back down the other side.
Elm.
She looks to her left.  He is in there, sleeping.  He lives alone.
She taps her hat four times with her ring finger, feeling the knife against her leg.
This is the last one.
She kills.  She is clean now.  Light.  Free.  She walks home.  She enjoys the night air.  She cleans the knife.  She puts it back in her pocket.  She sleeps.
10:12 AM.  She wakes.  She showers, dresses.  Euphoria.
“Now we complete our final task.”
“OK.”
She drives.  Her mother and father are fine.  Her cat is fine.  She will be fine.
“There.”
A strip mall.  Chinese restaurant.  Laundromat.   Fortune Teller.
Return the cards and you will go to heaven.
She opens the door.
“Good afternoon...Ms. Ringing?”
“How did you know that?”
“I knew you would be coming today.”
“But how?”
“You have something for me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.  Place them here.”
Give her the cards and God will forgive your sins.
“I am dying.”
“I know.”
“Cancer.”
“I know.”
“If I give you these cards, if you take them.  I will be free of sin.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps.”
“I will, you can’t say that I won’t.”
“Can’t I?”
She fumes.  Scratch your leg five times.
She does.  She feels the knife.
Tap your temple four times.
She does.
Look at the wall.  Let out your breath.  Don’t breath in.
She does.
Don’t look at her.  Look at the table.  Put the cards on the table.
She can’t.
She kills.
What have you done?
Turn your head from side to side, side to side.  
She does.
More.
She does.
What have you done?  Now you are the last.  Now you will be caught.  Now your mother and father will die and so will your cat.  What have you done?

______________________________________________________

 This was sent by e-mail:

Circus Act by S.M. Florey
“Gypsy..Gypsy...Gyp..see”  The taunt still rang in her ears all these years later. Isabelle Ringing’s parents had been part of a traveling circus and they had decided to winter over in a small mid-western town that year. The other kids in school thought Isabelle was strange and were not kind to her.  Her mother was a fortune teller and she told Isabelle not to pay attention to them, that she had been born on an auspicious date and possessed great talent.  Isabelle learned a lot from her mother, especially  that people were gullible and wanted to believe their fortune – good or bad. 
As a natural course, Isabelle fell into the trade and was pretty successful, but the circus was not where she intended to spend the rest of her life.  She often read the cards to forecast her own future and lately she had been turning up two tens, foretelling of unexpected luck coming her way.
 One day a handsome finely dressed gentleman and his pale, rather timid wife came to her Fortune Teller’s tent.  Over the years she had developed a second sense about people and she could feel that, while the gentleman was skeptical, his wife wanted to believe anything Isabelle told her.  The cards spoke of coming disaster, followed by great joy for one of them.  The wife went away fearful and the husband still skeptical.
A couple of years later, the circus happened to come through the same town and the same gentleman came to her Fortune Teller’s tent.  He sat down across from her and asked for his fortune.  There was sadness about him, but she told him that she saw luck coming his way, a large social gathering and a second marriage in his future.
Isabelle was a vivacious, rather attractive young woman at that time and the gentleman fell under her spell.  The handsome gentleman was kind and rich, and  Isabelle, too, fell in love, in her own fashion.  Soon they were married.  Though his friends were curious about her, neither Isabelle nor her husband ever talked about her past.  The years past and they became older and fatter and richer.  She and her husband threw parties where Isabelle amused her guests by pretending to tell their fortunes.  As those fortunes sometimes came true, more and more people clamored for her attention and the parties became more and more lavish.  Isabelle relished the attention of these friends and each day thrilled more and more at being intimately involved in their futures.  It never occurred to her that she had left the circus in name only.    


_____________________________________________
This was sent by e-mail:



Queen of Hearts by D. Bellenghi

    Isabelle Ringing had never been anyone's fool. The facts of life had been clear at the early age of six when she started school. The kids had nothing to do with her. Her clothes were shabby and she lived outside of town in a rundown house with her fortune teller mother. She had no father. These circumstances did not bother her. She had learned from her mother how to read the cards and she knew there was something big coming. All she had to do was wait.
    While she waited,she worked. She cleaned and cooked for her mother and worked in town at odd jobs. She was almost invisible to the towns people. She was just another cast out  of dubious background. And so, she worked and waited. Patience was her strong suit. Years passed.
      When fortune came calling a last, she did not recognize it. Fortune came wrapped in the present of George Ringing. He was a thin, wiry young man with a shock of thick uncontrollable hair and the deepest brown eyes. When she look into his eyes she found the understanding of the struggles and dejection she had been through. There was a tenderness there that she found no where else in her world. They were the same. George had big ideas. He was just passing through. He was looking for a way to make enough money to stake him in the big games. He was a gambler and he was ready to try his luck.
    Isabelle could not help herself. Despite her feet on the ground attitude , she fell helplessly in love. The man with those all seeing eyes and his cocky smile made her heart race and the world a bearable place. George came to Isabelle
late one afternoon and told her he was leaving. He wanted her to go with him. The way George described it, the world laid at their feet. All they had to do was take it. He was a man of luck and he was going to cash in. He had found her, hadn't he. Without a second's hesitation, Isabelle said yes. She was leaving nothing behind but rejection and hard times. She smiled to herself, there was something else that she and George had in common. The cards.
    The years went by in a colorful cascade of high living and grand times. They saw the many wonders of the world. All that George had envisioned had come to pass. He was indeed a man of luck. But luck can be a jealous lady. Perhaps,George had been too in love with Isabelle. Perhaps, he 'd gotten a little careless in how he gambled, always expecting luck to be with him. It happened slowly at first, losing an odd game. Then it got to be more often, sliding down the hard times of lady luck's distain.
    The riches of the past seemed to belong to another life time. The years passed slower now with the same bitter theme: at the next game,George would win. They would be on their way back. Isabelle remained always loving and encouraging. Winning was just around the corner, she would tell George. You have to believe! The money and all it's advantages meant nothing to her. Yes, she had enjoyed it all, but what she cared about was George. He could not seem to regain his balance,his center. The loses had shattered him and Isabelle ached for him.
    George decided they should head up to Alaska to try his luck there. It was new and freer than most places. Things would be different there, he could feel it. Isabelle as always agreed and they headed north. George's luck did not change all at once. It was on Isabelle's birthday that it changed. George was playing with a man named Charlie who was on his own losing streak. Charlie had no more money for the last hand, so he throw the deed to a mine he had been working in the pot. At the end of the game, George had won a sizable amount of money and a gold mine. He proudly gave the deed to Isabelle as a birthday present. George seemed to be himself that night. He had big plans for them again. Lady luck was with him again.
    The years of fast living and long nights caught up to George that night. It could have been the excitement of winning again, or the smoking and the drinking or  the worrying. He died in his sleep, at peace,a winner.
    Isabelle could only bare the weight of his lose by throwing herself into work. She decided to use the money George had won to develop the mine. What else could she do. Once again,fortune smiled with the discovery of gold. Isabelle liked to think it was George smiling down on her.
      After some time, Isabelle traveled back to the town she had left so many years before. There were not many who could remember her or would have guessed this wealthy woman was the fortune teller's daughter. No matter, Isabelle often smiled to herself. She knew. She had a grand life with her George. They had lived life, it's ups and down. The people of this town had only skimmed the surface of life.  It gave her a sense of amusement that the towns people were in awe of her as bought up businesses and real estate. She had come back to merely lay her cards on the table.
__________________________________________________
Sent in by e-mail 
By Gigi DeVault
 
Isabelle knew her own mind.  People said that about her.  She was a woman of conviction and she had no trouble acting on her convictions.  Still, it couldn’t hurt to get a second opinion
.  
She’d made the wrong choice about wearing a scarf, and pulled the fur collar tighter.   Away from the South Pearl trolley station, the streets were quiet.  By the building numbers, she had only half a block to go.
  
She came from stock that didn’t believe in coincidences.   The women in her family had second sight.  Not that it could be relied upon, coming and going like a tinker slinking around at the back door.  Never around when needed, and scaring the beejeebers out of you if you let your guard down.
Her premonitions were like tea leaves.  She could drink a hundred cups of tea, maybe two hundred.  Truth be told, when her intellect drove her to peer into the bottom of the cup, there would be no story.  That was the reason for this meeting.   She just wanted confirmation.  

There.  Number 18.  She looked doubtfully at the beat-up sign.  If someone needed to advertise in this business did they really have the gift?  Isabelle’s gaze compelled the teller to flip her shawl over her breasts.  Isabelle wondered if the sign over the door might be changed in the evening to signal a different sort of business, in which men bought their own versions of good fortune.    

“Don’t say why you’ve come,” said the teller.  “I only want to know what will be revealed.  You must shuffle the cards.”   The teller took the cards, blew on them, closed her eyes, and began a quiet singsong.  A bit melodramatic, but Isabelle would play along.  Be a good sport.  If people didn’t say that about her, they should.   

Five cards, face down.  Isabelle held her breath.    “We’ll ask for two spreads,” said the teller, as though they were about to order dessert.  “We may get a stronger reading.”   Isabelle was transfixed.  Ten cards to tip her over the edge, or to send her home again.
  
“The first three cards represent your past, present, and future.”  Snap.  Three of hearts.  “You are undecided about love,” the teller began.  Snap.  King of hearts.   “A fair-haired man.  Good-natured, caring, helpful.”   The teller looked long into Isabelle’s eyes.  “He is affectionate but not talkative.”  

“Yes,” said Isabelle.

Nine of hearts.  “The wish card—for the card just before it.  A dream fulfilled?”  Isabelle blushed deeply.  This was a bad idea.  She had not thought it would all come out so plainly.  Ace of hearts.  A card of love and happiness.  Your troubles lifting.”   

Snap.  Queen of hearts.  Again, the teller’s penetrating stare.   “He calls you ‘Belle’,” she said, finally.  Isabelle felt a wave of goose-bumps.   ‘Belle’ was his secret name for her.  A new name for their new life together.  Isabelle gauged her thoughts and found them moronic.  She had an impulse to grab the teller’s arm to keep her from seeing the second set of cards.  Instead, she was as fascinated as when the butcher slit the throat of a goat and let it bleed to death before her eyes.   But it was Isabelle’s secrets that were pouring out all over the table in an unstoppable fashion.   

The teller halted.  “The odds are very against a flush in a reading.  It’s more common in gambling...”  Bingo.  Isabelle thought that obvious.  “Perhaps, except for this problem that makes you query the spirits, the rest of your life is in balance.”  

“Yes,” Isabelle nodded.

King of diamonds.  Though she noted that pallor had replaced pink in her client’s cheeks, the teller made no mention of it.  “A gray-haired man of stature holds great influence over you.”    Edmond had fifteen years on Isabelle.  She had never thought of him as old until...  Isabelle was loyal.  No one needed to say it, really.  But she was.
  
Queen of diamonds.  “A gossip.”   Isabelle recognized her sister-in-law, Bedeliah, with her nose in everybody’s business.  Edmond adored her.  Ten of diamonds.  Financial changes.  Well, of course.  She’d give up a few things.
  
The teller narrowed her eyes at Isabelle.  “No one ever receives a second flush.”  She leaned toward Isabelle.  “Not unless they play games with the spirits.”

“I assure you, I do not.  I sometimes see or know things.  Everybody has premonitions at some time or another.”  

The teller pounced.  Isabelle’s eyes widened but she sat silent through the rant.  Neither woman gained if the session ended prematurely.    Isabelle studied the fanciful red shade covered with stars, planets, and crescent moons that topped a lamp on the window sill.  She surmised the teller could send a man straight out-of- this-world.   All that was required was to flip down the Murphy bed.  Isabelle noted that she was feeling less and less charitable.

Isabelle pressed several large bills into the teller’s hand.  

“I do not want to upset the spirits, “said the teller.  “We shall resume.”  Jack of diamonds.  “A man in a uniform will try to bring you bad news.  He is jealous. You must not rely on him.”  Isabelle and the teller held each other’s gaze until the last card was turned.  Ace of diamonds.  “You will experience a good change in your life.”

Well, there it was.  She’d be giving up all that life with Edmond could offer.  Stepping right off the brink, and embracing it.   

On Broadway, she hailed a cab that let her out in front of her building.  The doorman, in his blue uniform, held the door and handed her the newspaper.    “Mrs. Ringing.  Seems some illegal things are going on at your husband’s company.   Sorry you had to learn of it like this, Ma’am.”

She always disliked the man, brass buttons or not.  She looked the fool right in the eye.  “I’ve known for weeks, Harold.  I put them on to Mr. Ringing.”

The teller let him in.  “Did Belle suspect?” he asked.  In answer, she began pulling off his coat.









Thursday

Happy Holidays! I'm taking a break until Monday December 27

Hi Guys!
Happy Holidays!  I'm away on a break until Monday the 27th.  I will begin to post new competitions and articles then.
Have a great holiday season!
Kenney

Wednesday

S.M Florey’s “Born to Soar”: The Winner of the Burt Feathers Flash Fiction Challenge

Born to Soar  by S.M. Florey

  “Burt, you can be anything you want to be.  You can soar like an eagle!”  That’s what his mother always told him.  And Burt did soar.  Champion quarterback in high school.  Big Man on Campus in college.  Youngest vice-president of his father’s successful insurance business.  Handsome bon vivant and man-about-town.  Married well.  Burt didn’t have to do too much to soar.  He had it all.  And yet, he didn’t.  Something was missing.   A vague feeling of emptiness would overcome him from time to time. 
 
    One day, as he was driving through the countryside to meet one of his salesmen at a client’s house, a large pheasant crashed into the front of his car causing him to nearly run off the road.  He quickly stopped the car, got out to see what damage had been done and swore when he saw the smashed grill, complete with pheasant dangling.  “Damn!” 
 
     He finally untangled the bird from the grill.  As he raised it in his hand to throw it into the field, the bird’s feathers caught his eye.  He stopped his motion, struck by their iridescent beauty.  An unexpected feeling of pity and loss overtook him.  This had been a vibrant, beautiful creature before fate had tossed it into the path of his speeding car.  It had soared over the land and run through the fields.  It had had a purpose.  Burt wasn’t sure what that purpose may have been other than to someday be someone’s dinner, but it had some purpose.  Unbidden the bitter thought came to him, “What purpose do I have?  I’ve flown high.  I’ve had success – thanks to my father.  But I haven’t done anything for anyone else, fulfilled any real purpose – not even to be someone’s dinner.”    Burt felt a sad emptiness creep into his soul.    
 
    Caressing its feathers, Burt gently laid the bird down in the field and wept.

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I chose S.M Florey’s “Born to Soar” because that is the one that I had the strongest emotional reaction to.  In some ways it was the least “clever” story and the most direct and so it had a great punch for me.

I like the simulated letter aspect of some of the other entries as well.  Patrick Nelson, Stephen Rogers, D. Charles Florey’s stories had a great direct tact that took into account the elements of the painting and combined them with a sense of humor and a great fantasy of what the whole picture meant.  I kind of wanted to find out the back story on each letter and how the recipient of each chose to react.

I’m not sure if I “get” all the pieces because many of the pieces took on a Duchamp like surrealist bent.  D. Charles Florey’s “Intercity Man of Mediocrity” took a kind of Dadaist approach to the elements and kind of turned the letter into a response to an “object poem” that Breton would be proud of.  I like his sense of humor.  It read a bit like some other entries such as Kyle Toman’s short nonsensical phrase, the anonymously submitted, “The Party-wabbitbunny,” and Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli’s “A Safe Flight.”  Taking a surrealist vein to a darker place was Dee Turbon’s  “Only Screaming.” 

Thanks everyone for entering!

Kenney


Read them all here:
http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.com/2010/12/flash-fiction-challenge-burt-feathers.html

Go to my site for more contests:
http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

Friday

Newlin! The winner of the Clark Barr aka Young Master Newlin Contest

After much hemming and hawing I have finally decided on Newlin's piece. I think mainly because it sounded like a poem a kid would write, however, I wish I had the space in my book to use both pieces. I love the whole 1950's "B" movie feel of Stephen Rogers' piece!  Of course both will receive drawings of Clark!

I'm trying something different, I've been laying out some of the stories for the book.  So I'm posting a reformatted image of the pages for this story.  The book is designed to be 8"x8" so I stacked the pages.  I'm also looking for a publisher (I might self-publish with the gallery) but I really think the stories deserve more than this.)

Well here it is!

Wednesday

Demonstration. A step by step visual of how I make a painting. Buoy oil on canvas 36"x48"

This is post relates to an earlier post I put up a while ago on how I paint a glass of water.  Here is a painting I did a year or two ago that is part of my series of "glass of water paintings."

First step for me was to lay out the drawing of the image with a charcoal pencil on this large canvas.
 I then painted everything in roughly in acrylic paint with white acrylic gesso as the white paint.  I always paint background to foreground if I can.  Sometimes I need to paint the whole thing at a time but I find I get nicer edges if I think back to front.
 After painting the background and the table and glass in acrylic, I switched to oil paint.  I use the same palette of colors in acrylic that I use in oil paint.  With oil paint I also make sure that I premix large batches of colors so that they are more or less consistent in terms of hue and value structure (shading.)  Go to this link to see detailed  step by step of how  I painted a clear vessel of water.  It's the glass in this painting.
With the glass of water done I move on to paint the shirts in oil too.   I can see how it might look a little paint by numbers here but in this case, I premixed and painted each section individually so that the shirt parts would remain consistent. 
 Letting the wet paint dry before I move on to the faces.
 I do not underpaint the faces in acrylic.  For faces I paint directly in oil.  I have a really in depth article on color mixing and portrait painting on my site if you want to know my method for painting portraits and my color scheme for portrait painting.

Buoy oil on canvas 36"x48" 


 
Renovated Reputations: A Collaborative Installation of Paintings, Fiction, Music and Vintage Furniture
by Kenney Mencher, Patrick Nelson and others at:
The Art Museum of Los Gatos, California
4 Tait Ave Los Gatos, CA 95030
December 1 - January 6
Reception: Saturday December 3, 2011 5PM-8PM 
Show up in costume and get into the photobooth!  You may end up being my next painting!
Price: FREE
Phone: (408) 395-7386
The Art Museum of Los Gatos presents Renovated Reputations, an immersive exhibition experience featuring works conceived as a collaboration in painting, creative fiction, and design. At once noir, bohemian and pulp in style, the works invite the viewer to step inside and sit awhile, discover their stories and spark engagement.
More info at: 
http://www.kenney-mencher.com/


Monday

Write a story about Jacquie M. Balla and Win the Drawing on the Right

Write a story about Jacquie M. Balla and Win the Drawing on the Right  
The contest closes Monday December 27, 2010
The winner is W.H. Matlack





Jacquie M. Balla 16"x10" 
oil and acrylic on panel

Click on Images to Enlarge

The story you write should be a "Flash Fiction" which is a complete story in one thousand or fewer words.  Please post the story in the comment section, you will have to provide your name and an email address in order to be qualified to win or you can e-mail me at kmencher@ohlone.edu with your info.  There is a problem with how many characters can post (only about 4,000) so if you cannot post it.  E-mail it to me at kmencher@ohlone.edu

Go to my website for more contests: http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

Winning flash fiction stories will be integrated in with an exhibit in San Francisco at ArtHaus Gallery (April 8th for the reception).

The show is called:
Renovated Reputations: Paintings and Fiction inspired by Vintage Portrait Photographs

The exhibit will include a series of 20-40 paintings and mixed media works ranging in size from 8”x10” to 18”x24” framed with thrift store and vintage frames.  In addition to the exhibited works ArtHaus is publishing catalogs signed by me and as many of the authors as possible.

Catalogs/books will consist of image of the painting with the text of the “flash story” surrounding the image.  If I can get the authors to come to a book signing/party, authors would sign their pages for some of the printed stuff.

We're going to have a photobooth for the show for participants to play with and vintage costumes.

Of course I'll send the authors free copies of the catalogs. I will announce the winners the day after the closing deadline for the competition. I'm planning on doing one flash fiction competition a week every Monday from now until April. 

(If the conditions in the side bar are not to your liking, I'm totally flexible.  Send me a contract that you like and I will mail it back to you.  I just don't want to chase people for signatures when I publish the catalog!)
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This was sent by e-mail:



Il ya de nombreux Jacquies

by W.H. Matlack

In all respects Mme Jacquie was a normale Parisian housewife with one indulgent husband and three small children. Each morning after her husband went to work and her children were off to school, she would gaze contentedly from her small deck at her beloved Paris. To Mme Jacquie, Paris was her very existence. No one understood her life and her place in the world more than Mme Jacquie.

Sometimes, after her chores were done, Mme Jacquie would take a short, glorious walk through her Paris neighborhood for a croissant at the wonderful little bistro a few blocks away. There the contented and happy Jacques would let random thoughts roll warmly through her pretty head – joyeux fois.

Hélas, one day while she was contemplating the beauty of Paris, a small, dark cloud passed over her contented head in the form of a frowning, older man. The cloud’s name was Pierre Basset, a local intellectual whose hobby was disillusioning young people in bistros all over Paris. He thought of himself as a merchant of reality, and loved to see a happy, young face deteriorate into angst after being “enlightened” to the depressing realities that surrounded everyone. He was an Existentialist heavily influenced by Camus’ darker visions.

It was facile to open a dialogue with the pretty, young Jacquie. All the sophistiquée Monsieur had to do was smile so that his eyes crinkled just the right amount and ask, “Madam, do you know why Paris is so beautiful this time of year?” She would meet his gaze and ask back, “No, pray tell, Monsieur. Why is Paris so beautiful this time of year?”  

Thus would begin a series of daily lectures on how France gave Paris to the Nazis for their promise not to destroy it, horrors of the concentration camps, how Existentialism was borne from those camps, and how existence is such a futile illusion, really.

Each morning Jacquie would walk to the bistro, her mind filled with questions she had never before imagined. Each morning Monsieur Basset would answer those questions with more questions until Jacquie’s little head spun with wonder – wonder of things that seemed so obvious to her, but had been so invisible just days before. One day Monsieur Basset gave the impressionable Jacquie a mental challenge. “Jacquie, presuppose to be presuppositionless, and then see if you can experience the raw edge of pure existence.”

Through all of Monsieur Basset’s lectures, Jacquie had remained the dutiful wife and mother. Even so, her husband became increasingly uneasy with the vacant look that would come over Jacquie’s face in the quiet evenings when they sat together and read. Jacquie would read Camus’ The Plague over and over.

Each evening Jacquie felt that she was getting closer and closer to total presuppositionless awareness of, as Monsieur Basset called it, the raw edge of developing reality. Monsieur Basset explained that reality is not a solid, static thing. Rather it was like the bow of a ship that smashes into the formless water and classifies it as right spray or left spray, just as Jacquie classifies every element of her reality without being aware of it.

After that session, Jacquie came home and sat on their little outside deck just looking at everything and trying to not classify it. No longer were the beds made, the dishes done or even the kids kissed off to school. Those were suppositions, and Jacquie worked hard to not make them. Jacquie would just stare and stare.

Next Monsieur Basset focused on the multiple realities of quantum physics – the infinite number of realities and the infinite number of Jacquies. This was a difficult concept to accept until Jacquie realized that it was just another supposition, and she let it go. As soon as she did so, an infinite number of Jacquies began to contemplate the universe in concert with each other.

One day Monsieur Basset told Jacquie to focus on the time distance between her awareness of reality and her perceptions. Jacquie suddenly understood. Her inner awareness was a dimensionless point that existed (totally by itself) in the present. Everything else had occurred in the past before she became aware of it.

As she sat on the balcony, her suppositions all fell away to reveal the totality of pure suppositionless awareness. Jacquie existed alone in the present. There was nothing else except Jacquie’s total, unending fascination with the reality that hit her awareness like a rogue wave every second of the eternity that surrounded her.

The diagnosis reported to her crying family was schizophrenia, but Monsieur Basset knew the truth. He had won her soul.

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This was sent in by Marilyn by e-mail:




“Well, it was my moment to be alive, now wasn’t it?


The things people say sometimes stay with us. Same with the visual memories of her mother. How she used to take off her earrings and place them on the glass table at the pool, and would never get her hair wet, and swam so inconceivably slowly. So slow one thought she’d sink but it was really the thrashing that led to sinking. Such grace, like those strange utterances of truth that came out of nowhere. They stayed with her and her mother lived on through them.


Jacquie senior got sick right before her 41st birthday. An in-law found her wandering in the hospital mumbling to herself on one of her striper shifts.  No one knew what to do back in those days. There was just nothing, not like all the things they have today. It was probably best that no one understood or could not know what lay ahead. No one could tell them anything, since people didn’t talk about those things back then.


Those poor kids grew up fast, and yet never grew up at all. Childhood cancelled, momma dancing with the stars. One time Jacquie Sr. had decided to go to Washington DC. Congress was in session and she had had one of her visions of panacea. The visions had always been beneficent, saving people, ending suffering, and what not. Her heart remained pure while her mind had become an electrical storm. She had taken Jacquie Jr. with her without telling her the reason. Jacquie Jr. had thought she would die of mortification when they arrived at a Chinese restaurant on Pennsylvania and 3rd and were met by a legislative aid from their district. There was just no stopping her, and who could blame her. If they saw the things she saw, could see the cure to cancer in their minds eye, neither would they mind convention.


It was always a thrash, unless Jacquie Sr. was home sitting in her chair in the living room with the lights off. This would come after the visions of panacea and would last until the next visions. The psychiatrist told her it was because her father was gone during the war and this had caused an irreparable spiritual crisis. The psychiatrist had been a fraternity president. His father had gotten him into medical school. Unable to listen, he talked about all sorts of things instead. It made sense, according to him, to pay men more for winning tennis matches because they played for a longer period of time. The real problem with America was the trial lawyers. When she died, he was remodeling and mulled the loss of income.


But Jacquie Sr. was never a victim. Society was its own victim. The psychiatrist may have had a nice kitchen but he had never really been alive. Jacquie of course had many complicating factors in her life but she loved well. She tried, she wept, she saw. She could not control herself but when she lost control it was always in the service of saving. Saving humanity, saving lives, saving truth, saving us from forgetting that magic wind that whispers in our ear at every moment of our lives, even the worst ones. She had not really been a spender, a lover, or a gambler. It did leave Jaquie Jr. in a quandary all those years later. The visions, weren’t they somewhat real? It was profound but indecipherable. The mind like Icarus, could fly too high, but it’s not like the sun wasn’t there.

Jacquie played tennis, sang, did needle point, dried her hair under a dryer, played piano and was a troop leader. She was in the first integrated class to graduate from her high school. She had celebrated the first Earth Day and loved Jimmy Carter. Women were not to hope back then. Never quite understanding why they had to take the back seat of wife and mother, when their hearts burned for truth and something to do, they either laid down and died or cracked wide open. 


The last time that Jacquie Jr. went with her mother to church picnic it was out at the Davis’, who had a lovely Victorian pool with fancy tile work. They got there early enough to get fried chicken and stayed until the end. After the softball game, people began to say goodbye and leave. Jacquie Sr. seated herself at the Fischer piano in the Davis’ living room. Everyone was leaving, and Margie Davis’ stance in the marble hallway said it was time to go. Jacquie Jr. stood in the hallway getting nervous. Was mother off again? Jacquie Sr. began to play. For a few tense moments Jacquie and Margie Davis maneuvered separately to get her to stop, but they were arrested. For after a few halting bars, there came the sweetest, swinging, most hopeful melody that had ever vibrated Greenmont Hall. Departing guests came in to listen. “I am thine oh lord, and I have heard your voice…..” sang Jacquie Sr. It hit those poor Episcopalians like a wave of honey. Jacquie Sr. sang “Nearer Blessed Lord,” and Jacquie Jr. and Margie Davis could not steel themselves against a song so sweet and sincere. It took them both and all the departing guests beside, right inside of Jacquie Sr’s heart and made them feel that strong, strong will of hers to love and be good. “Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope, my will be lost in thine……” she repeated at the end. Applause, smiles, she had sent them to a good place, a place many of them might never go again.


Jacquie Sr. hummed it in the car on the way home. Jacquie Jr. was still wondering if it was a scene and made a vague complaint about it having been time to go. “Well, it was my moment, now wasn’t it?” Here mother said after a pause. “It was my moment to be alive.”