Short Stuff
Flash Fiction, Haiku,
and Aphorisms
Neil M. Levy
(Sir Real Neil)
Short Stuff
Flash Fiction, Haiku,
and Aphorisms
Copyright 2012 Red Oak Tree Press
Published by Smashwords
ISBN 9780985095833 (Digital)
Discover other titles by Neil M. Levy
TRAVELLING
THE TRAVEL WRITER
The travel writer knew that to expand the universe of the possible, he must record events that had not occurred and even events that could not occur. He appeared to move about with a sense of purpose, but actually his journeys were as purposeless as those of life’s other travelers. As a post-modern writer, he felt free to state conclusions based on incomplete data and even based on his own misconceptions.
ABANDONMENT
Whenever he left for a long solo trip, he intensely felt that he had been abandoned.
LOST
Without a point of reference, even a clear and detailed map is of little value. Thus came the GPS. But being lost is only a problem if you have a destination.
TRAVELLING HAIKU
Clothing on the floor.
So many places to see --
Where’s the damn suitcase?
Through the evening
studied maps -- Where shall I go
tomorrow morning?
Leaving on my trip
wondering if I’ll return --
or will someone else.
Flying through the night --
More than a slight touch of fear
when the plane shimmies.
RETURNING
The traveler knew he would be returning home soon. And he knew that even though he would remember the outlines of the trip, soon the nuances would fade. Still, he felt very good about still being able to take care of himself traveling alone for a month in a developing country.
I’ve come a long way
back to where I started
and the never ending cycle
which ends where it
began
EUROPE
INFORMATION
Confused after twenty-one hours of flights and layovers, he spotted a booth with a sign that said ''Information'' in London’s Heathrow Airport -- Terminal 3. He stopped by a booth that said INFORMATION. A sign stated, ''Please queue this side'' When his turn came, he asked the woman attending the booth, ''Can you tell me when the war in Iraq will end?'' She looked at him and said ''I don't make predictions. I don’t give out that type of information.'' He thanked her and asked for directions to Terminal 4.
GREAT BRITAIN
LONDON
In my room alone,
over looking Russell Square.
Two lovers walking
It’s forty degrees
The sky is gray, overcast
A daffodil thinks it’s spring
The rain showers end.
The sun shines through broken clouds
A nice afternoon
Flying through the air
Pigeons in the train station--
Janitor’s nightmare
The din of traffic
in the pedestrian’s ears
Church bells seem silent
STONEHENGE
On the way to Stonehenge, the traveler’s guide told the busload of tourists much about its origin and purposes. He said that most scholars agree it was built in three stages between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago. Most scholars also agree that its use was astronomical.
This seemed absurd to the traveler. To date the summer and winter solstices with reasonable accuracy, all that was needed was two stones and three strings.
The traveler thought of another explanation. Hunter/gatherers lived on the Salisbury plain where Stonehenge is located. They were peaceful people and when a more technologically advanced neighboring people asked to place down stones they agreed. However, as the centuries moved on, it became clear that the builders were not going to be satisfied until they built a second story on the lintels that had already been placed on the ground stones.
The hunter/gatherers met, fearful that the traffic this large structure would attract would disrupt game patterns. They authorized their chieftain to meet with the leader of the builder people. The chief builder told the chieftain of the spiritual significance of the location of Stonehenge. But the chieftain held his ground and spoke words never before heard: “not in my backyard” (NIMBY).
The traveler tried to explain all this to the man in the adjoining seat on the bus. His neighbor was not impressed with the explanation as to why to this very day Stonehenge has never been completed.
SCOTISH SIGNAGE
The tall, aged man hiked through the Highlands of Scotland till he reached the village of Low Row. He spotted a pub, an old small brick building with a low entranceway. He was about to enter when he saw a sign on the top of the doorway which read: MIND YOUR HEAD
Since he was six foot three, he was thankful for the reminder. Still, he wished someone had given him that advice forty years ago.
When he left the pub, the old man passed a church that had a sign in front:
SERVICES 1:00-1:30
Just in case that was not clear enough, the sign also said:
SERVICES – ONLY ONE HALF HOUR LONG
HADRIAN’S WALL
Having already seen the Great Wall of China, the traveler thought he should also visit Hadrian’s Wall. In 122, Roman Emperor Hadrian thought that he needed a wall to keep his Romanized, Englishmen safe from the fierce Scottish tribesmen. So far this sounds a lot like China’s Great Wall which was built to keep "barbarians" away from the pacified population of the Chinese Empire.
Much to the traveler’s disappointment, he discovered there also are great differences between the two walls. Hadrian's Wall is only 70 miles long and often is only seven feet high and five feet wide. Worse still, the traveler discovered that he could not get a decent egg roll within 50 miles of this wall.
AMSTERDAM
The Queen of the Amsterdam trams stared into the mist, glimpsing all pasts that had led her to this present. At sixty she looked her age, but she knew her ship had come in when the young sailor entered the saloon.
AMSTERDAM HAIKU
Amsterdam's canals,
Euclidian precision --
Rivers meander
duck in the water,
a wake rippling behind her
without an echo
raindrops hit water
causing concentric circles
before returning
The winter rains fall
plip-plop, plip-plop, plip-plip-plop.
Good to be inside.
COPENHAGEN
That morning he walked around Copenhagen, a city he did not know. He walked with no guide, with no guidebook, with no map. He knew it was a small city and he reasoned that if he got lost he could merely hail a cab and return to his hotel. He walked for three hours, taking only one break -- for coffee and a Danish in the cafeteria of the National Museum. He ambled through the narrow, crooked streets of the medieval quarter.
As he walked, he kept arriving at the Central Train Station and seeing the same spires and Baroque buildings over and over again. He first thought he must be walking in circles. But then he reasoned that perhaps he had been walking in a direct fashion, but that the city of Copenhagen kept replicating itself. Perhaps each section of the city was built according to the plan of the prior section. Thus, there might be dozens of Central Train Stations. There might even be dozens of versions of his hotel and a cab driver would have no way of knowing at which one the traveler was staying.
THE RECEPTIONIST
The sixty year old traveler arrived at his Stockholm hotel late in the evening. He got a good night’s sleep and headed down to the bountiful breakfast buffet. Afterwards he walked over to the reception desk. The young woman, perhaps in her early thirties, drew his eye. She was vivacious and dark haired with brown eyes, not at all what one expects a beautiful Swede to look like. They struck up a conversation and it was a half an hour later that he left on the itinerary she had laid out for him.
When he returned that afternoon, she was still on duty and they talked about his day. And then they just talked about pleasant nothings. He realized that these conversations had been the high points of his day.
The next morning, much to his disappointment, she wasn’t on duty. He spent an enjoyable day on the town and was delighted that she was at the desk when he returned. She was working the late shift. They talked some more and shared a cup of coffee. She mentioned that she would work until 22:00 that evening. He was about to ask her if she would like to go for a drink after her shift, but just then he noticed a ring on her left ring finger. He thought he had almost made a terrible faux pas. He just talked some more and went up to his room.
The next morning, the day he was leaving, she was sitting at a desk in the reception area. Someone else was at the front desk itself. This time she was wearing no ring. He knew he had made a mistake last evening. He motioned to her to come to him. She did so. He took her hands in his and said, “I hope I am not out of line, but there are some rare moments such as this when I wish I were thirty years younger.”
She squeezed his hands and said, “Me too.”
HEMINGWAY
In the late Thirties, Hemingway sat on the steps bridging a one-way canal in Venice, a canal so insignificant that it had no name. He did this every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Attired in an ankle-length black dress, and clean shaven, most mistook him for an impoverished widow. He was successful at begging – speaking in short, clipped sentences. Simple words. No whining.
Like all beggars, he had a dream. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he took accordion lessons. He wished to play in a polka band and never have to beg or write again. His teacher cautioned that he could not accomplish his goal unless he improved how he played in the key of C minor.
CENTRAL EUROPE
GOOD FRIDAY
In the middle ages, the custom developed in Slovakia for country inns to remain closed on Good Friday. At first the custom operated as one might expect, no new guests were admitted on that day. But over the centuries, the custom changed so that travelers could enter on that day, but those already there could not leave.
Country priests believed that this custom proved it was easier to enter hell than to leave it. Yet a contrary view, some would say a heresy, arose among the aristocracy that the custom proved only that those who commit no sins at all still can be damned.
THE BORDER
I came on foot to the border between the two smallest countries in the Balkans, at the least significant crossing, one that rarely sees more than a traveler a day. As is common in the Balkans, a no-man’s land of ten meters separates officials on each side of the border and a traveler must go through the formalities of exiting one country before entering the other. I left Kovixta easily and walked to the passport control to enter Samkov. The guard asked for the entrance fee of 12,000 krona. I realized that I had no krona with me and took three United States dollars from my wallet, worth more than the 12,000 krona. But the guard told me that he was not authorized to accept foreign currency. I asked him what I could do. The guard looked towards an old woman from the East who sat on a nearby bench. I went to the woman and kissed her left hand, as one does with wise women from the East. I held out the three dollars. She took them and in exchange gave me 12,000 krona.
I returned to the Samkov guard and handed him the krona. He took the krona, put them in his pocket, and said, “Don’t you know it is illegal to exchange money with someone who has no license to do so? The fine is 12,000 krona and there is no entrance unless you pay it. I asked the guard how I could obtain the krona legally and he continued to eat an apple.
At this point, I thought it best to return to Kovixta. I went to the guard who had let me out and asked to be readmitted. The guard refused, telling me that to enter Kovixta a second time, I needed a second visa. When I asked where I could get a second visa, he told me only in the capital, but without a visa I would not be allowed to go there. I asked, “If I can’t go to Samkov and I can’t return to Kovixta, what can I do?”
This guard also pointed to the old woman from the East and said, “She is a wise one.” I returned to the woman and kissed her left hand again. I asked her, “Wise one, what must I do to complete my journey, or at least to return to where it began?” The woman answered, “There are questions beyond the wisdom of the wise. If you cannot go forward and you cannot go backward, then you must remain. Come sit down. The sun is warm. Rest and relax.”
The story ends here.
FOR KAFKA
I make my lap-top my home so that I can travel without becoming homesick. But in Prague, I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find I had been sharing this home with Kafka: not with the works of Kafka, nor with his words, nor even his ghost, but with Kafka himself, who appears whenever I open "My Documents" folder.
Once, I asked him whether he was comfortable living so flat an existence. He told me that it had been worse when he lived and wrote in a tiny room inside Prague Castle's wall, particularly on rainy winter nights when the wind swept down the Vltava River, through the old Jewish Quarter to wake Rebbe Judah and invigorate the Golem.
We talked of law as one would expect two trained in the discipline to do and bragged of exploits never accomplished. I asked him of the nature of language -- why a system devised to give meaning, when placed in the mouths of lawyers, turns into a method for gentle distortion. Kafka nodded, (not easy to do in a file) and replied that he was not sure all the distortions were gentle. "Was the dispersion from the Tower of Babel gentle merely because the generation of Noah had been treated more harshly?"
I asked him about his death in 1924 and whether he resented dying at the age of forty-one. He said at least he was saved from joining his three sisters when they were murdered in the German death camps during the war.
FOR KAFKA (cont.)
It is dangerous for an author to enter into his own story. But I must let you, my reader, know of events that occurred after I completed the preceding story.
Staying in Prague, I walked to 22 Zlata Ulicka, Kafka's former residence in the castle wall. As three men approached, I began to read my story aloud. It was raining, but they stood listening till I completed my reading, even though they were Albanians who understood no English. They handed me several, worthless Albanian coins. Encouraged, I began to reread the story as a woman approached. Though she did not appear to listen, she stood patiently until I finished. I asked her what she thought of the story and she answered in perfect English, "I think it's time for you to go home.”
THE MISER PARABLE
A miser living in a small town in Eastern Europe purchased a vault from a traveling salesman. He placed all his most valuable possessions inside it. Since the key to the vault was now his most precious possession of all, he locked it inside the vault as well.
DRACULA
Café Berarie sits on Cositorarilar (Tinsmith) Street in the fortified hilltop town of Sighisoara in Transylvania, Romania. It occupies the very house in which Vlad Dracule, Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula himself, was born in 1431. They say that his mother loved him dearly until he grew teeth at three months and bit off her left nipple. Vlad committed many atrocities during his life, too heinous to describe here, but the Romanians love him because these atrocities were mainly committed against the Turks, who knew a thing or two about atrocities themselves.
Today, Dracula’s legacy lives on, but has turned against Romanian and other visitors to Sighisoara. In 1991, two years after Romania’s revolution, Vlad’s descendants sold the house to the present café’s owner. When one orders cappuccino here, one receives powdered coffee, powdered sugar and powdered who knows what else, all partially mixed in lukewarm water. The mixture is so foul that those who drink it are known to fight even if sober: hitting, kicking and, of course, biting each other.
THE TICKET
Never mind what I was doing in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, a country which not too long ago couldn’t decide whether it would rather kill Jews or Serbs. But whenever I am in Central Europe, I try to go to the opera house. It is not that I like opera, or even tolerate it; I hate the way sopranos sing. Rather, it is that in many of cities of Europe, the opera house is the most beautiful building, both outside and inside.
But this evening I was in luck. “Labude Jezaro” (Swan Lake), a ballet, was playing at the opera house at 6:00 p.m. I had learned that morning that the box office would open at 4:30 p.m. Though a cold wind was blowing, I arrived at the box at 4:00 p.m. to be first in line. It opened a few minutes late, at 4:45 p.m. Those few of us in line were told that no tickets were available.
But I am persistent. I stood in the cold until 5:30 p.m. when patrons began to arrive. Though many people milled about despite the cold, I spotted no scalpers, nor anyone who appeared to be selling a ticket of a friend who could not make it. But at a few minutes before 6:00 p.m., I noticed that there was also no one else but me appearing to wish to buy a ticket. If a ticket showed up, it was mine.
I saw two possibilities: an elderly woman standing alone and two women standing together, obviously looking for a third to arrive. As the elderly woman turned to go in, I made my move. Speaking no Serbo-Croatian, I gestured that I would like to buy a ticket. She looked insulted and walked alone into the opera house. I then approached the two women and gestured to the one holding the tickets in her hand. She spoke some English. She indicated that though she had an extra ticket, it was a subscription ticket and therefore it was against the law to sell it. She then said, “Take it. Take it. I can give it to you. I’m just not allowed to sell it.”