56 ladies boiling in a bucket

--Migue's 56-word noir tale, in response to March 9th's prompt:

“56 ladies boiling in a bucket”

The detective takes a glance to the bucket and back to him.
“ What do you mean?”
“Stupid”- he sniggers.
…
“Why 56 ladies… in a bucket?” - she notices the doctor’s looking at her legs.
“When he came here” – he looks up again - “he brought that bucket with 54 rings inside.”
“And?”
“A nurse was killed two days later.”

--Migue

Glowing Review, and a Prompt

I think that was the best sentence yet!

So, we have created the character of Madame Butterfly:

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless. Then little distortions started interfering with the flow, and thus sad feelings overwhelmed Madame's soul. Bright orbs showed visions emerging from mirrors surrounding her ever more.

(PLEASE CONTINUE to explore the life of Madame Butterfly in the comments section!)

PART II:
I am curious, given the limit of 56 words, which is how many we used to create her character, if we could make an entire story, a microfiction piece. If you've read Migue's latest post, you can see where several writers created entire stories in 6 words, so it should be possible! This time, each person is responsible for his/her own entire 56 words. I am giving a prompt below. POST YOUR STORY wherever you like, but also post it here in Continuum! If you do not have access to create posts, hit the "contact me" button to the right, and we will fix the situation.
Have fun!

**Given the character of an elegantly-gowned young lady, write a story in the hard-boiled detective genre, using the subject a bucket and the theme man versus the supernatural.

Word limit: 56
Time limit: 2 weeks (deadline is March 23).**


I got this microfiction prompt template from:
http://www.wgz.org/chromatic/projects/microfiction/

Save Madame Butterfly!

photograph by, Sarah Moon

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless. Then little distortions started interfering with the flow, and thus sad feelings overwhelmed Madame's soul.

Collaborators, Don't Give up Now!

All right, we're on our way to a paragraph, here...Let's give Madame Butterfly's telepathic communication a purpose, shall we?

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless.

A first word....?


I thought I might add a bit of inspiration here, now that we have a character. I was thinking....
a disturbingly womanly dragon...


The above drawing is Milton Caniff's Dragon Lady, drawn for Terry and the Pirates, a comic strip from back in 1934. He based the drawing on Joan Crawford. The eponymous Terry was a kid who had inherited a treasure map, and the friends he took with him on his journey. Lai Choi San, the Dragon Lady, was one of the many dangerous pirates they came into conflict with along the way--but perhaps the most dangerous, as sometimes she appeared to be an ally, and other times, a villain.

Anyway, nothing wrong with pirates, and we needed some kind of visual stimulus, right?

Collaborators, Continue to Unite!!

Let's allow Madame Butterfly an entire paragraph of existence, at least, shall we? So here, we have the first sentence. I added an "ly" to woman, in order to pull disturbingly and dragon together, and dropped the "ly" from ghostly for the same sort of reason. Any other suggestions are always welcome.

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere.

SECOND SENTENCE, FIRST WORD:

Her...


NOTE: a suggestion has been made which seems to me (zoe) very helpful:
"After reading the first sentence of "Madame Butterfly" (I contributed with a "woman"), I thought that, if you write "nowhere" as "Nowhere" it becomes an imaginary place. This way, the "womanly dragon" will interact with a defined imaginary place and not to nowhere, that is difficult to imagine for a person. In this sense, the second phrase "her nowhere was communicating telepathically with a ..." could be continued mare easily... maybe! :S This tale seems to belong to the fantastic literary tradition.. "
--Rosa

Collaborators, Unite!

A week ago, I discovered the blog of the author of one of my top, top favorite books. The book is The Manual of Detection; the writer is Jedediah Berry, the blog is The Third Archive. On the blog, I found this post:

"Some weeks ago, Wah-Ming Chang and I started writing a sentence together. We took turns writing it, one word at a time, in the comments section of this post, and completed it yesterday. Here it is:

Mr. Bluemoon, of that exceptional tribe named for its perpetually growing sense of devotion towards miniature galaxies, never once imagined he himself would stand, with thirteen engines sounding like thirteen ghoulish mourners, aboard the Flying Wastrel, hand flat against the lever that directed heaven’s temperament.

We’ve decided not to abandon Mr. Bluemoon quite yet, so the rest of his story will be written right here, using the same method. I for one am curious to find out what happens to him."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is, as I recall, a collaborative projects blog...and we have been lazy. I suggest that this is the perfect task for us. Each person contributes one word every day, and we will meet back here to pet and coo at our first sentence.

Just add a word in the comments section. Once there is a complete sentence (the person with the last word also adds the punctuation), we will start the next post, which will contain the first complete sentence, and so on until the end of time. Or something.


FIRST WORD:
Madame

Passing Through the Curtain

Entering the Magic Garden:
A new collaboration with the lovely Vesna:

A New Scent


At first, I saw only the bright light, I sensed something new. My mind couldn't immerse itself in the beautiful details until the heart sent its approval. Or, was it the other way around?
Is it all right to enjoy this? May I go on with this adventure now, here? How will this change me? Should I warn somebody that I may be gone forever? Will I be recognized when I come back?
"I can't come back", I said to myself. Time travels only forward, and life just goes on.
So, I relaxed, and let myself indulge.
It was a new scent.
The scent filled my nostrils and therefore forever changed my breath.
The scent covered my face and softened the way I look.
The scent gently landed on my eyelids and made me close my eyes and see more.
The scent flooded my mind, it sank old chains and balls and let new ideas be born.
I felt the scent as it traveled down my spine.
It was powerful like an ocean wave; it was unavoidable like an arrow arched from the birth of the Universe.
My body became the house to the fire, like a volcano. My hair turned red like lava.
My lips and my heart became One: Speaking of nothing but Love from that moment on.
--poetry by Vesna

The painting was also inspired by this piece by Vesna:

Inspiration
Her hair today again had a new shine. It was more red and made a different kind of frame around her face. “I’ll never finish this portrait”, he thought. He really needed the provision from this painting but he didn’t feel angry that the work was prolonging. Little Elizabeth, his daughter, brought light and warmth to the studio with her presence. One day her hair would have the color of gold, the other day the color of a young chestnut, or, like today, the shine of bronze. He looked through the window and saw his wife planting purple flowers. It seemed to him like the grass around her was all blue. His heart sent colorful fireworks through his eyes. “Maybe it is time to paint what I feel, not what I see,” he thought. Then the inspiration came by itself, he didn’t have to call it.

Notes from Zoe:
The plants that her image begins to appear through are all versions of the Hellebore. I had been thinking of the hellebore because of its legendary ability to cure insanity--thus, it formed a symbolic curtain between this world, filled with insanity, and the world of the magic garden, where one could suddenly and naturally be cured of it, and filled with magical abilities as a result...The idea was for there to be a certain location in a garden where, at a certain hour of the night, one could pass into an otherwise invisible garden, where certain plants grew that one had to have special knowledge to use. The hellebore is one of those plants.
In A Contemplation Upon Flower: Garden Plants in Myth and Literature, by Bobby J. Ward, it says:

“...the black hellebore, presumably Helleborus niger, was supposedly favored by witches who used it in their charms because they believed that one ‘finger’ of its lobed leaves was evil. According to legend, only a witch knows which one!....
Traditionally, even the collecting of black hellebores was considered dangerous because of their connection to witchcraft and sorcery. It had to be done in a specific, prescribed way; Pliny instructed drawing a circle around the plant with a sword and while lifting the root saying certain spells or prayers, entreating permission from the gods. The mystic rites for collecting, according to some versions, suggest looking to the east to be sure that no eagle witnesses the process; if it does, the gatherer will waste away and die within a year.”

Legend has it that the Black Hellebore (so named for the color of its root) successfully cured many famous cases of insanity, including that of Heracles, and that of the daughters of Argos, who had been driven completely wild by Dionysus.

Its use throughout history went in and out of fashion, because of the dangers caused by using it carelessly--whereby it became a poison (Hellebore is the ancient Greek word for food that kills).
In The Anatomy of Melancholy, it says “They that were sound commonly took it to quicken their wits, (as Ennius of old, Qui non nisi potus ad arma--prosiluit dicenda, and as our poets drink sack to improve their inventions)...” but later it began to be rejected as a poison; for example “Constantine the emperour in his Geoponicks, attributes no other virtue to it, than to kill mice and rats, flies and mouldwarps...” Later, it was picked up again as a medicine, and those that use it say it only has to be prepared correctly to work as a medicine: Brassivola “brags that he was the first that restored it again to its use, and tells a story how he cured one Melatasta, a madman, that was thought to be possessed, in the Duke of Ferrara’s court, with one purge of black hellebore in substance: the receipt is there to be seen; his excrements were like ink, he perfectly healed at once...” Some used a linen dipped in a warm concoction of hellebore and placed on the forehead to cure melancholy, some put it in an inhalant or a perfume.
And Paracelsus told us, “It is most certain...that the virtue of this herb is great, and admirable in effect, and little differing from balm itself; and he that knows well how to make use of it, hath more art than all their books contain, or all the doctors in Germany can show.”

The large bloom at the bottom left is from the type of Hellebore called the Christmas Rose, because it blooms as early as December. Its delicate scent and large, lovely petals bloom heartily even in the snow. We were imagining these winter blooms appearing in a corner of a larger garden at a secret hour of the night, their dew-strengthened scent opening the curtain between worlds, and the girl shimmering out of one and into the other.

Question

Photo by Diane Powers

Question

I have clouds in my pocket,

I have Sun in my hair,

many rivers in my body

and a blue star in my head.

I have forest in my heart,

I have a tiger in my foot,

I have a white rabbit in my left hand

and coloured lakes in my veins.

I have a China Wall on my skin,

I have a handkerchief at my eye,

I have a train on my lips,

I have oceans in my ears.

I have a silver dolphin on my shoulder,

every finger is a different wind,

I have sand on my face

and a one-way ticket.

Will you come along with me?

by Vesna

Touched by an Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Maya Angelou

Text by Maya Angelou. Photography by Julia Margaret Cameron

from zoe, to my angels:
thank you for the wonderful treasure of your friendships this year...


"Dream of Angels" by Anne Bachelier


...and on to new magical journeys! :)

(by Anne Bachelier)

Wherever friendly paths intersect...

Botticelli (segment from Primavera)

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

HERMANN HESSE, Demian


I Ask You

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

Billy Collins