"Will it ever make any sense, Edwin? The way you see things and the way the world actually is?" Serena asked her sensitive boyfriend Edwin. "No, Serena, that is the way of the world and you just cannot change it, it will kill you to try." Serena wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she was throughly engrossed in the images coming from the tv screen". "Did she really have to die to become a martry for freedom?" Serena implored her boyfriend, "This woman is my age, she shouldn't have been killed, she didnt deserve this!"
Serena was getting obviously upset at the both the images on the screen and the way her boyfriend had so easily dismissed the images. "I cannot believe you, of all people, Ned, would so non-chalantly not challenge the status quo. I don't know about you, but I know that I just have to do something. I cannot sit idly by while women are being targetted like this in that country!" "Oh, come on, Serena!" Ned was beginning to feel offended by his girlfriend of four years, "you've got to be kidding! You think you can take on a sexist dictorial regime that has been active for over five thousand years?" Serena looked up at Ned and said "You're damn right, Ned". These are fightin' times, and maybe it is the Irish in me that has gotten up my ire, but I tell you now, I am going to do something about these poor women in THAT country!"
Ned looked back at Serena and rolled his eyes giving up the argument to the fiery redhead. 'Ok, Serena, if you can do something about it, if you really feel you can do anything about the plight of these women in that land so, so far away country, then you can go right ahead, become a martyr, but leave me out of it!" Serena gave a brief smile towards Ned and said "Thanks, Ned, you won't regret it!".
Wicks Hollow was a displaced town from the gold rush of the 1860's. Life had seemingly forgetten the dreams planted years ago by the pioneers. Close to the farming country, Wicks was considered Hicksville by most city slickers from the big city only an hours drive away.
The small-town feel of Wicks Hollow was evident in the two hundred year old General Store, the main street of buildings restored from the 1800's. This charming, sleepy town had a nostalgic feel to it, if you closed your eyes you could easily imagine the citizens wearing clothes from the 1800's.
The bedroom community of traditional Amish and Mennonites were supplying the dream-like western images of yesteryear. Bolts of cotton were being purchased at the dry goods store, peppermint sticks and blackballs were being purchased by little boys in black suits with no shoes while blinded horses were pulling buggy carriages for the weekly supply goods. Even Mennonites had to eat and clothe themselves in the little town as food was scare between winter and summer. Not all families could produce the needed material for winter-weight clothing requirements, pure cottons milled from Ireland or Scotland the preferred choice of the well-dressed yet somewhat dated attire of the antibaptist community.
A refreshing morning renewed all people's interest in all things lively. Young Matt Dooley ran boundfully past the row of Victoria houses to the bus stop by the park, stopping to smell the flowers. His soft black hair, softened from a night of sweet dreams and candy wishes. His eyes shining with inward love light his face a rosey blush. He met his friend Sarah Beth at the stop and gave her the tiger lily he had plucked from the ditch by the side of the road. Sarah Beth said thank-you to Matt, and being only ten, she felt a bit embarrassed. She said she would give the flower to her teacher, Mrs. Brown, her favourite teacher.
There were not too many days left of school, the children were all wispy with wishes and dreams of the perfect summer. The large yellow bus rolled up to the curb where the children were waiting. The bus driver gave a friendly good morning as the children boarded the bus. The last week of school and then summer holidays and freedom! Matt and Sarah Beth continued their frantically animated conversation while the pastoral scenery rushed past in rhythmic patterns and relaxed continuity of many yesterdays.
The fresh scented forests and wildflowers with their heady sagey-musk aroma awakened Mrs. Florence Chronoleigh. Florence opened the sashed windows of her parlour and walked about onto her backyard gazebo paradise. Her prize-winning rose garden, all pink and white masterpieces of rosary perfection, bloomed endless perfection after another.
Florence breathed in the newness of the day, her favourite time, and slowly sat her ample posterior into the comfortable cushion of the iron chair by the crisp Irish linen tableclothe. In a gilded cage, a small yellow canary singing delightfully for a sampling tidbit of Florence's cremed strawberry bisquit, at least the strawberry being much appreciated by the avarian afficiando. "Here, here, Percy, come to Mommy, I have a bit of strawberry for you!" Florence opened wide the golden bird cage, all filigreed like the bistro table. The little yellow bird alighted on her shoulder. "There, there, Percy, Mommy didn't forget about you!" Florence was making little bird noises and had just put the bird back in his cage. Florence sat down at the table again and began to open up the newspaper.
When Florence noticed the news caption on the front of the newspaper, she uttered "Oh, my god, no" and immediately swooned and then crashed to the ground. The ground had been designed by the local landscaper and was a very intricate interlocking paving stone of Italian marble.
The sound of Florence's head hitting so violently on the hard ground awakened Darren, Florence's her neice, sleeping upstairs above the scene. Darren had been visiting her Aunt Florence during her yearly sabbatical tenure at the University of Edinburgh. Darren was aghast to see all the blood pooled in a large puddle around Florence's head. Darren screamed "Call 911!". Percy's empty cage door remained open, and Percy was perched on the upper branches of the apple tree, far away from the madness that had sliced through the peaceful morning. Where Florence sat down to her morning coffee and cremed strawberries, the world of reality opened by the turning of the page, into something horrible, something which had caused Florence to become off-balanced to the point of fainting, falling and dying in the matter of three minutes. Darren did not notice the opened newspaper left on the white wrough iron bistro table, with the headlines; "Woman Nadia Spivak Killed by Revolutionary Guards in Freedom Protest" gently flapping in the light morning breeze.
Oblivious to the carnage in Wick's Hollow, the salty dead fish smells continued to evoke those ephemeral long lost days at the beach. These primordial smells were wafting in from the cross-breezes from the beach ten minutes away. These enlivinging scents were soon to become unnoticed by the women in town who had begun to form Free Nadia's Everywhere". Although life began to churn like butter made in Revivalists Camps of Everything Yesteryear, Serena knew things were different. The action noticed, which was wholly unseen and very unseemly by those refined by the way things ought to go. Nothing could stop these church women. It did not matter how the news travelled. Saints and Martyrs were here too. Whatever it took, even to stop this glorious summer earth, the women knew what to do. Today's earth's regenerative powers would be used to incite good, not evil, not callous barbary on other coasts. All connected we could no longer ignore the plight of the female freedom fighters. Worldwide and gaining as much momentum as the rotation of the earth. Women worldwide stood up against the tide of anti-female policy. It was the beginning of Gaia triumpant return to claim her long lost citizenry.
Wherever the panorama the entire earth was aglow in this fresh newness of being, it gave ninety year olds zest in their step and a reason to live another day. Earl Harrow had been but a boy in the summer of '27, yet he still recalled all, as if yesterday. It was this ennubriating sense that recharged the core battery Summer restored all the old dreams, the hopes and wishes since children of the way the world should be, if I were the architect of it all. No slight, no sad word could make this day any less exuberant any less purposeful in meaning. A zen day. A day that stood down all the other days with it's gloriousness and glimpse of what heaven would be like, if only, and if, things had not changed . The nostalgic town had awakened to the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs coming from Gerts corner cafe. The sweet danishes could be tasted on the breeze at Elwood Taylor once sleepy in this sleeping hollow community this morning to brand new possibilities. The larks were chirping gleefully, the summer sun a big yellow plasma ball in the sky shining glorious light all around, but not for all, all the time. There rthyhm of life as up and down as balls like to go the sun being a ball, switching back and forth from light to darkness, sadness to happiness, all polarities exerting their unseen forces upon the citizens of Wick's Hollow. c 24 Jun 2009 Jane Jones
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