My earliest memory was my second birthday, sitting in my highchair in the kitchen of our family home. It was before the kitchen was renovated to include a large picture window. Previously, there were two long old-fashioned storm windows on that wall, with a telephone sitting high in pride of place between them.

You may ask how anyone can have a memory when only two years old. My own family has questioned it. However, I do remember that birthday and that day, and the memories evoked are in my mind’s eye – almost like a film flickering along from the past. My birthday is on February 23rd and my paternal grandfather’s birthday was two days earlier, thus on that day in 1960 two birthdays were being celebrated. I particularly remember the scene because I was sitting near the end of the table beside my mother, whilst my grandfather was at the other end in his ever-present plaid shirt and suspenders. The day was particularly notable because my grandfather’s brothers and their wives were also present; in a matter of a few years my grandfather and two of his brothers would have departed this earth. I recall that my grandfather and his brothers looked so much alike, all balding with liver spots on the crown of their foreheads. Only the oldest brother, Uncle Will, was different in appearance: with a full head of white hair and a moustache (a few years later he would remind me of Colonel Sanders of KFC fame). 

Another early memory is of wandering away after supper. I barely remember it. I was a toddler and always wanting to roam (which was an early indication of my need to roam even further afield than the farm and head off across oceans to other lands). My mother had been cooking supper and my dad would have been in the barn; my older sisters were young too but no doubt playing in the house, the yard, or the barn. I was probably left in care of my sisters, and they may have lost track of me. In any case, I headed off back the laneway that led to the barn but extended past that known place into the more distant universe: back to the corn and wheat fields that stretched to the back of our farm and ended in a small forest of trees. However, just past the barn and to the left of the laneway that receded into the distance there was the swamp, and further yet a small creek that meandered through our farm from north to south and then to the east where it met up with the concession line on which we lived. 

When my mother went outside to check with my sisters as to my whereabouts, I was no longer on the back step playing. My mother was naturally very concerned: a farm is a place not only of discovery, but also of danger. As I was later told, due to the sun setting and the evening proceeding on its daily path, my parents and our next-door neighbours set out in all directions to find the missing toddler. I can only imagine what went through my mother’s mind that evening: had I tumbled into the crick, or wandered into the cow field and been trampled, or worse yet, had I been abducted from the front yard by a passing motorist with evil intentions? 

All families have their legends and their lores, their memories and myths. The episode of the wandering toddler who disappeared one evening around suppertime was one in my life and in my family. For a few hours it caused a sudden panic for my parents and great concern for our neighbours. However, it had a good ending, as we wish all such incidents did: it was my mother who found me late that evening in the middle of the swampland, sitting on a log, illuminated by a full moon, and singing happily as if I were ensconced in the safest place on earth. 

The roamer and wanderer that was a part and parcel of my nature as a child continued throughout my childhood. I was fascinated by travel documentaries, by the National Geographic, and by any information about travelling via airplane, boat, train or even car. My parents were never in an airplane, although my father had ridden in a helicopter. However, I would begin travelling by airplane when a young adult, and then after moving overseas as in international educator, I was always in the air. My thirst for knowledge about other lands, languages, cultures, and peoples has taken me to approximately fifty countries, and I have lived in five. 

During these travels and journeys – the physical as well as the metaphysical – I have borne witness to defining incidents that have been signposts on the journey of my life: more than one earthquake (Turkey and Indonesia), a political uprising (Indonesia), a tsunami (Bali, fortunately far from the epicentre), an aerial offensive (Israel), up to 50 degree heat (UAE), and found myself taking refuge in a church in the middle of a raging, white-out conditions snow storm (Canada). When I was born, I am certain that my parents had no idea where my life would take me; they would have thought it would take the natural course as theirs had done. It was assumed that I would take over the family farm, that I would settle down and have the same life and lifestyle as my parents, and my grandparents, and thus similar to each generation previously. That did not happen. Like the settlers and explorers of generations earlier, deep inside me was the need to uproot myself, to experience the unknown, to chart another course; in a fashion and manner similar, no doubt, to my forebearers who departed from the British Isles in the early 1800s, heading for new horizons ‘across the pond’.

Like them, seeking a new life, an ordinary life. 

Meet the Author!

John RC Potter is an international educator originally from Canada, but who is living in Istanbul.  When in high school John had the opportunity to interview the Nobel Prize winning author, Alice Munro, who resided in his hometown. It inspired John to begin creative writing. His poems and stories have been published in the following: Literary Yard, Down in the Dirt, Bosphorus Review of Books, The National Library of Poetry, Jabberwocky. His most recent publications are ‘Blood from a Stone’, an excerpt from a novel-in-progress (Bosphorus Review of Books, January 2023), and ‘All Roads Lead To Istanbul’ (The Write Launch, February 2023). An upcoming story will appear in an issue of Fiction on the Web (March 2023). He is currently a quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Short Story Competition with his entry, ‘She Got What She Deserved’.  2023 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Competition Quarterfinalists – ScreenCraft 

I.

Atonement seems obsolete as an idea, but the idea keeps itself alive, precisely because the moment in which it could have been realised was not met. In sum, all we did was interpret what we have done, instead of changing it. Stunting ourselves, resigning from reality, committing to the defeatism of reason, we fail to change the world. Our appearance is what we put out as our experience, to hide the naive construct of our own innocence through jaded glasses. Nothing ever happened here. That is the truth, because we never changed our narrative.

“Are you flirting with me?” I asked her.

And she said, “You’re a thinker. Why don’t you go ahead and answer your own question?” So I put my hand on her thigh, while staring at the side of her face as she observed our friends’ conversation at the table. She brushed it down once. She brushed it down twice. And the third time she retreated. 

I wasn’t sure if this was what she wanted, until she sat down opposite from me and pale, drawing her girlfriend close to her, like a shield. That was when I got the idea, but did not say a word.

That speechless shame to have gone too far. If you’re a man, they say, you have to be assertive. I never wanted to be this way, but never having had the courage before I tried. You aren’t born a man, you see, you become one. 

II.

Leaving the bar, I went out for fresh air and left things as they were. For a moment reality settled into my conscience like a stinging cold, but it was disproportionate to the world surrounding me. I realised I had misinterpreted the signs she had given me, but did not say a word. It was too late to say anything, anyhow, I told myself. The deed was done. I didn’t change the world, you see, I just left the situation and took a breath.

Near the entrance, another woman, smoking her cigarette, had her eye on me, then looked away, not to draw attention. She didn’t belong to our inner circle. I put on an appearance. Disinterested, I stared into the night, telling myself that I was not a threat so that this stranger might believe it, too, then left.

III.

There were no consequences for me.  Some of the women I used to be friends with, kept their distance from me. But that is all I know that happened, rumours. The eyes that locked onto me and paused, because they never expected me to do anything like that. Maybe that was the point. I was the shy guy and everybody’s best friend. If I wasn’t categorised gay, I was categorised submissive. There is nothing you can do about other’s preconceptions. I didn’t mind being categorised as these things. What I did mind was to be written off as a person with no desires of his own. What I did mind was to be everyone’s personal pet and joke. So I pushed my hand underneath her skirt, thinking she might react.

Being feared is worse than being ignored, especially if people start ignoring you, precisely, because they fear you. Self-reflection cannot yield before the events of history. 

IV.

Atonement seems obsolete as an idea, precisely because life goes on. But the idea keeps itself alive, precisely because the moment in which it could have been realised was not met. I didn’t change the world, you see, because I never said a word. One evening, ten years later, I remember slipping a poem toward the clerk of an exhibition, believing the double innuendo to be clever. Revisiting the scene a day later, I saw her keeping distance, jaws locked in position, her rage and terror turned to stone. Her anger stood out like a statue in the gallery, hammered down with a weight, she would have liked to bludgeon me with, if I had not been a very special guest on this occasion. This is what happens when you have friends and business connections, you see. The space was very well known for its feminist art pieces and paying its female employees less than it did its men.

Appearance put out as experience, to hide the naive construct of a glamorous image, which is merely a construct of our minds indifferent to reality.

V.

I shed my skin a few nights ago, going through my memoirs. Longing to give some kind of confession, I entered a student bar, well known for its open readings. This is how I told the world my story. Bare of expensive clothing, I read my previous lines and sat down at the counter, realising that my life fit into a specific kind of category, a specific kind of box. You aren’t born a man, after all, you become one.

“What a depressing story,” the man next to me ranted, “Couldn’t you have read something more comedic? You come off as somebody who suffered child abuse by his parents.” Turning my head toward him, I waited for him to tell me more about what he was thinking. He continued without invitation, “Don’t get me wrong. You’ve really got talent as a writer, but if you just would do something more comedic to lighten up the room, you would really be something else, you know? You would be successful. You know? People want to have joy in their life. People want to laugh.” And with those words he handed one of the other performers his card, explaining that he was a well established media producer looking for fresh talent.

Unapologetic about his own behavior, he turned his back on me like a true conversationist and mingled with the other people reading at the bar. From afar, I got a better look at his trademark polo shirt, and the people he was leaning toward, saying he was in the city for a visit. Leaning over toward another table, he handed another group of people his card, resting his hands on the back of a chair, until his hands slid down farther and the woman he was groping told him to get off. Hands in the air, he said, he didn’t do anything, but backed away as her friends stood up. He even said so to my face. “Some people are really uptight.”

Suddenly, I felt my lips move: “I saw you slide your hands down her back.”

And as I said those words, he looked at me in astonishment and fury, self-assured about himself and answered, “No, I did not. I didn’t do anything at all.” Turning his back on me again, because I did not share his song, he interpreted his own actions in a different manner, editing reality before reality edited him out of the room. There was something hilarious about him in that moment, something that made my throat choke with laughter, simply because it was true.

Meet the Author!

Daniel Schulz is a U.S.-German author based in Cologne. He is best known for his short story collection Schrei (Formidabel 2016) and his work as curator of the Kathy Acker Reading Room at the University of Cologne. In 2019 he co-organized and curated an exhibition for the Goethe Institute in Seattle for which he edited the book Kathy Acker in Seattle (Misfit Lit 2020). He also worked as co-editor of Gender Forum‘s special edition Kathy Acker: Portrait of an Eye/I (2019). His works have appeared in the journals Der Federkiel, Luftruinen, Die Novelle, The Transnational, Electronic Book Review, Mirage #5, Gender Forum, Fragmented Voices, Divanova, Kunst-Kultur-Literatur Magazin, Versification, Salut L‘absurde, Café Irreal and Cacti Fur as well as the anthologies Tin Soldier (Sarturia 2020), Corona -Schnee (Salon29 2021), Jahrbuch der Poesie 2021 (AG Literatur 2021) and Home (Fragmented Voices 2021).  Instagram: @danielschulzpoet

Author’s Note: 

The text derives specific parts of its contents from Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, replacing the subject matter of philosophy with the subject matter of atonement and regret. As Adorno juxtaposed appearance and rhetoric of philosophy against the material reality of actual historical events and acts of discrimination and violence, his concepts could also be utilized in context of what the #metoo-movement made vocal. Appropriating Adorno’s concepts helped with the emotional, hurtful, and heavy lifting of the subject matter at hand. Below are the sentence specifically appropriated for this text, a writing technique I, in this text, have adapt in kinship to Kathy Acker’s work.

1.

Author’s Text:

Atonement seems obsolete as an idea, but the idea keeps itself alive, precisely because the moment in which it could have been realized was not met. In sum, all we did was interpret what we have done, instead of changing it. Stunting ourselves, resigning from reality, committing to the defeatism of reason, we fail to change the world. 

Theodor Adorno’s Text:

Philosophie, die einmal überholt schien, erhält sich am Leben, weil der Augenblick ihrer Verwirklichung versäumt ward. Das summarische Urteil, sie habe die Welt bloß interpretiert, sei durch Resignation vor der Realität verkrüppelt auch in sich, wird zum Dafaitismus der Vernunft, nachdem die Veränderung der Welt mißlang. 

(Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialektik. Jargon der Eigenlichkeit., Suhrkamp 2003, p. 15.)

Philosophy that once seemed obsolete keeps itself alive, because the moment of its realization has been missed. The summary judgement that philosophy has merely interpreted the world, that she, crippled in herself, has resigned from the world, becomes a defeatism of reason, after changing the world has failed. 

2.

Author’s Text:

Self-reflection cannot yield before the events of history. 

Adorno’s Text:

Ihre Kritische Selbstreflexion darf aber nicht innehalten vor den höchsten Erhebungen ihrer Geschichte. 

(Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialektik. Jargon der Eigenlichkeit., Suhrkamp 2003, p. 16.)

Her critical selbstreflection cannot stand still before the highest mounts of her history.  

Jemima has made it to the end of the season, but only just.

‘I was sure we’d get at least three years out of her,’ Jen says, as I muck out the shed we call a stable.

I put this misplaced optimism down to Jemima’s acquiescence. For a donkey she is not prone to mood swings – what you ask her to do, she does, if slowly and arthritically.

It’s fair to say she has borne a heavy load since Jen acquired her in the spring. Apart from the weight of the local children, few of whom are underfed, there’s been the burden of Jen’s expectation, to which I myself have been no stranger in the two years since we became an item.

In Jen’s mind, Jemima was to be our conduit into the previously impenetrable life of the local community. Staunch as her efforts were, her success was limited. Each day, unsaddled and led sometimes by Jen, but mainly by me, she clopped up and down the sparse, unwelcoming sands across from our seafront house. The locals came, they brought their children, they parted wordlessly with a grudging pound – then, ride completed, went away. Towards the end of the season Jemima’s rear legs ceased to coordinate under load, and she is now an elderly and time consuming pet.

For Jen, however, setbacks are merely springboards to opportunity.

‘I’m a self-starter,’ she said, shortly after we were abandoned by the other members of the ‘collective of like-minded people’, who moved in (then swiftly moved out) of the derelict shell that became our home. Now, though owing much to Charleston Farmhouse with a dash of Gandhi’s ashram, Jen has rebuilt it in her own image. And it is habitable.

With the restoration of our home complete, our thoughts have turned to other forms of survival. Once it was obvious that Jemima had heehawed from the credit to the debit column, Jen applied for a part-time job in the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Her client-centred, solution-focussed approach now infiltrates most of our waking hours.

‘Are you sure your role extends to marriage guidance?’ I ask in innocence one evening, after she has spent an hour describing the interpersonal dynamics of her latest client’s life.

Jen stares at me in disbelief.

‘To heal you must become whole,’ she explains, as if to a turnip. ‘Life isn’t just about Council Tax.’

I nod and say nothing. Jen’s vision has always been broader than mine.

I observe my relief when she decides to teach yoga one evening a week. Spring is yet to arrive and the church hall she has hired is damp and drafty, but her classes are proving surprisingly popular, with women of a certain age and men of a definite vintage flocking in.

‘Their last teacher moved further down the coast,’ Jen explains to me, early on.

Others might think this ominous, but Jen does not believe in omens. Soon though, I hear her muttering as she rinses her leotard.

‘I’ve seen more flexible ironing boards,’ she intones, with bitterness, to the sink. ‘And as soon as I start the relaxation they fall asleep.’

Self-belief might be Jen’s default, but she can also feel underappreciated. 

I meanwhile, in the absence of other possibilities, have taken up busking. On overcast mornings I stand alone and unamplified in the town square, adjacent to the cultural hub that is the local Tesco, trying to imagine I’m Mississippi John Hurt.

‘Nobody listens to thirties rural blues in this day and age,’ Jen advises me later, as I drop a meagre palmful of coins on the table. ‘But perhaps if I come with you…’

I don’t think of myself as a jealous person, but find it painful to admit that Jen’s ability to engage a crowd exceeds mine by about three hundred percent. Her voice, when she so chooses, is indistinguishable from that of Memphis Minnie, her harmonica sound from that of Sonny Terry. Standing at just over five feet tall in her flip-flops and crop top she effortlessly galvanises the local shoppers into generosity.

‘You have to make the effort to project,’ she explains to me later, not unkindly. 

But soon a chill wind blows from the advice bureau. It would seem Jen’s professional involvement with the concerns of others has not been entirely consistent with her job description.

‘They don’t want creativity, they want time servers,’ she laments, as we sit together over a debriefing coffee.

‘It was tactless of the manager to offer to pay your notice if you agreed to leave immediately,’ I suggest.

With Jen, you’re never unsure when you’ve said the wrong thing.

‘Tactless bordering on bloody criminal,’ she yells.

‘I’ll make us pasta tonight,’ I mumble to her back, just as the door slams after her.

But with Jen a dark mood is but the passing of a rain cloud. Summer, she assures me, is the time of fresh beginnings. She has taken an online course in kite making, and sits at the kitchen table constructing tiny frames of dowel and balsa wood, stretched with brightly coloured painter’s cloth.

‘It’s like making miniature shoji screens,’ she tells me, her face absorbed, her fingers busy.

First batch completed, she sets up a stall on the beach. There’s a certain panache in the way she flings one of her ‘bijou aerobats’ to the wind, then manipulates its flight with supple wrists. 

‘I used to fly kites on the Downs as a kid,’ she explains, when I comment.

The sight of Jen’s aerobat pirouetting on the sea breeze has immediate effect. Kids tug their mothers’ arms while old men look on wistfully. Sales prove brisk, and in response to discussions about technique Jen offers group tutoring at a reasonable rate. Mothers guide their daughters’ hands and fathers tag along with their sons, as local defence mechanisms start to crumble.

I knew they couldn’t hold out for ever,’ Jen tells me, matter-of-factly.

 Lacking Jen’s powers of self-reinvention I tart up my CV yet again and address it to a company I know nothing about. They are seeking versatile people with initiative, they say. When I press the send button it feels like leaving an orphan on a doorstep. I decide to start a vegetable patch to preserve my self-esteem.

As the year lengthens into autumn, I take to sharing my morning thoughts with Jemima. She is a ruminative animal, in more than one sense. We stand together in the small field in front of her stable, and I explain that the future is not entirely without hope, while she grazes, and offers me the occasional solicitous glance. In moments of extreme empathy she stops chewing and rubs her muzzle against my thigh. She knows I have taken to filling my trouser pocket with oats. It is a secret we choose not to share.

Meet the Author!

Mike Fox has co-authored a book and published many articles on the human repercussions of illness. Now writing fiction, his stories have been nominated for Best of Net and the Pushcart Prize, listed in Best British and Irish Flash Fiction (BIFFY50), and included in Best British Short Stories 2018 (Salt). His story, ‘The Violet Eye’, was published by Nightjar Press as a limited edition chapbook. A collection of mainly new stories is being prepared for publication by Confingo Publishing in 2023.