Pirates

July 2, 2024July 3, 2024 David Holcomb3 Comments

The visitor wore cargo shorts two sizes too big, a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt, grimy canvas deck shoes, and a blond ponytail.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t have a library card. I’m a pirate.”

Kellie Lovell didn’t bat an eyelash. Situations like this came with her job.

“In that case, you won’t be able to take any materials out of the building.”

The man smiled. He was missing a tooth on the left side, lower jaw.

“Yes, ma’am. I understand. Where I’m staying, I don’t have much room for books.”

The librarian nodded. She assumed that the visitor was living in one of two nearby facilities, a homeless shelter and an assisted-living center, which together provided a number of unusual library visitors every week.

“Tell me again the name of the ship?”

“It’s the Bountiful Bess,” the visitor said. “She was the Battling Bess, but me and my friends, we changed the name. We didn’t want to give the wrong impression.”

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Volcano

May 11, 2024July 3, 2024 David HolcombLeave a comment

In the westernmost part of the African nation of Cameroon lies Lake Nyos.

As lakes go, Nyos is not all that large, a bit less than four hundred acres. It is an expanse of still water surrounded by fertile green hills, occupying a crater on the side of an inactive—mostly inactive—volcano, the water held in place by a natural dam of old lava. To all appearances, this is a peaceful, green place.

Far beneath Nyos, however, lies another lake, this one of molten rock, a survivor of the days when volcanoes reared fiery heads, and the region was racked by earthquakes and eruptions. Gases rising from that crucible gradually work their way up through fifty miles of solid rock to the surface, where they escape one prison only to be trapped again, this time by the weight of the lake on top of them. The carbon dioxide escaping from the magma below has accumulated for eons, with hundreds of thousands of tons of gas slowly becoming trapped in the cold waters of the deep lake bottom.

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The Late Blonde

April 23, 2024July 3, 2024 David HolcombLeave a comment

The dead blonde in the babydoll nightie was fast becoming a nuisance.

Danny Zickell struggled to keep his mind on his playing, watching the apparition sashay among the tables. She was mouthing the lyrics to “I Surrender Dear,” her eyes half closed in what she undoubtedly believed was an expression of soulful concentration, while the ostrich-feather trim of her outfit swayed gently in counterpoint to the music.

Under any other circumstances, Danny would have been happy to look at Emily DuCaine all night long: she was five-five, curvy and blonde, with the kind of big, blue eyes that made you feel like you were the only man in the world. Silky Maloney had undoubtedly thought he was the only man in Emily’s world right up until he caught her sharing a sweet little love nest with a trombone player on the fourth floor of the Olympia Hotel.

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Rimbaud

April 23, 2024July 3, 2024 David HolcombLeave a comment

During the years I’ve lived in this city, the hotel at the corner of Centennial and Eleventh Avenue has been a Hyatt, a Marriott, and before both of those, something called the University Suites. Tonight, it is a Hilton. By Christmas, it will be a Best Western.

Someday, they’ll throw in the towel and tear the place down, but not until long after I’ve moved on. The old girl still has a couple of dances left in her; La Quinta and Holiday Inn have yet to take her out onto the floor.

It’s not a bad hotel, and its location is supremely visible, on one of the busiest intersections at that end of town, within walking distance of two hospitals. That said, it’s noisy, and the parking deck is impossible to get in and out of during rush hour.

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Prissy’s Mother

April 23, 2024July 3, 2024 David HolcombLeave a comment

Prissy sat at the kitchen table, leafing through a Betty Crocker cookbook; her mother stood behind her, braiding Prissy’s silky blond hair.

Prissy: the name defined her. No one called “Prissy” by friends and foes alike could possibly be anything other than a high-strung, imperious, bratty child. Prissy was all these things and more, and she ruled the household into which she had been born with a relentless, whiny arrogance. She was not reading the cookbook, merely looking at the pictures, occasionally holding up the book to demand that her mother prepare this dessert or that casserole for dinner tomorrow night.

“Not this week, honey. You know we have all that chicken in the freezer…” When Prissy’s mother talked, you could hear the origins of Prissy’s whine. Less affected, more heartfelt, plowed deep into a personality already heavy with grievance, but still recognizable.

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Good, gooder, goodest.

September 17, 2023October 12, 2023 David HolcombLeave a comment

Way back in 1770 the French philosopher, historian, and poet Voltaire wrote that “Perfect is the Enemy of Good.”¹ He was quoting an Italian proverb, which was itself probably derived from the Greeks or the Etruscans or somebody, but we’ll go with Voltaire because he said so many wonderful things and deserves all the credit he can get.

This statement, “Perfect is the Enemy of Good,” seems troubling at first glance. Shouldn’t we strive for perfection, even if we know that we — flawed beasts that we are — can never achieve it? According to yet another poet, Robert Browning, “…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”²

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Prisoners in the museum

August 22, 2021October 12, 2023 David Holcomb2 Comments

The classical Greek conception of the afterlife was not a particularly attractive one.

In Homer’s universe, the vast majority of the dead — those not singled out by the gods for special treatment — did not wake up in some bright city of jasper and chalcedony. There were no beautiful houris, no songs, no drinking with old comrades, no dancing in fields of asphodel. Death meant a transition from the daylight world to a gray twilight, a cavern of ashes and dust, populated by muttering shadows. The Homeric dead retained their identities only through the living, sustained in the memories of those left behind. As those memories faded, or the people who had known them in life themselves died off, the dead reflected that loss, becoming more and more vague, insubstantial, losing all individual selfhood. The one thing that could provide a moment’s respite in this slide into oblivion was blood. The blood of the living, freely given, would restore a shade’s identity and memory, at least for a short time.

Pretty grim, right? We are talking about death, after all, the big D, the final darkness, the end of life, so to expect sunshine and roses and platoons of beautiful virgins does seem a bit naive.

If you’re one of those folks who believes that you will, upon the death of your body, rise up to enjoy dancing and singing and partying for all eternity with your ancestors back to Adam and Eve, I’m not here to rain on your parade. We all look for consolation where we can. What I really want you to think about, looking out at those gray multitudes in the Greek afterlife vibrating to the last fading echoes of selfhood, is the concept of identity.

* * *

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In the Mood

January 19, 2021October 12, 2023 David Holcomb2 Comments

Way back during my turbulent twenties – about the time Nancy Reagan was tossing out Rosalynn’s White House china, and Mount St Helens was tossing its summit into low earth orbit – I had a friend.

We’re going to call this friend “Carl,” mainly because that’s his name, and when I try to use pseudonyms I lose track of who’s who from one paragraph to the next. Carl was a director of theatrical productions, and possessed a wealth of interesting – if occasionally impenetrable – epigrams with which he informed and edified his actors. In the course of a friendship that lasted many years (and continues to this day, thanks to the internet) I managed to retain two important and enduring lessons from Carl’s store of wisdom:

A) that cultural sophistication is something you evolve over time, not something you can pick up by watching a lot of public television, and

B) that “mood” spelled backwards is “doom”.

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A Likely Story

August 25, 2019October 12, 2023 David HolcombLeave a comment

“It was a likely story. But then, all of his stories were likely.”
– Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

In a somewhat pointless exchange on Facebook recently (but aren’t they all, usually?) a friend-of-a-friend, struggling to defend against a criticism of current US President Donald Trump, trotted out the “birther” trope: the assertion that Barack Obama was actually born in Africa.

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