Frames ON
The Circular Library of Stones
Frames OFF
By Carol Emshwiller Poison (part 1 of
2)
by Beth Bernobich
4/30/01
1/20/03 Our
keepers, the
They said all this wasn't true. That there had been no city on this site scientists, had used
complicated words
since even before the time of the Indians . . . that there had been no like metamorphosis
bridge across the (now dried up) river and no barriers against the mud. "If and hormones and
camouflage to
you have been searching for a library here," they said, "or for old coins,
explain us. We
you've been wasting your time." could turn invisible,
they'd said. We
For lack of space I had put some of the small, white stones in plant could change from
baskets and hung them from the ceiling by the window. I don't argue with male to female and
back. Survival
people about what nonexistent city could have existed at this site. I just
adaptations, they'd
collect the stones. (Two have Xs scratched on them, only one of which I called it. I wondered
scratched myself.) And I continue digging. The earth, though full of if what Yenny did
stones of all sizes, is soft and easy to deal with. Often it is damp and was for our
survival.
fragrant. And I disturb very little in the way of trees or plants of any real
size here. Also most of the stones, even the larger ones, are of a size
Rushes #1 of 12:
that I can manage fairly well by myself. Besides, mainly it's the stones One Is All Alone
that I want to reveal. I don't want to move them from place to place by Jay Lake
except some of the most important small ones, which I take home with 1/20/03 "So," says
a voice of rattling
me after a day's digging. Often I have found battered aluminum pots and
leaves and creaking
pans around the site. Once I found an old boot and once, a pair of broken branches. "At last
glasses; but these, of course, are of no significance whatsoever, being you return."
clearly of the present.
Interrupt
by Jeff Carlson
Gaining access to their books! If I could find the library and learn to read
1/13/03 Whatever
their writing! If I could find, there, stories beyond my wildest dreams. A happened to the sun
love story, for instance, where the love is of a totally different kind . . . a seems to be
kind of ardor we have never even thought of, more long-lasting than our intensifying. This
time I blacked out
simple attachments, more world-shaking than our simple sexualities. Or a
for at least five
literature that is two things at once, which we can only do in drawings,
days.
where a body might be, at one and the same time, a face in which the
breasts also equal eyes, or two naked ladies sitting side by side, arms L'Aquilone du
raised, that also forms a skull, their black hair the eye sockets. Estrellas (The
Kite of Stars)
by Dean Francis
For quite some time now I have had sore legs, so digging is an exercise I Alfar, illustration by
can do better than any other, and though at night my back pains me, the Hal Hefner
pains usually go away quite soon. By morning I hardly feel them. So the 1/6/03 He told her
that such a kite was
digging, in itself, pleases me. There is the pleasure of work. A day well
impossible, that
spent. Go home tired and silent. But mostly, of course, it is the slow there was no
revelation of the stones that I care about. Sometimes they cluster in material
groups so that I think that here must have been where a fireplace was, or immediately
available for such
perhaps a throne. Sometimes they form a long row that I think might have
an absurd
been a wall or a bench. And I have found a mirror. Two feet underground, undertaking, that
and so scratched that one can see oneself only in little fish-shaped there was, in fact,
flashes -- a bit of an eye, a bit of lip -- but for even that much of it to no design for a kite
that supported the
have been preserved all this time is a miracle. I feel certain that if they
weight of a person.
had a library, it's logical they would also have had mirrors. Or if they had
mirrors, it certainly follows they could have had a library. Archived Fiction
Dating back to
I keep the mirror with me in my breast pocket. (I wear a man's old fishing 9/1/00
vest.) When people ask me what I'm doing out here, I show the mirror to
them along with a few smooth stones.
At night I write. I shut my eyes and let my left hand move as it wishes.
Usually it makes only scratchings, but at other times words come out.
Once I wrote several pages of nothing but no, no, no, no, no, and after
that, on, on, on, and on, but more and more often there are longer words
now, and more and more often they are making some kind of sense.
Yesterday, for instance, I found myself writing: Let us do let us do and do