The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.27
First Lines
"I was asleep when he died." —Patti Smith, Just Kids
Here we are: smack dab in the middle of it. Summer. Long days. The swelter. The Tour de France on the tele playing tug of war with the World Cup for our attentions… Many of us are already off on our annual walk about, visiting the mountains or the relatives or the ocean… Perhaps hiking the West Highland Way (beware the midges). Thoughts become less focused and we catch ourselves just hanging out. So, poor yourself a cup of coffee, call up a friend or two and put some tunes on the juke. It's time to unwind the twist of demands that pull our attentions toward deadlines. Chill. Let your mind and being wander a while — it’ll find its way back home when needed…
Peace,
Dante
In this Issue
- Painting by Deon Morrow
- Micro Fiction by Anthony Ladesich
- Music by Connie Dover
Painting by Deon Morrow
Jupiter Moon
by Anthony Ladesich
Author’s Preface for Thomas Gage’s book Jupiter Moon
Dated - September 24, 2036
In the sweltering summer months of 2032, after we had all been warned by the National Weather Bureau and various other government agencies to eliminate our exposure to the sun, I found myself nocturnal. That is not unusual in and of itself as a great many artists are nocturnal by nature. But I was a creature of the light and it took some effort for me to retune my body clock to favor nighttime. I did so in order to regain some semblance of my former life. For me, that meant that I would wake up at around 8:30pm, or whenever the sun began to set, to brew a pot of coffee, walk my dog down to the park, stop at the bodega for an egg-cheese and then come home to start writing. That was when I had trained myself to conjure the muse. Though, I suppose in this season of my life it was less a conjuring and more of an agreement that I made with myself to not wither on the figurative vine in the face of so much change.
The darkness was strange to me at first. But so was the idea that the sun, the thing that makes all life possible, could also poison our skin and make us sick. Death was all around us. Inescapable, in fact. We all lost people. I certainly did. My editor, Kathy Cosgrove was the first to go. Next, my childhood best friend, Brian.
...then, my wife Julie.
I was devastated.
I didn’t write a word for months. I isolated. I didn’t speak to anyone but my dog. I had to remind myself how to breathe. How to live. How to write. So, everyday like clockwork, I would brew my coffee, walk my dog, eat my egg sandwich and stare at a blinking cursor. I suffered what felt like an endless string of false starts and terrible rubbish that would have ended up in the fire, were this not a digital age.
Then, just before sunrise on July 27, 2032, I sat at my desk after a long night of nothing. I pulled out the track-lock pen Julie had given me for Christmas that first year we were married. Julie was always my first and best audience. I reached for her half-used yellow legal pad. She must have used it to write grocery or to-do lists, because I could still make out the indentations from her past pen strokes. I started to write her a letter. A futile act considering she’d passed weeks ago. To be completely honest, it was as much for me as for her. As I stained the pages with pain, I wrote this phrase: How am I supposed to learn to live in the shadow cast by a dying star without you to keep me company?
I recall that date because we would have been celebrating Julie’s 53rd birthday.
In that moment, I received the inspiration to write Jupiter Moon. I imagined a world in revolt. An existence inverted. I created Capitan Laurie Maron and Lt. Commander Alex Lowry, explorers bonded by their mission to outrun the rays of the sun, to make it to an abandoned lunar outpost on Callisto, the most beautiful moon of Jupiter.
In some ways, this whole novel is simply a love letter to Julie: To my love, without whom I am lost in the sea of inky blackness that still lives between the stars.
Painting by Deon Morrow
Restless Angel
by Connie Dover