Illustrated fiction post..

Sorry I've been so notably absent, so much to do after the Design Week shows so without further ado!...
A eargerly awaited illustrated fiction post from Julia F Green.. here it is..
Just a note.. I'm thinking of combining these cool illustrated fiction post into a zine, what do you all think about that good idea? Id appreciate your thoughts.. :)

Est


When Clarice turned the corner, she said shit. Somehow, overnight, two cranes had appeared in the middle of the block of 20th Street she walked down each day to get to work. As everyone in New York knew, cranes were falling out of the sky and to walk under one was to look God in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself. That dude was not going to laugh that one off. Kaboom, and they’re digging for your wallet in five feet of rubble.

She could have turned back—she could have gone back to 6th Avenue, walked up or down a block, over to 7th and then cut back to 20th. But what a waste of fucking time that would be. Who lives in New York and walks around in circles just to avoid danger? Clarice murmured the only prayer she remembered from her mandatory early childhood church attendance, opened her umbrella to the clear blue sky, and strode toward her destiny.

Wednesday's Illustrated fiction post, "Postcards"

When I feel sad, I go to the junk store and leaf through the postcards. They have highly contrasted color photos of state capitals or big block letters that say "Greetings from the Grand Canyon!" with slivers of cacti and Indian jewelry within each letter. On the back, wives have written in loopy script: "The weather in St. Louis has been great. Only one day of rain and tomorrow we’re going to visit the Arch!" Or: "Hello from Idaho! Hope you’re well." They were always addressed to Mrs. Harold Mathers or Mrs. Ronald Kline or Mrs. Lawrence Bennett. Most date to the early 60s, when the stamps cost four cents. I picture tan women in big sunglasses and big hairdos writing the postcards to their friends, licking the stamps and affixing them carefully, while their husbands check under the hood or buy soft drinks. They wear lipstick and polyester and when I think of those ladies, and when I think of their vacations, seeing the U.S.A. from the passenger seats of their Chevrolets, I don’t feel so sad anymore.

Illustrated fiction

Here’s Wednesdays illustrated fiction story post--the highlight of my week created in partnership with Julia Green fiction writer extraodinare:
This one is brilliant!

Lovebirds

It's a funny thing, being married to someone for 50 years. Every once in a while we end up at the mall, and while Earl is marveling over the appliances you can buy all in one place on the cheap, I go over to the bookstore and watch the people watching the books. There are these young things with teased up hair and rocks on their hands, scurrying around like field mice, can't get their hands on those books fast enough. The ones they want, they're all called things like Thin Enough and Happy Enough and Cook Your Way to a Perfect Marriage. I usually go to the cafeteria part, get myself a small cup of coffee, and park at a table where I can see 'em well. Every once in a while, after I put two sugars in my coffee and start over to that table, somebody as old as my grandkid rushes over and calls me 'ma'am' while offering to help me along. I started getting ma'amed as soon as I was married, even though I was 25 going on 12. Today, even with my rickety hip and silver hair and funny smells where there didn't used to be any, honest to God I don't think of myself as a ma'am. A ma'am's got a beehive and handbags that match her shoes. All I know is whenever I hear ma'am, I think of Earl's daddy and his big old Studebaker that he let Earl take me out in on a Friday night and we'd park up on any old hill where we knew we wouldn't be bothered and we'd fog up those windows till there was no air left in there to breathe. These girls reading the magazines looking for the tips, clipping out the secret formulas, the ten signs of whatever, they think it wasn't like that back then, treat me like some celibate grandma who never had a day of fun. Sure, I remember the ration cards and the victory gardens, but the past ain't a history book. We raised four kids and between all those babies crying and doors slamming and pots of whatever cookin' on the stove, we still found time for plenty of hanky panky. Drove the kids crazy sometimes, especially when they were teenagers and started getting wise, realizing there was a reason their old parents were so happy all the time. I don't want to ruin nobody's fun, but those girls with the stacks of books under their arms, well if they spent fifty dollars on something nice, instead of those boring books, you know? My favorite part is when Earl comes back, some kinda new tool in a big old plastic bag in his hand. I'm still staring away at people in a way that really makes them think I've got the forgetting disease and I wandered out of some place and pretty soon I'm going to start taking all my clothes off and yelling and they won't know what to do with me. When he sees me see him, his face lights up, and he hustles over and kisses me on the mouth in a way that makes everybody uncomfortable. Can't figure it out myself; I always thought two old people not in love was worse than two who were.

A fiction drawing project.

Here’s Wednesdays story post: the highlight of my week created in partnership with Julia Green, fiction writer extraordinaire. We will be posting fiction and drawing together inspired by each others work, I draw, she writes, I draw in response so on and so forth. Enjoy.

While her grandmother slept, Martina stood out on the balcony and peered at the fruit stand below. Even from three floors up, she could see that the pears and apples were pockmarked and bruised. The melons were beginning to ooze and the bananas were the wrong shade of brown. She wondered who would pay for such things.

The man who ran the fruit stand always sat to its left, in a brown folding chair she saw him unfold very early in the morning when he arrived. Every day he left by mid-afternoon, so Martina, who was only able to get out for a few hours in the evening when Mrs. Dax, the next-door neighbor, could watch Nana, had never seen his face. She knew only the top of his head, the tawny circle of bare freckled scalp and the black and gray halo of hair surrounding it. And she saw his hands, also freckled, which held the newspaper at the beginning of the day and rested calmly in his lap afterward, their stasis interrupted occasionally, when some passerby pressed money into his hand in exchange for a bag of fruit.

When the fruit man sold nothing, did nothing, moved so little she wondered if he’d expired, Martina had to shift her gaze to the traffic light on the corner, staring at the green, yellow, red till her vision was splotchy and dizzying. But on the day that he looked up, searching the clouds for some definitive sign that the rain was on its way, Martina was staring right at him, right at the bald head she’d been secretly watching for three months. When he waved, she stared for a second, seeing from the corner of her eye that the light was red, and then ran back into the apartment where Nana was lightly snoring on the sofa, her nightgown bunched up, revealing her wrinkled knees.

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