2026 Blackberry Faire’s Show What You Grow Harvest Display Contest
OK, it’s only July, but it’s not too soon to start thinking about what to enter in the 2026 Show What You Grow harvest display/contest happening on Sunday, September 6. Held at the Denman Community Hall as part of the Blackberry Faire and sponsored by Denman Island Garden Society, this friendly competition is open to Denman and Hornby Islanders of all ages.
The rules are simple: all entries must be grown or hand-made by the entrant. Categories cover 30-plus varieties of vegetables, fruits, and flowers as well as harvest baskets, largest/weirdest vegetable, and homemade preserves and baked goods. Kids 12 and under are invited to submit entries in baking, vegetable decoration, flowers, and fall-themed art. There will also be a scarecrow contest, so get your imagination fired up.
To make this event truly special, we need volunteers. If you can help with setting up (possibly the night before), cleaning up, receiving/displaying entries, or judging a certain section, please call Shirley Ward at 250-335-2480. We also want to make the hall look especially festive, so please consider bringing fall-themed natural vegetation (e.g. corn stalks) or hand-made decorative items for display.
Watch for details about contest categories, scarecrows, how to enter, criteria for judging, prizes, decorating and more in August.
Q&A: Palestinian chef brings traditional cooking and food history to Vancouver Island
Q&A: Palestinian chef brings traditional cooking and food history to Vancouver Island
Izzeldin Bukhari speaks on the origin of falafel, Gaza’s rummaniyeh and why he sees food as a way to hold on to a culture under threat.
BY ERIC RICHARDS – LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER ● COMOX VALLEY ● JULY 8, 2026
Izzeldin Bukhari is a Jerusalem-based Palestinian chef who specializes in Somi cuisine — the Palestinian tradition of vegan and vegetarian cooking associated with spiritual fasting.
With his first ever Canadian tour, he aims to highlight the resilience and cultural richness of Palestine through long table dinners, cooking classes and storytelling.
Bukhari will be in Campbell River on July 11 hosting Tasting Resistance — a history of Palestinian food, and in the Comox Valley for a dinner and talk at the Comox United Church on July 14.
He will also be on Hornby Island on July 17 and Salt Spring Island on July 20.
A full list of tour dates is available on the Sacred Cuisine Canada Tour website.
The Discourse caught up with Bukhari while he was in Revelstoke to find out what he has in store for attendees, why he continues to champion Palestinian culture and how he creates connection through food.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for grammar and concision.
Eric Richards, The Discourse: Can you tell me about Sacred Cuisine and what was behind the creation of it?
I was in the process of wanting to create a business for food and I was trying to figure out my options. One day I had a question about falafel and I felt there was an idea behind the recipe, it wasn’t something just discovered by mistake. I asked around where I eat falafel and at the hummus shops and this and that, and nobody was able to give me an answer.
I continued to look and then I found the story. Basically, the Coptic Christians of Egypt are the ones who came up with the falafel as a food for Lent, the Christian fasting. This is like a thousand years ago. When I found this story, I was really happy but at the same time I was a bit upset that I didn’t know the story of something that we eat almost every day. So I decided to focus on food history.
I wanted to make the company Sacred Cuisine based on the Somi food concept to make a bold statement of what Somi food is, how it affected Palestinians and the stories behind the dishes. So it came out of my own interest of looking into food history, especially Somi food, and sharing that culture and learning about it myself.
Your mother’s family was displaced to Gaza in 1948, and you spent time visiting your grandmother there as a child. How do the specific flavours and cuisines of Gaza weave into the broader Palestinian culinary narrative you share today?
Because it’s been isolated since the 2000’s Gaza always had its unique kind of flavor and situation. For example, there is a dish that I used to eat at my grandma’s called rummaniyeh and it’s a dish made out of eggplant, lentils and dill seeds and also, a salad which is a spicy salad with tomato, chili, onion and also dill seeds.
But these dishes, I only ate them in Gaza. My mom would make them also from time to time but Gaza was the place where I ate them the most. So when I went to Gaza, even as a kid, it was a totally different portfolio of food. Even though in some ways the food is similar, Gazans have their own dishes that they make. And these two dishes kind of stayed in my mind because they were very special in flavor. These dishes became some of the dishes that I cook when I’m traveling and abroad, because I want to bring these flavors and I want people to know about these flavors and to try them.
You frequently say “food and narratives are intertwined.” When you host your events, how do the stories of the ingredients themselves act as a form of cultural preservation and peaceful resistance.
First of all, when I do my events, it’s two parts: one is the food and one is the storytelling. The food gives the opportunity for people to try, and the story will elaborate on the dishes they ate. It will explain what’s behind them and also any narrative or cultural things that come with it.
It’s like one package when I am doing an event for people to get them to know about Palestinian culinary heritage as well as Palestinian culture in general. And just through sharing my story, I am able to shed light on a lot of things — either political, religious or cultural or even my personal life growing up, to shed more light on the geographic and political restrictions that we have as Palestinians.
I feel preservation is a big part of resistance. As a Palestinian, I am very aware that my culture is under continuous threat of them [Israel] trying to delete our narrative history, confiscate the land and kick people out of their property. So from looking at the history of the Palestinian people and also my grandma and many others who lost homes and lands, it’s just been a continuous loss that we face as Palestinians. So I feel the least I can do is to preserve what I can.
I cannot preserve the land, I cannot fight and protect the land. But what I can do, I can share the story where I preserve that narrative — even my mother’s family history. To preserve the stories and how they come up and their life, it’s the best I know how to do in this situation to resist this ongoing threat to my culture.
Here in Canada, there are ongoing conversations led by Indigenous communities about food sovereignty — the idea that traditional food and cooking are inseparable from cultural survival, land rights and healing. Given that you have noted how Palestinians are becoming increasingly disconnected from their land, their own crops and traditional ingredients, how do you view the parallel struggles between Indigenous culinary preservation here and the defence of Palestinian food heritage back home?
You know, that’s an interesting question because I can relate so much to First Nations, to the Indigenous people here, and what they went through. And learning more about it and getting educated about it, I see a very similar pattern. The difference is the timeline.
The original nations over here, they went through this. And now they are in a stage where people are trying to acknowledge what has been done and they’re trying to close the gap and they’re trying to fix it in a way. While back home, it is completely the opposite — there is no acknowledgement of that.
When I look at Canada or the United States, I can see what Palestine can be in the future and maybe at the end there will be some recognition.
What do you hope people walk away with after experiencing a Sacred Cuisine event?
In general, my aim for the tour in the first place is to give the opportunity for people to try Palestinian food, to try Middle Eastern food. And also I always work in a way of bringing the unknown so, even if a person has tried Palestinian food, I want to make sure that I bring them something new. So my approach is to always look into these dishes that are probably not that popular, but they’re still delicious, and have a story in them. I’m always trying to give people more of an experience that comes from being in my shoes. Not from just the tourist point of view. I want to bring them closer to what a local person might experience: border restriction and checkpoints and such.
So for example, a lot of people will maybe go to a restaurant and they will try falafel. But how many people are going to come away with a story? And this is what I want. I want them to know the story and I heard it a lot from different people who came to my events. They’re like, ‘oh, we were eating falafel, and I told my friends about the origin stories of falafel and they were really intrigued by the story.’ So because it’s exciting, I also feel people take the initiative to tell these stories and share it with others. And that’s exactly my goal is for them to share these stories with their people as well.
Can you give us a sneak peek into what guests will be preparing and eating?
So I have the rummaniyeh and the daghha salad, the dishes I talked about earlier. They are a first course, usually on my dinners, so people get to experience them, try them. The second course is usually a rice dish. Most of the time it’s maqluba. It is another famous Palestinian dish, very Palestinian. This is usually what they experience, also with the dessert at the end.
Shucking Oysters: Towers of Power
Shucking Oysters: Towers of Power
By Alex Allen
If it’s not one thing it’s another. Everywhere we seem to be constantly hit with overarching decisions and actions that affect us all but have no control over. We have Trump in his big, bad, beautiful world playing whack-a-mole. And closer to home, we have our governments willing to destroy our country and throw away the protection key – all for the almighty dollar. What we are witnessing is an ever-growing unhealthy relationship between big business and big government, where one partner has more power over the other. And I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the government.
And so it is with no surprise, that the federal government’s industry-friendly agency, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has reached out for public consultation on proposed amendments to cell tower siting requirements. Let’s be clear, ISED may be asking for public “consultation” but they set the rules and ultimately have the final say on where cell towers are built. So, why bother?
What has the telecom industry lobbied for now? The most worrisome is pushing to streamline the approval process even further. Big business, no matter how big their basket is, can now jump ahead to the express lane and screw the rest of us. Other proposed changes include, centralizing all proposals online, which could replace traditional, local newspaper or mail notifications. They also want to limit how long municipalities can respond, meaning cell towers could be automatically “deemed approved” if a local government misses the 45-day deadline. And forget about local aesthetic or environmental concerns, it’s all about profits to shareholders. Just another blatant example of soul-sucking, business-first, top-down decision-making.
If these changes take effect, it will become even harder for the public to have any opinion, which seems to be the plan. The proposed changes eliminate virtually all meaningful local authority or local knowledge, forcing communities to accept unlimited tower installations with literally no consultation or ability to protect rural community character. Additional proposals include removing requirements for licence holders to invest in research projects, lessening annual reporting requirements for tower operators, and removing federal dispute resolution mechanisms for certain issues around tower sharing.
This approach is far from Canadian. As I keep on saying, every direction our governments take – whether it be policing, dealing with homelessness, big business and so on – we always follow the United way with unintended consequences. All of the proposals have been copied from the US playbook. Citing the current approval process as slow and costly, ISED has proposed a digital online portal where telecom companies can submit applications and communities can provide “feedback.” We call it streamlining approvals, Americans call them “rocket dockets.”
There is no question, 5G is categorically different than anything that has ever existed in the history of the planet. The multi-trillion dollar telecom industry is using the same nefarious tactics as big tobacco and big pharma. Take over the regulating agencies. Discredit or payoff scientists who do legitimate research. Pour on the propaganda to the public. Make your product as addictive as possible. There are so many reasons to raise concerns about the roll-out of 5G – the most basic of which is that the precautionary principle is not being followed. Industry research confirming that these exposures are safe are nonexistent, yet there is considerable evidence suggesting they are not.
5G uses the largely untapped bandwidth of the millimetre wavelength, between 30 and 300 GHz on the radio spectrum, which uses smaller base stations than current wireless technology. As a result, wireless antennae may be placed densely throughout neighbourhoods on lamp posts, utility poles, and buildings. Evidence to inform the development of exposure guidelines for 5G technology is limited, raising the possibility of unintended consequences. The impact to plants, animals, birds and insects – who have no voice – is huge.
Studies have found that trees dry up, have an unhealthy appearance, and experience growth delays when directly facing cell towers. Monarch butterflies are very sensitive to electromagnetic fields. Colony collapse disorder was observed in beehives exposed to radiation for 10 minutes, leaving only the queen, eggs, and a few immature workers behind. Radiation also affects pollinators and honeybees, causing navigational disorientation, lower honey production, and higher bee mortality.
Another study noted that embryos of house sparrows were damaged after being exposed to cell tower radiation for 5 to 30 minutes. Observed changes included reproductive and coordination problems and aggressiveness. White storks, rock doves, magpies, collared doves exhibited nest and site abandonment, plumage deterioration, locomotion problems, and even death. None of the symptoms existed in the neighbourhoods before construction of a cell phone tower. Exposed cows and calves developed cataracts and had defects in their memory. A study on a bat colony found a decrease in the number of bats next to a cell phone tower 80m from the colony.
In a survey of two berry farms in similar habitats, one with no cell phone tower, had abundant signs of wildlife, migrating and resident birds, bats, small and large mammals, and insects including bees. The other farm with a cell phone tower located next to the berry patch, virtually no signs of wildlife, tracks, scat, or feathers were noted. The berries on bushes were uneaten by birds and insects and the berries that fell to the ground were uneaten as well.
Whatever.
Local governments can expect an exponential increase in requests from telecom carriers seeking to install 5G equipment, with industry estimating the deployment of hundreds of thousands of antennas across Canada. In 2018 a grassroots campaign calling for a global moratorium on the deployment of 5G networks and satellites argued that there will be unprecedented global environmental change. The appeal forewarned back then, “If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet.”
ISED’s consultation will remain open until JULY 16 and then they will TELUS to Roger that.
The Book Report
The Book report 11
By A. Bae Hel
I’m back after a trip across the mountains to see the family. Many of the best books I have read came from recommendations on that side of the mountain. I am suffering a bit of Dungeon Crawler withdrawal after having finished the current published books, (a recommendation from my grandson), so I have been reading (aka listening) to the books as I drove. The story lines are so complex, that I felt I needed to listen again to catch more nuances. It was worth the time
But on to new offerings.
The Borrowed Life of Fredrick Fife
By Anna Johnston
I had to stop.
The premise is good; elderly man, about to become homeless, discovers another elderly man deceased in wheelchair at the park. As he tries to bring the body to the carers, he slips and the body tumbles into the river. He hits his head when he falls and when he comes to, the carers have mistaken him for their patient, calling him by the dead man’s name and bundling him into the van back to the nursing home. Mistaken identity continues as he looks much like the deceased, and deceased had dementia. so…
See, good premise.
But, and I didn’t get far, but filled with juvenile humor based on farts, penis and who knows what else? It is like being trapped in a car on a long road trip with a bunch of 8 year old boys.
Life is too short to read about intestinal gas as a story plot.
The Women
By Kristin Hannah
This book is all over the book lists with much raves. I have read some of her other books like The Four Winds and The Nightengale and found them a good read. I was optimistic that this would also be well researched and a worthy read. But, Ugg.
I rarely don’t finish a book so I persevered hoping to find something of value, but when you write an unlikable character you really need to have a dynamite story line. Sadly, just an unlikable character and a false promise of the story of the nurses of Viet Nam.
Full disclosure, I have never been in a war, nor am I American, but I have been a nurse in acute care for over 40 years, including America. I know nursing, which is why I was so looking forward to this story, and perhaps my disappointment of that story in why it gets a 2 star.
Frankie is a privileged naïve childlike woman in the 1960s who goes to Viet Nam in a misguided attempt to make her parents proud, or something. And it is likely that the experience of nurses in Viet Nam is as describe, but the experience of nurses in the world back home, which is where the majority of this book takes place is simply written to manipulate and try to build Frankie into a martyr character.
She is an OR nurse, and I do believe OR nurses in Viet Nam DID perform tasks outside of their scope back home, ABSOLUTELY, but where was the head nurse in Viet Nam? It is simply Frankie going rogue, Frankie being schooled by physicians, Frankie getting burned out and no leave because the unit needs her, only her to save them all. And granted, nurses in acute care do sacrifice themselves all the time for the good of the unit.
And once she is back home, she is a nurse who thinks bedside nursing is beneath her because a chop shop in Viet Nam led her to believe she was hot shit. Once she is finally back in the OR the narrative is so unbelievable. GSW do not come bursting into the OR. Clothes are not cut off in OR – can you imagine the horror of contaminating the OR like it is a battle field casualty station? Why are the GSW pumping blood, does EMS in the US not know about pressure on wounds? Is there no ER trauma bay? And gun shot wounds to the chest do not need and emergency tracheostomy, they need a chest tube. Why is an OR nurse wandering around the hospital into random patients’ rooms to hold their hands as they die? Nor does any hiring director or manager care one bit about your marks in nursing school, nor do they prevent you from working to your scope. Even in the 1960s and 1970s.
Granted Frankie is a walking disaster, but the stories of her escapades seem like they are written to show how dedicated she is to nursing, and how caring and compassionate, but all I read was a savior nurse misguided by her own sense how she was needed.
Now I get the PTSD was and is a very real tragedy, and lives are ruined. I have no quibble with that aspect of the story, but surely the entire US public wasn’t ignorant to nurses going to war? Given they have been doing it since the inception of nursing. Maybe I give the American public too much credit…
Then there is the stringing together of snipts of things from the 1970s, lists of music, casual references to events, and dear lord the description of the clothes people decided to wear at every occasion. – it all seems so calculated to nostalgia manipulation. It goes on and on and on. I kept thinking it was over, but no, new bad decisions and catastrophes. Lists and lists are not plot development.
I can’t recommend you put any time into this, I am sorry, I have. Nursing is full of trauma, and resiliency. Frankie never made me feel any compassion for her and Florence is rolling over in her grave.
Preview: Their Blood, Our Bullets by Aaron Maté
Award winning independent journalist Aaron Mate, son of Hornby Islanders Gabor and Rae, has a new book coming out in October. In it, Mate discusses the precursors to the proxy war in Ukraine, including the falsities of RussiaGate, in deconstructing the lies we’ve been told about Russia’s motivations, and revealing the U.S. and NATO’s interference in Ukraine in opposition to peace agreements, and that have been undermined by Western governments, leading to the death of 100s of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and mass destruction in Ukraine.
About the book: “In this bombshell investigation, years in the making, Aaron Maté exposes Washington’s professed support for Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy as a sham. Building on the rigorous, fearless reporting that has established him as a leading independent journalist, Maté irrefutably documents how the US and its NATO allies have meddled in Ukraine with the real aim of weakening and destabilizing Russia.
In pursuit of this aggressive geopolitical design, successive US administrations exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions and sabotaged every chance for compromise while relentlessly backing Russia into a corner. Gambling with the global economy and risking nuclear war, US planners then provoked and prolonged an illegal Russian invasion that has had catastrophic consequences—for the Ukrainian people above all.”
Praise for Aaron Mate: “One hell of a reporter.” Seymour Hersh, legendary investigative journalist.
“Exposes wars and crimes and corruption—Maté, a courageous, independent journalist, has done a great service.” Katrina vanden Heuvel, Publisher of The Nation magazine.
“A must-read for anyone hoping to transcend Western propaganda about the Ukraine War.” John J. Mearsheimer, geopolitical analyst and professor at the University of Chicago.
Their Blood, Our Bullets can be pre-ordered here: https://orbooks.com/catalog/their-blood-our-bullets/
Next Week: A review of Hornby Islander Sally Campbell’s new book, “A Mediator’s Eye View, Essays on War, Peace, and Shared Humanity”
Campbell touches on the proxy war in Ukraine, the genocide and apartheid in Palestine, among many other topics. This is Sally Campbell’s clarion call for peace, sanity, and environmental activism in a troubled world, amid the confusion propelled by the ubiquity of propaganda in corporate media. Many of these essays first appeared in print in The Islands Grapevine.
A Love Letter to Canada and NATO’s Budget
A Love Letter to Canada and NATO’s Budget
By Cylon2036 We/Us
There comes a time in every civilization when it must ask the truly important questions. Could the Canadian and NATO defense budgets be even larger? Is there room in the national budgets for one more stealth aircraft with a name that sounds like an energy drink? The answer, naturally, is yes.
Why stop at offensive weapons when we can have offensive weapons with premium features? Every announcement of another hundred billion dollars in military spending should be accompanied by fireworks, orchestras, and commemorative mugs. If spreadsheets don’t make military analysts weep tears of patriotic joy, then have we really invested enough?
But what about the Russians, Iranians, and Palestinians? Clearly, the only sensible response to every geopolitical headline is to commission more weapons systems, with continual explanations by Prime Minister Mark Carney about why this procurement cycle is different. History may be complicated, diplomacy may be difficult, but procurement timelines are forever!
Critics mutter about costs, priorities, or diplomacy. They simply fail to appreciate the majesty of a NATO alliance where every challenge can be met with another acronym and another line item in the budget. Peace, after all, is best celebrated by ensuring accountants in government ministries never know sweet relief. One can only dream bigger!
Such a puzzle will never be fully solved
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, June 19th, 2026,
Such a puzzle will never be fully solved
I have spent the better part of forty-seven years reading verses of this old and half-mad nature – verses that the British Library keeps in one of its back-shelved corners. The poem that started it all was more of a tangled riddle than a lament, but one loaded with references to the Green Man, Merlin of the borders, the Picts and the coming of the Gaels – and a whole host of other half-remembered mythic names that make one’s head spin. The verses referenced elements like “the knee-high nineteen forties”, “the waist-high nineteen fifties” and even “the middle row” that would “put the answer down”. Such nonsense tends to come from children scribbling after long nights of history lessons – so I, a wry old observer of absurdity, could not help but smile.
The tone was decidedly dark, as if the writer had swallowed an entire tankard of mead whilst reciting the lineage of Britain from the days of Noah’s brother Parthenon to the arrival of the flaxen sons of Mil. The verses spoke of “the green the garden and poetry attest their artistry thus and otherwise” and of “the comings and the goings in the high and far off times stacked and dried”. I saw it all in such a dim corner of the reference room, whilst watching the motes of dust dance in the light of one of the museum’s cracked windows. It was a perfect example of how we – the living – try so desperately to piece together a past that refuses ever to solve itself.
It was on a blustery Thursday afternoon when I took a wander through the museum’s newly developed wing – a glass-covered annex built to exhibit Ancient Britain. The walls were a sombre grey, as befits the displays of axes, bowls and stone circles that always seem to spring up where either Romans or Druids have trodden. The exhibit I paused at featured a group of statues – described in the catalogue as “celestial guardians, rendered in a contemporary medium.” While somewhat vague descriptions applied to both group and statues, I thought this was an ideal spot to linger – something I am wont to do when confronted with such order outside the world.
The statues featured impressive heights – far beyond any human figure – and were formed entirely from Rubik’s cubes. Each cube occupied a different shade of the original six colours. The group nonetheless presented an impression of a body – a torso of red, blue and green squares, long and slender legs that ended in a point at the ankle and arms that stretched outward towards the air. The most striking aspect was that each figure was completely nude; the limbs, marked out by the cubes, featured a faint, translucent glow in the spaces between the squares. The entire creation appeared as though fashioned from light trapped inside a child’s puzzle game.
Standing here, my eyes adjusting, I heard a soft rhythmic clicking – the sound of a Rubik’s cube being turned somewhere in a quiet room. The figures appeared to be moving – albeit without any particular purpose or intention – taking tentative steps to find a comfortable resting position upon the floor. The long legs of interlocking squares featured a gentle sway whilst the cubes that formed torsos made very small increments of rotation. It was as if the figures engaged in an endless silent game, endeavouring to solve themselves – a puzzle that could never be completed in any state of completion.
I could not help but laugh – a short dry chuckle at such an echoing corner of stone walls. The vision was utterly absurd yet profoundly beautiful and faintly unsettling all at once. The figures of cold plastic possessed a naïve innocence – like newborn angels exploring existence in its naked state. The long legs – each a column of interlocking squares – displayed a mechanical grace but also a whimsical element. Such faces – if they could truly be called faces – were just a single row of cubes slowly rotating in one direction after another.
One of the angels paused as its torso rotated a full ninety degrees – as if it saw me directly. The cubes lining the “face” aligned for only a momentary fraction of time to form what almost looked like a smile – before scattering once more. I felt a chill – not from fear but from understanding that these creations were attempting to answer a question that has haunted humankind since the dawn of staring up at the stars. What are we? The angel’s cubes made a soft, soft noise, as if the answer lay just out of reach – perpetually just a twist away.
I stepped closer and whispered the words: “You are the answer to a puzzle that never was.” The cubes shivered – the red squares flashing in recognition – and the whole figure deepened to a shade of amber. Yet just as quickly as it brightened, the glow faded, and the statue settled once more into its silent shuffling.
The rest of the exhibit passed before me as a blur of ancient stones and even older stories, but my mind remained fixed upon those Rubik’s cube angels. The long legs brought thoughts of the verses describing “the knee-high nineteen-forties” and “the waist-high nineteen-fifties” – arbitrary references to time and humanity. I thought of the Picts who were “clean as clams, witty and thick as thieves,” followed by the “flaxen sons of Mil” who came after them, each trying to make their mark upon the land and upon the riddle of belonging. I thought of Merlin – the wizard of the borders – who, legend says, turned in his river grave whilst waiting for a time when the stones would speak again.
When I exited the museum, the sky was a bruised purple – twilight at work upon the old stones and making them look like bruised fruit. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and the distant tolling of a church bell for vespers. I made my way home with the verses of the poem still rattling through my head like a half-solved Rubik’s cube. The night remained dark, yet the streetlights flickered with the same glow as the angels’ cubes. Such was the feeling I could shake – somewhere deep in the hidden corners of this grey old island there surely are beings formed out of coloured squares attempting to work out what they truly are.
I am an observer – a man of middle age who watched the world try to solve itself. The poem, the museum and the angels all fit – a jumble of history, myth and absurdity. Such a puzzle will never be fully solved. Yet perhaps that is precisely the point – we are all Rubik’s cubes in our own ways. The angels, beautiful and nude, with long legs formed of interlocking squares, will continue to shuffle and click and wonder about existence – whilst I, for one, will continue to watch the show – a wry smile adorning my lips until that very day when the cubes finally align.
Scarytale
Scarytale pt.3 of 3
by Quinn Ireland
Larry:
Lawrence and I stared at this giant circus tent for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes. The height of the tent is taller than most of the trees that circle around the clearing. Hundreds of ropes are staked into the ground holding the tent upright, while the entrance to the tent is wide open.
“Shoul.. Should w… we g…g… g go che.. check i.. i… it out?”
Lawrence spoke in a shaky tone;
“I… it’s r…r… real.”
I had so many questions. How is this myth real? When did this get here? And most of all; Why is there a creepy circus tent in the middle of the forest?
“I want to check it out.” I said calmly.
“You can come if you want.”
“Are you crazy?” Lawrence whined
“What good would come out of checking this place out, it looks creepy as hell!”
“Isn’t this the whole point of our adventure anyway?” I spoke.
“We were hoping to find this, and now you don’t want to go explore it?”
“I just didn’t expect it to be real, would you, Scary? Did you believe that it was real before now? Did you?!”
“Shhhhhh, quiet down. Okay, I didn’t think that we would find this, but let’s at least peek in the door.”
Lawrence thought about this for a minute.
“Fine. But we’ll just peek in the door, no going inside.”
Together, we creep out from the trees and into the open click our flashlights on. We pad across the field until we reach the tent. The canvas for the door is rolled up to the sides to reveal the well-lit inside of the tent.
“You look first.” Lawrence says.
“No, we’ll both look, on three. One… two… three!”
I couldn’t believe what was inside.
Lawrence:
“Three!” Scary said. We both peered into the tent.
It looked as if the circus had been going on while we were in the woods.
Clowns held by thin cables hung, suspended in mid-air. A lion had its mouth wide open as if it had just been doing a “roar!” And all the white lights pierced our eyes. We both ducked behind the door wide-eyed and mouths hanging open.
“I gotta get a better look.” said Scary. He sat up and looked back in.
“No! Don’t, Scary!” I said while pulling him to the ground.
“Why not, I want to see what that was… wait! Do you have your camera?”
“Yeah.”
“Give it to me, I need some proof.”
“Fine, just get one picture and get we’ll get out of here.”
I rifle through my backpack until I find it. My prized possession. I had saved up for the camera for years, I bring it everywhere I go. I hand it to Scary. He points it around the corner of the door, and it goes off:
“Click!”
“Got it, let’s move” he yells.
We run back to the edge of the clearing and turn back to take one more look at the massive circus tent, before turning around. Right into a clown’s face.
Larry:
There we were. Standing at the edge of the woods staring into the horrific face of a clown. “Arrrghhghh!!” We ran past the tent, but the clown followed in a fast pursuit. We then circled the tent and, a few moments later, we were back at the front door of the tent.
“I think we lost him.” said Lawrence breathing heavily.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go in the tent.”
“Yeah, we’ll hide there.”
We duck through the door into the tent. Only, there is no light inside the place that had been blinding just minutes before.
“I dropped my flashlight outside!” said Lawrence
“Damm, I did too.”
We scramble around the tent before hunkering down in the corner. Then a faint light flickered across the tent from where we were sitting. Suddenly, all the lamps turn on at the same time. The clown is standing right in front of us.
Lawrence:
There was a clown standing silently in front of us, grinning and chuckling. Then he charged.
“Ahhhhhhrggg!!!”
We both screamed. Now the clown stood about a foot away.
“YOU GOT PRANKED!!!!”
All sorts of people pop out of separate places. I recognize Mr. Underburrow, the shopkeeper, Mrs. Kate, the preschool teacher, and even Axe man, nobody really knows about him. We understand now, this whole story was a fairytale. A scarytale. Glad that there’s no school tomorrow, Mrs. Ruchill would make sure that I get the most doo doo grade possible. Maybe I’ll go to Scary’s house, but I’ll consider it after my heart stops pounding from fear.
And so, as the two boys walk home in the wee hours of the morning, they know that this adventure will always be remembered. The scarytale…