Summer Premiere Issue
Alisdair McHughes brings us a harrowing three-mile journey to Hell; with parable, L. MacPherson ponders the utility of wonder; and staff cartoonist, Max, delivers flowers in a way no one expected.
Hell has many rooms—nearly as many as there are people. Some rooms look nicer than others, at least at first, and draw many undirected souls into permanent residency. Others see only provisional occupancy. Those rooms are easy to spot. Covered in cheap subway tiles, they reek of burning kitchen grease and bleach, and rarely offer more than a plastic lawn chair and cat-chewed mini-blinds. As a blessing, such coinciding disincentives make these rooms easier for some to escape, though sadly, not all. But those nicer rooms—they come with terrific pay packets, comfy leather executive chairs, paid expenses and investment funds. Some even have well-stocked liquor cabinets and generous paid time off—clever distractions so you’ll mostly forget the “Hell” part. Mostly. Without a well-planned exit strategy, one can become stuck in those rooms well past any point of personal benefit.
Regardless of whether one’s stay in Hell is temporary or for the long term, there is a particular ritual that takes you to your personalised room in Hell at least five days a week. This is known as a “commute”, though it never involves a reduced sentence. Akin to the Roman Triumph, during each morning’s commute, you process down a long road until you cross Hell’s pomerium and into your personal domain of daily servitude. There’s little fanfare. But to be honest, plenty of hecklers. Like your mother, for instance.
Amanda thought of her commute as “running a gauntlet”, which was fairly accurate, all things considered. Her room in Hell was situated in a west coast city of the United States known for its crack-addict fashion standards and cyclists who rode naked. It also was known that 20 to 30 people were killed each year in this city, while either walking or bicycling. Hey, draw your own conclusions.
After a single trip on a bicycle through town (fully clothed, by the way), Amanda determined cycling in this city to be an extreme sport. Thus, for her commutes, she opted for a different spectacle of unparalleled brutality: city bus.
She did her best to take these in stride, reminding herself daily that they were only three miles long. Some of her commutes were much worse than others, of course, though none of them were nice. But no one could have guessed the total magnitude of awful required to dislodge a good-natured soul from her comfy room in Hell.
Logically, with only three miles of imaginary ink between the dots of point A and point B, it should have been nothing. It should have been eight minutes of introspection between semi-conscious flurry of morning and nine hours of frenetic, ulcer-generating workday. Instead, it further generated Amanda’s notion that the world had been sprayed with a high-tech chemical agent engineered to reduce the population’s cognition and complex reasoning. Of course, a few were naturally immune, she reasoned, but they suffered the most—from daily interactions with a society now filled with learning-disabled citizenry. Then again, it might be the pot, as she often mused. Different agent; same results. Legal marijuana billowed in clouds all around the down-town core. Its odour radiated through her apartment building and seemed an ever-present accompaniment to air everywhere.
She could even smell it as she stepped up and into the bus one morning, fare-in-hand. Showing the driver a five-dollar bill before stuffing it in the fare box, she was met with confusion.
“What ticket you need?” the driver asked, baffled. It was a hard one to work out. Amanda wondered when words had become so expensive.
“A...day pass? You know, the only ticket that costs five dollars?”
“Okay,” he replied blithely, pressing buttons that spat out a piece of shiny, pink paper marked “DA”.
Sure she’d have gotten the same response had she inserted an empty tampon wrapper into the fare box, she turned as the bus lurched forward, hurling her into another standing passenger. There were a lot of them. The bus was packed. She apologised, quickly looked for something to grab and found one of the high railings that ran the length of the aisle above the seats on either side. She had to stand on her tipsy-toes to reach it with a decent grip, but she hung on tightly. It was patently obvious this ride would not encompass quiet introspection.
Mile One
Amanda glanced down at the pitiable passenger seated in front of her. He sat among those who met the criteria for “priority seating”, and their seats all faced inward toward the centre aisle. Appearing frail, his ashen complexion had the look of embossed leather. A curious odour of root vegetables emanated from his general direction. Was that...garlic? She pushed it out of her mind. To Amanda, the smell of garlic was loathsome—an unholy alliance of decay and dirty dishwater—and would make her wretch violently if she didn’t compose herself. As the bus proceeded to alternate between stopping on dimes and initiating rocket thrusters for each take-off, she noticed the poor man was being slammed into a passenger on one side when the bus stopped, then slammed into the passenger on the other when it took off again. At no point did he register even a grimace. Looking toward the back of the bus, she realised none of the passengers seemed one bit fazed by their transportation’s violent jerking motions. But contemplation of this would be postponed.
Without warning, the bus suddenly reeled into a sharp right turn and the world went sideways. Losing hold, her body was wrenched decisively to the floor. Cutting off rush-hour traffic turning right-on-a-red, the right side of the bus went over a curb causing it to careen ‘round the bend on three wheels. Passing horns blared. A few passengers shuffled. Amanda blinked at the uncommon view of people’s pant cuffs. Through sheer force of will, she pushed herself into a standing position after the bus rocked and shuddered back onto all six of its wheels. Grit from the floor stuck to her hands and every sensibility within her recoiled. Sources of filth that floor likely knew flipped through her mind in rapid sequence—vomiting drunks, urine-tracked footprints, used drug needles and a myriad of invisible pathogens. She found a few things to love about a city—its art, music and... Well, maybe only two things, but a city’s filth nearly cancelled out all of it. She shook the larger bits of grime from her hands and found her ol’ hand-hold on the rail. Looking around, the sea of blank faces remained unchanged.
Mile Two
Around more corners that sent her swinging, over pot holes with an axle-breaking vengeance and stopping as if deer had sprinted into their path every quarter-mile, the bus continued its agonising herky-jerky trek toward the down-town core. She noticed that, with every acceleration, most riders were being shifted slightly further toward the back of the bus. A clever way to pack more in. But this method was about to be undone.
As if thwarted by the Hand of God, the bus came to a screeching, immediate and horrendous stop. The true miracle was that the chassis of the bus didn’t rip savagely away from its frame. Amanda used everything she had to hold on, fighting inertia’s determined goal to introduce her to the wind-shield. Her feet left the floor.
As she gripped the rail with all her might, she felt something pull and ‘ping’ violently within her left shoulder, as if something had snapped internally like a rubber band. The fire of it spread through her like lightening—a silently shrieking, electric agony—down her arm and back up again, up the back of her head and down her spine, tearing through her, incinerating her resolve and forcing her into an alternate reality. She felt every hair follicle raise. The skin on her face buzzed as more waves of white hot pain shot through her, but she dare not let go—even though by now, the bus was motionless. While she wrestled with these otherworldly sensations, as if grabbed by wind, the front entrance door flung open unexpectedly. Another passenger boarded, this time from the middle of the four-lane street. This one smelled of mildew, soured laundry and unwashed armpit. Competing heavily against the pungent odour of garlic, she thought she might pass out. Then she marvelled at how passing out would actually be a blessing except, where would she land? People were pressing in tighter, now, until personal space was relegated to the thickness of each person’s clothes. Amanda thought she would, instead, be sick. But jabs of excruciating pain in her shoulder sharpened her focus, keeping her out of the sick and fainting zone. That, and the fear of ploughing onto the laps of people seated nearby. People who smelled like garlic. Just a little more, she thought. Only another mile to go.
Mile Three
The bus had only narrowly avoided smacking into a cement truck. Observing the truck’s rotating mixing drum, she briefly imagined how it might have felt to swim in cement but never make it to the surface.
By now, Amanda questioned if the driver had impaired vision. She glanced at the mirror above his head. It appeared he wore dark glasses, though he hadn’t been when she boarded. But then, his reflection began to warp and ripple, as if the mirror were made of suspended liquid. Every time the pain from her shoulder washed through her, the mirror would undulate and the driver’s reflected visage would morph into something new. This continued until they reached the stop at Caruthers, when it became quite obvious the bus driver was, in fact, Stevie Wonder. Then yet another wave of electricity shot down her arm, reminding her of that time her dad once had surgery on his arm. Thoughts of her much-loved father abruptly snapped her back to the hell-ride at hand. Of course, I’ve been hallucinating. Light-headed, she wondered if she would go into shock. She wondered how anyone would even know, given their reduced cognition. Then she wondered if she would be late for work, and if she was late, would anyone care? She wondered when she might take cabs to work, instead of the bus.
Like flash cards representing her life, her thoughts continued flying past. She pondered the sorry state of her languishing career, and her life, her greatest but lost love, Matthew, the subsequent string of “situationships”, and whether this would be the day it all crashed down around her. This could be The Very Day when her strife, her determination and her indomitable and buoyant persistence would come to mean nothing! The Very Day when her whole, short, miserable life meets its tragic conclusion, once she is permanently disabled from riding a city bus. All that. All that tenacity and hope. All those long hours. All those dreams. All that, for nothing!
No, no! NO! This can’t be happening. This ISN’T actually happening. I’m merely going to work. Amanda snapped herself to, and continued mentally talking herself through this internal mini-crisis, emphatically resolved to never give in to defeat. She imagined that the sensations of shooting pain were actually beams of energy directed down upon her by angels. She imagined each angel was one of her favourite comedians. Bearers of truth and comedy, they flew overhead like cupids, shooting energy beams out of their asses and comedic mayhem from their mouths. They wore silly hats and wrote jokes about her pathetic life in giant cloud-like word bubbles. They snickered and poked snarky fun. But they were there for her. There to guide her way to the office. That’s all. Soon, she’d be there, the comics would leave, and the pain would fade. We’re all just going to work this morning. Isn’t that right, Conan. Conan? She imagined Conan O’Brien nodding curtly before he pulled forth a silver platter, on which was a hot breakfast and court summons from Satan, and told her she’d been served.
Which is precisely when the first punch was thrown.
Lance Demars started it. Benny Brewster and company brought it to a whole other level. Both punks, neither had to be to a job. Neither had worked at anything beyond selling dope or Class C Misdemeanours. It was rare for either of these hoodlums to be conscious at this hour of the day, but Benny had a court appearance down-town and Lance had been kicked out of his girlfriend’s apartment at the rude hour of 5 a.m., when she learnt he’d quit his part-time, two-hour per week job cleaning pools. This was the first bus he could get to his mum’s house.
Lance was exhausted and maybe still shaking off some shame, but as soon as he spied Benny, just sitting there, three rows in front of him, his ire blasted him awake. That was the no-good sonovabitch who’d shorted him two months ago. That little prick! An 8-ball ain’t two fucking grams. Like a shark, he wove his way through packed commuters and down the aisle, then shoved that little mofo piece o’ trash on the shoulder so hard, Benny slammed into the person sitting next to him. Lance then proceeded to berate everything from Benny’s mother to the size of his...pencil. Benny, who was about a foot shorter, stood up, puffed his chest out and reflected similar sentiments in kind. They were clearly in a sharing mood. The person who’d been sitting next to Benny, a ‘business partner’ shot Lance a look. In a matter of seconds, the fight was on.
Bystanders became inadvertent punching bags. Some punched back. There was a lot of yelling. The bus jerked to the right, then stopped, its tyres’ side-walls scraping a curb. People scrambled and clambered as best they could in the over-filled bus to get away from the fight’s nexus, pressing into and falling over each other as they did. Transfixed, Amanda finally let go of the rail and watched the scene unfold with fascination. A hat flew past, and in the milieu, it appeared Benny’s pants weren’t staying quite where they should. Then, a knife was drawn. Tension in the air thickened. A female voice shrieked as if it was the first time she’d ever seen a knife. Amanda rolled her eyes. Portlanders. Then, a fourth person emerged onto the scene, an apparent tough-guy-cum-saviour, who managed to pin Lance down and wrestle the knife from his hand. Standing, he tossed the knife to Amanda. “Keep it away from him!” he barked. This seemed wise enough. She looked down at the knife, saw an open window and calmly flung it out far and well beyond the street, into some shrubberies, some fifty feet or so away.
After several minutes of further fisticuffs and wrangling, and a stream of language that would make Gordon Ramsay blush, the fight finally progressed its way out the open side door. As the three instigators rolled around on the ground, continuing to fight in the least graceful way imaginable, Benny’s ass cheeks glowed brightly in the full morning light, and it appeared Lance was drooling like a baby, as angry words and possibly blood spewed from his mouth. Then, without a word, the driver simply slammed the doors closed, jammed the bus in drive and tore off with an impressive burnout. Right, then. This bus would stay on schedule.
The deafening clamour of riders still agitated and strung high by the excitement, continued during the last half-mile of Amanda’s journey. It seems something could actually rouse them from their stupor. A few dabbed at split lips while others surveyed their bedraggled attire. Then, Taylor Street: it was Amanda’s turn to deboard. Surprised the driver hadn’t used the eject button to launch her out the ceiling vent to save time, she quickly hopped down from the bus. Looking down, she noticed the five-dollar bus ticket still tucked under her wristband, where she’d hurriedly stuffed it. “D.A.” in thick black Helvetica stood starkly against the glossy pink background. It suddenly occurred to her. “Dumb Ass,” she muttered softly to herself. This is the note they give you to remind you that you’re a dumb-ass for ever taking a bus to Hell. You’re a dumb-ass for giving this much of yourself to Hell. And you’re a dumb-ass for thinking Hell will ever appreciate you for sacrificing your soul to its lost cause.
The reckoning had begun. During those last four blocks’ hoof to her office, Amanda laid out what would become her Master Plan. An estimated 47 million people were part of a recent mass exodus from Hell in the United States, and Amanda was the first. Shortly after that morning, she fired Hell, and never glanced back to see if it still burned without her. ✿
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Greta, who lived in an enormous white farmhouse with her family. Her family included five other loving people, two devoted dogs, one fine and gentle horse and a rotating colony of cats who lived and hunted among bales of hay and around the granaries and out-buildings.
Situated upon a hill, the house overlooked the valleys below that lay on two sides of it—valleys of rich soil and upon which her father grew tremendous crops, which provided abundance for the whole family. That abundance encompassed more than food or coin.
The family’s library was stocked with an impressive array of books—reference materials and classic literature. Intellectual pursuit was a fire tended by the humans of the family; that fire had been sparked by wonder and fed by the freedom to chase it to where it would lead. That freedom had been cultivated with as much care as the crops in the valley below.
The family’s culture was stocked with love. They took hold of the notion that love is the one inexhaustible commodity. Injuries to ego or spirit would heal where love’s solutions were applied to stop the bleeding. Perfection, in its raw form, had been discarded and replaced by encouragement. And that encouragement, fathered by acceptance and borne by patience, created a place where the only ‘perfection’ was balance—an even, level foundation where compassion couldn’t roll away and truth spread evenly.
Greta breathed, learned, lived and played in that abundance. Hers was a world of story, of drama, mystery, exploration and wonder. Her existence was a series of exciting discoveries, each a new thread woven into the tapestry of what she knew. That living tapestry changed and displayed altered themes as Greta went along, its picture an ever-updating story of information and how it all might fit together.
One day, Greta stood before the open doors of her parents’ wardrobe, as her mum sat nearby, combing her hair. The wardrobe was built in, its rod above so far up, Greta had to reach with all her might to grasp the coat hangars. She found the clothes there astonishingly more complicated than her own. They carried varying and distinctive weights of purpose. Her father’s dress shirts on one side stoically announced their sober intent. Her mum’s dresses on the other giggled in ruffles and waved at her in bright florals. Their business suits in the middle held a particular gender-less strength and solemnity.
She decided she wanted to know these things first hand. What did it feel like to wear business suits with belts? What was it like to walk around with heavy boots that so easily stomped? How was it to have trails of billowing combed silk flow behind you as you walked? Was it fun to wear something that practically announced itself without consideration of the person wearing it? All these things must be answered, she thought. And so, an afternoon of dress-up ensued.
Spiky high heels, thick leather work boots, flowing dresses and overalls with buckles and a hundred pockets—everything was so full of revelation! Greta tried each thing on as her mum watched with an approving grin. She tried on the pants with the boots, the dresses with the Mary Janes, the dress shirts with the ties or the bolos. They were all so much fun! Yes, she was playing “dress-up”, but more than that, she explored what it was like for her parents to wear those clothes. Even a hint of knowing was better than knowing nothing, and like every other experience she dove into, the whole afternoon was filled with fascination and fun.
For Greta’s sake and to the benefit of those around her, she never lost this wonder. To this day, she tries on a great many things, in her mind, deciding what they might be like, if they fit, and what caused them to be what they are. And in this pursuit, she lives more happily ever after than those counterparts who live in fear of being wrong.
Wonder. Many of us forfeit wonder as the weathering winds of adult life buffet our experiences. What have we lost along with it? As author of the book, How to Dismantle an Empire, and scholar from Third Paradigm, Tereza Coraggio, recently asked, “When did you stop being wrong?” When did we cease our endless quest to know and understand? What could we gain by taking up that quest once more?
With that same wonder that once led us to watch ants form armies or try on our parents’ clothes to see what it felt like to wear them, does it not also feel right to try on the ideas and opinions of others to gain a deeper understanding? Does it not feel correct to expand our awareness to satisfy what is, perhaps, our universal quest to grow beyond ourselves? Of course, not all of the ideas will fit. Some might prove to be uncomfortable. But at the very least, we'll better know where those ideas might work (if they work at all), what caused them, and why they fit someone else. Or maybe we’ll find in them some truth we’d missed, which we might be obliged to take, either whole or in part.
We hardly need published medical papers exploring Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (and there aren’t that many) to understand some common-sense pitfalls associated with the loss of wonder. Children generally possess a prioritisation that informs them it is more important to understand than to be right. One could posit that a reason contradictions to what we previously knew can be so uncomfortable is because we forget how to embrace the flux and chaos common to the human experience.
But it might be more helpful to remove abstractions and think about our processes in more down-to-earth terms.
For instance, some of us who’ve stopped being wrong begin by mistakenly believing that even just entertaining opposing ideas to be treachery. That doing so somehow betrays our identity by betraying that which we’ve already come to know. Some also may believe that retraction of a former belief demonstrates weakness. Internally, they presume that if we come to learn that a truth we once held is somehow not true, that implies flaw within us for believing that false thing to begin with. And they fear being perceived as vacillating.
It may appear remedial and obvious to explain, but actually, trying on someone else’s opinion is simply an investigation. No guilt required. From that investigation, at a minimum, we come to learn whether our initial belief still feels true, and what circumstances might have shaped this other belief, enhancing our empathy toward others.
Of course, as most children learn, to admit mistake or revise one’s belief is a demonstration of growth, not fault. Updating a belief after careful consideration (not on a whim) doesn’t make us dithering and ineffectual, but rather, fulfils the primary method by which we each weave our own unique and beautiful tapestry of knowledge.
By exploring within ourselves those ideas that seem foreign, contrary to what we know, or even outright wrong at first glance, we embrace the joyous and unending process of learning and refining. One might even argue that this process is the essence of who we are.
As the world is encouraged to become ever more divided, in some cases by design, in others by folly, humanity desperately needs to resist that temptation to never be wrong by returning to its childlike wonder. It seems we urgently need to reacquaint ourselves with our original selves, those new people we were, who embraced the art of being wrong and refining our way forward. By doing so, we can better appreciate those with whom we do not agree, and most assuredly better refine the ideas that still hold water. This process, which we all knew when we were Greta, living in curiosity, begins with the abundance that love brings. It thwarts those who would have us distracted by disdain for others. And from there, our tapestry-weaving never ends. ✿
WHO ARE WE?
A tiny cadre of writers, thinkers and artists who’ve joined forces, hoping no one will notice we’re not actually doing much work at our corporate jobs. More specifically:
The TransAtlantic Pearl Founder and Editor, Lauren Lyndsey MacPherson, relates her experience as freelance writer for zines as an abomination that nearly made her stop writing; her miserable experience as writer and editor in the corporate world was an assault on her mental health. She notes, “The Pearl is a path I have longed to travel since that first story I wrote in Year 1 about my life as an alligator (it even featured illustrations of an alligator and the handbag I’d become). Here, I am free and whole, and moreover, myself. I hope this publication will provide at least a modicum of the enjoyment I get from it to others.”
Alisdair McHughes began ghost-writing for others in primary school, where classmates quadrupled his weekly allowance for services rendered. This lucrative side-hustle bought him more than a few Xbox games, until the headmaster caught on. Since then, he’s provided numerous similar services, completely above-board, for a wide variety of clients, both as technical writer and writer of prose. In fact, he’s written in the shadows for so long, it took a lot of coaxing to get him here, so please be gentle with him. We’re hoping he’ll stay.
J. Arden Turnbow was working toward his graduate degree in botany at the University of Florida when he contracted the disease known as poetry. “It went radically downhill from there,” he said. “Before I knew it, I was writing papers on cellular morphogenesis in couplets. Not long after, my graduate coordinator showed me a couple of doors. I can’t help what I am.” He added, “I am a writer and there’s no cure, so I’m just taking it one day at a time.” We’re glad he’s found a home with us. We promise to give him all the support he needs.
Our resident cartoonist, Max, began as a doodler and progressed his way to graffiti art. An art school drop-out, his mother thought she’d never get rid of him until, one day, he got a job at an investing house. Having worked his way up to Senior Analyst, Max now finds plenty of time to doodle for us on the side. Or in the middle. Or wherever we need a comic to add some levity. In his spare time, Max is apprenticing to become a tattoo artist (and we’re not referring to military horn-blowing). In the meantime, keep those !@!!%! needles away from us, Max, omg…
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Additional Credits
Wardrobe image from portrait photographer mentatdgt. Please find him at Shutterstock or Pexels to see more of his stellar work.