By Rebecca Lüps

o here I am in famous Mont­martre next to 50 oth­er unknown artists who all do the same thing – draw famous peo­ple. Iron­ic, isn’t it? It’s Octo­ber, and the leaves are fad­ing. I call it fade, not fall because when you stand on this moun­tain all year long, you see how every­thing fades away. The view is fad­ing, the heat is fad­ing, the cus­tomers are fad­ing. What can I say, you get used to it.

The first years, I still shaved and kept my hair short, but you let go of those van­i­ties after a few cold win­ters out here. And you real­ize: Nobody cares. The only thing your cus­tomers care about is that you’re wear­ing a beret. I guess they think it’s art­sy and French. Hypocrites.

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By Bobbie Kirkhart

Gov­ern­ment Springs Park was once the pride of Enid, Okla­homa. Dur­ing my child­hood, gov­ern­ment was con­sid­ered a good thing, so we often used that full name in admi­ra­tion. Today it’s usu­al­ly called sim­ply Springs Park. Every school child knew it had been a camp site on the old Chisholm Trail, the best known of the routes used to dri­ve cat­tle from Texas to the Kansas rail­roads after the Civ­il War.

It was a per­fect camp­ground: hills over­look­ing the flat land where the cat­tle grazed and, most impor­tant, the drink­ing water from nat­ur­al springs that fed the lake. These things also made a per­fect park for chil­dren: the flat land – then punc­tu­at­ed with unsafe but excit­ing wood­en swings, hand-oper­at­ed mer­ry-go-rounds, and see­saws – was great for run­ning. We could drink from the springs, at that time cor­ralled by a pipe. I’m sure the water was less than pure, but I nev­er knew any­one to get sick from it. We could climb the gen­tle hills to the swim­ming pool, and, on spe­cial occa­sions, my father would spring for a quar­ter to rent a row­boat to take us on the lake.

It was a child’s par­adise except that we could nev­er climb the steep­er hills on the south side of the lake. That was reserved for the “col­ored peo­ple,” as the oth­er two-thirds of the park was reserved for whites. I was curi­ous, as chil­dren are about any­thing for­bid­den, but nev­er dared to go. I under­stood my par­ents didn’t agree with the law, but it was the law, and argu­ing was not permitted.

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By Maryann Henck

Flash fic­tion is not only a fun and quick read, but also a fun and not-always-so-quick write. The key is to cre­ate a suc­cinct sto­ry – rang­ing from 250 to 1000 words – that prefer­ably focus­es on one spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter and ends with a twist or epiphany for the char­ac­ter in ques­tion. In my cre­ative writ­ing sem­i­nar, “A Way with Words – Away with Words,” Rebec­ca rose to the flash-fic­tion chal­lenge and com­posed a three-piece col­lec­tion enti­tled The French Con­nec­tion – an homage to the art­sy and quirky char­ac­ters that pop­u­late the Parisian land­scape. The first instal­ment, “Belle Époque,” recounts the mus­ings of a some­body from a small town who always dreamed of mak­ing it big.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

”Lose your mind and come to your sens­es.” Fritz Perls

In an age of nev­er-end­ing par­al­lel con­ver­sa­tions, screens and sec­ond screens, and an even more inter­est­ing sto­ry just one swift move away from your fin­ger­tips, the most nat­ur­al and human­ly intu­itive things sud­den­ly don’t come easy any­more. It’s not easy to just go for a walk. To feel the earth give way under your feet. To lis­ten to the wind whis­per­ing cold gib­ber­ish into your ears. To feel the sun on your skin, that warm yel­low mas­sage of light. To smell the green of the trees, to grate­ful­ly breathe in what they so lov­ing­ly breathe out.

Since our feet are already in ‘vignetty’ waters, let’s go for a dive!

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