walking in the medieval gardens at the cloisters museum, Manhattan

walking in the medieval gardens at the cloisters museum, Manhattan

fiction
edward w pritchard

I walk in silence around and around the covered arcades in the  perfect square walkways of the highest spot in Manhattan, at the cloisters museum. The smell of lavender wafts from the warm gardens as I stroll up and down the seven columns of each arcade, 4 walkways each with seven columns, each column capped with a Romanesque style ornamental capital high up along the Hudson River.  Looking across the River I see new Jersey but as I walk my heart is always in Manhattan until I drift back to the Pyrenees in the cloister of St Michael de cloche in Northern Spain in the year 1115 which is where the cloisters museum garden where I now stand is modeled after. I know that because I feel in my bones that I lived at that original cloister as a monk in the year 1115. I walk now in my present life here in Manhattan nearly everyday at lunch and sometimes after work to remember my past life and to think again of Justa a girl I once loved and was unable to marry. I entered the Monastery from  Jaca a medieval town to escape my life in 1114 and now in 2010 everyday at noon I walk around the walkways of the summer garden at the Cloisters medieval museum here in Manhattan in silence and think of Justa my love. Sometimes a visitor here will ask me a question about the gardens and I will politely tell them a little about the monastery where I once stayed for four years until my death in 1118. I am no longer bound by my vows of silence as I once was as a monk at St Michael and I enjoy telling the visitors and foreign tourists here a little about the monastery and Northern Spain where I was born originally, long before my life here in New York.

The smells in the garden are what take me back to Jaca in 1115. I quickly forget my job on the trading floor at JP Morgan and for exercise each day I walk round and round the four walkways of the gardens and admire the Romanesque capitals on each column, some of which one hot Summer day in 1116 I helped repair after a small earth quake. Later I would often dust those exquisite monumental capitals as part of my daily duties when I wasn't praying. The work there at the monastery kept my mind off of Justa who was by the year 1116 married to a cloth weaver about two hundred miles from the Monastery I lived in.

Sometimes now in 2010 I stand in the garden among the flowers and lecture a little about life in the Monastery back in 1115. The tourists here in New York love my comments thinking me a part of the tour here at the Cloisters and the security guards don't mind thinking me merely one of Manhattan's many educated eccentrics. Also it helps that I am a patron of the museum and sometimes help raise money to expand the collections.

Justa was very beautiful and I still miss her. Of course Justa has been gone a very long time. I often wonder as I walk what became of Justa and wonder if she ever lived again after her life there in Northern Spain so many many years ago.

no searching on facebook or twitter for me, my love is lost in Holidex,

no searching on facebook or twitter for me, my love is lost in Holidex,

fiction
edward w pritchard

Before facebook, before twitter, way back in 1971, us working nights for the Holiday Inns, clandestinely chatted by Holidex, the company's state of the art reservation system. Clicking away over the wires, then clattering loudly as it printed to large rolls of print paper bored fellow night auditors would send me messages here in Akron from exotic locations like Santa Fe, New Mexico or North Chico, California.

Sometimes when my work was done, late after the bar closed I would sit by the pool and look at the stars and think grand thoughts.  After, returning to duty at the front desk I always watched for messages from Lucinda, "hippy girl"  of Rochester New York.

Three times Lucinda spammed me with questions in July of 1971 and three times I blathered back to her.
On our second chat after I asked her what her favorite kind of wine was Lucinda asked me some questions about Iago from the Merchant of Venice for her Freshman English class. Later Mr Janicus, district manager Holiday Inns of New York sent me a cease and desist edict not to use Holidex for person business per Holidex manual page 24 section 4.

Sometimes now forty years later very late at night  I look on the internet for information on Lucinda, " hippy girl" of Rochester New York, but it's hard to find anything relevant since I never caught her last name.
end

Backpacking with Jolene in the Appalachian Mountains

Backpacking with Jolene in the Appalachian Mountains

fiction
edward w pritchard

Jolene met me at the Mount Rogers National Park and we walked fifteen miles together backpacking through the Appalachian Mountains of Western Virginia.

The scenery was inspirational in the muted morning light as Jolene and I traversed the ridges and rises of the Mountains heading North toward the Shenandoah Valley. What I will always remember about that trip however was when Jolene first formally shouldered her heavy backpack. Nonchalantly Jolene stretched and flexed and methodically inhaled deep gulps of fresh mountain air to get the backpack into a comfortable position across her back for our walk. Adjusting the various straps tightly Jolene gently swayed side to side and back to front to balance the weight of the bulging pack properly on her chest and shoulders. I busied myself with little duties as Jolene bent forward and back and kneeled up and down to prepare herself for carrying the heavy orange backpack through the mountains of Mount Rogers Virginia.

Birds warbled, a light wind whistled through blooming dulcet rhododendrons bursting with purple passion and small musky animals scurried about the ridges and clefts as Jolene and I enjoyed the mild warming sunshine one morning nearly thirty years ago backpacking through Mount Rogers Park.

 Often I reminisce about the scenery backpacking with Jolene for seven hours on the Appalachian trail in Western Virginia.

threesome

threesome

fiction
edward w pritchard

I had all the advantages then. Me and Kara both wanted the same girl. The girl Jules neutrally bi.

I was a poker playing madman, lucky then in the only thing I excelled at and crazy and impulsive enough to spend everything I had on Jules.

Kara connived and planned. She was the type that always gets ahead, always win and always get what they want. But, not this time. Two hundred, four hundred once, even six hundred seventy eight dollars. I showered Jules with expensive gifts, daily sometimes.

Jules gone now. Kara after half a dozen rich female friends very wealthy now. I asked Kara for a loan. I wanted to buy that picture of Jules. Kara says no that picture will make either of us too sad. For my own good it's better if the picture from before just goes away.

a long time ago

a long time ago

fiction
edward w pritchard

Two very elderly women are standing in front of a smaller brick house talking. Usually the younger woman, Charlotte, 81, wouldn't  be outside but it was so sunny and temperate today that she walked across the two yards and knocked on her neighbors, Connie Flander's front door. It's 9:15 AM and already  87 degrees.

The two women are talking about Eric Jaggers again. Eric was Connie's boyfriend back in junior high school in 1946. One Friday night back then Connie caught Eric under the bleachers at the old stadium, now a Wal Mart, with Charlotte Johnson.

Families long dispersed and both women usually alone, the two women stood in the hot sun and talked about Eric Jaggers, disappeared from both their lives for 65 years and dead these last fifteen years. 

"Eric had that wiry black wavy hair; he was part Greek", said Charlotte.

"I am sorry I slapped you" said Mrs. Flanders.

"You never slapped me, I blocked it with my hand" said Charlotte.

"Your hands were trying to close your shirt young lady", admonished Connie Flanders.

Both laughed, "Maybe true, I can't remember", said Charlotte.

Soon the hot sun drove both women inside their respective homes for the day. But soon again, the heat and warm will drive one of the two to knock on her neighbors door and talk again about the men in their lives.
end

My Cousin Chubby

My Cousin Chubby

fiction
edward w pritchard

My Cousin Chubby acted irrationally when he got the appraisal of Uncle Taul's post card collection back from the auctioneer.

Thirty eight dollars as a memento, no commercial value, a quaint remembrance of a time bygone.

I heard Chubby sat back by the fire and one at a time burned off all the post cards, records of Uncle Taul's travels and adventures, one at time while he drank a couple of quarts of Miller Lite beer.