Emily Gray enjoyed a proper upbringing, in Bexhill, East of Sussex, South of England. She came from a large well-to-do family, with five brothers and six sisters. Her Nanny dearly cared for her from Nappy’s until she bloomed her teenage Minge. Often Nanny Nanette gushed that her parents loved her, it sounded not quite right.
As Emily grew into her twenties, she appealed for nothing in particular, other than to be identified as an uncompromised original. Emily’s litter mates could not be more idiosyncratic. Brother Charles, by degrees, emerged as a Gnashgab, quite fittingly I may add, forthright labeled a coarse complainer extraordinaire. Mary, of old English Gobermouch, fancied herself a shrew and composted her annoyances, to fertilize all her garden of scheming ways. She was known to be fond of nibbling the edges of someone else’s Stilton cheese. Randolf a bona fide Quisby, an imminent lazy, lais-sez faire, mutated a Russian bore-like apatite of everything meat pie and gourmet.
Emily is a natural explorer, always curious about the ways and destination of east, west, north and off course south.
At 21, Emily flew off to Africa for two years of exploration of the Greatness of the river Nile. Upon finding out her beloved Ripon Falls may not have birthed her beloved child Nile, she returned to England conflicted, dour.
While in China, she explored the art of feet wrapping and crowded shoes. And with her lack of improvement in restricting movement, it was home to jolly England once again. Upon her arrival, her maids were mindful of her click & clack, of elegant lacquered cloven hoofs. After months of silent ponder, of where else to wander, her mood elevated.
It was off to France to hunt for truth. Unfortunately Emily learned of her Starry Night’s inception. Merely a twilight dream of wheat & stars, in a glass view asylum window pane. And her beloved village never existed, only in the cunning mind of a mad man Gogh.
Feeling rather defeated, she sailed back to lovely Sussex in an open bird mouth month of May. It was there she moped about her garden grounds, dressed in a most exquisite gown, in all shades of grey. Emily planned just one final trip, in hopes of finding truth.
She was off to Greenland, to the center of the true North Pole, where she ventured to ice capped bluffs and snowy valleys. With her compass for calculations and a Rand McNally map, finding what she searched for in a snowy distant frozen field. Emily removed a white laced glove and stuck her index finger straight into the frozen tundra. The world spun dramatically, twirling its continents in a centrifuge of physics and chemistry. Emily in her discovery would never be the same. Emily, in her find, returned to lovely Sussex. Sadly she rarely ventured out, or about, until her dying day.
Dan Cardoza has a Master of Science Degree in Counseling from California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of two Chapbooks: Nature’s Front Door & Expectation of Stars. Partial credits include: Amethyst, Ardent, Better Than Starbucks, California Quarterly, Curlew, UK., Enclave, Entropy, Esthetic Apostle, Poetry Northwest, The Quail Bell, and Vita Brevis.