Mary kicked at the sidewalk curb, feeling an electric thrill at the pink and white lights that raced up and down the side of her shoe. These new shoes were magic, her mamma said. She could run fast in them, so fast.
Mary jumped up and down, little hops like she was jumping rope and the shoes flashed bright.
Her mama stood next to her, watching little Mary while she talked in a hushed tone to a man who lived in Idaho now, two states away.
"No, Shawn. No, that doesn't work for me. And Mary doesn't want to see you."
Mary began to hum a little tune, one that sounded like Baby Shark but was better, because it was hers. She added a little extra high pitched wooooo's in between each pretend verse.
Suddenly her mamma grabbed her hand, pulling her in the direction of the pharmacy that read 'algreens', the neon W burnt out forever ago. W: Mary knew that letter. Her mamma told her it was an upside down M, and Mary pictured her name being something different when she somersaulted or rolled down a hill, the letters tossing and turning around just like her body did, forming new and strange words she didn't know yet.
They hurried in to the store, like they hurried everywhere, Mary's small lightning bug feet skipping to keep up. Turning down her favorite aisle, Mary felt her heart float, and she pictured the red Valentine's day card she'd made in school the other day go 'ba-bum, ba-bum' inside her chest. Lights came from behind every beautiful, colorful package. Fancy pretty ladies stared back at her, teeth in white rows and lips red like a stop sign, red like an apple, red like her wagon.
Her momma's feet stopped in front of her, and Mary was face to face with a beautiful row of glittering eye shadows. These ones were in shades of blue, green, purple. She reached out to touch them, to get a better look at their starry surface but her momma yanked her hand back.
"No, Mary."
No, Mary, no Mary, noMary. Some days nomary felt like her actual name. She hummed the ABC's to herself.
Far above her, her momma picked out the lip gloss and mascara she wanted, cheap but not too cheap, bold but not too bold.
They hurried to the cashier and then hurried home. Hurried through dinner--chicken nuggets for Mary, white wine for momma. The doorbell rang, and there was Grammy! Grammy, whose hugs were the best and always told the most fun bedtime stories. She dug around in the pockets of her puffy green coat, the only one Mary ever saw her wear, and passed her a butterscotch candy. Mary nabbed it and ran away, squealing with delight,. From a distance she heard, "I told you not to give her that shit, mom. I don't want her turning into a fat kid like half her classmates."
Her grammy scoffed, and Mary could picture the rolled eyes. "I'm not the one who feeds her chicken nuggets every night, Laura. A butterscotch candy won't make a difference."
"It's all she eats, mom. I can't get her to eat anything else," her momma's tone sharpened, like it had when Mary had accidentally knocked the fancy flower pot over and it had shattered. "I'll be back in four hours."
The door slammed, and Mary looked down into her little hand at the beautiful gold butterscotch candy and felt her tummy fill with guilt. She didn't realize her momma would be mad that she'd taken the candy. Suddenly she didn't feel like eating at all.
The rest of the evening was spent in the living room, Grammy watching Oprah while Mary played with her Barbies. The Barbies in Mary's land solved crime, floating around the living room investigating missing puppies and stolen newspapers, their long legs and permanent smiles convincing imagined neighbors to tell them secrets.
At bedtime Grammy told a story of a princess, one who got locked up in a castle by a wicked witch who was jealous of the princess's hair. The princess won, in the end, she escaped from the scary witch and married a handsome prince.
Images of a beautiful princess running through a castle in her long, pink dress floated through Mary's mind as she drifted off to sleep.
A crashing noise woke her up, and her room was dark and so was the world outside her window. Mary was not used to this, and her heart sped up.
"Momma? Grammy?" the words came out in whispers. Mary shoved her head under her blankets and grabbed Miko, the stuffed racoon that slept with her every night.
The air under the blankets grew warm with her breath, and Mary listened to the quiet house. Then, footsteps, her door opening, someone sitting next to her; her heart beat out of her chest.
"Mary, honey." It was her momma. A cool feeling of safety fell over Mary and she peaked her head out. Her momma looked strange in the dim light; messy hair and streaked lines on her face. She smelled funny.
"Momma?"
"Mary, the date was a bust. He was a rude prick and was ten years older and thirty pounds heavier than his profile picture. And he was the one who accused me of false advertisement, the bastard. My pictures are only from a year ago."
Mary stayed quiet. Her momma was talking loud, the words coming out weird and wrong and slippery.
"Your dad and I met when we were so young, and I gave him all of my youth, all of my beauty. All of my healthy years before I had you. Now I'm just an old hag with a kid and nobody wants that."
Mary felt tears sting her cheek. These words sounded mean, and it seemed like whatever happened to her momma must have been her fault.
"I'm sorry, momma."
Her momma leaned over her and kissed her forehead, then left; the funny smell almost overpowering and then gone.
A wretched feeling grew inside Mary. What had she done? She pictured herself like Barbie, trying to solve a mystery. How could she be better?
She slipped from her bed and walked across the hall to the bathroom, stepping up onto her stool to look into the mirror. Without the light, the vague shape of a monster girl stared back at her. Mary pinched her cheeks, poked her tummy, barred her teeth, looking for the part of her that was wrong. It was somewhere, it had to be. She just needed to figure out where so she could fix it.
She would be better. Tomorrow she'd find that butterscotch candy and throw it away so she wouldn't be like those fat kids at school and she'd learn to smile like those pretty fancy ladies at the store her momma liked. She'd float around the world like Barbie. She would be good, and her momma would be happy, and things would be ok.

• WeekySpendingDiary: Some parts of my life have turned out like I had hoped they would when I was a kid. Like tonight, I'm just in from my writing class, sitting on my little couch, jacket still on me while the room heats up. I've the laptop open and I'm reading other people's writing, better than mine, while eating last night's homemade fudge from the greaseproof paper it was wrapped in. That's the good shit, you know? That's the stuff they really don't want you to have. Like that joy and connection and solidarity. If you find peace and all that then you won't go searching, if yer not searching, you're not buying. And then what use are you at all? To them? And I love that. I love to be no use to the billionaires. To sit here happy as Larry in my tiny flat with the electric heater and the single bed, to live so simply and so happily, to have nothing they can take except for the two middle fingers I will happily give them. Oh, it's a glorious thing to live a life of blissful resistance.
• safemouse: A tribute... Paula Yates & David Lynch at Safeway, Brunswick Centre, 1993 The automatic doors hum open. Paula Yates, wearing oversized sunglasses and last night’s clothes, steps inside, her heels clicking. She swerves past a display of Granny Smiths and nearly collides with David Lynch, who is examining an apple with deep concentration. PAULA: (grinning) David bloody Lynch! Fancy seeing you in a Safeway. I'm Paula. DAVID: (turning, delighted) Paula! Wow! Safeway, Brunswick. Beautiful place. These apples are something else. You ever really look at an apple? Just stare at it? PAULA: I tend to eat ‘em, Dave. That’s my main interaction. You making a film about apples? DAVID: No, no. Just appreciating. It’s like—they’re these little secrets, you know? You never know what you're biting into. PAULA: Yeah, alot of the Safeway ones are rotten inside. DAVID: Exactly! You get it. You get it. Paula plucks a pain au chocolat from a shelf, then waves it at him. PAULA: You ever eat one of these? DAVID: Pain au chocolat? Sure. But not often. You gotta be careful—one minute, you’re enjoying the buttery layers, the next, you’re deep inside a dream you can’t wake up from. Why, how do you know this isn't a dream? PAULA: (laughing) Impossible. I’m on a bender, haven’t slept yet. DAVID: That’s a mistake, Paula. Sleep is where the good stuff happens. PAULA: Not for me. I dream about missing shoes and telephone boxes that eat people. DAVID: British telephone boxes, huh? They’re like tiny red theatres of the absurd that trap a moment. PAULA: Yeah, it's summer and cigarettes for me. Shame they’re all out of order and stinking of piss. DAVID: Like the world’s turning its back on the idea of mystery? PAULA: And business cards offering 'special services'. Although you don't see them in the red phone boxes so much for some reason. DAVID: Is that so? Paula yawns. PAULA: Sorry, I’m knackered. What about you? You sleep alright? DAVID: I slept great! Had a wild dream, too. PAULA: Course you did. Hit me with it. DAVID: Well, see, there was this nightclub in some place that looked like old America. 1940s, something like that. And outside, instead of a bouncer, there was an iguana sitting on a velvet rope post. PAULA: What, in a little tux? DAVID: No suit. Just an iguana. But it was watching. Like, really watching. People would walk up, and it would just know—you’re in, you’re trouble, you go home. Tiny green psychic. PAULA: Christ. Was it right? DAVID: Of course it was right. It’s a dream. PAULA: I think I’d take my chances with a human bouncer. Iguanas freak me out. DAVID: That’s just what a troublemaker would say. Can't an iguana catch a break? Paula laughs, shaking her head. She drops the pain au chocolat into her basket, then nudges David’s apple toward him. PAULA: Go on, buy your apple. David inspects it one last time, nodding approvingly. DAVID: Well, I think that's all for today. I will now buy the apple and make tracks.
• safemouse: Dearly Beloved, I last gave a sermon nearly 9 years ago on the Hour of Writes website, dated 14:39, 29 Jun 2016. Doesn’t time fly? Though a remainer, I offered a cautiously optimistic take on the referendum result. My predictions at that time were: “Voting out might be painful but lead to a chain of events which could potentially see us [the UK] back in Europe stronger and closer.” “In the interim we may see the loss of Scotland and troubles in Northern Ireland.” “In the mid-term the EU itself may unravel and there may even be a war with Russia.” “Worst case scenario, a small nuclear incident.” This is a small update on where I see us now. We have not yet reached the mid-term, but all my predictions are either on target or in the realm of distinct possibility. The war with Russia is already happening by proxy (I’ll take that), it has threatened a tactical nuclear strike (premature to take credit for one), and there could soon be direct conflict as America retreats from its role as guarantor of world peace. While some tie disengagement to Trump, strategists like Peter Zeihan have long pointed out that this would happen and has been trending since Obama. There are certain underlying factors—demographics, geography, and resource distribution—that shape outcomes regardless of administrations and political posturing. Big picture, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a continuance of Trump’s approach, he also left Ukraine and Russia in a state of limbo, while Obama’s red lines were crossed without decisive action on Syria or Crimea. To any student of World War II, it seems all too familiar: dictators take small bites. Then bigger ones. Then…But I guess politicians always have tectonic plates shifting underneath them. FYI, I reluctantly gave my non-vote to Kamala last year, as she appeared more reliable on Ukraine, and after years of dangerous appeasement the Democrats were slowly getting their act together on China—a nation that has been waging a hybrid war with the West for decades. But the reality is, there was no golden ticket and pros and cons with each choice. You could make an argument that the American right is right to call out Europe for undermining Western values whilst pointing out that leaving Europe to fend for itself will make it harder to preserve them, which brings me neatly onto my next point. I predicted that the EU might unravel. Today, that prospect seems more likely than in 2016. For the EU it was a huge blow to have an economy the size of the UK’s depart. Now, what apparently holds the EU together is Germany—its massive economy being the lynchpin. Yet even Germany faces a perfect storm: demographic decline, energy shortages exacerbated by the Ukraine war, China's trade dumping and a breakdown in social cohesion fueled by large scale immigration and a spate of related crime and Islamist terrorist attacks. The concomitant result is the right wing’s resurgence which might address some issues, but also threatens to splinter the EU from within. The EU project, as it stands, is facing a day of reckoning. A noble project that seemed primed to coalesce into a great state like the US or China has allowed states such as Slovakia, Hungary, Germany to appease aggressive outside agents with a vested interest in its own demise. For the EU to survive, it must adopt a robust stance on China, sing from one hymn sheet on Russia, and deal with immigration and associated issues of integration and social cohesion more effectively. Oh, and defend Ukraine. Alas, the EU has been unable to fuse the empathy of the left with the pragmatism of the right into a well-balanced strategy that recognises the Cold War never truly ended. China, that enormous elephant in the room, survived Tiananmen and continues to assert its long standing hegemonic vision. Russia’s flirtation with Western rapprochement ended long ago when Putin seized power in 2000. If you think that was early days, ask the ghost of Margaret Thatcher, who, Cassandra-like in her post-PM dotage warned us about Putin’s chilling response to the Kursk disaster, or lack thereof and what it boded for the West. And Iran continues to be a thorn in our sides. On paper China is the biggest challenge. When the world handed WTO membership to China on a plate, allowing China unfettered access to Western markets whilst China simultaneously made sure the playing field in China was not level Clinton had this fanciful idea that China would just get rich and join the club. It ignored everything the Chinese have been telling us how they feel about deep resentment held for the West since the days of the Opium Wars, the Boxer Revolution and the inception of the Chinese Communist Party, anti-Western by its very nature, and just the simple strategic real politik that powerful countries of any stripe are not to be trusted, as cogently argued in the introduction of China: The Gathering Threat published 2005. To have peace, prepare for war. All too predictably, the West is now in serious trouble, facing a potential fragmentation reminiscent of the Roman Empire. The only part of the West that can likely weather this storm is America, buoyed by its vast natural resources and insurmountable geographic advantages. The postwar order, shaped by the Woodrow agreement, saw the U.S. guaranteeing global shipping lanes in return for economic dominance, fostering peace even among its adversaries. But America is out of shape and now retreating, prioritizing self-preservation—proving, as ever, that self-interest trumps idealism. This leaves the EU on the brink of collapse, and if that happens, we might eventually see Russia seeking to restore order on its own terms. The interim could be chaotic—turbulence the likes of which the UK has not witnessed in my lifetime. I still hope, and somewhat expect, that we’ll muddle along, dodge a few bullets, and ride our luck. But dark days may lie ahead before any era of plenty. As for Australia and New Zealand, they might fare better but are slowly drifting into a client state relationship with China that may see the Western nature of those countries erode with time. I am not a seer. The fun thing about geopolitics is that with so many variables, nobody really has a clue. Perhaps China will invade Taiwan. Perhaps Trump will save Ukraine yet. Perhaps the protagonists themselves are unsure. But what a time to be alive wondering what the future holds in store and if one should stockpile tinned food.
• safemouse: Hour of Writes 2014 cut up I see the air churn sickeningly. How I wasted my life. Is there an updated bit of the brain, that mingles the lust of attraction with the need of protection? The space between the panels, between the frames, between the camera clicks. A ski-lift that delivers me again to stand unbalanced at the hilltop, scanning all the great slant swathes of white. Forever has turned its back forever. I didn’t want it to end this way. Of course not. But as the rope tightens round my gizzard I must confess to savouring the moment. Our culture is founded upon an ideology of worst case scenarios. Spiders will first release a thread to the wind, like a poet with those thin junkie arms. Bein' in the dark whether it's sufferin' through the darkness of night or shiverin' alone in the darkness of mind. Either one of those can be terrifyin'. But it can also be enlightenin'. In the chest there is a flutter then a pulse, then clean air. The archaic personal delivery system? The language of oxytocin falls short to explain the shift from dread to welcome.
• safemouse: Hello Miris. It was Hour of Writes, I think.