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Step, step, step, step, step…

December 28, 2014 by Exangel

by Marie Davies & Margaret Hultz.

Best Mary could remember on this unforgivingly, hot August day was that she met Juan Diego on a Monday. He was an interesting young man; more miles had passed under his feet than the average person. Great calluses rimmed Diego’s well-traveled feet, lifting him an additional four inches off the ground.

As a baby, Juan Diego learned to walk at only ten months old. He mastered the skill with his first step—and just kept on walking. He walked right out the front door of the family casa along the small town’s dusty street, and out into the dry Mexican landscape. Diego walked through the scrub brush, circling twice around every agave plant just to make a game of it. Except for the first ten months of his life, a barefoot Juan Diego walked day and night—asleep or awake. At fifteen years old, Juan Diego reached the not-so-great height of four-feet, nine inches tall—great calluses included. So, on that particular Monday afternoon, December 9, 1531, when Juan Diego met Mary, he was a tad more than a boy, with very well used lower appendages.

Mary and Diego—their summit happened sometime around three o’clock. Diego’s lowest extremities—his worldly toes—twinkled and glowed unscathed by the multitude of miles that had passed beneath them. Yes, all ten of Juan Diego’s smiling toes revealed themselves to Mary, wooing her out into the open.

Just as this young man crowned Tepeyac Hill out of the bush appeared a young girl who looked about fifteen too. Pointing to his feet she remarked, “What lovely toes!”

Startled,Diego stopped in his tracks, “Que?”

Mary blushed and then stammered, “Well . . . I was just saying that you have ten perfectly shaped toes, they are such a beautiful roasted sort of brown.”

“Dedos de las pies? Juan Diego wrinkled his brow and scratched his head, “My toes? You’re talking about my toes?”

“Juan Diego, you were walking by and I . . .”

“Well, I was walking to . . . somewhere. . . .” The young man’s voice trailed off as he noticed something very peculiar about this girl—a vision really—in blue and gold. How strange? Diego thought, and then he asked, “How do you know my name? Do I know you? Maybe you are from Teyekte?”

The young girl squirmed, “Well . . .”

Diego tried again, “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” Mary searched for the right words.

Just then a breeze rose off the sandy path. Grains of sand carried by the wind spread out like rays emitting from Mary’s body. Every agave plant bloomed, ants stopped in their tracks. Clouds parted. Birds sang. The sun was outshone by her radiance. Heavens parted and angels sang out one long, sustained musical note of glee.

Juan Diego fell to his knees and bowed his head, “La Virgen Maria, Our Holy Mother!!”

The Virgin Mary looked up and said in a hurried, hushed voice, “Get up Juan Diego, I can’t see your feet!”

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2015: Firsts.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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