Ink-Filled Page

Nonfiction

Ticket to Ride

by Sara Etgen-Baker

“You gotta have a ticket to ride!” snapped the carney. “Get a ticket or move outta da way, kid. You’re takin’ up space!”

I stared motionless—hypnotized by the neon lights—as the magical wheel with its clockwise, circular motions cut through the clouds of the warm, heavy August sky.

“Here’s her ticket, sir. The three of us are ridin’ together.”

“Not happenin’, lady—only two to a chair. One of youz has to ride by yerself.”

“No problem, sir. She’s the oldest; she can handle riding by herself.”

“Whatever ya say, lady. She seems a bit young ‘n scared to me though.”

Aunt Betty gently scooted me to the next seat, then nonchalantly turned to me and said, “You’re okay with that, aren’t you sweetie?”

I panicked and tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Unable to speak, I unenthusiastically nodded yes,  hoping not to disappoint Aunt Betty with my fear and doubt.

Within an instant, I sat paralyzed and alone in the seat, waiting, pushing aside my fear of heights and wondering why my dear Aunt Betty left me to ride alone. Annoyed and perplexed, I looked up and saw Aunt Betty and my brother, Eddie, in the chair immediately above me—relaxed and apparently enjoying themselves as they laughed and talked together.

Just two days earlier—enchanted—I stood on the banks of the Mississippi River and watched the Ferris wheel being assembled for the summer carnival in Cape Girardeau. Its beauty and symmetry were as irresistible as a siren’s song, luring me to it. I imagined climbing aboard one of the cars, riding the circle of color and lights, watching the Missouri sun set over the great Mississippi, seeing the city’s lights from the top, and feeling the sway of the chair in the balmy, summer breeze. Now, though, my fascination turned to out-and-out fear fluttering in my stomach like crazy butterflies.

“Single rider!” shouted the Carney. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. “Put down the bar so we can all go!” the Carney barked.

The wheel began to turn slowly, then faster and faster; the earth below me moved and became smaller; then the chair rocked back and forth, and I came to rest up high on the apogee—stranded, alone, looking across the Mississippi River down at Cape Girardeau. To my right was the Old Mississippi River Bridge; to my left was the Old Lorimier Cemetery.

Soft, white, cotton candy clouds drifted above me. Below me, a Mississippi steamboat—reminiscent of the one that Mark Twain piloted—glided its way through the mighty river’s current. I followed the muddy river as it snaked its way through the countryside below me. Every inch of the legendary waterway brought something new into view—odd little islands, hills, woods, and towns. I felt the romance and intrigue of the river; and, for a brief moment, I thought I saw Lewis and Clark standing atop the bluffs and mapping the river’s course in the distance.

I was no longer landlocked. I sat silent between anguish and ecstasy—suddenly empty of fearful thoughts and full of soothing thoughts. I closed my eyes, mesmerized with joy and happiness as the Ferris wheel slowly turned round ‘n round and carried me to heaven. As I opened my eyes, evening approached; I felt as if I was traveling into space. The rhythmic rat tat tat tat tuh of the Ferris wheel’s machinery freed my thoughts as my spirit soared high above the ground. Inspired and unexpectedly shaken from my self-imposed timidity, I was forever transformed.

All too quickly the rhythmic melody slowed and sadly ended; as my chair approached ground level, I planted my feet firmly on the ground. The Carney released the safety bar and growled, “Careful, now girlee. Ya looks a bit dizzy.”

Nevertheless, I stumbled and fell backwards, looked up, and found Aunt Betty’s face smiling down at me.

“Yahoo, sweetie! I knew you could ride alone. I’m proud of you! Let me take your picture in front of the Ferris wheel with my new Polaroid. Stand next to the Carney. Okay, now smile!”

Later that night as she tucked me into bed, she handed me that Polaroid photograph and said, “You grew up tonight. So, you are ready to go to work with me. Get a good night’s rest!”

Because Aunt Betty was always full of surprises, I laid awake most of the night wondering just what she might have in store for me at the Western Union office where she worked. The next morning, she took me into a poorly-lit, musty-smelling back room. She sat me down in the corner at an antiquated, wooden office chair that was as stiff as an old man’s arthritic joints. She rolled me in front of a vintage Royal manual typewriter; placing my hands on the “home keys,” she demonstrated the reaches. Her college typing book was strategically placed to my left; and gleefully, she said, “You can read, can’t ya, sweetie? Now follow the instructions on each page; you’re old enough to learn to type.”

A few minutes later she stuck her head around the corner and insistently explained, “Oh, one last thing—sit up straight and keep your wrists up so they don’t rest on the edge of the table.”

With that assertion, she turned around and abandoned me, just like she had done the night before at the Ferris wheel ride. Not wanting to disappoint her, I accompanied Aunt Betty to work for the next several days where I silently spent endless hours perched at the keyboard, practicing until my wrists ached and my fingers became numb. Eventually boredom set in as the novelty of learning to type wore off.

At that point, she handed me a shoebox full of postcards and photographs saying, “Hey, take a look inside. Aren’t these pictures interesting? Instead of typing from that boring old book, why not use these and make up some stories? You could type the stories instead of handwriting ‘em. I’d love to read ‘em when you’re finished. How does that sound, sweetie?”

I nodded enthusiastically and hugged her—relishing her suggestion like a new pianist who embraces reading sheet music for the first time. Although I don’t recall the exact number, I typed several completed stories. When summer abruptly ended, I carried them home in a shoebox I aptly labeled “Shoebox Stories.”

The years since—like summer days—have burned and melted, leaving me to wonder what happened to my Shoebox Stories. Then one day while cleaning out my parents’ attic, I uncovered a somewhat dilapidated shoebox. The box smelled dusty like memories waiting to be explored.

As I gingerly opened the shoebox, a heartwarming aroma flooded my nostrils. I sniffed the yellowed, timeworn paper that smelled a bit like grass with a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness. Then I opened the folded pages and immediately recognized the faded ink of the stories I had created so long ago.

The photographs were discolored and worn, but they immediately ignited memories of both the enchanting Ferris wheel and my summer of creativity when Aunt Betty gave me more than a ticket to ride a Ferris wheel. As I rode above the horizon, she unknowingly gave me a ticket to ride above convention—past my fears—into a life filled with anticipation, adventure, courage, resourcefulness, and a level of inspiration enjoyed only by those who have had their spirit set free.

Now I am able to appreciate the beauty in sunsets and the joy in unexpected, sweet surprises. Although the Mississippi River inspired Mark Twain and gave birth to his creativity, the magical Ferris wheel transformed me and gave rise to my imagination—ever flowing like the river—ever turning tales to be told.

© 2011 Sara Etgen-Baker

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An Inventory of Words That Should Exist

by J.p. Lawrence

I have a shoe holder on my closet door, an array of empty plastic mouths, four rows wide by four rows high. It holds no shoes. It has a higher calling: keeping everything I need in its place. Top row, left to right: a pocket for business cards, a pocket for receipts. Second row: all-in-one shampoo and body wash (sports flavored), pocket mirror, and hair gel. Third row: cue tips, a travel-sized toothbrush with whitening toothpaste, a set of contacts with solution, mouthwash. Bottom row: condoms, cologne, and a brown plastic jump rope. And that’s it. Everything is in order, and nothing is in chaos–my mornings make sense.

I call it my glass wall. Is there a better name out there? Of course. But now I have a name for my shoe holder that holds no shoes. A name clean, sanitary, orderly; a handle that makes picking up the concept easier, that gives form to what had previously been a thing.

As for my shoes, they live somewhere else. My four pairs of shoes–one brown casual, one brown formal, one black formal, and one red for running–live in my bottom drawer with a pine tree air freshener, below the drawer for my socks and boxers, the drawer for my pants and shorts, and the drawer for my shirts, sorted by color and use. I spent many hours refining this system.

Once, in deference of my roommate, I dressed in the dark, grabbing at random from each drawer. When I stepped into the light, it all matched, from shoes on up. I need a word to highlight this significance. I know it’s not lucky, because I’m not lucky. I know it’s not coincidental or serendipitous, because my goal was to achieve the very thing that happened. Unlikely is a wet-noodle word. Perhaps sometimes there is no word that makes sense.

Last winter, I had a girlfriend—short brown hair, white knit hat, shy smile she sometimes flashed, and a laugh somewhere between a giggle and a snort. She doted on me as if I were a puppy dog. I needed a word that meant I love you, but not forever, but I couldn’t find one.

She and I still talk from time to time, nod in the hallway, say hello. She got me a book for my birthday, and I got her candy fish for hers. But I don’t have a word for her. Somehow now she’s less of a friend and more of a friend, and friend is a wet-noodle word anyway.

Sometimes in the morning I stumble out of bed and look at my glass wall, and I still can’t find what I’m looking for, and my morning never rises to anything useful. And sometimes the right word floats just out of my reach, and I never quite make sense of things. Those moments are hateful. But hate is a wet-noodle word too.

© 2011 J.p. Lawrence

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Fiction

Great Falls

by Sarah Kendall

I racked my brain trying to picture the words on Mrs. Snook’s fourth grade United States bulletin board. I saw the copper tacks, the crinkled purple border and the black stars next to city names. But the words looked blurry now, as if they’d been written in cursive with a charcoal stick. Nothing. I had nothing.

“Time’s up, Julie and Chrissy,” Mrs. Lingly whispered, taking her silver watch from the coffee table and sliding it over her bony wrist.

She turned off the radio and cleared her throat. Chrissy creased her card in half and passed it over, smiling and flashing her big square teeth. I could see it in her eyes; she knew the answer. I didn’t bother folding my card since there was nothing written on it. Out of my allotted thirty seconds, I’d spent the first seven recognizing the fact that I didn’t know the capital of Montana and the last twenty-three deciding which would be worse: writing down a wrong answer or writing nothing at all.

“Looks like Chrissy’s got it,” Mrs. Lingly said, taking the dry erase marker and adding a dash to the left-side tally.

She finished her last sip of white wine before getting up to start clearing dishes from the room. Barnes waved his hand at Chrissy for a high five, exaggerating for emphasis. He slapped palms with her slowly, using a frame-by-frame approach.

“Good game, guys,” Barnes said diplomatically to the rest of us.

Nobody made a big deal out of the game except Hank, Will’s little brother, who had recently turned ten and developed a case of outspokenness.

“Oh, come on, what did you put?” Hank whined.

“Does anyone want seconds?” Mrs. Lingly asked, picking up a half empty pizza box off the coffee table.

Hank crossed the room to pick up the two paper slips. He showed me my blank, pen-pricked card, his mouth open just wide enough so the light from the fire reflected off his bottom braces.

“You didn’t even guess?”

Disgusted, he let out a throaty grunt as he crumpled the cards and chucked them onto the sofa. My tongue felt like sandpaper. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but I’d babysat kids like Hank before. He was too smart and too skinny for his age and spoke with such blunt force it nearly knocked you over.

I thought about the moment two months ago when Will had invited me to come up here to visit during the summer. I’d just aced my differential equations final and everything seemed exciting and worthwhile. I flew through the test, page after page of linear systems and qualitative methods problems. Will had bought me a cinnamon latte to celebrate. Yes, of course I would come visit him this summer. I could still taste the sweetness of that victory and yet here I was, almost two days into the trip with Will’s family and Barnes’ girlfriend, Chrissy “Pretty-Face” Gillroy, already feeling like the awkward fifth grader with the bad haircut in remedial geography class. I looked at Will and sent him my best What now? look. He got up and took a seat on the floor next to Hank.

“All right, smart guy. What’s the capital of Texas?” Will asked.

“Austin.”

“How about Hawaii?”

“Easy—Honolulu.”

Will took his rectangular black glasses off the top of his head and started polishing the lenses with the bottom edge of his sweatshirt. He sometimes cleaned his glasses like this during English class when he was trying to argue a particularly controversial point.

“What’s the capital of Germany?”

“That’s not a state.”

“So you don’t know it?” Will goaded.

“That’s enough, Will,” his father said, looking up momentarily from his book.

Mr. Lingly had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was in the room. I willed my skin to cool but I could tell from Hank’s glare that my embarrassment was still rouged all over my face.

Chrissy hadn’t said anything since the win. What was there to say? Barnes propped the white board up against the sofa to make room for her and she snuggled up next to him. I stared at the board: all those orange and blue tally marks, like two armies tolling the death count from the battlefields. Mrs. Lingly hadn’t wanted to keep score since it was my first time playing but Hank insisted. A vacation tradition, the homemade Jeopardy game took place after dinner on the first night at the cabin. When Will told me his family visited their “camp” in Connecticut each summer, I pictured bunk beds and Citronella candles. I imagined his dad, slightly overweight and wearing a loose fitting plaid shirt, fishing from a lawn chair off of a dock. I thought his mom would prepare turkey sandwiches with cheese, slipping them into Ziplock bags for a hiking trip snack. I came expecting Walden cabin and instead got a Gatsby bungalow.

When we first arrived, Will brought me up to the guest room where I’d be staying with Chrissy. The room, with its sky-high ceiling and two deluxe four-poster beds, gave way to a beautiful bathroom with heated floor tiles. Barnes and Will helped their parents unload three coolers from the trunk of the car. They stocked the fridge with bundles of heirloom tomatoes, balls of mozzarella cheese, pita chips, Pinot Grigio, fresh asparagus, two jugs of orange juice, and organic chicken breasts.

When it was time to play the Jeopardy game, Mr. Lingly divided the teams: Barnes, Chrissy and himself versus Hank, Will, Mrs. Lingly and me. For a while it was a pretty well matched game. A prep-school-educated sophomore in college, I studied math and computer science and watched as much CNN during the week as I could stomach. Will always asked me to double check his problem sets before handing them in. I wasn’t overly concerned with my fundamental knowledge base. Never in my worst nightmares had I expected to feel such crushing shame from my diminished memory of state capitals.

Chrissy unwound herself from the blanket cocoon, pinched three plastic cups between her fingers, and followed Mrs. Lingly and Barnes into the kitchen. Chrissy knew the routines. She knew where they kept the compost bin (right by the deck, next to the row of blue water jugs), and what water Mr. Lingly preferred (Here’s your seltzer, Mr. Lingly). She wore stretchy leggings and black moccasins and long, gem colored scarves. Her face appeared in some of the framed pictures on the wall, and she’d even brought the beloved Paddidle game to the Lingly family.

An hour into the car ride up to the cabin, I heard Chrissy and Mr. Lingly shout something in unison from the front seat.

“Paddidle!”

Mr. Lingly laughed in loud hiccups and told Chrissy it was a draw. I tugged at Will’s shirt.

“What’s paddidle?”

He explained they’d started playing three summers ago when Chrissy first rode up with them. Her family always played the game on long road trips: you see a car with a headlight out and the first one to yell paddidle wins.

“Why?” I whispered.

“I guess it’s just fun.”

I counted the telephone polls as they passed by the car window. Why not just relax and chat or listen to the radio? What’s the point competing for nothing?

I’d only known Will a few months. He’d sat three seats into the middle row of my one required English class. I’d taken an instant curiosity towards him. He tapped quickly and quietly on the keys of his black laptop, and asked pertinent, interesting questions about the assigned readings. Always chewing spearmint gum, I could smell the sharp, minty aroma wafting over to where I sat two seats away. He never once slyly tucked a sticky glob under his desk.

When Dr. Lasser chose partners for our final project, I found myself in Will’s dorm room making QuickTime animation movies of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” The class was torturous for me—all the close reading and plot outlines. Give me numbers! I craved graph paper and calculators and a projector illuminating proofs on the wall. But Will managed to make English interesting. We stayed up late every night for a week, over-alert and unblinking from our mugs of coffee. He kissed me for the first time as the electric guitar music whined and the pendulum sliced across the screen. We separated only when the music stopped, and even then with difficulty. Now, sitting quietly in the living room of his family cabin, that moment couldn’t seem further away.

Hank exhaled loudly, clearly bored and frustrated with the stall of activity. He mumbled a faint “whatever” under his breath and stomped up the stairs.

Will turned to his father. “It must be hard being so brilliant.”

“You could be a little nicer,” he suggested.

“I’ll talk to him later.”

It was always later with Will. I’ll get to it later. Later, guys. When we see him later, I’ll tell him. I wanted to see what he would do right now in the moment but Mr. Lingly didn’t argue. He just reached again for his book in the side fabric pocket of his chair.

Will got up and walked to the bathroom, and just as I was about to grab my own book from upstairs, Barnes popped into the living room from the kitchen. He took a slug from a long neck bottle of Blue Moon and pointed at me, waggling his eyebrows.

“Julie, you up for a night swim?”

I wanted to be brave, to answer yes right away with no hesitation, but I found myself frozen in place.  “It’s pretty cold out,” Mr. Lingly said.

Thank you.

“But it’s so muggy in here. It’ll be great, c’mon Julie.”

“Sure.” I heard the word escape my mouth before I could really think about the question.

“Yes,” he said, reaching his hand up for a high five.  “I knew I liked you. Now we’ve gotta convince Will and Chrissy.”

“Convince me of what?”

Chrissy walked into the room holding a steaming mug of tea. She always seemed to be cold. In the day and a half that I’d known her she always appeared blanketed in something or busy sipping a hot beverage. I admired her long fingers curled around the wide body of the cup and the thin silver rings on her left middle finger. I assumed Barnes had bought them for her. During the game she would rub the bands like a talisman and look at Barnes with wide, blinking eyes. He wrapped his arm around her waist and she pulled her head slightly away from his mouth, which probably smelled of tangy beer.

“We’re going for a night swim.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. I instantly felt the sting of my earlier loss beginning to fade.

“Julie’s going. Will’s gonna go. C’mon, we’ve never done it before.”

I wondered what else they’d done or hadn’t done. Something about the way he studied her and how he smelled freshly of cologne each time he entered a room she was in made me think they hadn’t slept together yet.

“I’m gonna get Will. You two go change.”

I noticed he ignored Chrissy’s response. He was a giddy ring leader and I could tell he took pride in orchestrating this event.

“Barnes, you should ask your brother, too,” Mr. Lingly said, this time not even lifting his head from the book.

“Where is he?”

He pointed a finger upstairs.

“Geez, is he still pissy about losing?”

There it was again, a reminder of my first failure of the trip. Barnes took another drink from his bottle and looked at me like Can you believe that? He swooped his hands from Chrissy’s waist and tickled her under the arms until she shrieked about the hot tea. They’d both just graduated from high school and you could almost smell the freedom on them. He had a swanky summer retreat, a once-a-weekend beer in his hand made available under parental watch and his girl by his side. The world lay open before him like a buffet of possibilities. I pictured him holding a big shiny spoon.

I said I’d go ask Hank if he wanted to join us. Upstairs, Hank’s door was slightly ajar. I tapped twice and waited.

“What?”

“Can I come in?”

I remembered when I was Hank’s age that I was very protective of my room. I hadn’t appreciated it when people waltzed in without asking.

“I guess,” he said.

The room was dark except for a black gooseneck lamp that Hank had curved so the light concentrated only on his current reading page. Besides the desk chair, the only other place to sit was the bed tucked in the corner under the window. I took a seat on the navy blue rug in the center of the room.

“What are you reading?”

“You don’t have to ask me that,” he said.

“I know. I wanted to know so I asked.”

“You’ve probably never heard of it,” he said, protectively covering the open book with his arm.

“Maybe I haven’t? So what?”

“It’s called Jaggerwall.” He showed me the cover where an open-mouthed dragon snapped its jaws towards an armored knight. I shrugged.

“I haven’t heard of it, but it sounds pretty cool. What’s it about?”

He rolled his eyes and turned back to his reading. I took the opportunity to apologize for the game.

“You should have at least guessed. Maybe you would have been right.”

I nodded my head and glanced around his room. Above his desk on the wall was a gigantic framed map of the United States. Hundreds of dots and dashes covered red and orange and green states. I narrowed in on Montana. Helena—of course. The answer suited Chrissy, the cabin’s own Helen of Troy. I searched the state for some remote city I’d never heard of. Great Falls, Montana. I pictured myself as the little black dot. I would never be the answer to any Jeopardy question.

“I was terrible in geography, as you probably noticed. I’m more of a numbers girl myself.”

This caught Hank’s interest, but I could see him actively resisting. He wouldn’t be so easily hooked.

“Even though I’m in fifth grade, I take sixth grade math.”

“That’s kind of cool.” I wouldn’t give in so easily either.

“They had to rearrange my whole schedule so I could take that one sixth grade class.”

He spoke as he continued the appearance of reading, but he didn’t ask me to leave.
“We’re gonna go for a night swim. I came up to ask if you wanted to join.”

He considered the invitation, resting his pointer finger on the last word he’d read on the page. “Maybe later,” he decided.

Later. I felt myself grinning and turned to the bookshelf so Hank wouldn’t think I was mocking him. I picked up a slim volume whose title had abruptly caught my attention: The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins. I wiggled it out from between two hard covers and took a look.

“Pretty scary stuff.” I showed it to him.

“I dunno.”

“Do you read a lot of poetry?”

“No.” He hesitated. “My dad probably put it up there. You can borrow it if you want.”

“I think I will. Thanks, Hank.”

“No problem.” His cheeks flushed. I might have been the girl who’d lost him the family

Jeopardy game, but I was still a girl.

“I’ll give it back tomorrow,” I added, but he’d already gone back to his book.

In the guest room I looked at my two bathing suits that were tucked into the mesh pocket of my suitcase: a navy one-piece with a gold stripe around the ribcage, and a black two-piece with a gray sailboat pattern. What would Helen of Troy be wearing, I wondered. Or would she even go? I turned and locked the door. The little digital alarm clock read 9:35. I’d been upstairs for almost twenty minutes and knew I should head back downstairs. I quickly flipped through the book Hank had leant me, landing on a poem called “Days”:

Each one is a gift, no doubt,

mysteriously placed in your waking hand

or set upon your forehead

moments before you open your eyes.

I thought of my imaginary day in Great Falls, living in my black dot world. There would be a wooden street sign with the city name and population: 503. The day would start with a good cinnamon latte and jam on toast. The lack of visitors and notoriety would be lonely at first, but would give me ample time to work on my adaptive multilevel numerical methods paper. I’d receive bags of letters from different math journals, begging for my next article. And Will would be there too, off somewhere in the city preparing a film project titled “Later.”

I dug deep and held onto the image of this one illusive Day that Billy described. I grasped the poem in my mind as if it were one of my tried and true algorithms, one I’d seen hundreds of times before and knew would help me. I changed into the gray and black bikini, wrapped a thick sage green towel around my body, and read the stanza one more time.

Outside we could barely see the dock, let alone the black, glassy water. Will held my hand and led me forward. My flip-flop slipped over a patch of wet grass.

“Careful now, don’t fall,” he warned.

Chrissy was chattier than she’d been all night. I could hear her slight New York accent, like firm sediment loosening with time now rising to the surface. She dipped her foot into the lake and shrieked, threatening to go back inside. She said she’d catch a cold. Bugs zipped past our heads while crickets sang and one lone bullfrog croaked a loud, solemn tone. I looked at Barnes’ face as my eyes adjusted to the dark. He was close to caving in. They’d taken a few steps away and were discussing the pros and cons.

“We don’t have to go in,” Will whispered to me. “We can do this later.”

And with that I let go of his hand, took four short steps down the dock and braced myself. The cold water washed over me and I felt terrified and relieved and as if I were slipping into my own world. As I swam up, just before reaching the surface, I could already hear them clapping.

© 2011 Sarah Kendall

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Author Bios

Sara Etgen-Baker is a freelance writer, technical writer, editor, and retired educator. One of her manuscripts, “Journey with Mother,” appears in an anthology entitled Wisdom Has a Voice. Additionally, other memoirs were published in Looking Back magazine and Yesteryears Magazette. She contributes regularly to Tiny Lights and has been a featured author. She currently lives in Allen, Texas with her soul mate who she has been married to for 28 years. She can be contacted at sab_1529@yahoo.com.

Sarah Kendall is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in writing program at Johns Hopkins University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Halfway Down the Stairs, Smalldoggies Magazine, Barely South Review, Bluestem, and Front Porch Review. Preferring her coffee cold and eggs piping hot, her ideal world would revolve around stories and breakfast foods. 

J.p. Lawrence is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served in southern Iraq from 2009 to 2010 as a military journalist with the 34^th Red Bull Infantry Division. His deployment consisted of traveling to a strange new place, meeting strange new people, and gaining an understanding. He wrote more than 100 pieces there. He came home, worked as an intern for foxsportsnorth.com covering veterans at home games of the Minnesota Twins, and came back to school. Today, he studies writing and anthropology at Bard College in New York, and he hopes throughout the rest of his life to continue experiencing new places, and to have an understanding, at some level, of the people there.

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Artist Bio

Eleanor Leonne Bennett, born in Stockport in 1996, is a young British artist who has had her work exhibited around the world. She has been taking photos for three years, but in previous years won first place awards in the biannual Woodland Trust Nature Detectives Art competitions. She has also had her poetry published and enjoys taking part in many genres of art.

Ink-Filled Page Autumn 2011 Issue © Indigo Editing & Publications

Cover Design: Jon Wise

Cover Art: Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Coeditors: Martha Byrne & Kori Hirano

Publisher: Ali McCart