lim·​i·​nal : in between, transitional, a threshold

Welcome to the archive of Tiny Stories 3: Liminality.

33 stories <100 words by 29 writers + 15 multi-disciplinary artistic responses by 15 artists
Created and shared in 2020.

To learn about this year’s Tiny Stories (Season 6: Reunion), this is where you want to go —>

Firelight invites you to explore our virtual exhibit by experiencing the stories and corresponding art.
We like to think of this installment of Tiny Stories as a museum — your guide is below, but we encourage you to get a little lost…

How to:

1. Scroll down + start reading

2. When there is corresponding artwork,
click the orange links

3. As you explore, a menu will appear
(desktop: at left, mobile: under the + sign at top right).
This menu = your map.

4. Use your map to explore new stories + art

5. Inspired by a Tiny Story? Create and submit
an art response to add to this live exhibit.

Liminality Cube Art designed by Corwin Levi and Jason Lambert with Eddie Suchocki-Sulborski

So far I don’t like it here by Jep Streit

So far I don’t like it here. Most of the others are older than me, plus using wings is way harder than it looks, they’re mostly just in the way. Getting them to move even a little bit was like that time before I died when I was trying to wiggle my ears. Only the left one actually ever moved. I’m not supposed to but I miss the twins and Mom. I can’t help it. Everyone says I’ll be happy here, that it takes time. I just want to go home.

More from the author —>

artwork

So far I don’t like it here by Aria Frehner, watch shadow puppet / dance film here —>

Kobe/George Floyd by Marilyn J. Simons

Kobe was a black basketball star, a tragic accidental loss. But he belongs to the time before. George was an ordinary black citizen, unknown until his death made headlines. He belongs to this time. Now George has reinvigorated a movement, his one voice made into millions. Two black men, one who made it, and one who is remaking the world. We will come out on the other side. Who will we be? Stronger, nicer? Weaker, meaner? They say change is good. A pandemic sweeps through indiscriminately--leaving, what? Broken hearts, but also new realizations and appreciations. What will you be?

artwork

Kobe/George Floyd — Crankie by Ann Putnam, watch video of crankie here —>

Resection by Martha Eichler

First comes the symptom, or a routine test. Then, a discovery. There is a problem. Something is amiss. A foreign “mass.” Not-self. Mutated cells run amok. Biopsies. A probable diagnosis. The probable diagnosis predicts the probable prognosis.

In between all of this lies the patient, worrying, wondering, wishing, and hoping; suppressing the rising fear and panic.

Doing the dishes, changing the sheets, getting a haircut, making dinner. The chicken was good.

Catscan. Meeting the surgeon. To discuss what will happen with the scalpel.

Between the surgeon and the patient lies the tumor. Between the scalpel and the disease lies hope.

I Slept by Jason Lambert

Almost every night, I have slept on a high bed under a pile of blankets. The second and third months, I had quick and busy dreams, close up and flashing: a wet bicycle, a galley kitchen, a tired road. Then the dreams lessened, lengthening to old friends – in sunshine mostly, in places that I loved them, in plain open air. I said thank you to many and sorry to some. After I dreamed of my parents when they were young, again and again.

artwork

I Slept by Laura Carden, watch video here —>
I Slept by Molly McDowell, watch video here —>

Mice have moved by Jazimina MacNeil

Mice have moved into my bed. Nobody taught them that it’s bad manners to defecate on somebody else’s pillow, even if you are a squatter, and my dad leaves grapes for them on a napkin every night, so they arrive fully loaded. My bedroom door stays shut most always now except on rare masked visits when I rummage for an old pair of slippers; my mother and brother and I appear in the bed, piled together under a circle of light, my mother reading sleepily then beginning to narrate a dream as it overtakes her, until we nudge her awake.

We Were Out in the Rain by Steven Bloomfield

We were out in the rain, my granddaughter and I, in the pandemic spring of 2020. For splashing in puddles, she wore her new yellow boots. Exposed to the wet, we felt joy in a flourishing garden where we wouldn’t be found, in our reveling together in nature. Perched on a moment, we were enacting a future memory that I’ll sweetly recall in the future – and that she’ll lose, because she’s only two. In the storm of this virus exist beautiful harbors. We live amidst not only constraints but a landscape of opportunities in which perhaps she’ll come to thrive.

artwork

Puddle Jumping by Ben Putnam, view sculpture here —>

Honor the space between – no longer and not yet by Susan MacNeil

An uninvited guest slithers among us, crossing boundaries and spawning them.
Man, beast or both?
We choke on the unnerving demarcation, jagged thresholds that dare us to rewire familiar landscapes.
We clutch at the slippery subliminal.
We cry at the loss of habitual frontiers.
We quake at the shadowy future.
Say hello to this undesirable visitor.
Make room for its experience.
Embrace the dread.
Wade beyond your knees if you dare.
Straddle the provisional mystery.
Will the Wayward Sisters of MacBeth predict our fate?
Might the Archangel Michael deliver us from evil?
One thing we know.
Only the strong survive.

More from the author —>

The house we built by Loree B. Sandler

The house we built, loved, and lived in for twenty years sold during the pandemic. We had six weeks to pack up and get out.

Bob said, “I’m sheltering in place with a yard, not elevator buttons.”
Bob said, “I’m never buying Illinois real estate again.”

We found a lovely house with a lovely yard (and a lovely landlord). We signed a 1-year lease, with the option for another.

Maybe the dog poop outside the door was accidental, but the theft of the BIDEN HARRIS sign was not.

Maybe no place will feel like home again. Or maybe any place at any other time will feel just fine.

More from the author —>

Transitioning by Heidi Mack

After several weeks of wearing the colors of fire, a leaf falls from a branch, swirls gently on its journey to the ground. Swirling in liminal space. From its state of fading and fluttering on the tree to its future as food for the soil. Following its previous transition from a lush green leaf feeding a caterpillar to a watercolor palette of red and orange. I casually observe these passages as I rake leaves of yet another state – crisp and brown. Where and when is the space between grasped and acknowledged? Do we cling to the season we are losing, like the oak leaf, reluctant to let go? Or shift our attention to the already-bare trees signaling the next season? I scoop up another pile of leaves into a tub and dump them to compost, hearing, but not really listening to, the intersecting voices of fall and winter. The rhythmic swish of my rake and the papery rustling of leaves amassing keep me distractedly oblivious of the other season I am in - in between. 

artwork

Can We Do This? by Julie Cowan, view lithograph here —>

Retiring by Jean M. Diamond 

Had a retirement party.
Still preparing returns.
Emptied out my office.
Still working from home.
Told my clients I’m stepping back.
Still checking email.
Knew it was time to let go.
Still holding on.

It started by Judy Carberg 

It started when I was 11 and a package arrived in the mail with my name on it. The return address was from my rarely seen maternal Grandfather who had a rocky relationship with my mother and so was periodically getting kicked out of our lives.

 The suspense was killing me. What could he possibly be sending me now to make up for 11 years of missed birthday presents?  And there it was …. the perfect gift… a white cotton eyelet 28 AAAA bra! It was as big as a thong. And then I waited …and waited… and waited  til the day I could fill the damn thing out!

Life Disrupted by Timothy Coutis

My father died in June of 1991. I’d been a bookseller for 15 years and had recently closed 8 of the 12 stores in a small independent chain as Barnes and Noble and Borders opened big ones. I was opening a store for my new employer when I got the call to come home. I didn’t make it in time. 

Mom passed just after Christmas that year. Too busy working to grieve, it seemed there was no way out. In 95, a year after Amazon came online, thanks to a small inheritance I joined a marketing firm as a partner.

The Interval* by Alice B. Fogel

If in the temporal world  
the vast interstice
hanging in the balance 
between the invocation
and the prayer—O  
holiest interval—there
were no mercy and God 
said yes?

If in the plenitude of yes
the measured world hung
in the hung invocation—O Lord
in heaven—
/—O World!—prayer then 
showed no mercy

If God tarried in if 
an intervention
between here and the holy
why why tarry 
if between ready and death God said yes
you prayerful span of being
I am death
for finitude why not
say yes?

*adapted from “Variation 2: Interval,” from Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s Goldberg Variations

More from the author —>

One Would Expect by Julie Perron

One would expect the product of multiple generations of New Englanders traced back to colonial times to fall in line with the practice of autumn worship. Like all of you here today, I strongly suspect. I’m here to tell you no – I hate fall. I object to its beauty and the dying of the light. It is my liminal space, exasperated by the combination of the anxiety it produces by its own right and the expectation of what comes next. So go ahead and stretch it out all you want. I just want to get on with things. Period.

artwork

Fall by Brenda Withers, watch film here —>
One Would Expect by Erin Sweeney, view sculpture here —>
One Would Expect by Ella Sweeney, view paintings here —>
One Would Expect by Winthrop Sweeney, view paintings here —>
One Would Expect by Jon Creamer and Jazimina MacNeil, view photo triptych here —>

Masks by Marilyn J. Simons

I never thought I'd be a bandit. Now I am one, whenever I meet someone. They are all bandits too (except the strange looking ones, the barefaced). How do I know my friends? Different clues--smiling eyes, a familiar coat, a hat or a hairdo. We must look closer to see friend or foe, good or bad, known or unknown. "Mask up!" I say to myself, when approaching someone. "Mask up!" I joke to a friend, when we both forget. Someday there will be no more masks. We will smile and frown again. My glasses won't fog up--hallelujah!

It felt like a break by Sarah Steinberg-Heller 

It felt like a break, 
a soft crack in my hard shell.

I looked back only once,
right after we two began to walk away.

I found my feet pushing 
forward against the salty pavement

my hand raising itself,
pressing against the side of my head
making sure I did not fall open.

I think you took the ride home,
but I no longer know.

I've forgotten 
how to hear anything but sadness. 

Phase Shift 2020 by Stephanie Latini

4am. She crosses the threshold of the sliding glass doors into the cavernous, shadowy airport. She has been here before, but the reassuring anxiety of the vibrant daytime pulse is absent. This place seems strangely distorted. Does she belong here? The ticket in her hand indicates that yes, this is the place, this is the course. She will reach her new destination, eventually. For now, there is only a disquieting sense of anticipation in this ephemeral palace. She waits for the change. The humming sound of a floor being waxed from far away brings promise.

I stood outside my sister’s house by Corinne Chronopoulos

I stood outside my sister’s house, listening to her labor. There is a six-year difference between us, but she always felt like my older sister. While I was cautious and pragmatic, Emily financed her education with a credit card, launched a business, made a home for herself, and dared to have a child in the comfort of her bedroom. She never asked for anyone’s permission. It is a gift to love somebody like that. So, I was not afraid hearing her call out in pain, standing in the dark below her window, knowing she’d belong to this beginning too.

artwork

I Stood Outside My Sister’s House by Sarah Sandback, view painting here —>

Dear Mom by Frank P. Manley

Dear Mom: I will never forget sitting by your bed the last week you were with us. You were trying so hard to say something about the pink china tea set that you told me would be mine someday. You were mad at me and gave it to my cousin. Were you trying to say you changed your mind? I was holding your hand two days later when you took your last breath. I am sorry that I had to separate myself and my family from you, but I had to. I know you never understood. Your pain hurt me.

Thirty years ago by Leela Howard

Thirty years ago, after graduating high school, I was at a threshold, and not yet ready for college. At 17, I set off alone to travel around the world.

Minimal itinerary led to unplanned adventures in Asia: trekking in the Himalayas, a Buddhist meditation retreat, elephant riding through exotic forests in Thailand, holy temples, cramped buses and trains, driving from Nepal to South India in an old army truck, drugs and rave parties on tropical beaches, rice patties, dancers and art in Bali....all steeped in interwoven times of connection and loneliness. 

Absorbing the diversity of lands and peoples created a fertile ground to know my inner landscape, discover independence, and change the direction of my life.

The Frog Prince Story by Deb Roberts

I rang the Sloan’s doorbell, hoping I wasn’t too late. We planned to work on the Frog Prince script before Janet lost interest.
“Come in! Janet is excited you’re here. “
 In truth, it was Joe I needed to see. He was to play the Frog, in the seniors’ show for our Nursery class.
Janet sat close to me on the couch. I put my arm around her, hand on her shoulder.
Joe began, “Once upon a time an ugly old frog jumped unto to the edge of a deep well…. “
Janet, semi-aphasic, suddenly spoke, “and a beautiful young Princess rushed out the Castle door, “Shoo, shoo, you ugly old frog….”

artwork

The Frog Prince by Susan Mann, view photographs here —>

Guilt by Marilyn J. Simons

Outside my nest, people are dying. I see through the TV hospital crises, California wildfires, riots in cities, bombast in Washington. I turn it off and look out the window, at changing seasons, summer weather, autumn colors. I am not sick, and I feel guilty. My employment survives--I am luckier than many, and I feel guilty. I hunker down in my nest and try to do worthwhile things--housecleaning, long put off paperwork, the sorting of old things. But I feel guilty I am not making masks, for which I have no sewing talent anyway. I am stuck here.

Leaving by Thomas G. Fiffer

Observing green leaves turning gold, pondering their pending drop, I considered the phrase "betwixt and between.” Between I knew, but betwixt’s etymology offered "the space that separates." The word "space" straddles the phrase, establishing betwixt’s borders. Change, even sudden, occurs in stages; switching states means crossing into the between space, neither here nor there, green nor gold, dead nor alive. This liminal space is where imagination hovers, vibrating with magic, not an end but a means to an end, not a continent we reach and conquer, but a kingdom of air we inhabit through the act of giving chase.

More about the author —>

artwork

Leaving by Carin Torp and Lisa Rogers, view performance here —>

David’s father by Allen Saxon

David’s father now undressed in the garage. He put his clothes in the washer on his way down the basement stairs to the guest bedroom where he showered and redressed. The dinner tray was placed on the stairs. His father ate sitting on the bottom step while David spoke from the top. In the morning his father was gone before David was awake. Last year was more fun when there were hugs and ice cream after soccer, but there was a certain pride when David’s teacher told his class that his father was the brave ICU doctor who ran the city’s Covid unit.

Suspensions by Kath Allen

January to July 4 finally saw my daughter once and no more. 
She is a nurse working on covid cases in her hospital.
Male relationship not getting off the ground,
too far apart and covid in the way.
Postponed photo shoot months on end,
latest stop until post Covid.
Photos and my name not on his written work
until way the other side of the threshold of 
the door baring way.
Suspended relationships and events
floating in space whirling until
we can wrap arms around one 
another again 
until..............

 The Actor* by Alice B. Fogel

It’s not avoidance,
not to transcend. It’s a hallelujah
chorus raising the rafters in a theatre
of all souls.
It’s to let each 
make a scene, death-defying, an act
in the wings. Call me a dodo, 
I am not 
extinct when I fly this coop of earthly bounds.
What you see
is not who I am:  It’s to slough a slew 
of disparate selves. Don’t you 
wish you could die 
night after night, and die, and die, and still be
attractive? 
It’s an I for an I. 
It’s all entrancing and never having
to bow out. 

*adapted from “Variation 16: Actor,” from Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s Goldberg Variations

More from the author —>

Are We There Yet? by Sharon M. O’Brien

are we there yet?
where?
i don’t know. anywhere!
where we at now?
heaven! or maybe hell.
where’s that at?
here!
“i was living in an ecstasy and didn’t know it,” she said, “that was the last carefree meal of our lives.”
betwixt and between - but that’s years off! or ought to be.
nope.
where are we going anyway?
the kid rock candy mountain, playing hollywood squares with everyone, walking in the rain the snow the sun.
every day it’s beautiful here. every day.
but i want to see OTHER it’s-beautiful-here-every-days!
are we there yet?
maybe.

artwork

Are We There Yet? by Jon Creamer and Jazimina MacNeil, watch video here—>

So far I don’t like it here by Aria Frehner

Video response to So Far I Don’t Like it Here by Jep Streit (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story —>

Kobe/George Floyd Crankie by Ann Putnam 

Video response to Kobe/George Floyd by Marilyn J. Simons (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story —>

I Slept by Laura Carden

Video response to I Slept by Jason Lambert (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

I Slept by Molly McDowell

Video response to I Slept by Jason Lambert (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

Puddle Jumping by Ben Putman

Art response to We Were Out in the Rain by Steven Bloomfield (TINY STORIES 3)

Artist Ben Putnam will be raffling off Puddle Jumping. Anyone who makes a $25.00 donation to firelight will be eligible for the drawing. For each additional $25, Ben will add your name into the hat again. Donate here, and let us know you’d like to enter the raffle. Thank you for your support!

More from the artist —>

Back to story —>

Can We Do This? by Julie Cowan

Art response to Transitioning by Heidi Mack (TINY STORIES 3)
lithograph with hand coloring / 22x30 on paper

More from the artist —>

Back to story —>

Fall by Brenda Withers

Video response to One Would Expect by Julie Perron (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

One Would Expect by Erin Sweeney

Art response to One Would Expect by Julie Perron (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

One Would Expect by Ella Sweeney

Art response to One Would Expect by Julie Perron (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

One Would Expect by Winthrop Sweeney

Art response to One Would Expect by Julie Perron (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

One Would Expect by Jon Creamer and Jazimina MacNeil

Art Response to One Would Expect by Julie Perron (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story + more artwork responses —>

I Stood Outside My Sister’s House by Sarah Sandback

Art response to I Stood Outside My Sister’s House by Corinne Chronopoulos (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story —>

 The Frog Prince by Susan Mann

Art response to The Frog Prince Story by Deb Roberts (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story —>

Leaving by Carin Torp and Lisa Rogers

Video response to Leaving by Thomas G. Fiffer (TINY STORIES 3)

Back to story —>

Are We There Yet? by Jon Creamer and Jazimina MacNeil

Video response to Are We There Yet? by Sharon O'Brien (TINY STORIES 3)

More from the artist —>

Back to story —>

Firelight welcomes you to participate in our Tiny Stories Project

opens December 18, 2020

Following Firelight’s Tiny Stories community events in 2019, we continue our tradition of engaging our community as contributors in our third installment: a virtual exhibit of stories and art.

Twenty-nine writers contributed short stories (100 words or less) on the theme Liminal Space. Artists were then invited to create a piece inspired by the stories. Fifteen artists feature a wide range of work -- from shadow puppets in purgatory to a crankie about George Floyd to a lithograph of changing seasons. 

Visitors are encouraged to explore the project like a museum exhibit -- to discover the “rooms,” get a little lost, and stumble upon something new. Designers Corwin Levi, Michelle Aldredge, Eddie Suchocki-Sulborski, Jason Lambert, and Nora Fiffer have shaped a virtual experience that is both independent and intimate for the visitor. 

Firelight’s intention with the Tiny Story community projects remains to extend the invitation to gather and create in our communities. This round we are thrilled to keep the project ongoing as a living document: we will keep the call open for artists to respond to one of these Tiny Stories. The yield of art to text is so engaging we are excited to see what other stories inspire the artists in our Firelight community.  

So while this is introduction is about the project and the process, it is also an invitation to find a story that makes you want to add your art to the work that is here.  

We thank Linda Claff, Firelight Member and artist whose theme set all this in motion. We are grateful for the nearly sixty people who have supported Tiny Stories 3, and we’re thrilled for you to experience this installment. The Tiny Stories project, as always, is free and open to the public. Visit the exhibit anytime after December 18 at 7pm. Take me to Tiny Stories 3 —>

Thank you for participating in Tiny Stories in 2019

thank you for coming to hunger & homelessness: Stories of hope

Following Firelight’s TINY FRIENDSHIP STORIES as part of The Thing in the Spring this past June, we continued this tradition of community collaboration in support of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week November 16th-24th. We asked our community, near and far, for stories of 100 words or less inspired by the prompt “Hunger & Homelessness: Stories of Hope.”

Selected stories were read by actors from Firelight and ConVal High School at an art opening by ConVal High School students held at the Peterborough Library on November 15th titled “What Does it mean to Feel at Home?” Stories were recorded by Echo Finch, so the community will have an archive. The privacy of all writers is completely upheld. Learn more about the week’s events here.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO TINY FRIENDSHIP STORIES!

PERFORMED AT THE THING IN THE SPRING, PETERBOROUGH NH

SUNDAY JUNE 9, 1PM ON THE TOADSTOOL LAWN, FREE

Firelight’s pop-up community project, TINY FRIENDSHIP STORIES, performed at The Thing in the Spring. Firelight called on our community, near and far, to submit a tiny story about Friendship -- 100 words or less. Thirty stories were selected for performance and 21 performers embodied the pieces. This project, inspired by the NY Times' Tiny Love Stories Project, echoes the themes of our second season. 

 Thank you to our writers: Steph Latini, Kath Allen, Christine Wolf, Claudia Chang, Marylou DiPietro, Loree Sandler, Sara Marberry, Susan MacNeil, Bill Chatfield, Christine Destrempes, Susie Spikol, Melissa Lamothe, Melissa Stephenson, Alix Woodford, Bill Horton, Corinne Chronopoulos, Kathy Boss, Allen Bush, Heidi Mack, Haylie Ellis, Marie Michaels, Isaiah Lapierre, Jazimina MacNeil, Rodger Martin, Steven Bloomfield, Tim & May Clark, Jason Lambert, Pat Hitchens Bow, Becky Karush, Corwin Levi.

Thank you to our performers: Paulee Mekdeci, Harold Thomas McCarthy, Karen Hatcher, Molly McDowell, Angie Carter, Melissa Stephenson, Alix Woodford, Terry Landis, Kathy Boss, Isaiah Lapierre, Michael Havey, Marilyn Simons, Kay Kinderman, Laura Carden, Tori Haring-Smith, Jason Lambert, Nora Fiffer, Henry Siegl.