Our stories today all hold a seed of love and romance for the villagers of Nothing Much. We’ll start with our title story, on a walk downtown as the not-quite spring sunshine warms hearts and faces. We’ll find a photo hiding in the back of a wallet and initials carved into a bench that has a story to tell. Next, we’ll build up a bit of courage and travel to the flower shop downtown. We’ll pick our a bouquet and have it wrapped up with a satin ribbon in Hearts and Flowers. Last, we’ll reminisce about the potent message that can be sent by compiling the perfect musical message in Mix Tape.
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Welcome to Stories from the Village of Nothing Much like easy listening, but for fiction. I'm Catherine Nikolai. I write and read all the stories you'll hear on the Village of Nothing Much. Audio engineering and sound design is by Bob Witttersheim. Our brains inherited something called the negativity bias, which means we tend to give more weight and importance to upsetting, scary things than soothing, lovely things. We pay more attention to bad news than good. It kept our ancestors alive. But in the world we live in now, a person can get steamrolled daily with really difficult information, and steamrolled people struggle to help anyone. So I offer up these stories as small antidotes, as ways to prime your pump for noticing the glimmers of goodness that are still there, always there. Take them with you on your commute or when you're out on a walk or winding down for the day, and this will help take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. One more, please inhale and exhale our stories today all hold a seed of love and romance for the villagers of Nothing Much. We'll start with our title story on a walk downtown as the not quite spring sunshine warms hearts and faces. We'll find a photo hiding in the back of a wallet and an initials carved into a bench that have a story to tell. Next, we'll build up a bit of courage and travel to the flower shop downtown. We'll pick out a bouquet and have it wrapped up with a satin ribbon in hearts and flowers. Last, we'll reminisce about the potent message that can be sent by compiling the perfect musical message in mixtape A Little Romance. I was out on the street on a bright winter day. It was cold, and the snow still lay thick on the ground in the park and piled around the trunks of trees in the boulevard. But the sun was out and there was a feeling of newness and freshness. We weren't huddling, hunched in our coats and scarfs, or racing from shop to shop to dive out of the cold. We were, for the first time in a few months, strolling, taking our time, turning faces up to the sun and tasting just a scrap of spring in the air. And by we, I mean all of us out on the street today. I was alone, but I wasn't The sunshine was making a smile at each other as we crossed paths, all of us knowing we were thinking the same thing, this feels good. I made my way down the main street, hands deep in my pockets, and turned at the corner toward the park. It wasn't quite lunchtime yet, and I had no place to be. There was a news stand at the entrance to the park, and I stopped and looked through a few papers and magazines. I found one with pictures of mountaintops in South America and busy city streets in Japan, there were fields of flowers and cold deserts at night. I bought it and a book of crowd sort puzzles, slid them into my bag, and stepped back onto the park path. The path wound around a pond still topped with ice, and walking all the way around it only took a few minutes. I stopped half way through and sat on a bench in the bright sun. A dozen geese, unbothered by the icy water, paddled in the melted puddles on the pond's surface. I smiled at their putty gray feet and slick black neck feathers. I remembered that when geese were on the ground you called them collectively a gaggle, but when they were in flight they were called a skein of geese. I wondered what they called us, and, pulling my coat tighter around me, looked down at the bench and saw a sloppy heart carved into the seat. I ran my finger over the groove in the wood and wondered where M and L were today, and if they were still putting their letters together inside of hearts. I liked to think so maybe they were all grown up now, and maybe they walked through the park and sat on this bench together and looked down at the heart and remembered laughingly the days of young love. If so, I should leave them to it. I pulled my bag back onto my shoulder and finished my circle of the pond, heading down a side street to a little cafe I knew inside. The warm air wrapped around me, making me realize how cold I'd been, and I ordered a bowl of minestroni full of noodles and vegetables and a rich tomato broth. It warmed me from my center, and when it was gone, I ordered a cup of tea and slipped a cookie I'd bought at the bakery that morning from my pocket to dunk into the cup. I thought again of M and L and love and romance, and as I opened my wallet to pay for my lunch, I slipped out an old folded photo strip from a secret spot behind my library card. It had been taken years ago at a little booth on a boardwalk, four frames showing two faces cheeked to cheek, then eyes locked on each other's, then a kiss, then a goofy laugh. I remembered that in Italian a love affair was sometimes described as a story made with someone, and I thought that I had been lucky. All the stories I'd made had made me a little better, a little wiser, a little more understanding, but never less open hearted. I folded the photo along its well worn crease, slipped it back into its home, and stepped out onto the street. The streets were busy with the lunch hour, and as I wove through the window shoppers and slow walkers, I noticed a few kids who must be playing hooky from school. Some were brazen and looking around to see who was noticing them. Being so grown up and some had their eyes down, just trying to not get caught as they stood in line to buy tickets at the movie theater. The sky was still bright, and I thought about walking more, doing some shopping, or visiting a friend who lived in the next block. But then I thought of that magazine of pictures from around the world, and that book of crosswords, and the way that the afternoon sun slanted across the kitchen table in my apartment, and of trading in my boots for slippers. And I turned toward my own street, passing the book shop. I noticed the owner trying to push a card of books through the doorway, and I stopped to hold it open for sidewalk sails already. I asked, well, it's sunny. She smiled at me. I helped her slide the cart onto the sidewalk, and we turned a few paperbacks around so the titles were easy to read. She nodded over her shoulder to the apartment mailboxes on the bricks beside the entrance to my place. Looks like you've got something in your box, hmm. Sure enough, the flap was tilted and I could see a corner of something in there. I fished it out and held in my hand a small, red heart shaped box. A sneaking smile spread across my face, and I opened the box to see a handful of chocolates tucked in red paper wrappers inside. I might have been blushing, so I just called quick thanks over my shoulder and slipped through my door. Hearts and flowers. I'd been standing in line at the market, a basket in my hands, overflowing with all my favorite things to put into vegetable soup. I was wrapped in my scarf and coat and watching the family in front of me as they unloaded their cart ont the checkout belt. They had a little boy, maybe seven or eight. He'd been talking about science class and dancing around the cart in the unembarrassed way that children are smart enough to do. He stopped suddenly in front of a shelf of Valentines, and I watched his face as he looked at the cards and the candy. He looked like he was thinking hard. He picked up a box of those tiny candy hearts, the one with messages printed on their chalky pastel faces. He shook the box and the hearts rattled and sighed. He peeked over at his dad who was quietly watching him from the register. He lifted an eyebrow, and the little boy shrugged his shoulder in a silent question and answer. His dad gave him a small nod, and the boy slipped the box onto the belt, beside a cann of tomatoes and a box of lasagna noodles. The boy tucked his hands into his coat pockets and stood with his back against the cart. I thought he might be planning just how and when and whom he was going to give that box of candy hearts. I remembered those class Valentine's Day parties in elementary school, paper lunch sacks taped to the edge of your desk with your name in red crayon sketched out on the brown paper, and walking through the rose dropping envelopes into the sacks and a plate of cupcakes on the teacher's desk for after. I remembered the deliberation the night before, thumbing through the cards to find just the right one for that particular classmate, writing my name with careful curly cues and adding an extra sticker to the envelope. Would they notice? The family was packeding up their groceries, and as the box of candy came across the scanner. The boy's father scooped it up and handed it to him. He slipped it into the pocket of his coat with a shy nod, and his father turned back to the register, smiling as they pushed their cart out to the car. The smile went from his face to mine, and I put a box of candy on the belt with my own groceries, thinking that if that little boy could be brave with his heart, I could too. Now that box of hearts has sat on my desk for a week. It caught my eye whenever I passed by, and today, as I sat down to write in my planner, my fingers gently drumming on the pink cardboard, I looked out my window to see a delivery person standing on my neighbor's front step, a bouquet of flowers in her hands. I watched her ring the bell and sat with that warm bloom of excitement for someone else's joy as I waited for my neighbor to open her door. I watched her face as she did, the second of confusion that shifted to delight, and the unstoppable smile that lit up her face. She signed for the flowers, and nearly took the pen back with her into her house, laughing. She returned it, blushing and flustered. I looked at those candy hearts and tucked them into my pocket and headed out. I went straight to a flower shop I knew, on an alley in downtown. Its windows were full of vases of long stemmed roses and lili's about to bloom. I pushed through the old oak door, and the scent of all those mixed blossoms struck me. There were layers of different kinds of sweetness, and under that the smell of water and soil and green plants. Could the smell of flowers be a kind of medicine, like a tincture or salve for lifting spirits and elevating thoughts. It was a busy place on this February afternoon, and as I browsed through the cases of flowers and shelves of houseplants, I moved around others on the same Errand there was an older gentleman dressed in a tweed suit, dapper and proud, with shine shoes and a pocket square folded just so in his breast pocket. The florist was wrapping up a bouquet for him, tucking baby's breath and pink and yellow tulips and crape paper and tying it the glossy ribbon. While he waited, he sidled up to me. As I was looking at the pots of exotic plants and succulents. There was wine that I had first mistaken for a venus fly trap, whose arrow shaped leaves were fringed with tiny green clam shells that seemed likely to clap together at a touch. The gentleman cleared his throat and said, Calancho de Grammontiana, or mother of thousands. I tilted my head in question, and he reached out to touch the leaf tipped with plantlets. As he did, a few small buds fell easily from the plant to land in the soil below. That's how her children leave the nest and grow up, he said. The florist called over to say his bouquet was ready, and I gave him a smile as he took it and left. I went back to looking for just the right flower, something that felt akin to the person I would give it to. That's the heart of romance, isn't it showing someone that you are paying attention to who they are, and reflecting it back with appreciation and a bit of excitement. It wasn't I supposed any different than looking through my stack of Valentine's cards in second grade to find just the right one to add that extra stick or to. There was a vase of feathery flowers in shades of light pink and cream and deep red. They were a bit like a fern who had given up on being just green and bloomed in a lacey plume. The floors caught my eye, and I asked for all of them to be wrapped up in tissue and tied with a satin ribbon. This was no time for doing things by half. As I walked through the streets on my way to a particular front door, I thought about the little boy dropping that box of candy and a paper sack taped to a school desk, and my neighbor opening her door, and the gentleman in the shop with his flowers in love. We must risk some hurt, but better that than holding inside something that should be shared. I stepped up to the door and made my heart brave and rang the bell. Mixtape. There was an art to it. The first song had to be really really good. It needed to pull you in and lay the framework for the mood you were attempting to build. But the second song had to be even better. It had to surprise the listener who'd assumed that all the magic had been spent on the first track. Then it would pull back a bit, a song with less punch but more poetry, maybe something a little odd but catchy, And then a song you hadn't heard in ages but loved and remembered every word of. With room for one more song on the first side of the tape, it was time for another heavy hitter, something that would be rewound and played again before the cassette was flipped. Then the second side called for some nostalgia, slower songs, harmonies that you felt inside your chest when you sing along. The whole thing was, of course a message of some sort, shared favorites for growing friendship, showing off your taste or prowess as a curator, But very often it was a kind of covert love letter, and the second side was the best place to slip in a song or two that showed your heart. It was all deniable if need be. They were just songs, but they weren't, and finding the one or two that might make the listener, with their headphones pressed against their ears, their walkman clutched in one hand as they crossed campus, stop and wonder or smile. Well, that was the point of it all. If you were really going to go all out, you named the mix and scrolled it out on the label, stuck to the tape, something enigmatic and impressive sounding, or a scrap of an inside joke that reminded them of how you'd laughed together. You might even design a cover, some hand drawn art or a photo that had gone through the copier and come out a bit streaky, but that only added to the effect. Then folding it just right so it would mimic the j card that usually sat in the hinged plastic case. Did you write anything inside the cover? How brave were you? Did you write out the playlist? Or maybe you wanted them to discover it one song at a time. That's how I like to do it. It kept the mystery and hopefully weaved a sort of spell as it went from one track to another. I'd forgotten just how much thought went into those mixes, almost forgotten about the idea of cassette tapes at all, until I found a shoe box full on a shelf in the basement. It was inside a bigger box full of things I'd cleaned out of my first car, the one that had just barely gotten me through the last two years of high school and the first two of college. I couldn't remember what kind it had been, except that it was red, and while it didn't start reliably and the heat was hit or miss in the winter, it had a moon roof, which I thought was the fanciest thing I'd ever seen. A box of cassettes when I'd pulled off the top and looked down into the mess of them, had brought back a flood of memories. Some were tapes I'd bought at the music store, and I remembered standing in front of the racks of new music, figuring out if I could afford more than one, and if it was just going to be one, which one? I thought about, how we'd listen to the same tapes over and over, how you came to know the songs in order, and when the flip to side B would come In the box were a few with very beat up cases that had been carried in back pockets and book bags passed back and forth at lunch and traded for weeks at a time. I swung open a few cases and took out the liner notes to read what the artists had written. Some were just lyrics, and others had pictures of the band, drawings and quotes. These had felt so meaningful, so special, when I'd opened them the first time. There's something about finding the music that feels like it was written for you. When you're growing up, you're trying on different ideas and styles, and when something fits down to the bones, and it might be the first time, you feel like you belong and that changes a lot. No wonder we made these mixes with such care. They were a way of asking if we belonged with each other. In the bottom of the box past the tapes I'd bought from the music store were the mixtapes. Most of them were loose, without cases, just a few words scratched out on the label, and suddenly I had to hear them again. I went through the boxes and the shelves around me. There must be a tape player somewhere here. I'd had a stereo that had a record player built into its top, an AMFM dial in the middle, and two tape decks on the bottom. They'll let you record from one tape to another, the height of technology at the time, but that had been sold in a garage sale when I was still in high school. I found a flat black tape doc with a microphone attached and a bright red record button, and remembered that for a while folks would make all sorts of recordings with devices like these. We'd just talk into them as if they were our diaries. We'd record family histories or tape birthday parties to play back later, though I can't imagine that was ever much done. Beside it in the same box was exactly what I needed. My Walkman, bright yellow and with the headphones still plugged in. I rushed to the kitchen drawer for a couple of batteries and settled on the sofa with the Walkmen and the box of tapes. I played a few i'd made myself. Songs for driving with the windows rolled down, songs for amping myself up before a test or audition, songs for a broken heart. I found some in the handwriting of my best friend. Funny how you don't forget how someone writes their e's or m's. These songs made me smile and tapped my toes on the living room rug, remembering how we'd listen stretched out on one of our beds on a Friday night, talking for hours and eating bowls of popcorn till one of our parents got fed up with the music and told us to pack it in for the night. Finally, and maybe I'd been saving it since i'd first spotted it in the bottom of the box. I played a tape whose case was still carefully preserved. The tape had my name written in red ink and the label for you from me, it said. I turned the cassette over in my hands a time or two. I'd played it so many times that it was probably near worn out, but I hoped it would play at least once more. I flipped it to side ay and slid it carefully into my walkman and press play. Thanks for spending some time here with us in the village of nothing much. However you celebrate love, however you show it, be sure it includes you. Two