A Master of The Very Short Story

Because it's Valentine's Day here's an apt quotation from Margaret Atwood: "The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love."

She is well known for her novels and poetry, but she also wrote one of the best collections of very short stories Big Frank has ever read. It is called The Tent, and the imaginative worlds that she creates in that tent are entrancing. Some are obviously stories, and some are imaginative essays and some are somewhere in between. Below is one of Big Frank's favorites from The Tent.

Time Folds

by Margaret Atwood

Time folds, he said, meaning that as time goes on and on it buckles, in the extreme heat, in the extreme cold, and what is long past becomes closer. You can demonstrate this by pleating a ribbon and sticking a pin through: Point Two, once yards away from Point One, now lies just beside it. Is time/space like an accordion, but without the music? Was he making a statement about hard physics?

Or was he saying: Time folds its wings, at long last. Time folds its tents and silently steals away. Time folds you in its folds, as if you were a lamb and the lack of time a wolf. Time folds you in the blanket of itself, it folds you tenderly and wraps you round, for where would you be without it? Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss and then it flattens you out and folds you up and tucks you away until it's time for you to become someone else's past time, and then time folds again.