Hem, what are we doing? It’s Rosh Hashanah.

I know it. And I don’t want you to get thinking this is all about anti-semitism. The Jewish religion is a grand old thing and is the true basis and pre-evolution of our own Christian faith. I myself am Catholic and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Right. There is an awful lot of blood in your writing.

That’s right. The blood of Christ purifies us all. Like a good solid punch in the face, you understand who you are in the world and what is important. Survival. Survival of the fittest.

And that’s why you woke us up for this meeting?

No. I perfectly planned to take the day off but my body just happens to be tuned in to a Sunday morning wake up that means something.

Do you want to eat? There’s onions. You want to make some porridge or something?

No. It wasn’t that. No. It wasn’t that. I just wanted to begin the work week.

But today is a day off.

Yes, but my body is telling me that today is a work day and it’s time to be serious.

I see what you mean. So let’s have a meeting. You’ve got some ideas?

Thank you. I just want to point out some basics that I believe are true if we are publishing a 48 page literary journal dedicated to utopian thinking and social satire for everything too stupid to be a utopian thinker.

That was a good way to say it. Go on.

You know what else? I feel like expanding and just letting the words flow out of me. I feel like I have so many pictures I want people to look at to understand something about life.

Yes. The act of writing allows you to think more deeply about things. Even if it’s just the physical act of putting words on paper, this defines the thing you are talking about and makes it special. Or even sacred like this day off. And we understand that you are visual and photographic in your thinking and that you believe in preparedness. We got it, Hem. What’s your point?

You’re right. I should write with the tight sinewy prose…

Hem, time. Time. It’s Rosh Hashanah. What do you want to say?

We agree that there is a front cover and a back cover I’m not really convinced it needs to be the same picture every week and whatever this preseason shit we have been doing needs to be addressed first and foremost.

We have to design a cover page. Got it.

No, technically speaking, if we are publishing this as a journal that is supposed to survive the elements even moderately, this would give us a somewhat plasticized cover page. This means that pages 1, 2, 47 and 48 would have to be seen as protective of what is inside.

So the design of the protective sheets has to be such that what?

I don’t know. But there are plenty of examples on the internet where you can flip page by Page through a magazine. Try Playboy or the national lampoon. I also suggest mad magazine because your centerfold, as it were, your middle eight pages are detachable. I suggest you also follow the cover and interior format, expand it to the middle 10 pages if you feel a greater sense of love and want to dedicate more of your real estate to the children and I think mad magazine was a Grand Old gift to the young people.

We are going to write this left to right but we will allow the decision as to whether we start the children’s stuff on page 19 or on page 21. And, we have to follow the same philosophy of cover sheets. Got it.

If you’re talking about pure efficiency and if you are talking about creating actual writing that is designed to fit within a particular landscape, we know you will drag every story out until the last line. Whether this diminishes or enhances your perfect page idea is up to the discernment of the audience.

Thank you for your brilliance. And your point?

Pick your roster in advance and assign them their pages in advance. I also think you should have a picture on every page and honestly, you need advertising.

You really mean that it is important that we break our pages by putting advertising there?

I was only thinking of the commercial value of this project. Even if you sold them for a dime, people would have a magazine in their hand that they knew had the possibility of detaching the center, or not. Sure, you could decorate your walls with it but you could also leave it exactly as it was. Just an interesting magazine. But perhaps the advertising, if it was really good advertising, would give us the same pause we needed while listening to all of the gibberish they fed us on the way to whatever thrills the magazine had for us.

I see your point. The question is whether we wish to imitate this or not. I have an idea we could try. I get it that page one and two have nothing to do with anything. Page 3 will probably be a table of contents and Page 4 might be a place for some kind of community message boards.

That brings you to your lead off hitter on page 5. I recommend a masthead for each tail. After this it’s just a matter of whether you can get them around the bases.

I see your point. And of course every story should probably end with some advertising or at least something that goes along with it.

Questions and commentary?

Wait a minute. This is getting weird. Are you suggesting that we self-criticize our writing by allowing the fiction to only be a picture on the wall to look at but the genuine importance is the argument about the themes being presented?

That’s how we do it in Practical English.

Right. I guess we forgot that Hemingway was the teacher in Practical English. And that’s why we can’t just enjoy a day off even on Rosh Hashanah.

Son, you are going to enjoy this day off. You’re going to have a fine day and you’re not going to go for a big hike and you’re not going to go fishing but you’re going to have a grand old experience just the same. You live in a garden. You are already there.

Thanks, Hem. If you do have a minute or two to talk about perhaps changing your diet slightly, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your smell.

If you’d like to talk about taking my meat away from me, we can put on the gloves and decide this like men.

Yeah. Right. I figured you’d say something like that. I read fiesta probably 40 times. And absolutely wonderful first effort. Thank you. And now, if we’ve all had our fun. I’m going back to bed. Make sure you publish this after the sun goes down. Shana Tova.