Carol Bergman

The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

         

-James Baldwin

 

Above all things, I fear absurdity as time runs out. 

           

-Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

 

 

It was the third letter I received in a week complimenting me on my Nomads trilogy:

 

Dear Carol Bergman,

 

Your literary voice bridges journalism, memoir, and fiction in a way few writers achieve. Nomads is a striking collection of flash fiction, aphorisms, anecdotes, and mini-essays that reflect your range and mastery of storytelling. With humor, precision, and depth, the pieces speak to universal themes war and peace, love and loss, the ordinary and the profound. The variety of narrative personas you employ gives the collection a layered richness, reminiscent of Lydia Davis yet distinctly your own.

 

What makes Nomads stand out is how it defies easy classification while leaving a strong cumulative impact on the reader. Its brevity and wit make it highly accessible to modern audiences, while its subtlety rewards careful rereading. This balance of immediacy and depth makes it a work with both popular appeal and enduring literary merit.

 

I'd love to help position Nomads more prominently within the flash fiction and literary short-form community through curated Goodreads placement, visibility campaigns across literary platforms, and targeted outreach to readers who appreciate innovative narrative forms. With the right exposure, Nomads can connect with the audience it was meant for: readers who enjoy compact but resonant storytelling.

 

Warm regards,

 

The letters were well-crafted and nearly identical, though the senders all had different names. What writer doesn't enjoy appreciation? Then I checked on the bona fides of the senders. They did not exist.

 

I thought of a friend who had been seduced by emails from a "man" on a dating site, had even felt a surge of anticipatory hormones when he said he'd be coming through New York on his way back from a trip abroad. Similarly, I had nearly "fallen" for the sweet words in the letters I received. What writer doesn't enjoy appreciation? But I'd been paying attention to AI scams for a while, and this one was obvious. Too smooth, I thought. Smooth as butter. Still, I read it straight through and enjoyed myself.

 

Writing is a "murky business," Rebecca Solnit writes in Orwell's Roses.  We can never be certain we've got it right or that we've connected with our imagined readers. The scammers know their target. Perhaps they had once attempted writing themselves and are creating AI masterpieces as missives to their lost selves.

 

Dear (         ),

 

Thank you for the well-crafted AI letter I have received about Nomads. Having searched your name, you probably do not exist. It is the 3rd  letter I have received from different "people." My agent is receiving them also and is blocking them. 

 

Clearly, you want to charge for non-existent services.

 

Writers appreciate compliments; they are seductive. We do not, however, appreciate AI generated letters, or scams.

 

Please note that if you do not present bona fides, I will block you, and report you to the Authors Guild lawyers.

 

Best regards,

Carol Bergman

 

Not surprisingly, there has been no reply.

 

End of story? Not quite. The episode unsettled me. How will the future unfold for aspiring writers? How will their work be received and evaluated? Who will sit with them and line edit their work? How will an inexperienced reader know the difference between a writer's hard-won accomplishment and an AI generated work? Will AI "enhancement," or "embellishment" matter in a few years' time? Will editors and publishers even notice, or care?

 

And a few final thoughts. My experienced eyes are a telephoto lens; what is near is far, what is far is near. I have stepped forward, taken risks, fallen into a crevice at times. I have been rescued or have rescued myself, a disciplined writer, a writer who continues to search for her subjects, and expand them.  Indeed, I would not be telling this story if I had been seduced by ease or luck.  I have blocked voices offering shortcuts, however tempting, and am grateful I am still able to distinguish between what is human-made and what is manufactured. If I could rewind, begin again, where would my writing life begin? Would I begin on top of the mountain relinquishing all struggle? 

       

They were in the garden having a Labor Day barbecue when the President stepped on the baby. He heard a cracking sound, looked down—he  was wearing his new boots—and  saw the baby's bloodied head under his right foot. The security detail rushed forward and hustled him away. Fortunately, there were no reporters present. An ambulance was called, however, so it was only a matter of minutes before the media, eavesdropping on the police radio channels, was alerted to an incident at the White House. Sirens wailed, satellite dishes hummed, a press conference was called.

 

          "Ladies and Gentlemen there is absolutely no truth to the allegation..."

         

And so on and so on.

 

That night the president lay in bed with his Brazilian masseuse. The woman, who was about twenty-five years old at the time, had chocolat au lait skin and amber eyes. She had smuggled herself into the country in a basket filled with non- poisonous tropical snakes and had required plastic surgery to remove the scars. The woman, a refugee from poverty and travail, had been rescued from incarceration at the detention center by the President himself in a public relations display.

 

"The president has rescued ...  "    

         

And so on and so on.

         

The president had paid for the surgery out of his private account. During her recuperation, the Brazilian masseuse was given a room with bath at the White House and she was still there many months later. Every morning at breakfast, the president's wife ignored her husband. Her manner was haughty and she hardly opened her mouth when she spoke. A conversation through clenched teeth, shall we say. She was studying Buddhism and practicing compassion. This was her mantra: "I am not angry. I understand your needs." She articulated this subliminally, but sometimes it burst forth unwittingly into the chasm between them.

 

The president laughed. He had always found his wife amusing.

         

The First Lady suppressed a scream. She had no privacy, there were eyes and ears in every crevice of the newly gilded edifice, the center of American government and the Western Industrialized World, and if she hollered everyone would hear her, record her remarks, the inflection of her voice, the scowl on her face, and these would all be reported assiduously within hours.

 

"The president's wife is sidelined,"  began every report since she had entered the hallowed portal. This was a reference to her marital status and also to her life thus far.

 

Of late, she had found aroma therapy helpful, an antidote to the Brazilian masseuse. The scent of the candles, bath oils, and creamy potions obscured the odor of sex from the other end of the hall.

 

She had been at the barbecue the afternoon of what came to be known as "the incident," but was in the far west corner conversing with the Ambassador of Koomar and his elegant wife.  They were discussing the latest fashion, well above the knee according to the current Vogue, when the First Lady heard the cracking sound. She thought, as did everyone else, that someone had snapped the bone of a chicken. Perhaps someone was eating in proximity to the small stage that had been set up for the over amplified country western band. They had not yet started to sing and the stage was empty, though the mikes were operative and had been fully tested.

 

But it was not a bone, it was a baby. The First Lady witnessed the kerfuffle as the security detail whisked her husband away, and then the paramedics arriving, and the mother of the child, one of the housekeepers who had brought her small son to work that day due to a baby sitter problem, crudely and forcefully shoved herself into the ambulance as the wind swept up her skirt and revealed her tattered undergarments.

         

"There is no truth to the allegation..."

         

 The next morning, in a scheduled breakfast audience, the president's press envoy repeated this assertion to the assembled reporters. And in the afternoon, the First Lady perused the headlines with alarm:

 

BABY KILLED AT WHITE HOUSE BARBECUE  (The Examiner)

 

UNEXPLAINED DEATH OF BABY AT WHITE HOUSE BARBECUE (The Post)

 

BABY DEAD IN WHITE HOUSE  GARDEN (The Gazette)

 

PRESIDENT IMPLICATED IN BABY'S DEATH ( The Star)

     

          Another press conference was called:

         

          Reporter: Is there any truth to the allegation about the baby?

         

          Another reporter (interrupting): We have heard that the Brazilian masseuse...

         

          "There is absolutely no truth to these allegations..."

 

And so on and so on.

       

BRAZILIAN MASSEUSE HAS BABY IN WHITE HOUSE (The Star)

 

THE FIRST LADY IS CRUSHED (The Post)

 

 One week later, as the President was hosting a foreign dignitary in the Green Room, the First Lady went out into the garden with a magnifying glass. It was already crisp autumn and a skim of vibrant leaves covered the hardened ground.  Still supple in middle age, the First Lady lowered her body to the ground in one graceless movement, sat back on her haunches like a peasant in India had once shown her long ago, and sighed. It was true, she discovered, that the position was comfortable and she could rest for several hours and search the ground for clues with her magnifying glass. It was an illusion that she was alone, of course; she was never alone. The security camera followed her into the garden and within minutes an officer was at her side helping her to her feet. But she already had the evidence in her pocket. She returned to her quarters and placed it under the potpourri on her dressing table. Then she called the detective in charge of the investigation. "The President killed the baby," she told him.

         

When the detective arrived, she handed him the plastic bag with the evidence. This consisted of a clump of mulched dirt from the garden, a few strands of long reddish brown hair, one or two hydrangea petals, a bright red leaf, and a small tab-like label from the back of the President's boot.

 

         

The next day, with great fanfare, the President of the United States was arrested and released on bail.

 

          "He is not a threat to the nation,"  the judge said.

        

That night there was a contretemps in the private quarters of the White House which has, unfortunately, not been recorded for posterity. By all accounts, the President had a towel around his neck when he emerged from his bedroom, stomped to the other side of the hallway, and pounded on the First Lady's door. She emerged, laughed at the President as he had laughed at her, and retreated to her chambers. On his way back to his apartment, he took the towel and flicked the security cameras off their metal brackets.

 

At breakfast the next morning, the First Lady and  the President did not speak. She was reading The Post, he was reading The Gazette. Both headlines were the same:

         

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, THE PRESIDENT HAS STEPPED ON THE BABY

 

 

This post is dedicated to the White House Press Corps.  To be absolutely clear, it is a figment of the author's imagination.

 

 

 

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

 

-Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

I had finished my lap swim and was sitting on a bench in the shade facing the outdoor shower, a metal post with four hard-to-turn spigots. The water runs hot for an instant and then turns cold. I have a routine: I shower the chlorine off my skin, and then sit for a while to dry off and get myself together for the short walk home. It's a relief to day dream under blue skies after too many days of wildfire smoke from Canada, watch the kids romp, and listen to their screams of summer delight. My reverie on this particular day was broken by a stranger leaning his cane and a plastic bag filled to overflowing against the bench.

 

He was an old cadaverous guy, naked to the waist. I had noticed him in my peripheral vision entering the pool enclosure via the exit, far away from the check-in station, and then returned to my email. I looked up from my phone when he asked how to turn on the shower. His voice was soft, the request polite. He seemed sober, coherent, but his body was famine thin, his ribs were visible, he was barefoot, and his white hair was all akimbo. Pieces of twine or grass were tied decoratively around his ankles.  He whispered  thanks as I demonstrated how the odd-shaped spigots turned on and off, and then smiled a sweet smile. He had no teeth.

 

I returned to the bench and watched him revel in the water. He was no longer a stranger, he was a visitor, a guest.  I wondered where he lay his body down at night, if he had shelter, or food, or if the safety net he was dependent on had been terminated, but I did not ask. Why not?  Because he had interrupted my reverie? Destroyed my sense of well-being? Because I needed a break from mayhem and trouble? Then I worried that someone official might notice his presence and ask him to leave. He looked different, he was so very thin, famine thin. Images of the starving in Gaza surfaced. Here, at least there is fresh water, I thought, and it has washed away the dust and flattened his hair. And how would anyone know that he had wandered into this privileged enclave and didn't belong unless he'd been spotted, or I said something, which I had no intention of doing. And what is the meaning of the word belonging anyway? 

 

 

As veterans return from foreign wars, they find a nation that uncomfortably mirrors the conflict zones they left behind: communities fractured and exploited by extreme voices.

 

-Jake Harriman,  Marine Corps, co-founder of +More Perfect Union, in Stars & Stripes 1/27/25

      

 

If it is true—according  to climatologists— that every forest fire in the world is everyone's forest fire, that there is only one planetary forest fire, then  it follows that every war in the world also has no boundary, that every war is my war, and your war. Images of a flattened Gaza are reminiscent of Tokyo after the American bombing on March 9, 1945,  and images of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, destroyed by Russian forces on May 26, 1995, are reminiscent of Gaza and Gaza is reminiscent of Tokyo and Grozny. Choose images of any war—even London during the Blitz—and you will find survivors digging through rubble, searching for remnants of their lives, for the bodies of their neighbors and relatives,  for beloved family pets, for food and clean water.

 

Images transfix but they also anesthetize, Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography.  We gaze at suffering on oversized screens from the comfort of our living rooms. We get up to make some tea, but even before this impulse, the still image or the eerie drone images have vanished from the screen. The war is here, and then it is gone; it has become ephemera.

 

If we are able for a moment, or a day, to contemplate our one precious life on earth interlocked with other precious lives on earth, the image of children walking over the rubble searching for bodies, or food, or water may say to us: "pause."  In this contemplation, every avaricious war is a crime, and every arms dealer—individual, corporate, or nation state—is a war criminal.

 

I am a child of refugess from war and I am drawn to the heroism and right actions—in the Buddhist sense—of humanitarian workers who risk their lives to protect civilians, return them to health, or bring them to safety. They work in the interstices of conflict, in the afflicted neighborhoods of our cities, in the countryside, all over the world.

 

When Fascism came to Europe, citizens were unprepared for war as a consequence of Fascism. When Communism came to Russia, citizens were unprepared for the Gulag. When Project 2025 came to America, no one imagined a masked paramilitary army, or deportations, or children starving, or the capitulation of revered institutions, or students unable to attend colllege, or families unable to access medical care in what was once the "richest nation on earth."

 

There is always an earthquake preceding a tsunami. We must gather our energy, our wisdom, and our determination, to resist the rising tide of hatred and oppression.