Murderer’s Lament

The water opened in front of me. Ripples at the edge of the lake transitioned into sun-speckled wavelets. I bent down to feel the coolness, and brought my cupped hands to my face.

A small silver dart exited the brown forest of underwater plants. Pink  granite and grey feldspar protruded from the sand, carrying memories of their faraway origins.

I lifted my head. A wall of late-summer-green leaves edged the far shore, framing the emptiness of the water’s surface. A few cottages, white, turquoise, lilac and pink, punctuated the living barrier. I silently thanked the houses’ inhabitants for their contribution to what would become my lasting vision of tranquility.

It had been years since I had seen so clearly. The memory of this last moment of quiet freedom has played over and over again in the cinema of my mind, as I knew it would, long after the small fish forgot all about the looming shadow that briefly darkened its way.

Wrong about Worms!

The worm, surprised by the sudden appearance of daylight, quickly retreated into its tunnel.

“Do worms have eyes?” asked Danny.

“Hmm, good question. I don’t think so.”

“Either did I. Maybe they can sense light though. Or maybe it simply felt the air move. Or maybe it was resting against the bottom of the flower pot when you picked it up.”

I had recruited Danny to help me clean up the yard, his young skeleton being more flexible than mine, and his muscles stronger.

“It’s hard to say what a worm knows!” Danny pointed out.

“Well, it’s easy to find some verbiage about worms. But saying something meaningful and truthful requires mental wrestling,” I reminded my young neighbor.

Worms do not have vertebrae!” retorted Danny. “That did not require too much wrestling.”

I nodded, happy to hear this entity of tender years producing such a pithy aphorism, and replied to him.

“We do have vertebrae, but we are still subject to the winds of fate. Our vertebrae help us stand straight, but we can’t avoid making some wrong turns in life.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Danny. “I’m still calculating the worth of that last explosion of wrath I indulged in.”

My eyes involuntarily sought the exit to the wormhole. I knew the feeling. We had met in the advanced anger management class. Our warped personalities were both on the mend. We were cultivating our minds. Tired of having to wriggle away from the complicated conditions we had created for ourselves, we were learning new habits. We were learning how to un-braid the strands of our troubled lives. We were learning to unwrap the layers of weird circumstances that had trapped us in inner turmoil. We were learning that prose is preferable to fists. Versatility is what we can learn from the worm.

Your face is wreathed in smiles,” noted Danny.

“Versatility is what we can learn from the worm,” I cheerfully replied.

“Right!” said Danny. No damn vertebrae to get in the way.”

MUSE

Our homework assignment in writing group was to randomly pick a word from the dictionary and write something about it or with it. I usually don’t do the homework. Most of the others in the group are retired and have more time. This time, I was inspired to write something though, but “WREATHE” (the verb) just did not give me much to go on. So I turned to the “Indo-European Root” dictionary at the back of the American Heritage Dictionary that I got a few years back. Word origins are very interesting. I read and underlined the entire Indo-European and Semetic root word appendices when the book arrived.

“Wreathe” comes from the root word “wer” of which there are three unrelated versions. (They’d sound different in the original Indo-European language, but all are represented as “wer” in modern American English. Wreathe comes from “wer” #2.) This version of “wer” has to do with turning and wrapping. It’s amazing how so few root words have generated so many individual expressions of nuance in the last 5000 years or so.

The highlighted words are all derivatives from “wer” #2. Of course some of the derivations in this dictionary are (IMHO) wrong. It’s tough work and the professionals tend sometimes to ignore the obvious in favor of the obscure. Sovereign, for example, (meaning self rule) obviously comes from whatever roots generated “swa” (self) and “raj” (as in “raja, king, also like reign!) but they have a different take.

 

Super Flash Fiction

Before the end of the news broadcast, Sophia sat calmly on the couch. She rolled the tent peg loosely in her hand. As the anchor started to sign off, Sophia’s glazed eyes regained focus. “I warned him,” she thought. The meticulously detailed plan sprang into life before her.

Her grip tightened on the tent peg.

“The death will be gruesome,” she told her pet goldfish.

“After this, they will allow knives again,” Goldie answered.

THE END

 

I combined prompts from two writing exercises: “murder by tent peg,” and “before, after.” The rest of my writings from this morning were, as we say, “the compost from which the beautiful flowers of our writing might bloom.” This idea of being willing to write “compost” comes from famous writing guru Natalie Goldberg.

Change of Color

Another little flash fiction piece… The prompt at the writing group was “In August.”

In August, you changed your colors. It seemed like an insignificant change. But we should have known better. All your life, at least as long as you’ve worked here, it’s been turquoise, teal or cyan. Colors that did not even have names for most of humanity’s existence. You were a modern person, through and through. The rest of us could not even distinguish between turquoise, teal and cyan, but you would stomp your foot if we used the wrong adjective.

Anyway, after twenty-nine years of shades of blue-green, you showed up one morning in yellow. We were so shocked, we held ourselves silent. The next day, it was orange. Then tan. This patternless pattern went on for a month. Where you got the money for all the new clothes, even the nosiest gossips couldn’t fathom.

Then, yesterday, you walked in with a firetruck red dress. Alarms went off in all of our minds.

Always silent about your inner world, the color changes should have told us something, but we could only ask ourselves how, instead of why.

Now, you are gone. We miss you. We realize we never knew you as anything but an enigma.
Eventually, we’ll have to find something new to talk about at the water cooler.

Behind Falling In Love

Based on another prompt from my writing group…

I wasn’t planning on this. Falling in love with you was the last thing I wanted. Because I know our time will have to come to an end. Yet here I am, begging you not to turn the page.

Time marches on at its own pace. You are not in love with me. It’s just the name you came up with to describe the cloud of reactions to hormonal releases during the exciting events we recently experienced together.

You sound like a Buddhist.

Well that’s because the Buddhists have the most practical advice for getting over doomed or failed romances. Remind yourself that I am nothing but skin and bones, flesh and blood, urine and fecal matter, hair and fat.

That’s BS. Even the Buddhists know we have an immortal essence.

Exactly my point. But that’s not what you fell in love with. You fell in love with the experience of the effects of the hormones. It’s time to turn the page.

The emotionally entangled state is the natural one for humans. That’s why we evolved all the complex hormones that give us these sacred experiences.

No. The hormones were evolved in earlier mammals. I have come to understand that only by liberating myself from those outdated entanglements can I be free for the next exciting adventure!

 

 

 

 

Yes, Kalenko?

Brenda was tired of saying she was sorry. Her captor was unrelenting, and she’d had enough. Starting today, she would no longer apologize for something she did not do.

“Brenda, you lazy slug! The floor is covered with footprints!” shouted Kalenko.

Brenda held her breath. She was not going to apologize, even when Kalenko had evidence on his side. This was a new day. She let out the stale air, and drew in fresh. What would Kalenko do?

“Brenda! Get over here now!”

Brenda turned away from the kitchen counter to see the alleged footprints in the foyer, the origin of Kalenko’s shouts. She knew that she had mopped all the floors earlier that day, and she felt the power of self control rising in her chest.

“Yes, Kalenko?” she asked, in her sweetest voice.

He pointed to a pattern of muddy cat paw prints.

“I’ll clean it up, right away.”

“You do that,” he grunted, and walked up the stairs.

Brenda smiled. She had met her goal. She had not apologized!

She was sorry. Sorry for a lot of things. She was sorry the neighbor’s cat had smudged her clean floor. She was sorry Kalenko had her trapped here in this isolated place. She was sorry she had disobeyed her parents, and gone out alone for a walk. She was sorry every day she woke up that the inequalities in the social structure led some people to take such dreadful actions as kidnapping. Yes, she was sorry. But that didn’t mean she had to apologize. And in this case, she wasn’t going to give anyone an excuse to think she was apologizing by even admitting she was sorry!

She felt stronger now that she had beaten down her fear. Maybe, in a few more weeks, her parents would find a way to rescue her. Of course Kalenko would never give them a clue about where she was being held, until he was sure they were bringing the ransom money. There’d be plenty of sorrow to go around. As for apologies, the ones who were really responsible were unlikely to be admitting it any time soon.

She touched the little box in her pocket

Here’s a little story I came up with at my writing group this week. The prompt was “She touched the little box in her pocket, and smiled.” We had 15 minutes.

She touched the little box in her pocket, and smiled. She skipped along the sidewalk, happiness in her heart. The memento was more than it seemed.

****

She touched the little box in her pocket, and smiled. Her other arm linked with Amy’s, warmth radiated from her heart. The memento was more than it seemed. Its importance had grown over time. It seemed to lighten the load of books she carried home from school.

***

She touched the little box in her pocket, and smiled. Her shoulder warmed by the palm of her lover, her hips swaying with each step, love radiated from her heart. The significance of the memento had grown over the years, even as its importance diminished.

***

She touched the little box in her pocket, and smiled. She stood at the podium, waiting to address the august body assembled before her. Compassion radiated from her form. The box was unimportant, yet, it was light, so she continued to carry it, out of habit. Every morning, she put it in her pocket. A memento, nothing more. It had been years since she had even opened it to check on the contents. But this was an important day. Maybe she should confirm her memory.

Her eyes swept over the assembly, and her fingers, perhaps involuntarily, grasped the box and pulled it out of her pocket, flipping it open. The velvet lining was still rich in color. The sacred space it still enclosed was intact. She closed the box, replaced it in her pocket, and smiled at the crowd.

****

THE END….

THOUGHTS: For some reason, I thought about the incorrect translation in my Jewish Bible, where the Hebrew said that the Children of Israel were to build a box supplied with poles, so that the spirit of God could dwell amongst them (THEM, the Children of Israel, not IN IT, ie, not in the box), and be easily carried from tribe to tribe.  The English translation had God living in the box. Yet the same words in a different part of that same translation had it right. The limited, empty box was a reminder of the nameless infinity called to our attention by the nothing. That is why the symbols for zero and infinity are so similar. Infinity is a zero with a twist. Zero is easy to represent symbolically. The empty hole. Infinity? How could there be a picture of infinity? For Buddhists, emptiness is where it’s at! In any case, emptiness invokes infinity, just as the elephant conjures the mouse,

(check out this link, and yes it’s a funny looking mouse…)

and vice versa, a full bladder at night brings a dream of a toilet, and hunger brings the dream of a banquet.

Picture Strabismus

Life is funny sometimes. The day after I wrote the following flash fiction, I found this photo of Walt Whitman. He seems to be looking in two directions at once. Wikipedia says he had a stroke toward the end of his life.

**********************

The painting had been in storage for decades. That had saved it from the destruction of the works considered to have attained a higher level of mastery. Now Nancy stood in front of the glowing acrylic colors. The face floated in front of the black background.

“The eyes,” she thought. “A portrait can’t be great if the eyes aren’t right.” The right eye wasn’t quite right though. “Haha,” Nancy thought. “The right eye isn’t quite right! Haha.”

The right eye stared at a different location from the left’s focus, which was the viewer. “That’s funny,” Nancy thought, as she moved back and forth in front of the canvas. “The left eye follows me, while the right looks elsewhere.

“Maybe it was intentional. Maybe this is an accurate portrait.”

Nancy walked over to the UPC sticker printer and touched her gadget screen. The sticker protruded from the slot of the printer, and she pulled it out and returned to the canvas applying the ID tag to the back of the frame.

“Cross eyed people always carry some extra pain. Who was this man” How did he overcome this disadvantage?”

Nancy stepped back. She used her third eye to visualize the neural circuits of the subject of the painting. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Who are you?”

A Flash Fiction Triptych: The Consequences of Sadness

I brought the cards from my Dixit game to my writing group. This is a fun storytelling game for ages 8 to infinity. The cards are beautiful. We used them as prompts. See the three cards I selected from the ten or so I was randomly assigned. If the image doesn’t show up, click on the blue text below.

Three cards from original Dixit Game. Artist M.Cardouat
Three cards from original Dixit Game. Artist M.Cardouat

Part The First

The true artist will buy paint over food. As Rumi purportedly said (via John Moyne and Coleman Barks) “If you can’t get fed, be bread.”

Puss in Boots, in her 92nd incarnation, this time as an artist, has made good use of her soul’s accumulated wisdom. Her current painting is of a fish, so realistically depicted, it swims off the canvas, naively thinking itself liberated, but now free to fall prey to the waiting fisherman.

Part The Second

Sadly, my head drooped. Forced back in to the ring too soon after my daughter’s death, this time was the only time in my life that I was sorry I had chosen this profession. It was the first time I felt inadequate to the challenge. I needed a clown to cheer myself up. The tears of the clown flowed down my face. I at least wished I had paid more attention to the prof in that 400 level class, “The Sad Clown.”  Back then, I thought it would be unnecessary. I’d always been the fountain of cheer.

Part The Third

Will there be anyone left alive to witness the heat death of the universe? Only the consciousness of the eternal serpent. No longer able to survive on its own waste products, the perpetual motion machine is winding down. The serpent bleeds its last drops of vitality as infinity chills toward absolute zero.

Perhaps, perhaps on its way to a new bang in the network we call the mulitiverse.

Note about the Eternal Serpent: This reference is to the Orobouros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros), or the snake eating its own tail. The issue isn’t eating its tail though, it’s what is implied in the action of eating its tail. The snake exists self sufficiently, on its own waste product. We humans can’t do that and survive in human form. Only “The All” is capable of this feat.

See this link for an image of the Orobourus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros#/media/File:Serpiente_alquimica.jpg