Into each life a little darkness creeps...

The dreary days are getting to me.  What better way then to write to scatter the darkness from my thinking.  Will this chase you away or will you stop in again and see what I've come up with?



What Joshua Doesn't Know Won't Hurt Him

Joshua poked the eye of the dead carp with the twisted wire he had found. He was near the edge of the pond, resting on his haunches, his five year old knees tight against his chest, one arm wrapped around them for support while the other worked to remove the milky, sightless eye. The fish stank. And it was huge. Joshua had never seen such a big fish in all his life.

Considering how rotted it was he was having quite a bit of trouble getting the eye out. He knew crows liked the eyes. This eye had been against the ground before he had flipped the fish over. The other side of the carp was mostly bones and scales. There had been maggots crawling around inside and flies buzzing and hovering just above the decayed flesh. But this eye was in good shape. He was sure that was because of the flat stone the carp had been lying on.

He watched as a fly landed on a small wet spot on the grey stone, walked the centimeter length of the patch and then walked onto a dry place. It walked in a weird little circle and then its legs gave. In less than five seconds it went from alive and searching to dead and shriveled. A hornet swooped down, landed on the fly and then picked it up and carried it away.

Joshua didn’t like the stone. He was sure it had something to do with how the fish had died. He watched another insect, a sow bug this time, wander across a dry patch of stone and then stop cold, curl in on itself and die. He flicked the little bug off the stone and then gently waved the wire in the air to keep the other flies from landing there accidentally. Eventually he started picking at the eye again.

It was like the eye was tied into the fish’s skull with a string. He’d just about get it out and then it would slip back into place. He nearly reached out with his other hand to hold the fish still while he tried again, but he thought better of it. Too close to the stone. Too close. He raised the wire in the air and held it there for a second. With force he brought it down on the rock with a sharp crack.

The bugs scattered. They had tolerated his presence before; his slow, methodical poking hadn’t disrupted their own marauding so they had stayed. But this unexpected movement, the violence of it, the sudden wind his swing had created, sent them flying.

He hit the stone again. Crack! Then, why he didn’t know, he hit the fish. Once, twice, three times he hit it in rapid succession. Scales and rotted skin and muscle flew off. The sound of the impact was dull and wet and not nearly as satisfying as he expected. He hit it one last time across the head and the skull gave. The eye exploded and the carp’s cheek split from chin to eye socket. Maggots spilled out and writhed on the ground. Those that touched the stone died. The ones that fell on the grass simply wriggled further into the darkness at the roots.

The strings that held the eye in place, the nerves and tendons, hung out of the socket like tiny hands reaching for a lost toy. The eye was gone. Frustrated and losing interest, Joshua shoved the dead carp with the end of the twisted wire until it no longer lay on the grey stone but in the grass beyond it. There were words carved in the rock, but Joshua couldn’t read them so the warning went unnoticed.

“Caution: Radioactive containment pond. Absolutely no swimming. Absolutely no fishing.”

Joshua stood up and threw the twisted wire into the still water. It floated on top for several moments before slowly sinking through the green ooze that covered the pond’s surface. Without a second glance he climbed back through the hole in the chain link fencing that surrounded the pond and ran off to the only open swing in the playground.



~ Peace and knowledge

Stagnant

It amazes me how tied I feel to the sun.  We have had a dreary October and my production as a writer diminished dramatically.  When the sun reappeared I thought I was saved, but that was an illusion.  My ability to move forward and create lies within me.  The sun helps, but the drive comes from inside.  A poem surfaced as I tired to see my way forward.  Here it is.  Take it as you will.  Move forward as you can and so will I.

Movement



The blades of the turbine spin.
The air
moves them.
Or
do they move
the air?

How fast
does the wind slide
along their length?
I cannot feel it.
Yet I know
it must be blowing.

The grass bends beside me;
branches sway.
But I
am still.
My hair
lies
motionless
on my shoulders.

The turbine blades swing high overhead.
They move in the world.
Why can’t I?

~ Peace and movement

Miriam's Choice

There is a split second where we decide to, or not to. It exists in everything we say, everything we do, every moment we move through the world. Miriam, in that split second, decided to. After she would wonder if she had decided rightly. Once her task was completed she might curse her situation, blame circumstance, rail against the unfairness of this cruel and punitive world. Later she would brood over what might have happened had she decided not to. But that is another story.

It really wasn’t a hard choice to make, at least it hadn’t seemed that way. It had been easy like the flip of a coin, a whim, a careless nod, a shake of the head. She couldn’t really remember how she had made the choice. One second she had been traveling down one path in time, the next, a different one. She wondered if she would have known the difference if she had chosen not to instead.

After torturing herself about the what ifs, the if onlys, and the but I’s, Miriam stopped worrying about the decision and simply got down to the to of it. Really, that was all that she could do. She had started, so there was no turning back, no changing course, no starting over. Now it must be done. Now she must show her resolve and commit to the task at hand. The clock was ticking and, as we all know, time waits for no one.

And so, with shaking hand and quavering breath she did.

“C5,” Miriam said.

“Miss. G3,” Joseph replied.

“Hit.” She sighed heavily. “You sank my battle ship.”

“Yes! That’s two games out of three! You do the dishes for an extra week. HA!” Her thirteen year old brother jumped up from the table and did his version of a Battle Ship touchdown dance in the middle of the dining room.

Miriam turned Joseph’s half of the game to her and stared at the game board. It was clear that had she chosen C7 she would have won. His smallest ship lay hidden on the C6 and C7 positions and she had chosen wrong. Dishes for an extra week.

“Hey, Mira. Want to play for taking out the garbage?”

There is a split second where we decide to or not to. This time Miriam decided not and did not waste time worrying that it might be the wrong choice.

~ Peace and decisiveness

Abecedarian Poetry

An abecedarian poem is one in which the first word of each line/stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet and follows the correct order of the alphabet until the last letter is reached.  A writing colleague of mine posted one today and I was intrigued and inspired.  I fiddled around with the style and came up with two poems. They are modifications of the style - I followed my colleague's lead and opted to use a letter for every word instead of the start of every line/stanza.  Hope you enjoy them and thank you, Mr. Fishman, for the inspiration.

Musical Juxtaposition

Allegro
brazenly cascades
Dancing elliptic forces
gyrate happily inside
Jumbled, karaoked, lip-synced
media noise
oscillates
quavers
resonates
slides through
Unstoppable vicissitudinous
Wanting Xanadus
yearning
zealous


Brilliant Child

A brilliant child
drawing endless faces -
grinning, happy, illustrious.
Kids laughing,
music,
nature,
orchestrating quintessential resolve
solidarity throughout
unwavering
verily withstanding xenophobia
yielding zest.

~ Peace and poetry

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month - better known as NaNoWriMo - started Sunday, November 1. The general idea behind it is to encourage writers to write - with abandon, sans criticism - for an entire month with the goal being a 50,000 word novel. This is both a thrilling and frightening task. To actually write that much in 30 days sound impossible, yet if you calculate it out it comes to about 7 double-spaced pages everyday - or roughly 210 pages by 11:59pm, Monday, November 30th.

To participate in NaNoWriMo you must be starting a novel from scratch or from a preexisting idea. You should not have written anything about this novel before November 1st. That, unfortunately disallows me from the "competition" since I am uneasy stepping away from my novel so completely for such an extended period of time. I use NaNoWriMo, instead, as a motivator for serious focus on my novel - write everyday, as much as I can, and by the end of November I should be significantly further along. That’s the plan anyway.

So today - Monday, November 2nd, I am committing to that goal - to write everyday, as much as I can, in order to make forward progress on my novel so that I might complete this 1st draft before the end of the year.

What will you do this month? Keep me in your thoughts and I will keep you in mine.

~ Peace and forward momentum