15 minutes of fiction
Pictures and music combine to move a memory up from the depths pushing me to consider certain things.
Instead of focusing on form and listening to the clinkety-clank of steel I am silently singing along with Otis.
It is the second or third time this particular tune has demanded my attention but so do the weights so the first part is a soft:
Action speaks louder than words
And I’m a man of great experience
I know you’ve got another man
But I can love you better than him
And then followed by a more authoritative finish set against blue skies and flowers
The song ends at the same time as this particular set but I can’t say it is coincidence or otherwise. All I can affirm is that some things have always been true.
You’re Just Another Facebook Liar
I roll through the feed and look at updates, comments and pictures and the same response falls into place for certain people.
You’re just another Facebook liar.
I don’t believe the perfect world you portray and or I think your politics are ridiculous because you operate based upon how you wish the world would be and not how it is.
Some of may same the same about me and without question some label me as reality challenged but you haven’t a real sense of the depth of the battle or challenges because you live in a separate universe.
In my world armies have rolled through villages and salted the earth. Lumberjacks have razed forests and various other entities have set the fields on fire.
The battles haven’t been limited to a single front and the online world hasn’t been the greatest refuge but we haven’t taken a knee or been broken.
Not because we’re the best warriors or greatest tacticians but because we have been solid about using the resources we have.
That has enabled us to paint a picture in which our adversaries have focused their multiple front fire upon strongholds they think house troops but are just facades designed to give our people time to evacuate.
And so they did and they have–leaving me as the head of a skeleton crew whose sole responsibility is to buy time for the remainder of the people to get out.
****
The quiet is noisy because my mind knows the storm is almost upon us.
I do my best to stay busy so as to keep the roar down to a softer hum but as you see from above there are echoes ping ponging around the house.
Soft cries reach out from places and people far away making me wonder if I have become clairvoyant or if I hear what I want to hear.
At least I hope this to be the truth because there is a possibility it is something else and that is more frightening.
Maybe reality challenged is a fair description of me now. Maybe it is because of fear or maybe that last round of bombing did more than I realized.
Maybe I was injured and I am in a coma dreaming about who I once was and who I am struggling to become.
Maybe this is all a dream.
Paging Dr. King
I am listening to an audio version of Stephen King’s book about writing and trying to push myself to pump out more content, including fiction.
King talks about not focusing on plot and creating characters who encounter challenges. He pushes using their struggle as a tool to figure out how to take a story and drive it.
I took 15 minutes and wrote the very rough story above. I didn’t take time to edit or think about what I was trying to do, I just pumped out the content to see what I would come up with.
The idea is to push myself to come up with some ideas and see if I can move some from the piece in my head to something fleshed out upon the page.
Do this enough times and maybe we’ll move this into a place where the books are reality and not just an idea.
Or so goes the dream but as to whether we take opportunity and possibility to make something of it…well time will provide an answer.
In the interim we have this tired old junk to play around with.
