She sat on the train to work listening to a terrible throw-back to the early 80s and, terrible though the Nolan Sisters were, she sat in a quite perky way, bopping her head and tapping her feet happily in time to the music, trying all the time not to notice just how much she was annoying the person next to her, when she realised that she seemed to be the only vaguely happy person on the train – she just did not understand it, I mean, sure, she was not always happy herself and, yes, it was an early ‘off to work we go’ sort of train and, yes, this didn’t exactly thrill her to her toes, but surely amongst this multitude of people there was one other person in existence that felt just a glimmer of happiness or good cheer, I mean, just look at them, with their mobile phones, their books, their Gameboys, their iPods, their well-fed and well-clothed bodies, their ‘better lives’, surely just this material wealth alone would lend them to sniggering or sneering in some sort of a “I’ve got more than you” way - exactly why was it that they seemed to be so utterly, entirely, exclusively, without exception, wretchedly miserable, was the end of the world nigh and she’d missed it in the news or was it more personal than that and maybe she was dying and everyone on the train knew that and no-one was willing to tell her, but that couldn’t be true, I mean how would they even know, it’s not like she had it tattooed on her forehead, or maybe that was it, maybe it was something physical, maybe there was something wrong with her, maybe that saying about bliss (how did that go, was it something like blissfully unaware or, no, that’s it “ignorance is bliss”), that was it, the only possible way that she could be sitting here as happy as a bear with his head stuck in a pot of honey, would be because she didn’t know what it was that was causing all this misery in everyone else, there was some ‘big thing’ that she was totally unaware of and that’s why, every morning, day after day, week after week, people sat around her looking almost suicidal; because they knew the ‘big thing’ and she didn’t, I mean, let’s face it they were probably all secretly laughing at her for being so naive and so unbelievably, pathetically cheerful, god they probably hated her, all of them, everyone on the train, sitting there, looking at her and thinking to themselves “hah, of course she’s happy, she doesn’t know, it’s easy to be happy when you don’t even know”; but the thing is, how would she find out and, more importantly, did she want to find out, I mean, if ignorance is bliss, why break it, why try fix something that doesn’t need breaking- no wonder they all hated her, god, she was miserable.
TAGS: 500, commuting, loneliness, miserable, consumerism“This looks like a quiet little place for a set of sheets to slip into for an ice-cold beer,” thought the folded sheets, who’d slipped from Henry’s linen closet several months earlier without Henry’s knowledge, and had hidden away in the coat closet, nearest the back door of the house, lying quietly behind a pair of bowling ball carrying cases (hadn’t Susan taken her bowling ball when she moved out? thought the sheets, but not for long, since it only brought up the whole painful business of being left behind, which wasn’t something that the folded sheets was anxious to explore, lying there in the dark, at least not something it’d want to think about while hidden behind a couple of bowling balls, which smelled of cigarette smoke (no doubt second-hand smoke from the bowling alley (the folded sheets tried to breathe shallowly, which was hard to do, considering the excitement of having escaped the linen closet and the very idea that they were on their way somewhere - who knew where! - and hoped that when they got there - wherever that might be! - that the smoky smell wouldn’t have soaked in too deeply, certainly not more than a decent washing and refolding wouldn’t take care of)), while it’d waited for both the courage and the right moment to slip out of the house unnoticed, which had been only this afternoon, and which two bus rides and a short walk later, had brought them to the front door of the quiet-looking little tavern which the sheets now passed through, just in time to catch a glimpse of the surprise on Henry’s face (which the folded sheets mistook as surprise at seeing his own missing sheets show up at the very bar he happened to be at during working hours, but was, in fact, the lingering surprise of having watched a woman pull an AK47 from somewhere out of her bra), the final flash of the cocktail waitress’ bra before her shirt snapped back into place (which was rather nicely crisp and freshly pressed, thought the folded sheets), and finally the site of the assault rifle being fired (an AK47, the folded sheets observed, having seen one in action on more than one occasion while watching movies on the bedroom television), but not the sound of it being fired (since folded sheets, as everyone knows, have no ears), which might have forewarned the sheets (might, I say here, because as everyone also knows, sheets, in spite of what they might bear witness to in the bedroom, still remain rather unworldly and naive) of the inherent danger, nay, the foolishness, of walking into a small bar in the middle of the afternoon while an assault rifle is being fired, but which of course, being earless, the folded sheets didn’t hear, causing them to walk straight into the path of a single stray bullet, which ripped through several layers of crisp folds, dropping the sheets to the floor in an undignified heap.
Bakerina’s rules:
500 words, minimum. No maximum, but no bonus points for longer sentences, either—we want sentences to be correct in both form and content. Colons, semicolons, comma comma comma play, ellipses and dashes are all acceptable. Endlessly repeated single words (i.e. “dorky dorky dorky dorky!”, a la Kotzwinkle) are verboten. Magical punctuation (i.e. “ZOUNDS!————!—————!”, a la Laurence Sterne) is similarly verboten. I recuse myself from judging or establishing deadlines, but will gladly donate prizes.
That’s it. Stir it up, little darlings, stir it up.
Edit: Oh, yes. Sweating heavily and breathing like a hard-ridden horse are both mandatory.
[Keith, feel free to box this up, pretty it up, de-sticky it, take my name off it or whatever… -’mouse]
TAGS: 500It happened one day in the full light of afternoon, on the day before Johnny’s birthday party, as she carefully adhered all the ears on all the Styrofoam mice laid out in front of her on the table, as she mused over the perfection of the day to come, and wondered if her husband would make it back from Iceland on time, given the vicissitudes of the weather as well as the pilot’s strike, when who should appear at the door dressed like a UPS man but her former lover, Juan Francisco, whom she could not help but imagine dressed much like the mice she worked on so minutely and blindingly, and savagely she took him in her arms, planting a juicy tongue-kiss on his well-turned lips, as he stood dumbfounded because truth be told his name was Pete and his twin brother Juan now lived in a West Virginia suburb thousands of miles away, and this incident only cemented his conviction that yes, he was gay, as if he didn’t know already what with the boyfriends and the furtive encounters in off hours with other like-minded drivers, and yes, he needed more than anything else to get the hell out of his current job; it was hell on so many levels, including the driving of the damn truck which was so large and unwieldy, and the shorts, the shorts, the terrible ill-fitting shorts which now comprised half his wardrobe at least, and sometimes alone in the truck he cried out, “Horrible horrible shorts, how I hate thee!” very poetically, because after all he had a Ph.D. in Classic Literature from a prestigious university in Florida; but suddenly he was aware that the kiss had not yet stopped, but rather he had forgotten about it in his reverie, so he pushed the woman away and asked her what the hell she was doing, and she said, Juan, I remember you Juan, and he said No, it’s not me at all, I mean, I’m me, but I’m Pete, and Juan is my twin brother who lives in West Virginia in the suburbs, and can I use your phone because I need to (he trailed off as he entered the house to look for the phone) and Kate yelled that the phone was in the kitchen and he was welcome to it; that’s when she went into her own reverie about her magical romance with Juan, who had been by far the best lover she’d ever had over to her small room during college; they would lie for hours in her bed and he poetically described the angle of the light playing on her body, which of course was all she needed to take up their happy lovemaking again, but wait, she was brought up short, how could she want him when her husband was on his way back from Rekyavik, and how did you spell Rekyavik anyway, and what happened to that driver, she thought quickly, and that was all.
TAGS: 500The man-Friday stood sweating heavily and breathing like a hard-ridden horse, his mind spinning out of control on its own flashbacks and tangents as his benefactor—the master-baker who was wearing her new, crisp, starched-and-ironed, strawberry-print apron she’d received from a secret admirer/Internet correspondent (who was really the man-Friday himself pretending to be a 300-pound Samoan man living in his mother’s basement not-too-successfully pretending to be a teenage lesbian nymphomanic blogger by the AOL IM name of “hotJessica15”), droned on and on about possible ingredients (cinnamon from Madagascar—where once the man had made a two-year expedition seeking undiscovered orchids, only to nearly die from a rare form of dengue fever that left him weak and feverish in a bush hospital run by an Australian doctor and his defrocked priest lover; nutmeg from Indonesia—he’d lost months of his life there, nursed slowly back to health by seventeen Buddhist monks who treated him with noxious jungle herbs and 24-hour-a-day chanting to cure the rabies he’d contracted from a monkey bite—another orchid-related accident—he really was unlucky in his search for those accursed flowers; vanilla from the island of Taha’a in French Polynesia - he’d never been there, but he’d have to put it on his list, since where vanilla (which is a form of orchid) grows there should be other orchids to discover; 147 other spices and aromatics carefully arranged in alphabetical order by the man, and labeled in impeccable calligraphy which he drew using an antique Chinese camel-hair brush; and, at the end of the 14-or-so feet of spice-shelf, the baker’s very favorite ingredient, black cocoa from King Arthur Flour Company—which when brought off the shelf always triggered a lively discussion not only about the relative merits of dutch-process cocoa, regular cocoa and that king of cocoa, King Arthur black, but also inevitably led to stories of the Baker’s training at King Arthur where she’d first learned the secrets of ganache, eggs, gluten and so much more), recipes which she was forever talking about, scribbling on milk-stained post-it pads, tweaking and rushing off to try, and most important— suddenly piercing his molasses-and-rum-raisin soaked consciousness—the critical subject of the day: What they were going to bake this very afternoon, when and if they managed to break their respective food- and orchid-based reveries, and then the Baker made her pronouncement, “Tollhouse chocolate-chip cookies, but not just any Tollhouse cookies, these are going to be made from 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, gently pliant to the touch, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 3/4 cup light brown sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 large eggs, 1 teaspoon almond extract, 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 1 teaspoon hot water, 2 cups (measured by dip-and-sweep method, about 11 ounces) all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup (about 2 ounces) Dutch-processed cocoa powder (or better, 2 tablespoons “plain” Dutch cocoa and 2 tablespoons black cocoa from King Arthur Flour, and 1 pound of cappuccino chips, which you, man-Friday, (and you, dear-reader), shall make and enjoy with a cup of fresh-pressed espresso-roast, Kona-bean cappuccino.”
TAGS: 500I awoke from my long and scary nightmare, sweaty and breathing like a hard ridden horse, in the early dawn of that fateful day in late October, the day that would live forever in my mind as the oddest and yet the very best day of my life, in which I actually Found My True Calling (that is as long as one believes, as I did at the time, that working for a living setting up clunky bowling pins to be again and again knocked down by chubby hairy drunken middle aged men while they leer at you and spill beer and make lewd comments to one another about your boobs is not exactly worthy of being considered one’s true calling) as the Girl Who Brushes Sweat off of Hard Ridden Horses, feeds them, mucks out their stalls and whispers in their perky ears all the while flirting with the little gay jockeys (wondering all the while if having sex with a jockey is quite like the time she got laid by that midget during her brief but extremely interesting stint as a carnie in the course of the summer of her junior year at Brown before she got her degree in Public Engineering and Policy Administration which prepared her in no way whatsoever as to how to rid oneself of a profoundly horny and rather heartsick –but fabulous in bed- midget who turned rather suddenly and threateningly into creepy stalker guy) as they pranced about the stables (the jockeys, not the horses) in their teeny tiny little breeches and complained how “hungry” they were and jumped on and off of their scales and vomited up their teeny tiny little lunches which were comprised of a few pale limp lettuce leaves and no dressing at all leaving the poor horses with not a soul to brush off their sweat, once hard ridden, and muck the smelly piles of poop out of their cramped wooden stalls and whisper in their perky ears when THEY are the poor creatures that have to do the sweating and hard riding and carrying of the anorexic teeny tiny little men around the dusty race track while chubby hairy drunken middle aged men cheer and shout at them and spill their beer and make bets on who will finish first (and second and third) on this racetrack that I stumbled upon accidentally when I took a wrong turn on my way to the podiatrist where I was to have some large and quite painful (not to mention unsightly) verrucas removed from the bottom of my left foot, had a scary but not injurious (to either person or property) fender bender with a bookie who instructed me to follow him to the parking lot of a nearby track to exchange insurance information and identification (just in case of any problems that may arise in the future) as a result of the accident, and I saw the lovely horses in their stalls, and I Found My True Calling.
TAGS: 500I note the 500 word competition with some regret, as it comes to my attention on a day when the most official course of action available to me could be summed up thusly; “can’t be stuffed”.
TAGS: australia, 500, cant-be-stuffed
In the little bed the young girl slept fitfully, her eyelids seeming to twitch, and she seemed racked with pain, seeming almost to cry silent tears as she slept, and as the camera of the story’s eye swirled around the spartan room, and through her hazel eye, we found her dreams and we found her standing alone, alone in a big red land; and as Becky stood in the middle of the scorched, dying, red, red desert she pivoted slowly around, her eyes flitting over the rocks and rock wallabies, watching this land die, but looking for signs of moisture, some sort of droplet, a little sign of life, just the merest hint of rain, but all she found was dust, flames, rock hard and lifeless ground and ashes, but she couldn’t give up, this land was hers and she wouldn’t let it die, so she spread her arms wide as she continued to turn and as she did so the searing air began to shimmer and curl, seeming to split and fly away in ribbons, each ribbon a shade of blue, a blue like the ocean, a blue of a young girl’s eyes, the blues from a bowerbird’s collection, a blue of the late night sky, and as each ribbon curled away into the sky, it became a tornado of blue, swirling higher and higher above Becky’s head until she was at the centre of a psychedelic storm and with each movement that she made, the storm grew and spread, reaching out across the scorched and scarred land, going up towards the centre and the red, red shores, spreading to the right and roaring through its deep green valleys, reaching further down through the myriad of lands, all the way to the bottom to its crisp white lines, swirling in larger and larger circles around the land, sweeping up the dust and the ashes and the pain, sweeping up the burnt carcasses and broken hearts, but leaving in its wake a river of gentle blue, a caress that called out to the people of the land, made them leave their hovels, exit their homes, come out into the street and dance under the blurred stars, so blurred because of the water falling from the sky, the moisture filling the air and filling their hearts, rain that, as it fell on their heads, caused their papery, dry and dusty limbs to cease crackling, a rain that started their brains to spark and their hearts to beat, a rain so gentle and long lived that they would speak of it for decades to come, yet it was not a rain of damage and torment, it was not in all the wrong places, it did not roar out of the sky ripping out trees and flooding roads, it just came and stayed and stayed until it was not needed anymore, it came when it was called and it was as blue and as beautiful as the Earth itself.
TAGS: rain, becky, harlequin, dreams, 500, caress, life, drought, feel, challengesThe thought of a sentence with five hundred words seemed to her like a river that would overflow its banks and flood the plain and simple truth of the landscape that surrounded her mind’s ebb-and-flow of temporal reaity—if reality could be the word for what went coursing through her waking moments—and really, she longed for constraint and discipline like an out-of-control woman needing a good spanking; her own thoughts being difficult and unruly, childish in one moment, soaring and esoteric the next, or else given to a deep melancholy that threatened her tenuous grip on the fact that her life wasn’t going exactly as planned…she chided herself inwardly for that weak thought, then cursed that bad habit of self-criticism—still, the thrill of something bigger and stronger, a Rule, that would take all the roaring and rushing torrent of words and make them BEHAVE in a demure, desirable form of womanhood…well, that was a challenge that she’d have to take on, if only to delight in the steadfast firmness of something, anything, that would be unchanging, solid in her gypsy imagination; five hundred words seemed almost too easy if she just wanted to prattle on, but the constraint of one.single.sentence. was just another in a long series of dares she felt compelled to take on, as though working two jobs and writing a stupid blog (oh, she needed the writing outlet and would likely kill the child in its crib before long, but as it was, the care and feeding of the damn thing seemed just one more task she compulsively took on, knowing full well that when she invited that desire into her bed, she would loathe the child of such a union and fear it would grow into a miscreant aberration of embarrassing self-revelations about family dysfunction—or worse—devolve into a whiny teenager that was never going to decide on a career path or do anything to further itself) wasn’t enough for her insatiable appetite for creative output; no, she was determined to completely alienate any chance for something remotely normal even if it meant the indescribably lonely feeling one has when they realize their obsessions have taken them places they probably shouldn’t be, but were irresistible nonetheless…places where the ego wants to expand and vaunt itself to dizzying heights just because the fear of heights was so viscerally implanted in her psyche to a point of danger, and there it was: the reason she simply could not resist the temptation of the challenge of five hundred words in one sentence was the possibility of abject failure or abiding achievement as the result of disciplining the thousands of synapses into one cohesive (and hopefully, coherent) phrase of meaning; an accomplishment that she knew she would enjoy rewinding (now there’s a new anachronism!) and replaying in her stupid blog just as soon as she posted it here in this amazing forum, concluding the deed with a sigh of almost sultry satisfaction and lighting an imaginary cigarette.
TAGS: 500As she began her tome, she anxiously searched for a topic of import that would capture the readers’ attentions and simultaneously lend enough material on which to expound; she could address the circumstances of coming by her peculiar nickname, she could extol the virtues and challenges of her favorite hobby (of which she had been boring other members on the chat line vociferously), she could delight the group with tales of her career mishaps (the boss who, when he traveled, and found it irritating to read his emails on his Blackberry device [which he frequently called his Blueberry] would require that his emails be printed out and faxed to him each morning [Scott Adams of Dilbert found this all too amusing]), but it all felt a little bourgeois; she also contemplated writing a piece de resistance in stream of consciousness, sure that her slightly bizarre train of thought would amuse her and her compatriots, but that seemed a little quotidian, too overdone; so she gathered her thoughts and sat with her laptop (a warm, heavy weight in her lap not unlike the heavy weight upon her shoulders) and chewed her lip nervously, hoping that she could pass this five hundred word test while simultaneously revealing a bit of her creative spark, her sarcastic sense of humor and her desire to belong to a group so utterly dedicated to the preservation of the word and the non sequitur; already she was addicted to turning her daily realizations into witticisms for others to read and comment upon (at this point it should be noted that she seriously debated the use of a preposition to end that last phrase, but upon finding neither a suitable replacement or the inclination to rewrite her work thus far, so she heaved a great sigh and carried on) and to fill the archives that would later be consulted by novice Scriners facing this same challenge; she stopped briefly to consider her next thoughts carefully, absentmindedly picking up the sock she was knitting and completing a few brief rounds in soft orchid-hued wool, smiling to herself and feeling the tension slowly ease out of her muscles with every stitch she knit; her thoughts drifted to the major life changes she would face in the upcoming months: the potential move to a new city, the beginning of a cohabitation with her betrothed, the change in her work situation and whether or not relocation would come to pass and necessitate a new job; if money were no object she would open a yarn store, but there was her career to think of and she dared not tempt the fates by mixing work and pleasure for fear it would result in her having to find both a new hobby and a new field in which to work; these thoughts swam in her brain, echoed by the dull drone of the television, the occasional sounds of cars passing in the distance, the faint murmurs of the child in the apartment next door.
TAGS: 500On the eve of November 14, the Scriners waited with delicious anticipation - they were halfway to their goal of 1,000 posts and so far only one small turtle had been injured in the process.
TAGS: 500, anticipation, delicious, no animals harmedThe distraction I felt was clearly obvious to all, culminating in an intervention almost, with a coworker concernedly asking me why, recently moreso than ever, and the answer was so simple yet at the same time, its simplicity seemed to increase its complexity and it occurred to me to say “do you know what it’s like to lack feeling, not just feel apathetic for a time, but really, consciously stop feeling to avoid pain, not mental anguish, but physical pain, and you don’t realise that the pain you avoid isn’t all you stop feeling and the longer it goes on, the easier it is not to realise - I mean you know something is missing but you couldn’t put your finger on what it is - but then something happens, something wonderful which you could not have hoped to set out to achieve, was furthest from your mind really as from where you were you would not have been able to comprehend this sensation,” and it is at this point that I would have paused, uncertain as to what I would say next because whatever it is, when considered, must happen to others somewhere everyday, though I wonder if it does, and if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily be the same surely, indeed couldn’t be the same as for me, couldn’t be found where I found it and although two people, or two million, could come upon my catalyst, it would not be a key for them and they would pass it by with only a cursory, superficial acknowledgement, if even that, and this loss wouldn’t be felt, not by them anyway, and it occurs to me that that had been me and I never knew, so I could not expect them to understand; nevertheless I would feel obliged to continue, in part to appear as though I had actually been considering what it was that was distracting me rather than allowing it to flow through me unchecked - not unremarked just unhindered by active thought - but also to discover if this person too had experienced this marvel and recognised it in me, and so I would resume “this sensation which pulses like a beacon, guiding you from somewhere to somewhere else although you can’t distinguish either place until you get where you’re going at which point you can’t really recall the journey, it has absorbed that from you and, although unfortunate as it means you can’t learn how a journey of this nature is made, also means you should find it harder to return, at least via the same path, and further, makes it so much easier to leave the dark past where it belongs allowing you to look forward unsullied by such burdens and with a renewed capacity to feel; do you know what that’s like?” though I suspect at this point it would be clear that they did not and it wouldn’t matter to me if they did and so I say “I was thinking about a girl.”
TAGS: 500In my mind, I’ve eaten three Twix bars, sideways (carmel side first), and I wish this would appease today’s appetite for mediocre candy but it probably won’t.
TAGS: 500, chocolate‘Have patience and endure’, said Ovid, many long years ago, certainly before my birth in January 1973, during the first in a long line of trials punishing people for hubris, both theirs and Nixon’s, and while I don’t believe in such a thing as coincidence (everything happens for a reason, let’s not kid ourselves, even that nappy-headed ho, Wittgenstein, believed this, depending on one’s interpretation of his writing, of course), I find it hard to comprehend the possibility that I might have had something to do with the way Watergate ended, for my own ego has been dragged through the mud enough to know better than to make such haughty claims to playing important historical rolls, but I digress, where was I, oh yes, Ovid and his blessed little remark, patience and endurance truly are worthy virtues, along with perseverance, hope, and decent hygiene, but the particular idea behind being able to sit quietly and wait on the God of your choice or Fortuna’s fickle wheel and to not give up, to never give up (thank you, Winston), this takes real courage, the kind Atticus Finch had when he fought the good fight knowing it was a losing battle, thanks to the townspeople’s relentless pursuit of ignorance, and Boo Radley, thank heavens for Boo Radley (did you know that Boo Radley was played by a very young Robert Duvall in that flick, I mean seriously, Robert-friekin’-Duval played a slightly dim-witted introvert, a stretch I’d say) and his willingness to rise above his so-called ‘station’ and beat the sweet living bejeezus out of the drunk bigot that successfully broke Jem’s arm and was intent on killing Scout, who was dressed like a ham at the time, long story, don’t ask, and actually I recall that Boo killed that dude, but the sheriff and Atticus decided to let things go, there had been enough destruction of innocence for one book and, oh that Harper Lee, herself an introvert of sorts, barely ever agreeing to interviews, but how can one blame her, I myself rarely want to be seen or heard by the mass of humanity and their sheep-like b-a-a-a-ing at whatever spicy little tidbit the media serves up, but…wait a minute, how the hell did I get here, this is nowhere near my point, let me quickly recap, um, Ovid, blah blah blah, endure with patience, etc., so if I ever have children (God help us all), I will sit them down and Ovid’s words will echo through the ages and I will make them read Kipling’s exceptional poem ‘If’ and memorize its lines about ‘forcing [their] heart and nerve and sinew to serve [their] turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in [them] except the will which says to them: “Hold on!”’, and in doing so endeavor to plant in their heart(s) the truth that as long as they never give up on themselves, the opinion of the world will matter not in the least.
TAGS: 500