
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” I reminded myself. The cold and warm fronts were colliding in the sky which was colored with moving clouds, yellows, grays, and shades of purple. Darkness was falling as I was driving.

“I don’t have a lot of friends,” I reminded myself. The cold and warm fronts were colliding in the sky which was colored with moving clouds, yellows, grays, and shades of purple. Darkness was falling as I was driving.
Begley came here first, and the way I understand it, the fence surrounding the site hadn’t begun to unravel yet, so he had to enter subterranean style. He lowered himself through the sewer grate right out there on Kendall, under the old shuttered newspaper shed, having faith somehow it would lead him here, right under the old train station. It did, by the utility rooms and employee lockers, three floors down from where we’re sitting.
Continue reading “Most of Us Are From Someplace Else by Philip Ivory”
Old Scott’s Mill had given off odd sounds since the day it closed down. Now it gave off a sense of passage.
Yet again, our hearts go out to those effected by events in this sick world!!
***
Something strange happened this week. I laughed and was filled with an ambition. I want to visit Iceland. (Sorry Diane, Adam and all my English friends!!!) I am petty, childish but grateful that this narrow-minded thought came to me as it gave me an idea for this post. Continue reading “Week 80 – Emotions, Pygmies And Paddling Pools”

“Hey babe, what tie should I wear with this shirt?” I asked, draping a solid pink tie and then a diagonal-striped black and blue one from the collar of my black dress shirt.

I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but can’t think of a good reason not to. Maybe it’s true what my parents say about a teenager’s frontal lobe or cortex or whatever not being fully developed. Anyway, I’ll be back before they’re home. I slip the bracelet over my hand and slide the switch to Future.
I have come across a problem that I think we all have at some time whilst writing. I am thinking on things and then doubting if I have mentioned them before. Yep that old problem of a crap memory causing repetition. Anyone who has written more than a dozen bits and pieces begins to wonder if they have used the same phrases, the same topics, ideas, thoughts and feelings. It is hair pulling time as you need to look back. This is the writers equivalent of being drunk and repeating yourself. How many times after a few sherbets do we need to say, ‘Of course sweetheart, I know that I have already told you that, but I am just emphasising the point…Oh and did I repeat the fact that I love you?’ To which a curt ‘No!’ is the normal reply. Being drunk and reading has one advantage, you can read the paper at least three times with no penetration. When I was younger I could remember everything that I had done the previous night on the sauce, now not so much. I have forgotten conversations, visitors and my identity. I have woken up some mornings and had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to myself to get my name. I now need to look in the kitchen to see if I ate supper. I have on occasion woken up to thinking I had some form of deformity growing on my face only to find that it was a midnight attack of the munchies and an inability to find my mouth for a toffee. This memory constipation is the same when writing, you begin to repeat and doubt and think that you have said it all before. Nine times out of ten, you have! This is why I admire the multiple authors so much. (I know that is repetition, I have mentioned that before and am emphasizing the point!!) Sure you can find some common themes but for someone to write multiple stories and for them to keep their ideas fresh is some talent. This wee weekly posting is a bit easier, I normally find something throughout the week to kick-start an idea. Hence this weeks thoughts on memory being the inspiration.
Continue reading “Week 79 – Memory, Repetition And Brigadoon.”

“. . . ?”
How can you help? Hmm, how can you—
“. . . ?”
My mother? . . . Okay, we can start there. . . . My mother—my mother came from a large family, a very large Irish Catholic family. Do they make them any more? I think not. . . . At any rate, as a boy, a young boy, no more than eight or nine, I would employ the template of the Baltimore Catechism to sort them out and keep them straight—the Faheys I mean . . .The catechism’s set formula, y’see, helped me convey the essential and fundamental content of the Fahey family. Beginning—
Ku was named with a rare consonant and the last vowel her wordless family had to spare and she had fallen on desperate times indeed. The Qxlb recruited Ku when they discovered that she sold slang on the black-market, desperately moving from alphabet to alphabet to feed herself. Ku had always considered them her last resort, and now that she had succumbed to it, she felt her end very near. The Qxlb chose their unpronounceable names from scraping the remnants of burned lexicons on the streets, an act which endeared them to the wordless majority. They made bold claims to restore the depleting vocabulary and often acted on them, using methods that Ku could neither accept because of their extremity nor reject because of their results. The government could not capture or describe that which they could not name, which served the Qxlb’s purposes quite well.
Continue reading “They Who Were Wordless by Piyali Mukherjee”
Her legs began to go numb as they tingled from her weight. She was on her knees again, scrubbing. Always scrubbing. The chill of the linoleum floor made goosebumps run over her thighs under her pants.
This home didn’t belong to her. She wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of her labors. Mrs. McCormick, or Mrs. Glenn, or Mrs. Whomever Ella worked for that day would come home after she left. All part of the job, you show up, clean, and leave.