Yeah, Okay, So I Need A Little Assistance With This

Happy Wednesday, dear readers!  I know this is Hump Day for many, but I'd like to beg ask of you all a favor.

A penny for your thoughts?  A nickel, perhaps, what with inflation and all?

I recently received in the good old snail mail, a flier for a writing competition wherein they are looking for short stories of 1,500 words or less.  Being a man of many words (written, at least) I have been toying with the idea of submitting an entry.  Safe as milk, right?  Should be no problem.

Well, here's where you come in.  See, I have a big blind spot, often, for my own stuff.  Sometimes I can read the same piece over and over again and still not quite get why others might find it interesting, scintillating or otherwise worthy of comment.  Or editorial consideration, for that matter.  So if I may, can I get a little sugar from you all?

If there is a story or piece of mine that you can recommend, one that you really enjoyed, doesn't have to be recent, please tell me which one.  I'm of a mind to maybe give this competition a go, take it on a lark, as it were.  I haven't done it in a while, and I feel the need to flex a little and maybe join the party.

Or...wait, maybe this is even better...

You can certainly recommend a significant piece I've already done OR you can send me a writing prompt and maybe I'll just write a fresh piece around that, for the competition.  How about that?

So if you don't mind, and you have a moment to throw a coin or two into my mental cup, drop me a line in the comments.  I welcome the feedback, and it could be just the ticket to freshen up my brain space!

The deadline for entry is November 15th, so I reckon I can take ideas from now until the end of September.  That, too, is a milestone, and probably a good cutoff point because at this rate I am very close to having posted an entry to this blog every day for one full year.   I hadn't intended to do that, but somehow fell into it.  I'd like to see if I can carry it off, at which point I'll probably take a hiatus to recharge.  But I don't think I'll stop writing altogether, so the short story idea could be the sabbatical I need.

Thank you all again for your readership and attention.  I look forward to hearing some interesting things!

A Poem About a Book About a Mirror Reflecting a Picture of a Mirror Reflecting a Book About Poems

Delightfully recursive, don't you think?

I know, it made my brain hurt just thinking about it.  There is, however, method to this madness.  It all started, as many of these things do, with an assignment.  This time the assignment arose in the class in which I am enrolled on the topic of Web development.  The assignment?  Create a blog, post on it and link with other blogs to be created by classmates.  You can see why I would be intrigued by this activity.

Long time readers are probably saying "Dude, you're aces! and DONE already!"

So it would appear.  Truth be known, this blog already satisfies nearly ever criteria required for completion of the assignment.  That's all good.  Part of the assignment is to write at least three new posts before the deadline next week, and I think many of you know there is no way I could resist it.

It did make me reflect on this blog, in a way I hadn't done in quite some time.  The why, the what, the who.  It hit me that there are a lot of questions about identity involved when blogging.  Why do I do this? What do I get out it?  Who is this person who blogs?

After all, a blog can chronicle deep life experience like this: Blood of My Blood...

It can serve a bowl of goodness: Soul Food...

It can ruminate on personal identity: Plume...

It can tell good stories, and poems: Maw of Winter, Mirror Cracked...

It can be funny and fluffy: One of My Favorite Things...(this is one of my daughter's favorite posts)...

It can be all those things and more.  Text and pictures and videos and music, everything that the everyday miracle of modern electronics can bring you, all right there for you to skim or swallow, chew or spit out.  Really, a blog can be about everything and nothing.

The important thing is that it be true to you, because in this age of instant communication and viral spread of information, the only real editor you have is yourself. Control the information, or it will control you.

Blog if you will, there are rewards: connectivity, friendship, knowledge, personal expression and creativity...many wonderful things.  Don't worry if it doesn't seem important.  Everybody has a story to tell, and a unique voice in which to tell it.  I am still learning to raise mine, while writing this poem about a book about a mirror reflecting a picture of a mirror reflecting a book about poems.

A Winter's Day - Branches and Stones

Michelle at Confessions of a Desperate Housewife and Irish Gumbo present their second edition of Pic and Prose, for your edification and delight. Enjoy!

“If on a winter’s day a traveler…”*

On winter walks, the boy always thought he would be caught by the branches.

On winter walks, the man fretted the distance he would fall.

Together, they joined hands and leapt.
The fall was not so great, the water not so cold, after all.
They had each other.

*Paraphrased from Italo Calvino’s book “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler”.

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CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT: The smack talkin’ has begun! The lurvely Petra has invited me to participate in a contest for the weekly “HeBlogs/SheBlogs” post that she runs on The Wise (*Young*) Mommy. I am up against seven dudes who will lose, er, strapping young lads competing for the honor, and you lucky readers will get to vote! Contest entries will be posted beginning Monday, February 9th on The Wise (*Young*) Mommy, two per day for the week. My entry will be posted Monday. Please make sure to read them all, voting starts the evening of Thursday, February 12th, after the last entries have been posted, and will close the following Sunday. I invite you, lovely readers, to drop by the other girls, er, dudes blogs and drop them some comments. Feel free to humiliate them. Don’t forget to vote (for me)!

President Gumbo and the Big Red Button

Begging your pardon, dear Readers, because the title of this here post is a bit of a misnomer. See, I am not a President. At least, I am not a President of anything you have probably heard of. Most people hear the word ‘President’ and they think POTUS, Pres O’ The Eeww Nighted States, which most certainly is not me. Wouldn’t want the job, even if I didn’t have to run for it. It doesn’t suit my Temperament. I don’t like backgrounds checks, either. It isn’t so much that I have done any Egregious Wrong Type Stuff; it’s that I find it insulting to have people poking their noses in my Personal Biz, unless I ask them to. Which is almost never. About the only place I am really President*of is the Republic Of Gumbo, a small country approximately the size of my head, population: 1. And the native is restless. I am constantly on watch for a coup d’etat.**

You might say, “Gumbo, why would you NOT want to President? Think of the power! Think of the cool limos you’d get to ride in! Think of all the navy blue suits you would own!” Yeah, well, that’s nice and all. But limos are overrated, and I have an aversion to suits. As in I don’t want to wear one, they make me itch no matter what fabric it is.*** Now to be honest I could dig me some power, because that means I could tell people to just leave me the hell alone, and they’d be all “Sorry, Mr. POTUS, sir we’ll come back when you’re ready!” and I’d be all “Hells to the yeah, and I get to decide when I’m ready!” and there is nothing they could do about it. Heh. That’d be cool.

So I’m alright with power, but there is a really big reason why you, the upstanding Citizens of this Fair Land of Amber Waves, would not want me to be the President, charged with safeguarding your welfare and all.

I have a worrisome fascination with Big Red Buttons.

It’s my understanding that the President has access to the Lord God Emperor of all Big Red Buttons, and if he were to be inclined or advised to push, some serious shit of the Really Bad Type would happen. Like a plague of radioactive Giant Frogs would land on us or something, or the national supply of Cheesy Poofs would be cut off. Apocalypse, my friends, not cool.

No, let me explain. So why don’t you “ruminate whilst I illuminate”****:

Picture if you will, an ordinary looking bedroom, in an ordinary looking house. There is a nice wooden desk with side drawers and some overhead cabinets and shelves. Said drawers and shelves are cluttered with books and the assorted junk that tends to accumulate around nerdy young boys with social anxieties, curious minds and too much time on their hands. Sitting at the desk is the aforementioned nerdy young boy. The fluorescent light overhead lights his face with that peculiar glow that tends to make white people look like Casper. He is staring intently at the items on the desk before him, inventoried thusly:

1 box of matches
1 candle, sitting in a metal holder
A small length of coat hanger wire
2 boxes of the real old-style flashbulbs, the kind with the wiry metal clump in the middle
A clump of the same wiry metal

The candle is lit. The young man is intently cracking open the flash bulbs and pulling out the contents, to add to the steadily growing clump on the desk. The wiry metal stuff is magnesium wool. It was used in flashbulbs, back when flashbulbs were common. It is also found in flares, and I believe it used to be (maybe still is) an accelerant in certain things that were supposed to burn bright and hot. Oh, and in flash bombs, too. The clump is approximately the size of a golf ball.

It should also be noted that our Hero had recently read a lot about magnesium and other metals for a school report, and it was in the course of that research he stumbled across an Interesting Fact: magnesium in the form of a powder or thin filaments will burn extremely fast, bright and hot if ignited. Our Hero also had just read on a carton of flash bulbs***** that they contained magnesium wool, “Keep away from open flame”. Hah.

So the Hero calmly assembles a big lump of magnesium wool, impales it with the length of coat hanger wire, says to himself “What’s this big, red button do?” and calmly thrusts the ball of magnesium into the open flame.

FFOOOSHHHHHHHHHH!

“Oh, shit!” (cough, cough, cough)
“Oh, shit, I’m blind!” (searching for eyebrows)
“Aw, man, I am screwed!” (waving frantically to disperse smoke)

Having satisfied himself that magnesium wool does indeed burn hot, fast and BRIGHT, our Hero settles down to await the return of his vision. Yep, magnesium wool is an excellent source of light for flashbulbs, as his seared retinas will attest. Now, this isn’t the only example of the Big Red Button fascination. There were certainly others.

There was the Backyard-Model-Bonfire-Fiasco, behind the shed. Good thing the shed was metal.

There was the Hardened-Thick-Lumber-Chunks-In-The-Leaf-Shredder Dance Party. Woo! What a beat that was! My ears are still ringing.

There was the Let’s-Use-Gunpowder-To-Burn-The-Leaves-In-The-Field-Behind-The-House Debacle. Glad I did that at night, the flash was phenomenal.

The Let’s-Stick-The-Ends-Of-This-Mystery-Electrical-DooDad-Into-The-Socket Break Dancing Lessons. Actually, I knew the wires would heat up to the point of melting, but that’s not what happened. What happened was my finger slipped off the plug and touched one of the prongs as it went into the receptacle. The resulting surge of power shot through my arm and the spasms flung me across the room to land on the side of my bed. That shit hurt.

And probably one of my personal favorites: The Starting The Motorcycle In The Shed Trick!

This one was a real hoot. My brother briefly had a small motorcycle he was going to fix, and it was out in the shed in our backyard. The shed was small and the motorcycle was up on chocks. It ran, but it was missing one small piece of hardware that was essential to its operation: the throttle cable, it was broken. And I knew it was broken.

It was also of the type that you could kick start it by pumping the foot lever down and holding in the clutch (at least, I think it was the clutch), so it was pretty easy to start. Very, very easy to start. So easy even a blockhead like Yours Truly could do it, no sweat. So one day, I went out to the shed to goof around and sit on the motorcycle. I was pretending to drive the motorcycle, hands on the bars squeezing the clutch when I said “What’s this Big, Red Button do?” and I pumped the foot lever.

You know what happens when you start a motorcycle like that, and the throttle cable is broken? Well, the engine screams to life as if it were running at full throttle. I was so freakin’ surprised that it started (and that sumbitch was LOUD) that I screamed and LET OUT THE CLUTCH. You know what happens when you let out the clutch on an engine that is running at full throttle? The motorcycle takes off like a freakin’ missile, that’s what happens! Which is exactly what happened to Moi. The bike leapt off the chocks and shot full bore at the back wall of the shed, me hollering at the top of my lungs and hanging on while trying not to choke to death on the thick, blue smoke that was filling up the place up. BANG! Right into the wall! I fell off as the bike tipped over, frantically trying to find the kill switch on the handlebars.

Fortunately, I found the switch and cut the engine. Just in time for my brother to fling open the door to the shed, screaming “What the hell are you DOIN’?!” Blue smoke pouring out the door, I just looked at him and said “Nuthin’, why?”

So there you have it, Friends and Citizens, that is why I don’t want to be President. I just don’t know as I could resist the urge to fiddle with that Big Red Button. Many things in life I learn the hard way; it’s good knowledge, just not suited for general distribution.

And I really don’t want to be responsible for Giant Radioactive Frogs landing in your backyard.

* Louis XIV said “L’etat c’est moi!” Gumbo says “L’etat say whaat?”
**Ever try to cut off your own head? I cannot endorse it. Painful. Messy.
***And you can bet your ass if I was POTUS, I wouldn’t be wearing some nylon/polyester/microfiber shit, no way. Silk, baby, silk! I want my junk to be comfortable.
****Name that movie and I’ll hoist a Guinness in your honor.
*****Told you he was a nerd.

THINGS YOU MUST DO TODAY:
Teri at Cold Lemonade has posted her final entry in our collaboration. All I can say is: PLEASE READ IT NOW. Words have escaped me; it’s...oh, just read it! I am honored and delighted to have been a part of it, and many thanks to Teri for allowing me to contribute. And in a strange way, it ties in nicely with the theme of my post today.

Jaguar Dreams An Old Lover*

You still come to me in dreams
This little bed can barely hold
The dark beauty of your eyes

Burn like a fire in the cold

Under a sky the color of luminescent bruises, Jaguar sat on the cliff, legs dangling over the edge. His arms angled out from his sides, palms flat with fingers clamped against the raspy rock. He stared unblinking, gazed fixed on the distant torch wavering out on the desert floor. His breathing was shallow, measured: the gentle rise and fall of an infant’s belly. The tears had dried on his scraped and burning cheeks. Small runnels of grit and blood formed a skein of primal tattoos on his face. Jaguar did not bother to wipe them clean; he barely registered their presence clinging to his cooling skin. The wind blew soft bringing with it the faint presence of water, overlying the scent of the Other.

Jaguar blinked slowly with his eyes watering against the dry desert air. The exhaustion he felt caused him to sag, melting onto the rock beneath him. In the back of Jaguar’s mind, a lone guitar played as a gruff baritone sang bittersweet memories that echoed in the canyons behind his eyes.

She was out there, he knew, the scent a faint needle under the skin over his heart.

Comfort is the only kind

Hearts like flowers bloom and fade
Against the chill that finds the bone

Is come from dust to dust in trade

The dust roused by his earlier frantic scrabbling had settled in a faint shroud over his trembling frame. It was in the folds of his skin, in his ears, in his mouth. Jaguar’s lips curled back as he swabbed them with a tongue the texture of sharkskin. He spat into the void. The dirty globule of spittle fell swirling out of sight and scattered into a long silver stream of beads as if caught in a strobe light.

Jaguar rose up slightly in a burst of panic, his breathing breaking down into a series of stop action motions. The sky began to flicker rapidly, phasing in and out of day and night and day and night. He felt his heart pounding, near to bursting from his chest. Out on the desert floor, sagebrush and coyotes raced jerkily about on the sand in the flashes.

There was something new. Something he had not comprehended before. He had seen the rocks near the torch earlier, broken and in rough shadow. Now he could see they formed a crescent in the sand. As he sat transfixed, searching the rocks for signs of life, there was motion amongst the shadows. A faint glimmer of liquid, heavy and shiny-black. Whether oil or water he could not tell. The glimmer subsided and the shadows swallowed up what had been, leaving afterimages as the remains. The flickering sky slowed, the last day bleeding back into the night. Jaguar felt the tension bunching up the muscles of his shoulders, locking his arms into rigid bars. He realized he had lifted himself off the rock edge, and quickly unlocked his arms to settle heavily back in place.

Your sorrow for another coin

A phrase no lover fails to strike
The record of our briefest kiss

The shadows of our love alike

Jaguar briefly looked down, gauging the height and considering whether he could survive the fall, yet again. He rejected the idea, knowing it wasn’t possible, not bothering as he did not want to take his eyes off that trace of liquid that he had seen. In the purplish half-light from the stars he could see the shapes of the rocks, but only shadows where the glimmers had been. His pulse was still high, nostrils flaring as he strained for another whiff of Her. His vision was sharpening, his hearing growing keener and he could hear faint, tremulous noises rising from the desert. The landscape began to brighten as if lit by faint candles. A tiny whispering shusshh reached his ears, which had swiveled forward swiftly to track the sound. Jaguar could feel the fangs lengthening over his lower lip, grown heavy as his face and jaw elongated in the transformation. Overhead, the Hunter looked down and smiled, saying “Welcome back, my friend”. Jaguar looked up briefly, growling softly and baring his teeth at Orion.

The shusshh repeated itself, followed almost immediately by a guttural scream. Jaguar whipped his heavy head downward, swift as the strike of an adder, to pinpoint the source of the sound. His pupils dilated and the aroma of water, warm and laced with the taste of Artemis incarnate, filled his quivering snout. The scent provoked a fit of trembling, arching his back as a tingling surge raced from his nostrils to shoot down his spine and into his loins. Jaguar growled with pleasure as the lifeblood of the earth filled his veins. The shaman king was back.

As memory and the sea are deep

Inside our blue and nameless blood
Coursing through this mortal fuse

The flower with its frailest bud

Jaguar leapt to his feet, claws clicking against the stone. The power was strong in his limbs, which trembled rapidly with excitement. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, to better gather the scents pouring in from the desert. The stars above began to waver and smear in a swirl of quantam possibilities. Jaguar growled low in his chest. His claws began to dig into the ground, the outline of his body flickering rapidly between human and animal. The shaman laughed as he peeled the flesh from the bones, sinking into the rock and underground.

Swimming through stone, down through the compressed sediments of millions of years, brushing against the fossil memories of beasts long departed. A femur here, a fang there: brothers to the shaman buried under tons of rock. Jaguar laughed as he made his way to the bottom of the cliff. He reached out, parting the igneous curtain and stepping out into the warm desert. Another deep breath. The Other was close, so close. Jaguar tensed to listen. There was a faint whisper of wind carrying the scratching of underbrush rolling across the sand. The scream, when it came, startled Jaguar into a crouch, the leap before the strike.

“Come! Come to meeeeee….!”

He sprang forward in a blur, tawny spotted flesh taut over his muscles. The stars turning into strands of opals, glittering overhead, Jaguar ran as if pursued by the devil. He stretched his legs to the point of near-breaking as he galloped over the sand. The crescent of rock approached rapidly and Jaguar leapt over the nearest boulder. The scent was thick in the air now as leapt again to land on the anvil-shaped rock beyond. His chest heaved, gulping in breaths to slow his racing pulse. He could see a form stretched out on the rock, pale skin glowing like alabaster in the starlight.

She lay unmoving in a thin puddle of water that was rapidly vanishing into the warm desert night. Her hair fanned out in a lacework web around her head. Jaguar’s heart thudded over slowly in anxious panic until he saw her chest rise in a cycle of slow breathing. A soft leap to alight on the rock beside her. Gently, slowly with his muzzle, he traced the curve of her neck where it arced into her shoulder. She did not stir as his warm breath pulsed over the skin, drawing the scent deep into his lungs. He reached out a paw in the shape of a hand and growled quietly.

You still come to me in dreams
This little bed can barely hold
The dark beauty of your eyes
Burn like a fire in the cold

Lover, awake.


(Italicized paragraphs are lyrics from “I Dream An Old Lover” by Jeffrey Foucault, from the album Ghost Repeater)

* This post was inspired by the writings of dynamo Teri, at Cold Lemonade. I read something of hers that I liked, which influenced my “Rusty Cage Fugue” post. These things being circular, she in turn was inspired in writing this post, and led to her suggestion of a collaborative story. Temptation so wonderful cannot be resisted; we hope you enjoy it!

A Winter's Day - Flower And Web

By the miracle of this here Internettyweb thingie, I have had the pleasure of making the digital acquaintance of Michelle at Confessions of a Desperate Housewife. I forget exactly how I made it to her site, it may have been through Heinous at Irregularly Periodic Ruminations, but I am very glad I did. Michelle has quite the eye behind the camera, and has posted some very lovely photographs on her blog. The following shot of a pheasant is a particularly good example:

Very nice, I think you would agree! Beautiful bird caught at the right moment. What makes this picture even more special is Michelle got her car stuck in the snow, going back to the same area to get some more pictures. That’s dedication! Thankfully, the car was extricated and everyone got home safe.

There was another picture she posted, the day after the pheasant shot, that not only looked great, but had a nice caption. It was called “The Flower and the Web” and it sparked some creative thoughts in my noggin. So naturally I wanted to write something about it. I commented to Michelle that we should do a collaborative piece incorporating the picture and some text. To my delight, she agreed: she supplies the picture, I supply the words. I created a short story, sort of a “1 minute writer” type exercise, to go with the picture. So without further ado, we present a Theme on The Flower and The Web:

SUMMER TO WINTER: THE FLOWER AND THE WEB
The Spider did not see the Pheasant, as the Pheasant plucked it from the Flower.
The Pheasant did not see the Hunter, as the Hunter raised his Rifle.
The Hunter did not see the cracks in the Ice, as they split beneath him.
In the Silence after, the Flower and the Web nodded.
They had seen it all. Only they remain, waiting for Summer and all new things.

We hope you liked it. It was fun, and a great way to get some creative juices going. Please visit Confessions of a Desperate Housewife and check out some more great photos, drop some comment luv and let us both know your thoughts!