Tag: story

When my world memory started recording my life for me storing it

.Reading time 4 minutes.

The moment I woke up to life I was cuddling a soft brown bunny. And I was thinking. If I say I found it. The gate could have been open. Then I can keep it.

I left the gate around the side of the house open. I had already considered the trouble I could get in for opening a gate next door. Proof there. See, the gate is already open.

Finders keepers. It’s the ultimate authority. I just found it.

I could feel the weight of authority. My sister had enforced this law and applied it with my things alot. so I know it was a good working device I could operate to claim a bunny.

I adjusted the world and had my very own furry bunny. I could have named my wonderful new dream come true America! But something bothers me. I also knew about telling the truth. I wondered if I was telling the truth. That was something else I kew was important. But I didn’t know how telling the truth works. And does it matter if I tell it or not if no one else knows?

So I would test it, I guess. I want this bunny so bad. I want it to keep being. For that I have to find it.

It had to be loose out the gate that I didn’t open. I couldn’t have opened the gate and found the bunny in a hutch that I unlatched to take it out.

Id never unlatched anything before. I remember thinking as soon as I found myself unlatching if I would get in trouble for that. But it didn’t matter cuz the bunny was just looking at me with big eyes between it’s ears and I knew it was a bunny from the pictures. It didn’t run away. That’s how I knew it was as good as mine. I had to hold it. I would just say it was already unlatched.

And left open.

That the door was ajar.

That the bunny was on the ground.

Outside the gate left open. By someone else.

Im holding the rabbit.

I don’t like the way I start to feel.

I turn around with the bunny all droopy. It falls out of my grasp. It hops a few hops away.

Oh no! Need somewhere to keep my bunny from hopping away.

I head towards it lean down and try to snatch it up. But it pours out of my grasp like hopping water.

I get all the way down hold it from hopping. Put both arms around it and hold the bottom so it doesn’t flow out.

I hug it tighter and lift it up again. Now I have a bunny again.

It’s mine.

I caught it. it was escaping.

Someone did indeed let it out then it was running away.

I caught it.

So now I am telling the truth!

Yay!

But the truth bothers me. So I remember the day.

Ways to 42

.Reading time 2 minutes.

wpid-wp-1413563301586.jpegAbout what the meaning of life the universe and everything else, I wonder if it’s particular to each person.

Then maybe each particular individual variation is a twist in a good story. Since every good story is about conflict of interests and growth from making growing choices then conflict of interests it’s totally a basic high quality story ingredient. So we would story- starve without our differences.

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Just for the record. No diversity no story, no Saturday cartoons.

Then there is this other wonder. To just call the other interest, not my own, the guys who want some really no-way things evil could be really dumb or maybe just developmentally at a certain level. Like the ewww girls level. The boys have cooties level. Quite age appropriate even. Maybe part of the meaning of life is that as a cultural being we are age appropriate.

Then, if so, what developmental level in me and my species comes next? What are some of the possible new ingredients for tasty satisfying story foid? Are they an acquired taste like caviar? What do I pay to get them? Where? How? Where do I find a Why and learn to cook it?
Wait, that’s the seed of every new story vegetable. Maybe, it’s for planting.

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Would you, if you could, plant and grow a story vegetable garden?

What do healthy home-cooked stories taste like?

Do “my” stories create and add up to my “me”?

 Other wonders:
Are there GMO stories?
Organic stories?
Mass stories?
Hydroponic stories?
Poison stories?

Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma- I Witnessed an Imaginary Story

.Reading time 11 minutes.

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Wondering Laid To Rest

Two makes language. Two communicates.
Sad, I thought, when my sister hollered up the stairs: An airplane just crashed right into a building!
I don’t watch news.
Oh, my god! Another airplane just crashed into another building. Just now!  Just now!
My mind flips into mode. I don’t react. I ask. What is going on?
My newborn is laying next to me, where I’m reading. I look at my tiny baby asleep safe on our shared bed. I gently snatch my precious two-month-old into my arms head for the stairs and march down with her nestled to my chest. I’m fixen to set to translating this language of two.
What is being said here?
But I lost my brain and train of thought waiting for the firefighters to rescue trapped people form that crash, to evacuate the first building. Two buildings side by side airplane wounded, bleeding smoke.
Tell me people got rescued. Common firefighters get up there already! Get up get out.
It’s about time for an update. Suspense isn’t joking.  Are the people out of danger?  Like when baby Jessica was in the well. I’m not sure I can stand them in there any longer when my body feels a backbone crushing from the bottom up collapsing me one vertebrae at a time. It disintegrated and went up in a cloud of dust I can’t breathe.
They didn’t have time to get out! They didn’t have time to get out! All those people. All those firefighters. I just commanded them to get in there! They did. They didn’t get out!
They didn’t have time to get out looped my brain.
I rebooted it. It turned to rescue people charred by the other plane. No way such collapse would happen again. It was a fluke. It was only a fluke. People will get rescued this time. This building will hold as buildings do. So get em out.
Get out!
My inner voice shouts. Hurry! It works as much as cheering a team playing a game on tv at making me feel better.
Nothing feels good enough and I can’t just sit here.  Scouring the foot of the building hoping to see people come out is almost useless at so far off a screen view. Parched thirst for safety turns desperate like desert heat and blazing sun. The firefighters are in there. That’s no wet enough news. The spot on the ground I’m scrutinizing for exit movement liquefies. The tower squats down, shrinks, disintegrates, plunging my soul with it into a pile of rubble erupting ashes and dust of hope. Nothing makes sense now.
I look down at what I discover in my arms. Future in the baby face nuzzled at my breast vanishes. I can no longer imagine milk ever flowing out for her, again. There is no world now. No world for her to live in.
I ghosted back upstairs, put my sleeping child down in her un-safe spot on the bed, then went to find us some safety in a stillness, a quiet surrender to what is. Letting go of what I think and feel-a hopeless end. A world.  Allowing something that just liquified and collapsed to begin to regenerate or reconnect in me, then to my world.
What desperate heart-piercing scream erupts in these two molten crushing voices?
I sit and search, finally melting into the stillness where life is.

Till I’m wretched out of a concentration maintained fragile focus by my sister. Another airplane hit the pentagon!
Goddam! War-cries explode into being inside me. Instead of lighting up with those, I flee to a quiet place to put out the fire and stitch the world back together.
Later the story of the plane down in a field jerks my mind the other way. That one did something to me.
I imagine my people taking out the pilot and going down with the plane. Finally, I don’t feel bound and helpless. My hero’s, my people, succeeded. They did stuff for me. I feel like my fellow citizens and some pretty sacred symbolic place got rescued.
The Brave. The cost! Imagining that person, those people, instantly facing death, trusting each-other, banding together, standing up, thrills me and cancels out the already-in-the-grave feeling of helplessness. At the last-minute choosing to go down with the airplane in a spot were no one else would be hurt, fired up hope again. These are my people! Fiction or not.
Then I thought of the hijacker.
The contrast for him. Alone. Thwarted. Failed. The creeps of failure along with death. The guy or gal who may have, according to the speculation, took that plane down dies a glorious death while even the children on that flight, doomed, where not enslaved and twisted into instruments of more destruction. This is a victory even in death-or something like that.  Then I thought this is what really matters to me-to people.
One hijacker had the worst possible death. He died hopeless, a failure, crushed by letting down what he was willing to die to uphold. So, what was he upholding that mattered that much to him, then? What band of brothers did he feel like he betrayed? My emotions settled here, and everything started to make sense. This kid knew when he boarded the plane that he was going to die. He couldn’t chicken out. He couldn’t afford to really see one human being on that plane with him. No person could be more cornered or desperate, and sad. I wept for him. Then, I wept for his fellows.
When memorials were held, I scheduled my own. I’m already feeling like an American about my own American dead. So, I don’t focus there, were everyone else is already showing up. For each memorial, I brought a flower, to take time and felt the grief for each hero of a cause I don’t understand. And for his mother. For a kid compelled to shout-out that blood shrill for help. I don’t understand it. The kid, I figure, really didn’t understand it, either. We are equally lost in the world him and I. He stood for something just like my heroes. He was a person. He died failing, or triumphant. But that wasn’t what I wept for. I wept for the time he passed a beautiful American girl on a New York street and didn’t allow himself to see her beauty and love her, because he might have to kill her. She is them. This is not for me. Bitter tears dripped for the hours he spent at the airport, then on that plane looking at children, babies, couples in love, not seeing this was for him. Not seeing himself in them. I wept for his looking yet not seeing community, only death.

It took me a few years to tell another person after that first person I told. She looked at me like I’d swallowed the devil whole and alive. It doesn’t matter that I don’t agree with Osama Bin Ladin, even if he is not framed, but I let my heart try to hear the people he speaks for, is blasphemy. My position made me shake all over, but I can’t just pretend I feel different.
When Osama may (or may not) have been killed. I take it hard.
Every time the subject or name of Osama has come up for the last decade or so, I handle it by imagining Jesus getting accused. I don’t know anything, but he is my friend because I made a choice to listen to and honor him with my thoughts. I don’t know what he is saying, I’m just listening.
He just got crucified.
While my community celebrates, grief crushes me. I cry on my walk. Grief floods me making lunch, on my way to pick up my kid, while I play Runscape with my online friends, but I don’t talk about it to them. While walking off the feeling of indigence over my country taking-out my friend for me, my walking buddy Lois brings up the politics and his death. A lump grows and grows in my throat choking up tears I can’t hold back.
I lost my imaginary friend, today. Yet the grief is mostly over the idea of celebrating it.


Daily Prompt: Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma

Weekly Photo Challenge- Imaginary Friends

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Waywardspirit Art

Trees
My friends
Fairies inspiration
Living pets
Hugging company

Weekly Photo Challenge- Companionable

Inner
Mind
Playing tennis
With a
Holy ghost
A heart
A pet

In here
Somewhere
Fun
Wonder
Companionship

***

Weekly Photo Challenge: Companionable

Apple Wannabe

.Reading time 16 minutes.

Endless adventure-less days dragged behind and drooped ahead then, but now I’m free.

Free from boring. Free, not shut in the house all day with my little brother. And there will be lots of kinds of food, every day.

Everyone else gets home from school or work where all the fun is happening, but can’t tell me about it. It’s great to go to school, I know it, but no one can tell me exactly why. When they try to I don’t understand. I ask so much why about everything. No one answers anymore. They have adventures. I don’t. They get to do things at places I can’t go. Relished embellished tales my third grade sister Tosh spins to enchant me to envy, do.

Mom, in full regretful consternation, obeys the law. She sends us to elementary school, nothing else. I beg to go to kindergarten. She said I wouldn’t get to go even when I was old enough. No one else in our family ever goes, or would go, to kindergarten.

They don’t make kids go to kindergarten so you are not going under any circumstances. I wouldn’t send you or anyone to school at all if I didn’t have to.

What are circumstances? I wonder out loud looking back and forth from mom’s face to Tarza, fishing for an answer the best way I can in as many languages as I know, all at once to see who will help me. I need to find a way to go to kindergarten!

My oldest sister Tarza likes to and can answer almost anything. She explains in patient sing song:

Circumstances are something, that could be a good reason to go to school this year. What mom is saying is that even if there is a good reason, you are still not going to go to kindergarten, no matter what. We are against it.

All I hear is: “good reasons to go to school”.

Good reasons to go to school. I know of a whole bunch of them, and one of them has to not be the “no circumstances” one.

Something is wrong about us even going to school at all. It bothers mom like me not doing the dishes after breakfast does. But I still don’t do the dishes after breakfast when I’m told to. So, I can still go to school, in the same way, even if it bothers her. Mom does not agree.

It’s not about that. It is because school corrupts you. The danger tone switches on in her voice. She tells me about how other children have become corrupt. Some have even had to be stoned by their own parents, for it.

“Corrupted” shakes me up. Grave and scary shivers erupt on the inside. I can almost feel the ominous evil spirit trying to. I don’t want it to happen to me. I know this is bad and it can happen to me in school, mostly in kindergarten, I guess. So, I’m really glad to not risk it this afternoon.

Mom, I promise not to get corrupted, if I can go to school today!

How will you do that?

I will just not let corrupted do it to me.

How will you know what corrupted is?

Because it’s bad, so I’ll know.

The thing about getting corrupted is it’s tempting. Mom has stopped dressing and is looking at me in a sudden way. She sits me down on her lap on the bed. She never does this anymore and it feels tender nice and awkward. After a minute of balancing me on her lap she maneuvers me next to her at the edge of the bed where she can look at me. I swing my feet in the air bumping the box springs while she looks at me with a very important look. I stop swinging my legs. I’m craving important.

You want to know how corruption starts?

I nod wide eyed, knowing that however it does, it won’t, because I’m not gonna let it.

Corrupted. It is when you start to like your friends more than you like to do what God wants you to do. When you think your friends are more important than God is, the devil has you and it is almost impossible to ever get away again. You get dark minded, then you don’t even want to get away anymore. She pauses and takes a hearse breath. That’s how the devil tempts you, she sighs.

I know that my survival depends on understanding what she is saying.

He leads you astray with things you like more than you like God, and you become corrupted. She looks at my face for signs. I know this is solemn, and not time to shout how I’ll absolutely win and she has nothing to worry about!

I won’t let the devil tempt me! So, I’ll never get corrupted. I’m resolute, fierce, not smiling, only knowing and solemn. I feel solemn. It’s so much nicer than the shivers and horrors feeling.

You won’t know it’s the devil because he pretends to be good and you aren’t old enough to know the difference.

I am old enough though. Only dumb people, and bad people don’t know the difference. I can too tell what is the devil and what isn’t.

How can you tell?

I just know I can.

I’m imagining a serpent whispering for me to eat that apple. I won’t eat it though-no matter what. Then I start thinking, obviously the snake is wicked. And obviously it was Snow White’s wicked stepmother, in that old lady suit, too, that made her eat that poison apple. Snow White wasn’t as smart as I am. I’m smart enough to skip Snow White, though since mom says fairy tales are simple-minded, and corrupt and have no moral, but Eve wasn’t that smart either. And see, I know what corrupted is, too, I muse. I know which story is the right story.

I won’t get tempted like Eve did! I’m sure of it. I always double-check, make sure people aren’t the evilest ones, or the devil’s servants, and I will make sure that it’s right before I do anything.

How can you tell?

I just can.

The devil disguises himself to lie to you so you will believe it.

I tell mom how I will always not believe a lie.

How could you tell it’s a lie?

Because lies aren’t true.

Every few days a new reason pops up that hopefully wasn’t under the any circumstance clause and so would get me on the adventure bus in the mornings . I follow mom around when she gets home. Different ways, surprising times, wondering aloud about a different angle, for a loophole, and  bring it up in conversations, comment about it, nag, then remind her that I still want to go, to school no matter what, too. Nothing works. But the peak of my day is the hope.

I resort.  Whining, begging, weeping, screaming “It’s not fair!” and being locked in my closet till I my head pulses as hard as I have sobbed. Charm fails. Getting up and being ready for school fails. Trying to sneak on the bus failed when my own sisters didn’t let me try.

Close to the end of school, all hope isn’t lost.

Mom I will be happy to go for just whatever days are left, please, please, please! Please mommy!

Ouuuuwh! This was the wrong way to get to school, for sure because mom is suddenly madder and meaner.

You are hurting my ears. I have a headache. And I’m so, so sick and tired of you nagging and begging me all day long! Under no circumstances, whatsoever, are you to ever, ever mention school to me again. Do you hear me? One more word about school and I will spank you. One more word. Don’t even say school! Her face wrung the words. The words squeezed me dry.

The best reason yet, for me to get to go to school, is that there aren’t even enough days left for me to get corrupted anyway. The feeling jambs my thought. It squashes my breath and gives me a gripping voice ache.

Then, all is lost. The “lost and never to be” void gapes wide, dark, open, tunneling through my whole chest. My sister Tosh has fun tossing things through the tunnel.

The morning of the first day of school mom is a weird mad. I whooped a piercing triumph war-cry at the top of my lungs in the house smirking at her when she reminded me to get ready for school.  She did not deliver me to the inevitable dangers of first grade that first day. When everyone else walked, she refused to take me to register.

You are not going to school today.

The second day I didn’t turn the dryer on as I was told. So my fist-day-of-school purple corduroy outfit isn’t ready in time. Mom is mean and won’t let me wear it wet.

I try to show her how it’s the second-day-of-school anyway. So what do first-day-of school- clothes matter anymore? At first she tried to explain first impressions to me, but I didn’t care about those. I just want to go to school today.

I don’t have time anymore to go by the school to register you anyway.

I howl searching for any clean not wet clothes to wear. She threatened to make good on that spanking if I don’t be quiet. And you will not be going tomorrow either. Meanwhile I couldn’t find any other clean clothes and all my underwear are shame for shame dirty. None pass school inspection without washing, and she hadn’t washed any with my outfit.

My outfit is the only thing in the dryer, she had washed it by hand quick to get the stains out. It was to be clean and dry, on time.

Remember I told you not to wear your new clothes till school started? She sighs accusing.

I did remember. But it has a big yellow flower with pretty orange trim on every petal sewn on the front. This big flower is at the bottom front and to one side. A perfect spot on the front of a blouse for a big flower just like this one to be.

I could not wait for the first day of school. I couldn’t wait or change before I went outside to show everyone then stay to play. I couldn’t wait long enough to change before I ate sloppy joes.  I was too hungry.

You be a good girl or you aren’t going to school at all this year. I don’t care what the law is! Her voice hung at the end of thin rope. So did I.

On the third day of school I’m walking for the first time with my sisters. I’d imagined myself on this day skipping and whistling triamphantly. All of the “I’m free!” whipped right out of my body language though. Guarded, regretful and talking to myself in “what if’s”, and “When I’s” I lose my self in sidewalk cracks. My sisters walk on ahead and turn the corner.  Lost and left behind stings my eyes. Then, up ahead, Tosh is part telling part pleading part commanding Nickie: “It’s funner this way!” But Nickie comes back and risks a peek around the corner just for fun, and gestures for me to catch up.

School is wonderful.  And after a while, I discover this irresistible apple. The un-poisoned apple of desperate need to be the teacher’s pet. No one offers the apple to me. I want the apple. I poison myself with it.