Ficlets | I Am Empty Like the Ocean

I am empty like the ocean.

I am turbulent wind swept roiling foam. I am the dead calm of doldrums. I am the giant rolling swell of the deep sea.

I am flotsam and jetsam and the filth that collects in the corners of the harbor. I am the treasure sunken to the bottom of the sea.

I am the soulless predator. I am the unknowing prey.

I crash upon the shore and lap lazily at the beach.

I am warm and frigid, soothing and harsh. I am a friend and an enemy and a tool. I am worshiped and feared. I am untamed.

I am empty like the ocean.

Written here: Ficlets | I Am Empty Like the Ocean

Ficlets | On the Cusp

Tomorrow will be my 14,245th day, the first day of my 40th year.

I have been around for 14,244 days. I was born on a Monday in a leap year but after the leap.

I recall, vividly, about 100 of those days. Not all of the time of all of those days. Maybe a few instants of those days.

I don’t know what I recall. Days in the Volkswagen convertible with Mom spent driving nowhere and everywhere. An evening at the dinner table learning to write numbers with Dad. Pets.

Idle hours spent assembling LEGO structures, then disassembling, then reassembling. Air travel. Exploring new places, a new home, far from the concept of home I had been born with.

Playing doctor with a friend and a couple girls. Chaste kisses. Running around trailer parks and jumping ditches with my bike.

Rain. Lots of rain. Inner tubes on a small lake in the rain. Canoing in the rain. Building earthen dams in the rain. Watching my innocence, my youth, wash away like so many grains of disaffected sand. Pebbles in the water.

Aged.

Written yesterday here: Ficlets | On the Cusp

Ficlets | De Luxe Olympia

I started on a typewriter just like this one, maybe this one. A De Luxe Olympia. I didn’t know QUERTY and was not acquainted with Mavis Beacon either. I would hunt and peck and hours later I would have a few paragraphs filled with youthful enthusiasm if nothing else.

I was tentative with the keys. I’m surprised that I didn’t end up with TMJ . I would grit my teeth with every strike.

I had amazing speed. Somewhere around 10, maybe 15 characters per minute.

I remember staying up late at night, my bedroom door closed, a solitary lamp close to my desk illuminating the keyboard and the paper. I could not stream my consciousness, only think in phrases and catch up with my fingers at the end of each word.

My only companion with the click, clack, tick of the keys. They typewriter and maybe a dog.

And what crap I wrote. Science Fiction. I never finished anything. I wonder where those pages have gone? Lined a bird cage? In a folder on a book case? Where have those old works gone? Where are the words?

I've been writing over here: Ficlets | De Luxe Olympia

Ficlets | The Pencil

He hadn’t held a pencil in his hands in a long time. The octagonal shaft felt good, its weight comfortable, the paint tacky, gripping his fingers lightly.

He loved pencils when he was a kid, almost to the point of fetish. He was probably eight or nine and all alone in his classroom. He found a brand new unopened box of a dozen Faber No. 2’s and he sharpened them all down to tiny nubs.

The sharpener was near bursting. He gripped it firmly with one hand, the desk with the other. He twisted the metal basked until it disengaged from the sharpener base then pulled it free. Shavings hung from the sharpener spindle. He wiped them into the basket, the smell of graphite and shaved wood pungent, flaring his nostrils.

He was in a sharpening euphoria. A rush he had never known. A high that would never be surpassed.

He began to twirl. He twirled and twirled and twirled spreading the shavings around the room. He danced in the shavings spreading their dust around the huge room, not a care to the consequence.

I've been writing over here: Ficlets | The Pencil

Ficlets | The Bottle

Its just a bottle. It is cold and smooth and glass. It is green with the residue of glue where the label has been peeled off. The cap is still tightly on top. He wants to open it but does not. He picks at the glue like he picked at the label. Soon the glue will be gone and the cap will taunt him.

“Open me.” “Fuck you.” “Please.” “Fuck you.”

He wants to open the bottle. The bottle wants to be opened. What is the problem. Just open the damned bottle. He can not.

He is weak but he is not that weak. The bottle stares at him; he stares at the bottle.

“Please.” “FUCK YOU ,” he screams and hurls the bottle across the room. It catches the large chrome handle on the old Frigidaire and bursts, spraying the kitchen with froth. Glass skitters across the floor. Yellowish foam slithers down the refrigerator and becomes rivulets which become streams which leap off the bottom of the door landing on the freezer door and crawl towards the floor.

“Fuck you,” he mutters without much enthusiasm. “Fuck you.”

I've been writing over here: Ficlets | The Bottle

Rain with a Chance of Sun

Why don't more weather people get into politics?

We are already used to hearing their lies.

Ficlets

A new diversion:

From their website: "About Ficlets: ficlets are shorter than short stories. Well, no, actually, they are short stories, but they’re really short stories. Really short, as in there’s not a maximum word count … there’s actually a maximum character count (1,024)."

This may actually be more addictive than Flickr. I have already written two stories. : The Bottle (late last night) and The Pencil (a few minutes ago).

Sunday Morning Sun - 146/365

Sunday Morning Sun - 146/365, originally uploaded by Bearded Jon.

The bright warmth of the sun is a tease when the thermometer hovers around zero as it does this morning. The sun does not know the clocks have changed. The chill air does not know the clocks have changed. It registers in my mind but my body does not know that the clocks have change.

My body knows that the sun streams through the window and warms my face on this other-timely Sunday morning.