Being dead. I can't complain.
I really can't. It's got to do with glands, I haven't got any. I didn't know what to expect but it wasn't this. It certainly wasn't this.
I didn't even get a chance to catch my breath. Or my teeth. When you're hit that hard by a speeding car. There's no pain, just force.
Then I blink and I'm staring at the ceiling of my son's room. I expect to feel a wash of relief. I must have fallen asleep I think to myself. 15 and he still likes to hear old Dad read him a story. He says it's like his own personal podcast. He said he'd planned to start recording me. Wish he had, too late now. I'm as certain as the absence of any wash of relief, I feel nothing. I can think but I can't feel. Then I do feel something. A sinking feeling I recognize from my own days in high school. My son's voice in my head.
"I don't want to go to school," he says. Does he? I hear him but I don't. Did he think it?
The feeling dissipates but doesn't fully go away as I have the awkward experience of feeling myself in a body I can't control, feeling feelings not my own, hearing the private thoughts of the boy who doesn't yet know his father is dead.
I know I'm dead, if I wasn't I would cry.
He checks his watch, I haven't missed a day. Three thousand miles away on a business trip but distance and time seem no obstacle to the powers that put me here. I don't understand why but I begin to understand what.
What my son feels, I feel.
What he thinks, I think.
His breakfast is shovelled into his mouth, and he's out the door before my wife wakes up. I wish I could have seen her but it's just a wish. I care but I can't get upset about it. I'm curious to find out if I'm gong to have to go on like this forever.
I certainly hope my own father wasn't trapped in my head all those times I masturbated after his death.
I begin to dread coming home. We run through hand lotion and kleenex fast. I face these realities dispassionately.
If kitsch is life with the necessary shit removed.
Death is shit with all the necessary life removed.
I have no illusions and gain no satisfaction from my newfound clarity.
I fade out. Let the scenes run through like a late night movie. On the bus, at the school, homeroom, second period, third period, fourth period, lunch.
Lunch is awful. I remind myself to give him more pocket money for the sandwich place on the corner, then I remember I'm never going to be able to give him anything again.
Then my son's heartrate goes up, his breathing gets shallow, he's standing up but just as he finds his feet he's pushed to the wall.
The kid is bigger and his eyes are full of bored-ass affluenza bullshit. I feel anger, and fear.
It's so natural, I forget these feelings are not mine, reflexively I imagine heel striking this little shit right in the nose.
My son's hand lashes out and don't hear so much as feel a satisfying crack of bone under my son's palm.
The bully is howling. My son is terrified now, he doesn't know why he did that.
I imagine grabbing the little shit by his ears and shoving my knee into his teeth.
It works! One of the coaches pulls my son off the boy and he's yelling and my son is freaking out, he can't look away from the mess on the floor. The cafeteria is roaring.
In the principals office, midway through the expulsion, they get the news.
My wife comes and picks him up. There's a lot of tears.
Through it all, I feel my son's confusion and fear and loss. Running through it all is another feeling.
Deep relief. "He'll never bother me again," he thinks. I know who he's talking about. You got lucky son, I think to myself. I was a loving father but back before I met your mother, bad things happened when I was around. If they hadn't pulled you off him right then and there, I know we'd have killed him.
I'd died a grown man with a grown man's restraint, gaining control had caught me by surprise.
I wouldn't be so sloppy next time, if there was a next time.
Just like in life, I didn't know how long I had, stuck riding my son like a voodoo god.
But only in anger and fear.
My wife gave him something to help him sleep. I didn't sleep. When he shut his eyes, after about fifteen minutes, I felt the control return.
I sat up.
I tried opening his eyes and felt control slipping away.
I closed them.
Growing boy. Needed his rest. Lost his father.
"I'm here son, we're going to be alright," I whisper. My son's voice.
"Dad?" I've lost control now. I can't answer him.
He drifts back down into dreamless sleep.
I remain awake. My son was always the kindest of us. Which is good and right but I'm sure the cops would be round to talk to him tomorrow. He'd say nothing without his lawyer present.
In the dark, dialling by feel. I make a call I haven't made in nearly two decades.
"Zeke's." the voice hasn't changed.
"Charlie, tell Zeke Flannery O'Connor called for Jimmy, he'll know what I mean."
"Hey! Who is this? How'd you get this number?"
I hang up.
The phone rings in my hand.
"Flannery?" It's Zeke.
"Hi Zeke, it's not Flannery, it's his son Sean. Flannery is dead," I lie. or do I? I don't know anymore.
"Listen kid-"
"My Dad is dead and I've got trouble, I can pay."
The line is silent.
"Kid, you sure you can pay for Jimmy?"
"You don't want to know what happened?"
"Kid, you're paying for Jimmy, by the time you hang up, we'll know everything."
I hang up. Eyes shut tight.
my son is going to have to do some sleep-digging under the rosebushes but I think that's only fair.
Tomorrow night is soon enough. I let him sleep.
He won't have any explaining to do, my old lawyer will fix it. Then I'll have a week to mail him the gold.
I realize I can't risk waiting.
I get up again.
Morning finds my son exhausted, a hole in the garden a package in the mail and my poor worried wife on the phone to the school excusing him indefinitely. Sorry honey, I had to do it, no telling how long I'll be around.
My son will skip an assault charge. He won't be expelled either. Nor will that little shit bother him again.
Or anybody.
Not while I'm still around.
THE END
Beyond infinity: Art / Twenty to One / Quire to Ream / Words and Images
8 is the longest letterform
Arranged and Rearranged
Monday, January 04, 2016
/u/ SamuraiNoKokoro [WP]Upon traveling five years into the future in a successful experiment you find that America is under fascist control. You contact an underground resistance group for information.
My arm is sore where she grabbed me. Pulled me into the building. This used to be a nice neighbourhood.
"Chester, you fucker," she hissed and pressed a pipe of cold metal against the small of my back.
"Francine," I try to sound warm and relaxed. I sound like shit.
"I should have gone first," she says and lets go. She turns away and walks deeper into the darkness of what used to be FabLab, our start-up incubator.
"We didn't know it would work," I say. It's easier to talk when I'm not looking at her. They say living under fascism adds ten years.
They don't really, that kind of talk can get you shot. Learned that quick. People five years in the future are paranoid for serious.
"Your trip broke the eastern grid," she says. Her voice is rough.
"I guessed that, what about the rest of it?" I wave my hand around the burnt-out shell of our lab.
I massage my sore arm while waiting for an answer. She doesn't answer me. When she speaks, it's on another tack. Words that come out off kilter, like she's saying out loud something she's said in her mind a thousand and one times before.
"It was slow, first the spying, then the censorship, then the laws, but slow'" then her voice breaks. "Shit Chester, they had the cool kids so distracted with video games, online shopping sales and prescription drugs that when the purges started south of the border, nobody gave a fuck so long as they could play another round of COD."
"You used to love Call of Duty," I say.
"Yeah? well now I'm playing it for real. Every. Fucking. Day."
"Francine, Why did you bring me here?" I had gone looking for her the moment I got here but turns out when you're new in town and looking for an old friend and that friend happens to be a leader in the fascist resistance it isn't as simple as knocking on doors and ringing old numbers.
Out of the gloom, things separate from the darkness, become human-sized. Patches of darkness upon darkness. Her people.
"You know why," she says.
"You really think I can go back and fix all this?" I say, backing away. "You know that's not how it works."
"Not back," she says.
Then I understand. My eyes wide.
It takes time and time is not our friend, not until we get it working. which was hard enough when the parts could be ordered in. Half are now scheduled and the other half are simply illegal. I write 'What do we want! A time machine! When do we want it? Doesn't matter!' on the lid of my laptop. Which is bullshit, it does matter. Every month brings more atrocities, deportations and dissappearances. My days blur into my nights, my months into my seasons.
Then one day, I'm standing on the spot where the Generalissima of the Universal States, The Supreme Colophon of America, Her Excellency in Perpetuity, Our Fearless Leader, will be standing in 48 hours.
Her annual roadside sermon of the Union address. Well televised, heavily guarded, but it's a public thoroughfare, no sense in blocking a major artery when there's nothing to guard. Video will catch us but our evidence will be somewhere they'll never find it.
In time.
The bomb is a new design, it will turn everything between the capitol building and the monument into a pool of slightly radioactive glass. Everything.
I flip the switch. The lights go out. The bomb vanishes. There is a pop of vacuum rushing to fill the hole but nothing spectacular, nothing hollywood. This is science, not science-fiction.
I stare at the shuttered Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and my heart is heavy with regret. I really loved this part of town.
It's eerie to drive away. In a sense we just turned downtown D.C. into Schrodinger's cat. It both exists and does not.
For we do not know the future but tonight, we made history.
"Chester, you fucker," she hissed and pressed a pipe of cold metal against the small of my back.
"Francine," I try to sound warm and relaxed. I sound like shit.
"I should have gone first," she says and lets go. She turns away and walks deeper into the darkness of what used to be FabLab, our start-up incubator.
"We didn't know it would work," I say. It's easier to talk when I'm not looking at her. They say living under fascism adds ten years.
They don't really, that kind of talk can get you shot. Learned that quick. People five years in the future are paranoid for serious.
"Your trip broke the eastern grid," she says. Her voice is rough.
"I guessed that, what about the rest of it?" I wave my hand around the burnt-out shell of our lab.
I massage my sore arm while waiting for an answer. She doesn't answer me. When she speaks, it's on another tack. Words that come out off kilter, like she's saying out loud something she's said in her mind a thousand and one times before.
"It was slow, first the spying, then the censorship, then the laws, but slow'" then her voice breaks. "Shit Chester, they had the cool kids so distracted with video games, online shopping sales and prescription drugs that when the purges started south of the border, nobody gave a fuck so long as they could play another round of COD."
"You used to love Call of Duty," I say.
"Yeah? well now I'm playing it for real. Every. Fucking. Day."
"Francine, Why did you bring me here?" I had gone looking for her the moment I got here but turns out when you're new in town and looking for an old friend and that friend happens to be a leader in the fascist resistance it isn't as simple as knocking on doors and ringing old numbers.
Out of the gloom, things separate from the darkness, become human-sized. Patches of darkness upon darkness. Her people.
"You know why," she says.
"You really think I can go back and fix all this?" I say, backing away. "You know that's not how it works."
"Not back," she says.
Then I understand. My eyes wide.
It takes time and time is not our friend, not until we get it working. which was hard enough when the parts could be ordered in. Half are now scheduled and the other half are simply illegal. I write 'What do we want! A time machine! When do we want it? Doesn't matter!' on the lid of my laptop. Which is bullshit, it does matter. Every month brings more atrocities, deportations and dissappearances. My days blur into my nights, my months into my seasons.
Then one day, I'm standing on the spot where the Generalissima of the Universal States, The Supreme Colophon of America, Her Excellency in Perpetuity, Our Fearless Leader, will be standing in 48 hours.
Her annual roadside sermon of the Union address. Well televised, heavily guarded, but it's a public thoroughfare, no sense in blocking a major artery when there's nothing to guard. Video will catch us but our evidence will be somewhere they'll never find it.
In time.
The bomb is a new design, it will turn everything between the capitol building and the monument into a pool of slightly radioactive glass. Everything.
I flip the switch. The lights go out. The bomb vanishes. There is a pop of vacuum rushing to fill the hole but nothing spectacular, nothing hollywood. This is science, not science-fiction.
I stare at the shuttered Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and my heart is heavy with regret. I really loved this part of town.
It's eerie to drive away. In a sense we just turned downtown D.C. into Schrodinger's cat. It both exists and does not.
For we do not know the future but tonight, we made history.
Saturday, January 02, 2016
/u/SpecialAgentCoulter [IP] The tale of four soldiers who single handedly saved New York
"Demons in New York," he says.
I give him the once-over spit-shine lookee-see-here-mister.
"Well, just the one," he says.
"I take it this, creature, ate the rest of your lance, Corporal Kiljoy?"
He says it again, only slower. Like I'm a tour junky.
"Demons. In New York," he says.
"I'm sending you rearwise, Corporal,"
"I''m fit to fight Sargeant," he says.
I shrug and point my thumb over my shoulder. He trots back behind our lines. good soldier, follows lawful order. Make note of his barcode, stand him a round when this is over.
I lower my smartscope and wipe the sweat from the strap of plastic at my forehead. My orders say this is your typical summer riot in New York.
Ever since they shot that boy and his mother back in '15 the hot heads and hop heads have been marching up and around Washington square and each year, somebody gets rough. Well this year, they got a little too rough I guess and the governor called out the guards, but they mucked it up, I don't know how, I wasn't there.
I got the call just as I'd knocked off my moonlighting gig taking newbies, FNG's and tour junkies past the knees of liberty over on Staten, right where the beam weapons of the Mormons had sliced her into the harbour in their bid for supremacy.
Fucking Mormons, nobody saw 'em coming.
My musing gets interrupted by a sudden billow of smoke up the avenue. My nose burns from a rotten egg stench.
"Gas!" I call out then clip my mask to my helmet and purge.
Out of the smoke come smoldering red eyes. One horn is damaged.
"Huh," I hear myself say as I take a knee and fire a short burst before taking a new position further back.
"Demons in New York." I say into the throat mike. My voice sounds flat even to me.
Keeping calm, communicating calm, has suddenly become my second highest priority.
My number one is barrelling down on my position.
I run. I take a sick comfort in noticing I am alone. The rest have bugged out ahead of me.
Then something I don't see every day comes out of the smoke which by now has totally engulfed the street.
Corporal Kiljoy, masked up, strides towards me with a Carl Gustav anti-tank bazooka on his shoulder and level with the lumbering nightmare at my back. There is a crude white cross painted across his uniform in what looks like house paint.
The ground trembles.
Kiljoy drops to one knee and takes aim. He's shouting something but the roaring behind me drowns him out.
I hug asphalt.
I hate guessing games but this time I guess right.
Behind Kiljoy, the fireball silhouettes him in black and orange.
Behind me, the HE round explodes dead centre of mass.
I'm sprayed with demonic blubber.
Corporal Kiljoy helps me up. I make a show of wiping myself off. The Corporal is staring behind me.
"Didn't think it would work," he says.
"Which part?" I ask.
"The paint. Tried Carl before, it ate my lance."
"The paint is what did it?"
"Demons can't abide holy weapons weilded by men of faith."
"Corporal, are you saying you blessed your bazooka? I ask. He nods.
"Any action at the right time is better than the best action when it's too late," he says. Chapter and verse from our own rules and regs.
"G--" I catch myself "--hmm, Good gosh durn it." I say.
"Come on Sarge," he says, "Let's go find another one."
"Certainly," I say. "Just show me where you got the paint first.
THE END.
/u/GeffoRN [WP] Everyone in the world switches bodies with their polar opposites. For example, a macho body builder could end up in the body of a petite cheerleader.
What hurts?
Dig your fingernails into the cliff. Tearing away is better than dying. Pain so sharp you gasp. It's bright and pitched so high it scarcely feels like pain. It becomes a beam of cold light slicing up your arms, up your back, behind your eyeballs.
A moment and a lifetime ago, you were rested and serene, a Buddha of gentle smiles, your face aglow in the blue light of your screens. Your bones swimming in a sea of your flesh. Warm, dry, utterly unafraid.
A moment and a lifetime ago, on your screens, So many shows, so many screens, so little time.
No time now. Suspended, clawing with manic strength, the snap of the rope tight against your waist and thighs breaks your plunge and you whip against the cliff once, twice, you hang, your death interrupted.
Wait. Thighs? Your toes are bleeding in your tight shoes where they struck the cliff, six of your fingernails are dangling, but thighs?
You haven't seen your thighs in years.
You look down, the sweep of trees and the river beyond is heartbreaking.
You look up, recognizing climbing rope and pitons.
Someone is screaming below you. Their hand is hammered into the climbing winch. What happened to you must have happened to them too. Belaying device? Is that what they're called? The mind takes strange tangents when you're certain you're about to die and somehow, miraculously, you don't.
The pain mingles with the sunlight, your arms hang limp at your sides, dripping. Your fine strong arms.
The laughter from your dusty throat shakes your chest.
Your eyes fill with tears.
Joy.
Pain.
Shame.
Some part of you knows this was a swap. Somewhere far away, behind screens of ancient entertainments, someone utterly undeserving must right now be warm.
Dry.
Comfortable.
Screaming.
Dig your fingernails into the cliff. Tearing away is better than dying. Pain so sharp you gasp. It's bright and pitched so high it scarcely feels like pain. It becomes a beam of cold light slicing up your arms, up your back, behind your eyeballs.
A moment and a lifetime ago, you were rested and serene, a Buddha of gentle smiles, your face aglow in the blue light of your screens. Your bones swimming in a sea of your flesh. Warm, dry, utterly unafraid.
A moment and a lifetime ago, on your screens, So many shows, so many screens, so little time.
No time now. Suspended, clawing with manic strength, the snap of the rope tight against your waist and thighs breaks your plunge and you whip against the cliff once, twice, you hang, your death interrupted.
Wait. Thighs? Your toes are bleeding in your tight shoes where they struck the cliff, six of your fingernails are dangling, but thighs?
You haven't seen your thighs in years.
You look down, the sweep of trees and the river beyond is heartbreaking.
You look up, recognizing climbing rope and pitons.
Someone is screaming below you. Their hand is hammered into the climbing winch. What happened to you must have happened to them too. Belaying device? Is that what they're called? The mind takes strange tangents when you're certain you're about to die and somehow, miraculously, you don't.
The pain mingles with the sunlight, your arms hang limp at your sides, dripping. Your fine strong arms.
The laughter from your dusty throat shakes your chest.
Your eyes fill with tears.
Joy.
Pain.
Shame.
Some part of you knows this was a swap. Somewhere far away, behind screens of ancient entertainments, someone utterly undeserving must right now be warm.
Dry.
Comfortable.
Screaming.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Zeus decides to host a Family Game Night.
[WP] In an attempt to ease tensions, Zeus decides to host a Family Game Night.WRITING PROMPT
submitted by Drunk_Bard
Edit: Thank you to /u/Romulus919 and /u/pm-me-your-ipseity for the encouragement and /u/ZoZferatu for the excellent feedback and /u/alwaysafairycat and /u/DandyStevie for helping with the solution. Here goes…
EXT. MOUNT OLYMPUS. DAY.
In the middle of a SEMI CIRCLE OF ORNAMENTAL PILLARS, ZEUS and HERA are seated at a BEAT UP OLD CARD TABLE and they have a BOX OF SCRABBLE THAT HAS SEEN BETTER DAYS open in front of them. HERA is reading the INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAY and ZEUS is fiddling with the WOODEN TILES. On the table are FOUR PLACE CARDS and written upon them are the names ZEUS, HERA, APHRODITE, HERMES.
ZEUS
So you’re supposed to make words?
HERA
That’s what it says here.
ZEUS
What about lightning? Can we make words with lightning?
The sky DARKENS.
HERA
It’s against the rules.
ZEUS
I am the rules!
LIGHTNING flashes across the sky.
HERA
Stop it dear, this is supposed to be a nice family evening, like we planned, m’kay?
ZEUS [mutters]
Wouldabeengoodtoseethemallinoneplace…
HERA
What was that dear? Your brother’s business is underwater and your sister is trying to get your niece out of a bad marriage. Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Hephaestus had already made plans, you can’t expect your grown children to just drop everything and come have a visit on a whim can you?
ZEUS
What about Dionysus? Is it too much to lift your head and yell now and then?
HERA
Just be glad Aphrodite and Hermes could make it.
ZEUS
Athena gives me a headache anyway, always nattering about her rights. What about duty? Tradition? You never hear about that now, do you?
HERA [under her breath]
Shut up you old blowhard, she’s not my kid, and whose fault is that Zeus?
ZEUS
What was that?
HERA
Settle down dear, I think I hear the children.
APHRODITE AND HERMES greet HERA. ZEUS stands up and hugs his children warmly.
The sky LIGHTENS.
HERMES
Hey, dad, got a message for you, Dionysus says he’s sorry he can’t make it but, well, he’s drunk you see, it’s his job but it’s wearing him down, he’s gone off for a bit of a holiday to sit in a cave with a bunch of odd fellows who don’t believe in him. Says it clears his sinuses.
APHRODITE (gives ZEUS a peck on the cheek)
Hi, Dad
ZEUS (hugs APHRODITE and returns the peck on the cheek)
That boy is spending too much time down there, today he’s got sinuses, what next? A liver? Tell him he better come visit soon or I’ll string him up beside that other fraternizer, Prometheus.
HERMES
Dad! You wouldn’t!
ZEUS
I would but I won’t! He doesn’t have to know that though does he?
HERMES
Ah Dad, still quick!
ZEUS
Not as quick as you son!
ZEUS and HERMES engage in rough housing, hair tousling and mock wrestling.
HERA
How are you dear?
APHRODITE
Still single, as usual. But you know what happens to fraternizers.
HERA
Your Dad sure does.
APHRODITE
Mother!
HERA (affectionately bats at APHRODITE)
Shut up you're not my kid. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT ZEUS? I know I know, have a seat and let’s start without THEM, I don’t think your dad is suited for this sort of game, no dice in it.
APHRODITE
I thought Dad stopped gambling
HERA
He did, oh done with all of that. Still takes that other board out now and then, picks up the pieces, rolls the dice in his hands, doesn’t throw them, I’d know. Not to worry dear.
APHRODITE
That’s a relief, after the last time—
HERA
Shh! Here they come.
ZEUS
Talking about us again?
HERA (huffs)
‘Course not, girlie things, right dear?
APHRODITE (demurely)
Yes Hera.
ZEUS
Call her mom. I see you’ve set up the board.
HERA
I told her not to, don’t give me that look! Now, as the youngest, Aphrodite will go first and then we’ll go around, take 7 tiles from the bag dear.
APHRODITE takes SEVEN TILES from the BAG OF TILES and passes the bag to HERA who then passes the bag to HERMES who reaches in and pauses, his hand in the bag.
HERMES
Ah, we have a problem. I know what’s on the tiles. Not only that, I know the order they will be drawn and the words everyone will play in this game. They’re a kind of message you see?
APHRODITE (angrily)
I don’t believe this.
ZEUS
I’ll draw your tiles.
HERMES
Won’t work dad, still a message, sorry. We can still play, mom’s going to win.
ZEUS
Why spoil the surprise?
APHRODITE
You always have to be a snitch, don’t you? Like when we were kids and you’d tell me what my birthday presents were going to be. 100 years in advance! Ooh, I should have smacked you the first time!
HERA
Manners, dear!
APHRODITE
Oh yeah, take his side, it’s not enough he’s his favourite!
ZEUS
Settle down daughter!
APHRODITE
You’ve always hated me right from the start! Do I remind you of her so much!
ZEUS
Leave Dione out of this!
HERA
I will not have that womans name spoken in this house!
The sky DARKENS
HERMES
Sorry sis, I thought that was all behind us.
APHRODITE (throws a tiny furled scroll at HERMES which unfurls when it strikes him in the chest)
With this?
HERMES (picks up the tiny unfurled scroll)
This is…
APHRODITE (TEARS begin to roll down her cheeks)
The list you gave me of my boyfriends! All of them! When I was only 75 years old! I was just a young deity, didn’t know how I wanted to do what I had to do, and you had to give away the ending. All of them!
HERMES
Hey! I didn’t write their letters! The poems were all their own doing! I didn’t interfere at all!
APHRODITE
Why include all the breakup letters too then? Why?
HERA picks up the other end of the scroll and starts reading, she unfurls more and more, it seems endless. ZEUS is sitting with a face like a stone. HERA stands up and walks to APHRODITE who is crying inconsolably in her chair, ashamed to be seen. HERA hugs her step daughter and APHRODITE struggles to free herself but HERA does not let go. APHRODITE relents and accepts her stepmother’s sincere embrace. HERA makes eye contact with ZEUS and indicates HERMES sitting there meekly and then the distant foggy peak of Mount Olympus. ZEUS stands up and tilts his head at HERMES who stands up quietly and is led away by ZEUS.
APHRODITE (between sobs)
I’m sorry [sob] those mean things I said about you weren’t true [sob] he just makes me so mad.
HERA
I know dear.
APHRODITE (rocking gently in Hera’s arms)
I want my mom.
FADE TO BLACK.
submitted by Drunk_Bard
Edit: Thank you to /u/Romulus919 and /u/pm-me-your-ipseity for the encouragement and /u/ZoZferatu for the excellent feedback and /u/alwaysafairycat and /u/DandyStevie for helping with the solution. Here goes…
EXT. MOUNT OLYMPUS. DAY.
In the middle of a SEMI CIRCLE OF ORNAMENTAL PILLARS, ZEUS and HERA are seated at a BEAT UP OLD CARD TABLE and they have a BOX OF SCRABBLE THAT HAS SEEN BETTER DAYS open in front of them. HERA is reading the INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAY and ZEUS is fiddling with the WOODEN TILES. On the table are FOUR PLACE CARDS and written upon them are the names ZEUS, HERA, APHRODITE, HERMES.
ZEUS
So you’re supposed to make words?
HERA
That’s what it says here.
ZEUS
What about lightning? Can we make words with lightning?
The sky DARKENS.
HERA
It’s against the rules.
ZEUS
I am the rules!
LIGHTNING flashes across the sky.
HERA
Stop it dear, this is supposed to be a nice family evening, like we planned, m’kay?
ZEUS [mutters]
Wouldabeengoodtoseethemallinoneplace…
HERA
What was that dear? Your brother’s business is underwater and your sister is trying to get your niece out of a bad marriage. Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Hephaestus had already made plans, you can’t expect your grown children to just drop everything and come have a visit on a whim can you?
ZEUS
What about Dionysus? Is it too much to lift your head and yell now and then?
HERA
Just be glad Aphrodite and Hermes could make it.
ZEUS
Athena gives me a headache anyway, always nattering about her rights. What about duty? Tradition? You never hear about that now, do you?
HERA [under her breath]
Shut up you old blowhard, she’s not my kid, and whose fault is that Zeus?
ZEUS
What was that?
HERA
Settle down dear, I think I hear the children.
APHRODITE AND HERMES greet HERA. ZEUS stands up and hugs his children warmly.
The sky LIGHTENS.
HERMES
Hey, dad, got a message for you, Dionysus says he’s sorry he can’t make it but, well, he’s drunk you see, it’s his job but it’s wearing him down, he’s gone off for a bit of a holiday to sit in a cave with a bunch of odd fellows who don’t believe in him. Says it clears his sinuses.
APHRODITE (gives ZEUS a peck on the cheek)
Hi, Dad
ZEUS (hugs APHRODITE and returns the peck on the cheek)
That boy is spending too much time down there, today he’s got sinuses, what next? A liver? Tell him he better come visit soon or I’ll string him up beside that other fraternizer, Prometheus.
HERMES
Dad! You wouldn’t!
ZEUS
I would but I won’t! He doesn’t have to know that though does he?
HERMES
Ah Dad, still quick!
ZEUS
Not as quick as you son!
ZEUS and HERMES engage in rough housing, hair tousling and mock wrestling.
HERA
How are you dear?
APHRODITE
Still single, as usual. But you know what happens to fraternizers.
HERA
Your Dad sure does.
APHRODITE
Mother!
HERA (affectionately bats at APHRODITE)
Shut up you're not my kid. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT ZEUS? I know I know, have a seat and let’s start without THEM, I don’t think your dad is suited for this sort of game, no dice in it.
APHRODITE
I thought Dad stopped gambling
HERA
He did, oh done with all of that. Still takes that other board out now and then, picks up the pieces, rolls the dice in his hands, doesn’t throw them, I’d know. Not to worry dear.
APHRODITE
That’s a relief, after the last time—
HERA
Shh! Here they come.
ZEUS
Talking about us again?
HERA (huffs)
‘Course not, girlie things, right dear?
APHRODITE (demurely)
Yes Hera.
ZEUS
Call her mom. I see you’ve set up the board.
HERA
I told her not to, don’t give me that look! Now, as the youngest, Aphrodite will go first and then we’ll go around, take 7 tiles from the bag dear.
APHRODITE takes SEVEN TILES from the BAG OF TILES and passes the bag to HERA who then passes the bag to HERMES who reaches in and pauses, his hand in the bag.
HERMES
Ah, we have a problem. I know what’s on the tiles. Not only that, I know the order they will be drawn and the words everyone will play in this game. They’re a kind of message you see?
APHRODITE (angrily)
I don’t believe this.
ZEUS
I’ll draw your tiles.
HERMES
Won’t work dad, still a message, sorry. We can still play, mom’s going to win.
ZEUS
Why spoil the surprise?
APHRODITE
You always have to be a snitch, don’t you? Like when we were kids and you’d tell me what my birthday presents were going to be. 100 years in advance! Ooh, I should have smacked you the first time!
HERA
Manners, dear!
APHRODITE
Oh yeah, take his side, it’s not enough he’s his favourite!
ZEUS
Settle down daughter!
APHRODITE
You’ve always hated me right from the start! Do I remind you of her so much!
ZEUS
Leave Dione out of this!
HERA
I will not have that womans name spoken in this house!
The sky DARKENS
HERMES
Sorry sis, I thought that was all behind us.
APHRODITE (throws a tiny furled scroll at HERMES which unfurls when it strikes him in the chest)
With this?
HERMES (picks up the tiny unfurled scroll)
This is…
APHRODITE (TEARS begin to roll down her cheeks)
The list you gave me of my boyfriends! All of them! When I was only 75 years old! I was just a young deity, didn’t know how I wanted to do what I had to do, and you had to give away the ending. All of them!
HERMES
Hey! I didn’t write their letters! The poems were all their own doing! I didn’t interfere at all!
APHRODITE
Why include all the breakup letters too then? Why?
HERA picks up the other end of the scroll and starts reading, she unfurls more and more, it seems endless. ZEUS is sitting with a face like a stone. HERA stands up and walks to APHRODITE who is crying inconsolably in her chair, ashamed to be seen. HERA hugs her step daughter and APHRODITE struggles to free herself but HERA does not let go. APHRODITE relents and accepts her stepmother’s sincere embrace. HERA makes eye contact with ZEUS and indicates HERMES sitting there meekly and then the distant foggy peak of Mount Olympus. ZEUS stands up and tilts his head at HERMES who stands up quietly and is led away by ZEUS.
APHRODITE (between sobs)
I’m sorry [sob] those mean things I said about you weren’t true [sob] he just makes me so mad.
HERA
I know dear.
APHRODITE (rocking gently in Hera’s arms)
I want my mom.
FADE TO BLACK.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Some people are plants.
When I found a place in the world I was happy. I stopped searching and took root. I planted myself.
Here I stand.
Others cannot resist the allure of distant pastures.
Harvey Keitel's character in "Up in Smoke" said that if you stay in one place long enough, the whole world passes by.
In a recent article, someone wrote that the future of media channels is one were everyone is the center of their own channel.
A recent news article reported that the "top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors."
A commenter noted that the barrier to entry for calling yourself a writer has fallen considerably since the pencil was invented.
The slush pile grows, the market is oversaturated, publications resort to dirty tricks to game the system.
None of this bothers me in the slightest.
Rabbi Tarphon was right, we are not free to see the work complete, nor are we free to desist from it.
Nevertheless, it is something we want done.
We have a mission.
I don't post here much because I was denied publication because I had posted my story here.
I'm still writing. I am, if anything, relentless, patient, unstoppable.
It's not me that presses on. I am pressed on. Keep writing and you'll know what I mean someday if you don't already.
Here I stand.
Others cannot resist the allure of distant pastures.
Harvey Keitel's character in "Up in Smoke" said that if you stay in one place long enough, the whole world passes by.
In a recent article, someone wrote that the future of media channels is one were everyone is the center of their own channel.
A recent news article reported that the "top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors."
A commenter noted that the barrier to entry for calling yourself a writer has fallen considerably since the pencil was invented.
The slush pile grows, the market is oversaturated, publications resort to dirty tricks to game the system.
None of this bothers me in the slightest.
Rabbi Tarphon was right, we are not free to see the work complete, nor are we free to desist from it.
Nevertheless, it is something we want done.
We have a mission.
I don't post here much because I was denied publication because I had posted my story here.
I'm still writing. I am, if anything, relentless, patient, unstoppable.
It's not me that presses on. I am pressed on. Keep writing and you'll know what I mean someday if you don't already.
Friday, March 28, 2014
HEADPHONES: A PHENOMENOLGY
It's a familiar scene: crowded onto public transportation, headphone-wearing young people are jostled aside by others who simply want to get on or off the bus/tram/morning circus. Young people also crowd the entrances, they do not move back, they are not the problem, however, why they do what they do and what it means, that is the problem.
my claim is this: Young people seek validation of their existence, as do we all? What is often lacking is a good outlet, a responsible channel,a functional means of self-validation, I believe and argue that what young people cannot have appropriately, they will appropriate inappropriately or dysfunctionally. They are, if nothing else, us, only without our means, they remain us. Do they? headphones allow youth to close off command channels to themselves they could never close off before the portable stereo Walkman. Monophonic portable radios did not spark the revolution in personal audio consumption, that had to wait for the Sony Walkman.
How liberating it must have been at first, music was free for the first time to follow us through our daily lives, it was unleashed from the basements of our personal sound dungeons and let loose on the city streets, the soundtrack of our lives. Movies set the pace and the tone, everyone had to have their theme music and backup band. If you wanted to feel a feeling, you only had to pop in a cassette.
I want to enumerate the phenomenology of headphones:
When you wear a headphone, by sight, your signals is that: 1. you will not be disturbed. 2. You may be disturbed. 3. You are closed to interaction with those people in your immediate environment. 4. Those in your inner circle and far removed from you physically can break through thanks to the marriage of portable mobile telephony and personal digital audio technology. Ah-hah says the young person, I listen to music perhaps because it's really important to me. while that is almost certainly true. We form our characters by a variety of processes, not least of which is our choice of audio consumption, it that the only reason? Does it fully explain why you listen on the tram while reading something else? Only 1 in 40 people is a true multi-tasker, What researchers call 'super-taskers' whose performance in several tasks at once, through rapid cycling is no worse than in any one singular task. Notice, the act of asking whether your beloved audio consumption isn't just wallpaper at least of the time, produces cognitive dissonance, where your words emanating from your left hemisphere language centre, say one thing but your body language emanating from many parts of your brain and spatially informed by (citation needed) your right hemisphere say something else.
It is useful to presuppose or notice or imagine that when you are interacting with another, there are two of you, at least, interacting with at least two of them. Back to headphones.
the benefits of being able to close off, by choice, your hearing means you need not attend to what others say on the tram.
Finally, status is conferred in public by who we ignore. Headphones confer maximum localised status that is at once instantaneous, totally personal and totally valueless in the wider scheme of society.
my claim is this: Young people seek validation of their existence, as do we all? What is often lacking is a good outlet, a responsible channel,a functional means of self-validation, I believe and argue that what young people cannot have appropriately, they will appropriate inappropriately or dysfunctionally. They are, if nothing else, us, only without our means, they remain us. Do they? headphones allow youth to close off command channels to themselves they could never close off before the portable stereo Walkman. Monophonic portable radios did not spark the revolution in personal audio consumption, that had to wait for the Sony Walkman.
How liberating it must have been at first, music was free for the first time to follow us through our daily lives, it was unleashed from the basements of our personal sound dungeons and let loose on the city streets, the soundtrack of our lives. Movies set the pace and the tone, everyone had to have their theme music and backup band. If you wanted to feel a feeling, you only had to pop in a cassette.
I want to enumerate the phenomenology of headphones:
When you wear a headphone, by sight, your signals is that: 1. you will not be disturbed. 2. You may be disturbed. 3. You are closed to interaction with those people in your immediate environment. 4. Those in your inner circle and far removed from you physically can break through thanks to the marriage of portable mobile telephony and personal digital audio technology. Ah-hah says the young person, I listen to music perhaps because it's really important to me. while that is almost certainly true. We form our characters by a variety of processes, not least of which is our choice of audio consumption, it that the only reason? Does it fully explain why you listen on the tram while reading something else? Only 1 in 40 people is a true multi-tasker, What researchers call 'super-taskers' whose performance in several tasks at once, through rapid cycling is no worse than in any one singular task. Notice, the act of asking whether your beloved audio consumption isn't just wallpaper at least of the time, produces cognitive dissonance, where your words emanating from your left hemisphere language centre, say one thing but your body language emanating from many parts of your brain and spatially informed by (citation needed) your right hemisphere say something else.
It is useful to presuppose or notice or imagine that when you are interacting with another, there are two of you, at least, interacting with at least two of them. Back to headphones.
the benefits of being able to close off, by choice, your hearing means you need not attend to what others say on the tram.
- inevitably, your existence will be dysfunctionally validated because someone will have to acknowledge your existence by bumping you or tapping or shoulder or speaking rather loudly. In other words, the normal command channels having been mitigated or even eliminated, the physical command channels remain and in this touch averse society, Where young people not young enough to be cute or old enough to be useful workers sense on some intuitive level that the general regard for them is somewhere approaching useless for the majority of those who are not immediate family.
- So who's crazy now? Used to be that if someone was talking to themselves, you crossed the street because they were crazy, now, with bluetooth, hands free mobile telephony, many people exhibit lunatic behaviour that is now considered normal. how strange to hear someone on a tram wearing headphones and talking to someone who is not there via integrated microphones. How much stranger still that no one comments on the strangeness, sometimes there are dirty looks.
Finally, status is conferred in public by who we ignore. Headphones confer maximum localised status that is at once instantaneous, totally personal and totally valueless in the wider scheme of society.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Helmeted in the face
A cavalcade of squeeze
Pushing for pressure's sake
The others
Too precious with themselves
To ever be unleashed
They overthink and underact
Unfettered, rise!
The day is done when we say so
Pushing for pressure's sake
The others
Too precious with themselves
To ever be unleashed
They overthink and underact
Unfettered, rise!
The day is done when we say so
Sunday, October 13, 2013
The P word is a 4 letter word
Macrobial stalks
The wet iguanaroidLoves to rip it up
protean standards
it dines alone
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
The great vacuum inside Dingleberry Axleworthy's head
Dingleberry was a little man. he would not hesitate to kick puppies if he caught them unattended. He should have kicked their owners, who let the puppies shit all over the place. That bitch with her filthy cigarette and ugly pets. Dingleberry wished he could flush them all down a giant toilet. After he'd shit on them of course. Her screams would echo off the porcelain as she vanished into the plumbing. Dingleberry felt the cockles of his heart flutter in fantasy-vengence.
Charlene was a chain-smoking, poodle walking bitch and her poodles shit over every horizontal surface but the plateau of her shovel faced head.
"Hey, Charlene,"
"Hi!"
"Hey, Charlene,"
"Hi!"
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