The Probability of a Trojan Hippo.

The following is my submission to [Fiction] Friday Challenge #218 at Write Anything.

Inspired by the image they provide, it's a fun exercise purely in creative flow. Oh dear - no editing allowed. :)

Somebody chopped it up. Right in front of my eyes. I reach, but my knock on wood just rings in and out of my ears. 

Someone carved up time and space, and the probability of them returning to how things were before. Quite neatly, but annoying, like a brash, not-very-puzzling pattern, as opposed to slashed, like jumbos cutting through a cloud over a delayed terminal. Life interrupted. Surely not the Butcher of Time, rather the Carpenter of Dimensions. Yes, this is their handi-work. A deviation from their plan, from their fail-safe design. Perhaps the linear lines seem dull after some time, even though their practicality is what held everything up, like cups and hiccups, and hippos under water gelled to the crust of a planet. Now it could be a pie, for all I know. Tiny little hippo snouts snorting chunky sweet custardy pleghm, the kind they just wake up one morning and have. Or is it one giant hippo with a foot snug in a custard tart? On, off. On, off. We see the yellow smudge of every fourth step, but there's no longer any evidence of the beats in-between.

I find myself grinding out dried up old custard from the grooves, so I can slot myself in them, instead. As soon as I get into the flow of one grain, I find myself going against the grain in the next. After all that effort. Now I am derailed, I need to adjust, like a clock quite happily 'being' and realising that yet another tick is needed, then for some unknown reason, a tock. Up down, Up down, tugged side-to-side, the tonal quality of happy, sad, happy, sad. Sixty mood swings a minute. 3600 bipolar blips an hour. A lifetime of bliss and pain and laughter and terror compressed, gone in sixty seconds before a new life begins. It must, it will. Time is manic, I suddenly remember. I much prefer the quiet still of the chaos I have found myself in. Chaos is so close to choice. Thankyou, I choose to sit this one out and watch. And pat this hippo, as I smile with self-content. Is that contents? Contents of self? Wait - who exactly am I?

To get a better look at myself, I take off my tool pouch and brush the sawdust off my hands and clothes.

Saturday night musings... "The Future You".

Imagine there is such thing as reincarnation. Imagine that whatever the limit is of your human consciousness now, is the level of consciousness that will define you in your next life. Those issues that remain undealt with, will be burdened onto the future child. Any dormant abilities, unfulfilled potential and repressed self-awareness will be theirs. You would have to live it all again, as them. Imagine you are just as responsible for your future reincarnated self, as you are for any child you may give life to in this time.
Do you feel that you are doing your best to prepare them for greater opportunities in life? Can you say you've become everything you can be to empower them to become the best they could be?

Flash Fiction beta readers needed [only 500 words]. :)

Hi all, I totally understand if you're busy, but if anyone could read my flash fiction story and give me feedback that would be great! Feel free to beat me with sticks via the comment box if you see anything glaring. But please - only paddle-pop sticks - they're tiny and constructive. :/
I'd especially like to hear if the story and themes make sense considering the 500 word limit. I've removed the last line, as I said I might do, and have edited the piece overall.
Thaaanks! I will be submitting this to the 500 word challenge over at Waxings: http://waxings.wordpress.com/500-word-challenge/breath/

*Note: I've done some editing since, and this version is now longer than 500 words.

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Moving On

My lungs inflated right before my knees, chest and mouth hit the pavement. My beautiful ice-blue bicycle mimicked my fall like an adoring pet, only with the instinct to fall on the grassy nature strip. Teeth panging and mouth laced with fine gravel, I rushed my fingers up to my face. The wet on my lips was as red as my mother’s good lipstick - the shade she wears on dates, or to the Parents' Association meetings, where [my aunt Lilly says] they all throw verbal punches at mum. I pressed my lips together to stop it dripping.

Mr Allemand's cream picket fence blocked out the morning sun while I sat and recovered from wheezing. The milk was still on his porch from yesterday, turning into brilliant yellow bottles of cheese in the sun. Just not the kind you can eat, as mum always says. We have cheese of both kinds in our fridge. Mum and I got our refrigerator much later than other families did. I thought fridges kept food safe forever, and I was quite sick that month. My best friend, Martha, missed me terribly in those days I skipped school. How would we cope now?

Counting my grazes, I picked the best, imagining which one mum would say. My left knee - wait - no. Yes, definitely my left. I hauled my bike up theatrically, pretending it was a motorcycle while I grimaced sideways at Eddie Pierce’s house, but he wasn’t in his driveway yet, washing his Harley. I would see him on the way back. Suddenly my chest ached more than my teeth at the thought of returning home.

Martha’s driveway was several houses ahead, in view between the Robinia trees lining her lovely street. From this distance, I could believe her parents were having a garage sale of furniture on their lawn, and if I blurred my eyes - a birthday party for Martha. But the giant truck parked on the street would need to vanish, or turn into a travelling carnival stage. I dangled my feet off my pedals and let the wheels soundlessly carry me, rolling in front of Martha’s house like I was perched on a moving set in a Broadway musical. The familiar chrome glint of my rims would now be sparkling through the lace curtains of her windows. The front door opened.

Martha took a step forward, then the crutches. I dumped my bike among the boxes and furniture, and ran to my friend. Not knowing what to say anymore, we hugged each other hard and soft and hard again. I cried helplessly, and the tears ran down my chin and glued it to her shoulder. Was this the worst I would feel? What about tomorrow? I thought of mum and how Henry went off to war. I never met him. I remembered all the times she told me she missed him so bad her heart ached in her chest, and how my eyes would daze off. My tears doubled and my chest deflated with a long, quivering breath.

Blogbyte: Inverted Intervention

Inverted intervention: when a single person sits down with a group of friends or family and tells them how dysfunctional they all are.

Two Bulbous Forms, Still Life.

Two bulbous forms with gently drooped lips adorn a table for two, right next to yours in your favourite cafe. The forms are closely matched in design and colour, aesthetically one taller, the other squatter. This still-life is indeed perfectly still. Unshaken by a knock of the table. Unaffected by the sensuous human experience playing out around them - of tantalising tastes squishing onto forks and aromatic scents deliciously marbling with spirited conversations.

This pair is not a set of inoffensively contrasting vases, or kitch salt and pepper shakers. This duo is the Unhappy Couple. They sit perched on their chairs like a pair of dusty china cats who once complemented each other, only they've been bumped some time ago and are forever offset as each stares beyond the shoulder of the other into eternity. They don't speak to each other, they don't look at each other, they glumly sip from a coffee cup or poke at a ricotta spinach filo and side salad, all with as little physical movement as possible.

In another context this quite morose human vignette would go relatively unnoticed. Catching sight of them on a train, for instance. Standing behind them in a juice bar queue. But what if you've raced down to a cafe to meet a friend in dire need of caffeine-charged personal advice and your table is jammed right up against theirs? Or imagine you and your romantic mate have chosen a spot in a quiet, practically empty restaurant - and this universal pair walk straight up and slowly lower themselves into chairs right beside yours like a couple of leering old men sinking into your turkish bath. That's a little close, don't you think?

At this point you are forced to reconsider your purpose for the day. You are no longer a couple of friends or lovers in your own bubble, the sound of your private conversation drowned out by the equal sounds at roughly equal distances of everyone else. Instead, for the next 45 minutes you become Days Of Our Lives to the Unhappy Couple watching and listening as they sullenly munch away at their tv dinners.

If you can sweat it out, I promise you, you will out-sit the Unhappy Couple. As soon as the last mouthful passes their silently bitter and twisted lips and scratches it's way down into their dried up pits of resentment, those dagger-eyes will scour for the bill or cash register. The pair will quietly gather their rather obvious baggage and drag it all to another cafe and sit down at another table beside another couple to watch more re-runs of their old life.

Although it's quite aggravating to feel like you're being listened in on and stared at for an album length by a couple of spooks from an 80s cold war movie, it does put things into perspective. We say we want to find someone to grow old with - but the part we truly desire is to grow together. Aging is just the unavoidable biological part, and the passing of time, in itself, is irrelevant compared to the journey.

Our first Write Night!

Well what a wonderful night we had at the Beehive on thursday, our first Write Night for a small handful [like, a three fingered ET hand] of writers here along the surf coast. http://write-night.blogspot.com/
Our first exercise was to write a poem inspired by Kirstin's eminently saucy teapot called The Queen of Hearts. We had only five minutes to do this, which was quite a challenge for someone like me who a) doesn't write much poetry and b) takes about a year to be happy with a first page. As a result, I received special consideration in the group, and subsequently promised my second-born [first-born was promised already] for an extra two minutes. Check out our write-night blog for the 5 minute poems by Kirstin and Poncho & Petticoat! :)

~

The Queen's Heart, by Melinda

Early morning blue

tints the royal sheets

The royal dress is buttoned while

the soft blue mountain sleeps

Fifty fingers fluff her collar

so stately and devine

yet, the royal blue nipple

will be his again tonight

~

Gold to the ground

Autumn trees
are the scorpios of nature
Rich, red, gutsy and
about to bare all

Throwing gold to the ground
like a king rich in cash
and poor in companions

Throwing gold to the ground
like it grows on trees

Thought of the day...

This one is for a special friend. :)

We are all Archaeologists of our own minds.
Unfortunately, we are far better at burying things.