Write your 52 words from the perspective of an animal
He’s out the door. I’ll drop the ball; he’ll know what to do.
I’ve trained him well.
I love this game. Throw it way down the yard, come on put some effort in.
I’ve taught him to say drop. He throws it again.
Up and down we go.
How good is this?
Written for: http://sachablack.co.uk/2017/10/25/writespiration-138-52-weeks-in-52-words-week-43/#more-5572
Image Credit Heather Sanders
As the first rays of the sun snaked their way between the trees the night creatures scurried away to the protection of their dark spaces.
With their night at an end they snuggled in with loved ones, watched their children settle for the light, discussed plans for the next night and shared the spoils of their labours.
Rest and sleep descended upon them for the next night they would need to be at their best as it was a celebration day. It was the annual Nightly Full Moon Harvest Festival and they all wanted to look their darkest nightly best.
Written for: https://bikurgurl.com/2017/10/25/100-word-wednesday-week-42/
Universally he was acknowledged as a man of merit.
Pillar of the church, benevolent and generous to a fault.
His undoing came as a terrible shock.
Underneath the facade lurked a monster.
The illusion shattered we struggled to put our lives back together.
Written for: https://patriciasplace.me/2017/10/25/in-other-words-illusion/
Each Wednesday is a quiet blogging day for me so I am going to post a photo or two I took today and write a short story/explanation about it.
You are welcome to join in and share your Wednesday shots as well.
It could be something you see when you get out of bed.
Your own bleary-eyed face could be included though I know mine could be troubling to some and be not necessarily a good way to start your day.
The shot can be of anything you saw during the day.
Good or bad doesn’t matter as you’ll see with many of my efforts.
I would like you to tell me the story if any about your photo and its backstory if it has one. Try and restrict your enthusiasm to tell me to 100 words.
Here is my image this week.
On my walk this morning I walked past the old Post Office building. In my younger days, yes I did have them, once, the location of the post office was an indication of where the town was centred. Over time the population has expanded and grown away from this part of town and today a well known charity in these parts has taken over the building.
And in keeping with not always getting my photos right here is another of that caliber. An attempt to shoot the old steps.
Have a good week.
Image: © Richard Davis Photography
They said he was a man of the cloth
Though he looked more dishcloth than tablecloth.
His face like his reading room
Showed the ravages of time
The creases were deep and abyss like.
Along each wall was an array of shrunken heads
Bones and bottles containing bits I was hoping were for display only.
He beckoned me over
Took my hand in his
His touch gentle and soft
He turned my hand one side to another
All the while sucking on a pipe that dangled from his lips.
Then he took some herbs and set them alight
The smoke filled the room
But I never once felt overcome
Rather I relaxed, drew in the aromas
My body responding by letting go
As a huge calm settled over me.
I closed my eyes and he spoke:
“Future good, work good,
Marriage will elude you,
Health an issue but you have inner strength
Use it wisely, listen to your heart
It speaks the truth.”
I opened my eyes and he was gone
My head was clear, I remember everything he said.
On the wall as I exited it said:
Listen to your heart, not everyone else’s.
It was then a chill ran down my spine.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/photo-challenge-186/
Based on the Aerosmith song: Same Old Song and Dance.
The woman stirs as the alarm besides her quietly goes off telling her its 5am. She feels her head has not long hit the pillow and already another day has dawned.
Beside her the husband snores his way into the new day.
She hears the toilet flush and knows its his sister is up early as always, in the toilet, then the shower, then expects breakfast before she hurries off to work in the city.
The sister has left her husband and is staying with them until she ‘sorts something out.’ It’s been two months now and the woman fears the sister is getting too comfortable. She and her husband have discussed the current arrangement but he won’t hear a word about suggesting she move on.
Her feet hit the floor and simultaneously slip into her worn old slippers.
With that her morning routine begins and she knows her role is important to everyone but her.
The children expect to see her there in the kitchen when they come in, one will be rowdy, the other sleepy resenting being up and unhappy about having to get ready for school. But as she says, the bus wont wait and he’ll have to walk if he misses it.
She goes through her morning ritual, boil kettle, set the table, prepare kids lunches and her husbands he has expectations that as he is the bread winner he should be treated as such with his breakfast made, his lunch made the way he likes it and he makes his disapproval known if she deviates from his expectations.
She flicks on the radio, the usual news, disasters here and there, he said she said, then the predictable songs of morning radio, designed to wake you up and put you in the mood to start your day.
It plays away its monotone programs, the music blasts out but one hears it, they are intent on satisfying their own needs and whinge when something is not there.
Once they are all up and at the table her morning dance begins in earnest, from side of the room to the other, a quickstep here and a waltz there, arms manoeuvring the respective plates with eggs and bacon, then cups of tea and coffee and tumblers of juice all measured exactly to each recipients requirements.
Her life is a series of predictable moments, each one crushing her more than the previous one.
As the final child leaves, her husband throws her a cursory kiss more out of habit than with meaning, and she swirls one last time as the radio plays “Three Times a Lady” and she sits for the first time, sheds a tear and understands the saying, each day is ‘the same old song and dance’.
She surveys the morning mess and sighs as she remembers her mother’s saying: ‘same shit different day.’
Written for: https://flipflopseveryday.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/manic-monday-8-challenge-same-old-song-and-dance/
Image: Thanks Dorothy
The monk despite his austere life and dedication to meditation and devotion still possessed a very human trait. He hated stepping on cracks or joins of any kind.
So he found himself in a spot of bother as he went to cross the street for the council had recently upgraded the town’s crossings and he was aware until he arrived at the crossing that there were new joins to contend with.
So with baby step precision he negotiated his way across the street. Such was his concentration as to where he was putting his feet that he failed to see the No 9 bus approaching.
In the next life he found himself in a world full of cracks and joins. In his pocket he found a small slip of paper with the words, “Welcome to the next life. It can be a bugger sometimes.”
Written for: https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/fffaw-challenge-week-of-october-24-2017/
This week’s challenges: constellations (irregular borders) woodcuts [Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts.] Martinis Spies rule of thumb [a broadly accurate guide or principle, based on experience or practice rather than theory.] calculus [ the branch of mathematics that deals with the finding and properties of derivatives and integrals of functions, by methods originally based on the summation of infinitesimal differences. The two main types are differential calculus and integral calculus|| a particular method or system of calculation or reasoning||a concretion of minerals formed within the body, especially in the kidney or gallbladder.] Glowing Puzzle weather vane savory [(of food) belonging to the category that is salty or spicy rather than sweet || having an appetizing taste or smell ||morally wholesome or acceptable.] Legendary
Lenny Puzzle was the twelfth child to Ima and George Puzzle. Ima was legendary within the community for producing so many children to a man known affectionately as Jigsaw.
They lived on Constellation Street, which was a fortuitous place, as there seemed to any one passing by an ever-increasing number of Puzzles to deal with.
Lenny by some quirk of fate had been blessed with brains and loved spending his mornings pouring over an old calculus text his dad had long used as a doorstop.
Jigsaw loved a martini or ten and sipped on them as he worked on his woodcuts, a skill he possessed and one which earned his family a few dollars at the Sunday markets where the Puzzles would descend in their haphazard way, set up their table and hassle every passer-by trying to sell their wares.
But Lenny was not interested in any of that. After studying the calculus text by day he loved to look through an old telescope his dad had found in the dump. He could see the constellations with their irregular borders, the rings of Saturn and the moon closer than he imagined.
Lenny having the brains in the family was also blessed with an imagination and often in-between the chapters of his calculus text imagined himself as a spy solving great problems with his famous catch cry, “Call a Puzzle to fix your puzzle. The smaller the pieces the better the fun.”
Another of Lenny’s favourite things was all things nature. His dad had come home one day with an old weather vane, a bit bent but once placed upon their roof provided Lenny with another source of fun and adventure.
The rule of thumb in the Puzzle household was if it required thought to fix an issue, Lenny was your first port of call as opposed to their dad who had a bad habit of destroying the problem thereby eliminating it, like the wonky leg on the dining room table he destroyed with the number 6 sledgehammer and stood back glowing with pride over his accomplishment until Ima reminded him he’d be eating off the floor until they could secure the services of a new leg or table.
With so many kids and all of them constantly hungry Ima had learned that anything savory was a hit with the family. So she fed them savory meats, savory fruits and savory porridge and in each circumstance increased her own legendary status.
Lenny being a typical Aussie kid loved vegemite on toast and was settling in to a night of star gazing when his dad, martini in one hand and woodcut in the other, tripped over the weather vane Lenny was repairing and landed head over heels in their fish pond, the one with the irregular borders and savory tasting water lilies.
As they later said: “Therein lay the biggest Puzzle.”
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/wordle-175/
New and shiny
My kids bought me a new kettle and toaster for my renovated kitchen.
https://trablogger.com/mundane-monday-challenge-132-learn-photography/
Image: ©Dave Huggard Fragmented life drawings
When she was, alive life was a constant battle to stay in touch with whatever had to be done.
She felt owned by and owing to so many.
There was never any time for herself. She felt obliged to respond to everyone’s needs. She’d given up thinking about her own needs. They were inconsequential, just like she was.
She welcomed death.
It was an escape, and she doubted she would be missed by anyone apart from the inconvenience of them having to get their own coffee and make their own bed.
Death gave her time, and she smiled at the thought that time was now irrelevant. She had occasion to reflect on her fragmented life.
That was a good word she decided, fragmented.
For that’s how it had been. A bit of her for her parents, her siblings demanded of her, later her husband, the low life scumbag he turned out to be, governed her every moment and so she ceased to exist.
Even when by some miracle, she conceived and had children to a man who made it clear he didn’t want children she felt a little bit of her go to each of the two kids who took up so much of her time.
Life was a single mother existence when her husband up and left, said he’d found a better woman, a woman who thought he was someone and loved him unlike her whom he called cold and distant.
When he left, there was a sense of relief, but at the same time, she felt a little piece she called failure, break away, never to be replaced.
Over the years that was how it had been with bits of her breaking away, floating off into a space, she could never reach.
Now she had reflection time, and she used it well. Free of the world of obligation she realised settling over her was a rare calm.
Maybe the fragments she lost while alive could be replaced with fragments worth hanging on to.
Written for: https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/weekend-writing-prompt-25-fragment/
Morpethroad 