Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Maybe she’s sick or blind,
so, she don’t look this way, or,
maybe she’s afraid or worried,
so, she don’t look this way.
Maybe she’s unfriendly, stuck-up, or conceited,
cuz she don’t look this way,
or too insecure,
because she don’t look this way.
Could be that she’s dead,
’cause she don’t look this way
or maybe I’m invisible,
because she don’t look this way,
or I’m old, sick, or dying,
because she won’t look this way.
I keep wondering when my regular coffee haunt is going to start serving CBD-infused coffee? I mean, Carl’s Jr is serving a CBD cheeseburger.
What’s taking so long?
The start
seeing
noticing
talking
flirting
friendship
lust
sex
love
trust
The relationship
trust
sex
love
support
compatibility
complacency
ennui
questions
regrets
The decisions
disagreements
betrayal
anger
arguments
fights
threats
tears
compromise
counseling
separating
praying
choices
The end
together
apart
resigned
accepting
hopeful
dismissive
optimistic
pessimistic
loving
trusting
hoping
Death.
His turn, at last, just when he was about to explode from impatience. That woman ahead of him had taken, like, six minutes.
As soon as she walked away, he strode up. Spreading his fingers, he put his palm to the ATM’s cold, dark screen. A pulse rose through his fingers. Blue light limned his hand. Sharp tingling nibbled at his skin, and the hair everywhere on his body stood on end.
He tapped his foot, waiting for results. Like thirty seconds later, the ATM began printing sounds. More seconds passed. His hair flattened and then the pulsing faded, the light dimmed and disappeared, and the tingling ended. As he removed his hand, a slip of paper scrolled out. Finally.
Taking the paper with, he perused the print out. “You done?” the next person in line said.
Nodding with a grunt, he walked away, perusing his print out as he did. The bottom line was what he first went to read. It said, “Warning: your karma points have reached the minimum balance. Be careful what you do.”
A car horn blew. Looking up and around, he found the offending driver and gave them the finger. As soon as he realized what he’d done, he grimaced. Crumbling the paper up, he shoved it into his pocket and started walking fast. Of course his karma points were low. How the fuck were you supposed to get points in a world like this?
Getting into his car, he started it with a burst of smoky revs, shoved it into reverse, and punched the gas. His rear tires grabbed traction with a chirp. “Hey,” an old man shouted behind him. “Watch it.” Selecting drive, he scattered pedestrians as the car jumped forward. Cutting off another car, he started speeding down the street.
“Minimum balance,” he said, selecting another radio station and turning up the volume. “Fuck that noise.”
Lighting a cigarette, he went on down the road, speeding past a girl in the crosswalk. Minimum balance, right. How was he ever supposed to get karma points when the world was set against him?
As his father always said, there’s just no sense in trying.
You ever get sucked into listening to another group’s conversation – people that you don’t know, in a public place – and then they lean in and drop their voices, making it difficult to hear them? Doesn’t that just chap your nose? It chaps my nose because it puts me in a bind. I’m invested in their subject. I want to hear what’s going on. Asking them to speak up usually doesn’t work, and moving closer to them often interrupts the discussion.
Thank the flying spaghetti monster for the technology that lets me listen from a distance. Yes, I mean, bugs. You can just point and hear. Relatively inexpensive, they’re easily found on Amazon, are now so discreet that nobody ever notices.
The things I’m forced to do to satisfy my curiosity.
It’s hard staying disciplined today. I’m going through through my monthly cycles*, and I’m on a creative high. Sounds good, but…
My imagination has too many ideas about the novel in progress, rendering the process more difficult and challenging. Through my muses or myself, I’m besieged with new what-if scenarios. Each demands to be considered and incorporated, or discarded. Once a path is chosen, my fingers dash over the keyboard in mad hammering. As scenes and chapters are finished, new ideas jump in again.
The problem isn’t having ideas about the story or characters, or a writing block. The problem is that there’s so many ways to tell the story, so many choices about what to write. It seems like an enviable situation. Don’t be fooled. Knowledge gleaned from writing other novels has informed me, too many ideas can end up with a messy, messy novel. I know that I can write it all up and edit and revise, but I think that writing along the wrong paths dissipates the novel’s essence. Besides that, my puny brain struggles to keep everything straight. Adding more complications…well, complicates that process. The challenge is to find the best path and keep focused on it despite the temptations to stray, and some of them are very, very tempting.
Got my coffee. Know what time it is? Yep, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Note: my spectrums – the mood shifts from happy and optimistic, to dark and pessimistic and the energy levels that rise and fall – seemed monthly, perhaps driven by hormones, tides, or some other causes. My imagination runs on like cycles, as do my emotional and physical energy. Yes, some call this all hokum, others think of them as pseudo-science, but it’s something that I experience. Being aware of them helps me manage the dark times.
I dreamed I was walking on a sidewalk by a city street. It seemed familiar. Across the street was a cemetery. Heavy, old trees protect the graves and mossy, tilted head stones. Squirrels, jays, and robins dash around the cemetery lawn. The grass is high and rich with tiny, white flowers. I can see that the wind is blowing.
As I notice the waving grass and tree branches, I realize that I don’t hear anything. That disturbs me. It’s unnerving. I’m walking, and cars are passing, but it’s all a silent movie. I see birds but I don’t hear them. A jet flying overhead leaves chemtrails but not sound.
Turning a corner, I come up on an intersection and watch others walking and talking. They seem to be hearing. Cars and trucks pass without a sound. Red, amber, and blue lights flashing, a firetruck silently passes.
The wind grows stronger, and it’s more difficult to walk or even stand. I can feel the sun’s warmth on me. In fact, I feel too hot, and sweat sheathes my back. Ah, so not all of my senses are affected. I can feel heat and the wind, and I see everything going on.
Turning into the wind, I test my sense of smell. Rich odors of burning marijuana, baked goods, cut grass, exhaust gases, and wet earth reach me. I smile as I smell them. Relief creeps in. I can smell things. I’m only not hearing. Why can’t I hear?
A weird epiphany that the wind of change is blowing strikes me. As I stand and think about that, I suddenly hear everything going on. It was like the world had been muted, and now it was un-muted. Listening, I walk back toward the intersection.
So the dream ends, with me standing at the intersection, listening and watching everything around me, and thinking. When I awaken, I stay in bed, thinking and listening, going through a memory of the dream.
When I sit down and open my computer, I perform a ritual of blowing away the debris that’s collected on the keys, the cookie crumbs, peanut pieces, and other curious-looking but unidentified things. I figure that my blowing should clear it away but it never does the job. That surprises me because people keep telling me that I’m a blowhard.
Guess I need to blow harder.
You ever have a bad case of verbalrhea, you know, where you just start running out of your mouth, and you can’t stop saying shit?
Man, I hate it when that happens.
