Donald Said
July
“July,” he whispered. “Feel the passing year’s cold breath breathing down your neck?”
He flicked it aside. “It’s just time. It’s just air. It’s nothing that matters.”
Then he resumed writing like crazy.
It was all that mattered.
Seven
She doesn’t know who first called her Seven. She knows that’s who she is. They all have the same name because they think of themselves as the same person, even though they know that they’re different.
She exists everywhere, but there are only seven of them, so she only exists in seven places and times at once. The seven were certain that there were no more than them.
When we say everywhere, we refer to every dimension, and every time and place. Only one of the seven are ever there. Only one person there can see and communicate with her when she visits someplace. It may not be the same person if and when she returns to a place.
She has been the same age during all of her existence. She has no memory of a beginning, and she wonders if she has an end. The seven of them have their own minds and memories, and they can talk to one another, regardless of where they are. None of them have ever died, that any of them ever knew, and she really doesn’t know how she looks. She’s never seen her reflection.
Other than those things, she’s just like everyone else, except she’s happier.
She’s Seven.
Flowing
First a hot, black sip
and then writing like crazy
and a long, cold gulp
Charles Said
I wonder if Charles Dickens was ever called Charlie or Chuck?
Anyway, I’ve done these things that he referenced, prowling to find ideas and words, beginning and stopping, beginning again…
Penetrated
There’s a trio of nursing students who have been coming in and quizzing one another on terms, symptoms, treatments, etc., this week and last week.
Today, they were asking one another questions about ischemia, strokes, and other cerebral vascular events. I’m usually pretty good at zoning out and blocking out others’ conversations and exchanges, but today, their comments penetrated my walls and took me back to my time with coronary and peripheral angioplasty start-ups.
One of them hired me after I retired from the U.S.A.F. I began as the customer service/sales operations manager with a coronary angioplasty company developing coronary stents mounted on angioplasty, ended up a product manager, and then went into marketing services with a start-up trying to develop devices to treat chronic total occlusions. I worked with some terrifically intelligent and energetic people, and wound up wandering the Google “where-are-they-now?” path. I was only with those companies and that industry for a few years – 1995 to 2000 – before moving on to Internet security, but it was an exciting time. I learned a lot, and appreciate the opportunity that I had.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of me, time to return to writing like crazy.
Kafloof
Kafloof (catfinition) – to be utterly defeated by a cat.
In use: “Every time he sat down to type, his small black and white cat stretched out on his keyboard with a green-eyed look that asked, “What are you going to do now?” His answer was to sigh. He knew his goal to do some writing was kafloof.”
Michael Seidel, writer 