The Day
It shapes me,
I shape it.
Before sunrise,
After sunset.
Most times, it slips through my fingers without notice.
But sometimes, a piece becomes special as a rare jewel,
And finds home in my mind and heart.
Friday’s Wandering Thought
He pulled his car up to the stop sign and stopped. No cars were visible on the mile long slope in either direction. He pulled out, going left, heading toward town. A car pulled up on each road that he came up on, left and right side, and pulled in behind him after he passed. It was almost like they were waiting for him.
A paranoid person could really worry about that.
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
She: “I need to wash those front windows. The cats got fingerprints all over them.”
He, who might take things too literally: “Fingerprints. Really?”
The Writing Moment
It’s been profitable but daunting work down in the novel mines. After chipping along with the pick for the right words, rich seams of plotting, story, character, and setting were found and worked out. Coming up each day, re-emerging into the real world, brought realizations of how deeply he was into it. Matters such as time, tasks, and news, were slipping past, undone, barely noticed. He promised himself, as soon as this novel is finished, he will take up other matters, work hard and catch up.
Yes, he makes the promise but other novels are out there, waiting to be written. He wonders if having a clone would help. It couldn’t be exact; the other fellow would need to be the one immersed in the real world, because he likes it too much, down in the novel mines.
Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts
I’m amused when elderly women flirt with me. Then I remember, I’m just three years short of seventy.
I’m basically their age, although that’s not how I see it in my optimistic mind’s eye.
Thursday’s Wandering Thought
He was waiting for his wife. Standing about twelve feet in front of her, he watched as she came out of the store, looked left and then right, and then begin walking to her right.
“Hello,” he called. “Where are you going?”
Her head snapped around. “There you are. I didn’t see you.”
“I was standing right there.” He pointed.
This happened again at another store thirty minutes later. When it happened again, he was certain that she was gaslighting him. There was no way that she couldn’t see him like that three times. Unless, maybe, subconsciously, she blocked herself from seeing him.
Hmmm, he thought. Hmmm.
The Resemblance
He thought he saw a friend entering the coffee shop, staring at him as the other passed.
Impossible, of course. His friend, Andy, died back in the early part of the century, murdered while on a business trip in Tennessee, a story misted with mystery. Andy and a woman he’d met at a bar talked to a man in the bar about buying a boat. After some drinking, the three went out to the man’s house at midnight to see the boat. A fight ensued.
Andy always carried a knife and pulled it now. The knife was taken from him. Stabbed twice in the abdomen, he staggered half a mile down the long dirt road leading to the house. A trooper found him dead on the roadside hours later.
All that came back as he watched the man with the remarkable resemblance to Andy. Other possibilities could explain why the man looked like Andy. It could be Andy. Andy could have returned from the dead. Andy’s death may have been faked, the death story constructed as part of some larger con. Maybe Andy had a twin he didn’t know about, or he’d crossed into a dimension where Andy still lived. Theories crowded his head as Andy’s doppelganger took his coffee and departed the establishment.
He couldn’t let it go. Catching up, he called, “Andy.”
The man turned back to him. A smile flickered over his expression. “No. Not me.”
Sipping his coffee, the Andy twin turned and hastened away.
Michael Seidel, writer 