Social Blunderer

This will break your heart. Standing on a train platform telling your best friend that you want something more. That shift you see in their eyes. Knowing that they will say no. She smiles. This is your heart breaking. With certainty but uneasiness she explains. Trying to let you down gently. You just want her to leave. The answer is no.

A different story.

Mina looked into the monsters eyes and smiled. This thing was supposed to be evil but she saw light in it’s eyes. It was strong, stronger than most men, that is where our fear of them came from she thought. The broad back of the creature was covered in spines and spikes and it moved on all fours with poise. There was no wasted movement. For something as large as a carthorse it was agile.

Mina reached in. It was aware. It could forms thoughts of a sort. Mina reached in to feel them. The emotions felts abrasive. The concept that formed in the creatures mind was close to what we humans call hate. It hates us.

It pounced against the cage. It was a futile gesture. Her folk excelled in steel and stone. They had craft. What the masses did not, could not, do was reflect upon why exactly they kept “monsters” like this one caged. Mina had decided it was because her folk had always done so and would always do so.  People, humans, kept it caged not because it was dangerous but because it was beautiful. It’s beauty was glorious like the flames of a village set alight or a blood covered blade. Her folk always caged the beautiful when they could or destroyed it when they could not.

Mina recoiled. The monsters roared. It had twisted free like a cat in an unwanted embrace. Fury lingered. She was tempted to reach again. To whisper “Shush, you’ll be free soon”

There. Water, so beautiful, so perfect.

Remember when we were young.

Smiling in the sun.

Staring at the fountain.

It was so wonderful. Oh it was so wonderful. The noise and sounds it made. The whoosh as water spurted out the top. Atomised water droplets failing splashing into the pool at the base. The trickling sounds, like laughter, as the water flowed over stone.

Remember when we were young.

We were hot. The sun was remorseless. You said “Go on”. I took off my sandals and dipped my toes in the cool pool. Splashing and splashing watching ripples.

I giggled. You smiled I think. You smiled and joined me.  Those fleeting, floating moments sitting at the edge. Listening to the water fall and flow and rise and dip and drop. We were still.

I close my eyes. Now. I close them and can  still hear it. The ripples our feet made. There were birds. Yes. There were birds singing. Others were there. The familiar chattering and howls of families and children running and walking. In my heart’s memory we were there alone in silence but for fountain. It was an orchestra of fluids, of motion, playing an overture just for us.

Then it passed. Like sand grains in flowing tides we were swept away from our perfect moment. We went home. Our lives went on. The water’s song we heard in the fountain played on in our absence.

I go back there sometimes. Without you of course. It is not the same. Trickling, tinkling, splashing, sploshing. I hear them. The song is not them same. It is not for us..

Not sure what the prompt was

There are so many young people here. This is proof, in any were needed, of how long ago my life went off track. I have to start at the beginning again. I have wasted so many years.

Another Story

I have grown to hate my dog. He has changed and I can’t tolerate his behaviour anymore.

It used to be different, we used to be happy, all of us together. Me, Mel and the the two little ones. The perfect family, mum, dad, Casey and Phil and our mongrel dog (Mel insisted he was a Golden retriever mix) Boppi.

Boppi was great with the kids. Playful, protective and gentle no matter how rough they were with him. They loved him. When me and Mel got together she was not too keen on Boppi, she thought him ugly with his long fur that was a shade of dull brown with patches of grey. But she could see how much he meant to me.

God I miss her.I miss that life. I’d do anything to get that life back. Me and Mel tried, we tried until we got tired of trying.

Boppi has a permanent sneer on his face. He growls and barks all the time. He’ll take his food and water from me but nothing else. He snaps at me when I try to take him for a walk.

Most of this is written in illegible handwriting.

“You bastard Straighty”

“What? What did I do?”

“You bloody well know what you did. Telling those young geometrists that there was a way Pi could be finalised into a whole number”

“Oops”

“Oops? Oops! They have been prodding and probing me all week.”

“Yes. That is what you get for.”

No idea what that was. The next bit was again very hard to decipher. Heres a pic.

Interview I did with Emma Faulkner. Really badly missed us the sound recording. Very disappointed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1zSR9qfzps

Here is an interview I filmed with Laurel Lefkow. Lots of mistakes. Focus and lighting were poor. I asked her to look directly into the camera not realising how weird it would.

It was shot on a Canon 700d with a lapel mic. The awesome Guillaume Laroche (another Omnibus intern) helped me film and edit the footage.

Interview with poet/writer/performer Rob Auton before his gig at Omnibus a few months ago

boom, not much. really struggling to write. Anything. Nothing is working. pish.

so blogging weekly is not working. will try to update monthly