Friday, April 11, 2014

2 mintues. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. No reason. Just ending the week in style.

You can write whatever you want in the comments section. You have two minutes. Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. 
So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

Have a good weekend!

We'd sit on the roof and throw handfuls of rocks at the MUNI busses, jump the gap between the old victorians. Just a few feet, but it was a lot more of those feet to get to the ground. Got the adrenaline pumping. Parkour for drunk kids.

There was something about the roof. The Mission winds slipped into our mouths, and the words that came out were flighty, but not weightless. The ladder to get to the roof was the most dangerous part. It was broken and old and it didn't fuck around. We were whole, and young, and we didn't fuck around either. Or we fucked around constantly. Depends on which roof you sit on.

The view changes...

I got distracted by a small child talking at me. I'm going for round two straight out the gate. 

You were so sure that it would all work out. Why? Because everyone told you everything would work out. That's a con. That's 'find the marble underneath the walnut shell' shit. But everyone ends up saying the same thing and it gets ingrained ... it digs into your brain like a parasitic worm and soon you're telling people that everything is going to be alright even though you know different. And it feels wrong.

It feels like you're a billboard or some cheap advertisement for spray-on-hair. And then you think, holy hell, I live in a world where bald men can spray fake hair on their heads and not feel ridiculous. You judge people too much, you know that? I forget who we're even talking about, and I don't have time to check, but I do know there is a whole lot more judgment being doled out than we really need.

28 comments:

  1. I dreamed that Dan and I were sitting on the banks of a stream of consciousness. We'd been fishing for words all day, but all I caught were small ones, too small to keep. I was beginning to suspect that we had picked out a spot downstream from David again. He liked to catch all the big words and leave little for anyone else. He'd tuck words like spectrophotometry into his basket with a smirk. But more than big words, which were harder to land that to hook, he liked rare ones. Words which, though short, were deceptively hard to real in. Words that would put up a fight with strange diphthongs, obscure origins, and multiple means at times. Time which only a hand full of word fishermen really understood. My basket was filled with common words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and the occasional common conjunctions. Dan had a basket full of four letter ones which he liked to shake up before pulling one out and baiting his hook with it. “It's how I catch unexpected controversies,” he would say with a laugh has he would cast his line toward a snag.

    “Controversies, good one! Four syllables.”

    He liked to tempt the currents of fate that way. I always choose to bait my hook with a nice medium sized pronoun like “these” or “those.” Those would always catch you a action word,, much more often than “not.” Meanwhile, all I could do was dream of bigger words up stream. Maybe it was time to pull in my line and move upstream a little.

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    1. Of course, "Reel in." Damn rare homophone for common little words. One of these days I'm going to get caught by the ranger and fined.

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    2. This is so awesome. I love it, Ed.

      (small lures catch big fish ... truth) ;)

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  2. Wonderful. My smile for the day. Well done.

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  3. His long, ebony hair glinted under the blinky fluorescent lighting of the hallway. He stood next to his locker, chatting with a boy she didn’t know. Neither had seen her yet. She reached into her pocket, tightening her fingers around the cold, hard handles. Her heart raced, smashing blood into her ears, making her feel like she was under water, each breaking wave burbling the voices around her. She could just stop. She knew that. Turn and run. But then Amy would know. When she didn’t return with what Amy the witch wanted for the love potion. Holding her breath, she slipped the smooth, steel blades from her pocket and skooched in behind him. Nobody would know. Nobody would see. Her free hand trembled as she reached for him. She squeezed her eyes shut. But when she opened them, he was gone. And her palm, damp and wobbly, was empty.

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    1. Wow! I was actually nervously glancing over my shoulder and mentally back at my high school locker.

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    2. Intense piece! My heart raced a little, too. Well, in Laurie!

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    3. "What they said," said this dittohead.

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  4. The bar is dark in daylight. What paltry light there is moves sluggish, thwarted by dust motes.

    "I can't help it if I have an addictive personality." Liv leans forward and presses one slender finger into my sternum. "And you don't exactly help, my lover, my partner, my significant other."

    "How so?"

    "Indulgences. Temptations. Urges."

    I have no idea what she's talking about, so I decide to enjoy the view down the front of her shirt. Significant other. Ha. She's being an asshole, albeit a flirtatious one. I don't believe in addictive personalities; I believe only in strength or weakness. I smirk at her. She raises one perfect eyebrow, a brunette Lana Turner. Like she knows what I'm thinking, like she knows this postman will not only ring twice, he'll keep on ringing until somebody damn well answers.

    "I can quit them all, you know."

    I can feel my smirk stretching my face.

    "Fuck you," she says, as if she's telling me about the weather. Her face is placid as Arctic ice.

    All of a sudden I'm scared. She's out of her chair and at the door before I can think. Confused, I look down at the table.

    "Wait! You forgot your cig—"

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    1. This is an awesome piece, D. Minutes longer in Canada or did you just drink some coffee? ;) Kidding, love it.

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    2. Yeah, our minutes are in Celcius. ;)

      Truth is, I always forget to time these. It's why I got fired from IU. "Doesn't work well with others." (Kidding, I wasn't fired.")

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    3. lol. You know how I feel about rules. One of these Fridays you should throw a novella up on this shit. ;)

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    4. Or to throw an even bigger wrench, someone *else's* novella! :D

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    5. Addictive personalities? I am addicted to water and food. Does that mean I have an addictive personality? I can't stop breathing air, and prefer fresh air to stale. I like to masturbate, a lot, not sure if that counts as a n addiction either.

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    6. You have an addictive personality, yes. ;) Ew, you masturbate? Gross. Jesus is sad.

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    7. And we're viscous cozens. Something along those lines.

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  5. There is this soft, ugly moment when it first hits you. Then it hits you again. And again. You try to fight back, but you're slugging at the air and air molecules are pacifists. That much you gotta know right of the bat. The air is your friend. It's harder to breathe now, so don't piss the air off, you need all the friends you can get.

    The sound of insects is like a thousand old typewriters pounding outside a deaf man's ear. You hear the click, click. Click! Feel it? It used to bother you, but now you have bigger problems. Forget about the bugs. The bugs ain't nothing.

    In a field, far away, a boy throws a tennis ball against a broken concrete wall. He does this so he doesn't have to think about anything. Not his dad, not school, not nothing. The tennis ball is his salvation. He hasn't gotten hit yet.

    But it's coming.

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    1. Argh. This one messed with me. Nailed the ending. But this line is still buzzing in my head: "The sound of insects is like a thousand old typewriters pounding outside a deaf man's ear."

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  6. I am *so* out of my league here! That's OK, I enjoy reading stuff better than I can write.

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  7. I like this piece a lot, Jo. Real and raw. Empathetic. And I'm terribly allergic to lavender, FYI. ;)

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  8. Love this. Lavender is supposed to be a sleep aid, no?

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  9. I think so. In my case it is a massive swollen eye, sneezing, disaster.

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