2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). 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.

“Get the Google Docs!”

“Huh? You mean you want me to send you a document?”

“No! What are you, simple? I want the Google Doctors. Now! My whole internet is sick. Viruses and more. I don’t know what’s going on. Windows keep popping open on this old computer, and I think my laptop has a fever. It’s so hot that I can’t even put it on my lap.”

The young man shook his head.

“Mom, there aren’t any Google Doctors…”

“Don’t lie to me, college boy. I heard all about it. The Google Docs. Everybody knows about them. Even your poor old Mom who is apparently too stupid to understand computers or her son or –“

“Mom. Calm down. What do you want me to do?”

“I told you! I want you to call the Doctors. Make them fix my World Wide Web.”

He shook his head. There were a lot of ways to play this. He could try explaining. Like he’d tried explaining about firewalls. Only that had made his mother terrified that her computer was going to burst into flames. He could lie. 

Yes, he would lie.

“OK. Mom. Here’s the thing. The Google Doctors are very busy. And they have a long waiting list to be seen. They wouldn’t be able to make it out here for weeks. But they owe me a favor. I can get them to come by and take care of this for you, but they have to think they’re doing it for me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get a cup of coffee. Go to the library. Give them like an hour and a half. They work fast. And don’t tell anyone you cut in line. I’ll make the call now. Go grab your purse.”

She was halfway out the door when she turned back. He was prepared to accept her thanks graciously. He was looking forward to it.

“Son,” she said, “Don’t ever lie to me about the Google Doctors again.”

His mouth hung open as the door slammed. Then, he poured a stiff drink, ran the anti-virus software, and checked his Facebook.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). 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.

The man was tired. He sat with slumped shoulders, breathing heavily. He occupied the middle of the park bench, and there was a perimeter around him. People picked a careful distance, which averaged to around ten feet. They would not sit on his bench.

But I did.

When he felt my weight on the wooden slats, he raised his head and smiled gamely.

“How you doin’ kid?”

I decided not to mention the fact that a 34 year old man is hardly a kid. Maybe I liked being a kid in his eyes. I don’t know. But I didn’t say anything.

“Good, how about you?”

He seemed to consider it. He rasped his hands together and all kinds of clichés popped into my head. They were like catcher’s mitts. They were the kind of hands that had spent a lot of time in boxing gloves. They were working hands. It was all silly. I didn’t know anything about him.

“I’m doing.”

He leaned back and I couldn’t tell if it was for his benefit or mine. Maybe both.

I didn’t want to ask him if he was OK – it seemed invasive, so I made small talk about the weather and the way people dress in California when it gets even remotely cold. We laughed. He said he was originally from Montana – lived in California half his life, but the place still didn’t make sense to him.

I laughed. Told him I’d been born here and it didn’t always make sense to me.

We passed a half an hour or so, and then he stood abruptly. He left a manila envelope where he had been sitting.

I don’t know how, but I knew it was for me. I waited until I got home to open it. It was full of money and a short note.

The note said, “I was wondering if someone would stop. You did. Thanks.”

I guess I passed the test. 

And I'm still surprised how much money you can fit in one envelope.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). 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.

She sat on the edge of the sea wall, feet grazing the tips of the waves. There was sunlight and birdsong, but it felt wrong. There was a feeling she didn’t recognize. Something too heavy and hard to wrap her mind around. She ran a hand through her long, gray hair and sighed. The sigh was heavy and drifted towards the wisp clouds on the horizon.

It was a light heaviness, the feeling inside her. It clutched at her throat and made her feel a kind of opaque fear, surrounded by a giddy, childish anticipation. She wondered at it, but she knew not to question it too deeply. She was old enough to know that good things come to those who wait.

Or she was old enough that she had convinced herself of that – told herself that it was truth. But she did know, deep inside, that the good thing was coming. The anxious joy inside her … the flashes of light and sound that matched her twitching mouth. Smile, frown, wonder, think …

She heard his footsteps before he spoke. He was a heavy walker for a thin man. Like his feet were trying to punish the ground.

“Hey, you ready for an adventure?”

She smiled shyly. She wondered if anyone is ever really ready for adventure or if adventure is something that needs to be ready for you; she was determined to find out. She brushed sand off her legs and stood tall, stretching. 

"Let's go."

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). 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.

Is there anything worse than the perception of judgment? Negative judgment specifically. Do we all go through our whole lives trying not to be scolded? Afraid of the schoolmistress of the mind? It’s a play on paranoia. A whole system made to destroy you.

Sleep in the bed you make. Even if it is just twisted blankets in your mind, the flotsam of a life unkind. And fuck all of that bullshit noise besides. I’m not trying to win the black fingernail polish award. That’s not what I’m here for.

And things are rough all over. It kills me.

While I feel put upon in my relatively simple life, kids die of cancer. People get raped and murdered and their loved ones wonder why the fuck it had to happen forever. It’s brutal - half of humanity walking around with different shoe leather. And we’re supposed to get along.

Birds of a feather.

I have no right to complain about my pain. And yet it is everyone’s right. But that doesn’t change the fact that my arthritis bugs me and somewhere there is a sweet eight-year-old boy getting beaten bloody every night. And we gotta live with that.

How can you make that right? How do you even try to sleep at night?

And wake up and do things like make sandwiches and try to bluff your way through life. Pretend you’re not bogged down. Strife. Strafe. We are riddled with the bullets of a hell-bent existence. In for a penny, in for a pound.

It’s fucked up, but it’s what makes the world go ‘round. 

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...