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.

You look into the water, see your reflection – fail to see any genuine affection. You curl your lip and squint your eyes. Sneer. That’s affectation. What a difference a few letters can make. But it doesn’t matter because you’re not thinking that way. You’re not thinking about anything. Not anything that matters. 

Maybe that’s why your life is in tatters.

Pride goeth before the fall? Maybe. Maybe it goeth before Spring, Summer, Winter … maybe pride is all you have, so you pull at it like a splinter. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but making sense of things isn’t what this is about. 

Keep looking. Straight on or crooked. The water doesn’t lie. You may lie to yourself, you may lie to the folks that ask you questions, expecting answers. You can’t lie to your reflection. Or you end up getting a flower named after you.

#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 air is thick and wet, and the hairs stick to the back of your neck. You hear everyone laughing, but there is no laughter in you. There are questions. The same questions that always rattle around inside the craven, corrupted cavern you call a skull. Why won’t anyone talk about the important things? Are they pretending to be happy? How can they be happy given everything that’s happened?

These questions will eventually block out the noise of the laughter. They will eventually block out the light of the sun. They will eventually become a weight that hangs around your neck, strangling you. But right now, there’s a pale man in dress shoes and shorts passing you a bowl of potato salad. You try to smile, but your lips lick rigor mortis. 

"Potato salad?"

He smiles; his teeth are yellow and crooked. The sky is fractured now. Your brain is screaming at you, but it turns into a kind of melodious drone. You close your eyes and ignore the voices. Ignore the hands shaking you. You will sink into the grass if you just give it time. 

You’re sure of that. 

#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.

I think about it sometimes – more than I’d like to admit I guess. It sits inside my brain like a sarcastic cartoon mouse. Sometimes I throw it a piece of cheese – distract it for a while. Sometimes it just sits there all smug and chuckling and I think, “what the hell, man, you can’t do everything right!”

The mouse doesn’t care.

And I guess I should be glad that there aren’t any horrible regrets flying around in there. Wreaking havoc. It’s the things I didn’t do that keep me up at night. Why was I so afraid to talk to that one girl? Why didn’t I stand up for myself more?

That’s what nighttime regrets are for.

And sometimes I can’t shake them when I wake. They follow me around. A snail slime trail of nagging memory. But all the could have’s and would have’s and might have’s don’t change a thing. 

Not really. 

It’s like the telephone is ringing, but you don’t want to answer it because you don’t want to talk about it. I have enough useless conversations. I don’t need to be debating my younger self about why I didn’t jump off the cliff when everyone else was having so much fun. Why I didn’t think more about the things I was going to do and the things I’d done.

I’ll give the mouse some more cheese before it turns into a dragon and devours me.

#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 wind lifts the wet hair off the back of your neck and, for a moment, it is almost like flying. Eyes wide and heart singing. There is a sensation like you are being lifted off the earth – you are neither frightened nor amazed. You are bored. Bored with flying? Already?

Who could have seen that coming?

There is birdsong in the eaves, but you don’t listen. You hear only the freeway traffic as it passes your house. Gasses it, leaving only carcinogens and confusion. Why don’t you listen to the birds, little mouse?

You used to.

Me, I’m juvenile. I’ll listen to birds sing and pretend to fly all day. I don’t think that makes me simple. I don’t think it makes me complicated either. I try not to think about it. Makes the mockingbird mad when I get too lost in my head.

At least that’s what I think he said.

All of this is just a roundabout way of saying:

I counted on you, and you let me down. I’m not saying it’s your fault. It’s both of our faults and neither of our faults. It’s the way the cookie explodes. I get that. But I don’t want to sit and eat pasta and pretend.

It’s time for that to end. 

There’s nothing wrong with listening to traffic and thinking that cool lift of wind is a given. But I like my way better. I’m sticking with it. Even if it leaves me deaf or splattered on the ground.

So, if you’ll excuse me, the mockingbird and I are going to have a conversation. Then, I’m going to hike up to the top of that hill. The one the red-tails love. And I’m going to stand in the wind. 

And pretend.

#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.

(Prompt)

It’s a jumping off point. It’s a suggestion.  A shove in the right direction. An invitation to a different kind of inflection. A new voice. A new character. A new story. It doesn’t matter where you start because it is far more important where you end up. 

See, it’s like a road trip with no road signs. That’s the best kind. You might get lost, but think of all the things that lost people might find. It’s enough to blow the most complex mind. 

Take it and run with it. See how far it gets you. See if you know where you’re headed or if you have the guts to let chance take you where it will. 

Don’t tell me it’s a slog. That it’s all uphill. Because I don’t buy it. Prompt or not, you gotta move. 

Stasis is a killer. 

#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 Barlow knife was stuck about shoulder high in the hot bark of the old tree. Shoulder high to a nine year old isn’t that high, I guess. But there it was. I was half delirious from fishing and Florida sun – the kind that sticks to your skin. Of course, knife-loving boy that I was, my first thought was to pocket the thing. Then, knife-loving boy that I was, I thought, “dang, someone might be coming back lookin’ for that.” 

I had, myself, left a knife in a tree by a stream a year before. Even though I knew it was dumb while I was doing it. Even though my Grandpa had told me - always in the hand or the pocket. And someone took my knife. I know, ‘cause I went back the next day at first light. It was gone. 

And it had hurt me.

Then, I looked at it closer. Saw the muck where the steel met the wood. That knife had been there a while. I shook the sticky drops of sun off my face, put my rod down. This? This was a conundrum. Wasn’t nobody coming back for that old Barlow knife. But. 

But, hell, how long had it been there? There was something almost sacred about it. I knew it was filled with the memory of fishing trips and campfires and that it still held the memory of the hand that had held it. Who was I to take the Barlow from the Pine? No Arthur, I. Just a knife-loving boy who loved stories and saw a bunch of them in the patina of that old steel. The way the scales were rubbed smooth in parts. The scratch marks on the blade that told me someone had sharpened it on a wheel. 

Just like my Grandpa did with his work knives. 

I don’t remember how long I stared at that knife. And I’ll allow that time has probably prettied up the patina on the memory, but I do know that it was enough to stop a fish-loving boy from fishing. At least for a day.

Straight flummoxed. Ethics and all. I was a morally precocious boy, born feeling guilty.

I went home and sharpened my knives. The right way. Not out of any disrespect. Just because it gave me more time to think. And I had a whetstone the size of a pink eraser. 

I didn’t have a grinding wheel. 

#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.

Everybody come on down; the cat man is singing. It ain’t a question of the words, but the heart and soul he’s bringing. Pull up a patch of grass, and pass that fucker my way next. Put your fucking phone away. There’ll be other times to text.

How many chances you gonna get to sit in the grass with your friends while the cat man plays?

Tweak the crystal chandelier pain. Come inside son, you’ll die of rain. Die of rain? Won’t I just get wet? 

You’re an adult now; don’t get upset. 

What the fuck will it do to the suede? Your tears aren’t helping, though they’re custom made…

Stare at the sun until you see spots? I see spots everywhere. There’s that spot over there – under that tree. You can’t see because of how low the willow branches hang. Come on over, hear, and spark that thang.

The cat man’s getting inside you now. He lives in your diaphragm. He controls your heart. You open to closing? Hell, that’s a start. Close your mind, close your windows, close your soul, soft innuendos – the cat man can do it all. And you’ll see that right before you fall. 

See you next Spring. 

Have a good trip.

#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...