The mythical geneses
of Thanksgiving Day
doesn’t matter to me,
nor the religious significance,
or supposed underpinnings
of this America’s holiday.
It’s healthy to have
the attitude—to feel
thankful, to reflect,
to summon love & respect
for others in my life—
today and those past.
There is the good,
the bad,
and the ugly.
My family, love,
music, art, health,
heart, happy stuff,
rain, books, writing,
babies, moms, medicine,
motorcycles, children,
grandkids, good coffee,
air conditioning,
electricity, good teeth,
this poem.
Today is about all the good!
Look both ways with a grateful mind and heart.
Mind the gaps but see the good.
Today we contrive stories from a cityscape photo with a narrow street from Roger Bultot. Rochelle has set it all up on her blog and we post as directed by her wonderfulness.
For Friday Fictioneers we write micro-stories of 100 words or fewer given ideas germinated by a new photo on Wednesday of each week, provided by various participants. You can read the rules over on Rochelle’s blog and join in the fun. Here is the photo and my story for this week.
Genre: Ethnic Fiction
Word Count: 100
Title: Crucible Mossad
***
They stopped jogging.
Chava whispered, “It’s the white truck. Remove the gas cap. You won’t see the nano drone. Wait two seconds, replace the cap, and run. I’ll meet you at Freeda’s.”
Tzitta moaned, “You distract the guards. I’ll be gone before they notice. Sexeh outfit, Sista.”
Five minutes later they ducked into Freeda’s Deli. An old man yelled, “Check the ice!”
Look both ways but take a side.
Mind the gaps, cameras, and guards.
Run like the wind.
Click on Ziva David, former Mossad on NCIS portrayed by Cote de Pablo, to read all the wonderful micro stories written by participants.
Gloss: Nu is a Yiddish expression to ask a simple question instead of using words such as “well” or “so.” Oy gevalt! means oh, violence! It is used to express shock or amazement. Ess gezunt is deli slang for eat in good health. Everybody knows mazel tov, right?
I expect to surpass 37,000 words today. That keeps me on track to finish up 50,000 one week from tomorrow, on November 30th.
I thought the project I chose was going to be easy. Answering 127 questions about my past and myself has taken more time than I expected. I laughed at questions about my favorite hairdo and making a dinner party menu. Yes, I did that, but we called them haircuts (like crewcut) not hairdos, even though they were.
Memories are not forever. Sometimes there’s not much to say. Often, I must ask questions. Like yesterday, I had to ask Yolonda the name of the drive-in burger place where we met. She sent me an article about it closing in the 1970s.
Research can be fun, but to write enough words each day, I must answer four or five questions with four to five hundred words each. And each question is different and unpredictable.
As I enter my fourth week of this self-inflicted Nano challenge, I feel like I will not do it again. It’s a lot. However, I’ve managed to keep up with everything else.
In addition to writing for Nano, I’ve posted at least two poems and one essay each week. On the 8th, I accepted a challenge to write a short prose piece on dVerse, a poetry writing webpage. The problem there was making time to read and respond to 40-plus other bloggers.
I’ve also written three micro-fiction stories for the Friday Fictioneers challenge (30-ish to read and respond to), with one more to do before Nano ends next week.
The weekend of November 5th through the 7th, we drove to west Texas to visit with Julie and her bunch for grandson’s last football game of the season and his 16th birthday.
(Christian Ashby #74, Colorado City, TX Wolves.) When you find yourself the varsity center and defensive nose-guard on your high school football team as a sophomore.
I’ve also managed to complete several home honey-do and self-assigned projects. I’ve been shopping several times and there is more to do this week in preparation for our family’s Thanksgiving on Saturday.
Except for three or four days, I exercised every day by walking or swimming. I’ve been reading as much as I can (finally completed Papa Hemingway) and trying to figure out what to read next.
I tried doing my Saturday morning writers group zoom meetings. That hasn’t worked well. I’ve had to leave early on two occasions because I couldn’t concentrate (needed to be writing for Nano), and I’ve passed on two others. And now I’ve done this report.
Today, two of my favorite people conspired to inspire Friday Fictioneers. Magnificent Rochelle teamed up with photographer extraordinaire, Dale, to throw us on the old woodpile.
We write micro-stories of 100 words or fewer given ideas mused by a new photo each week, provided by other creative and imaginative compatriots. You can read the rules over on Rochelle’s blog and join in the fun. Here is the photo and my story for this week.
Click for Sammi’s blog and links to other blogs for prose and poems.
Timeless Reflections
For twenty-seven thousand days and nights
what you have seen is not all that ever was.
You see in me today’s truth, one perpetual now.
With one look I never judged anyone.
I reflected an eternal present
without darkness, forgiving the past,
each glimmer gone, days and nights
numbered and stacked
upon your tired shoulders.
Like ashes from wood burned
in past fires, days forgotten, names confused,
adjusted appearances, time
carefully dealt from fate’s shuffled deck,
one at a time until there was none.
Lines of life get clearer, youth
forgotten there, inside grandfather’s mirror.
Mirrors can’t look both ways.
The reflection they cast is only today.
Mind the gaps and fix the cracks, everyone has history.
This mirror hung in my grandfather’s house 100 years ago, then in our dining room from before the day I was born. Click on the photo to read Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Mirror.”
Are we united? One,
indivisible nation
facing all that division
and diversion
has to offer.
When politically
trapped rhetoric becomes
the dark knight, when
lies form gospel,
when logic is lost, when
hate becomes faith,
we form our own
deep “Troubles”
dis-united.
On this Vet’s Day,
let us remember,
and never forget,
why we are here.
Look both ways and work for peace.
Mind the gaps as we make it a better world.
Another Wednesday as marvelous Rochelle inspires us for Friday Fictioneers. We write micro-stories given ideas by a new photo each week, provided by creative and imaginative compatriots. You can read the rules over on Rochelle’s blog and join in the fun. Here is the photo and my story for this week.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Word Count: 100
Title: Blind Man’s Bluff*
If Russians discovered us, we’d be captured or killed as spies. The last we saw before submerging to the bottom of the fjord were escarpments and mountains.
Life in a submarine a thousand feet down on the ocean floor is tense with fear and physically miserable. A whisper meant discovery and death. We sat for days entombed in dark silence.
Our air gone foul; our batteries low; we decided to escape. We started. Slowly, we crawled between underwater mountains.
Then, the skipper’s voice, “We’re clear. Surfacing in international waters. Another day at the office for Cold War bubbleheads, eh mates?
Look both ways as you run silent and deep.
Mind the safety of gaps between glacial mountains.
Learn the endurance capabilities of human life.
***
Click on picture of the Spy Submarine (USS Connecticut) to read other stories from the same prompt.
*Title from the Book, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew.
Click the graphic to go to Sammi’s Blog. There you may read more prose or poems, and you can play along.
Yearning for Old Broadway
The Empire State’s
wonderful people
of the city that never sleeps.
Coney Island, Manhattan,
Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.
That tall building, George M!,
Lady Liberty, the Bronx,
‘the city so nice
they named it twice,’
Gotham,
Broadway Joe, the fucking Yankees
in the Big Apple.
Herald Square, Times Square.
How I want to be there.
Sadly, the day of many hearts
broken by hate.
I love New York!
Look both ways.
Take the Staten Island Ferry and the NYC Subway.
Mind the gap, as in watch your step in the City of Five Boroughs.
Our Literary Journey 