Month: February 2022

Overcoming Self

Green Sky © Chayanan Phumsukwisit | Dreamstime.com

Emerald skies (wait, how do you have emerald skies? I’ll have to research what gases have to be in the atmosphere for skies to be emerald) greeted him in the morning as he stepped outside. His (what would you call a motorcycle-type vehicle that doesn’t touch the ground, like in Star Wars?) floater beckoned.

He wanted to hit the road (wait, why would there be roads if vehicles don’t touch the ground?)

Are you going to let me tell the story or second-guess every word I try to write? (BWAA HA HAHA HA HAHAHA ha ha ha ha ha!) What? (I pulled you away from imagining a guy taking a ride on his floater under emerald skies.) Damn you, Self-Editor, you nailed me before he was barely out of bed. Can I get on with the story? (No, I’ve driven it out of your mind. BWA HA ha ha.)

So, you see, class, you have to put your Self-Editor in handcuffs, lock them in a trunk, and walk to the other side of the house where you can’t hear them screaming how they can’t breathe. Because when your Self-Editor is in the house, you can’t breathe. (That’s funny, I hit the wrong key somewhere and autocorrect changed “breathe” into “create.” How appropriate.)

He wondered whether he should get a cup of coffee before he started. He could almost taste the bitter jolt of woe-up, the hot liquid easing down his throat to break up the morning frog, the comfort of being warmed up from the inside, but he wasn’t ready to be comforted yet. The days had slipped by one, two, three, and he was three days closer to the day when it would be too late.

He knew — intellectually — that the day was inevitable, it comes to everyone, but he couldn’t muster the required sense of urgency. He tried slapping himself figuratively and he tried slapping himself literally, and still he remained calm in the face of the literal deadline.

“Maybe,” he told the mirror, “calm is acceptance. Maybe some days just slip by, and the more you beat yourself up about it, the less you get on with living.”

“Yep,” said the man in the mirror, “it’s what you call a vicious circle.”

“Everyone calls it a vicious circle, not just me,” he said.

“Don’t get me started,” the mirror replied.

“You talking to me?”

“Oh, stop, that’s a cliche by now.”

Oh, deer!

I’m thinking I should take the dogs out in the backyard for some midwinter frolicking in the sun, when I look out and see the white-tailed deer strolling across the field next door toward our bird feeders. The dogs can frolic later.

I was about to compose a few lines about living in a place where wild animals go strolling on a Sunday afternoon, when I realized, “Wait, a deer at the feeder?” and grabbed the camera.

A few dozen shots later, I sat down to write about the awesome beauty of this common-but-not-everyday encounter, and a couple sentences later I peeked out the window again, to see her gone.

There is a time to write, and a time to grab a camera, and most of all there is a time just to soak in the beauty and enjoy the life all around.

Cliff’s Notes Novel

The journey was epic, but the Woodywacs finally made it from one place to another.

The reason for the journey is lost to the ages. Were they leaving their ancestral home to find a new homeland, or were they returning home? No one knows. They just know that the epic journey was made and the Woodywacs have called Woodywacacia home for the ensuing centuries.

Would they ever leave Woodywacacia again? The Woodywacs would tell you there was no need — the land is fertile and generous, so only a catastrophe could make them move.

Enter Katastrofee, goddess of malice. She swooped in one day and burned the crops and earthquaked half the village to rubble.

But the Woodywacs gathered round and drove her away, if not forever, then for the foreseeable future, and they lived happily ever after although ever vigilant for the return of Katastrofee.