Sunday, May 6, 2012

Losing your marbles?



I am. I thought May would slow some, but it is not to be. Much juggling. (And now I've gone and mixed my metaphors.)
To flash your fiction today, write of marbles spilled...juggled balls akimbo...plates spinning in midair, or dropped and broken. Write of things that are round, grounded in blurred edges and smooth in your palm. Write of colors spilled loose, and the way they flow into each other, and what's found there. Write of childhood games...marbles, hide and seek, Miss Mary Mack. Or take this photo, and spill what you will. Just write. And flash it here.

28 comments:

  1. Oops. Forgot photo credit (see what I mean?)
    It's here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy6white/2963290907/

    Happy writing.

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  2. Here is my flash fiction:
    I juggle days. They are rounded at the edges with no sharp delineation of beginning and end, no angles or events reaching out at the sides to fit them into one another like a puzzle, a logical pattern. They are random, identical, freefalling.
    I juggle days. They fall into one another and careen off, somersaulting toward me or away as I grab them from the air. I try to control them, order them into a clear progression, but they fly from my fingers and spin without order or purpose.
    I juggle days. They are hard and colourless and heavy with time. They surround me, innumerable, and I am lost in them, unable to find my way, frantically juggling with nothing to show for my effort except that I have not been buried under them yet. Not yet.
    I juggle days. I am recuperating, emerging slowly from a curtain of fear and pain, juggling as I stagger across the stage. They are becoming heavier, my arms weaker, my breath failing as they fall over me, each one like the others. I catch them and send them up into the air, into the future, a future I want to fall into after them: a future I may never reach. I may tire too much. I may let them fall. They are so heavy.
    I juggle days...
    - Jane Ann McLachlan

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    1. Ah, Jane. I love this. It reads as fine lyric prose, itching to be put in poetic form. I states how I feel most days. My juggling is mostly as your last paragraph; one of surrender to the inevitable disaster waiting at the end, taunting with its lack of satisfaction toward my production. This piece said so much about my life. It was like reading from my own journal.

      I thoroughly enjoyed this. Well done, Jane, well done.

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    2. Jane, this is just superb. I echo Claudsy's comments above, and will add that this line in particular hit home for SometimesMe:
      "They are hard and colorless and heavy with time."
      Oh, how that makes my heart ache for us all, that so much of life's day's begin to feel like that.

      The repetition works so well for you here, also. Just a powerful, powerful piece. Well done. Thank you so much for posting! :)

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  3. This came to mind:
    My aunt’s studio, the smell of oils, the pallets, the blend of colours, the pile of canvases and the easel. That beautiful easel. Towering over the nine-year-old me “Can I paint, can I paint?” “Look there,” my aunt says, “there on the table.” I see marbles on the table. “Look at the reflection, look at the light, draw the light. When you draw twenty...when you draw twenty you can help me paint a background.” I get out my sketchbook and pencils, start drawing marbles. I loved that day. So many times I’ve built a door for that day. Closed the door. Closed the door and shut the rest of the world out.

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    1. A good memory of a good experience. You painted a lovely picture here, Veronica. I couldn't smell the paints, see the easel and the marbles. You opened that door for me to see into a young girl's heart and mind.

      Thank you so much for the peek.

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    2. Oh, Veronica! This line literally gave me chills:
      "So many times I've built a door for that day."
      That's powerful stuff there. Love that we have that power, to build doorways to our memories, to pieces of ourselves.
      This is a perfectly painted moment, and the connection to it lingers, still.
      Gorgeous.

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  4. WHOLE-SOME MEMORY

    As a young girl growing up on a farm in the Midwest, I learned to make do with what we had. We worked hard on the farm, but when it came to playtime, we played outside with what God gave us: imagination and a vast open space in which to roam.

    Occasionally, however, my sister and I would receive hand-me-down toys from our older cousins. As secondhand goods, we made do there, as well (our Scrabble board had three holders for tiles and no one ever got to be “the hat” in Monopoly, because that piece was missing; and Barbies always had “bad hair”).

    One treasure that will always stay in my memory was the tin that rattled as its contents rolled: marbles. That collection of tiny glass orbs fascinated me. I had no idea what to do with them, but I was continuously drawn to them. I loved the sound they made as they clicked together, the feel of their smooth surface, and the way I could see what they looked like at their very center.

    At a time in my life when things were disjointed and often unpredictable, I returned time and again to that collection – just to let my fingers linger over the tiny little examples of perfect wholeness.

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    1. This is wonderful, Paula. Such a poignant slice of the past, beautifully portrayed. LOVED Barbies always had "bad hair," and that missing Monopoly hat. And your last line? Just absolutely perfect.

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    2. Paula, your atmosphere here also catches me. Yes, the images about the Barbies' hair and the missing Monopoly hat - great! What about the clothes? No, sorry, I just think it's wonderful.

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  5. I, too, remember a childhood formed from elements of farm life, playing in the woods, and coming to know wildlife and wild things better than people. Ours was a time of hand-me-downs, imagination, and exploration of the world.

    Marbles came right after jacks and we were never taught to play marble games for they were considered another form of gambling. We made up our own games for them, having seen examples on the occasional TV show like The Little Rascals.

    Ours had cat's eyes of varying colors, held captive within each center. Those eyes also held mystery; how did they get inside, why were they different colors, who got to claim the green ones; always my favorite.

    Thank you for sharing your rounded memories, Paula. They helped bring back some of my own and helped establish another link to a past that doesn't appear often anymore.

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    1. Oh, sometimes, for those simpler times. Love your line above, Claudsy, "held captive within each center." I know you meant to merely comment on Paula's piece, but true to your talent, you've woven us a piece of yourself. Lovely. :)

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    2. That's so sweet, De. Thank you. Yes this was merely a comment, but Verbose is my middle name. I can't just leave something plain. I have to embellish, just a little.

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  6. Such wonderful offerings all!!! I wish my marbles would hold still long enough for me to grab one. Not today...words are slippery. This is a great prompt, De!

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  7. Flashy Fiction: A Dog’s Best Friend

    It was a few days after the dog turned all generous and sharing, depositing the lower third of a brown lizard on the Berber carpet, that things started going missing. Nothing valuable really, which made it all the more curious. The first object to vanish was one of my favourite red potholders. A few days later, I caught sight of the dog trotting out the back the door, head held high, with the other red potholder in her mouth.

    Perhaps I should introduce my dog at this point. Her name is Trine, pronounced Tree-nah. She doesn’t acknowledge any other pronunciation or variation. Trine is a dachshund. She’s 16-years-old.

    “Hey!” I shouted. She ignored me. “Trine! Stop right there!” She kept prancing out the door, across the patio, and into the garden like a very short Lipizzaner horse. “Drop it!” and so she did, straight into a freshly dug, knee-deep hole next to the Oleander bush.

    Trine loves to dig holes. It’s in her nature and design to dig holes and then jump into them, chasing anything that moves. She can disappear down a hole faster than a golf ball.

    Trine and I looked into her deep hole. “What’s all this stuff?” I asked. Only a doggie person speaks to their pet as if they’ll reply. Not unsurprisingly, she said nothing. Her mantra is don’t apologise and don’t admit anything.

    The hole was filled with treasure. My youngest son’s GI Joe action figure that went AOWL a month earlier, the miniature travel alarm clock that my husband thought he’d left in a Singaporean hotel, one white sport sock, one black woollen sock, a Christmas ornament from 3 months ago, three red clothespins, a orange Nerf ball, and an assortment of pencils, pens, screws and multi-coloured glass marbles.

    I suspect that there are holes all around the garden filled with children’s toys, articles of clothing, and items that we’ve yet to realise are missing. I started excavating the hole, dusting soil off socks, shaking the clock to see if it still worked (it did!), stuffing my pockets with screws, nails, marbles and clothespins ... but Trine complained deeply from the I’m-miffed-regions of her throat when GI Joe was retrieved. She was fond of him, and I wasn’t going to separate a miffed dog from her best friend.

    Trine lipizzaned off to a new spot in the garden, GI Joe caught tight between her jaws, and she started digging. Again. It’s true: A man and his dog are rarely separated.

    ~ Misky
    http://miskmask.wordpress.com

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    1. Misky, see comment below...
      Jeannine's story snuck in between as I was posting.
      ;)

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    2. And, OH, this:
      "Her mantra is don’t apologise and don’t admit anything."
      :)!!!

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    3. And the verb "lipizzaned"! And that last "man and his dog" line! Just.So.Wonderful.

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    4. Ah, Misky, this is super. I could picture it all, the prance, the hole, the attitude. I've had dogs like that, thought not quite so clepto.

      I chuckled all the way through this. The dog has a thing for red, evidently. My question; what happened to the pot holder?

      Love this, Misky. Truly a good sport.

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    5. Thanks, Claudsy! I still have the potholders, and they're still my favourites. A bit worn along the edges but I keep binding them back up with thread. Trine was a good dog, funny as all heck, but my current dog, Molly, is my all time favourite. Springer Spaniels are special.

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  8. Oh, yes, this is great. Guess you also enjoyed Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley."

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  9. Thanks, Andrea. I'm sorry; I haven't read Travels with Charley.

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    1. Oh, Jeannine. This is wonderful. I feel her frustration, and then her triumph. Just perfect. Love the marbled metaphor here. Thank you so much for writing to the prompt!

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    2. Jeannine, you have this tenderness that I always seek in whatever I read. You created a character, an image, telling underlying stories of life. You light up both the past and the present here and that's just so great!

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    3. This is wonderful, Jeannine. It shows us so many things, usually unseen, unnoticed. You've quite a way with this type of gentle storytelling.

      I've so enjoyed reading this piece.

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  11. Oh, Misky! You had me from that engaging, endearing first sentence. Wonderful! :)

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    1. Thank you, De. And I'm not sure where my reply to Andrea went, but thanks to her also.

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