#coffeebreak: go back to the ocean
This week’s 10 minute writing challenge. Share an excerpt from your response to the photo below in the comments area.
go back to the ocean, back to where you came from, originally uploaded by Rowena R.
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Well I guess I’m the first this week:
This sort of thing will continue, Finch said, throwing the paper onto the desk. He drew a line across the nearby whiteboard and then above it he wrote the word ‘relocation’ and thought about it for a second, then added ‘MASS’ in front of it in capitals. The others in the room put down their cups of tea and one pushed his away into the centre of the table as if the milk had suddenly soured. On the newspaper there was a picture of a woman’s hand extending out from a river and a rescue worker strained to take hold of it except that it wasn’t a river at all, it was a street and there was a traffic sign nearby that said “yield” and an overhead one advertising ‘tobacco’ and next to it ‘leathergoods’. And by the gap between their hands and the stretch of their arms it was obvious that the next photograph would have shown the woman’s arm gone and the rescue worker’s arm gone limp and silent like the dead bough of a sapling. And this emotion filled the room, soured the tea and made the biscuits lying on a nearby tray suddenly seem overly sweet, whilst Finch gathered his fist in the air and set it down on the table like a full stop.
On the dining cloth Finch sketched plans for how it would happen. The likely continents to go under first. What it would mean from a power perspective. Food supplies. His eye’s lit up as he shifted to engineering, construction. He hastily sketched plans for something that to the boys looked like a mechanical insect but he assured them that it was a submersible crane. This is the sort of thing that will be needed, he said, dabbing the ink of the pen on the cloth. We’ll need visionaries to get it done. Beside the crane he had drawn pod-like flotation devices with connector rods to structures that sat above the ocean of blue ink he had filled in. Gentlemen, he said, throwing his fist on the table. There is enough here to make us all rich. And at mention of the word one of them, who had been thumbing a mobile phone, stopped and looked up. More than rich, continued Finch. Gods.
Yeah sorry, I didn’t get around to having a crack at this yesterday. Still, here I am. (:
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sketching:
little bit of a weird photo. kid with a helmet (?)and some birds. the way he/she is holding his/her arms indicates a sort of excitement. perhaps a little bit special, who knows?
obvious route would be to write something about a keeper (babysitter/minder) taking a special kid out for a walk pre-dawn and seeing this misty shot. kind of like garden state crossed with gilbert grape. not going to happen. take the kid out of the picture and you’ve got an interesting scene, with just the (obviously photoshopped) birds wheeling around there.
so rather than accuse the image of manipulation and leave it at that, maybe i should give them a reason for being there. they look like sea-birds. seagulls. oh, shit I just noticed the title. ‘go back to the ocean’, poo, thought I was being original for a second.
alright. scrap sea-birds. how about the mist? there looks to be a building to the left there, along with the trees around the perimeter of the oval. could they be lost and getting back tot eh building? lost in a mist, but brought back by the cries of the birds? ig euss it’ll have to do. already chewed up 5 minutes. the kid cna not have a helmet on, and not be special. just a kid. a niece, or nephew perhaps. not entiiiirely sure what I’ll be trying to say, if anything.
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writing:
Matthew and his cousin Jeremy had set out on a walk at morning tea time. Their exercise was motivated by a desire to escape the confines of the country mansion that their family had rented for the weekend gathering. There were only so many aunties one could smile and inform of one’s age before one became a smart-arse and asked them their vintage right back. In fact the two boys were very similar in age; both were ten, and only three months separated them, making them the perfect play partners.
The morning was bitterly cold, and they had begrudgingly been rugged up against the winter chill by their parents. Soon, though, they were out of view of the mansion, and away from the watchful eye of their parents. Comments on the frosty climate became teasing that one or the other couldn’t handle it, became a suggestion of a game to test their mettle. Matthew began the game by taking off his outer coat. Jeremy followed suit. They felt the creep of the cold inching its way deeper into their overshirts, coming close to their skin but stopping an inch out as their hearts continued to beat warmth around their body. Jeremy continued by removing his overshirt, and here the cold overcame his heart and he felt the prickle of the two temperatures colliding. Matthew removed both his overshirt and his undershirt in one cloth-stretching action, and the race was now on. Belts were pulled, buttons undone, and finally the two boys stood in the middle of the field, shivering despite their bravado, in only their underwear.
Matthew pointed to a distant tree, “Race you!” They bolted off, leaving their clothes as discarded skins, steaming slightly as the morning mist pooled over the hills.
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Thanks again for the prompt.
Another sermon / exercise in evangelism:
There is an enormous difference between letting go and giving up. Sometimes to let go is the hardest part of the battle, and also the most necessary. There is so much peace and contentment in the words ‘letting go’. It’s part of the Buddhist belief construct which I find so pragmatic and appealing, a lesson in how not to grow too attached to worldly possessions, and our emotions are those possessions we hold most tenaciously.
I let go of my dream in that moment, but I was not giving up. It was time to do something else, to carve myself out a new direction. No longer would I be tied, kicking, wallowing, obsessional to my dream. People drown like that. I had swallowed a fair amount already, now it was time to swallow my pride, or risk asphyxiation. I had lost perspective into myself and my situation. A situation which somehow had crept up on me, disguised as a familiar friend but then sinking that warm blade of misery deep into my rib cage. Sometimes trouble is opportunity dressed in the garb of a worker, this time, it was in reverse. I had asked for it all. I’d created my opportunities. I’d done the hard work. It was direction and perspective I was lacking. I had only myself to blame. Those regurgitated words “money can’t buy happiness”, went echoing through my consciousness.
I’d fallen from that place of happiness. I thought somehow I could buy my freedom and sense of fulfilment with enough coin. I fell sorely short of that goal. I had been following my discerning gut to get into this situation – a gut that never lied. But then I went too far. It started out as a ideal and I turned it. I tainted it sickeningly into some kind of perversive obsession. How did my life become so confused? Before I knew it I was stealing from the beggars that lined the walls of my soul. These beggars had names like Hope and Belief. And when you are devoid of hope, you truly are alone and desperate.
But it hadn’t always been like this, I wondered, meditated on this thought. Was there a moment, a point in time when things had started to sour, was there an instant when I could have said no? Could have saved myself from so much misery…
We make ourselves through the choices we bring day after day, moment after moment. There is always a chance to say no, or yes. Our gut knows when to illuminate these moments. These choices define who we are, whether we will be loved or loathed by those we hold close.
Nice Phil. Has a very Atonement feel to it. I especially like this line: “here the cold overcame his heart and he felt the prickle of the two temperatures colliding.”
Always enlightening Benjamin. When are you starting some sort of cult?
Oh man I was totally going to write something and then read all of your stories and now have been intimidated back into my hiding hole. Keep up the good stuff!
Come on Elena. Writing is a creation, not a contest…
Yeah, carn Elena. Enough of this self-doubt and self-censorship. Embrace the challenge! The only way you’re going to learn how far your limits lie is to test them. And hey, we’re all friends here. (:
feeling like I’ve let the team down! Prepare for incoming Simpso-prose!
He died. Died. DIED!
Arms outstretched, cage door left open.
So it goes.
And birds soar above in the soot filled sky. The earth crying tears of soil into the atmosphere. The man, who was (if nothing else) a man of earth and grit and dirt and crushed shell thinks yeah, how fitting.
He wonders if this is the beginning of the trip. There is another planet out there waiting for him. He knows it. The soot pushes him upwards towards SOMETHING and seeing as how he doesn’t (never did, never will) believe in an afterlife he assumed this was still just plain old life, albeit without the flesh, or the being late for work, or even that whole gravity thing. This must be the trip, he thinks. But how am I getting there?
He can’t tell if he is one of the birds, part of the soot, or something else all together. The young girl on the shoreline waving up at him. The dog barking at the birds. The fish in the cool slime encrusted water.
He feels eyes looking down at him, and he sees reflected in the pupils the black words on the white page that he realises is him. The body made text. The dream encoded.
And sooner or later, he thinks, I’ll have to give up this charade. This pretence that a disembodied voice is telling my story. Some random, godlike voice. No. I need to take ownership. It is me, sitting here typing this, still bound by my flesh, still trying not to be late for work. That dust comforts me, the idea of swirling around forever, or settling down forever. Being consumed, regurgitated, consumed again. Multiple shots at getting the thing right.
Everything is invention (of differing degrees of acceptability). Everything is disjointed. I have written this too slowly, written without a goal.
The cage door far below, still open. Inside: a fresh, shiny world waits for me, offers to envelope me.
I die, or I am born. Fill in as appropriate.
possibly the most nonsensical thing I’ve ever written.
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