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Flash Friday: The Happening

February 19th, 2010

This is an exercise derived from one of my favorite novels. Playing with words and styles can be so much fun..


                                        

The Happening

                                        

Florina Hapsin smiled.

She walked naked across the yard. The street lay far in the distance. A sharp trickle of sun floated downward from the sky over the vacant grass. The grass seemed resolute, the dirt rotating. The dirt had the warmness of one sliced moment when expectation meets simplicity and emotions are held in a fusion more powerful than nature. The dirt was dark, compounded over centuries.

The street in the distance was only a thin black barrier breaking the world into two. The ground below grew deep, unchanged. It existed purely to sustain—so that the world seemed planted in space, a rock positioned on nothing, anchored to the body of the girl in the yard.

Her body ascended above the earth. It was a body of smooth curves and angles, each segment broken into lines. She walked simply, her hands moving with her body, effortlessly. She felt the ease of her shoulders hanging below her head, the curve of her belly, and the blood resting in her veins. She felt the air around her, at the edges of her skin. The air blew her hair gently into waves. Her hair was neither blond nor red, but the exact color of ripe sunrise.

She smiled at the event that happened earlier that night and at the events to follow in the future.

She knew the minutes to come would be hard. There were inquiries to face and decisions to be made. She realized that she needed action. She also knew that she could not think, because everything was already apparent, because her decision was made long ago, and because she needed to smile.

She tried to ponder. But she digressed. She was looking at a blade of grass.

She ceased smiling as she reached awareness of the world around her. Her face was like a gift of nature—a thing one could appreciate, accept, and adore. It had round cheeks over smooth, rosy dimples; green eyes, warm and exploding; a full mouth, slightly open, the mouth of a thinker or an idler.

She paused, lay her bare skin against the smooth slivers. Today she needed to feel. Tomorrow she would re-enter the world on her own terms.

                                        

Also, I plan to add some artwork to this piece later, if packing and a going-away luncheon don’t eat up my entire day.
                                        
©Lindsay Oberst
                                        
                                          

If you like what you read, please stay connected with Google Friend Connect (on the side bar) and I’ll try to make our friendship worthwhile, or subscribe to Word-Wild Romp posts by e-mail if you prefer a non-personal interaction. Of course, you can do both.
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Friday Flash: Emotional Programming

February 12th, 2010

This is my piece that is in the new 6S Love Anthology (purchase it for some good winter reading). I ordered my copy yesterday and can’t wait to read all the other (love)ly words. I’m going to use this for my #fridayflash because I’m busy re-designing this site and playing in the snow. It’s short—six sentences, so read it and think about it…


                                        
                                          

Emotional Programming

                                        
                                          

When she heard the words magical and ecstatic, her heart swooned, tumbling down a candy red corridor. She pictured fairies with wands spreading love dust and men—all engaged in passionate flutters—prancing wildly before her. She believed the taste of heaven would gush down her throat when the right one licked her tongue.

What she couldn’t know, was how love is an art, both uncontrollable and incessant.

When her ripe-tomato lips touched those of her roommate in her all-girl collegiate housing, she wept, curling herself into a ball and never unfurling. The ruling madam came and locked her away, feeding her only a diet of Disney, with the occasional fairy tale spun deceivingly.fairy

                                        
©Lindsay Oberst
                                        
                                          

If you like what you read, please stay connected with Google Friend Connect (on the side bar) and I’ll try to make our friendship worthwhile, or subscribe to Word-Wild Romp posts by e-mail if you prefer a non-personal interaction. Of course, you can do both.
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Slice of Zen-spiration: make love

February 11th, 2010

                                   

                                   
This weeks video zen-spiration is “Make Love” by Daft Punk, an electronic music duo from France, in honor of this love-filled weekend. I’m not a huge—pink and red!—Valentines Day person. And, I think the holiday is commercialism-saturated (like all holidays in America,) and causes a lot of undue stress and unnecessary purchases: over-sized teddy bears, obligatorily-worded paper and syrupy-sweet fake candy products.

It’s also quite silly for people to moan about being alone on this one day of the year. Seriously? It’s one day like any other day of the year. You have friends and family and other people who matter, even if you’re without a partner, and if you don’t—love yourself. Of course, I don’t want to dismiss the holiday entirely because love—however you choose to define it—should not be dismissed.

I recently read an essay by a Pagan explaining how prayer can be important for people in non-Christian ways. The author, Silverwolf Sanctuary, writes:

Praying to an extrinsic Divine does not mean relinquishing free will or accountability to said power, but demonstrates the ability to recognize and accept a sacred balance – light and dark, male and female, internal and external Divine.

In the same way, love can be meaningful in ways other than its overly-spouted form. Love should not be cheapened. Instead, love should be a celebration of balance.

This way of viewing love should be cheered. Need ideas?
                                   

Ways to Use Love on Valentines Day
(for writers and creatives)

                                   
Love yourself. Buy yourself a new notebook. Come on. You know you want to. Empty, bound paper in your hands along with a few new easy-rider pens. Wouldn’t that feel nice?

Love someone close to you. Allow your relationship with someone close to you to inspire a poem or a painting or plant a flower in their honor (wouldn’t that be better than over-priced roses from Kroger?).

Love your neighbor. Don’t take this one too cliche. If it’s all about balance, you should try to love or appreciate those around you whom you interact with daily, but don’t directly connect with. Write them a note, or draw a picture. The personal matters. I think we forget this too often.

Love the world. Write or create something that gives back. For example, HOW Journal publishes a mix of writers and artists with an effort to raise money and awareness for the 15 million children worldwide that have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. They publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art.

Love other creative people. Creators try and try and try. And rarely are they rewarded. Comment creatively and meaningfully on writer and designer blogs. Get to know other people in the blogosphere. They will appreciate it.

What non-commercialized ways can you show love this V-Day?


Also, this video has a really interesting story, which I discovered through the comments on YouTube. Daft Punk made a full-length film, Electroma. Apparently, it’s extremely sad and emotional. This video is from that film.

The characters in the film are trying to be human. After discovering they are robots, they kill themselves without realizing they were human after all because they showed emotion—something only a human can do. This bubbles up ideas in my head..no time now, but we’ll see for later.

                                   
                                   

Side note: I will be re-designing my Web site sometime this weekend, or possibly early next week because I should have some free time on my hands (I know my current design is causing some viewing issues for some and I apologize. If you have suggestions, bring ‘em on).

So why will I have some free time? Well, I quit my job without any secure opportunities (If you want to tell me I’m crazy, go for it. I’m starting to like the sound of it.) I will be moving to Atlanta in the upcoming weeks—some house in the Little Five Points area. I’m excited to soon live in such an eclectic area. Of course, I’m going to get lost at least a bazilion times because I won’t have a Garmin. But, anyways, I’m keeping most elements of the current site, but the new site will be fixed-width and better explained and organized—hopefully.
                                   

If you like what you read, please stay connected with Google Friend Connect (on the side bar) and I’ll try to make our friendship worthwhile, or subscribe to Word-Wild Romp posts by e-mail if you prefer a non-personal interaction. Of course, you can do both.
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Flash Fiction: An Occurence in Mistine Valley

February 5th, 2010

Not sure of my feelings on this piece for some reason. Also, it probably needs a bit more editing, but here it goes.
                                        


                                        

An Occurence in Mistine Valley

                                        

Artrose Scull sat slumped at the center of his one-room home. Life was dull; the ends burnt and crispy. No more middle soft and gooey like little girl thigh flesh after a sweetened, hour-long bath, or new beginning glaring before him, a buzzing black hole.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had washed the bits of life from the crevices in his skin, or stood outside in the crystal rain and felt life breathe within his veins. His one window was chipped a bit, a spider-webbed crack rising to the top and glinting when the sun shone with bright sparks of happy light. Rarely did this happen, though, for his little abode sat shoved between corners of mountainous rocks in a misty valley.

Most days he sat on his rumpled bed and paid lip-service to old newspaper articles piled in scraps, or pondered why tenure at the most prestigious schools of his time had been grasped away from him three months before its arrival.

“Yes. Yes. The affair. For chrissakes! Why such rumpuses about sex and singleton moments?” he often wondered.

He acquired food and snippets of mousy news from the other inhabitant of the valley, Sundown Shell, who had found ways to whip mold into pies topped with edible flowers in the sunrise of spring or simple syrups best made in the moonlight of summer.

Other times, he practiced entomophagy—a subject he once took as a college class because he thought the word sounded melodious. “Entomophagy,” he’d whispered and sent the word rising in the air with hopes that it would carry him to higher things (of course, no longer was he a dweller of melodies or dreams or other wispy things).

Ant larvae was most delicious to him. Sometimes he ground meal worms into flour. He was always thankful for the crack in his window and the hole is his wooden door which allowed his meals to arrive. He didn’t miss lamb stew at all. In fact, he felt healthier with meals now lower in fat and higher in protein. Not that health was much of a concern. He knew time was never ending, and his body built slight.

For some some unspoken reason, he never dined on cockroaches.

On this particular glum day that he slumped in his chair with a particularly plump larvae pie, Artrose Skull rubbed his blackened fingers together and had one original thought:

“By Molly! I’ll teach the cockroaches to dance.”

He then grabbed one of the many crispy critters scuttling around his feet and smiled with teeth jagged like mountain tops.

Soon, the cockroaches rose to their back limbs, spun to their forelimbs and something like clapped their hands.With each step choreographed by their dreary puppet master, their feelers shuddered slightly and their eyes glimmered, window-like and green.

After awhile, Artrose Scull’s hair paused at gray without reaching a white death, and his fingers cracked open his stone door. He stepped out, sniffing the air thickly laden with dew. Then he climbed the mountain above his head.

With each new glorious cockroach performance, he painted rainbows, and when travelers stopped to watch, they paid in lumps of glittering gold and always did they shed tears of delight.
artrose-bow

©Lindsay Oberst

                                                                                                                                             

What does this story say to you?

                                          
If you like what you read, please stay connected with Google Friend Connect (on the side bar) and I’ll try to make our friendship worthwhile, or subscribe to Word-Wild Romp posts by e-mail if you prefer a non-personal interaction. Of course, you can do both.

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Story will be in Six Sentences Love Anthology

February 4th, 2010

                 

This anthology will be published by Six Sentences next week. I can’t wait to read the other artist entries. If you don’t know about Six Sentences, check it out. It’s inspired me, although many of my pieces end up being longer than six sentences.

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