This is really good, Mary G! Writing by numbers or as a list definitely adds something. Maybe because the reader's mind is adding in what is not said in-between the list items.
Thank you, J.D.A. It's not a list story, it's just numbered sentences. But I think the numbering makes the action stronger than if it were in paragraph form.
Agree, and why I liked the prompt. The list one I did was endemically numbered, but the second one really had me thinking about each subsequent sentence and it's value, all because of that numbering convention. Wise prompting!
Actually, I can foresee taking existing work I'm evaluating for revision and using the numbering as a tool for sentence economy and value assessment. SO thanks yet again.
Right, exactly! I had actually written this little story the other day and decided to tweak it and number it this morning. I think it works better this way.
Interesting. I thought, because of how well it worked as numbered sentences (ie how much the numbering and the sentences worked together) that you must have written it with that in mind.
I had to do some major tweaking and deleting, etc., to get it to where it is now. I could have written something from scratch this morning, but this one had a hold on me and needed something--so I was happy to see that using this form worked.
1. Iron Springs. She jumps on the sofa and gives everybody the finger. We drive off without her, and then return and finally she gets in the car.
2. Soap Lake. She puts mud all over her body and sits at the edge of the lake with the fat ladies. At night, there’s a bonfire and she dances and dances with Danny’s dad.
3. Penticton. We swim in the pool while she stays inside the hotel room with the shades drawn.
4. Portland. That’s the house she grew up in. But then everybody died and she became an orphan. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
5. The Space Between Her Legs. That’s where you came out. Right there. She points so you can’t miss it.
6. Her Bed. When she yells for you to come, you have to get under the covers with her and she’ll press your head to her body. She’ll smell like darkness.
7. Your Body. This is part of her comedy routine. Your face! Hahahhahaha!!!
8. The Seventh Floor. Where they take her, more than once. She comes home with decoupaged art. Van Gogh bridges and flowers. For a while, she is calm.
I've been thinking about "what is a story?", like you have discussed and your prompts have certainly challenged and widened my thinking on this.
One thing, for me, is that if a piece of writing generates a picture for me, especially a picture with some 'movement' (or perhaps dynamic is a better word for what I am reaching after) and some personality, then that piece of writing falls into the story part of my brain.
This excellent story, Mary, does exactly that. Congrats.
One other thing I have noticed is that every story I love is always also about itself or about that very question "what is story", even if obliquely.
For example, that opening of The Doll's House, in which she opens the front of the house and peers in:
'there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open ! Why don't all houses open like that ? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas! That is—isn't it ?—what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at the dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel...'
I'm going to think about what you're saying. I wonder if it's because in good stories, the beginning has so much contained in it--has the ending embedded already. Has the question the story is asking right there. Has the kernel of the conflict or whatever--is saying "this is what you're in for with this story."
If this is "pure" fiction, wow, you're imagining a really big novelistic relationship (not that it must of necessity be expressed in a novel, of course). But it feels like lived experience, in which case, wow again, some experience! Nonstop pain and aggravation, can't get out!
"She'll smell like darkness". Brilliant. My mother smelled like menstruation, back when I didn't know what that was.
Yes, lived experience here. My mother looms large in my head lately. I think because as I get older, I see so much of her in me. And I understand her much better. I'm grateful for her, though growing up with her was traumatic. So there's a lot to write about. Thanks for the comment.
Wow. This brings me back to the prompt which focused on time. The transition from 8 to 10 accelerated time in a shocking wow, which is true to how memory often works I think: things you can remember as if they were last week which happened decades ago.
Every sentence in this is spare but so full. "She'll smell like darkness" is a description that will stay with me. And the "Fifty-odd years with no tour dates."
This is full of emotion and reads like a spare summary of a novel.
I wish I had the same super-power of transforming the mundane into (numbered) verses. I loved the fire being started repeatedly and all the "etc's" and "so on's"
Love the ending -- and how everything before sets it up too -- how the apparently humdrum, all the such and suches and so and sos, lead us to 'spectacular'.
Great. My oatmeal regimen comes from John Robbins. I forgot a couple of things. Flax seed, and chia seeds, which I grind in a coffee grinder. All together it's a bowl of vitamins and fiber. Oh yeah and a dollop of molasses to top it off.
Took me a moment to realize the numbers were connected to the morphology and then it was a delight to realize. I really like the octave scale with seven intervals as part of the morphology, in addition to Babel two and botanical nine.
I was having trouble coming up with a seven reference among flora and fauna. There is probably a flower with seven petals out there, but I'm not aware of it and too lazy to do deep research (as noted in my preface).
The octave refence comes from me studying a little music theory during the pandemic.
True. "Cat-normal" is a relative concept, meaning "normal for cats" which is not at all like "normal normal." Having been owned by both cats and dogs (as well as other creatures) I can appreciate the inter-species differences.
Had to stop reading Borges before bed. The dreamed man entered my dreams.
9
First thing in the morning was fine, you just had to expect the porridge to taste airier than normal.
8
But it always caused arguments, books at the table. I get it.
7
So, I stopped altogether.
6
No point in banging your head against a wall.
5
Unless that banging knocks something loose, I guess. It’s what happened to Borges, I read. I think. Don’t quote me.
4
Augustus John, though, definitely. Cracked his head on a rock diving into water. Went from capable draughtsman to direct and important artist overnight.
3
Not especially kind though, I heard, not even to those who loved him.
2
Especially to those that loved him.
1
Would I take that crack on the skull, let that dreamed man dream himself?
1. A baby being born, first crowning looking like a shriveled walnut (the wet hair) then unimaginably, more emerging, totally emerging, here!
2. God’s hand on Moses as he shelters in the cleft so as not to die or go blind, then when it’s time, looking, at God’s back. Returning to his followers so radiant they cannot look at the freshness still reflecting from his face.
3. Plants wouldn’t grow without the sun, neither would there be wind. We would all be frozen and dead, except for the tube worms in their deep sea vent bubbles, deep inside the ice, eating bacteria and sulfur. All other parts of the ocean would be frozen solid.
4. The pancakes you made, inspired by the eclipse.
5. A wedding ring, the traditional kind, except more Lord of the Rings.
6. A dilated pupil with a corona iris, the most intense — unseeing or all seeing? — eye you’ve ever seen.
7. An air freshener made by Death, so you sense it and come out the other side grateful to be alive.
8. A flashback to the body caste of the woman sheltering her children at Pompeii. You held your family too, amidst the darkening of the sky. The eclipse like the tubes inside the lava where the bodies used to be.
9. Back home, how quickly we forget what an eclipse is like. Using your phone while the kids display their miraculous-ness and the spring leaves unfurl.
10. An ellipses, sounds similar and there are many, the next one in Spain 2026, then when, forty years later? The separation between them marking fathoms of our lives, babies and kids growing old, some of us, the middle aged and elder, seeing this one for the last time.
So lovely, Erik. From the miracle of birth to pancakes. (I had just such a conversation with my 79 year old friend the other day, about how she wouldn't be around for the next one.)
Oh, this kinda broke my heart :( I really appreciated the build up. Also, I couldn't help noticing how the length of the sentences on the page built on each other. Beautiful, and heartbreaking.
Thank you, Imola! And thank you for noticing. Yes, I used the numbered prompt to guide the words per line. I loved the discipline of that, and it really made me consider my choices.
Your brilliant numeric convention reminds me vaguely, (in the same vein at least) of the poem my daughter loved as a fifth grader and that we continue to love, the one that makes sense read forwards AND backwards but has totally opposite meaning each way.
Yeah, written by an 11th grader. It really turned a corner for my daughter when she was young in terms of realizing the power of written words and where you put them.
How did you come to choose the numeric word-per-sentence building up structure? I love it. Will probably try it myself, or some version of it as a prompt. I like the idea of going up and then back down, and then maybe going up by odd numbers and then only even numbers. I find challenges like that tend to get me thinking in very different and focused ways about the structure while freeing my 'story mind' to wing it iin order to meet the requirements, often resulting in some fresh stuff for me.
I also now find this piece kind of related oddly to the story I did off yesterdays prompt (writing based on a photograph) because mine was at a bus stop. I think your characters might've been in my story, just not mentioned :)
Was it an 11th grader! Wow! That's humbling! I'd been playing around with writing stories which were 10 words, then 30 words, then 50 words, and just seeing how much you could change a story with that discipline, so when I saw the prompt that idea just sprung to mind. I like the idea of going up and down again. It's create when working with characters as well, as you really have to think carefully about your words and how to effectively convey their personalities. I actually wrote this one really quickly. I did it while waiting for my daughter to finish a club, so took about 30 mins start to finish. I think if I did it again I'd like to get the know the characters more before I'd start.
1. The first few times the window was opened, it was opened in Mexico City for old Colonel Freeleigh, alone, ailing, and isolated in his home in Dandelion Wine. His last few minutes were spent crosslegged on the floor, clutching the phone and listening to the bustling city sounds of traffic and people greeting each other.
2. Another time it was opened in Brooklyn, New York. The sounds of pages thoughtfully flipped as a young girl reads rapidly–a book a day, sitting on the fire escape.. A young girl never really acknowledged by the librarian. A young girl who listened for the confident notes her father sang as he mounted the stairs.
3. Once it was opened in Quebec City, and a homesick young woman listened intently for the familiar rhythms and intonation of her native language in the busy Quartier du Petit Champlain. She was heartbroken when someone suddenly closed the window.
4. The window opened suddenly in Cancun, at night, during Spring break. The elderly woman who was listening to reveling partiers instead of the soothing breezes rustling the palm trees and the gentle lapping of waves on the beach was surprised to find herself remembering her own roisterous days. And she was not disappointed by the sounds.
5. It opened in one fluid motion on the island of Maui, just as the South Maui Fish company was opening and tourists were gathering to eat outside. This time, the placid ripple of waves and the breaths of wind in the palms were the perfect background for the hooting, razzing, and chirping of hundreds of tropical birds. The listener begged for extra time.
6. The window was wrenched open abruptly and then slammed shut by a rancorous middle-aged man who “needed his sleep” in Portland, Maine. “Goddamned owls! Shut up already!”
7. Once when the listener was in New York City and homesick, a window opened in London. It was raining and the tires of always hurrying motorists swished in the puddled streets. Big Ben chimed ten ponderous tones before the window was closed.
8. That same listener had to request a window flung wide open to allow the sounds of Vernazza, Italy to penetrate the extended mileage. But it was worth it. The melodic sounds of the rumbling train wheels and the screeching of the brakes provided a rhythmic soundtrack as the town woke to market day.
9. A broken window, a sudden cacophony as a sandlot game in Boston suddenly comes to a halt. Kids scatter. Homeowner runs outside and then laughs.
10, And now a listener tunes in avidly to the sounds of over a century ago from a window flung open in Wichita Falls, Tx–hoping to catch the sounds of her mother's footsteps and laughter as she rode the trolley across town each day to school.
It’s the one in which Colonel Freeleigh is housebound by his family. He is old and frail and they don’t want him to get too excited. So they won’t let the boys come visit him anymore. He calls an old friend in Mexico City who hangs the phone outside the window to let him hear the sounds of the city. Then the nurse finds out what he’s doing and calls the friend. The chapter ends with the window being closed.
The chapters aren't titled, so I'll find this later today. (I pulled down the book yesterday morning, just before your post . . . )
Going a bit technical, I see a triangle which keeps turning. 1-2-3, 3-2-1, 1-3-2 . . . 2-3 . . .
1. the listener
2. the one who opens the window
3. the window (+ location)
Not all lines have all of the points. (Line 2, for example, only has 3--we don't know who opens the window or who's listening. Line 6 merges 2 and 3--no distance is involved. Line 9 does away with the triangle altogether. In 7 and 8, the window opens at the other end, with 2 missing.)
The triangle, asserting itself and falling back, kept me on my toes . . .
This morning, I flung open a window, recorded two minutes of blackbird and church bells. Thank you for the evocative writing.
I hadn’t considered the structure. Good realization to have if I follow up and expand this. It was fun to write, and I have a thought or two about what to add and revise. Your analysis is helpful.
Bradbury’s book has inspired a few different ideas as I have read it. It was one of his own personal favorites.
I am glad you tried out the idea of flinging the window open. I am trying to listen more and talk less, so this may be why the idea inspired me.
The specific Chapter is #25.
Blackbirds and church bells seem especially appealing through an open window.
The sentences read very very well. They are convincing. I think George said something recently in SC about sentences reaching a state of "undeniability".
As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives. I wouldn’t say I was impressed, but he was proud and he insisted they introduce themselves one by one as I stood by on the cliff-side of the coast path to let them pass.
1 She had the sneer of command. She said, ‘My maiden name is Fitch, rhymes have been a trouble to me all my life.’
2 A born usurper, still had that look in her eye; I knew just enough not to glance behind as she passed.
3 Pale, skinny, meek, the skin on her hands was red raw.
4 Forearms like limbs of an oak, cheeks red with health and hair tied back like a man, carrying three sacks and still a hand free to shake my own.
5 Carrying a babe on her hip, mopping at the dirty face of a small child, she looked tired but I longed to ask how she’d ended up like this.
6 Was she not ashamed to be a sixth wife? Was it not a great humiliation? She looked chalky like a schoolteacher, and seemed not to understand my question. What does he have that you all want so much? Now she understood my questions, and finally looked ashamed.
I couldn’t see the seventh. As I waited off the path, I turned to look out upon the western sea until a voice by my shoulder caught at me.
7 ‘You do not need to continue on your way to St Ives, you know. After all, do you think we are all heading away because we love the place? You’ve met us, one by one, and reduced each to but a sentence. St Ives is only one village away from the end of the world, and you could not swim in that glittering sea any further than we could escape your descriptions of us.’ She looked me in the eye, cocked her head to one side and smiled with half of her mouth, then set off after the other wives, scuffing up little puffs of dust as she went.
I waited a long time in that spot, watching their figures gradually pass out of sight, one by one. Seven wives, I said to myself. Seven.
1. In the first round, you’ll be given two coding questions. The difficulty level varies between easy, medium, hard. The two problems can span some, but not all combinations: two “mediums”, a medium and a hard, two “hards”. Never two “easies”. A good candidate is expected to solve both in the allotted time.
2. Three months later, you still don’t pass the first round. The easy is hard, the medium is impossible and the hard-forget about the hard. You can’t finish reading a “hard” in the allotted time.
3. You improve. You engage in light conversations with the interviewers. They’re always polite. Polite, but unhelpful. They’re good people, just like you. Sometimes you see a cat napping on their desk, or a child playing with Legos in their background.
4. You get better at distinguishing “hards” from “easies”. You finish reading the “hard” in the allotted time. Sometimes you even ask a clarifying question.
5. After six months, you still don’t pass the first round. You can solve easies! But not during the interview. During the interview, each problem revolts you. “Reconstruct a tree from in-order and post-order representation”. Reconstruct a tree, jeez! They gave this problem to YOU? While you code your algorithmic tree reconstruction–exceeding the allotted time!–twelve very concrete trees have been dislodged from their forest.
6. You improve. Congrats, you solve "mediums"! But mediums come with a heavier metaphysical burden.”Find the shortest, optimum-cost path connecting two towns given a country’s road grid”. Optimum-cost? How depressing! In life, you always prefer the longest, most convoluted paths, you linger in little mountain towns barely connected to anything else on the grid. In life, you never optimize. Should you?
7. A year has passed. You solve "hard" problems, you still get rejected. You just can’t stop polemicizing around the problems, can you? While you attempt “Reachable Nodes in Subdivided Graph”, do you really need to deliver a monologue about the political polarization graph, which depicts today’s world like sad collection of isolated components, with few or no edges connecting opposing viewpoints?
8. One more year. You have interviewed with every Big Tech company at least five times. You stopped debating, stopped criticizing the social load of the assignment. You just solve each problem they throw at you. Uber-failure.
9. You give up. You start a chicken farm. The path connecting the chicken coops is shadowed by tall trees and is quite unoptimized. This makes you very, very happy.
By the way, I always hoped one day to read a story about computer programming. I know only some very basic principles, but I love that you managed to make it work.
You made me think about it! Not sure if I've read a story that goes deep into programming; a suggestion is Hugh Howie's short story "WHILE (u>i) i--;" His entire collection "Machine Learning" is an entertaining read.
My daughter has been a tech manager, basically since the web exploded into the world, in the 1990's, so when she talks tech-talk its like a foreign language to me. She was laid off last summer, one of the 250,000 layoffs in the industry, made networking her job, and got hired at the end of February, for a fraction of what she was earning, doing a difficult job, but as she says, she'd rather have a paycheck. I wish you the best of luck.
Yes it is, and she struggled to keep her hope alive. She joined several networking groups, founded one for people who use Agile and one of the men who came to that network group recommended her for the job she got. He's the only one who lives in the Denver region where she lives, so she can meet with him in person but other than that, all her work is done online. The company she now works for is an equity group (venture capital investors) who bought six small tech companies and her job is to get them all talking to each other and working together, so they are all on the same page. It makes my head spin. She used to work on Cloud stuff but now that is passe. Is the stuff you were writing like AI? I see that is the next big thing. I sent her lots of good luck so I'll send you lots of luck too.
Mary--would you believe before I even opened my laptop this morning, I thought I should list all the things my father taught me. Unfortunately, Substack won't print it in the outline format, so you will need to imagine it.
Things I learned from my father:
1. How to cut my toenails straight across or I would get an ingrown toenail.
2. Sarcasm.
3. How to fear men’s authority and act passive and complaisant and never speak up for what I knew was right or to criticize a man if I thought he was doing something wrong.
4. How to hate reading.
a. When my mother came home from a consultation with my first-grade teacher, who had told my mother
i. who was proud to have learned to read before she started school because she sat on her uncle’s lap, and he pointed out the words he was reading aloud to her
ii. but who had never once read aloud a book to me
b. that I might be held back a year because I didn’t know how to read.
c. My father
i. who had never once read aloud a book to me
ii. but because I liked the story The Three Bears, had bought a 78 rpm record I could listen to whenever I wanted to hear the story
d. then decided he would teach me to read.
e. So, each night we sat side by side, with me sitting in the little child-sized chair that was identical to his big chair and read aloud the Golden Book Dictionary.
5. That I could never please him.
a. My mother gave me an oil painting kit with brushes, a pallet, several tubes of colors, turpentine and a blank canvas. One summer day, while my mother was ironing the wash,
i. Who had met my father in art school and had been a commercial artist
b. I sat at the dining table and set up a small still life and began to paint. I was thrilled and loved the sensation of feeling the brush in my hand and drawing it in small strokes onto the canvas.
c. My father came home. I proudly showed it to him, and he told me all the things I had done wrong. I put the paints away in the little wooden box, never opened it again, and never finished the painting.
i. My mother never again encouraged me to paint.
6. That I had three career choices and being an artist was not one of them:
a. I could be a nurse like his sister Ruby had done. She had learned nursing during the war to care for the injured soldiers and married one of her patients, Ray.
b. I could be a teacher like his sister Almira who had gone to teacher’s college before she married Tony.
c. I could be a secretary like the tall, glamorous, exceptionally well-dressed woman who lived with her parents several doors down from our house, who was the Mayor of Minneapolis’ secretary and who my father liked to give a ride to work and to drop her off at the city courthouse. And who had told me the high school years were the best years of my life.
i. I thought that if life was only going to get worse from here on out, I should kill myself.
How long did it take me to unlearn the things my father taught me:
1. Two weeks ago, I cut the nail on one big toe in a slight curve and so far it hasn’t become ingrown.
2. Whenever I used irony or mocking language with friends, they never got the joke, and I was disappointed.
a. I may never have unlearned how to see the irony in people’s behavior, but I try not to call attention to it, or if I do, I do it nicely.
b. I don’t have many friends.
3. In my early twenties, I rebelled against everything my father ever stood for, became part of the counter-culture, marched against the Vietnam war, joined a commune, smoked pot, and voted Democrat.
i. We found something we could both enjoy together every Sunday when I ate dinner at my parents' house, and we watched All in the Family.
1. he laughed at Archie Bunker’s narrow-minded and prejudiced views,
2. and when his son-in-law’s outspoken, counter-cultural views criticized Archie’s disparaging comments, I laughed.
4. I have never again read a dictionary, but read novels, many of which were written by people who live in foreign countries, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic.
5. I stopped trying to please him when I moved out of his house. But we remained on speaking terms. And eventually even became friends.
6. When I began to paint, sculpt, perform, sew costumes for alternative theaters, one of which performed a play in which a nude actress came on the stage in the final scene.
a. I comped my parents tickets to see the show, and my father’s comment afterwards was, “You didn’t tell me there was going to be nudity in the play.”
b. Obviously, I didn’t kill myself because I am still here and writing up a storm.
Loved how you nested lists within lists - it was wonderful to feel the forward impulse as well as getting the little departures, almost like parentheticals - such an appealing way of receiving the fullness of a story / a relationship.
Thanks, I appreciate your reader's view in drawing attention to the actual relationship. It was so much fun writing it this way, I couldn't stop and even after I'd posted it, kept adding more and more items to it (not online) until I had to say to myself 'STOP.'
1. Check the weather. Check the weather from four different sources - US Coast Guard, windy, Marv's Weather Buoys, a metereologist named Chris to whom all sailors in the region are slavishly devoted. Check the weather again. Keep checking it obsessively until you don't have cell service.
2. Plot your course. Take into account current and drift. Read technical manuals about the "S curve" approach to managing the current to cross more efficiently. Draw the known edges of the Gulf Stream carefully on your chart. Use vectors to plot a precise course from Bahamas to Florida.
3. Cast off - early in the morning at sunrise with much enthusiasm. Drink coffee as you steer confidently out of the cheerful tropical marina, escorted by dolphins surfing the bow-waves - clearly a sign of fair sailing.
4. Follow your course exactly, despite the 20 knot winds shifting around and refusing to fill your sails so the sail flaps and the 5 foot waves constantly knock the boat over in revolting lurches after only 30 minutes at sea.
5. Abandon your course in order to fill your sails so the crew does not start throwing up at the beginning of the voyage. Keep trying to get back on course, filled with anxiety that the current is going to push you even farther of course.
6. Jibe, so at least you are way off course against the current, that hopefully, maybe, you pray will push you back onto course at some point.
7. Ride the sickening roll of the boat for hours by bracing yourself against the stays. Make micro-adjustments to course and sails as the wind shifts back and forth behind you, and the waves batter the hull with increasingly confusing patterns.
8. Stand in awe when the boat suddenly reduces speed by a couple of knots and you realize that you are fighting a 900 million ton force of nature 50 miles wide that couldn't care less whether you live or die.
9. Bring out the boom box when you can't stand being tossed around as if you are in a washing machine. Blast nineties dance music into the void of the endless waves, singing loudly and dancing to the writhing gyrations of the boat.
10. Jibe again after realizing that the wind is turning you into the current and that you are going slower and slower and if you stay on this course you are going to be out here suffering until the end of time.
11. Ride the current like a madmen at 9 knots, flying toward the coast of Florida , even if you are a little out of control surfing the 6 foot waves and completely off course again.
12. Feel the current reduce and the boat stabilize. Weep because you still have an hour to go that is interminable. It's still windy and uncomfortable. Your feet hurt from standing for 9 hours battling nature. You haven't eaten anything to avoid being sick. Your face has been burned by the wind. And the coast of Florida refuses to look like it is getting any closer.
13. Come into blessed port. Anchor badly, too close to the boat next to you but you just don't care. Drink whiskey on the rocks and lie down on your bunk in total psychological collapse.
had to hold my breath reading this one!! Now I need a whiskey on the rocks, too. If i ever had any thoughts of sailing out to sea with no land in sight--nope! Will not do!
Yay! Have never done that trip but it's a pretty bleak coastline. Jealous. Send trip notes. Def need whiskey (the only time I drink whiskey is at the end of a hard day sailing)
1. Your birth is an accident and it does not entitle you to a ‘happy life’ (an American invention).
2. Learn to walk, talk, eat and shit by yourself – and learn to do these things early. Nobody is going to do them for you (they have better things to do).
3. Develop an appreciation for art and architecture.
4. Look like you know what you are talking about (if you really must open your mouth), even if you don’t read.
5. Money is the root of all evil. People who have money are either immoral, corrupt, fat, or greedy. Choose: Would you rather be rich, or a noble human being? (You know the right answer)
6. Deal with your nightmares when you wake up at night and find yourself alone. They are not real anyway.
7. Sharpen your perspective. Keep tabs on your parents’ debts and expenses. You think boy trouble is a problem? Think again!
8. Learn to endure physical pain. It makes you tougher.
9. No grade below 5 is acceptable, but don’t expect help with your homework (we are busy people).
10. Emotions (an American fixation) are overrated. They’ll get you nowhere, except to therapy (a favourite American hobby).
11. ‘I love you’-s must be savoured for special occasions. They are not a synonym for ‘goodbye.’
12. Compliments will make you bumptious. Better to preserve a healthy level of self-hatred (nobody is perfect).
13. Laughter is a nuisance. Make yourself useful instead.
14. Leave the singing for the professionals.
15. Dress well. Put on your best suit for the dentist and your nicest slip for the gynecologist. You don’t want them to think that you are poor, or unclean.
16. Remember your manners. You are welcome to stab people in the back, but do it in style. Be polite (always) and smile at all times (but don’t laugh!)
17. Take pride in your suffering and those gloomy Sundays. In the end, there is only one outcome and it’s the same for everyone: Death. Glorify it in poetry and in your National Anthem.
18. Nobody is happily married. Some are just better at pretending than others.
19. Children need to be disciplined, not loved.
20. (Sorry to break it to you, but) children are not cute. It is best that they grow up fast and make themselves useful.
21. They should keep quiet, respect adults and have impeccable manners.
22. Hurry up already! Menjél már!
23. Learn to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. People are not to be trusted.
24. Love (an American fabrication) is overrated. It only makes you weak.
This grows and grows, and though there is that element of humor beneath the words, there is a lot of anguish here. Also resiliency. A toughness mixed with sweetness. Really well done--I think the numbering of sentences really works for this one.
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This is really good, Mary G! Writing by numbers or as a list definitely adds something. Maybe because the reader's mind is adding in what is not said in-between the list items.
Such a good point, Vishal.
Love this one Mary. Captures so perfectly the perverse innocence and the casual waste of becoming prey.
Loved this. Great last line!
Thanks so much, Kurt!
I've been to the Blue Moon. It just had a different name.
ha! Everybody's got a Blue Moon somewhere!
Just stay out of the headlights, baby dear.
Poetic descriptions in this.
It's a lovely poem - so real I can smell it.
I so love this Mary! Including the title. What a treat.
Thanks, Imola!
I like this a lot
Thank you, J.D.A. It's not a list story, it's just numbered sentences. But I think the numbering makes the action stronger than if it were in paragraph form.
Agree, and why I liked the prompt. The list one I did was endemically numbered, but the second one really had me thinking about each subsequent sentence and it's value, all because of that numbering convention. Wise prompting!
Actually, I can foresee taking existing work I'm evaluating for revision and using the numbering as a tool for sentence economy and value assessment. SO thanks yet again.
Yes - the numbering of sentences has a powerful effect, and it doesn't feel like a trick either.
Right, exactly! I had actually written this little story the other day and decided to tweak it and number it this morning. I think it works better this way.
Interesting. I thought, because of how well it worked as numbered sentences (ie how much the numbering and the sentences worked together) that you must have written it with that in mind.
I had to do some major tweaking and deleting, etc., to get it to where it is now. I could have written something from scratch this morning, but this one had a hold on me and needed something--so I was happy to see that using this form worked.
On Tour with My Mother
1. Iron Springs. She jumps on the sofa and gives everybody the finger. We drive off without her, and then return and finally she gets in the car.
2. Soap Lake. She puts mud all over her body and sits at the edge of the lake with the fat ladies. At night, there’s a bonfire and she dances and dances with Danny’s dad.
3. Penticton. We swim in the pool while she stays inside the hotel room with the shades drawn.
4. Portland. That’s the house she grew up in. But then everybody died and she became an orphan. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
5. The Space Between Her Legs. That’s where you came out. Right there. She points so you can’t miss it.
6. Her Bed. When she yells for you to come, you have to get under the covers with her and she’ll press your head to her body. She’ll smell like darkness.
7. Your Body. This is part of her comedy routine. Your face! Hahahhahaha!!!
8. The Seventh Floor. Where they take her, more than once. She comes home with decoupaged art. Van Gogh bridges and flowers. For a while, she is calm.
9. [Fifty-odd years with no tour dates.]
10. Cemetery on 145th near Northgate.
I've been thinking about "what is a story?", like you have discussed and your prompts have certainly challenged and widened my thinking on this.
One thing, for me, is that if a piece of writing generates a picture for me, especially a picture with some 'movement' (or perhaps dynamic is a better word for what I am reaching after) and some personality, then that piece of writing falls into the story part of my brain.
This excellent story, Mary, does exactly that. Congrats.
Thank you, Niall. I can't tell you how much time i spend thinking about "what is a story?"
One other thing I have noticed is that every story I love is always also about itself or about that very question "what is story", even if obliquely.
For example, that opening of The Doll's House, in which she opens the front of the house and peers in:
'there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open ! Why don't all houses open like that ? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas! That is—isn't it ?—what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at the dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel...'
I'm going to think about what you're saying. I wonder if it's because in good stories, the beginning has so much contained in it--has the ending embedded already. Has the question the story is asking right there. Has the kernel of the conflict or whatever--is saying "this is what you're in for with this story."
Holy shit Mary. This one really got to me. Really good. Really lean. Really sharp, like long dangerous knife sharp.
Thanks so much, Kurt.
If this is "pure" fiction, wow, you're imagining a really big novelistic relationship (not that it must of necessity be expressed in a novel, of course). But it feels like lived experience, in which case, wow again, some experience! Nonstop pain and aggravation, can't get out!
"She'll smell like darkness". Brilliant. My mother smelled like menstruation, back when I didn't know what that was.
Yes, lived experience here. My mother looms large in my head lately. I think because as I get older, I see so much of her in me. And I understand her much better. I'm grateful for her, though growing up with her was traumatic. So there's a lot to write about. Thanks for the comment.
Wow. This brings me back to the prompt which focused on time. The transition from 8 to 10 accelerated time in a shocking wow, which is true to how memory often works I think: things you can remember as if they were last week which happened decades ago.
Second wow = way
Every sentence in this is spare but so full. "She'll smell like darkness" is a description that will stay with me. And the "Fifty-odd years with no tour dates."
This is full of emotion and reads like a spare summary of a novel.
Thank you, Angela.
No. 4 hits me; the center from which the tour stops before and the actions after emanate.
Ooh you’re getting deadly ❤️
Wow 💗
How To Write In Twenty Easy Steps:
1. Open a blank document. The sort that’s white and empty and foreboding and—you know the one: blank.
2. Stare into the abyss. Let your fingers hover over the keyboard as if inspiration will hit at any moment.
3. Wait for inspiration to hit.
4. Give it time.
5. Longer.
6. Bit longer.
7. Consider that inspiration might not hit right now.
8. Look out the window; look at the ceiling; look at the woodlouse crawling across the carpet.
9. Look at your phone.
10. Regret looking at your phone.
11. Think about that girl—what was she called? Katy?—and why you didn’t message her back all those years ago.
12. Think about whether that was your fault or whether, actually, you both drifted away from each other.
13. Think about how much fun it was being with her, forgetting all reasons for not staying together.
14. Think about where she is now and whether it would be strange for you to message her out of the blue.
15. Check Instagram: find that she now lives in Spain; is married to a Spanish man; has half-Spanish child.
16. Look at flights to Valencia. Why not.
17. Search “Katy” on your phone and open last message from her: “You’re sweet but please don’t message me again.”
18. Close airline tab.
19. Close blank document.
20. Try again tomorrow.
This is great!
Get out of my head!! Thanks!
This is just SO GOOD! Just the right amount of funny-sad and - truth! Some uncomfortable truths to recognize here as a writer...
Yes, definitely keep trying .
I've noticed sometimes these transactions involve delayed responses.
at once funny & sad
Well done!
Kind of breaks my heart.....
1) This is my story and I'm stickin to it. Today I
2) Woke at 3:30 am and opened computer, whom I've started sleeping with.
3) I've decided the internet is my mistress, so this makes sense.
4) I'm tired of sleeping alone, and Mac brings a lot to a relationship.
5) So after so and so and such and such there, I get up and start the fire. It's 45 degrees outside.
6) Simultaneously or as much so, start coffee water brush teeth dress up in clothes and so so.
7) Idea to write about "The Shadow of Silk", more email, reply copy send sent inbox ha ha drafts.
8) Coffee.
9) Steel cut oats, blueberries, yogurt, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, molasses, flax milk, start another fire
10) Now I am working on mary g prompt #18. Time flies etc etc. Coffee.
11) Have to move right along because at 9 am I test drive a Prius.
12) The Prius belongs to a friend sailing away soon, heading generally east across the Pacific Ocean.
13) Farther in the future of the day, I drive to Port Townsend for a covid booster. So and so there too.
14) I will check emails, my mistress missives, along the way, all day, so pretend not to be lonely.
15) You just never know do you, when the sky might fall,
16) or something such and such spectacular might happen.
Fantastic, Tod.
I wish I had the same super-power of transforming the mundane into (numbered) verses. I loved the fire being started repeatedly and all the "etc's" and "so on's"
i'm guessing you've got some super powers there, Blimunda, just waiting to be revealed!
Love the ending -- and how everything before sets it up too -- how the apparently humdrum, all the such and suches and so and sos, lead us to 'spectacular'.
I guess so, I wasn't conscious of that.
1. Really nice build from
2. Everyday to
3. Fantastical
I like the tongue-in-cheek humor here "and Mac brings a lot to a relationship."
Tod, I hate to break it to you, I've been..... sleeping with your mistress, too. Mac's a whore.
Perhaps your everyday is a story.
What a nice way to live a life!
Good luck w the Prius.
That's a nice way to think about it.
Love the Prius, and it gets 47 mpg. !
I like the details on breakfast and coffee! And haha drafts.
I absolute loved this Tod! Thank you for making me smile this morning.
You're most welcome Iola. Thank you.
Nicely done, Tod! You even gave me some ideas for what to add to my steel cut oats for breakfast. 😊
Great. My oatmeal regimen comes from John Robbins. I forgot a couple of things. Flax seed, and chia seeds, which I grind in a coffee grinder. All together it's a bowl of vitamins and fiber. Oh yeah and a dollop of molasses to top it off.
Morphology (yes, I'm being kind of lazy today...)
1. A snail has one foot.
2. According to Babel, human women have two prominently located breasts.
3. Insects have three major body segments: head, thorax and abdomen.
4. A dog has four legs.
5. Normal cats have five toes on each front foot.
6. Polydactyl cats have six or more toes on each front foot.
7. An octave scale has seven intervals.
8. An octopus has eight arms.
9. A portulaca (or rose moss) is called a nine-o-clock flower because it blooms in early morning and closes at 9 AM.
10. This list has ten entries
Loved #2!
Haha. We are all cursed now, we will always think of breasts when we think of Babel.
Wasn’t it about moment of connection in a world of disconnects and not about breasts at all.
(Except slightly, because he was young and they were about) He noticed so many other loving details.
I was thinking. He didn’t mention breasts in the other stories, but then I remembered Aunty Bobka’s hand warmers.
Yes. But is the reverse also true, breasts = Babel ?
lol
Nice list, Mark! Is #6 a Hemingway reference? 😊
Did not know about nine-o-clock flowers, but I used to grow four-o-clock flowers, they open at four in the afternoon and close in the morning.
Yes, it's a Hemingway reference, thanks for noting.
Took me a moment to realize the numbers were connected to the morphology and then it was a delight to realize. I really like the octave scale with seven intervals as part of the morphology, in addition to Babel two and botanical nine.
I was having trouble coming up with a seven reference among flora and fauna. There is probably a flower with seven petals out there, but I'm not aware of it and too lazy to do deep research (as noted in my preface).
The octave refence comes from me studying a little music theory during the pandemic.
How playful, brief and nice!!! Like you, I will always associate amply described breasts with Babel since G. Saunders' office hour.
Something about the idea of normal cats really tickled me.
True. "Cat-normal" is a relative concept, meaning "normal for cats" which is not at all like "normal normal." Having been owned by both cats and dogs (as well as other creatures) I can appreciate the inter-species differences.
Lovely
10
Had to stop reading Borges before bed. The dreamed man entered my dreams.
9
First thing in the morning was fine, you just had to expect the porridge to taste airier than normal.
8
But it always caused arguments, books at the table. I get it.
7
So, I stopped altogether.
6
No point in banging your head against a wall.
5
Unless that banging knocks something loose, I guess. It’s what happened to Borges, I read. I think. Don’t quote me.
4
Augustus John, though, definitely. Cracked his head on a rock diving into water. Went from capable draughtsman to direct and important artist overnight.
3
Not especially kind though, I heard, not even to those who loved him.
2
Especially to those that loved him.
1
Would I take that crack on the skull, let that dreamed man dream himself?
Do not crack your head!
don't stop reading Borges !
I like this, and I love Borges
reversed order, nice!!
Yeah - figured it offered something to write towards... an end point. Otherwise you can just write one more sentence
"expect the porridge to taste airier"! yes!
Things an Eclipse is Like
1. A baby being born, first crowning looking like a shriveled walnut (the wet hair) then unimaginably, more emerging, totally emerging, here!
2. God’s hand on Moses as he shelters in the cleft so as not to die or go blind, then when it’s time, looking, at God’s back. Returning to his followers so radiant they cannot look at the freshness still reflecting from his face.
3. Plants wouldn’t grow without the sun, neither would there be wind. We would all be frozen and dead, except for the tube worms in their deep sea vent bubbles, deep inside the ice, eating bacteria and sulfur. All other parts of the ocean would be frozen solid.
4. The pancakes you made, inspired by the eclipse.
5. A wedding ring, the traditional kind, except more Lord of the Rings.
6. A dilated pupil with a corona iris, the most intense — unseeing or all seeing? — eye you’ve ever seen.
7. An air freshener made by Death, so you sense it and come out the other side grateful to be alive.
8. A flashback to the body caste of the woman sheltering her children at Pompeii. You held your family too, amidst the darkening of the sky. The eclipse like the tubes inside the lava where the bodies used to be.
9. Back home, how quickly we forget what an eclipse is like. Using your phone while the kids display their miraculous-ness and the spring leaves unfurl.
10. An ellipses, sounds similar and there are many, the next one in Spain 2026, then when, forty years later? The separation between them marking fathoms of our lives, babies and kids growing old, some of us, the middle aged and elder, seeing this one for the last time.
So lovely, Erik. From the miracle of birth to pancakes. (I had just such a conversation with my 79 year old friend the other day, about how she wouldn't be around for the next one.)
Thank you, Mary, for this and your other wonderful prompts, for getting me to write and share and read in a community of writers.
The eclipse as a measure of human time.
I love this; intrigued by the air freshener. I think I have been near death when confronted by air fresheners a couple of times.
Ha! Same
This is lovely. Poetry. Wide-ranging reference. Everything, and nothing.
Very beautiful!
Even Jamal and Odd Ama
1. Bus-stop.
2. He stares.
3. She feels uncomfortable.
4. He's parading his confidence.
5. She hates his constant stare.
6. Jamal's dad says women love this.
7. Every morning, it's the same. He stares.
8. The truth is that Jamal doesn't feel confident.
9. The aggressive arrogance he bears makes Ama's skin crawl.
10. Mute. If only he knew what to say to her.
11. Why doesn't he speak? What's wrong with him? Clearly a creep.
12. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he'll ask how she is or where she works.
13. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe she'll shout at him and tell him to back off.
14. His friends say women like a bad man. 'Treat them mean, keep them keen.'
15. But she knows not to aggravate. Men like this are insecure and can be violent.
16. He's not a bad man. He's awkward. He's weak. He's invisible. He's not what women want.
17. She knows his kind. Power. They crave it. They lord it over women. Well, not this woman.
18. So what's his plan? Make her fall for his peacock feathers, then turn and reveal his meek manner.
19. Enough! She stares back. She glares. She snarls. She offers nothing but disdain. Her expression shows nothing but hate.
20. He looks away. He's pathetic. He's angry, but angry at himself. He disgusts her with his ways. He's disgusted too.
So well done. Love the way it sits on the page, too.
Thank you. Lots of fun and challenging as well!
Yes. Like a staircase.
Thank you! It was fun trying to increase each sentence by one word each time.
Nice visual poem. I like alternating the inner monologues: "dialogue de sourds"
Thank you!
Oh, this kinda broke my heart :( I really appreciated the build up. Also, I couldn't help noticing how the length of the sentences on the page built on each other. Beautiful, and heartbreaking.
Thank you, Imola! And thank you for noticing. Yes, I used the numbered prompt to guide the words per line. I loved the discipline of that, and it really made me consider my choices.
Your brilliant numeric convention reminds me vaguely, (in the same vein at least) of the poem my daughter loved as a fifth grader and that we continue to love, the one that makes sense read forwards AND backwards but has totally opposite meaning each way.
Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don't try to convince me that
There's something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don't last.
And it's not true that
It's all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one's surroundings are good
It's not true that good exists
I'm sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It's all beyond my control
And you'll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day
Thank you! I forgot about this poem, in fact I dont think I ever really read it, I just know of it. I love it though. Very inventive!
Yeah, written by an 11th grader. It really turned a corner for my daughter when she was young in terms of realizing the power of written words and where you put them.
How did you come to choose the numeric word-per-sentence building up structure? I love it. Will probably try it myself, or some version of it as a prompt. I like the idea of going up and then back down, and then maybe going up by odd numbers and then only even numbers. I find challenges like that tend to get me thinking in very different and focused ways about the structure while freeing my 'story mind' to wing it iin order to meet the requirements, often resulting in some fresh stuff for me.
I also now find this piece kind of related oddly to the story I did off yesterdays prompt (writing based on a photograph) because mine was at a bus stop. I think your characters might've been in my story, just not mentioned :)
Was it an 11th grader! Wow! That's humbling! I'd been playing around with writing stories which were 10 words, then 30 words, then 50 words, and just seeing how much you could change a story with that discipline, so when I saw the prompt that idea just sprung to mind. I like the idea of going up and down again. It's create when working with characters as well, as you really have to think carefully about your words and how to effectively convey their personalities. I actually wrote this one really quickly. I did it while waiting for my daughter to finish a club, so took about 30 mins start to finish. I think if I did it again I'd like to get the know the characters more before I'd start.
I'd love to see any work you do on this!
Have you got an idea for the theme of the piece?
It has really worked! I am inspired! :)
Well done, Simon! Love the way this builds and builds, both visually and in terms of the emotion.
Very nice slice.
Thank you!
Someone, about 2000 miles away, closed a window.
1. The first few times the window was opened, it was opened in Mexico City for old Colonel Freeleigh, alone, ailing, and isolated in his home in Dandelion Wine. His last few minutes were spent crosslegged on the floor, clutching the phone and listening to the bustling city sounds of traffic and people greeting each other.
2. Another time it was opened in Brooklyn, New York. The sounds of pages thoughtfully flipped as a young girl reads rapidly–a book a day, sitting on the fire escape.. A young girl never really acknowledged by the librarian. A young girl who listened for the confident notes her father sang as he mounted the stairs.
3. Once it was opened in Quebec City, and a homesick young woman listened intently for the familiar rhythms and intonation of her native language in the busy Quartier du Petit Champlain. She was heartbroken when someone suddenly closed the window.
4. The window opened suddenly in Cancun, at night, during Spring break. The elderly woman who was listening to reveling partiers instead of the soothing breezes rustling the palm trees and the gentle lapping of waves on the beach was surprised to find herself remembering her own roisterous days. And she was not disappointed by the sounds.
5. It opened in one fluid motion on the island of Maui, just as the South Maui Fish company was opening and tourists were gathering to eat outside. This time, the placid ripple of waves and the breaths of wind in the palms were the perfect background for the hooting, razzing, and chirping of hundreds of tropical birds. The listener begged for extra time.
6. The window was wrenched open abruptly and then slammed shut by a rancorous middle-aged man who “needed his sleep” in Portland, Maine. “Goddamned owls! Shut up already!”
7. Once when the listener was in New York City and homesick, a window opened in London. It was raining and the tires of always hurrying motorists swished in the puddled streets. Big Ben chimed ten ponderous tones before the window was closed.
8. That same listener had to request a window flung wide open to allow the sounds of Vernazza, Italy to penetrate the extended mileage. But it was worth it. The melodic sounds of the rumbling train wheels and the screeching of the brakes provided a rhythmic soundtrack as the town woke to market day.
9. A broken window, a sudden cacophony as a sandlot game in Boston suddenly comes to a halt. Kids scatter. Homeowner runs outside and then laughs.
10, And now a listener tunes in avidly to the sounds of over a century ago from a window flung open in Wichita Falls, Tx–hoping to catch the sounds of her mother's footsteps and laughter as she rode the trolley across town each day to school.
So good, this one.
Thank you. I was inspired by a chapter in Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. This was a fun prompt to write from.
Which chapter? (If you have time.)
It’s the one in which Colonel Freeleigh is housebound by his family. He is old and frail and they don’t want him to get too excited. So they won’t let the boys come visit him anymore. He calls an old friend in Mexico City who hangs the phone outside the window to let him hear the sounds of the city. Then the nurse finds out what he’s doing and calls the friend. The chapter ends with the window being closed.
The chapters aren't titled, so I'll find this later today. (I pulled down the book yesterday morning, just before your post . . . )
Going a bit technical, I see a triangle which keeps turning. 1-2-3, 3-2-1, 1-3-2 . . . 2-3 . . .
1. the listener
2. the one who opens the window
3. the window (+ location)
Not all lines have all of the points. (Line 2, for example, only has 3--we don't know who opens the window or who's listening. Line 6 merges 2 and 3--no distance is involved. Line 9 does away with the triangle altogether. In 7 and 8, the window opens at the other end, with 2 missing.)
The triangle, asserting itself and falling back, kept me on my toes . . .
This morning, I flung open a window, recorded two minutes of blackbird and church bells. Thank you for the evocative writing.
I hadn’t considered the structure. Good realization to have if I follow up and expand this. It was fun to write, and I have a thought or two about what to add and revise. Your analysis is helpful.
Bradbury’s book has inspired a few different ideas as I have read it. It was one of his own personal favorites.
I am glad you tried out the idea of flinging the window open. I am trying to listen more and talk less, so this may be why the idea inspired me.
The specific Chapter is #25.
Blackbirds and church bells seem especially appealing through an open window.
Thanks for your thoughts about this piece.
The sentences read very very well. They are convincing. I think George said something recently in SC about sentences reaching a state of "undeniability".
That's what these feel like.
Wow. Thank you.
This feels good in my brain.
So good! And so beautifully fitted to this form - you fling it wide open!
I'm working on flinging things wide open, so that's nice to hear. Thank you.
This is great.
This is just beautiful. Stunning.
Thank you. It was fun to write this.
As I was going to St Ives
As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives. I wouldn’t say I was impressed, but he was proud and he insisted they introduce themselves one by one as I stood by on the cliff-side of the coast path to let them pass.
1 She had the sneer of command. She said, ‘My maiden name is Fitch, rhymes have been a trouble to me all my life.’
2 A born usurper, still had that look in her eye; I knew just enough not to glance behind as she passed.
3 Pale, skinny, meek, the skin on her hands was red raw.
4 Forearms like limbs of an oak, cheeks red with health and hair tied back like a man, carrying three sacks and still a hand free to shake my own.
5 Carrying a babe on her hip, mopping at the dirty face of a small child, she looked tired but I longed to ask how she’d ended up like this.
6 Was she not ashamed to be a sixth wife? Was it not a great humiliation? She looked chalky like a schoolteacher, and seemed not to understand my question. What does he have that you all want so much? Now she understood my questions, and finally looked ashamed.
I couldn’t see the seventh. As I waited off the path, I turned to look out upon the western sea until a voice by my shoulder caught at me.
7 ‘You do not need to continue on your way to St Ives, you know. After all, do you think we are all heading away because we love the place? You’ve met us, one by one, and reduced each to but a sentence. St Ives is only one village away from the end of the world, and you could not swim in that glittering sea any further than we could escape your descriptions of us.’ She looked me in the eye, cocked her head to one side and smiled with half of her mouth, then set off after the other wives, scuffing up little puffs of dust as she went.
I waited a long time in that spot, watching their figures gradually pass out of sight, one by one. Seven wives, I said to myself. Seven.
I just sighed with pleasure when i finished this one. So clever while also moving. And of course, still a riddle. Well done!
"a born usurper."
I love this. Well done.
Fucking Bravo is all.
Cheers
Loved this! Especially "chalky like a schoolteacher" and "hair tied back like a man"!
This feels rather juvenile, but I had fun writing it. 😊
1. The wooden fence gate has been open for days.
2. The wind picks up in the small hours, the gate swinging back and forth with reluctant creaks.
3. In the yard, lily of the valley grows rampant, white flowers glowing in the light of the moon.
4. A glint of moonlight on broken window glass.
5. The front door yields eagerly to a mere caress.
6. Beam of flashlight boring through the dark.
7. Spray of blood on the wall.
8. Smell of flowers lingering inside.
9. And, another smell.
Wow. Did not see that one coming! Good job!
powerful. I'm not sure if it's cool or scary that you described it as Juvenile though.
Thanks Fred!
Yikes.
Nine Ways to Fail the Big Tech Interview
1. In the first round, you’ll be given two coding questions. The difficulty level varies between easy, medium, hard. The two problems can span some, but not all combinations: two “mediums”, a medium and a hard, two “hards”. Never two “easies”. A good candidate is expected to solve both in the allotted time.
2. Three months later, you still don’t pass the first round. The easy is hard, the medium is impossible and the hard-forget about the hard. You can’t finish reading a “hard” in the allotted time.
3. You improve. You engage in light conversations with the interviewers. They’re always polite. Polite, but unhelpful. They’re good people, just like you. Sometimes you see a cat napping on their desk, or a child playing with Legos in their background.
4. You get better at distinguishing “hards” from “easies”. You finish reading the “hard” in the allotted time. Sometimes you even ask a clarifying question.
5. After six months, you still don’t pass the first round. You can solve easies! But not during the interview. During the interview, each problem revolts you. “Reconstruct a tree from in-order and post-order representation”. Reconstruct a tree, jeez! They gave this problem to YOU? While you code your algorithmic tree reconstruction–exceeding the allotted time!–twelve very concrete trees have been dislodged from their forest.
6. You improve. Congrats, you solve "mediums"! But mediums come with a heavier metaphysical burden.”Find the shortest, optimum-cost path connecting two towns given a country’s road grid”. Optimum-cost? How depressing! In life, you always prefer the longest, most convoluted paths, you linger in little mountain towns barely connected to anything else on the grid. In life, you never optimize. Should you?
7. A year has passed. You solve "hard" problems, you still get rejected. You just can’t stop polemicizing around the problems, can you? While you attempt “Reachable Nodes in Subdivided Graph”, do you really need to deliver a monologue about the political polarization graph, which depicts today’s world like sad collection of isolated components, with few or no edges connecting opposing viewpoints?
8. One more year. You have interviewed with every Big Tech company at least five times. You stopped debating, stopped criticizing the social load of the assignment. You just solve each problem they throw at you. Uber-failure.
9. You give up. You start a chicken farm. The path connecting the chicken coops is shadowed by tall trees and is quite unoptimized. This makes you very, very happy.
i love how I don't have any idea what these problems are, but I also completely understand the whole thing.
Splendid.
Reminded me of this, from Garrison Keillor, intro to collection of his own stories:
'[I adrmired] the New Yorker's great infield of Thurber, Liebling, Perelman and White.
They were my heroes, four older gentlemen, one blind, one fat, one delicate, and one a chicken rancher'
Thurber and Perelman live in my heart. They just walked in and that was that forever. Don’t know Liebling or White. Exciting
EB White. Yes I do know him. But not Liebling
Thanks Niall, sounds like an author I'd love to read!!!
Very, very funny.
By the way, I always hoped one day to read a story about computer programming. I know only some very basic principles, but I love that you managed to make it work.
You made me think about it! Not sure if I've read a story that goes deep into programming; a suggestion is Hugh Howie's short story "WHILE (u>i) i--;" His entire collection "Machine Learning" is an entertaining read.
Indeed the chickens staged a "coup", and so much the better for "you."
oops, spelling! thanks Tod!
And it turns out to be such a wonderfully, elegantly *optimized* working out of the prompt! Really enjoyed!
Strangely, animal paths don't bulldoze forests down.
But my, 8 iterations before you get to the chickens..!
it would make me happy too.
“Reconstruct a tree.” This option #9 is best! Chickens actually make sense.
I just have to ask you if you worked in the tech industry. What you describe sounds like tech talk.
I used to, Joan, trying to get back in, thanks for the comments!
My daughter has been a tech manager, basically since the web exploded into the world, in the 1990's, so when she talks tech-talk its like a foreign language to me. She was laid off last summer, one of the 250,000 layoffs in the industry, made networking her job, and got hired at the end of February, for a fraction of what she was earning, doing a difficult job, but as she says, she'd rather have a paycheck. I wish you the best of luck.
Aww, so happy for her, glad she found a job, it's pretty tough out there!
Yes it is, and she struggled to keep her hope alive. She joined several networking groups, founded one for people who use Agile and one of the men who came to that network group recommended her for the job she got. He's the only one who lives in the Denver region where she lives, so she can meet with him in person but other than that, all her work is done online. The company she now works for is an equity group (venture capital investors) who bought six small tech companies and her job is to get them all talking to each other and working together, so they are all on the same page. It makes my head spin. She used to work on Cloud stuff but now that is passe. Is the stuff you were writing like AI? I see that is the next big thing. I sent her lots of good luck so I'll send you lots of luck too.
Thank you for sending good vibes, Joan! Your daughter's job' sounds very stressful, I wish her luck, too!
Mary--would you believe before I even opened my laptop this morning, I thought I should list all the things my father taught me. Unfortunately, Substack won't print it in the outline format, so you will need to imagine it.
Things I learned from my father:
1. How to cut my toenails straight across or I would get an ingrown toenail.
2. Sarcasm.
3. How to fear men’s authority and act passive and complaisant and never speak up for what I knew was right or to criticize a man if I thought he was doing something wrong.
4. How to hate reading.
a. When my mother came home from a consultation with my first-grade teacher, who had told my mother
i. who was proud to have learned to read before she started school because she sat on her uncle’s lap, and he pointed out the words he was reading aloud to her
ii. but who had never once read aloud a book to me
b. that I might be held back a year because I didn’t know how to read.
c. My father
i. who had never once read aloud a book to me
ii. but because I liked the story The Three Bears, had bought a 78 rpm record I could listen to whenever I wanted to hear the story
d. then decided he would teach me to read.
e. So, each night we sat side by side, with me sitting in the little child-sized chair that was identical to his big chair and read aloud the Golden Book Dictionary.
5. That I could never please him.
a. My mother gave me an oil painting kit with brushes, a pallet, several tubes of colors, turpentine and a blank canvas. One summer day, while my mother was ironing the wash,
i. Who had met my father in art school and had been a commercial artist
b. I sat at the dining table and set up a small still life and began to paint. I was thrilled and loved the sensation of feeling the brush in my hand and drawing it in small strokes onto the canvas.
c. My father came home. I proudly showed it to him, and he told me all the things I had done wrong. I put the paints away in the little wooden box, never opened it again, and never finished the painting.
i. My mother never again encouraged me to paint.
6. That I had three career choices and being an artist was not one of them:
a. I could be a nurse like his sister Ruby had done. She had learned nursing during the war to care for the injured soldiers and married one of her patients, Ray.
b. I could be a teacher like his sister Almira who had gone to teacher’s college before she married Tony.
c. I could be a secretary like the tall, glamorous, exceptionally well-dressed woman who lived with her parents several doors down from our house, who was the Mayor of Minneapolis’ secretary and who my father liked to give a ride to work and to drop her off at the city courthouse. And who had told me the high school years were the best years of my life.
i. I thought that if life was only going to get worse from here on out, I should kill myself.
How long did it take me to unlearn the things my father taught me:
1. Two weeks ago, I cut the nail on one big toe in a slight curve and so far it hasn’t become ingrown.
2. Whenever I used irony or mocking language with friends, they never got the joke, and I was disappointed.
a. I may never have unlearned how to see the irony in people’s behavior, but I try not to call attention to it, or if I do, I do it nicely.
b. I don’t have many friends.
3. In my early twenties, I rebelled against everything my father ever stood for, became part of the counter-culture, marched against the Vietnam war, joined a commune, smoked pot, and voted Democrat.
i. We found something we could both enjoy together every Sunday when I ate dinner at my parents' house, and we watched All in the Family.
1. he laughed at Archie Bunker’s narrow-minded and prejudiced views,
2. and when his son-in-law’s outspoken, counter-cultural views criticized Archie’s disparaging comments, I laughed.
4. I have never again read a dictionary, but read novels, many of which were written by people who live in foreign countries, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic.
5. I stopped trying to please him when I moved out of his house. But we remained on speaking terms. And eventually even became friends.
6. When I began to paint, sculpt, perform, sew costumes for alternative theaters, one of which performed a play in which a nude actress came on the stage in the final scene.
a. I comped my parents tickets to see the show, and my father’s comment afterwards was, “You didn’t tell me there was going to be nudity in the play.”
b. Obviously, I didn’t kill myself because I am still here and writing up a storm.
Wonderful stuff here, Joan!
TV dinners watching All in the Family - Hey, that's my childhood!
Loved how you nested lists within lists - it was wonderful to feel the forward impulse as well as getting the little departures, almost like parentheticals - such an appealing way of receiving the fullness of a story / a relationship.
Thanks, I appreciate your reader's view in drawing attention to the actual relationship. It was so much fun writing it this way, I couldn't stop and even after I'd posted it, kept adding more and more items to it (not online) until I had to say to myself 'STOP.'
I've had that happen here with one that I posted, and that's like an extra bonus gift of the prompt.
Hooked on writing.
1. The place to look is wherever you have been already.
2. This is the problem with losing things.
3. You never get further on, out ahead of the game.
4. Often you have dreams made out of this feeling, that the more you look, the more you’re lost.
5. Sometimes the theme is packing a suitcase, desperately late for a flight, which is the same.
6. There’s a good chance of places you see many hours per day, e.g. kitchen countertop.
7. Blindness to whatever occupies the visual field most often is too common to merit diagnosis.
8. If you begin to lose all hope, you can start counting your steps, or the places you’ve looked.
9. This will not materially change trajectory or outcome, but it will offer you some rhythm.
10. Whether “rhythm” reminds you of a mother’s heartbeat or a dark drink place with loud music
11. it is the same.
12. Let yourself be carried by this and by the memory that for sure before you lost it, you had it.
13. And, before you had it, was the time when you didn’t have it.
14. And in your returning now to this not having, you walk the sure and even curve of a loop.
15. (Think of the smoothness of a golden ring, so purely imagined it is not placed on any finger.)
16. You may also recall, as in the song, five of them shining.
17. So brown ants still climb a Möbius strip in an old woodcut, assured they are always ascending.
18. Forgetting these images, which is to say the same, remember you already know the way.
So many great lines here. Well done (and beautiful).
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Loved 'a dark drink place' and much more in this.
Thanks! (: And omigosh, I just read that poem the other day -- had not at all realized where I was pulling from!
Gorgeous. Thank you.
of the terrific 18, i#10 is the most evocative for me, and a great, unexpected connection.
How to cross the Gulf Stream
1. Check the weather. Check the weather from four different sources - US Coast Guard, windy, Marv's Weather Buoys, a metereologist named Chris to whom all sailors in the region are slavishly devoted. Check the weather again. Keep checking it obsessively until you don't have cell service.
2. Plot your course. Take into account current and drift. Read technical manuals about the "S curve" approach to managing the current to cross more efficiently. Draw the known edges of the Gulf Stream carefully on your chart. Use vectors to plot a precise course from Bahamas to Florida.
3. Cast off - early in the morning at sunrise with much enthusiasm. Drink coffee as you steer confidently out of the cheerful tropical marina, escorted by dolphins surfing the bow-waves - clearly a sign of fair sailing.
4. Follow your course exactly, despite the 20 knot winds shifting around and refusing to fill your sails so the sail flaps and the 5 foot waves constantly knock the boat over in revolting lurches after only 30 minutes at sea.
5. Abandon your course in order to fill your sails so the crew does not start throwing up at the beginning of the voyage. Keep trying to get back on course, filled with anxiety that the current is going to push you even farther of course.
6. Jibe, so at least you are way off course against the current, that hopefully, maybe, you pray will push you back onto course at some point.
7. Ride the sickening roll of the boat for hours by bracing yourself against the stays. Make micro-adjustments to course and sails as the wind shifts back and forth behind you, and the waves batter the hull with increasingly confusing patterns.
8. Stand in awe when the boat suddenly reduces speed by a couple of knots and you realize that you are fighting a 900 million ton force of nature 50 miles wide that couldn't care less whether you live or die.
9. Bring out the boom box when you can't stand being tossed around as if you are in a washing machine. Blast nineties dance music into the void of the endless waves, singing loudly and dancing to the writhing gyrations of the boat.
10. Jibe again after realizing that the wind is turning you into the current and that you are going slower and slower and if you stay on this course you are going to be out here suffering until the end of time.
11. Ride the current like a madmen at 9 knots, flying toward the coast of Florida , even if you are a little out of control surfing the 6 foot waves and completely off course again.
12. Feel the current reduce and the boat stabilize. Weep because you still have an hour to go that is interminable. It's still windy and uncomfortable. Your feet hurt from standing for 9 hours battling nature. You haven't eaten anything to avoid being sick. Your face has been burned by the wind. And the coast of Florida refuses to look like it is getting any closer.
13. Come into blessed port. Anchor badly, too close to the boat next to you but you just don't care. Drink whiskey on the rocks and lie down on your bunk in total psychological collapse.
had to hold my breath reading this one!! Now I need a whiskey on the rocks, too. If i ever had any thoughts of sailing out to sea with no land in sight--nope! Will not do!
Oh! It is so much fun, if you are a masochist like me
Ha!
ahhh mary g.! where the land ends, that's where life -- and adventure -- begins!
Never crossed The Stream.
But looks like I'll sail from Seattle to San Francisco in the fall.
Which is beside the point, but thanks for the reminder to take whiskey.
Probably didn't need a reminder, but some things are worthy of reminder no matter what.
Yay! Have never done that trip but it's a pretty bleak coastline. Jealous. Send trip notes. Def need whiskey (the only time I drink whiskey is at the end of a hard day sailing)
Blast nineties dance music! A viable solution to many problems!
Makes me want to get back out there again. Miss my boat.
25 Rules for Noble Living in Communist Hungary
1. Your birth is an accident and it does not entitle you to a ‘happy life’ (an American invention).
2. Learn to walk, talk, eat and shit by yourself – and learn to do these things early. Nobody is going to do them for you (they have better things to do).
3. Develop an appreciation for art and architecture.
4. Look like you know what you are talking about (if you really must open your mouth), even if you don’t read.
5. Money is the root of all evil. People who have money are either immoral, corrupt, fat, or greedy. Choose: Would you rather be rich, or a noble human being? (You know the right answer)
6. Deal with your nightmares when you wake up at night and find yourself alone. They are not real anyway.
7. Sharpen your perspective. Keep tabs on your parents’ debts and expenses. You think boy trouble is a problem? Think again!
8. Learn to endure physical pain. It makes you tougher.
9. No grade below 5 is acceptable, but don’t expect help with your homework (we are busy people).
10. Emotions (an American fixation) are overrated. They’ll get you nowhere, except to therapy (a favourite American hobby).
11. ‘I love you’-s must be savoured for special occasions. They are not a synonym for ‘goodbye.’
12. Compliments will make you bumptious. Better to preserve a healthy level of self-hatred (nobody is perfect).
13. Laughter is a nuisance. Make yourself useful instead.
14. Leave the singing for the professionals.
15. Dress well. Put on your best suit for the dentist and your nicest slip for the gynecologist. You don’t want them to think that you are poor, or unclean.
16. Remember your manners. You are welcome to stab people in the back, but do it in style. Be polite (always) and smile at all times (but don’t laugh!)
17. Take pride in your suffering and those gloomy Sundays. In the end, there is only one outcome and it’s the same for everyone: Death. Glorify it in poetry and in your National Anthem.
18. Nobody is happily married. Some are just better at pretending than others.
19. Children need to be disciplined, not loved.
20. (Sorry to break it to you, but) children are not cute. It is best that they grow up fast and make themselves useful.
21. They should keep quiet, respect adults and have impeccable manners.
22. Hurry up already! Menjél már!
23. Learn to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. People are not to be trusted.
24. Love (an American fabrication) is overrated. It only makes you weak.
25. Be tough. Be tough. Be tough.
This grows and grows, and though there is that element of humor beneath the words, there is a lot of anguish here. Also resiliency. A toughness mixed with sweetness. Really well done--I think the numbering of sentences really works for this one.
Thank you Mary. And of course you are absolutely right. A lot of anguish and resilience underneath the dark humour ;)
So grim, except for #3. But then all the following seem to negate art and architecture appreciation.
Believe it or not Kevin, I was trying to have a sense of humour about my very messed up upbringing...
I thought so, and felt that, despite the grim details. The piece gave a view of what you needed to find the humor to overcome.