Saturday Pomes & Words, 21/12/2024
Microdosing Visitors
Happy midwinter solstice, by the way. I hope you are having a merry time.
If you’re wondering about the lack of exclamation marks there, and the slight suggestion of morosity, that’s because I suddenly find myself a little bit depressed. I think I must’ve encountered some trigger of sorts. Possibly it’s my subscriber count going up and down like the Assyrian Empire, but I doubt it, as that kind of thing doesn’t really bother me anymore (although there’s certainly one emotional part of me that takes things personally and senses that’s a lie). Aside from anything else, my 86 subscribers and my average number of post-reads being around 50 or so is a hell of a lot more than I ever got on my Wordpress site.
That site is soon to close, by the way (hence no point in providing a link - although you can find it on my homepage), and I shan’t be posting anything else there. Not that I have for a while anyway. It did strike me though that I wrote a lot of words there, enough to fill a book, so maybe that’s what I’ll do. Put it all in a book, I mean (and republish a fair amount of it in the Paschats section). I am half-minded to self-publish a bunch of collections sometime in the new year all at once. So that would be, I don’t know, five or six books. Perhaps that might be an enticement for potential paid subscribers, as they get all my books for free.
Well, I’ll work that one out in due course.
Also well, I decided to have a glass of wine to see if that helps.
Anyhow, I’ve got some more fragments for you now, all prompted as usual by Miguel the Fiction Dealer. For the previous Pomes & Words, which were also fragments, although all with a sort-of afterlife theme, click there.
I’ll do these in order of when they were written. It’s easier that way. I thought I’d use the title ‘Visitors’ because all of them sort-of-loosely involve visits of one sort or another, especially of non-humans. I’ve been hoping I could do these fragments in themed batches, but if not then I’ll just do a microdosing randomly thing and see what happens.
Mind you, that ‘just seeing what happens’ kind of sums up writing prompted fragments anyway.
So let’s see what happened this time.
This little collection also includes my impromptu entry to Miguel’s little seasonal competition, the results of which you can find at that link there. I didn’t win, by the way, which should come as no surprise - it didn’t to me - seeing as my entry was entirely impromptu as I say, and my Window’s Explorer metadata tells me the file was created at 04:45 last Saturday morning. Obviously I didn’t get up at such an ungodly hour, so go figure.
My little thing ended up being one of my meditational fragments (it also descended into another afterlife theme), rather than a ‘story’ as such. It’s clear that’s what the judges were looking for after all (stories I mean, not meditations). And that’s not really my own style. I also think that when it comes to fragments you can’t really do a story. The best you can do is allude to a story which is lying somewhere in the background. A backstory, if you like. So you’re making suggestions to the reader about that backstory (and about the characters - so it’s as much a character introduction as a scene-fragment). Conscious, one hopes, of the narrative theory insight that it’s always the reader, not you, the writer, who fills in that unspoken backstory - the subtext, that is. I think perhaps a lot of writers make the mistake of providing too much subtext, in that sense. Let the reader do it. All you need to do is provoke them into it.
You’ll probably see that sort of thing in these fragments. Except maybe the longer two (A Donkey’s Tale, and Tradition - the former, as it happens, was an impromptu comment, which turned out to be quite amusing) - and these ones were indeed longer than the prompt length. If I start doing a little fragment and a story occurs then I’ll just ignore the word limit, because I can’t stick to it.
The others, though, might also be taken as a kind of pitch. That’s to say, you can definitely imagine those scenes as part of a full-length movie/novel. That’s what I mean about suggestion, and allusions to a backstory.
Oh dear - this is turning into a literary essay about fragments. That won’t do. You just want to read the fragments. You don’t want to listen to me droning on.
So with that in mind I’ll say that’s enough and just, well, here’s some more fragments for you.
I’m on my second glass of wine now, so things are feeling a little better.
And don’t worry - most of these fragments are quite humorous. Especially the last one, which I really like.
Shut up Evelyn. Give over. To the Great Image Generator, I mean.
Ok. Sorry.
50ml of Blood
Area 51
Restrained to this table I'm forced to stare upwards. No movement allowed while they cut their autopsy.
Of course they can't hear me. I try telling them, but no.
This species doesn't do telepathy.
They'll be reverse engineering my timeship soon enough.
Should never have come to this forbidden planet.
100mg of a Carnivore
Carnivore
The rescue timeship materialised on the edge of the forest, easily locating the broken remains of its sister.
Huge gashes laced its exterior.
Broken teeth jutting out at odd angles.
You know the score. When time travel is involved it's all so very predictable.
We've seen all this before.
There'll be a third one soon, and then a fourth, before someone gets suspicious and informs the Institute of Xenoarchaeology at Capella Three.
Perhaps just one more expedition, unless those magnificent roars and growls in the forest don't stop.
Still, welcome to the Cretaceous, baby. We hope you enjoy your trip.
This one wasn’t done from a prompt - it just came out in a comment when the subject of Donkeys arose. That link is to the original comment - have a read of the thread. This one is 180 words, just for the record.
A Donkey’s Tale
We had a donkey once. We called him Ote.
Oh - and he had a big panda bear as a friend, who we called Sancho.
One day we got so worried because they weren't there. We looked everywhere but couldn't find them. Then we found about these new offshore wind turbines being developed off the coast of Anglia. We discovered them both on the beach. After staring wistfully out to sea for a few days - they told us - they had the bright idea of building a raft. They were halfway through collecting the wood when we found them.
We took them home, but they got depressed. So one Christmas, whilst they were sleeping, we had a little brainwave and spent all night building them a canoe.
When we told them it would be their honour to name the canoe, they needed no hesitation. They got a big bucket of paint and gleefully christened it 'King', in bright red letters on the side.
They were gone by new year. We still miss them both very much to this day.
100mg of a Campfire (you may recognise the theme/imagery to this one - if you like it, there’s this Fairytale Sunday - ‘Stories my mother taught me’)
A Visitation in the Ice Age
All human life can be found in a group of friends, sitting around a campfire.
This is how you once were, I know.
One of you tells a tale of the one that got away.
Another, the dangerous fairytale, the monster in the woods.
A warning and a life lesson in the ice age.
We visited you then, when you were unafraid of our otherworldly difference.
No fear of the other.
For you were one with nature and forest and all her myriad spirits.
We joined you around the fire, listening, telling.
Our timeship, there in the clearing, can wait.
100mg of The Holidays (this is the competition one. There was of course another ‘Holiday’ one, from the previous Pomes & Words, which was part 2 of the Dead Madonna tale); as you’ll see, it’s one of my meditative things.
Untitled
Everyone gets a holiday in eternity. Just one day into life. Seems like a lifetime, I know.
Most disremember. Most dismembered.
Depends which world you choose to suit your temper.
Most disembodied, and most will leave this world with fond, tender memories.
I saw a sunrise once, I watched it melt your heart.
We stayed up all night to see it. Then you forget, the Styx gets you every time.
Music and healing, this life, this world. This Gaia.
She knows, you know, she knows you.
You might think she doesn’t love you but no, you’re wrong.
You’re wrong again…
An overdose of a tradition (it’s 337 words, for the record)
Tradition
“Oh I agree wholeheartedly!” remarked the cannibal to the explorer, continuing their somatic tour of the village, “Tradition is a very fine thing indeed! And you are fortunate to find us on a feast day!”
“Ah,” said the explorer, who was also, it must be noted, an anthropologist, “that explains those wafting culinary savours assaulting my nostrils, eh!”
“Indeed,” chuckled the cannibal, “Indeed, Sir!”
They rounded a corner, into the central square where a colossal cauldron did smoke.
“…sweetbreads, liver and kidney pot pie, rump casserole… We have a recipe book, you know?”
“Oh! I would be exceeding intrigued to see that!”
Another friendly chuckle.
“Tastes like chicken, does it?” enquired the anthropologist, with an emerging sense of suspicion.
“Oh, no,” replied the cannibal, “we call you long pig.”
“Hmm.” Racist too, mused the anthropologist, thinking to note it later for a monograph on the survival of barbarianism into this modern age of his glorious Victorian Empire.
Unless we were to say, on the off-chance he had any descendants today, an eerily similar monograph on the savagery of Braves in the New World Order?
“Oh,” muttered he, as they neared that steaming cauldron, “you haven’t, by chance, seen my compatriots anywhere, have you? I fear they may well have gotten themselves lost in answering the call of nature when we made landfall, the fools.”
The cannibal chuckled once more. “Hah! I know very well where they are, my good man, and I very much fear they have beaten you to it with their exploration of our traditional artwork.”
“Oh?” The anthropologist’s eyes lifted in the manner of a proud beta scholar unwilling to accept another’s pre-eminence in the field. “Well, man? Do, pray, tell me where they are!”
The final chuckle, as the young men of the village began to circle, and then, “Why!” says the cannibal, gesturing to that smoking centrepiece of the settlement, “your compatriots I fear are exceeding busy with their Peace Meal analysis of the intricate carvery on the inside of that pot!”
There you go, dear reader. Some more fragments for you. I hope you enjoyed them. If so, I am sure there will be more to come in the future. I already have some, as it happens…
Oh, and I hope you do have a very happy midwinter!
The next Pomes & Words is now available, which is Kundalini Seven to Ten (it’s poetry, that is).
You do realise that some of us (as in I) now need to know more about the adventures of Ote and Sancho?
Donkey Ote! (and Sancho, too!) - I do like that donkey story of yous. Nice fragments, I enjoyed them. Don't be bummed out about the competition. If you DM Miguel, he'll tell you more about how your story was rated. He said he liked mine, but it had the same problem as yours - it was a narrative rather than a story. I'm just doing these as a brain exercise, but I'm finding them to be fun, too, so I'll keep plugging along. I like your holiday entry - it was a lot deeper than mine, I wrote about cookies. 😂 Happy Solstice!