Petrified Wood

Writers Island
3WW Prompt: Touching, Visible, Stage
Cafe Writing Prompt: Option 3, Pick 3 Possession, rough, eternal

When the serrated blade buckled against the wood, Jessie knew it was time to see-saw it out. His shiny red knuckles gripped up into a fist and he bit his stubbly bottom lip as he pulled, then pushed.

"This one is ready to fall."

He turned to Ben, his new quasi-apprentice and pushed him onto the straight and clear path. It seemed like he had a new apprentice every month now. These days young men just can't handle the rigours of a lumberjack's life, but they sure like the pay.

"Hey J, Whats Mr. G. do with all these trees anyways?"
"Another one down!" Jessie ignored Ben, and called out to Mr. Giuseppe, the man who signed his check.
"Where do you want her?"

The splintered wood creeked and moaned in pain as she; heaved away from him in disgust, hit bottom and rolled up against the other fallen timbers.

"I want that one on the truck bed, she's a keeper." declared Mr. Giuseppe.

Jessie turned towards Ben to respond, "Mr. Giuseppe is a wood alchemist Ben, he's a man of science and we don't call him Mr. G."

"a wood wha??" Ben retorted, as he crouched down and placed his hand on the weathered, rough skin of that newly cut tree. He could still feel her heart throbbing, or was it the chainsaw reverberation?

"So Mr.G is a man of science is he?" Ben asked rather rhetorically "whats he do make paper out of 'em?.
"No Ben no paper, Mr. Giuseppe is more like a collector".

Once she was strapped in Mr. Giuseppe shuffled his feet over to the truck and hoisted himself in. He was getting older and didn't seem to have the stamina for field research anymore...he would have to train someone soon. Someone who had the eye to pick out the Prana filled specimens.

Time, days, months and years of running his hands along the grain, peeling bark, and touching the inner circles seem to be flying by him. Once the driver pulled up in front of his studio, he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

The studio was hoisted up on girders and built by Mr. Giuessepe with the finest dead-wood there was at the time. The structure stood alone in the middle of a field that seemed endless. He had installed two stately iconic doors that seemed out of sync with the architectural crudeness of the one-room workshop. Still the most unnerving thing was the sculpture arched above the entrance, comprised of random arms reaching out everywhere, made out of petrified wood.

The driver unsnapped the strap that held the log, and kicked it off the truck bed.
"I don't usually make pick-ups and drops for one log at time, Sir. It seems a mighty odd waste of efficiency."

"Oh well you must be a new driver, because I always do only one girl at a time." Mr. Giuseppe placed his hand by his head as if to salute the driver goodbye and walked towards his studio doors.

Once the studio doors opened wide, the world they held hostage burst into a breath of air and was unsettled from the dust. All the floating and abandoned puppets swung on strings and they rocked from side to side. You could tell Mr. Giuseppe had been the supreme being in this space among all his personified possessions for quite some time.

Mr.Giuseppe took off his long cracked leather coat and hung it on a wall hook. He wiped his glasses clean. It was at that moment all the lives he had created became visible. He looked across the studio in a three hundred and sixty degree panoramic circle, inhaling the taut strings, the backward limbs, the hairless heads, stopping at P. his masterpiece. A frozen boy carved wickedly on a chair with his eyes fixated eternally on the ground.

"Today is the day my boy, you're at that stage...all grown up and ready for a girl."

Cafewriting

Fearlesss

Sunday Scribblings prompt: Fearless

I used to be Fearless. As a child there was nothing I would not dare to do. My meditations took place on the windowsill, contemplating the art of falling. I designed wings to attach to my flapping arms- in order to fly. Alone for so much of the time, there was no time for fear- everything was do or die.

I am dismayed to report that the body that was Fearless has been kidnapped. Held hostage and tortured for the truth. Fearless has been gone now for so long, we fear it is too late. As soon as I noticed Fearless was gone I sent out a rescue crew, but they have been searching for years and are tired. We received a distress call once, Fearless seemed to have discovered a moment of freedom from bondage, where it was able to call for help.

Please send help! I'm still alive and able, though I have been beaten to a pulp and have spent months close to the edge of breath, every time I am sure to fade into oblivion they come back and resurrect me enough to torture me some more. Please don't give up on me. Send help!

I want to keep looking. But the rescue crew is tired. They want to return home to their families who they haven't seen for years. Many of them have full grown children that they have never met. It's not fair to keep them searching. They try to tell me it's no use anyway, they say Fearless will never come back and I should just accept it. They say that if by some miracle a return were ever to happen, Fearless would never be the same anyway. I am growing weary and am inclined to believe my rescue team and relieve them of their duties.

I look around to these four padded walls with only a hole with which to see outdoors and think maybe it is time to send the rescue team home. Maybe this white room is home now and I have to accept it. If it weren't for those damn Memories, that visit me every dawn. They walk right in through one of the padded doors I try to keep locked. They walk in with their faded colored robes and taunt me. The Memories remind me, what it was like to feel, taste, see and smell life. They carry little nostalgic vials of blood that rush, crash and surge like waves to be alive the way I used to be. They keep me hoping Fearless will one day walk through that door and set me free.

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/

The Magic of a Photograph

Sunday Scribblings Prompt: The Photograph 4/6/08

The photograph is perhaps the single most powerful piece of two-dimensional paper there is. Short of imagery made literally by the human hand…the metaphorical mirrors in a photograph have a supernatural quality about them. The greatest spell ever placed on you was not by a social security card, birth certificate, passport, or green card, but was with a photograph – of that I am sure.

As you walk through the violet door, strands of chotchkes chime and stacked jars filled with some of this, and some of that, quake as though to turn and look at you. The candles, tall and short burn and flicker with your air. The effigy's of saints with discolored robes stare. Magic lives in this place and each little object is infused with the greatest of spirits, your belief.

There are memories that I have that I don’t think I would if not for a photograph. Clearly that stands true for many people. Therefore my life would consist of ‘amnesiatic’ voids, if not for photo albums illustrating my life to me. The power of a visual image in your hands to revitalize the subdued and often muted/conflicted image in our mind’s eye is extraordinary. It includes the sensual body memory aroused simply by the visual.

The elder walks out and clearly reads you without opening her crinkled foiled mouth. Soon she will wave her hands over you, smoke you and spit into the air cursing at invisible evil to clean you. You will leave this place cradling envelopes of powder, ribbons with saints, metal charms and strange dehydrated plant matter. However, before you cross the treshold to exit, she will speak out in tongues and tell you all you need is a photograph to call upon what it is that you want.

I now respect the photograph as one of the greatest tools in a witch’s arsenal. I deliberately rearrange relevant and non-relevant framed images in my home before a visit and they cast spells every time. I do so often in hopes to reinforce connection and meaning of my existence with that of my guests…but it unleashes its own reckoning that I simply have no command over. Images that are meaningless to most, can be boulders of enticed emotions to others. I have had a grown man enter my home in jovial, exuberant spirits ready for an evening of festive repartee be crushed into a bowed head of tears by seeing an image framed on my wall of his long dead mother.

We are all Dr. Frankenstein when it comes to the electrical power of a photograph…we use it to recreate, reanimate living creatures whether they be lost or simply absent grandparents, parents, pets or lovers. We personify that two dimensional plane. If we had the power to physically do so we would all have talking and moving pictures, though we might choose not to bring back the dead. Talking pictures like that in the movie of Amelie and Harry Potter. Which I may add, holds a similar, but very different inflection and physicality than video and home movies. This fine distinction is because a photo captures a frozen MOMENT in time. A moment that becomes an empty carafe which we can then fill up with our own inferred magic like the power to make your twelve facial muscles smile.

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/

Bar Code Number Please

I have combined the Sunday Scribblings prompt: Out of This World and the 3WW prompt Bounce, Mysterious and Parallel (I wasn't feeling well when I wrote this and fusing the two prompts was the most I could do - so sorry).

I was so delighted by her long legs and her Japanese-inspired Harajuku fashion; with clunky knee-high boots and gothic petticoats, that I simply forgot the state of the world we are living in. Her car with the letters ZE (one of the largest multinational corps in the world) should have been a dead-give-away, but I foolishly attributed it to the weak dollar and her being of a foreign exchange rate. I was both wrong and right. I have been working as a valet now for two years and I thought I had seen all types until that moment when I saw her bounce out of that surreal car.

"Keys Ma'am?"
"Oh, no keys, I use my bar code."
"You mean you have a key pass code?"
"No, I have a bar code." She clarified in a louder voice and with sharper annunciation while waving her wrist at me in a mysterious 'hello' way. Her bangles clicked and chimed at me.

I started to think perhaps there was simply something lost in translation. I have heard of these new self-parallel-park cars and those fingerprint-key cars, maybe that's why she's waving her wrist at me.

"Ma'am, I have to park your car...so how would you like me to do that?"
"I have a copy of my bar code for you, it needs to be returned to me when I pick up my car." She hands me a piece of white cardstock around one inch by two inches in size that has no legible numbers on it -simply a variety of black thick and thin lines.
"Theres no number here Ma'am so what do I do with this?"
"My number is much too personal - you can only find that here," She moves her bangles up her arm and shows me the same black stripes but with a number imprinted like a tattoo on the soft supple flesh of her wrist.
"O.Righhtee then." At this point, I'm thinkin' she's just a wacked-trust-fund-babe, "So do I swipe this somewhere?" I asked incredulously.
"I get it, you've never seen a GE girl before have you?"
"Excuse me?"
"A G-E G-I-R-L, genetically engineered. My father is the ZE corporation and you should get used to my type. There's a whole battalion of us who have just been brought over. You'll never know when it's one of us your irking."

Ever since that day, I can't stop thinking about her. What it would feel like to kiss her, would she taste real/natural/ or synthetic?

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/

What Would I Attempt if I Knew I could Not Fail!

Sunday Scribblings Smorgasbord Prompt #1 What would you do if you knew you would not fail?

I thought my illustration, entitled Solimar was very fitting for this prompt!

This is SS's first ever prompt and I am honored to be able to respond it now, since I was no where near the blogosphere back when it was posted!!! I am currently sitting at the airport with 50 highschool students about to embark on their spring break in France and Germany! (You guessed it - someone in this world convinced me to make my spring break about chaperoning!! Damn him!) and Hi Steph!! I miss YOU!!!p>

So what wouldn't I attempt???!! ;) Well, here is what I would attempt:

I would quit my job and go into business for myself. Maybe even have a storefront of magical and alchemical objects that only imaginarites could shop in! I would mail out that manuscript that I have never even brought past the front door. I would die my hair Marilyn Monroe Blonde even for just a month! I would shave my head! I would create a foundation for young women in which they are taught to be, survive and thrive! I would sell the house and travel everywhere for a year. I would birth a child! I would open a working gallery - complete with artist classes. I would be a lead singer to music band and sing Joplin and Nina Simone covers. I would try to meet Johnny Depp and ask him 'Voulez Vous Couchez Avec Moi C'est Sois?? Or something like that! I would hunt down actor, Benicio del Toro and ask him to perform a love scene with me on Broadway for a whole year!! I would glass blow for a living. I would travel to outer space and back. I would get laser surgery on my eyes so that I wouldn't think the Almighty has bestowed me with new sight everytime I fall asleep with my contact lenses on! I would sky dive.

Oh No! My plane is boarding!!! Go to go! bye!
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