Free Write - Imagine

 

Once again two of the writers are in France and one in Switzerland. They write ten minutes on a prompt and then compare what they've written. Two of us took a dark turn. Thank goodness for the third who reminded us of the good things.

The prompt: I can just imagine is from Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread. It was D-L's Free Write. Next up Rick.

D-L's Free Write

Salvah was wet and cold from her hiding place under the red maple leaf pile that Papa had raked yesterday.

Today, rather than bag the leaves, he was at the demonstration at his university. 

When she woke this morning, she could imagine all the wonderful things that would happen on this, her eighth birthday.

Mama took her to the zoo to see the elephants. Salvah loved elephants, but instead of a happy herd like on the videos, there was just one lonely, sad elephant.

Back home, three men had forced their way into the house.

"Run, hide," Mama said.

As she did, she heard one of the men say "Shut up" when Mama asked who they were and why... The rest of the question was stopped by a slap and she heard the word "bitch."

Salvah was used to listening to her parents talk about "home" not this home, where she'd lived from when she was born, but a "home" far away. This home needed a green card, which they had. Salvah was surprized that the card wasn't green but a grayish plastic like Papa's driving license.

Her parents would cry watching the rubble-filed news from "home." They would cry when they learned of their parents' death and Papa's nephew and Mama's sister.

From her hiding place she saw her mother pushed into a car,

It rained harder. She never imagined hiding in a leaf pile. Leaf piles were for jumping in, not hiding.

It grew dark. She snuck into the house to wait for Papa and wait, and wait, and... 

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. https://dlnelsonwriter.com 

Julia's Free Write

Sitting here at my desk and seeing the pouring rain outside leads to reflections of sunny days elsewhere!

Having had to attend weekly religious services in my youth, followed by many a boring conference as I entered the adult world, first I escaped with a book or magazine discreetly tucked in on my lap: thank you Reader’s Digest for allowing me to escape.

As I progressed through life – mostly wonderful – I hit a few road bumps along the way, but it wasn’t until I turned 50 and needed chemotherapy that I realized “I can just imagine.”

Stuck in a chair in a hospital room in the days before better patient management, I realized that I could escape in my mind by just imagining.

Need a PET scan? Just shut your eyes and return to your favorite beach.

Need to stay still for cataract surgery? Just transport yourself to your favorite mountain peak.

Bored during a meeting? Just imagine the lovely buffet to follow.

Feeling down? Just imagine that last family reunion or party with friends.

Just imagining can bring a wealth of positive to the worst of circumstances.

Julia has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

 Rick's Free Write

I can just imagine being awoken in the middle of the night to the explosions of bombs being dropped on the city where I live.

I can just imagine having to live in underground rail stations or tunnels with no heat or electricity.

I can just imagine queuing up for handouts of bread and water amidst the rubble of our homes and schools and places of worship.

I can just imagine my sons in uniform, marching to the front lines to face an unseen terror of land mines, drones, razor wire and disease.

I can just imagine the elderly dying in a makeshift hospital without modern medical equipment, lying near a young mother in the thralls of birth.

I can just imagine my country’s ‘friends’ turning their back on the plight of my people, leaving us to the mercilessness of their new ‘friends’ – our enemy.

I can just imagine receiving the letter that informs me my eldest has been wounded, my youngest killed, my niece captured and deported, my mother raped…

No, I cannot imagine. Cannot possibly imagine the agony, the fear, the pain, the heartache, the hopelessness…

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com 

 

Crazy Cuckoo Clock

 

We did not have to promise to buy a Swiss Cuckoo Clock when Rick and I were nationalized, but Rick really wanted one. Aha, it will make a great birthday gift.

It is easy to find clocks in Geneva and I bought one, thinking, "Whew - birthday taken care of."

 Not so fast. "Let's go to Gruyere," he suggested. We knew the Covid shutdown was coming, so we thought we'd better go then. Rick continued. "I bet I can find the perfect cuckoo clock there.

Two choices.

1. Act like a bitch and reject every clock he would look at.
2. Give him the clock, early. It would still be a surprise.

I chose two and he loved it. 

However, we discover the clock has idiosyncrasies. 

We can shut it off, but it shuts itself off at night, which is good. Hearing cuckoos every hour followed by a song that varies is wonderful during the day, not so much at three in the morning.

I'm writing this at 7 p.m., 19h as the Europeans call it. I swear the cuckoo pops out and most hours are signaled double. Rick swears it's an echo. If it acted as a 24 hour clock, the cuckoo would have just rung 19 times, but it sang for 14. However, today at 2 p.m.(14h) it only cuckooed twice.

The bird decides to go to bed and stop cuckooing 8 (20h), 9 (21h), 10(22h). Maybe it is tireder some days than others. Most morning it wakes at 8 a.m. making it a lovely alarm, but this morning it decided to wake at 7. We have a dog who sleeps in and he did not seem happy to be disturbed for his first walk, especially because it was raining.

One day last week, the clock slept in until 9 but decided to ring 18 times or as Rick says, nine times and nine echos. 

Rick often has phone or zoom interviews. The clock is above his desk giving the interviewee a Cuckoo serenade.  

All this is not a complaint. I love the little figures coming out the door and dancing. I appreciate the man who spends his life sawing the wood, although the amount in the basket remains the same. The dog never bites anyone. The songs are cheery.

I suppose we could take the clock back to where we bought it to have it reset, but I kinda like it isn't conventional but just a bit crazy.

 

Loss -- Funny English

 

English is a funny language in the way we say things, especially about death.

In an Anne Tyler novel I'm reading, a character says she lost her mother. In the book she lost her three times, once to dementia, once when she went wandering in the neighborhood and once when she died.

Lost is often used to describe people who've died. Maybe if they are lost, it won't seem as permanent, they can be found again. In reality they can be found in memory, in photos, in old letters, but they won't be found in a hug or sharing a cup of tea across from us.

I've lost my grandparents, parents, my beloved stepmom, a friend of 50 years and another of 40 years. I didn't misplace them.   

The ashes of my friend of 40 years is in the cemetery to my village. Although I can't remember the exact cemetery locations in Malden, MA and Florida of my buried family members, I know if I go there I will be able to find their graves. 

I won't visit them because under current conditions, I do not want to enter the U.S. Visiting the final resting place of loved ones, was not something I did when I lived there. 

It was different with my grandmother, who made a several times a year ritual to visit the cemetery where her daughter, son and husband were buried. She loving planted flowers. She also visited the grave where her sister-in-law's family were buried nearby because her sister-in-law lived too far away in another state to do it. These visits are so different from those with the living with a cup of tea, a glass of wine and multi-person conversations that can be heard by everyone.

As a child we loved running around the cemetery while my grandmother planted the flowers, often chrysanthemums or pansies, without giving much thought to the people laid to rest under the grass where we played. 

Laid to rest is another of those phrases that doesn't say what is being said. Rest implies temporary and except for some religions, death is permanent. A bit closer to truth final resting place with the emphasis on final covers for both those who believe in life after death or not.

We also say things like, she passed. It seems like there was a deliberate movement. We pass cars, exams, property on to others, places, time and milestones in life like school graduations. Passing onto death has to be our biggest milestone worthy of a better word. 

There are ways people describe what the deceased is doing in death. "He's playing bridge with Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Butch and Auntie Bert" or "I hope he has lots of holes in one." We seldom mention, "I hope he doesn't run into X. Boy they hated each other." 

Even our pets have substitutions. We may lose a beloved pet, but more and more they cross the rainbow bridge a lovely image of them scampering across the bridge to a field with trees, flowers and four-footed friends on a sunny day.

Although I don't like to think of my own end, I do like the idea of me skipping across the bridge like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, to be greeted by Albert, Amadeus, Nikki, Mika, Clover, Toughie and all my lost pets and sitting down with long-gone family and friends. 

Redefine Socialism

 

I was a cub reporter covering a New England Town Hall in the middle 1960s. These meetings were made up of citizens (either the entire town or elected representatives) whose votes were binding.

The issue was adding fluoride to the drinking water.

"Creeping Socialism," one of the new representatives declared and people agreed. It was step toward Communism. Creeping socialism was defeated and cavities were safe for the time being.

At 16 I wasn't sure what the terms Socialism and Communism meant and it began a life-long research into the two economic philosophies and how they were implemented in different place. One thing that became clear both terms struck fear into the hearts of Americans including those that had no idea of the difference.

U.S. politicians can get the public to go against anything if they use the term Socialism. They use countries that have applied it and not done well like Venezuela as a horrible example.

Socialism and misery are not necessarily partners. 

What politicians don't point out, Socialism properly applied works well.

Six out of the top seven happiest countries in the world for 2024 were Northern European countries. Finland took top honors—for the tenth year in a row—with an overall score of 7.741, followed (in order) by Denmark (7.583), Iceland (7.525), Sweden (7.344), Israel (7.341), the Netherlands (7.319), and Norway (7.302). All are heavily socialistic. 

Why are these countries happy? Reasons include:

1. Taking care of social needs
2. Feeling of belonging to a community
3. Low corruption
4. Top education
5. Strong health care system 
6. A life balance

The U.S. was 24th. If 1-6 help to make a country happy it is easy to understand why the U.S. rates where it does.

 

Read the report https://worldhappiness.report/

 

 

 

 

Free Write -- on the carpet

Rick and I had breakfast at the new café across from the post. Julia, who is in Switzerland, sent us a photo as a prompt.

 Julia's Free Write

He hadn’t had a peaceful night at all.  Tossing and turning, mind whiling, wondering what the consequences of yesterday’s standoff would be.

Therefore, although he hadn’t heard anything (actually he had, but had attributed the small thumps to a dream) he wasn’t surprised upon arising  and going downstairs to find things laying on the rug.

Blood red rug, I might add.

He called his police friend, leaving everything in place then made coffee and tried not to think what it all meant.

His friend – not in uniform – duly arrived and both men stood there staring.

Finally, he saw the note laying on the desk.

“I refuse to cook any more for someone so ungrateful!

Your daughter”

Julia has written and taken photos all and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

D-L's Free Write

"A picnic."

"But it's raining," Susan said to her daughter Jasmine.

"We'll have it on the rug."

Jasmine was thrilled with the idea. The cleaning woman had come yesterday and wouldn't be back until Monday.

"It'll be fun, Mom. Potato salad, hot dogs. We can grill them in the fireplace.

Grease dripping, Susan thought.

"Do we have marshmallows?  Graham crackers? Hershey bars?"

"No." 

Jasmine was 11,  a borderline teenager. Susan never knew would it be a doll day, a day she's want her ears pierced or if she'd spend the day lost in her books.

Her cuddly little girl seldom wanted to cuddle. Attempts were followed by a multi-syllable "Mother." Who knew that word could have five syllables?

From a child who used to tell her everything, Susan wondered if Jasmine took mute pills.

"I'll set the rug." Jasmine rummaged in the silverware drawer and put forks, knives and spoons on the rug. "We don't even need a tablecloth." 

Susan swallowed comments on germs, built the fire and used the leftover potatoes for the salad.

They ate on the rug, pretending the pounding rain was waves crashing on the shore. Jasmine jabbered about school, clothes, her friends and the new Judy Blume novel as Susan tried to ignore the crumbs on the rug.

 D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. https://dlnelsonwriter.com 

Rick's Free Write

Geoffrey had agreed to watch his nephew, Jack, for a few hours and quickly regretted the decision. The kid fit his name – he was as wired as a Terrier.

He only knew the six-year-old from visits to his sister Sonia’s house, usually family gatherings, and he could mostly ignore him there.

The kid was autistic, which Geoff didn’t really understand, nor had he bothered to research. He was sympathetic, so long as it didn’t affect his own life.

After Sonia dropped Jack off at his apartment in the city center, the kid didn’t say a word.

“Would you like to play a game?”

No response.

“Shall we have some lunch?”

No response.

So Geoff went into the kitchen and started preparing some sandwiches.

After a few minutes, Jack wandered in. Still mute.

“Hey, buddy. How about setting the table?” He handed Jack the knives, spoons and forks, and said, “We’ll eat in the living room on the coffee table.”

Jack disappeared with the cutlery.

Geoff finished up the PB&J sandwiches, the juice, and potato chips, loaded it all onto a tray, and headed for the living room.

The first thing he noticed was the silverware thrown on the rug.

The second thing he noticed was no Jack.

The third thing he noticed was the open front door.

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com