[for 5.6.11] 5.31.11-bugs

[note: awhile ago i posted a drabble called silence. the day i posted it i didn't think i would have time to write a drabble. but my pride got the best of me tonight and i wanted to be able to say i wrote 31 drabbles in the month of may-one for every day (without cheating with a previously written drabble). so, without further ado, here is my final drabble]

"You know it's buggy when you can slap your arm and kill 3 mosquitoes"
"Ah!! There's an ant on my napkin!!"
"You have a spider on you!"
"It's hot, the middle of the day and breezy and there are STILL mosquitoes!"
"I was just pulling a couple weeds and there was a tick crawling up my arm"
During the winter I always forget how itchy mosquito bites are, how annoying it is to walk through a spider web and how surprising it is when an ant appears on your napkin.
This is a New England summer.

5.31.11-ECHO [my last drabble (*sad face*)]

"Good morning!!!!!!!!" *good morning good morning good morning good morning* the little girl shouts cross the lake.
"Where are you?????" *where are you where are you where are you* she shouts again.
"Sssshhh, sweetheart, it's only 6:30, you'll wake everybody up!" her mother gently scolds.
"But mommy," the little girl pleads, "someone said 'good morning' back, she said it over and over again until I couldn't hear her anymore. And she asked where I was. I think it's a lost princess. She might need our help."
"Oh, my darling. It's only your echo."

An Accident?!?!

I feel the power of my horse through his saddle. I feel the thrill of the ride through his feet. I feel his excitement in the rhythm of his movements. His power makes me bold; his thrill makes me exhilarated; his excitement gives me the urge to go faster.

His mane and tail fly with the wind and the steady thrump of his hoof pounds into the ground. We gallop across the open field, free as the breeze rolling over the distant hills. I feel the power of my horse through his feet. And some say creation was an accident!

Summer! (for 5.29.11)

With my feet dangling in the ice cold pool, I wait for my victim. The pool is so calm, so smooth. I swish my feet back and forth, causing ripples and little waves to run from my feet. The velvet of the water cools my legs as I sit on the deck. With a flick of my feet water spays over my body. At the sound of the creaking door, I fill my squirt gun with the freezing water. I aim and fire the cold water at my sister, who just walked out of our basement door.

Don’t you just love summer?

5.31.11 Red – a super drabble of 1000 words

[Note: a super drabble consists of 10 drabbles together resulting in 1000 words. I thought it would be fun to do a little something different for the last day of drabble month]

Red. Red is the colour of danger, warning, and trouble. It is the colour of the disunited, of the insubordinate, of the rebellious. It is the colour of havoc, chaos, destruction. Red is the colour of the commoners, the colour that sets apart the elite from the trash, the glorified from the weak. Red is the colour of suffering, of pain, of torture. It is the colour of labor, of toil, and of agony. Red is the colour of those who are hated, forgotten, and abused. Red is the colour we shun, the colour we hate, the colour we kill.

Stupid and naïve as children are, we know the consequences for our actions. We know the danger of tree climbing and running. Of digging and riding. And fighting. Ha! We even know the danger of gardening; curse those dreaded thorn weeds! We have learned that even the smallest cut, the tiniest prick, can result so frighteningly in the colour of the commoners. And the anger that it would bring from every adult was enough to crush every bit of creativity that swelled in our infant minds. We would be locked up alone to contemplate our soiled clothing and damaged skin.

But my dear nursemaid (whom I loved, despite the rules against it) was always there to clean me up, to wash away the colour. She would mend my clothes and fix my hair and present me to my enraged parents. And they would smile cold uncaring smiles, perfect examples of what society wanted me to be. As I grew, through the maturity of age and failure, I learned that the only way to avoid such childish mistakes was to do only respectable adult-like tasks like sitting and walking. No more running, no more playing. But that was before the revolution.

Oh, revolution. Stupid revolution. So much worse than the insignificant naivety of children. Worse even than the most efficient underground organized crime. Revolution was the worst in the world. Revolution used weapons, it challenged the practice of our perfect society, it sought to topple the principles on which our very own feet rested. Strangely enough, no one tried to stop it at first. I suppose they thought the young citizens, the ones just now mature (the ones like me) would rise up and squash it. But we didn’t. No, we did the most reckless, foolish thing imaginable. We joined it.

It was dark when I left. I could hardly breathe. My heart was beating so fast it felt as though it was suffocating my lungs. But I escaped that cold colourless house with the impassive parents and heartless edicts. I was free; I had escaped that adolescent repression. My amazement only grew when, after my acceptance into the ranks of the insurrectionists, I was shown the instruments of retaliation. Never in my life could I have imagined all the glorious colours. Brown, green, blue, and the most beautiful colour they called yellow. It was amazing and I couldn’t stop looking.

That was the thing that the others had not counted on. They had never seen the mystifying and incredible number of colours. They had, like all good citizens, cut colour out of their minds. But when they scraped away that colour, they destroyed what colour meant. Colour meant living. Colour meant seeing. And we embraced it. We, with our newly opened eyes, saw the glory in sensations that colour gave us. Green made me smile, blue made me shiver, and yellow (oh magnificent yellow) made me warm from the inside out. Colour gave us minds which gave us rebellious ideas.

Revolution, however joyous it may seem at first, is truly an agonizing and painful choice in life. I saw so much death those first few months, so much devastation and heartbroken pain. And I saw red. Real red. Not just the trivial red that I had seen as I child when I scraped my knee. I saw pools of red by broken bodies, cuts of red so deep they looked like they would never end, burns of red so sickening I closed my eyes and wept. It was the first colour that frightened me. So I tried to avoid it.

I could not avoid it forever. After one horrendous battle, I found a child. There was red streaking his chest and flowing down his cheek. He was crying. His mother was dead. As I wrapped him in my arms that colour transferred to me. It was the first time I had touched real red. I couldn’t pull myself away. It melted me, burned me, broke me. I felt for the first time the sensation of red: anger and passion and love. I learned the meaning of the colour, even as it covered me. And that was how they found me.

I woke in a room of blinding white. The walls were white; the floor was white, the ceiling, the counters, the cabinets, the instruments. The brown and green and red of my clothes were the only exception to the spotless room. A man entered. A colourless man, with colourless hair and colourless coat. He told me I had seen too much; I would have to die. He held a dripping needle in his hand.

Oh, to die in colour, to rest my body forever in a bed of downy yellow. But no, the last I would ever see was white.

White. White is the colour of silence, isolation, and emptiness. It is the colour of the cruel, of the joyless, of the barren. It is the colour of seclusion, oppression, futility. White is the colour of the privileged, the colour that sets apart the elite from the trash, the glorified from the weak. White is the colour that chokes passion, vision, and enthusiasm. It is the colour that kills creativity and smoothers the ideas of the thoughtful. It is the colour that is colourless. The colour that kills colour.

They used white to oppress us. They used white to exterminate.

5.31.11 The body of Christ.

The hands which worked, the body that was baptized, the back that was whipped, the face that was spit upon, the feet that burned when they walked across the stone path which led to the hill, the hands that were pierced, the back which held the weight of sin, the body that was resurrected, the face that was glorified by the father. Christ, who despite the fact that he loved his father, felt the merciless pain of nails in his hands and feet, the wrath of the father, and the crown of thorns.

The body of Christ that was broken for the world.

5.30.11 Death of the Young

She sat on the sofa, holding her husband’s hand. In her other hand she clenched a tissue so hard it was turning to paper shreds. Two military men in immaculate uniforms were slowly telling her the story she had dreaded since the moment her son had told her he was joining the marines.

“His helicopter went down during the rescue operation…”

She stopped listening; she couldn’t bear to hear anymore. All she could see was the little boy with the missing teeth. The little boy who had hardly become a man was dead before he had a chance to live.

5.30.11-doorway

Suddenly the molding shoots up and runs perfectly perpendicular to the floor, it then turns sharply to the right and runs parallel to the ground until it turns left in a sharp perpendicular line heading straight for the floor where it meshes with the baseboard and travels peacefully around the room. Doorways can seem random sometimes-awkward openings in an otherwise perfectly smooth wall. But they always have a purpose. Solidly marking the difference between kitchen and living room, bedroom and hallway, doorways are unquestionable ends and beginnings. They hold unmistakable opportunities and always lead somewhere. Where does your doorway lead?

Memorial Day 5.30.2011

He looked out the window, drinking from his dark, black coffee. The eyes that gazed out the window were empty and haunted.

 All the celebration. They didn’t really know what went on in those wars. 

He did, he would never forget. He had lost brothers . The guilt rode heavily on him throughout the years. 

There was a small knock at his door. He opened it, staring down into the bright blue eyes of a blonde little girl. She smiled and handed up a small white daisy. 

“Thank you for serving, sir!” she said, meaning it sincerely.  

And then…  He smiled. 

5.30.11 Memorial Day

The man slipped into his grey uniform and cap and a shadow came over his face. So many painful memories flooded into his mind.

Memories of the field in which they had fought, side-by-side, through the long hours of the day.
Memories of the gunshots, the screams, of the hard gun pressed against his back, forcing him to go into the cell.
Memories of the cold floor, where he sat, alone, waiting for any sign of life, of a rescuer.

Those were hard, cold, awful memories, but he pushed them aside.

It was Memorial Day, a time to celebrate.

He had survived.

5.29.11 Bad News

The piano tapped out its melancholy tune in the corner almost oblivious of the old musician sitting beside it. But its heartbreaking melody was only second on my mind for my eyes were riveted instead on the two men by the fireplace. They spoke rapidly in hushed tones, one held a piece of crumpled paper between them. Then suddenly the ballroom went silent, the dancers swirled in slow motion, and the lights dimmed. They turned toward me and I shivered in my seat. My hands were shaking, spilling red punch on my gloves. They frowned. One of them was crying.

5.29.11-good morning

Traveling through the surreal and strange land of dreams, I attend parties, fight wars, observe weddings and executions, visit buildings and beautiful woods. People are not who they were and there is no reason to time. All the sudden a bird chirps and my sense awaken-calculating the time. Slowly the characters and places I had been traveling fade and I embark on a strange journey. There is no definite moment when the dream becomes a disintegrating memory and the world becomes reality again, but somehow my mind awakens and I remember time, somehow my eyes open and I
wake up.

5.29.11 Fever

Fever swept through Philadelphia that summer of 1783, during the hot, humid, scorching, sweltering summer months. The bells that hung in the church tower tolled ceaselessly, an awful reminder that thousands of people died daily. Many children had been stripped of their parents and children had been mercilessly taken from parents. Everyone lived, stricken with the fear that they too would be victims of the awful fever. The city streets once crowded and bustling with merchants and shoppers now stood desolate, abandoned by the outside world. The fever combed through the streets of Philadelphia, ruthlessly killing everyone in its path.

5.28.11 Colour

I love to look up and see blue floating above me. I love to stick my nose out and smell the sweet fragrance of red. I love the feeling of green between my toes as I skip barefoot. I love the prickly warmth of yellow on my skin and the taste of pink on my tongue. I love to hear the whistle of orange and the creak of old brown when I walk. I love the splash of grey on my head, the flash of white in the night, and the taste of sweet chewy black.

I love every colour.

5.28.11-colours

"I wish I could see colour. God, why did you make me blind?" Amelia whispered to herself.
Someday you will see. My colours are better, wait for the stunning brilliance I have in store for you, Amelia.
70 years later Amelia lay dying. She peacefully contemplated her last moments,
"I have never seen this world. Colours are only words. But soon I will see.
She entered eternity. She saw her God and she was stunned by His brilliant colours.
Mine are more brilliant than the world's. They are especially gorgeous for you. Hasn't it been worth the wait?

Colours (5.28.11)

“Jesus of Nazareth is passing!”

The cries of civilians reach my ears. Is it true? Is the Son of David walking this way? I cry out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those around me rebuke me and tell me that Jesus has no time to bother with blind beggars. Then I hear a different voice, a kind voice.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

“Lord, let me recover my sight!”

“Recover your sight; your faith has healed you.”

Then I saw what I had longed to see: colours!

TV (5.27.11)

*click*

“and she goes in for the layup, what was she thinking?!?!” *click*

“See, that’s the problem with you! you don’t have a brain in your head!” *click*

“Igor, hand me the brain!” *click*

“Now you just add that to the flour mixture and toss it around awhile with the spoon…” *click*

“…and she missed the game-winning three-pointer! Such a perfect opportunity wasted!” *click*

“Don’t leave your chicken wings in there for too long, or they will be burned to a crisp!” *click*

“Oh no! Uconn is toast!” *click*

“That’s it, I’m done with you!”

*BEEEEOOOOooopp*

There’s nothing good on!

Word Search (for 5.26.11)

The letters jumble before my eyes. I spot a word hidden in the letters, but, to my dismay, it is not one of the words listed in the bank the restaurant gave me. Well, I guess that makes sense. Why would Pizza Hut have the word “cat” in its word search?

I go back to looking amongst the random letters for a word. Finally I find one, “pepperoni”. Triumphantly, I circle it with the green crayon. Then one after another I find the words. Finally, I set my crayon down and look at the page.

I completed my word search!

(for) 5.27.11-conversations with a three year old

“We went to the zoo today,” he told me.

“Really?” I asked him, “what was your favorite animal?”

“uummm, all of them! We got to pet them and feed them and watch them!”

“Ooohh, that's neat.”

“And we saw two camels! One had one hump and one had two humps!”

“Oh, wow.”

“Do you know what two plus one is?”

“Three.”

“yes!!” he affirmed, slightly surprised.

Then, after asking few more addition question he closed his eyes and said,

“if you close your eyes you can see a rainbow!!”