RW Drabble 2.0.072: Recast

This was published in Fiction Shorts. The photo I took out our kitchen window two days ago suggested the song, and once I started with Credence I couldn’t stop.

The prompt: This story will be 133.333 words. How? One word will stop bef….

Don’t you love Fiction Shorts’ editors?

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“Susan, I see a bad moon ris…”

“Please, John, no spell on me before breakfast. I feel like there’s a traveling band inside my head.”

“At coffee yesterday, I heard it through the grapevine. Elon Musk has recast Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Down on the corner, across from the courthouse, people are gathering. So, I’ve been lookin’ out our back door. We could lose Proud Mary.”

“Speaking of the backyard, it’s a jungle out there. Have you seen the rain forecast?”

“Oh, Suzie Q, let’s take the Mary out on the river today.”

“Suzie Q worked last night. And your up around my bend was lovely, very lovely. But isn’t the river green, full of algae? Plus, our fortunate son is coming for lunch.”

“Oh no, there’s trouble on the way.”

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These Creedence Clearwater Revival song titles have been used in the dialogue: Bad Moon Rising, I Put a Spell on You, Traveling Band, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Proud Mary, Down on the Corner, Run through the Jungle, Have You Seen the Rain, Suzie Q, Up Around the Bend, Green River, and Fortunate Son.

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RW Drabble 2.0.071: Jurisprudence

This story appears in Medium’s Fiction Shorts. It is a drabble.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

Editor: “Dialogue only.”

Writer: “OK.”

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“Leon, my father always said, ‘The world is not fair.’”

“I’m reminded of that every day, John. Even here, in this upscale bar, people look at me differently than you.”

“What did you think on that day?”

“Fancy words are cheap. The law is my life. That’s why I’m teaching it. But after George and those nine minutes and 29 seconds, man, that’s the jurisprudence of Jim Crow.”

“What about the rioting?”

“John, some people get to be violent, and others don’t; the violence of some is honored and pardoned. Think about if the January 6 mob had been Black.”

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RW Drabble 2.0.066: Oxygen

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts. It is a drabble, 100 words. The prompt was to use the word oxygen written in the self-help genre.

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“You want me to do what?”

“Before you put your food scraps in the composter, let them sit on your kitchen counter, open to the air, for three days. Observe how the oxygen breaks down the material into nutrients that will enrich the soil — from death comes new life. It’s nature’s way.

“Becky said you’re a strange psychologist, but she does seem different, more vital.”

“The second homework assignment is to imagine your body decomposing from bones to dust.”

“Huh?”

“Once you accept death’s inevitability, you’re ready to live. Do this daily meditation, and I promise you will come alive.”

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The corpse meditation is from Anthony De Mello’s Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. On my self-help shelf, this is one of my go-to resources.

This story was published in Six-word photo story challenge, a Medium publication.

Life is one problem after another.

Some problems are doozies — life-changing. Yesterday, I talked with George, a friend with stage four colon cancer. On some days, Katie does not know her life partner, Steve. Rick lives with a back that can’t be repaired.

I’m in my 8th decade in reasonable health. Occasionally, I fantasize about an older me, blanket-clad, sitting in a rocking chair beside a fireplace with nothing to do and nowhere to go, problem-free.

Two days ago, I oversalted my famous ham and bean soup so much that it was uneatable. Instead of putting the mistake into the composter, I dumped it down the garbage disposal. Yesterday, the plumber, after 45 minutes, said, “I don’t know what was down there, but it was sure stuck.”

Ordinary problems.

My irregular fantasy of a problemless life lets the cat out of the bag. I resent problems, especially the common day-to-day ones. Why do I feel this way?

Oliver Burkeman, in Meditation for Mortals, suggests an answer.

‘Problem’ is just the word we apply to any situation in which we confront the limits of our capacity to control how things unfold…[responding] is precisely what makes life meaningful and satisfying.

Further, once we accept this beautiful idea — the inevitability of problems —we can “unclench” ourselves for the more vital task of “living a life of ever more interesting and absorbing ones.”

Problems are life. And vice versa.

This story was published in The Daily Cuppa with a word limit 150.

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I’m new to this book club business, joining our community’s older men’s reading group about a year ago. It’s called that to distinguish us from a whippersnapper bunch who looked two decades younger when we met in a joint session last August.

When I asked our founder, Jim, why only men, he said, “Because we read different books than women.” Our geezer gang of ten consists of eighth-decade white men, including four college professors, one engineer, one banker, three small business owners, and a psychologist.

We intentionally exclude people by gender and age but not by race. However, we live in an almost all-white town in the nearly all-white state of Iowa. We asked Novian, an African-American English professor at the local college, to lead our discussion.

Two fertile hours later, Steve turned to Novian and said, “You’re the first black person I’ve gotten to know.”

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In the central time zone in the USA, daylight saving time came this morning at 1:59.59 AM.

One second later, my MacBook clock took away the hour it had given us last fall.

After taking this photo, I heard human sounds outside our corner street house. I went out on the back stoop and peered over the railing as the voices came from the street in front of the house. Three young people, two men and a woman, had exited a car. It looked as if one may have been sick. They were chatting amiably, so I left them to their privacy. But not before swinging in the other direction and taking this photo. It looks like my neighbor Ismael may also be up.

Or, like my young friends, perhaps he’s not been down yet. I, on the other hand, went to bed around 8 pm standard time.

I love getting up early. For about fifty years, my engine has revved up around 4 a.m. I woke up earlier this morning because I wanted to document the change in time.

My brother Pat, who is 70 and six years younger and, like me, retired, rises every day at 2:30 for a part-time job monitoring drivers delivering organs and medicine to local hospitals.

We come by this naturally as our mom organized her Catholic parish’s breakfast after the 6 am mass until she was 90.

Whenever someone says, “I wish I had your willpower,” I’m quick to reply this habit has nothing to do with character.

It’s how our bodies work.

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This story was published in Fiction Shorts. The word limit is 100. Today’s word prompt is psyche.

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Did you know the Greek word psyche means soul and caterpillar?

That’s when it started. I guess humans need symbols — things that mean something else. But it’s not easy being a token — not all lions are courageous. Some want to stop and smell the African Lilly.

That’s me in the photo, what you call the teenage stage. Soon, I’ll spend time in my room, hanging upside down and stretching, eventually sprouting wings and flying away.

Just doing what comes naturally.

You should, too.

I suggest you look inside yourself for guidance instead of burdening me.

That’s what mature adults do.

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Note: the stages of a caterpillar/butterfly are egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa, and adult (butterfly).

This was published in Medium’s The Daily Cuppa.

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Do you like me?

I hope so.

The sun against my skin.

My backside flatters.

Even with my private part blotted out.

I would do anything for attention.

A poser.

Flattered by the camera.

The first time, a month ago, I was surprised anyone cared.

So, I went back

After a shower.

And did the same thing.

Only faster.

And you still cared.

Love, Paul.

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A Reflection on Happiness

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Can you, on a bad day, conjure a better one?

Buck O’Neil did. Do you know of Buck? You ought to. As an introduction, I suggest Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America.

It’s about much more than baseball or a baseball player. Buck died at 96 almost twenty years ago. He was a Negro League player, manager, and the first African-American coach on an American Major League Baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.

He was a Black baseball player beyond his prime before Jackie Robinson opened the door in 1947. Buck had too many reasons to be bitter to count. It rained every day on him.

When Posnanski asked how he kept bitterness at bay, Buck said,

Where does bitterness take you?

To a broken heart?

To an early grave?

When I die

I want to die from natural causes.

Not from hate

Eating me up from the inside.

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One last Buck O’Neil story.

Toward the end of his life, Buck was one of 39 Negro League players, managers, and owners considered by a special committee for induction into American baseball’s Hall of Fame.

17 of the 39 were selected for an honor Buck yearned for and deserved. But he didn’t get it. In July 2006, 16 Black men and one Black woman were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The guest speaker was

Buck O’Neil.

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RW Drabble 2.0.048: Gleam

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This was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

You are a fly on the wall in your neighbor’s bedroom.

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It started innocently, with my new iPhone and zoom lens.

She woke every morning at 8 am, just as the sun crept over our building and gleamed into her room.

Even when we were kids, I was up an hour before her.

I’m in apartment six; Phylis is in two, just below me.

Two days ago, she told me she had fallen while entering the bathroom: “I know I should be careful first thing in the morning.”

“Maybe it’s time we moved in together,” I said.

“Since Bob died, I’ve learned to love my privacy. I promise to be careful.”

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