Someone Saturday: Write from the point of view of a character, real or imagined.
The contents of Len's coffee upended onto himself and a handsy couple on the train. The couple gasped and cursed and threatened at Len, but they might as well have been screaming at a chair or a parking garage. For you see, Len was simply elsewhere, hovering lazily over the coast of Iceland, contemplating volcanic activity and cancer from cell phones and blue whales. Len did this often when he was in public spaces. It made the lives of everyone else around him easier for him to bear.
Len stepped out at the next stop, exiting the train amidst the frenzied spittle of the couple, having transferred their unity from sex to rage. He turned and waved dully at them as the train doors closed, after being presented with two witchy scowls and a Ganeshian foursome of middle fingers. The train's red brake lights sucked Len back from Iceland, and he realized, unsurprisingly, that he was on the wrong side of town entirely. So Len climbed the steps up to transfer from outgoing to incoming and sat next to a twitchy blind man, feverishly playing an erhu.
Len spent a long while watching the man's knobby little fingers, deft and furious at their task, producing such a screechingly maddening cacophony that most people coming to the stop either turned right around, or rushed to the farthest end of the boarding area. Len didn't mind, as he was deep in the man's hands. He knew what they had built, what they had wrought and caressed and held. He saw what they had suffered, through time and labor and hardship, to be there playing for him. He pulled strength from the teeming history of the erhu player's hands and began to openly weep as the blind man came to an especially jaunty and erratic part of his song. All the love in the universe fell onto Len in that single moment, and he knew what it was to be real and alive.
Unfortunately for Len and the subway staff, a pea-sized globule of cholesterol stopped up an artery in Len's brain and he collapsed to the floor, dead before he hit the ground. The erhu player paused for a moment as he felt Len's errant soul pass through his navel, and then continued with his grating melody, filling the cement tunnels with the glut of his barbed aria.
The contents of Len's coffee upended onto himself and a handsy couple on the train. The couple gasped and cursed and threatened at Len, but they might as well have been screaming at a chair or a parking garage. For you see, Len was simply elsewhere, hovering lazily over the coast of Iceland, contemplating volcanic activity and cancer from cell phones and blue whales. Len did this often when he was in public spaces. It made the lives of everyone else around him easier for him to bear.
Len stepped out at the next stop, exiting the train amidst the frenzied spittle of the couple, having transferred their unity from sex to rage. He turned and waved dully at them as the train doors closed, after being presented with two witchy scowls and a Ganeshian foursome of middle fingers. The train's red brake lights sucked Len back from Iceland, and he realized, unsurprisingly, that he was on the wrong side of town entirely. So Len climbed the steps up to transfer from outgoing to incoming and sat next to a twitchy blind man, feverishly playing an erhu.
Len spent a long while watching the man's knobby little fingers, deft and furious at their task, producing such a screechingly maddening cacophony that most people coming to the stop either turned right around, or rushed to the farthest end of the boarding area. Len didn't mind, as he was deep in the man's hands. He knew what they had built, what they had wrought and caressed and held. He saw what they had suffered, through time and labor and hardship, to be there playing for him. He pulled strength from the teeming history of the erhu player's hands and began to openly weep as the blind man came to an especially jaunty and erratic part of his song. All the love in the universe fell onto Len in that single moment, and he knew what it was to be real and alive.
Unfortunately for Len and the subway staff, a pea-sized globule of cholesterol stopped up an artery in Len's brain and he collapsed to the floor, dead before he hit the ground. The erhu player paused for a moment as he felt Len's errant soul pass through his navel, and then continued with his grating melody, filling the cement tunnels with the glut of his barbed aria.
Haiku of the Day:
The hulking beast wakes,
adjusts his human skin quilt,
and falls back asleep.
Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "cap-a-pie" from the Merriam-Webster word of the day. It means "head to toe.")
Today's "365" Project (make something with numbers. I took a series of picture of the numbers I saw on my way to the store.)
"Walk by Numbers"
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