My fantasy

When I see someone who has influenced my life, like I did the other day with Alice Walker, I’m just an observer in the audience. Afterwards, I am prone to long fantasy conversations with the person. In my fantasy, I tell her all about my thoughts on each of her books and what it meant to my life. I tell her about things I wrote myself because of her. I listen, too. She magically opens up and tells me all sorts of wise and soulful things that make my spirit bloom.

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “my fantasy.”

The mail

When I opened my sister’s door there was an unopened pile of mail on the entry table. The place had a deserted feel, which explained why she wasn’t answering my phone calls. I looked at the mail and saw that the piece on top had a recent postmark.

Who was bringing it in her for her? I thought I had the only spare key. And where was she? Why would she go off somewhere without telling me?

“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I cooed. I wandered from room to room looking for the cat. Everything was dusty. How long had she been gone? . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “the mail.”

I Love It When

I love it when the weather is in that open window phase. When you don’t need store-bought energy to cool or heat your house to make it comfortable. The morning chill is stimulating, the afternoon warmth is perfectly suited to outdoor living. I love a day when the walkers and runners and bikers mob the trails as thick as mosquitos by a pond.

Can we still depend on the predictability of weather? We had some strange, extreme, record-setting weather events where I live last year, and I fear more are coming. I hate the thought of losing the autumn, the spring, and having some new and unusual weather that brings too much summer or too much winter . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “I love it when.”

Ants

The nightmare was suitable material for a horror movie. The plot line needed work, but the ants were scary as hell. Moving, surging, undulating, waves of ants covering the ground, scaling the trees, making the tall grass shudder with their passage. A blanket of black, creeping like mold over everything in its path. It had internal motion: a pulse or a heartbeat like a single organism.

When I sat up in my bed screaming, I was drenched in fear-laced sweat and convinced my skin was coated with a thick layer of wriggling black ants.

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “ants.”

Be Prepared

As a young man I took the Boy Scout motto Be Prepared to heart. But as an adult, I’ve learned there are some things that you can never be prepared for, no matter how prepared you think you are.

Grief is one of those things. Two years of crushing grief over the loss of my wife have lead me to believe . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “be prepared.”

Baby Brother

I hated my baby brother when he was born. I tried to ignore him. I unhooked the safety pins on his diapers hoping he’d get hurt. I ran away from him after he could walk well enough to follow me around.

My baby brother is 63 years old now. I no longer hate him. I must depend on him. He does all the things I cannot do. He mows my lawn, cleans out the gutters, moves the couch. He brings his wife on days I need my laundry done. So now, I simply resent him. It’s . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “baby brother.”

Yesterday

Yesterday I watched Letters from Iwo Jima, the Clint Eastwood movie. I’ll be watching the companion film, Flags of Our Fathers soon.

There is so much to be said about a movie like this. I think about the danger of accepting cultural values blindly. The unexamined lives we live cause so much needless loss. What defines heroism? Courage? Hope? Faith?

I think after I’ve seen the second of the Eastwood films, I’ll agree even more with the bumper sticker I saw the other day: “I’m against the next war, too.”

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “yesterday.”