#dailyprompts

Halloween, Cemeteries and Earthquakes

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Daily writing prompt: What is your favorite pastime?

Artist Marc C Green

Today I wrote some posts that I was very happy with,

yesterday my dog sensed an earthquake and decided to cut our walk short and go home- (I’d like to say I felt it too, but I didn’t)

tonight I am going to go home, get ready for my trip next week that will involve attending Halloween festivities with my Granddaughter and visiting some cemeteries.

I am always on the hunt for my next favorite pastime because they hardly ever come to you- you have to get out there and track them down yourself.

The Drowned Fisherman

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Word of The Day Challenge: PRESENT

I also challenged myself to only write about the things that I could see or taking place in this picture.

The drowned fisherman
Michael Ancher1896

In a small room with smooth whitewashed walls, a drowned fisherman  has been laid to rest on an oak table that he built years ago with his own rough and calloused  hands.

Sunlight is being  filtered through a single dusty window just above his head and little droplets of ocean water, caught in his hair and his beard glisten like little bits of broken glass in pale light that strikes his face and chest.

Around his resting place where his wife is clutching his hand to her chest, where  his  Mother and son are staring  down blindly  into his pale face, where  his crew are holding their breath, all of them  want to know- how can it be that in that room full of  beating hearts and plans for tonight, dreams for tomorrow,  can death be here with them?

He will open his eyes they are thinking, he will take a breath and to the marrow of their bones they believe he will sit up and together they will leave that room together and return to their work and their life at Sea.

There is a dark man with no face sitting across from the Drowned Fisherman and he knows better then all of the people in that room what will happen next- he and the Drowned Fisherman.

A Holiday Ritual Returns

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RDP Tuesday: BREAKING NEWS

A scene from the lost 1923 silent film BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE.

We all have our little rituals.

Some of us buy fancy expensive underwear and chocolates  to hand out for Valentines Day.  Some of us eat Waffles on Sunday.  Some of us get tattoos every time we pop out another child.

My ritual is a special one and I look forward to performing  it every Halloween.

On Halloween I kill you,  sometimes I do it  more then once because, darn it-it feels good.

I guess this is the part where I mention that you turn up in various stages of decay in the stories I write- sometimes you are already dead and the part you get is that of a rotting corpse. Other times you get done in by a Devil or a psychopath.

Once I baked you in a pie.

It was yummy, I mean the story was yummy. It was funny too. And well written, if that counts for anything.

For the curious, you worked your way into this special ritual because when I told you my nephew had died from a terminal illness- that you knew about his illness because I told you about it when we learned seven years before that at the age of 14 he would probably be dead by the time he was in his early 20’s,

you sent me this message

That was all you said about my nephew’s death. That’s how you expressed your condolences for the death of a young man you watched grown up.

I wouldn’t have wished his death on anyone, not even you. But to be honest sometimes I do.  Yeah.  Honestly. Sometimes I do.

So let me take away the  mystery, let me erase any doubts, let me make myself perfectly clear. In  August when I start setting up my blog for Halloween and the body count racks up around here, I just want you to know, so that there is no question about it  that in that pile of ink stained corpses is you.

For the record, I toss in a few more people into that pile  for different reasons that don’t matter right now.

But you my dear and special friend,  I kill you every Halloween, sometimes more then once during Halloween but I never do it thoughtlessly or carelessly because unlike you my Soul might be dark but it is not empty.

And I put a lot of thought into what write and send out into the world.

Written In Ink

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Word Of the Day Challenge: NEWSPAPER

Photo A.M. Moscoso

The last time I remember seeing a newspaper in one of those plastic stands that use to dot street corners and stand in front of grocery stores was in 1999.

I remember it because that was when we had the WTO protests in Seattle and after the pepper spray and dust had settled, the free newespaper were flying out of those little plastic stands like crazy-the free papers were carrying a lot of stories about WTO and not many of the articles about the the Seattle Police Department or the local government’s response was what one could call favorable.

So, I was waiting for my bus when a Cop on horseback rode buy and his horse relived himself near the curb.

The cop got off and cleaned up after his horse. I thought that was pretty cool because dog walkers didn’t always do that and horses leave a bigger mess.

What wasn’t cool was that he went to one of the plastic paper stands, which as I mentioned housed a paper that was critical of SPD and he was about to shove his horse’ pile of poop into it when he saw me and a few people at the bus stop across the street.

Now keep in mind this was before youtube and social media and tik tok. He could have shoved that wad off horse poo in there and if we had said anything about it, he could have easily said he and his horse had been framed.

Instead,  let the lid on the stand close and then he went to a garbage can and put the horse mess where it belonged. I’m not sure why he didn’t carry through on his plan to turn a paper stand he didn’t think much of into a toilet- but to this day I remain curious.

 

There were probably newspaper stands all around me after that, but I don’t remember them. This one, I will always remember.

Photo A.M. Moscoso