The exercise:
Write four lines of prose about: guilt.
Didn't get to bed until almost three last... er, this morning, so I slept in until after ten. Kinda screws with your whole day when you do that.
Anyway, we're ready for another market tomorrow morning. And our decking is sitting beside our house, waiting for Kat's dad and I to descend upon them with hammers and screwdrivers and such.
Mine:
Shortly after I pulled the car out of the driveway last night to take Kat to the hospital, she admitted to feeling guilty for dragging me along to have something checked that could very well turn out to be nothing. Never mind that it could also have been something very bad.
So I told her how I saw it: I would be perfectly happy if the whole trip turned out to be a total waste of time, because that would mean that both her and the baby were fine.
Hey Marc,
ReplyDeleteglad to hear that you, Kat and the baby are all fine. I totally agree with your attitude: far better to check it and have it turn out to be nothing than something! Especially when you're talking about people and lives.
Hope the market is fun for you both, and that the decking goes nice and easy. And I hope this is the worst scare you have during the pregnancy :)
As for work... still busy this weekend oddly, but the deadline for the document in Monday, so with luck I'll have a little more time here and there next week.
Guilt
H'ed read Poe's "The tell-tale heart" so many times he recited it in his sleep when he was anxious, but he was sure that he'd taken a lesson home from it. He went to guilt-management classes so often that some instructors got guilty about seeing him there and banned him for making things ironic. He looked himself in the eye in the mirror every morning and said firmly, "You have done nothing wrong."
But the empty side of the bed and her clothes scattered where she'd left them on the morning of the car accident were a permanent reminder that he'd been driving.
marc, ditto greg, better safe than sorry, you are a good husband and father 2be,
ReplyDeletegreg, argh! wit and grief in but a few lines, one of your best!
mine...
Guilt
Mark Twain of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn fame was quite the philosopher... he said that “in order to get a man to do something for you, you have to make it difficult to attain” - they covet the forbidden fruit and want it all the more; then he said that “work is something you have to do whilst play is something you want to do” - eg: “in England rich men would ride the coach all day in summer because it was pleasant and they could, but if they were paid wages to do it they would resign.”
And some more gems float in...
"The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next"
"Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company" - that one is up there with "Hell is other people" for me.
"Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”
Ha! You gotta love those. That reminds me of ...“Yesterday's heresy is tomorrow's dogma.”
Stoopid society. Recalling how Galileo was treated reminded me of this, too. How we ever managed to evolve this far is amazing...an individual can evolve but a group? Much harder, when those threatened by intelligence try to dominate it with brute force. Strange, that, - the conflict of opposites.
We read Twain at school. The subtlety was lost back then. Can you believe it was a catholic school who let us read them? The books’ subtle promotion of anarchy ran counter to the school's guilt ridden ’do as I say philosophy’, ha.
Such quotes pique my interest. One should run an anti-crystal shop and draw from a bookful of them as ’quote of the day’, along with scientific experiment kits instead of pendulums, books by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins instead of the self-help section, and T shirts and jeans instead of hippy tie dyes. The shop would be called Normality instead of Magicality or Crystaleyes or whatever other magic-alluding title they usually employ. HA! sounds like a plan...
@Marc - glad all is well on the baby front. Best not to fret.
ReplyDelete@Greg - most excellent sir. I agree with Writebite.
@Writebite - I too went to a catholic school and failed to ingest their sick version of guilt.
Mine...Guilt
He sat drumming his fingers on the desk and staring at the big black and white clock ticking itself, and the world, inexorably towards the Witching Hour.
Although the walls were concrete and covered in drywall he still thought that he could hear all the others madly typing away, or frantically making their whispered last minute phone calls to their muses.
He felt a little odd in the pit of his stomach, guilt perhaps, knowing that all their months of grinding hard work would come to naught, and all his months of play would bring him recognition, money, and bucket loads of accolades from his colleagues.
He had absolutely no idea what his presentation was going to be about, but he knew that when it was his turn to speak people would gasp at the pure genius coming from his mouth, they always did.
@Marc- Always better to be safe. I'd rather of went just to find out everything was fine too.
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Are you feeling a little "dark" these days? Executioners, imprisonment, curses, and now guilt
Did someone annouce a theme week and forget to tell me?
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An instant message from Gabriel appears in the middle of my computer screen, hiding my current project from view.
“So when are we hearing more from Drue? I want to read more of her story.”
“Oh I don’t know,” I reply. “I’ve got so much going on right now. I’ll try to get something written this week.” =/
“Well hurry up! We haven’t heard from Drue since March!”
After letting out a long sigh my fingers began to pound the keys once more” Okay! I’ll do my best.” I wrote before signing off and tearing up a handwritten page of fruitless ideas.
Another day spent with school books, homework and after school activities. Our schedule is so hectic, I can’t even remember the last time I played with my kids.
Greg - sounds good. I hope that another pressing deadline doesn't appear to take this one's place!
ReplyDeleteFantastic final line, it really delivers an unexpected punch to the gut.
Writebite - thank you, I'm doing my best :)
Twain is a wonderful quote. Wouldn't it be something to spend an evening in his company?
Iron Bess - ugh, working with people like that is the worst. It just all seems so easy for them, doesn't it?
Morrigan - yeah, it was worth it just for us both to get a decent sleep that night (even if it was shortened by the trip).
Nah, sometimes my mind just starts wandering in a certain direction and I don't even notice it :P
Getting pulled in five different directions at once does wonders for the amount of dust stories are able to collect. I don't even want to think of how long I've ignored some of mine.