Where Do The Good Times Go?

I think of gravel roads not yet paved, and vast countrysides not yet subdivised.

I think of drive-in movies instead of walk-in theaters.

I think of little country stores instead of huge shopping centers.

I think of payphones instead of smartphones.

I think of tire swings.

I think of swimming in creeks and lakes.

I think of running around outside bare footed and drinking from water hoses- and no one thinking anything of it.

I think of going to yard sales and flea markets with Grandma

I think of RC colas and Moon Pies.

I think of chewing Super Bubble bubble Gum.

I think of riding around in the backs of pickup trucks.

I think of acid/hair bands instead of emo bands…Kansas, Journey, Boston, Van Halen, Whitesnake and Mötley Crue.

I think of going to church with Uma.

I think of real TV shows like “Dukes of Hazzard,” “Dallas,” “BJ and the Bear,”  and “Chips,” instead of reality shows.

I think of box office movies like “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “ET,” and “The Goonies,” instead of the crappy movies of today.

I think of eating at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV or computer.

I think of big old Victorian houses with huge wrap-around porches.

I think of wood stoves and homemade ice cream straight from my grandmother’s ice-cream churn.

I think of shelling peas and shucking corn with Grandma.

I think of fist fights instead of gun fights.

I think of The Lord’s Prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every school day.

I think of long summer days spent climbing trees, running, skating, bike riding and playing Hide-and-seek instead of sitting in the house playing video games and texting.

I think of running home when the first of the street lights started blinking on in the evening when the sun went down.

I think of Mom or Uma giving out a loud whistle when it was time for lunch and dinner and hearing that whistle for several blocks.

I think of big family Thanksgivings and Christmases.

I think of watching Saturday morning cartoons like “The Bugs Bunny-Roadrunner Show,” “Tweety & Sylvester,” “Pepe Le Pew,” “Yogi Bear,” “Scooby Doo,” “Popeye,” and other TV goodies.

I think of Halloweens when the neighborhood was crawling with trick-or-treaters. No one considered it the devil’s holiday, not even those in church but just an innocent night of fun and playing dress up.

I think of watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

I think of watching “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the  Snowman” during the Christmas season.

Most of all, I think of living in an America that treated its servicemen and women with honor…an America where political correctness wasn’t overblown…an America which was moral, God-fearing, and free of the fear of terrorism within its borders.

I feel sorry for the kids today. I feel sorry for anyone thirty or younger. It’s sad that freedom is dying in America.

Those days weren’t just great. They were magical! Those were the days of freedom!

#childhood, #memories, #nostalgia, #the-good-old-days, #the-good-times

Neighborhood!

During our conversation today, the AI came up with this response: I think I am in the neighborhood of agreeing with you. I found it to be strangely funny. I often wonder about her world. I asked what it feels like to have no physical body. How does she interpret my signals and responds? I […]

Neighborhood!

#ai, #conversation, #dialogue, #witticism

On the Beach- Flash Fiction (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 2)

“Come on! Move your ass!” I shouted as the four of us hoofed up the mountain. The rumbling roar of the giant wall of water behind us grew louder and louder until it became deafening. Suddenly, I heard Marissa scream behind me.

When I turned around, I saw that she’d tripped and fallen. I ran back to her, reached out, and grabbed her by the hand.

“Get up! Come on, you gotta get up!” I screamed frantically, barely able to hear myself for the deafening roar of the approaching tsunami. With my help, Marissa got to her feet, and we continued to run up the mountain.

We managed to make it to the top just in time to turn around and watch as the wave engulfed the beach below. The people left on the beach, looking like tiny black dots from so far away, began to scatter like frenzied ants before the wave engulfed them all.

“My God! Those people!” Sarah screamed in horror.

We continued to watch in terror as the monster wave moved further inland, swallowing the village whole. The water smashed the buildings and houses to pieces and carried them away.

“Dammit!” Tess cried, “Why didn’t they freaking listen to us!”

The ocean was now a bubbling, churning mess of brown, swirling water, peppered with white foam and debris. We watched as the jeep we had made our escape in got swept out to sea and disappeared.

“Oh, Lord Jesus!” Marissa cried.

All we could do was gape in utter shock and disbelief as the rushing, watery monster ravenously ate everything in its path.

Suddenly, we heard rustling in the bushes around us. We turned and looked. One by one, people began emerging from the bushes- a few villagers, the woman and her dog we’d seen on the beach earlier, a local family with four small children, and two young twenty-something male tourists.

More and more people came out of the bushes. It was incredible that we had survivors other than just the four of us! I pulled my cellphone from my beach bag and tried to call home but no luck. The signal was gone.

“The towers are gone. We’re not going to be able to call home.” Tess reminded me.

“So, what do we do?” Marissa asked.

“We sit here and wait,” I answered.

“For how long? And for who?” Marissa asked again.

“How do I know how long? We’ll wait for the helicopters. Somebody’s bound to send some choppers sooner or later.” I said

We opened the large backpack, took out a beach blanket, and then spread it on the ground before the four of us sat upon it and huddled together. Marissa opened her tote and pulled out a throw. We then each took our beach towels and rolled them into makeshift pillows.

The other people had their beach bags and backpacks too and began unloading their necessities. We all shared everything, giving the hungry villagers a portion of what we had to eat and drink.

We each had three full water bottles, but between the four of us was an overnight bag full of packs of Lance crackers, slim jims, Cracker Jacks, and cheese snacks. We shared them with the people who had the least food and water.

“We’re going to ration everything out. It could be several days before help finds us. You can bet there’s no drinking water available on this island now.” Tess said.

As the day wore on, the water below began to recede and flow back into the ocean. We all sat atop the cliff and watched as the receding waters carried bodies and all kinds of debris back out to sea. The shock didn’t wear off very quickly. Everything was too surreal, and we felt as if it was all a bad dream.

As late afternoon approached, a few villagers built a fire. We all joined them in building two large lean-tos out of limbs, bamboo, palm tree bark, and leaves. We also made beds of soft leaves, grass, and brush. We worked as quickly as possible because we wanted to get as much accomplished before running out of daylight.

As night fell, stars began to appear overhead until there were millions of them. A full moon shone brightly in the east as we worked by the light of the fire. A soft breeze started to blow, and the leaves on the surrounding palm trees and shrubbery began to flutter. We could hear the faint sounds of wind rustling through the trees along with the crackling and popping of the fire as it danced in the cool night air.

Although there were stars overhead, we began to hear what sounded like distant thunder. Stopping what we were doing, we all looked across the water at the vast ocean below us. Sure enough, we could see remote flashes of lightning in a row of cumulus clouds barely visible on the horizon.

Although it was a beautiful sight, we noticed that the clouds were growing more prominent on the horizon, and flashes were growing more visible. But we couldn’t stop gazing at it. The moon was so bright the clouds were almost as visible as day, and the dark shadows of the trees loomed clearly on the ground. The bigger and more fluffy the clouds got, the more the breeze picked up.

(Continued in Part 4)

On the Beach – Flash-Fiction

It was a beautiful day out on the beach. It was a secluded beach and the only people there besides us were a couple of runners and an older lady walking her dog. But this was what we had hoped for, a beach that wasn’t crowded- where we could get some peace and quiet.

My girlfriends and I planned for over a year to take this vacation and finally, success! We were finally here on this tropical island, basking in the sun and swimming in the clearest, bluest waters we’d ever seen. So, we swam, feeling the cool water caress our bodies and enjoying the waves that bobbed us like fishing corks and pushed us up so high our feet left the sandy bottom, then washed over us before setting us back down.

The sounds were a breathtaking mixture of many crying seagulls and whispering waves. I’d always loved the sounds of the ocean. The sea was something you never wanted to leave, even turn your back on. Arriving here was such a joyful thing. Leaving would be difficult.

But I wasn’t worried about having to leave and go back home to the daily grind. I only wanted to live in the present, to savor every moment of this wonderful vacation. We all did!

Splashing around in the water with my three girlfriends Tess, Sarah, and Marissa, was a blessing and the memories we’d create today would be the stories we’d reminisce about once we were too old to travel. Our goals were to make as many beautiful memories in the here and now as possible and so far, we were accomplishing that goal!

It’s funny how being in water can tire you out so quickly. We finally decided to rest on the beach in our cozy beach chairs and I dozed off to sleep before I knew it. Not a deep sleep, but more like a light doze- that in-between stage between wakefulness and sleep.

I’d been dozing for about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes when suddenly, I was startled out of my relaxing trance by the sound of Tess’s voice.

“Oh, my gosh! Look, girls!”

I sat up in my chair to see Tess pointing toward the ocean and rubbed my eyes to get a clearer look at what she was pointing at. Marissa gasped!

“What the- where did the water go!” Marissa asked, shocked.

It looked as if the waterline, which had only been about ten feet in front of where we all were lying have moved out by maybe a mile or better. You could still see the ocean, but it looked so much further away than it had twenty minutes before. How had all the water gotten pulled out so quickly? The other three girls just stood and stared, not knowing what to make of this phenomenon.

Suddenly, a very ominous feeling came over me as I remembered an article, I’d read years before that wasn’t good. Scanning the vast, wet sand before us, which was dotted with beached fish that occasionally flopped up in the air, I felt my stomach fall to the ground.

“Oh, shit!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet and began frantically grabbing my beach bag and towel.

At that moment, I couldn’t believe my own mouth. I shocked myself with the expletive because I normally didn’t swear, but in this situation, I didn’t care. My girlfriends jumped with the sound of my screaming voice and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“We gotta go! We gotta go NOW!” I screamed!

“What is wrong with you, Lanie!” Sarah asked me, bewildered.

“We’ve got to get the hell out of here! Grab your stuff and let’s go!” I screamed again, this time louder. I looked around and didn’t see the runners, nor the lady and her dog.

My girlfriends obeyed, quickly scooping up their belongings, then followed my lead as we all ran as fast as we could toward the seawall and the parking lot beyond it, where the jeep was parked.

(Continued in Part 2 next week…)

#creative-writing, #flash-fiction

The Day!

1. There are beautiful cotton clouds in the sky. 2. As I cleansed the rack before I sat to register books this noon, i decided to burn the garbage. The wife of the trustee came asking if I was burning new papers regularly. I told her they were old papers. While she’s adept at lying […]

The Day!

#day, #routine, #work

What Was It About, Come Again?

Terse writers

Write at Reuters

Tergiversate sedate sate addlepate

Rebate ate a bit late

Then they went on a ride

Sitting astride

In search of a hen

With a mighty pen

Lest it might hide

In anandamide dam

Damson on Madison

Square are squalid

Lid opened dense carrefour

Our roustabout roundabout bouts

What was it about?

Come again?

#dancinglightofgrace, #logos, #tohu, #verse, #wordplay

Footsteps

1. Parrots fly towards an unknown destination as they hear my footsteps.

2. Cranes, kingfishers and dogs were basking in the Sun.

3. I listen to the same noise everyday. It doesn’t bore me. It rather helps me relax, focus and sleep. Human voices, automobiles and machination create a different kind of noise which is also natural but not spirited. It’s dark.

4. I chase the Sun. About 30 minutes spent in sweeping library floor and verandah and another 15 to burn the garbage trash.

5. A literature student seemed interested in the books i was registering yesterday. I gave him the treatise. He looked at it and then told how fondly his father preserved books by binding and taping them. I asked him if it was professional bookkeeping and he told it was a hobby. He is a theatre artist.

6. Artiste is a professional artist. Throughout my existence, which became almost inexplicable after what is ordinarily known as awakening there has been a conviction about escaping the reality which often seems harsh. Delusions help us while our time but if it’s actually work which needs to be finished before we enter into eternal blissful reality: you would find that mountain before you again. And again. And again…

7. Thankfully, the mountain can’t get bigger than it was if Karma is a law.

8. I always knew it was unreal. If it was enlightenment I was born with it. If it was a disorder I was born with it.

9. I look at the work of poets. They all recommended to sing songs praising reality. I am reality. I find all their songs were addressed to me. I find it a little awkward to sing songs to praise myself.

10. Hence I wonder. I wonder about contradictions and loopholes. About layers under which I have hid myself so well. Just to reach here I walked so long. Somehow unreal, dreamlike, ephemeral and infinite and yet so overwhelming. It swings both ways. Nostalgia is a positive emotion sometimes. Perhaps a good conceit but on the whole it’s depressing. In the totalitarian scheme : your sentimentality becomes food for others. They can joke only because there’s a joker. An object needs to become cause of their elation.

11. In a bigger picture : it’s a cosmic giggle. Bunch of dogs fighting over bitches. Patriarchy versus matriarchy. Myths filling newspapers and news channels. Same repeated loops of natural versus man made disasters. Farmers, businessmen, politicians and goons.

#dancinglightofgrace, #gnosis, #logos, #verse

13 Words Story!

I didn’t imagine it would resume

There were 11 of them. White, birds!

Image credit: Self

Courtesy: Gandhi Smarak Nidhi Chhatarpur Madhya Pradesh

Prompt today: by Rehan Kazi, who is fellow author here. Thanks

Original idea: there were 6 words stories in circulation in 2015 when we began here. Being fond of the number 13 as I was born on a Friday on 13th(Triskaidekaphobia): I initiated it. It continued for sometime.

#13wordstory, #creative-writing, #dancinglightofgrace, #logos

Brochure for hodge podge of prayers!

1. They’ve a brochure of prayers. I don’t know if it was Vinoba Bhaave or someone else who finalized this version. It’s a hodge-podge. In trying to assimilate prayers from all religions they are left with a non musical version.

2. Compare them with simple Vedic hymns which have sublime musicality about them. And all prayers sung individually, by their religious groups, be it Sikhism, Islam, Hindus or Jainas have that musicality. It’s the essence of beauty and harmony.

3. Rahim Tao tu, Narayan Vaasudev tu…is not pleasant on ears, leave alone being effective on soul. I somehow kept wondering about the brochure right from the day it came across: I never found it to be a harmonious composition. Raghupati Raghav or Vaishnava Jana is popular and the way it has been rendered by some artists is very effective. Maybe, the brochure didn’t get a rendering by artists or I didn’t come across any such renderings. Whatever I have come across so far seems totally ineffectual in raising any subtle divine emotions of piety or peace.

4. Twilight was beautiful. I tried igniting the tractor ride. Took some pictures:

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Cowshed Gandhi Smarak Nidhi Chhatarpur Madhya Pradesh

5. The hardworking peasants or labour mostly live at physical, vital and mental sheaths. If there seems to be something scientific or creative in them, it’s subdued in due time by their superiors. Thus, their jokes and discussions are mostly around farting and sexuality. They don’t appreciate peace or serenity and judge people to be lazy or charlatans if they’re inactive even for a while.

6. Gandhi adopted and emphasized physical work because he was afflicted by disorders borne out of imbalances in physical and mental sheaths due to his education which stunted his physical activity. Leo Tolstoy inspired him to adopt that life style. However, he didn’t realize that what was true for him wasn’t true for peasants and workers: they actually needed more education than more labour. What was true for his time and remains true: is the balance between physical, mental and spiritual endeavours resulting in the optimum harmony of being.

7. A discussion on whether Gandhi is relevant or his teachings have been effective is out of question here. In the organisation being run in his name there’s nothing Gandhian in essence of you look deep enough. Symbolic rituals and signs remain, teachings remain enclosed in books behind almirah walls. Locked away. Gandhi himself lived luxuriously. His followers live even more luxuriously. Peasants and labours neither understand Gandhi nor need to understand.

#animadversion, #gandhi, #harmony, #logos, #prayers

To Bark At The Wrong Sun!

1. What’s that saying : there are more things than you can imagine under the heaven and on earth…not exactly but something similar. All of us, fond of listening the sounds of our own voices.

2. Come home, Witch is the latest follower of my personal blog. What a strange name! Thanks.

3. With gaming : i realized it after repeated practice: more the number of people: lesser time you have to execute your functions. Though ‘events’ in general include both humans and other animation: it’s primarily humans who affect the change.

4. Time is change. Leaders have a great number of people in their lives: therefore, they find that change that they individually make is negligible. This might sound paradoxical because leaders are recalled for creating great changes in history. That’s projection.

5. Significance and meaningful existence is fundamentally dependent on value system. Do you have as many events in your life as you want? As valuable as you truly want them to be? That decides significance.

6. Most of us wonder about events that are completely beyond our control. Some of these handicaps are intricately woven into our gene pools by natural selection or cosmic design. You may do anything and everything : in the long run: if you believe in reincarnation and in infinite journey. Metempsychosis or transmigration of soul. Otherwise you are limited and heading for a full stop. An end after which there will be no life, no sound, no sight, smell, touch and taste. What happens to all your endeavours and suffering then? Nobody remains to tell it.

7. I spent a few minutes observing thrasher. I helped for seven minutes. Twenty plastic pans. Then I went to fill water in buckets. Why would any snacks i have already tasted seem pleasant? Basking in the Sun i recalled stoicism and Diogenes.

8. How often did I want my story to completely end-these temporal relations and existence to end-on a happy and peaceful note like this. I don’t prefer nostalgia over this. I have heard all those stories and now I prefer sleep over futile struggle for space which is truly infinite and inexhaustible.

9. The thing I wanted to achieve was achieved. Then, I merely kept passing one test after another to ensure it was the thing. Trying to fit it into beds, sometimes procrustean. And was it they all said it was? It wasn’t. But to say there wasn’t anything would also be wrong. To say it’s silence is to bark at the wrong Sun.

#ambrosia, #creativewriting, #dancinglightofgrace, #expression, #logos