Find one small thing near your home. The object should be no bigger than your hand.
Describe the object fully. Give colour, shape, smell details. Imagine how the object came to be at its location. What is its story?
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7 comments:
From Kay:
No bigger then my hand....
So there it is. No bigger then my hand, just lying there on the bus stop bench, soaken wet and well used; A January bus pass...where had it been,what routes had it travelled. what stories could it tell, thirty one days of cold and rainy weather, it had been well appreciated upon every bus boarding presentation.
It was just one of those cold rainy days when Elaine purchased the pass at the local Safeway store, "Damn! thats a lot of money to fork over just to get to that stupid job at the travel agency, well I'm not going to be there for much longer, once I publish my first book, I'll be on easy street. The travel agency certainly has my blessing to assign my desk to any unsuspecting soul who doesn't have a clue as to the horrors of sitting that close to the washroom door.
Two weeks later a publishers letter arrives at Elaine's house, Acceptance, Hellalulla!, Now is my chance to have that new car I always dreamed about.
The bus pass is now only two weeks into the month of January. Maybe her friend Ester would enjoy travelling with the wild Westminster crowd on the 106, let me tell you that is a wild crowd, New/West is rather noted for its oddballs. That may be due to the fact it was home to a very large Federal prison for years, also a very large mental hospital, both were closed a few years ago, a lot of occupants were released to the street to survive, and remained in the area.
A warning to cute little 22 year old Ester, who would pass more as a teenager, do not trust any stranger on the bus, unless its a sweet little old lady like your classmate Kay, and always remember to carry your "Meet Miss Mew" weapon .
On one of her siteseeing days she peers out the rain soaked bus window, spys her pet teacher Brad running for shelter, he must have been stretching his legs between classes.
OK! here comes a nice little old lady (looks like Kay),argues with bus driver, (sounds like Kay), she sits down beside Ester, figets around a little moving Ester's backpack, Two stops later she is off the bus and so is the bus pass...Moral to this story is, "Don't trust little old ladies that look like Kay."
POSTED BY KAY AT 12:11 PM 0 COMMENTS
RE: Kay's piece
Thanks for mentioning me in your piece, Kay...it was good, I laughed a lot also cuz it was all so strangely close to the truth about me! HAHAHA! Yes, I always dreamed of publishing my first book & getting the heck out of that business!
Hey, Key... thank you for mentioning me in your story, I laughed and I've already met some perverts in the bus, and the library... How weird that you've mentioned that and I've already encountered those people!
P.S:I'm not that sweet, by the way...
Oyster Shell
It’s bleached white, with grey stains inside it. The edges are scalloped and still sharp to the touch. It smells faintly of cigarette ash and sits just beneath my back porch clothesline.
The shell travelled here from the beach on Denman Island, the one just below the Lindsay Dickson forest—the forest that the people of Denman saved from loggers, but not before a dozen trees were cut down at the top of the road.
When the tide is low in the channel between Denman and Hornby islands, the oysters lie nestled in the rocky bay. Sometimes, they cling to the rocks, making a large screwdriver an accessory to mollusc murder!
Whenever I see the shell I think of both my favourite Gulf Island and that I still have friends who smoke. For some, it’s a habit that goes back more than 40 years. I worry about them. And I worry about the oysters, too, as the waters warm around Vancouver Island and habitats change.
-One small thing:
What is one thing that nobody notices at the end of the branches, give up? That’s dews! Yes, I know it’s lame to appreciate this small thing, but lately when I was walking along the neighbourhoods, I’ve noticed those little clear things at the ends of branches. If we take a moment to look at it, they’re a crystal chandelier that we couldn’t dream of having.
The clear, small bottle lays alone on the soil amongst the shrubbery at the bottom of our condo's driveway. There is a colourful design on the front of the bottle and, at first, it looks to me like an empty bottle of chili sauce. However, I thought, what a strange item to be left lying on the ground.
Well, maybe not so strange. I had recently also seen a wine cork and cellophane wrapper laying nearby on the lawn. No doubt, someone had decided to have themselves a picnic with a bottle of wine and a sandwich with possibly some chili sauce on it.
But some time later, upon closer inspection, I realized that that small bottle of chili was actually an empty micky bottle. Hmm - I should have stuck with my first instinct. Another vessel of alcohol emptied and left behind by a most considerate citizen. It was too much effort to throw in the trash can one block away. Well, okay, I'll give them some credit: too "hammered" to entertain the notion that trash belongs in a trash receptacle. (Never mind that their trash is now on someone else's property!)
But what a strange place for it to come to be. Come to think of it, the alcohol itself was strange. It was labeled "Vincent Van Gogh, Double Espresso, Double Caffeine (of course, why not?), Coffee Flavoured Vodka". And then, there was the picture, trying to resemble a Van Gogh painting. Van Gogh himself, in a white and yellow straw hat and blue tunic, supposedly picking coffee beans off a bush, and his faithful, red-coloured donkey by his side, ready to cart away his master's goods. I didn't even know Van Gogh was in the beans business. Maybe they opened a Starbucks in Tahiti?
Well, I suppose it's not so strange that such an item was left lying on the ground. Too close for comfort, there are several low-rent apartment buildings just across the street from our property. So one can expect such a thing to be left by some of these partying neighbours. However, I'd prefer not to be so presumptuous.
Maybe this is what actually happened:
There being a mailbox on the corner nearby those shrubs, probably a mailman (or mailwoman), during their last stop on the route to collect mail, and after having added a little "pick-me-up" to their Starbucks travel mug, and in their haste to leave no evidence behind in their mail truck, slyly chucked Mr. Van Gogh into a new abode amongst the shrubbery. Tahiti, palm trees, green shrubs. . . it's all the same, isn't it?
Yes, I believe that is what happened.
In front of me was a green, carton box, the same size as a deck of playing cards, on it, printed, was an image of a half-smoked cigarette, bending down, and a warning: Tobacco use can make you impotent.
Inside it were twenty sticks of tobacco, tightly rolled in white paper, and at the end of each stick, was a white filter. I opened the carton and took one cigarette. Slim and soft, it hanged loosely between my fore and middle finger. I took my lighter out of my side pocket, tucked the Cancer between my cracked lips, and lit it. The smoke reeked into my eyes, so I placed it in an ash tray, and for a while, watched it burn. Slowly, the paper and plant turned into ashes.
“This thing is a waste of money,” I thought. “But hell, we’re all going to die anyway.” I put the killer-stick back in my lips, and started sucking the poisons-- I swear, I felt the smoke-- into my lungs. It felt good.
My cigarette was almost finish. I put it out in the ash tray, stared at it until the last of it’s embers died, saying to my self, “There goes the ever silent, and pleasurable culprit, which does not only make my breath stink, it also burns, not just my money, but my short, precious life --God, I need to quit!”
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