106 Extracted Words – The Tease

July 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story in progress.

He ran his wrinkled hand over the bound and tattered book cover. He had never started a revolution, or even joined one. But he was pretty sure that to start anything, you must first begin, and perhaps that was the most difficult task of all.

He opened the cover and was greeted instantly by the dusty musk of library scented pages. “To disable field cannon before capture, drive a spike into the vent, crack the spike off at the limit of it’s exposure and then drive the remaining portion below the surface with the use of a second spike.”

Interesting, if not useful, he thought.

Banff or Banff?

Whether you are speaking about the town or the national park (or both), there’s no denying the beauty of this place. This is the first of a four part pictorial from our recent visit. Enjoy.

123 Extracted Words – The Tease

June 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay/new feature in progress.

Gas goes up in price, new technologies go down in price. Outside a few blips, that has been the norm for most of the twenty-first century. Such inverse relationships beg for analysis, expression in graphs, numbers, and thus, the Tesla/Fuel ratio is born.

What is the T/F ratio? It is the lowest cost for a new Tesla (any model) divided by the latest national average for a gallon of gas. In other words, how many gallons of gas would be needed to trade straight across for a new Tesla.

In January, the TFR was 13,606.79. In May it had dropped to 10,217.72. Given that trend, it could be under 10,000 by the end of August. We can only wait and see.

137 Extracted Words – The Tease

May 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.

This week marked the 200th U.S. mass shooting of 2022, a year that is only 145 days old. Over 30 of those incidents have involved schools and children. This reminds me of the epidemic of drunk driving fatalities in the late seventies and early eighties. I myself lost five friends in my last two years of high school. It’s hard to imagine now, but these numbers were not abnormal. Somehow they were seen as acceptable. Until MADD formed.

In today’s world, intoxicated driving is still a problem, but greatly reduced and no longer ignored as an inevitable, unavoidable tragedy that we are somehow unable to stop.

Does that last part sound familiar?

It’s time for a new movement. Perhaps MASS. Mothers Against School Shootings. By any name, or none at all, it is past time for a change.

83 Extracted Words – The Tease

April 2022

 

 

More pumpkins

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story in progress.

If it had been sunny, then he might have seen how deep the pothole was. If it had been sunny, he would have worn his shades and his blush would have been hidden from the world, and the Mother Superior.

“You seem to have lost your way, and your front axle.”

“I was looking for pumpkins. Do you have pumpkins?”

“Oh no, you must be looking for Green Bluff. That’s one bluff over to the right.”

He exited the sedan to inspect the damage.

127 Extracted Words – The Tease

March 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.

I am currently exploring Salish, the native language of many of the indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest. I am not attempting to master the language. Hardly. I can only speak a handful of words, mostly the names of animals. But in learning these new words, it is evident how closely connected Salish is to observation and experience in the natural world. Possibilities springing from the etymology of the language fascinate me.

For instance, the word uknaqin, seeing over the top. Or sxWy?itp, sharp pointed trees. I wonder what shared experience of early North Amercans inspired the development of these terms.

And yes, I can see how this new interest will demand that I re-learn how to insert special characters on WordPress.

101 Extracted Words – The Tease

February 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a war in progress.

Last month’s tease was inspired by thoughts on dreams. This month’s tease was conjured from a nightmare, one the whole world is now participating in. When Czar Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert, he made the entire world Ukranian. We are all on the front lines now, whether we choose to be or not.

I have many [internet] friends from Ukraine. You will see them represented in numerous editions of my year-end wrap up, Around the World Without Leaving My Blog. I hope they are all still safe and well. Hoping is all I can do.

Courage friends.

135 Extracted Words – The Tease

January 2022

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.

Dreams have a logic all their own. They possess their own timeline, history, participants. Switching from awake reality to dream reality means accepting that what we know isn’t true actually is true. Things that never happened have always happened. People that have passed are still alive and vice versa. And your thoughts are no longer musings in your head but the canvas on which your real time fantasy plays out. Does your dream-self have thoughts when you are dreaming? And if so, is that actually you thinking outside of your dream. Is it even possible to have thoughts inside your dream? And if not, would that make dreaming the ultimate mindfullness, where it’s not even possible to have interference from a random thought? I can’t remember ever dreaming that I was thinking, can you?

85 Extracted Words – The Tease

December 2021

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a movie review in progress (my first).

Don’t Look Up is a movie that made me think more than any film I’ve watched in quite some time. And then I looked at today’s trending Google searches, and it inflated that thinking exponentially. I’m new to this, and don’t wish to be a spoiler, so that’s as far as I will dwell into the plot. But I will say, if you are interested in social media, politics, media corruption, science and/or astronomical physics, this movie will entertain you … and make you think.

92 Extracted Words – The Tease

November 2021

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short work in progress.

Driving downhill, the city never looked like a city. It was a town, sheltered in an arrowhead valley, wounding the green, western slopes of the Selkirks. The white and olive mountains behind yielded only enough boreal retreat for one highway and one railway. Whether you entered on a boxcar or in your borrowed car, the approach was the same. The scene was sugarplum infused, icicle starshine. Frosty spires and cozy warm lanterns anchored every street. And yet, there was the steamy breath of the homeless rising from under nearly every bridge.