Tag: Friday Fictioneers

Friday Fictioneers 2/22 : The House that Jack Built

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes19 Comments

In keeping with the minimum-creative-work-capacity provided by the stimulus of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields at Friday Fictioneers, this week’s brief composition:

Copyright-Janet Webb

The House that Jack Built

Whatever he put his hand to.  Didn’t seem to matter.  Oh he had the will and the brawn – the heart – he was a determined man.  Yeah, the fence does look nice, dad built that.  But the house, that was Jack’s doing.  Parents said he was always that way.  Everything he touched.  Marriages, parenting, education, work.  Big dreams and fine intentions, with a flair for entropy – DIY and disorder.  Always came to pieces, his doing the undoing of whatever he done.  Easy and difficult to love on so many levels.  This house only one of ‘em.  It’s amazing anything still stands.

N Filbert 2013

Yearn Vulnerable – Friday Fictioneers 2/15/2013

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes12 Comments

Such a powerful prompt this week – yowza!  Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and her continuous work at Friday Fictioneers for providing us with such fare to engage and reflect.  Please join us if you have an urge to translate experience into words.

The prompt:

copyright-David Stewart

(this prompt was so good I’ve included 3 responses in the manner of brainsnorts)

1.

She grasps while he flees.  The horror of everything offered.  He’s reaching all the same.  She clings, and thus submerged, loss becomes attachment.  He yearns.  They’re vulnerable.  Their hold and flight are balance.  A panicking fail like this can require only one thing – somebody’s everything – which she offers, and which frightens him to terror.  She lays it at his feet and pursues – without her he would fall – traumatizing him, for there will come a day.

copyright-David Stewart

2.

Everything depends on it.  Seems to.

This risk, this reach, this grasp.

All has been let go, ripped away for this advance.

She’s nothing left but hope and fear.

Submerged in this suspension.

And he in silent trauma – terrorized.

What would be the gain – of grasping or clasping; a yearn or a vortex; great loss or its threat?

A possible life?  An wholistic vitality?  The “whole hurly-burly”*?

What?

We leave it here.  NOW.   In the reaching.

*Ludwig Wittgenstein’s phrase for the complex background, context of human life

copyright-David Stewart

Alternate 2.

“Do you not get it?” she stressed, “can you seriously not see what I’ve done?”

“EVERYTHING!” she cried, “EVERYTHING I’ve left and abandoned, deserted, let go, in order to offer myself up to you! – to come for, reach out to – YOU!”

“This is unbelievable!” she, exasperated. “I really and truly cannot!” she, bewildered.

And he – silently terrorized, traumatized, afraid.

Trapped in this suspension – the grasping or clasping; the yearn or submersion; the loss or its threat.

And what of the gain –  a possible life?  An wholistic vitality?  What – ?

We leave it here.  NOW.  Reaching.

N Filbert 2013

Points of a Journey

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes37 Comments

Thank goodness (again) for Friday Fictioneers – fostering the insistence and reprieve of manageable creative work when I’m finding it ever so hard to pull away from endless research.  I always mean to set aside a little time, or “get to it” at a break – and just write awhile…but days have a way of eluding me.  So thank you Rochelle et. al. for the weekly prompt and community that kindly obligates us to create, at least a few paragraphs, 100 words (I borrowed 9 from Doug).  A healthy distraction.

copyright-Rich Voza

            The beginning is filled with arrivals/departures, dogfights of fly-bys and paradise islands.  Ecstasy and remorse, all seeped in the past and aimed toward a future, took place in realms  in-between.  Between a rock and hard place, between the cities we called home, between obligations and accidents, here and there, me and you.

In the long middle we developed mistrust and fostered desire.  Building on distance with dependencies and betrayals.  Which flies faster – a sparrow?  Depends which side the wings are on.  We flew and we crashed.  We survived.

Bringing us to the end, the point at which we always arrive, together.

N Filbert 2013

The Anniversary

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes43 Comments

FRIDAY FICTIONEERS – WEEK OF February 1

(please consider joining us)

The Anniversary

I remember what the sculptor said, at our wedding:

“How very many years it takes to get to this – the unitary lean.  Two figures completed in one.  So much stripping and friction, hacking and cuts.  So very many tools applied.  The hurt and the loss, the heat and the cold.  Form and substance are hard to reshape.  A person is a stubborn thing.  Nuance and habits of matter overcome.  Natural processes and straining retrained.  Rock removed from its quarry – blasted and torn where it rested and grew.  A new context of becoming so forceful and delicate.  Ravaged and renewing till it holds itself up.”

– how our weight is supported, these 22 years.

Passages

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes33 Comments

quick quip for Friday Fictioneers…

Copyright-Renee Homan Heath

Not as if we’ve much choice.  Forward?  Back?  If we could see a little further, higher, or what might be underneath.  There’s a reason we’re heading this direction, away from what’s behind, but still.  We needed water, we’re given sand.  Needing shelter, we find a beach.  It won’t do to stop here, but where do we go?  Carrying on is unknowing, all the same to me, and yet.  Something’s bound to open up, if we could locate a horizon.  You go on ahead, I’m surely unfit to lead.  Why does it always seem like this?

N Filbert 2013

Found Objects

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing25 Comments

Greetings all – squishing this in before the homework hits.  As always I highly encourage any and all of you creatives out there to take these generous prompts and craft away, as exercise or effort – The Friday Fictioneers weekly wonderful co-creativity :

Copyright-Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“Look, the details don’t matter, okay?  It happened, and here’s the proof, and now nothing will ever be the same.”

“As if it were.  As if things could change like that – all over and immediate.  How do we even know what from this collage?”

“Jesus Ralph!  They’re connected by the photograph!  Look!”

“As if the image were the thing itself.  C’mon Rachel, really?”

“God dad!  It’s grandpa, a menorah, a dial-up and some crayons – how obvious does it have to be?”

“I’m gonna need something more than a sign Rachel, something more than a trick of the light.”

N Filbert 2013

Entanglement

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing25 Comments

Getting back into A swing of things, I’ve missed the past couple of prompts for the wonderful mixed company of creatives that take part in the Friday Fictioneers (yes, please DO join us!).  So here’s to restarting refreshed…

Copyright-Roger Cohen

Entanglement

So this is our journey.  No way out of it.  Bound together, bound apart, bounded in.  We call it “Situation.”  Shared in common.  Held by circumstance.  Anything might bow us, but both will be effected.  The cords behind, some measures of rest, and whatever comes next – it all impacts the song.  Lucky for an other – no sound can be heard if there is only one, if our strings never touch.  Though sometimes cross and crossed over, at others we vibrate one another to the sweetest hum. It happens together in our ever-bordered context – the space of our entanglement.

N Filbert 2013

Brave New World

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes26 Comments

part of our weekly practice of participation in the lively community prompted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields Friday Fictioneers – I encourage all to join!

Copyright -Douglas M. MacIlroy

Brave New World

Assembling for the task, we began.  Each in our strengths conspiring.  Tristan executed calculations which were pinpoint.  Ida concocted the sounds and the language we could use, boxing up the requisite books and emotions.  We counted on mama for the overall surround, a global view of the society – espousing natural characteristics and roles.  Oliver modeled the world and placed it on a bucket.  Everything was ready – needing only performative passion – a unified desire.  We waited for Aidan, lugging the chains that would keep us on course, to hold back entropy’s risk.  Leaving me to chronicle this family’s brave new world.

N Filbert 2012

In Living Memory

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes39 Comments

Copyright-Rich Vosa

Not like there’s a whole lot there.  It is what it is, my memory – glossy, apparently endless, and stripped bare.  But there seem to be windows, areas the light creeps in, and doorways – entries to room after room of possibilities.  If I could get in there, could move past this moment of glimpsing, find the courage to carry myself forward (or is it back?).  Remains to be seen, here – me at the cusp, in full view, just on the verge, of remembering.

What just happened?

N Filbert 2012

this post created as participation in beloved weekly Friday Fictioneers – check it out!  join!

Decisions

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing9 Comments

A quick response to this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt, a quirky, multi-faceted, and wonderfully open collective of writers from all over the globe riffing their words to an image – a weekly task I am thankful for, and company I admire.  So, from the midst of this holiday week in N. America, something:

And Yet

Mom is right.  It is hard to deny that something points a clear direction, unambiguously, and difficult to argue.  But for reasons I’m at pains to reveal or explain, I am uneasy.  Seriously, I couldn’t ask for a more definite sign – but is clarity everything?  I mean, what about signals from below?  Like how I feel?  Or that strange uninterpretable “intuitive” stuff?   Something isn’t right.  As if I were standing at an intersection without a crossroad, a highway with no exits, opened out before me, shining bright.  And yet.  I have misgivings, doubts.  Troubling the obvious. Are all exceptions exhausted?  Every option foreclosed?  Pressure is on, expectations real – I’ll be a laughing idiot to choose otherwise.  And yet.  And yet.  I have the feeling it will end in a horrible guffaw.

N Filbert 2012