Six Sentence Sunday: Troubadours and Marionette Strings

Hello, Everyone.


I have been in limbo the past few weeks it seems. Local friends have been coming out of the wood work lately and I felt, with their coaxing, the need to put my shy, hermit tendencies aside for a while and get out of the house. It’s not healthy for me to be a recluse all the time. I spent last weekend hiking throughout the beautiful Idaho country, such a wonderful time, I’ll never forget it. It seems I’m not the only one who’s missed the SSS the last few weeks, however, and I’m glad my writing friends are getting out into the sunshine. Must be cabin fever going around.

So, this week I’ve cheated a bit, changed the punctuation just slightly to turn eight sentences into six. I know, bad form; though I wanted to use this section and it was just too difficult to break it up into six sentence bits.  Another scene from Squishing Whistle Pigs; after last week’s Six, the pastor makes his opening speech to the congregation and this Six follows directly.

The last word echoes through the pews all the way to the back of the room, punctuated by a select few ‘praise the lord’ interjections. A small three piece band begins to play, the congregation stirs and then the whole of them stand; reluctantly I do as they do. They begin to sing and move to the rhythm, I don’t do that. A strange force takes effect on some and their hands become weightless and rise up into the air, palms facing the ceiling; they’re attached it seemed, to marionette strings. I wonder if I look up I might see troubadours in the rafters with crossed sticks. There isn’t any.

I hope you enjoy this week’s Six. I’m quickly running out of them. Maybe I’ll have to write something new for a fresh set. ;)

Thank you again for your visit here. Please visit the official Six Sentence Sunday site for more great writers who actually follow the rules, and click on some of my favorite Sixer’s here: Wendy S. Russo, L.J. Kentowski, Loni Flowers, Kelly Seguin, Mae Clair, Daniela Renelt, Karen de Lange, Mackenzie Crowne, and Steven Montano. 

Your comments are very welcome. I'm sincerely fond of them so please leave a word or two. 

Six Sentence Sunday: Mothballs and Bourbon

Hello everyone! 

Thank you for stopping by this week. I've been on hiatus for a while. Lots of overtime hours at the “paying” job has kept me busy and exhausted, so writing and blog hopping has been nil. I have missed out on L.J. Kentowski’s wonderful “What’s Your Take Wednesdays”, that one however is due, as much or more, to the challenge of it. Some really amazing writers over there can take a writing prompt and create a scene in moments off the seat of their pants. I wish I had that talent. I could percolate for a few days on a prompt and only come up with a meager attempt at something clever. However, L.J. I will try to do better in the future.

Because I didn’t get my name on the Six Sentence Sunday Linky list this week, I’m going to cheat. This is much longer than six sentences. This scene from Squishing Whistle Pigs comes after Rachael, Ben and the kids reach the church. My favorite scene from Squishing Whistle Pigs, which appears just prior to the one I'm about to post, I’ve already posted many weeks ago and it can be found here. It can give you a bit more build up. It’s also more than six sentences, though quite short and very funny!

In this scene, Ben enters the church for the first time. I have drawn from a variety of personal experiences with my visits to several different churches and created this scene, so all this stuff actually happened to me at some point in my personal, spiritual search.

“Ben?” Rachael stands by the double doors. She motions with her head that I should join her. A staunch gentleman stands on her left. Nice shirt, tie and Dockers. “This is Pastor Hinckley and his wife,” she says.

            I shake his hand. His wife is elegant, and drop dead beautiful. She winks at me through seductive eyes. I feel like a schoolboy and step on my tongue when I move forward to greet her. Her name is Secret. I wonder how many she had and if she’d be willing to tell me.

            The people inside didn’t resemble my anticipated church going fare.

            We meet Billy Thomas in the foyer just outside the Chapel. Afterwards, he staggers into his pew reaching out for it as if to stop it from moving. He smelled of mothballs and bourbon.

            Sue Swanson meets us in the aisle and introduces herself. She shakes my hand and won’t let go. Her eyes rape me. It felt appropriate to offer her a cigarette when she finally let loose. Her husband takes her by the hand. He smiles at me and then leads her away.

            I enter the pew after Rachael and the girls, squirm against the black cherry wood, and then settle in. I can’t beat away thoughts of overdraft fees, and repo notices. Troubles had piled up like cold Hoary Marmots. They wouldn’t stop popping in and out of the holes in my brain. I imagine the little boy stomping on them.

I hope you enjoy this short passage. Thank you again, so much for your visit here. Please visit the official Six Sentence Sunday site for more great writers who actually follow the rules, and click on some of my favorite Sixer’s here: Wendy S. Russo, L.J. Kentowski, Loni Flowers, Kelly Seguin, Mae Clair, Daniela Renelt, Karen de Lange, Mackenzie Crowne, and Steven Montano.  

Your comments are very welcome. I'm very fond of them so please leave a word or two. 

Six Sentence Sunday: Rape us God, Make us New

I have missed Six Sentence Sunday like a Pooh Bear misses honey; although, I have a fine excuse for missing last week. My roommate/best friend, and I spent a three day weekend at his brother’s log cabin in beautiful McCall, Idaho. I’ll post some photos and videos of the trip as soon as I figure out how to post a video. Grr. I’m technology challenged. I was able to get some quality writing done while sitting on the back porch listening to the sounds of nature, birds, chipmunks, and thunder rolling through the valley, bouncing off the mountains of Tamarack, and my roommate made a video of a buck and doe moseying through the property. My phone has erratic service up there so I was only able to respond to a few blogs before it was lost for good.

Six Sentence Sunday is a monumental, weekly event where close to 200 amazing writers post six sentence snippets from their work. It's like a greatest hits album of the written word. Please visit  more Sixers by clicking the Six Sentence Sunday Link at the end of my post. 
 
My Six this week is one of my favorite passages from Squishing Whistle Pigs. The narrators close friend, Rachael, comes to pick him up on a Sunday morning to attend a church service as she believes it will do him some good to gain some “enlightenment”. He hasn’t been to one in many years and his broken heart has made him skeptical of it all. 

We pass the park where Erin and I would walk, and then turn onto Carmichael; pass the Civic Center for the Arts, its marquee emblazons, ‘local thespian Marge Burns reading the sensory, erotic poetry of John Donne, 7 PM’; pass a man wearing a sandwich board. He stands across the street from the EZ Come, EZ Go Mart. His chest says “rape us God, make us new.”

            I sink low in the seat. Rachael merges onto the freeway, eastbound. A sun ray shines through the overcast sky like a spotlight from the heavens, it’s quickly swallowed up.

 

As mentioned every week, like a scratched, vinyl 45, your visit here to read my work is appreciated beyond measure, and in turn, your comments inspire and “enlighten” me to ignite my passion for this craft. 

 

Please visit the official site for more great writers for Six Sentence Sunday, and click on some of my favorite Sixer’s here: Wendy S. Russo, L.J. Kentowski, Loni Flowers, Kelly Seguin, Mae Clair, Daniela Renelt, Karen de Lange, Mackenzie Crowne, and Steven Montano.

Six Sentence Sunday: Honeysuckles and Hummingbirds

I’ll continue with Squishing Whistle Pigs for the time being. Last week’s post went over well, so I’m curious to know how the next few weeks will go. Squishing Whistle Pigs is a bit of a dark read, at least at first. The main character is heartbroken and rock-bottom with depression, struggling to find a hand hold on spirituality. I hope you all know how appreciative I am for you taking time out of your weekend to visit my blog to read and comment.

            These are the next six following last week’s post.

Wasn’t time to say goodbye or to ask why. My mind hovers on an image of her face, wanting to picture her the way she was when we were in love. My emotions have become dull like the knife that unwillingly cut my breakfast, though I smother with the hash browns under sausage gravy.

            The wind is bitter this spring. The snow has lingered longer than past years. Honeysuckles bloomed late and the hummingbirds have moved on.

Please visit the official site for more great writers for Six Sentence Sunday, and click on some of my favorite Sixer’s here: Wendy S. Russo, L.J. Kentowski, Loni Flowers, Kelly Seguin, Mae Clair, Daniela Renelt, Karen de Lange, Mackenzie Crowne, and Steven Montano.

On a side note, I’ve relaunched my personal blog; It’s going to be a hoot, based on my abstract life and all the dumb stuff people do, namely myself. I hope you’ll visit and have a good laugh at my expense. The Karma Chronicles.

Appalachian Dreams

     There are several writers whose work has inspired me; several people who have influenced and encouraged my writing. However, there are only a select few who I can credit for creating me, creating this love of writing within me. I honored Ray Bradbury last week. This week, I honor Mr. Joseph, my sixth grade teacher. 

      In the summer of 1982, Mr. Joseph took myself and two other students on a cross country road trip. The trip included a hike that spanned the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia portions of the Appalachian Trail.

            Mr. Joseph is a rabid fan of Mark Twain’s stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. A writer himself, Mr. Joseph would read to his class chapters from his own book each day just before class let out. It was a story of adventure that rivaled that of Mr. Twain. The students loved it. I loved it.

     Shortly after our trip I kept a journal outlining, to the best of my memory, events and things we saw. That journal has become a short story titled Appalachian Dreams. By pressing the boundaries of creative non-fiction, I have attempted to capture in Appalachian Dreams that “Tom Finn” spirit and style that Mr. Joseph loved so much. I do so to emphasize his heart’s desire to be a character in a Twain novel, and his boyish aspirations to experience such adventure. I also use this Twain "voice" as a tribute to Mr. Joseph whose influence has made a monumental impact on my life. He’s one of the reasons I fell in love with writing and storytelling, giving me my very first taste of it. No, none of the real characters are from the south, none of us really talk this way, although, in the essence of the man that Mr. Joseph is, not to write about our adventures on the “Trail” in that spirit would seem against all that the trip stood for. I do not use the device as an insult to anyone’s education or intelligence; it’s simply flavor, in honor of the stories that Mr. Joseph loves. I have always seen Mr. Joseph as Huck Finn leading us on an amazing adventure to find a lost treasure buried somewhere in the Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania landscape.

This wasn’t just a cross country trip. It was a Mark Twain adventure, and for a brief slice of life, we were all characters in this incredible story. 

The following is a short excerpt from Appalachian Dreams: 

That Maryland mornin in ’82 was crisp and chilly. We’d arrived by vehicle the night before. It’d taken the better part of a week to get there. The lushness of the area was amazin. I’d never seen so many trees in my young life. Nostalgia was so thick you could smell the gunpowder of muskets and the smoke of cannon fire and Civil War history was alive in the design of the New England style buildins. Somewhere in your mind you could faintly hear the bugle call of “charge” of union forces echoing over the meadow. There was a sense of fall in the air giving me a feelin of giddiness I hadn’t felt since I kissed Jenny Lee Avery behind the old mill that last Summer.

After near two hours of preparin and packin, we were ready to move out. Lookin off inta the brush just beyond a sign signifyin the entrance to the trail, I felt a bit of a faithless pit in my stomach. The trail was a haunting thing. I reckon it had to do with ghosts of the Civil War and such. Still, there wouldn’t be much nostalgic treasure to find in all that as far as I could tell, though Mr. Joseph saw things different. He knew there was treasure on that trail and we set out to find it.

            Brian took out his rabbits foot an gave it a good rub then put it back in his pocket.

            “Wudd’ya do that for” I asked

             “It’s good luck, ya know?”

            “Can I try?”

            “Naw. Anyone touch it now an it’d rub off my luck.” He said.

            “That’s just a wives tale. It don’t really work.”

            “One time I was walking down the track over by Saw Creek Mill…” Brian explained, “…and my foot become stuck. The Loggin Express was ten minutes early that day. I couldn’t get loose and the express was barrin down on me. I thought fer sure I was done for, so I took out my rabbits foot and began ta rub it. The conductor must’a seen me cause all a sudden I could hear the breaks scrape’n an straight away sparks come a shootin out the wheels. By some miracle the conductor managed to stop the thing some five foot from me.”

            “If it wasn’t for that rabbits foot you’da been squished!” I shouted.

            “Ain’t that the truth.” He said.

Thinkin more clearly on it today, I can’t say I believe his story was the straight truth. Regardless, I spent a good portion of the rest of the trip thinkin of some way ta get that rabbits foot in ta my own pocket. One thing my life has always been short on is luck. I reckon that foot would’a fixed me up right.

Excerpt from

Appalachian Dreams

By M.L. Falconer

Mr. Joseph is still alive and kicking. He continues to embark on multi-mile hikes, cross country bike trips and other amazing adventures with his wife and kids. You can find his work, Family on the Mountain at Amazon.com.