Plight: The Next Burger

A man who's almost died, he starts making plans. If he's creative he'll start worrying, that he never made anything worth anything. That creative, doomed soul, he'll flail in the darkness for light--for inspiration, obsessed with the act of creation, to make one worthy work. Those who see it coming from far away, they're in better shape. They might be able to squeeze out a few pieces, worthy or not, plinked out like in a carnival shooting game.
     I nearly died not too far back, it gave me some time. I started writing.
     My wallet filled up, became a thick pain in the right side of my ass, filled up with captured anecdotes, reveries, epiphanies, you name it--I wrote them down on all the various receipts that constantly accumulate: from the atm, for burgers and fries, for toothpaste ...
     They say an anarchist, he's one by choice. Did I choose? Can't say, rightly. I might wimp out, drop the cross, you know--might say that anarchy chose me, that it took the form of my environment, made itself god, gave and took, just right, just enough for me to see ... the truth.
     The truth is nobody owns me but me, I hold no debt--the state thinks otherwise. The letter I received last week, it had the fancy seal, the print of the state building in red, the courthouse steps smudged a little. That letter, it said I owed the state some, said I failed to file a few years back, they don't seem to know--I stopped filing.
     Truth is a funny thing, what we all proclaim to seek, yet none of us want to hear. None of us are perfect, all of us have flaws and imperfections--we just don't want to hear which. To drown out the truth, we buy; we consume. The truth starts to speak and we turn on American Idol, we tune in to CNN: The Extended War on Terror, we flip to the Buccaneers as they take a pounding from the Redskins. We do that hot dance from the 80's: the drive through, through Mickie D's, through Burger King and Wendy's. The slices of cow covered with flame broil flavoring, those salivacious, third-party injections of antibiotics, sustaining us; we can ignore that dirty mouthed truth, if just til the next burger.

Dwellings in the Wind: Break

It was a midsummer day; the heat and humidity set upon the two in hopes of invoking a sweat, but the pond had other ideas. Within its depths it lunched upon the balmy rays, pausing only to exhale a fine mist from its placid surface.  

     "Oh, I see one! Over there, Nathan."

     The man affected a smirk of self-control and whipped a red bamboo pole around his head, flinging an odd looking, impaled insect through the air upon an invisible string. It landed just inside the second capillary wave left behind by whatever the woman had seen.

     "Now you'll see, Kara. We shall catch something today after all."

     "I didn't doubt you, dear." Kara broke her attention from the bait placement to study their surroundings: an idyllic, oval shaped pond overlooked by a high red clay cliff on its southernmost bank; willow trees dotted the water's edge otherwise, creating cool canopies of shadow; the sun's reflection on the water followed behind their gondola like a lost lamb of pure effulgence.

     The bait writhed upon a thin sheen of water-tension; a barbed, yellow gut smudged hook still protruded through its striped thorax. She never did enjoy watching Nathan set the hook; it was the thing she most regretted from these trips--bad karma, at least the fish had a fighting chance.
     Suddenly, a whirlpool formed beneath it and the fishing line twisted into opacity. The edges of the vortex rose into the air, revealing monstrous, fleshy pink lips and dagger gray teeth. The lips closed around the line like the chubby hand of a child.
     "Ha!" Nathan said, "That's a fine specimen; may be my biggest catch here yet."
     "Is it yet caught?" Kara half grinned, keeping her eyes on their prey as it sunk back into the depths from which it sprung.
     The line went taught and the boat shook as Nathan struggled with the pole; his face speckled red with strain. "No you don't, dinner!" He set his feet against the wooden stern and pulled back with all his might, making meager gains and giving them swiftly back.
     Then the undulant flapping of giant membranous wings became audible, a familiar sound that wafted over the cliff above like a heavy smoke, proclaiming the arrival of suited men. As if leaping from the precipice, the silhouettes of three man-sized grasshoppers came to hover over the pond, generating sharp gusts like invisible sword strokes, cutting the water into a churning grid. Kara could smell an acrid odor permeating the atmosphere and felt the band around her left forearm contract slightly. Pulling back her sleeve showed the grafted site had turned from a normal human flesh tone to a phosphorescent bright green: a warning--a call to battle. The suits lifted away into the clouds above and vanished, presumably to continue spreading the alarm.
     All light and mirth had gone from Nathan's face, wholly replaced by a dour squint that weighed upon the edges of his mouth. He unfastened the mantid blade at his hip and drew it across the fishing line, setting his lake spawned nemesis free. "Let's go," he said.

Kurt Vonnegut's advice on writing short stories

Dmitry Orlov: Social Collapse Best Practices

There is nothing any of us can do to change the path we are on: it is a huge system with tremendous inertia, and trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane. 

FORA presentation