The ongoing thread below had me think about the nature of worldview on as big a scale as possible. Some subscribe to a human-centric model (considering postulates irrelevant to humans as irrelevant postulation), while others subscribe to a transcendental model--by which I do not mean angels and devils and so forth. Instead, I mean a harsh, deistic transcendental model as this combines theists with atheists and agnostics into a single category.
I would like to see advocates on both sides prosecute their case and fight! Any style, any position so long as it's relevant to the dualism I presented.
Be honorable and show the hacks of the world what a properly trained writer can do with a keyboard!
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Smurfs that fold sheets for a living have messed up hearts. Something wrong with them. It could be a result of complications from bullet wounds but they’re probably just tired from all the flipping and fighting. I met an old smurf once. He put 170 grains into a guy’s throat. The lead recipient had been wearing a black burkha and carried an rpg when he crossed paths with the sheet-folding smurf that I would come to meet. He thought he could get out of a pickup truck dressed like a lady and point an rpg at someone. But the man-lady caught some lead grains with his neck and in a short-lived retaliation burkha boy’s buddy, similarly dressed, put a few grains into the liver of the smurf I got to talk to. His liver is a complication now. Complication for his heart, which I am sure, has flipped many times in the past.
ReplyDeleteSmurfs don’t flip for Yaweh, Jesus, or Mohammed. You might say that smurfs flip for money. And that might be right. But any smurf that can put 170 grains into, what he thinks is, a lady’s throat is probably ruthless enough to make money any fucking way he wants. As tough a smurf as he was, his liver had him folding sheets.
I had tea with that smurf and his fucked up flipped out heart. We talked about the weather and people and life. He told he how he ended up folding sheets. It was uncomfortable. But I liked him. I liked his tea and his gooey ginger treats. As awkward as it was, I felt like our conversation took place in a pleasance, observed from on high by all the big ones. The two of us sitting, drinking tea, presenting our fucked up flipped out hearts to one another. I thanked him for the tea. Gave him a twenty. He feigned an inability to take the money. Then he took it. I gave it to him partly because our moments together felt clean and I thought they had been celestially and honorably observed. But, mostly, I gave him a twenty because I didn’t want him to put 170 grains in my neck.
Ah, all power flows from the barrels of guns eh? Any rebuttal from the inhuman side? Chile and Haiti might have something to say about the power of guns alone.
ReplyDeleteShe is Christian and so are her babies. Gambling a cooler behind the crumbling walls that protect them. She sells booze. Cause she’s Christian, she can. The local cops don’t squeeze her as hard as they do others. She’s too close to her clients, for now. The cops make their rounds uttering as they pass, not for long. Not for long.
ReplyDeleteWhat might she cling to? A Christian amongst Muslims. A collaborator surrounded by those who wait for the withdrawal of the great equivocator. A woman with a little money living with men who will take it from her, everything from her. Circling.
An American came to see her one night. To buy some of her booze. She brought the children out to the stand. So that if they might see one like him they will be unafraid. As he held a bottle of whiskey the whistling passed over her home. Three katyushas flown tight in time. Loose in proximity. The closest just a few hundred yards away from her home. The woman and her children were gone, rushed into the house.
The man stood alone holding a bottle in his hand, a minute passed before he looked up and caught movement in her doorway. She peeked out and smiled. Went in and got her children, ushered them out. To show them that they should not be afraid. So that they might share in her faith.
both great peices. I like the smurf storie better it's vauge and hit me with recognition somwhere along the way what grains and smurfs are. Second one a clean snapshot and kinda got the feeling this was the inhuman one. I vote for for the smurf
ReplyDeleteHmm, I'm a bit partial to the second one. The weaknesses are simply tightening of words-- instead of American, maybe Texan? Nothing a revision can't fix. I did enjoy the smurfisms in the story and smurfed the use of smurf as a synonym with vagueness. Yeah, come to think of it, I think the smurf story was better. I just liked the whiff of directness from the second one.
ReplyDelete