A Day at the Office - Chapter 2

The pattern on this set of cubicles irritated, stimulating the eyes and visual brain center, but at low enough intensity as not to distract from the computers they corralled. The color, however, was a shade somewhere between pastel yellow and egg-shell white. It was not the stark white or black of oppressive bureaucracy, nor the safe beige, brown, or grey of a conservative, but humane, institution. It did not recognize one's desire to be outdoors in fresh currents by mimicking the colors of natural environments in homage. Rather, it made reference to the sun and summer flowers too prudent to attract the attention of their violet, indigo, and chartreuse cousins. A reference brazenly flaunted and disgraced simultaneously as instead of the sun it is like the rotting bones of some sick animal so large the fleas had yet to realize was in its death throws. This was the truth that Hu saw as ...

Expectations

"A life, a life. Just a simple life." She paused, pain demanding all strength as payment for a breath. "How arrogant and naive. And Edwardo, what a ... fucking fool for believing in you."
She cleared blood from her mouth and explored with trembling hands the tears in her torso. It was too much of a struggle to sit upright, the body broken and raw, fumbling over herself required time.
"Edwardo said the farm might allow me to find hidden patience. A quiet life, that's all we wanted." Sobbing, she extends her fingers. The nerves of which are still so raw the warmth of blood isn't detected. "The truth, Hand, is that I've never had patience, not even for my own flesh."
Exploring the unnatural openings, ugly geography that was now her body, she shuttered. Wasn't she entitled to a safe home? To a sense of stability, peace? What of children and a protective husband? This last thought, turning to Edwardo, focused her anger. In response, her body tightened, the muscles taking the universal form for displeasure; raised, hard units of pure tension. Blood squeezed past foreign objects and, like water from springs in the ugly geography, emptied in red ponds.
"I didn't do anything! I don't deserve this!" She shouted with abandon, foregoing safety.

The woman heard voices, and then a sound like movement. Her disloyal lungs began to work faster, sending pulses of pain with every expansion. She licked her lips and swallowed as something akin to hope arose to sit next to disappointment and regret in her heart.

Owl

Sometimes the beauty of reality is so stark we believe it illusion out of stern, reactionary loyalty to the utilitarian. Sometimes the utility of perception is so poor the difference between ephemeria and physical is hard to discern. Beauty is unmoved by the objective truth that separates our perceptions from fact.

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"This stamp is the seal of Kuluth, as I am sure you've seen before?" His finger pointed menacingly toward a yellow lump of wax imprinted with a square shield, three stars at top and a diagonal band; fading details of a wheat bunch to the left and a cow to the right.

"Yes," replied the younger, it is common here."

"It should be. Kuluth was founded not far from here and has many choice wells." The elder moved his finger to the right of the seal. "This number is what is left, the difference which is implied, is the magnitude of the last transaction. If the lower value is less than the one above, which is most common, it was an expenditure, larger, a credit."

The younger glanced at the paper. The syntax seemed clear enough, but the reason this was being explained was not, so he waited before turning to face the penetrating gaze of the elder.

"Seems clear enough. The larger the amount the better it is. More, uhm..., credits, more numbers, more stuff. Then we can have a fruit cart instead of a pineapple, right?" The younger glanced at the cored pineapple in his hand, the little ice he could afford now melted, then at the mobile fruit cart he purchased it from. When he realized the elder was speaking again he wasn't sure if it was the promise the cart meant to him or the smile on the young woman monger behind it.

"Edwardo, there are many who would wish to apprentice with me. Do you think you are the only one in your generation who knows his numbers? Now, the quantity must be informed by the patron, whose seal it is. If Kuluth's seal is here, let us say, then this paper can be taken to a Kuluth well and water can be purchased at the going rate, or it can be redeemed for a number of water credits equal to this current tally, less a modest percentage."

"Yes, I know," Edwardo interrupted, "this is the way i live, collecting water since I was seven. Although I've had one of those," pointing to the paper. "But, the Garbonza, my mother's brother's family, they saved their government pay like that. They traded it for a sewer hook-up and nice solar panels and a good fence."

"And the Garbonza taught you numbers, yes? Well, after applying some new knowledge you'll have the means to repay them for investing in you." Edwardo suddenly felt the weight of obligation. he looked to the cart and the young monger, still looking cute in her apron, and knew these things he could not have until his debts were settled and his family honored. "For the past and the future," Edwardo declared, holding high the water receipt like an ancient priest offering sacrifice to the Celestial Court. "It was something my father used to say before supper, at least that is what my mother told me."

Upon a hill in front of cathedral they looked out over the corrugated metal roofs at the coalescing of people into rivers. Edwardo was not surprised to see that these clusters were around the cisterns, the water company's retail distribution. There was also one near the stadium, one at each of the city gates, and a small, but visceral, cluster at the cathedral.

Fried, America, Sunken, Beauty-Queen

The house was looking less white, he thought. One more thing to do, and yet no more time to do it in. Something was going to have to give. Shorter breaths, maybe? The lawn was looking a lot less green, too. Probably best to stop taking long looks before walking in the front door could be removed from that list.

"Before you take off those shoes take out the garbage," came from an area approximating to the kitchen. The bag was sitting on top of a low lamp table, minus the lamp. When he picked it up grim saturated camping magazines pitifully demarcated between the trash and table.

"No problem Betty Jean, my beauty queen." As he freed his other hand of his keys to open the door the droning of a television was interrupted by shuffling of slippered feet. " Caleb, sweetie, thank you." Betty Jean's puckered lips rammed Caleb's turning jaw. "Come back in here quick like. Warm food and warm thighs are waiting for ya."

The living room furniture was sunken under the weight of memories. The house had long been absent of the hiss of air escaping the weight of eager television viewers. The two cuddled with something hot and fried on their laps. On the screen the President was speaking. "These fallen brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, have given the ultimate sacrifice for America, and it will not be in vain."

Not waiting to void her mouth of food, Betty Jean asked, "How was your day?"

Lifting the television's remote control, "Not bad, not bad at all."

Story, Anticlimax, Tributary, Muse

This gurgulling brook, this Caravaggio alto, this mountain top sunrise; tributaries to my heart. I am filled but like a canyon, winds moving.

Muse! Hold this quivering pen until hand becomes dust and bones.

"Mortal, your story is your own, a tribute to the gods and their court. All the tragedies and triumphs of the human struggle, the splendor of Earth from a mortals eyes. How precious it must seem when eventually it will be your last, but never knowing which.

Each eye sees from a different position, every breath rattles in a dying cage but exhales with a different shard of life. Carry on and show us what your shard feels. When I come to hold the writer's hand it will be the anticlimax."

Design Promotion

Creation Ideas:

Duo tone illustrations with phrase with furtive meaning, think Andre the Giant face. "mob" promotion, cult-like vagueness and clique cultivating information curve. Long curve: sell niche, and long view: subvert status quo promote positive, fearless memes.

Another Stupid Poem

What is that source, that Platonic ideal, that draws us down toward the object of our pain, to find lines drawing from disparate parts back to this idol of our suffering and fixes our eyes thus? Let us not see the smiles, or feel the fresh breezes, or know kindness. Let us cling to old pains, provide succor and warm, damp, fertile ground so they can be like new, reborn in the present as passed spirits possessing the living.

Where once a person, vibrant and alert, a shell fueled by burning the compressed matter of another era. A thick black soot veils the eyes, impairs the lungs to only shallow breaths. The coals are cold, the skin ashen, the blood is ice.