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Laughter Lost
Weekly Writing Challenge: 1,000 Words (or more or less!) – write a post based on this image.
Picture courtesy of Michelle Weber
For a while she watches the children playing on the merry-go-round. They laugh as they spin around, over and over, faster and faster. She feels a little pang of fear as every so often one jumps off, but they always land safely. The others laugh as they watch their friend stagger around, dizzy and giggling.
After a while the children leave, heading back to their homes for dinner. Although still a child herself, she doesn’t feel one of them. She no longer joins in their games, no longer laughs with the others. It has been so long since she has laughed.
On the Edge
L’appel du vide is French and translates to “Call of the Void”. It is the unexplainable urge to jump when standing on the edge of a cliff, or tall height. It can be considered a form of self-destructive ideation, or a protective instinct to let the brain play out what the body should not. It’s definition has been expanded to describe responding mentally to the call of the siren song– whether that means the desire to reach into a fire, drive into a wall, or walk into the eye of the storm.
He struggles to remember the early days, the good times. The times when drinking was fun, sociable, relaxing. The days when he and his friends met at the bar after work for a few drinks, to laugh and joke and relieve the stress of the day.
He can’t quite remember those days.
All he has now are memories of darkness. Hazy, muddled memories of fights with his friends. Vague recollections of arguments with his wife. The knowledge that he’d swapped his beautiful house and family for a tiny, grotty bedsit. A dank, dark little room to match his mood.
He remembers two days when he hadn’t drunk, when he’d tried to stay off the booze so he could see his kids. Two horrific days of misery until the siren’s song of alcohol drew him inexorably back.
His memory vaguely recalls a time when he had friends, friends he could rely on, but now his friends could no longer rely on him and they’d done their best but now they were gone. He’d pushed them away because they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand what he was going through. Those days feel like a dream, a different life.
Darkness, emptiness, helplessness, shame. Home, wife, kids, friends, job, self respect all gone.
And now his mind drags itself back to the present, as he stands on the cliff. He can’t go on like this, it has to end. He stands on the edge of the cliff, his mind remarkably clear, and stares out into the void.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Carefree
Weekly Photo Challenge – Carefree
On a recent holiday to Wales I visited Coed y Brenin forest park. After walking for a while I sat under the tree you can see on the far left of the photo.
For the first time in years my mind just emptied as I watched the water flow past – for the first time in years I felt completely carefree.
Fade Away
Daily Prompt: Standout – When was the last time you really stood out in a crowd? Are you comfortable in that position, or do you wish you could fade into the woodwork?
I’ve had to struggle to remember the last time I stood out in any crowd. I think we’ll have to go back over ten years to “the dark drinking time”. Emboldened by Dutch Courage I was MC at a work pub quiz. I was the fill-in act – told jokes, gave away prizes, that sort of thing. Apparently I was quite good!
One year for a university Christmas party I wrote a song (a spoof on the university to the music of the Eagles “Hotel California”) and got together some backing singers and some amateur musicians (physicists are less boring then one might expect!).
Ritual and Routine
Ritual and routine. Watchwords for my life.
When I say “ritual” I’m talking about the personal things we do, rather than anything connected to religion. Little things like knocking on wood before performing a certain task, maybe. Things that don’t really mean anything, but make us feel better.
Routine – the things we do every day, the things we have to do, like checking all the windows are closed before we go to work.
I love my routine. I do the same things every workday morning, in the same order. Get out of bed, make lunch, shave, shower, brush teeth. That’s all fine. Next I check the kitchen plugs are off, check the water to the washing machine is off, check the washing machine and microwave are unplugged, check the side window’s closed, check the amplifier is off at the wall, check the amplifier base unit is off at the wall, check the bathroom fan master switch is off and leave the house.
There’s more, but you get the idea.
Here’s the kicker – I already know most of the stuff is fine. I use the washing machine on a Monday evening. It can’t magically plug itself back in, but I need to check every morning. If I don’t check I feel uneasy. That’s when routine becomes ritual. It serves no useful purpose but I need to do it to make myself feel better. If I do something out of order it feels very wrong.
Then there’s the stuff which my brain expects to happen. The other day I walked into a door at work. I flung my right arm at the door handle and missed. I tried with my left hand and missed. However, my brain expected the door to be open by now, so my legs just kept on going. Ouch!
Here’s what I imagine was going on in my head at the time, starting in the “Department for Hands and Arms”.
Once I’ve locked a door, I check it’s locked – that’s good common sense. If I wait around in the proximity of the door for more than a few seconds I have to check it again. That’s just mad! I know it’s locked.
Does anyone else have a routine which has morphed into a ritual?
Draliman Through the Ages Part 2 – Dralisaurus
For the second part of our series “Draliman Through the Ages” we visit a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and one dinosaur in particular – the fearsome killer Dralisaurus!
Catch up with “Draliman Through the Ages”!
Part 1 – Dralamoeba
The team at DraliDoodlesTM have raided their piggy banks and bought a cheapo graphics tablet. They still can’t draw, but now they can’t draw more professionally. Enjoy!
Time Twister
RETROCAUSALITY IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ADDRESSING THE QUESTION, “CAN THE FUTURE AFFECT THE PRESENT, AND CAN THE PRESENT AFFECT THE PAST?”. IT IS ANY OF SEVERAL HYPOTHETICAL PHENOMENA OR PROCESSES THAT REVERSE CAUSALITY, ALLOWING AN EFFECT TO OCCUR BEFORE ITS CAUSE. IT OFTEN REFERS TO PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF TIME TRAVEL, THOUGH THE TWO TERMS ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY SYNONYMOUS. (Logo courtesy of Queen Creative.)
Wow. Can the present affect the past? I’m going to say “no”.
I read the Wikipedia entry on the topic. It’s all a bit spurious, physics-wise, although there are theories. There are always theories. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century to be a physicist. I like to see my physics in action.
We’re talking “causality” here – cause and effect. One example of cause and effect is described by the “butterfly effect”, which is also part of chaos theory. Now, I’m happy with chaos theory per se. If you pop a ball on the top of a hill it will eventually roll in some direction or other based on all sorts of starting conditions. But the “butterfly effect”? A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away weeks later? Really?
Those Chinese butterflies have some serious mojo going on
“The Butterfly Effect” by DraliDoodles
Back to retrocausality. As a thought experiment it’s fun, I guess, especially if you’re with your mates down the pub, or it’s post-university-disco and you’re all sitting in the kitchen, nicely drunk making cheese toasties and talking philosophy.
As a reality, I’m thinking it could not be! I’ve watched a ton of Dr Who and he always actually travels to the past in order to affect the future. If he could affect the past by changing something in the present, he wouldn’t need the TARDIS, now would he?
But whoa there just a minute! How do we know that this retrocausality thing isn’t happening all the time? We don’t! Think about this:
- I don’t like something about my past
- I fire up my RetroCausalitron(TM)
- I change the past from “here”, the present
- The timeline from “that point then” on to “this point now” is rewritten
- Because the timeline has changed I never actually changed the past – that action belonged to a defunct timeline. Nor do I even want to change the past as it is now what I wanted it to be.
Therefore we could have changed the past millions of times from the present and we’d never even know. Now that’s scary. My head hurts.
Dull and Boring
Daily Prompt: ( YAWN ) – What bores you? Photographers, artists, poets: show us DULL.
OK, here you go. Dull it is.
Dull, in Perthshire (Scotland), picture courtesy of BBC website
As you can see, they’ve shaken things up a bit by twinning with a town in the USA.
Boring, Oregon (USA), picture courtesy of The Guardian website
If that’s not enough excitement for you, read more here:
Excitement hope for Boring, Oregon, and Dull, Perthshire (BBC News website)
Silly placenames: welcome to Dull, twinned with Boring (The Guardian online)
Please Let Me Go Home
Weekly Writing Challenge – Your earliest memory. Capture every detail. Document the quality of the memory — is it as sharp as HDTV or hazy and ethereal, enveloped in fog? Write for 10 minutes. Go.
I must have been around four years old. We were living at the first house I ever lived in and we left when I was five so that sounds about right.
Mum left my little brother and I with a good friend of hers to play, as she occasionally did. I’m sure we’d been there before, though everything from so long ago is pretty hazy.
I don’t remember anything about that visit apart from the very end – that is etched into my memory as if carved in stone.
My memory tells me that Mum’s friend held a cup of tea – it could have been coffee but I think it was tea – out to each of us. She said “Drink this or you can’t go home.” I was terrified. I wanted to go home to Mum.
I drank the tea. It was foul. I was only a toddler. Toddlers don’t drink tea. Toddlers drink juice or milk (I never drank milk and still don’t – it makes me sick).
We never went back to that house. Not ever.
“Cup of tea, little boy?” by DraliDoodles
It’s a witch’s hat, OK? Shut Up. I don’t do hats.
Is this how it really happened? Probably not. This woman was a kind woman, a friend of the family. More than likely she said “Have some tea to drink before you go home.” I misconstrued.
Only now, as I write this, do I feel terribly guilty for the poor woman. Imagine inadvertently scaring a toddler so much that they refused to see you ever again?
Memories are tricky things. Although I am convinced that “I heard what I heard”, I have been similarly convinced that a film ended this way, or a book ended that way only to watch or read it decades later and discover that my mind has altered the ending. In my mind it ended the way I always wanted it to – now that I’ve rediscovered it I find that the ending is completely different. Disappointingly different.
My mind very probably twisted this innocent encounter into something sinister.
What can we trust if not our own minds?
Stop the clock…
Time to write: 8 minutes.
Proof-reading/editing: 4 minutes.
Draw/scan/format/upload doodle: 5 minutes.
Confession: I didn’t let this sit for a day as per the instructions. I didn’t want to spoil the thoughtless spontaneity.
D I Why
Prompts for the Promptless – Do It Yourself (DIY) is the method of building, modifying or repairing something without the aid or experts or professionals.
I have to be honest – DIY and me don’t mix. I’d love to be one of those chaps who can put up a shelf at a moment’s notice or fix a leaky tap at the drop of a hat, but sadly this is not the case.
If I try anything so much as cutting the tag off a new t-shirt, I always ensure that the first aid box is close at hand. Stick me anywhere near a power tool and I’m likely to have one of those hard-to-believe hilarious yet tragic accidents.
“Cornish man accidentally falls on own chainsaw while hanging picture.”
“Chainsaw Disaster” by DraliDoodles
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