Short Story: Spring

He spotted it in the corner of the window. Its wings
peeked over the frame, their slow repeated fluttering
suggesting exhaustion. He studied the butterfly
closely. Between those black and red brown wings, the
hairy body looked too large. He realised the wings
hadn’t grown, but were small and jagged as if
corroded. Perhaps it was this weather. Spring just
wouldn’t come. A stubborn north wind kept everything
leafless. It kept the flowers in their buds so dooming
this little creature as well.

“Brian, you’ll have to help me up.”
The nurse didn’t come today so he’d agreed to take the
day off to help mom.
“Yes, mummy.”
He wondered why she’d put on her dress to sit on the
bed, perhaps to look her best for him. He took her by
the bony shoulders to straighten her, then moved his
left hand to support her back. At the touch of the
weak flesh bulging around her bra strap his hand
pulled back, like a snake that’d just struck and
coiled itself for another lunge. This happened without
thought and she seemed not to have noticed. Gently he
moved her from the bed, remembering all the times, at
dances and parties, when his hand felt the strap
slightly indenting a girl’s tight flesh.

“I want to read now.”
“It wasn’t necessary to get off the bed for that. You
could’ve asked for the book you wanted.”
“Brian dear, you’ll have to be patient with me. The
bed’s only good for sleeping anyway.”

He helped her downstairs to the small crowded lounge
where they sat down on the settee in front of the
television, where his mom and dad used to sit when he
was small. The flotsam of three lives, all the
memories and feelings, had washed up among the
furniture and photo frames. A sports car passed in the
street, moving at a leisurely pace but making a noise
like a race car. His mom gave a short laugh.

“Silly ass, it’s like seeing a chess player groan like
a weightlifter.”
“I hate them.”
“You get used to it. It’s nothing new.”
“I lived here for twenty-six years and I still hate
them.”

She took up her book. He knew her eyesight was failing
and she’d spend ages on one page. He listened to the
sounds, the traffic noise, the planes taking off from
the airport behind the tenements. A lock of white
hair swung down her forehead. Without taking her eyes
off the page, the same page, she carefully tucked it
back in.

Suddenly his vision blurred and he started sobbing. In
a flash as if to put out a fire, she dropped her book
and embraced him. She held his head against her
shoulder and rubbed the back of his head and neck.
Whenever she did that to him in the past his dad had
disapproved. And he himself hated being cuddled as
well, and for a moment he tried to pull back, but it
worked.

“Now dear, it’s all right.”
He stopped crying.

A week later Spring arrived. Leaves dusted the trees a
bright green and insects appeared. Perhaps the
butterfly survived too.

first published in The Birmingham Art's Journal, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Best Writing Prompts

I've purposely left out info about the pictures to help avoid preconceptions about time and setting (click on the pictures to view a larger version).

Describe the landscape. Describe the people in it and their actions. Now imagine you're in this picture. How did you get there? What are you going to do? How will the people in it react to your presence?

 

Describe the landscape. Imagine sensations other than visual (smells and sounds). Imagine the sensation of the wind against your skin and the touch of wood and foliage. Now start walking. If you were to cross the wire would someone stop you for trespassing? Describe the confrontation.

Down and Out Riots

By coincidence I'd just finished reading Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London when I heard part of a broadcast on Radio 4 (BBC) on the very same work. Though his novels Animal Farm and 1984 are better known nowadays, his journalism remains largely forgotten, apart from Shooting An Elephant, which is often anthologised. In the first part of Down and Out he describes his life as a plongeur, a dishwasher in a French restaurant. He describes all the fraud that goes on behind the scenes of fancy restaurants. In the second part he describes his experiences as a homeless man in London, being moved from dosshouse to dosshouse. Generally the plongeur, despite the harsh working conditions and the low pay, is better off than the tramp. Right about the time I finished it riots broke out in Tottenham.

In Down and Out Orwell contends capitalist society fears the mob so much they won't leave people idle. The tramps have to work for their stay in de dosshouse. His suggestion was to give people money and let them pass the time as they saw fit. However, later in the book he points out how resentful and humiliated people feel at being
given handouts.

From the Industrial Revolution onward, one problem with capitalist society has been that once food became more available the population would surpass the needs of industry.
Colonies providing cheap raw materials and later the welfare state tended to mitigate this problem. So the idea among (social) democracies was to provide basic services and a small income for these "superfluous" people. They ignored the resentment this caused among the recipients who felt excluded from society, and the taxpayers who felt they were being robbed. The latter won't cause that much trouble because they have more to lose. Resentment among the former, however, is free to boil over at times.

The only option would be to make young, unemployed people work for their handout, but this would have unpleasant echoes of slavery and Russian gulags.

Immortality, and onward

Self-portrait by Jacek Malczewsky

Der Mensch ist etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr getan, ihn zu überwinden?

Man is something to be conquered. What have you done to conquer it?

Der Mensch ist ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Übermensch - ein Seil über einem Abgrunde.

Man is a rope connecting animals and the superman - a rope across an abyss.

Both quoted from Also sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche (my own translations).


Nietzsche felt the body, the receiver and transmitter of the senses, was a thing to be overcome, conquered. In this he used the same duality of mind and body as many religions do. Dualities have the drawback of suggesting oppositions, where in fact there is a relationship. The image of the rope over an abyss also suggests something has to walk across it. The soul, perhaps?

Granted that we’re the vehicles of our DNA. In the process of nature this is our part in it. Yet we are, and feel ourselves, to be more than this. From reading the works of Daisetz Suzuki, and Nietzsche’s metaphors, the following thought struck me.

We are the results of countless causes, our parents meeting, for a start.
Our actions, and even our existences, have equally countless consequences, most of which we’ll never know.
Doesn’t this mean that even our organic selves are immortal?
Some food for thought, I hope.

First entry

I'll start by showing you some nice pics of Olofström, a village in Blekinge, Sweden. I spent my vacation there last month. I often spend my holidays in the Scandinavian countryside, as it contrasts so much with my own, urban, part of Europe.

What sets this area apart from other areas in Sweden is its broad-leafed forests. Not that you won't find them in other parts but here conifers aren't so dominant.

What I especially like is that you don't have to stick to marked paths. I love to just head into the woods (with map and compass).

Olofström's old power station.

The church of Jamshög, just south of Olofström.

I love all these huge boulders, left over from the Ice Ages.