The Medusa Fora

Supermarkets...hm...last week we were in a large supermarket and I took our daughter to the toilets before shopping to wash her sticky hands and was gone for approximately 3 minutes. By the time we'd caught up with my husband and sons they were in the second last aisle! When we're shopping, he frequently loses me, and when I catch sight of him, he's looking around really crossly, and I KNOW what he is thinking - "Geeeeez...where has she gone now??” It wouldn't enter his head that HE might be the one getting lost all the time and that he's actually barged off away from wherever I am?? The old people that you see shopping happily together are a hallucination induced by women wishing that their men could relax while shopping. Oh, and this Shopping Avoidance does NOT include shopping in B & Qs, Motor Worlds, Halfords, Wickes, any Newsagents or Ikeas. The men like those shops. Moral to the story: Leave the men at home whilst shopping, or send them off with a list. Secretly I loathe shopping almost as much as housework...and am probably a big disgrace to Women of the Shopping World, to my sisters - all of whom adore shopping. I would much rather be a shepherd...(with my laptop, notebook, pen, sketch pad and sharp pencil of course).

Irishbookish wrote:Supermarkets...hm...last week we were in a large supermarket and I took our daughter to the toilets before shopping to wash her sticky hands and was gone for approximately 3 minutes. By the time we'd caught up with my husband and sons they were in the second last aisle! When we're shopping, he frequently loses me, and when I catch sight of him, he's looking around really crossly, and I KNOW what he is thinking - "Geeeeez...where has she gone now??” It wouldn't enter his head that HE might be the one getting lost all the time and that he's actually barged off away from wherever I am?? The old people that you see shopping happily together are a hallucination induced by women wishing that their men could relax while shopping. Oh, and this Shopping Avoidance does NOT include shopping in B & Qs, Motor Worlds, Halfords, Wickes, any Newsagents or Ikeas. The men like those shops. Moral to the story: Leave the men at home whilst shopping, or send them off with a list. Secretly I loathe shopping almost as much as housework...and am probably a big disgrace to Women of the Shopping World, to my sisters - all of whom adore shopping. I would much rather be a shepherd...(with my laptop, notebook, pen, sketch pad and sharp pencil of course).

I think it's one of those left brain/right brain or Venus/Mars things. In my experience, and of course I am generalizing, always a dangerous thing to do, men go to shops to buy things they already know they want/desire/need. Women have more circuitous routes to the end result and tend to factor in more things - will the children starve if I buy this for myself, that kinda thing.

Irishbookish wrote:...B & Qs, Motor Worlds, Halfords, Wickes, any Newsagents or Ikeas. The men like those shops.

I hate Ikea.
Spend many hours in Topshop
despite being male.


(This may be something to do with living in the house of girls. I got offered a cup of tea by the manager in H&M once, because I'd been abandoned there so long. )

Gee how strange...I posted some writing I was working on last night...then checked it and all was fine, but it has since disappeared. Hmm. Somebody doesn't like my writing obviously...

Irishbookish wrote:Gee how strange...I posted some writing I was working on last night...then checked it and all was fine, but it has since disappeared. Hmm. Somebody doesn't like my writing obviously...

That IS odd. I saw that post and had made a note to come back and read it later.

The logs indicate that no janitors touched it, but that the author in fact removed it. Perhaps you forgot doing so?

So Barney, where are more of your poems? I've found them entertaining and am missing seeing new ones.

Fionn

There were times I didn’t know just where to put my face, or my hands for that matter, when they weren’t typing out a manuscript or writing something to keep the internet readers happy and interested so that they will want to keep buying my books. My agent assures me I am making sufficient money, but it seems sensible and polite to keep the readers happy in between books. I have been an author for all of my life or it surely seems that way and at thirty something I guess that isn’t a long time for some men who can say they have been in some career for forty plus years. I am so trapped in my work and my life as an author that I find it difficult to remember what day, month and even year it is let alone exactly how old I am. I can remember these things but it involves touching reality and grounding myself for more seconds than I’m often willing to sacrifice and to what matter is age anyway? I feel a thousand years old some days and then another moment like a small, innocent child in a universe of stars with God as the puppeteer – dangling the planets around our small earth like an almighty magician and the power of life and death the sum of our existence.
Up until January fifteenth last year I believed in magic and everything seemed good in my life – even my social awkwardness because I had parents to love me for whom I was, not whom the world expected me to be. I could be a square peg and be happy enough. On that inauspicious day, my mother and father had a short holiday planned to Scotland to visit my mother’s sister, Elena. Naturally, they wanted me to go with them, and I was also to share the driving as my mother had never learned how to drive. However I had a deadline to meet and my editor was literally breathing down my neck so much that I became ill with a nasty cold she passed on to me and I told my parents I would housesit and keep the dogs company instead.
No-one could say how my parents didn’t hear the signal, why the boom-gates failed to lower, nor why they did not hear the approaching train. After the funeral I drove to the crossing and sat in my car staring at the exact place where they left the earth. I noticed that the breadth of trees cover the oncoming trains until only moments before, however the sound and feel of the rumbling of the train was hard to miss. I morbidly imagined myself slowly edging forward and looking up to see the Great Western Freight Train hurtling down upon me with such velocity that I would be able to think no further than what I was actually seeing before the thing smashed me to oblivion and I became a star hurtling through the universe in a strange world of some everlasting dream. I became slowly, quite appallingly aware that my car was actually moving forward onto the crossing and had almost reached the track when the boom-gates sounded. I snapped myself out of the melancholy and decided to restrict my visits to the safety of the local cemetery where my beloved parents were interred instead.
My life has never been the same since they’ve left me. They were my life. My way to stay focussed and in touch with the real world. I have floated about the world in some vague and obscure fashion since they left this earth and reality is a thing which seems to come and go like the fleeting lifespan of a vagrant dragonfly in a sweetened spring.
Presently, I juggled my popcorn – the popcorn I’d bought out of duty – for I had no real appetite for such things yet my yearning was as much for those ordinary normal things as though the mere acting of buying and eating something so common as popcorn would make me normal. As I waited for the time for my movie to draw near enough to risk going in, I sat back into a soft chair by the wall directly in front of a Harry Potter poster and watched normal people for a while. It was a strange game which I often played when necessity drove me out of the shell I had built for myself and into the real world. I occasionally picked at the popcorn though couldn’t for the life of me understand the attraction. It smelled like one would expect burned fingernails to smell like. So there I sat. Waiting for time to swipe its terrifying fingers across the face of the clock. Waiting for my movie. Sometimes I pretended I was actually waiting for someone; that I was not alone in the world. On those occasions I made frequent (important) checks of my father’s watch, nodding at people who looked my way, hoping they thought I was normal enough for having someone to wait for. Other times being normal was just too much and I became a human chameleon fusing into Harry Potter’s world as people passed by without seeing me. A couple of people even stopped by to gaze through me into Harry’s frightening world. I wished I could fall into that place for real. I wondered if I made a face or some peculiar noise would they suddenly see me or was I doomed to be a part of the furniture and remain unknown and unremarkable as anyone could ever be? I twisted uncomfortably around and uncrossed my legs as I watched the young man serving the food at the refreshment counter, twisting my father’s watch painfully around my wrist and deciding what I would next do with my idle hands. The boy was obviously a new employee as he’d painfully served me the popcorn some minutes before. He’d had that haunted look – appealing to someone, anyone to tell him that soon he would be as proficient as the next kid while making clumsy, unpractised movements. His questions and answers to the customers were stilted and parroted and the people he served shifted from foot to foot impatiently, rolling their eyes heavenward in exasperation; adding to his agony. He was, I noticed, like me for a short while, though fortunately for him his agony would last only for maybe a week or so, yet mine was a lifetime sentence mapped out before me as slowly as the second hand ticked its way agonisingly past each stroke.
Finally I decided I would be able to go in for my movie before I was swallowed into some darkened abyss or I became trapped in Harry Potter’s poster until they removed it from the wall or drove my own self mad with my imaginings. As I settled myself in the almost empty cinema juggling my book under my arm, popcorn and water bottle, I twisted uncomfortably into the chair, noticing the two old women behind me – staring crossly at me for some unknown reason with mouths opening and closing like guppies. I scrabbled with my pockets – looking for something elusive; the meaning of life? A book on the Rules of Social Etiquette for those who weren’t born with it tucked neatly under their arm? No, those things elude me and even though there are times when it seems I may suddenly have done something the right way, I have only to turn and look at the path behind me to know the real truth of the matter that I was as inept as I felt.
Speaking of books I had forgotten mine as it lay carelessly on my lap in the half-light. Was I the only soul who ever brought a book into a cinema? There on my lap surrounded by popcorn and carnival-like advertisements booming in the background and flashing on the big screen my book seemed out of place. The book was hot on my legs and seemed to beg me to take it away or at least hide it from this strangeness. I picked up my book for want of anything better to do with my hands and sunk deeply into that world. I felt the wind tearing at my clothes as John Tucker stood by the cliff and watched the boats fill the horizon. I felt his sword begin to sing a strange and sad song which caught the wind by the tails and refuse to allow him a thought for anything else save the damning truth that he was alone. I felt his heartbeat and became one with him until the thrumming of it became louder and filled my ears so much so that I awakened into the cinema and realised that my book had somehow tumbled to the floor.

Naked (note: edited title)

Exposed,

within.

like the last tree

standing...

in a clear cut.

~chinaski

DzM wrote:So Barney, where are more of your poems? I've found them entertaining and am missing seeing new ones.

indeed.

Irishbookish wrote:Fionn

There were times I didn’t know just where to put my face, or my hands for that matter, when they weren’t typing out a manuscript or writing something to keep the internet readers happy and interested so that they will want to keep buying my books. My agent assures me I am making sufficient money, but it seems sensible and polite to keep the readers happy in between books. I have been an author for all of my life or it surely seems that way and at thirty something I guess that isn’t a long time for some men who can say they have been in some career for forty plus years. I am so trapped in my work and my life as an author that I find it difficult to remember what day, month and even year it is let alone exactly how old I am. I can remember these things but it involves touching reality and grounding myself for more seconds than I’m often willing to sacrifice and to what matter is age anyway? I feel a thousand years old some days and then another moment like a small, innocent child in a universe of stars with God as the puppeteer – dangling the planets around our small earth like an almighty magician and the power of life and death the sum of our existence.
Up until January fifteenth last year I believed in magic and everything seemed good in my life – even my social awkwardness because I had parents to love me for whom I was, not whom the world expected me to be. I could be a square peg and be happy enough. On that inauspicious day, my mother and father had a short holiday planned to Scotland to visit my mother’s sister, Elena. Naturally, they wanted me to go with them, and I was also to share the driving as my mother had never learned how to drive. However I had a deadline to meet and my editor was literally breathing down my neck so much that I became ill with a nasty cold she passed on to me and I told my parents I would housesit and keep the dogs company instead.
No-one could say how my parents didn’t hear the signal, why the boom-gates failed to lower, nor why they did not hear the approaching train. After the funeral I drove to the crossing and sat in my car staring at the exact place where they left the earth. I noticed that the breadth of trees cover the oncoming trains until only moments before, however the sound and feel of the rumbling of the train was hard to miss. I morbidly imagined myself slowly edging forward and looking up to see the Great Western Freight Train hurtling down upon me with such velocity that I would be able to think no further than what I was actually seeing before the thing smashed me to oblivion and I became a star hurtling through the universe in a strange world of some everlasting dream. I became slowly, quite appallingly aware that my car was actually moving forward onto the crossing and had almost reached the track when the boom-gates sounded. I snapped myself out of the melancholy and decided to restrict my visits to the safety of the local cemetery where my beloved parents were interred instead.
My life has never been the same since they’ve left me. They were my life. My way to stay focussed and in touch with the real world. I have floated about the world in some vague and obscure fashion since they left this earth and reality is a thing which seems to come and go like the fleeting lifespan of a vagrant dragonfly in a sweetened spring.
Presently, I juggled my popcorn – the popcorn I’d bought out of duty – for I had no real appetite for such things yet my yearning was as much for those ordinary normal things as though the mere acting of buying and eating something so common as popcorn would make me normal. As I waited for the time for my movie to draw near enough to risk going in, I sat back into a soft chair by the wall directly in front of a Harry Potter poster and watched normal people for a while. It was a strange game which I often played when necessity drove me out of the shell I had built for myself and into the real world. I occasionally picked at the popcorn though couldn’t for the life of me understand the attraction. It smelled like one would expect burned fingernails to smell like. So there I sat. Waiting for time to swipe its terrifying fingers across the face of the clock. Waiting for my movie. Sometimes I pretended I was actually waiting for someone; that I was not alone in the world. On those occasions I made frequent (important) checks of my father’s watch, nodding at people who looked my way, hoping they thought I was normal enough for having someone to wait for. Other times being normal was just too much and I became a human chameleon fusing into Harry Potter’s world as people passed by without seeing me. A couple of people even stopped by to gaze through me into Harry’s frightening world. I wished I could fall into that place for real. I wondered if I made a face or some peculiar noise would they suddenly see me or was I doomed to be a part of the furniture and remain unknown and unremarkable as anyone could ever be? I twisted uncomfortably around and uncrossed my legs as I watched the young man serving the food at the refreshment counter, twisting my father’s watch painfully around my wrist and deciding what I would next do with my idle hands. The boy was obviously a new employee as he’d painfully served me the popcorn some minutes before. He’d had that haunted look – appealing to someone, anyone to tell him that soon he would be as proficient as the next kid while making clumsy, unpractised movements. His questions and answers to the customers were stilted and parroted and the people he served shifted from foot to foot impatiently, rolling their eyes heavenward in exasperation; adding to his agony. He was, I noticed, like me for a short while, though fortunately for him his agony would last only for maybe a week or so, yet mine was a lifetime sentence mapped out before me as slowly as the second hand ticked its way agonisingly past each stroke.
Finally I decided I would be able to go in for my movie before I was swallowed into some darkened abyss or I became trapped in Harry Potter’s poster until they removed it from the wall or drove my own self mad with my imaginings. As I settled myself in the almost empty cinema juggling my book under my arm, popcorn and water bottle, I twisted uncomfortably into the chair, noticing the two old women behind me – staring crossly at me for some unknown reason with mouths opening and closing like guppies. I scrabbled with my pockets – looking for something elusive; the meaning of life? A book on the Rules of Social Etiquette for those who weren’t born with it tucked neatly under their arm? No, those things elude me and even though there are times when it seems I may suddenly have done something the right way, I have only to turn and look at the path behind me to know the real truth of the matter that I was as inept as I felt.
Speaking of books I had forgotten mine as it lay carelessly on my lap in the half-light. Was I the only soul who ever brought a book into a cinema? There on my lap surrounded by popcorn and carnival-like advertisements booming in the background and flashing on the big screen my book seemed out of place. The book was hot on my legs and seemed to beg me to take it away or at least hide it from this strangeness. I picked up my book for want of anything better to do with my hands and sunk deeply into that world. I felt the wind tearing at my clothes as John Tucker stood by the cliff and watched the boats fill the horizon. I felt his sword begin to sing a strange and sad song which caught the wind by the tails and refuse to allow him a thought for anything else save the damning truth that he was alone. I felt his heartbeat and became one with him until the thrumming of it became louder and filled my ears so much so that I awakened into the cinema and realised that my book had somehow tumbled to the floor.

Was this dedicated to me?

You mean you're a social recluse like my Fionn? Nah...sorry to disappoint you young man. I have Fionn in two of my stories - I just really like the name. I thought for a random moment you may have read the story and were going to give some feedback.

No sorry, I'm far too lethargic to wade through that. But seriously, paragraph the shit out of that!

Hmm...one has to wonder why you called in then if not to read or contribute???

chinaski wrote:untitled

Exposed,

within.

like the last tree

standing...

in a clear cut.

~chinaski

beautifully bleak...nice one chinaski...good on yer...

old barney greyheron wrote:

chinaski wrote:untitled

Exposed,

within.

like the last tree

standing...

in a clear cut.

~chinaski

beautifully bleak...nice one chinaski...good on yer...

ahh.well. I guess you could call it bleak. but that really depends on how you look at it. my intent was not to the negative at all.
the basic theme is: Vulnerability.
not only that....but the fact that what was hidden and protected...is now revealed...and very much conspicuous.

Although there is no real 'word(s)' saying so... i'd hope to have implied at least,,,
that this was a matter of the heart. sorry if i have missed the mark.

ah..well....i tried anyway. posting this kind of thing is very hard for me to do. It was only because of an abnormal situation that i even posted this at all. of course...now i am feeling all kinds of shame.....