#55 - Mossy Pond, Water Sound

Eye Count; Flash Fiction: NSFW; Please, Sir, More Moss!

Hello, my friends,

Peaceful night-time sleep has been interrupted this week due to various factors: Too many thoughts, Michael being sick early in the week, weird weather (Egads, rain!), Sophie complaining about being cold after throwing off her blankets and requiring her servant (me) to night-walk down the hall to her room to replace them. Sometimes she’s really sleepy when I arrive and sometimes she’s wiggling her feet and and grinning. Kids these days, they can’t even put on their own blankets!

“Girl in Bed” (1952) by Lucian Freud

Eye Count

The other day I was wondering about submitting some poems to literary journals when I had the realization that if include a poem on HMF, post to Facebook, LinkedIn (because my poems are “the business”), and Instagram, more people would read them than were they published in the majority of literary journals. There are two main downsides, though. First, in a future book, I wouldn’t be able to put that sweet, sweet line “[Poem Name] was first published in [Poetry Journal Name]” over and over on its own page or two. Second, when a poem gets selected to get put into a poetry publication, there is the assumption that a poetry expert thought your poem was better than most of the other submissions.

So, it’s a choice between eyeball count and credibility. What do you think?

“Eye Colour” (1946) by M.C. Escher

Flash Fiction: NSFW

I stood outside of the door, not knowing what to expect. This is my first time doing this. Inside, I heard music.

I knocked on the door and waited. No one answered. I tried the knob. It was unlocked!

The first thing that hit me when I walked in was the smell. It was dense, I mean so disgustingly thick that I felt like I was wading through it. 

It was reasonably dark so before my eyes adjusted my ears registered slaps, rhythmic thudding, and groans slipping around the casual beat of the chill-out lounge trance music. 

Once the darkness gave way, I saw the bodies. They were everywhere and in various states of undress and hard-driving undulation -- not the visual I had when I applied for this job! The scene was definitely not 'safe for work'. 

Shifting my envelope to my other hand, I looked around for a recognizable face. It felt like being a foreign anthropologist at an ancient and highly immersive ritual; people definitely saw me, but they didn't acknowledge my presence. It was like a reverse anxiety dream -- instead of being naked in the crowd, I was the one fully dressed. And in business casual!

Slowly, I went room to room, trying to breathe (and see) as little as possible. Finally, my persistence was rewarded. There he was, the target of my search. Walking over to a man wearing, yes, just an Apple Watch, I tapped him on the shoulder. He did not stop thrusting as he looked around blankly. 

"Are you Alastair Frümm?" I said making sure to enunciate and speak loud enough to be heard over the spectacular hubbub around me. He nodded. I handed him the envelope which he took by instinct.

"You've been served!" I let out, and turned without waiting for a response making a beeline for the front door. 

Once outside, I breathed in as deeply as I could several times. Okay, I thought, okay. The sun was warm on my back. I had a job. Everything was going to be okay.

“The little green door!” (1873) by Giovanni Boldini

Please, Sir, More Moss!

Michael and I went for a walk in the park not too long ago and I took some photos of moss-covered rocks:

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote about a year ago in HMF #2:

• Flowers for the Ladies: March 8th is International Women’s Day. Here’s how it was in the Soviet Union.

• Bake It ‘Til You Make It: I had begun to bake bread for the first time (and continue baking other stuff) and experienced delight in doing it with Michael.

• Tachai!: Announcing the March sumo tournament and the amazing story of Terunofuji’s return.

“Sunny Morning” (1935) by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky