"we are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side” ― kahlil gibran
(street art, covered passage off denisova, olomouc)
twists and turns
false paths and blind alleys
fate turns
so, when on the way
there really is just one
way
and it is right in front of
you
(for wordpress weekly photo challenge – on the way)
*shot with nikon d700, nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens at ISO200, 1/60s and f/2.2, edited in lightroom cc, the way is clear”
on the way on belgianstreets
on the way on belgradestreets
Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.
Do you have a dark side?
Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.
Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday
Share your dark side?
I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.
dark | side | thursday | one
It stopped. Suddenly. Under the spring sun.
Over. All done. Nothing more.
A soft wind caressed the few hairs left on his head. As he gazed, without care or regard, over the serried ranks of headstones.
All those names. Those faces pasted to the marble. Staring back at him.
The fake plastic flowers. Their fake, plastic, feelings.
Death. Decay. Despair.
He had been shocked, by the flowers. The intensity, of the flowers. Their lack of life. Lack of pollen. Lack of decay. Their, lack. Their fake colours spoke to the horror. In his heart. In his soul. If he had one.
Walking, among the dead. The cold gaze of the stone sentinels. So little to do. Just staring and waiting until the wind abraded their faces into anonymity. They left their statues, to absolve their conscience. Standing. To do the bidding of those who no longer care.
He felt it. Even before then. That moment. He felt it.
He had come to learn, to capture the essence, to absorb his new culture. Familiar, and, not.
And all those names and dates and faces and false, fanciful, fake, flowers.
He pressed the shutter release over and over. Yes, he did. That’s what he did. Over, and over. Recording, reporting, revealing. And, later, he would know. More than he wanted. He would. Know.
Pollen covered his shoes. A light dusting. Dust, that troubled him.
And, those massive, stone, slabs. Sealed. Suffocating. Echoes of Poe. That damp earth. The broken finger nails. The strangled cries, of despair. Beneath.
He continued. To walk.
Among those slabs. Those inscriptions. The man, hanging on the beams of wood, one vertical, one horizontal. A fractured world. Lost hopes. Lost dreams. Always fighting. And, then, a photo on a stone. A photo.
He was incensed by the injustice. The rows of small stones. The mausoleums of the rich, the mayors, the benefactors. Who decides. Of all those faces, gazing out from the stones. Which deserved his care? His attention? His lens?
Troubled. He pressed on.
Soon, he found it. It, found him. They, found him. And it, they, will never let go.
The space. The emptiness. Between the stones. That stopped him. Made him think. Too much, as always. He had always thought too much. Without thinking.
There was no grass. No marble. No stone. No written homage to the great and good. No stone sentinel.
What had been there, was gone. No smooth marble cladding. Only bricks, scraped, exposed, bare. Industrial. Yes, industrial. The stark futility, pierced him.
What of those who had knelt here? Those, who had been left behind. What of them?
He stared at the bare boards. Those rough hewn, wooden, boards. The concrete lintel. Surrounding that terrible open hole. The slates. Dragged across that gaping, terrible, hole.
He knelt. He looked. He, saw.
A cold pit. Filled. With water.
Cold walls. They no longer constrained their bitter cargo.
And, he looked. He heard. He saw. He felt. What had been there.
The end.
The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.
one | fiftytwo
dark
long night
night crawling dark thoughts
thoughts spawned dark endless night
night terror cracked dark gnarled fingers
fingers slithering scraping grasping fingers
fingers gnarled dark cracked terror night
night endless dark spawned thoughts
thoughts dark crawling night
night long
dark
(for mara’s poetry 101 rehab – dark)
*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens at 70mm, ISO200, 1/250s and f/8.0, edited in lightroom cc and analog efex pro 2, wet plate filter applied, fingers over eyes*
“the soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye”
― charlotte brontë, jane eyre
(eye -bar restaurant, ijpromenade 1, amsterdam)
(for wordpress weekly photo challenge – intricate)
(also for lucile’s photo101 rehab, with thanks…)
*shot with nikon d700, nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens at 1/250s and f/8, edited in lightroom cc and silver efex pro 2, eye’s left*
intricate on belgianstreets
intricate on belgianstreets
Once more, I chose to explain this post before I begin, and not add one of my cryptic, and often ambiguous, notes, after the piece. This time, it is the end of the piece that may, for some, appear ambiguous. For which, I do not apologise.
This is my response to day seventeen of the Writing 101 Blogging U. course run by WordPress. The course will end on Friday.
The brief, came in two parts.
As usual, a prompt, with a twist.
Today’s prompt
“We all have anxieties, worries, and fears. What are you scared of? Address one of your worst fears.”
And, the twist?
“Write this post in a style distinct from your own.”
The man sat at the bare wooden table. In the corner. Heavily. He was exhausted. It had been a long day. Again.
For him it was always so. Each day the same.
Alone. Contemplating his surroundings. The bar was dim, dingy after the searing sun in the street. A long mirror behind the bar, an empty hatstand.
And cold. Very cold. The floor, stone, covered in dust and the remains of well chewed cigars. And other stuff. He didn’t want to think what stuff.
Turning, signalling to the bar tender, with a single raised finger.
The bar tender looked across the room. Blankly. No response. His head seeming to sweep slowly across the bar. And its solitary occupant. His reflection, in the long mirror behind the bar, completing the circle.
“Hey, what do I have to do to get served around here?”
The bar tender appeared unmoved by the request. Not a shrug. Not a raised eyebrow. Nothing. At all.
The man pushed back his chair, legs scraping through the detritus that covered the floor.
“Hey. I really. Could. Use. A. Drink. Here. Yeah?”
Nothing. The bar tender turned away. A finger rubbing his chin absently.
The couple entered the bar. He, sombre, miserable looking, black tuxedo, open white shirt, top buttons missing, unshaven. She, tight fitting little red dress, little else. Or so it seemed to the man, his attention distracted from the unresponsive bar tender.
The tuxedo and the red dress stopped, looked. Moved past his table. Saying nothing. At all.
They sat, fell, into a plump sofa pushed against the wall. So close, he could smell their heat, their lust. It disturbed him.
He looked away as the tuxedo explored the red dress. He didn’t need to see what he guessed was inevitable. Hearing their grunts and hot heavy breathing was enough. More than enough.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the tuxedo and the bar tender exchange a glance. No words. A nod. That was all.
Their drinks appeared quickly. Left on the low wooden table. It was covered in stains. He watched the ice melt in their glasses.
The man turned away. Looked directly into the bar tender’s cold grey eyes. Sought to hold his gaze for a moment. The bar tender turned away, his eyes drifting to the battered old TV set flickering, buzzing, in a corner above the bar.
Coughing, the man stood up. Walked to the bar. Angry now. Very.
“Listen. Can. I. Have. A. F******. Drink. Mate!”
His fingers, dry and twisted, drumming on the edge of the bar.
The bar tender turned. Checked out the tuxedo and the red dress. His face twisted in a sneer, one that made it clear he had seen it before. Seen them before. Knew how it played out. He walked away from the bar, past them. Towards the door in the corner. Left the bar. The door closing behind him. Slam.
The only sounds in the room, the TV, the moans from the couple on the sofa.
“What the f*** do I have. To. Do. To get a f***** drink in this bar!!!”
In a red veiled rage, he reached across the bar, fingers grasping for the bottle of whisky that lay there.
Bottle in hand, he splashed a heavy shot from the bottle. Filled the glass.
“I’ll f****** well help myself then!”
He raised his glass, looked directly into the mirror, saw the tuxedo, the red dress.
And nothing else.
sprinkled
stirred
added
to mask
to obscure
reality harsh bitter life
a cube
a grain
a sprinkle
is that all it takes
to taste
better?
(for mara eastern’s poetry 101 rehab – sugar)
Day Fifteen of Writing 101 requires us to
“think about an event you’ve attended and loved. Your hometown’s annual fair. That life-changing music festival. A conference that shifted your worldview. Imagine you’re told it will be cancelled forever or taken over by an evil corporate force.”
Many hours were spent cogitating, contemplating, considering.
To little avail.
When pressed to name something that I particularly like, or identify a favourite, my mind freezes.
My hometown. Yes, I have a hometown, the place where I was born. But, not a place I regard as “home”. That place lies within. Not outside.
And music festivals? Yeah. Done that. Maybe even have a tee shirt. But, life changing? Nope.
Conferences that shifted my world view? Right. Been to a lot of conferences, find it hard to shift in my sleep during the sessions, but world view shifted? Nope.
Oh, and, as always, the task had a “twist”
“While writing this post, focus again on your own voice. Pay attention to your word choice, tone, and rhythm. Read each sentence aloud multiple times, making edits as you read through. Before you hit “Publish,” read your entire piece out loud to ensure it sounds like you.”
Ok. Now we’re talking. I do like the sound of my own voice. At least, that’s what they say. And that’s good, right? Right? Ah.
So.
I thought a bit more and then it came to me.
I remembered the day I realised that my life as a student was over.
And, yes I mean the studying part.
Not the other.
The mistaken assumption that on leaving University, I would leave behind forever the world of learning.
That’s what I am writing about.
Walking along a pavement in London. Thinking, no more Schrödinger’s cat, no more complex organic compounds, no more contemplating the infinite.
No more questioning the why, what, how, when, where and if.
No. I realised that I had traded that life of learning for a living.
Instead of reading to discover, I would read to earn money.
Yes, they had taken my soul.
An evil corporate force, well actually several different evil corporate forces, would now determine my direction.
No more worrying about the fifth dimension, the forces that bind the universe, the philosophical questions about who we are. And why.
No, now, balance sheets and books of account, files and fiches, debits and credits. A trial balancing account. A life where learning would end.
So. Yes, at that moment my heart and soul went cold.
So. Yes, I was wrong.
The learning and lessons had only begun, the real class about to start.
The class of life.
People, relationships, love, loss. And all the bits in between.
The event I feared. The end of learning. It never happened.
Instead, it blossomed and grew.
And, not just in me. In the faces of those who followed. Upturned eyes, hands reaching out, those searching questions again from younger minds. And the total trust that I would know the answer.
So, next time. When someone asks why.
Think hard, before replying.
As today’s Writing 101 prompt involves the use of “voice”, I decided to accompany my writing with a recording of today’s response.
(for wordpress writing 101 – day fifteen)
no
nothing
nothing is
nothing is worth
nothing is worth this pain
nothing is worth this pain this
nothing is worth this pain this time
nothing is worth this pain this
nothing is worth this pain
nothing is worth
nothing is
nothing
no
(running man, mariemontkaai, molenbeek)
(for mara eastern’s poetry 101 rehab – no)
*shot with olympus om10, zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens and ilford delta 3200 black and white film, feel his pain in the grain*
andy townend 