[µstory] The ants, I admire from afar

"....I get a rash on my hand that feels like fire. I blame the henna and am angry, but then get rashes all over my body and am in too much pain and burning itchy discomfort to be properly angry. I tell my then-med-student (now doctor) sister, who says, "Hives." What are those? I become acquainted with them well. I then remember being bitten by Something on that very same hand recently when picking up a cousin from a tropical farm house. I file this away mentally, sleuthing through the facts to pinpoint what on earth could have made me so miserable."

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[µstory] Partridge

He would a’ bought me a partridge. I can see him now, runnin ’round town, visiting every farm and pet store and ’splaining his ridiculous scheme, and the owners grinning from ear to ear, some laughing, You’re mad! they’d say. Course if it din’ work out he’d get the bright idea of catching one out’o the wild, and lo he’d ’a done it too, near fright’nin the poor bird half t’death I would guess, his head all a-feathered, ha ha! And at night, when we’d all be right fast asleep, he’d a’ got out with the poor thing, climbed up the pear tree in the garden with it in a litt’a cage in the crook o’is arm, and got his head pecked a dozen times, and muttered and sworn and oh my nearly fallen off, but he’d do it. Break o’dawn he’d ’a called us I’m sure. Come out to the garden! he’d be grinning and Look out the window why don’t you, saying we’d be fair surprised. And we would be.

[µstory] Sand in the throat

He still felt some uneasiness in his throat as he continued to stare out the window. He saw the wind whip up the sand into angry, rising circles. He watched sand raised over the lip of sand, watched air become haze and haze dissolve into dust. Then words came clearly from the back of the jeep, arriving in fragments, as though they first had to be retrieved from deep archives and, once recalled, moved rustily through the throat before being deposited by the tongue.

***

Excerpt from "Sandstorm," a short story

[µstory] - How cahn you seeh?

This is quite remarkable. I was thinking of posting to my blog today, but didn't really have any idea what to say. But, fortunately, I have been blessed with an amusing, albeit off-putting, incident! How things turn out : )

I just came back from buying groceries with my sister on this very blustery (though pleasant) day, and we were trying to negotiate a heavy-laden trolley down a flight of stairs. I catch sight of this old lady at the bottom of the steps, and so now my task has been rendered triply difficult as I try to
a) keep my headscarf from blowing off my head
b) keep the trolley from careening down and crashing with miscellaneous fruit flying from all corners and
c) attempt to restrict myself to one side of the stairs so that the old lady can pass without incident

Ah, but successful as I was in manoeuvring the trolley to one side (my sister grasping the handle at the top and me lifting it at the bottom and trying hard not to trip on my own feet as we make our way gingerly down), the aforementioned lady climbed the steps, alas, with a wee incident. First chance I get to look up from my fluttering laces, I see this mouth-agape look of disgust. Here is the quaint exchange between us:

Her: HOW CAHN YOU SEEH?
Me: (taken aback – my sister more so)
Her: I hope you drop dead.
Me: May God guide you.*
(*I also said “Bless you” before that when I was a little dazed, but I like this response better :))

The funny thing was that, my sister was much more appalled (meanwhile I giggled at the amusing statement of “how can you see” – uhm, perhaps with these inset orbs above my nose – what’re they called again – oh, eyes). Okay, so it’s not so funny when some random person curses you with death, but hey, at least she didn’t shove the trolley down the stairs. Besides, she was old and thus can be excused from her ignorance.

Interestingly, I’ve met this lady before. I was startled once when she, in her thick European accent proclaimed loudly when our paths met, "How cahn yous see?!"
I smiled and thought, "How can you not?"

:)

[µstory] - What to be (excerpt)

“µstory” (“mu-story” or “micro-story”) is a categorization I use to designate a very short story, a prose-poem, or an excerpt from one of my stories/works-in-progress.
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He had his palm on his forehead, leaning his head heavily on it, wisps of hair jutting out miserably from the crevices of his fingers. "I want to do something...spectacular," he breathed, gazing at the table as though the furrows in the grain shared with him some muted understanding. "But am I someone that can do something real? Something good? A person can do a collection of nothings and be elevated into the recognition of the world. Even be infamous if you can't be famous, notorious if you can't be notable. But I - I don't want to be anything to the world. Just to be nothing, but do so much that it's worth something. So later, you'd look around and say, ‘See, something good has happened, we don't know why or how, but it’s wonderful, it's changed.’ Yes, that’s…”
- He buried his hand deeper into his hair, furrowing his brows, closing his eyes as though the table had blinded him. "Nothing seems to be enough for people to notice the world now. It's no longer important enough, no longer severe enough, compelling enough to hold our attention. No, for that we have fiction. Blink at it, oh yes it’s happened, let’s turn to a far richer experience. A whole, real life isn’t enough, isn’t even worth a sentence; awful, wretched it is! So I can’t… I can’t just put forward some simple amount of good as all the rest like me, some small offering that will sink away… insignificant. To really do something, to shake the world and say, “Look!”, to – to help, it must be more than surreal, it must be greater than turning away, so strong it’s worth being a part of, so unimaginable it fills volumes. I don't want my deeds relegated to the prelude of a novel.”

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- Excerpt from a 'novella-in-progress' (for the pathopoet, everything is in progress!), "London Avery"