Month: December 2022

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Response – JSW Prompt 12-26-2022

The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.

They stood behind the closed door, staring out into the backyard, at the snow-covered hammock.

“It looks cold.”

“Brush off the snow, get a couple blankets, it’ll be fine.”

“Still looks too cold.”

“Ah, I’d keep you warm.”

“I know, hon, but the hammock will be wet.”

“That’s what one of the blankets are for,” he replied, wrapping his arms around her body. “Keeping your dry.”

“Oh, I think I’ll stay nice and dry inside, thank you.”

“Where is the fun in that?”

“The fun in staying dry?”

He let her go, picking up several blankets. “Come on, live a little.”

“Freeze a little is more like it.”

He opened the door and stepped outside, sneakers crunching in snow. “Come on.” Moving to the hammock, he shook off the snow and spread the blankets out over the damp material, motioning for her to come out.

She had to admit he looked cute with snow in his hair.

He lay down in the hammock, between the blankets, holding them open in invitation.

With a laugh, she stepped out and lay down beside him, snuggling into the warmth of his body, cold teasing at her nose and cheeks. She buried her face in his chest as he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. Moments later, she peeked back out, blanket drawn up to her chin.

“Comfortable?”

She had to admit that she was.

“This is nice,” she said softly.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Everything is nice with you.”

“Why thank you. Everything is nice with you.”

They lay in the settling dusk, watching the snow spiraling lazily down, piling up on the blanket.

“You want to go back in?”

“No, I want to lie here a little longer.”

“Okay.” He settled the blanket around her chin. “We can stay as long as you like.”

“As long as I like?”

“As long as you like, baby.”

“Just a little while longer then,” she said, watching the snow swirling down. “Just a little while.”

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Retro Thursday 12-29-2022

“MEN HAVE NO MO…

“Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

So said the fox.  The Little Prince did tame the fox and thus they were connected.  “…If you tame me, we shall need one another. To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you…. My life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Others send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music,” said the fox. 
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince  

We have accomplished so much in this world – cars and planes and computers.  Skype.  Cell Phones.  Instant Messaging.  Each of these inventions have succeeded in shrinking our world into smaller and smaller and smaller bits – including the ‘spaces’ between us, our houses, our lives, our countries.  Yet the chasms that exist in this world yarn wider than ever before.  We’re too busy playing computer games, surfing Facebook,  Ebay or any other site that has drawn us in, ensnared us, that many of us have lost the sense of the world beyond it’s lit screen.  Is being ‘tamed’ by the internet really a connection?  How does this life make us unique to one another? 

Instead of sitting on a hill with family or friends to watch a sunset, we look at a picture somebody posted on Facebook.  By ourselves.  Want new shoes?  Buy them online and avoid the crowds and hassle and the personal interaction with the sales people. Order groceries online?  You don’t have to even speak to anybody.  Want to see a movie?  No need to go to the theater.  Just order it online and watch it in the privacy of your own home.  Want a vacation?  Forget the rush of the sea or the cool of the mountains.  Plan a staycation instead and spend your time surfing, each member of the family cut off in their own space.

At what cost have we grown into this new world?  What small pleasures are hidden in the darkest shadows which we never now see and what is lost when our interactions scroll endless through pixels and numbers and cables across thousands of miles that make us feel so close when we’re really not.  No one, especially me, is insisting that the days before these inventions were the absolute ‘good old days,’ but perhaps we have lost something that shouldn’t have been allowed to vanish.

Said the Little Prince to the snake:

“No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

My wish is that someday we can all be ‘unique in all the world’ to each other.