Month: March 2023

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Friday Fictioneers 3-30-2023

PHOTO PROMPT Amanda Forestwood

 

Chris picked up the violin and held it to his chin. If there was one instrument, he didn’t like it was the violin. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t play it, but he didn’t like to. Then again, it fit his image to dislike the violin; everybody should have one thing they didn’t like.

“Going to play us a tune?” Jay asked, knowing full well the answer.

“Not on your life.”

“Ah, come on.”

“Screw you.”

Jay just laughed and they walked on to the dressing room to get ready for the concert.

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Retro Tuesday 3-28-2023

 BY ATHLING2001

Struggling With Reality –

“So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.

-Brian Greene

I blogged the above as my “Quote For The Day” yesterday after reading it several times over, attempting to wrap my brain around the *reality* of Mr. Greene’s statement.  Something in my head keeps bulking at acceptance.  I know reality is not what we believe it to be, but is it “all events is spacetime?” Can one person’s reality be the same reality as a star so far away we don’t yet know of it’s existence?  Accepting that means accepting our reality is not really our own, but instead is the reality of the Universe.

Would that distance star’s reality be the same as my reality?  Does it accept the cars and 9 to 5s and the joy of the family?  I’ve always believed that everyone’s reality is different.  I don’t go so far as to insist that whatever I can see and feel and taste and know is the only reality available. I’m more of the mind that all people live in the same general reality, just as all stones live in the same reality, animals in their own, rivers and seas in yet another reality.  Parallel universes, maybe, overlapping and connecting at all points yet still separate.

Do I know the reality of a stone?  I can imagine, but I can never know.

Somewhere in all these separate realities, there has to be something, a spark of some unknown magic or science, that binds all realities together, bonding everything into one.  Where?  Is it invisible? Is it even really there?

I know I am made of star-stuff, so does that means the star is made of my-stuff?  What if we are all one? I am the star and the star is me. I am the river and the river is me.  Is this, then, all a dream? Is the star inside me dreaming or am I dreaming inside the star?

Or, maybe, the reality is both are true?

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Response – JSW Prompt 3-26-2023

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.

But I was wrong. As I often always am. Her eyes passed over me without a blink, staring off into the distance and then focusing on something beyond me. Something not me.

I stepped in front of her but her eyes never changed, never focused on me.

“You see,” said Michael, wings fluttering in the breeze.

I snapped my fingers. Nothing.

“Are you ready?”

Was I ready? Hell, no, I wasn’t ready. At this point I would never be ready.

“Sabrina.”

She moved on with her day

Michael wisely said nothing. Had he, I might have taken his head. If one could take the head of an angel.

Six hours, I followed her around, acting the fool, but she never noticed.

“Now are you ready?”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “Do I have a choice?”

“Of course you do,” Michael said. “No one is ever forced to go to the light.”

“What’s in the light?”

“You’ll see.”

I gave him that look. He shrugged. Smiled.

“Shall we?” He motioned to the right where a shimmering light bobbed.

“How… do we do this?”

“Just walk into the light.”

I glanced back at Sabrina then at the light. “What happens to her?”

“She goes on with her life. Minus you.”

“Poor bedside manner that.”

“I”m not here to be your friend,” Michael told me. “I’m here to help you into the light.”

“What is so great about the light?”

“You’ll see.”

“What if I don’t want to see?”

“That’s your choice.”

“You’d just leave me here?”

‘If here is where you choose to be, yes.”

I looked at the light. At Sabrina. At the fact I didn’t exist in her world anymore.

“All right. What do I do?”

“Walk into the light.”

With one last look behind, I turned and walked towards the light.