Velvet Verbosity

Internet, I can’t believe you put up with my crazy schedule sometimes. Maybe it’s because you know I’m well-intentioned.

I’ve been biking to work more lately, and after a week of rain, today was the first day that I felt I could safely take the bike to work and back. It struck me, as I was whipping along the bike path, that the invention of the wheel, such a simple thing, has been turned into so many modes of transport and recreation. Roller-blades, bicycles, strollers, contraptions whose name I don’t know but whose foundation is wheels, and on and on. I love riding my bike. Always have. Moving myself through space and interacting with others with smiles, nods, and “good mornings”. If I could give up my car altogether, I would.

So…yeah. That had nothing to do with the 100 Word Challenge but I’ve been glowing all day from the weird sense of freedom I get when riding. Last week’s challenge was to write 100 words on “Hour”. For some reason, I was excited by this prompt more than any other so far. The word hour has always held a whisper of something thrilling to me. It brushes up against infinite worlds for me. A word used to define one segment of the construct of time that we do not fully understand, yet make work for us. So let’s see what the word brought to mind for others.
I think Ash and I have some similar relationship with the word hour. This piece resonated powerfully with me.

The silken hour slips away with a whisper,
at once soft and cutting,
like a ghost of treasure;
a homeless man’s memory of wealth.

Already the fabric of time slides
again through fingers numb with
the caducity of life, unable to
grasp its only true riches.

Time cannot be trapped,
cannot be stoppered in a bottle
like an epochal elixir
to fix all the world’s ills.

Indeed, it is only those who
have discovered the ancient rhythm
of joy and surrender
who are the masters of time.

For them its silken fabric is a sail filled with wind.

Lceel had some fun with this one!

“Want to go upstairs?”, he asked.
“Nah, I don’t think I’m in the mood.”
“Oh, come on. It could be fun.”
“Yeah, I know your idea of fun”, she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t want to get into that, right now.”
“No. What did you mean?”, he asked again.
“Okay .. It’s always you, you, you and it takes five minutes and boom, it’s all over. I’m left hanging and you go to sleep. Okay?”
He opened the bag and showed her the ‘toys’.
“These could take an hour, or so”, he said.
“Oh … at least”, she said.

The Night Blogger evokes the dreamy quality of a fulsome hour passing lushly and lazily. These are those hours we remember.

Smoke drifts lazily upward. I dream.

There is a meadow. With every breath of wind, innumerable fronds of yellow grass wave to the sky. Scattered cottony puffs coalesce above to form an umbrella against the searing sunlight.

The ground is cool here, beneath a wondrous giant redwood. Far above, so far I believe my neck will preak from straining to see such a distance, branches sway. There is such harmony here.

He’s there. He sits beside me and puts an arm across my shoulders. I’m happy then.

The smoke dissipates and I wake to find an hour has gone by.

Penelope over at Mama Bear Writes brings us to another time, another hour.

The night grew darker as the horseman rode,
The moon casting barely a dusting of light upon the ragged path he rode.
They said the answers he sought waited for him,
Hidden away in the castle keep for many a long year.
He had no memories of this place they claimed was his,
A home they said his mother and father and loved him in.
His father, a man he would not recognize if he passed him,
His mother long since buried in body, but never his heart.
He rounded the bend, there sat the keep,
Now was the hour.
~ Penelope Anne
July 3, 2008

Secret Agent Mama, aka Mishi, brought tears to more than one pair of eyes with this one.

Just one hour, that’s all I want. One hour to smile at you. One hour to laugh with you. One hour to listen to your voice. One hour, to crave more.

Just one hour, that’s all I want. One hour to cry with you. One hour to burden you with my problems. One hour to help you with yours. One hour, to drag on to two and three.

Just one hour, that’s all I want. One hour to share my hopes with you. One hour to dream together. One hour to hold hands and sit. One hour, to wish forever.

Susan introduced us to her character Chelle. I think I know her…

Lots of you come up to me and try to keep me from leavin’ shows when I got to. I try to be nice and all, but boys and girls, Chelle’s got a deadline here. If she don’t hit that deadline over at The Trumpet, her review don’t make the paper. Capiche? And since the whole reason Chelle’s got a job is to review bands for The Trumpet, if she don’t make her deadlines, she don’t get a paycheck.

You heard it first and you heard it here: Let Chelle make like Cinderella and get to the paper on time.

Renee Daniels is back this week speaking da truth! Right on sister.

Sixty minutes

Three thousand six hundred seconds

Each on a chance

Every moment an opportunity

Every tick gives us an option

To live consciously or move carelessly through life

To smile at that stranger, to hold a door, to pause long enough to say good day

Or to rush through the crowd, wrapped is self, selfishly trying to hoard time

To what end, for what purpose

These moments will pass regardless of our intentions or lack thereof

Each minute, each second can be used in a positive manner

Sixty minutes. Three thousand six hundred seconds. On hour. A lifetime.

The Wandering Author decided to try a short story for this challenge. The hours that we let slip past unnoticed, are the same last and precious hours for someone else. A lesson we all know, but forget to apply in our lives every day.

 

Final Hour

A short, sharp knock, the sound I’ve been expecting - and dreading - for months now.

A guard thrusts open the door, not waiting for my reply. “You have an hour to prepare.”

My goodbyes have already been said. If God has rejected my earlier pleas, all I can do now is accept His decision. I pick up my pen. So many ideas, so many observations jostling to escape before darkness erases them. Their loss seems sadder even than my own. Which shall I save? My pen wavers in midair.

Another knock, and the guards come in. How brief an hour is!

JM at Fiction Scribe had some technical complications but is back with this piece, another short story.

An hour. One whole hour.

What possessed me? How could I have so, so easily signed over my mind – my soul! – to another being. I was and am naïve to think that such a thing could possibly be good. Could possibly give me some sort of shred of decency or goodness to make this torture worthwhile.

“Mr. Talbert.”

Have I gone mad?

“Mr. Talbert?”

I look up. Could it be? Has an hour passed so soon?

The receptionist smiles. “The doctor is ready.”

Mr. Alberts walks out right on time. “Welcome, Mr. Talbert. I see you got here early today.”

Allison, who prefers to participate by email, turned her observations from the lakeshore into 100 delicious words.

Waves crash at my feet, the wind tussles my hair and the sun heats up my skin.
Around me, my little ones run on the beach, filling pail after pail with water and sand.
The seagulls fly overhead, wishing for crumbs from the strange large creatures beneath them.
I watch the peaceful rhythm of the natural state of the world.
Time passes but stands still while the sun slips down the sky.
Questions about the beginning and the end enter my mind.
Who and how did they decide to mark an hour?
When? Why? What did people do before that?

I haven’t been doing much reading lately, of anything. Work, the outdoors, and the social call of summer have been keeping me busy until exhaustion. However, I just pulled off my bookshelf Smilla’s Sense of Snow, which happens to be one of my favorite movies . Except the end. Why do they always ruin brilliant movies with lame or nonsensical endings? Anyway, the word is

City

Entries are technically due by midnight Thursday, but late comers will get posted too as long as I see them before I put up the post.