Vignette Sharethread: It's All About The Little Things

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Good evening Agora Road,
This thread is our creative repository for vignette-style writing.

What is a vignette?
A vignette is a short passage of descriptive/poetic writing that captures a moment, place, person, feeling, or any manner of stimuli at a point in time. A vignette's success is to bring the reader to a particular moment and the feelings it evoked.

I encourage our users to share their own vignettes, or try it out for the first time; or you can share works from outside the forum should they capture your imagination.

Optional, but bonus street cred if you can provide an accompanying photograph with your story.

Pinging @Punp for his series about Japan he has been writing, and @Captain for the wonderful vignette he wrote about the old internet, stars, and power lines.

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Here's one I wrote about the top of a mountain (real photo)

---

The wind howls and greets my paled hands with daggers. Stomach dropping, I fasten my footing into the snow, as if the gusts threaten to kite me up and over the surrounding precipices.

Behind me shouts metal abrasing metal, as dangling and swinging cabins are corralled into formation around the bullwheel, the gear churning clockwise, releasing them back into the sky on the opposing diameter, but not before their bellies open, allowing their inhabitants to gingerly step back into the Earth's domain.

The valley sprawls beneath me, and I wonder if it is as big as the hearts of men who constructed such an insult to the mountain's sovereignty.

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Affable Slavic elder brews me a cappuccino while his tradwife makes me a delicious breakfast sandwich. I would welcome them to my country but they have lived here a decade longer than I've been alive. The wall wears continental license plates as a general wears bars and medals upon his breast. Surrounded by a cauldron of mountaintops and receding blankets of snow, we agree that the desert is beautiful.

 

[Punp]

Tree held in scaffold
Core thinned and weakened by rot
Flowers jewelled with bees

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Weaving through the coast mountain range in the spring is about as predictable as bull-riding. Sheer faces of jagged rock glisten in the damp and conifers ejecting towers of mist that rise and settle in suspension over the valley and the little metal boxes who haste through it. The sky releases dense rain and windshield wipers at their fastest clamber to keep up with the rate the windscreen is obscured. Just through the thick of it the clouds break and allow the sun to reach back through to bless its children, but this is a mirage. Before long the overcast closes back in and with it the oppressive rainfall, the hazard of the road climbs tenfold again. At times the side windows streak and speckle with water, making blind spots truly blind. In this weather mountaintops have a habit of peering out from under the plume, greeting hello and goodbye as you continue.

Alongside on the highway a lifted black F350 Super Duty defines excess in the fast lane. You can taste the arrogance in the exhaust fumes and when the tires cut through puddles the collateral splashes straight into the windscreen, as if the insatiable driver spit into your face personally.

The downpour and its implications are welcome here. More and more often our summers are replaced by wildfire season. Instead of plumes of mist and comforting blankets of fog we are buried by layers of smoke. Smoke that dries you no matter how much you drink, the smoke that stings no matter how much you blink. The inescapable smell of campfire; proof that there can be too much of a good thing. The smoke that robs you of breath and blue sky. The smoke that brings the bugs out - every insect in the land emerges en masse. In daytime as well as night moths and gnats swarm the light of a gas station like a horde of confused locusts. Mosquitoes do the same but are only after the source of your breath. Every little thing with wings emerges to feast on the Earth's carcass. Driving through the haze will leave the front end of your car looking like a paintball field, minus the neon. Every year this happens and feels more apocalyptic - every year the anxiety grows that our children will catch as many summertime tans as youth in Beijing, or when they finally climb a mountain that called to them as children their reward will be a red disk in a deluge, instead of the depth and blue of the sky colliding with the sea interspersed by flickers of light catching more waves than a hairy van-lifer in the 60s. We would like to believe things were always like this. But we are young, not necessarily stupid - deep down we know the score, but feel powerless to change it. It is an unspoken truth. The best option is to savour while it lasts.

 

[Punp]

Weaving through the coast mountain range in the spring is about as predictable as bull-riding. Sheer faces of jagged rock glisten in the damp and conifers ejecting towers of mist that rise and settle in suspension over the valley and the little metal boxes who haste through it. The sky releases dense rain and windshield wipers at their fastest clamber to keep up with the rate the windscreen is obscured. Just through the thick of it the clouds break and allow the sun to reach back through to bless its children, but this is a mirage. Before long the overcast closes back in and with it the oppressive rainfall, the hazard of the road climbs tenfold again. At times the side windows streak and speckle with water, making blind spots truly blind. In this weather mountaintops have a habit of peering out from under the plume, greeting hello and goodbye as you continue.

Alongside on the highway a lifted black F350 Super Duty defines excess in the fast lane. You can taste the arrogance in the exhaust fumes and when the tires cut through puddles the collateral splashes straight into the windscreen, as if the insatiable driver spit into your face personally.

The downpour and its implications are welcome here. More and more often our summers are replaced by wildfire season. Instead of plumes of mist and comforting blankets of fog we are buried by layers of smoke. Smoke that dries you no matter how much you drink, the smoke that stings no matter how much you blink. The inescapable smell of campfire; proof that there can be too much of a good thing. The smoke that robs you of breath and blue sky. The smoke that brings the bugs out - every insect in the land emerges en masse. In daytime as well as night moths and gnats swarm the light of a gas station like a horde of confused locusts. Mosquitoes do the same but are only after the source of your breath. Every little thing with wings emerges to feast on the Earth's carcass. Driving through the haze will leave the front end of your car looking like a paintball field, minus the neon. Every year this happens and feels more apocalyptic - every year the anxiety grows that our children will catch as many summertime tans as youth in Beijing, or when they finally climb a mountain that called to them as children their reward will be a red disk in a deluge, instead of the depth and blue of the sky colliding with the sea interspersed by flickers of light catching more waves than a hairy van-lifer in the 60s. We would like to believe things were always like this. But we are young, not necessarily stupid - deep down we know the score, but feel powerless to change it. It is an unspoken truth. The best option is to savour while it lasts.

Wow, what a picture. I really enjoyed this painting.

 

[McGovern '72!]

Apologies if this is pretentious dogshit, I've been trying to get better at writing but nothing works.

---

The lamps glow dirty orange in the night; they must have glowed white, then yellow, once, but they have been beaten down— by what, it is impossible to tell. Nevertheless they still loom above, casting down that orange light, sentinels to ward off that specific yet unknown danger. But on closer inspection the light seems to waver. Is it scared? Or maybe it's inherited the paranoid energy emitted by the entire neighborhood, the one that oozes from the rows of identical houses, levels all flora before it into a uniform buzz cut where not even the smallest insects can hide, then spills onto the wet, shit-colored streets which abruptly terminate before the pristine road, which is completely black, and should be consumed by the night by now, but isn't; the orange light safeguards it. The logic of this suburb is the same as The Lion King: "Everything the light touches is our kingdom." That's why there isn't even a spot of darkness anywhere, why these frightened lights are held up by stoic lampposts, why nothing is allowed to escape the eternal gaze of the windows.

Only the same suburbanites who evidently couldn't sleep from paranoia still can't catch a wink. In their desperate drive to see everything, their eyes have been forced open forever. Light pours in. There is never any rest for the paranoid, only silence enforced by tension.

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Apologies if this is pretentious dogshit, I've been trying to get better at writing but nothing works.

---

The lamps glow dirty orange in the night; they must have glowed white, then yellow, once, but they have been beaten down— by what, it is impossible to tell. Nevertheless they still loom above, casting down that orange light, sentinels to ward off that specific yet unknown danger. But on closer inspection the light seems to waver. Is it scared? Or maybe it's inherited the paranoid energy emitted by the entire neighborhood, the one that oozes from the rows of identical houses, levels all flora before it into a uniform buzz cut where not even the smallest insects can hide, then spills onto the wet, shit-colored streets which abruptly terminate before the pristine road, which is completely black, and should be consumed by the night by now, but isn't; the orange light safeguards it. The logic of this suburb is the same as The Lion King: "Everything the light touches is our kingdom." That's why there isn't even a spot of darkness anywhere, why these frightened lights are held up by stoic lampposts, why nothing is allowed to escape the eternal gaze of the windows.

Only the same suburbanites who evidently couldn't sleep from paranoia still can't catch a wink. In their desperate drive to see everything, their eyes have been forced open forever. Light pours in. There is never any rest for the paranoid, only silence enforced by tension.

The first three sentences were mid but it got better and better as it went. Nice piece of writing.
My favourite part is this sentence here. Just great imagery

Is it scared? Or maybe it's inherited the paranoid energy emitted by the entire neighborhood, the one that oozes from the rows of identical houses, levels all flora before it into a uniform buzz cut where not even the smallest insects can hide, then spills onto the wet, shit-colored streets which abruptly terminate before the pristine road, which is completely black, and should be consumed by the night by now, but isn't; the orange light safeguards it.

I still battle with feelings of pretentiousness as well. I think the cure to that is brevity. The least words I can describe something in, the better it is, at least to me.

 

[Punp]

I think it's sturdy writing supported by a strong analogy. Some of the lines are a bit purple, but overall it's an excellent vignette.

 

[silktrader]

The headache's still there. Take another drag. The headache's still there. One more sip of the coffee. It's not supposed to be this hot this time of year, shift into the shaded areas of the overpass. Three puppies running around. The one with the black dot thinks that pants are a chew toy. The headache's still there.

Lot of honking, lots of yelling. Up above. People yell and street merchants sell used underwear, shirts with Donald smoking a fat blunt, notebooks with stylized names on the front. You spent 50 on a pair of headphones that broke the same day. Look at the river ahead. Rivers aren't supposed to be green. Are they? The headache's still there.

You'll have to go back. The big ancient hospital at the end of the road. More endless paperwork, more angry mothers and accusations of witchcraft, more kids swallowing things they're not supposed to swallow and men at the top floors of the psych ward asking if you could run down to the corner store and grab them a pack of cigarettes. Makes for funny stories at least. Best part of public service, shift ends at 2. Better get going before the buses roar down the bridge and squash you too.

The headache's still there.

 

[Captain]

Every photo has a beginning and an end. It's a gift and a curse that we can see both. This photo is no exception. There is excitement in the air the moment this was taken. Anticipation of starting life and finding freedom, meaning, and happiness. My first stop is to pick her up. I loved her in that moment, the perfect moment that we drove to the ocean.

She is more of a metaphor than person now. A placeholder of a feeling. It was never about her anyway; it was about building my happiness, I think. The idea of the perfect life. It's the idea of us that is the nostalgia. I long for the feelings or at least the moment, not for her. Maybe that's what love really is and why it's so fickle.

I can feel the ocean air as I look more at this picture. Her smile flashes in my head but I can't see it. I see broken memories like glass that I am stepping on, fragmenting them more with each walk down memory lane. It's not linear or complete. It's the car that ties the memories together. It is part of the stage of our time together. A critical element of the scenery of the play of life. In this place and time, the car has meaning. It sits today a forgotten set rusting in a back lot waiting until it is no more. If I were to sit in it, there would be no meaning. It would feel like an empty auditorium the day after the show is over. The silence and emptiness would be almost devastating.

The sunlight flashes in my head and I am, for a moment, filled with the echoes of the joy of that day. As the echo fades my hand feels the ghost of hers in it. The faint memory of the electricity running up my arm as her voice momentarily rings in my ears. I remember the emotion in her eyes, I almost see them, but can't.

The feeling of the steering wheel travels along my fingers as another memory flashes in an instant. I remember thinking of the future in that moment. I remember I had an almost precognitive memory of a future on that day that wouldn't quite turnout how I thought. I knew how it ended, but I didn't know who it ended with. The idea was there as vague feelings, but the picture was blurry.

The sounds of seagulls and children playing reverberate from the back of my mind at the same time. Pieces of the scene from our play come to me, but I can't focus on them. The ocean waves are there for a second. Then a clank of a flagpole rope. I close my eyes in the hopes my mind can reproduce the memory, but it can't. The irony is the photo was taken with a camcorder, but no video was taken.

As her voice echoes through my head incomprehensibly, I ponder why I keep looking at this photo after all these years. Looking as the same broken sounds and images play in my brain. I once thought it was about her, but it's not. I thought it was about the day, but it's not. I spend my days trying to build the future but am living in the past. I don't truly exist in any one place. Maybe I am nostalgic for the ignorance. Ignorance brings unlimited possibilities and with it the idea that you can do whatever you want. The future is yours for the taking. But I am not sure that is it.

As I get ready to close the photo, I am filled with the same thoughts of disappointment of the moment ending. I don't want to close it. Knowing the car will soon drive away and this memory that I am making will be over. The car is parked in the photo but will eventually drive away. It always does, and it always will. It leaves the moment stuck in time, at that place. We can never go to this place again and that is the the hardest part to grapple with. I ask why into the void and listen, but there is no answer. It's almost like our nature is nonlinear but we are trapped in this linear world.

Without this moment, without this anchor point, the future is not possible. For that reason, I am grateful for it. But it opens deeper questions, questions with no answers.

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Without this moment, without this anchor point, the future is not possible. For that reason, I am grateful for it. But it opens deeper questions, questions with no answers.

Incredibly touching. Thank you for sharing Captain

 

[Punp]

I'm reading "The rise and fall of the Dinosaurs" by Steve Brusatte and thought of this thread. He offers a reconstruction of the last day of the dinosaurs.

Mindful of pirating half a chapter from this great book, I'd like to recommend the rest of it. He really has a way of bringing dusty fossils to life as living creatures, peppered with personal anecdotes about his field trips with drunk Paleos, spurious Chinese government backroom fossils and eccentric excavators who set their fossils on fire.

Available here, but please use your local book shop where possible:

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/0062490427

Pinging history buffs @HammerKoopa @Vitnira and nature enthusiasts @zalaz alaza @Oasisboi

---

Dinosaurs die out

IT WAS THE WORST DAY in the history of our planet. A few hours of unimaginable violence that undid more than 150 million years of evolution and set life on a new course.

T. Rex was there to witness it.

When a pack of Rexes woke up that morning 66 million years ago on what would go down as the final day of the Cretaceous Period, all seemed normal in their Hell Creek kingdom, the same as it had for generations, for millions of years.

Forests of conifers and ginkgos stretched to the horizon, interspersed with the bright flowers of palms and magnolias.

The distant churn of a river, rushing eastward to empty into the great seaway that lapped against western North America, was drowned out by the low bellow of a herd of Triceratops several thousand strong.

As the pack of T. rex readied themselves for the hunt, sunlight began to trickle through the forest canopy. It highlighted the outlines of various small critters darting through the sky, some flapping their feathered wings and others gliding on currents of hot air rising from the humidity of the young day. Their chirps and tweets were beautiful, a dawn symphony that could be heard by all the other creatures of the forest and floodplains: nored ankylosaurs and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs hiding in the trees, legions of duckbills just beginning their breakfast of flowers and leaves, raptors chasing mouse-size mammals and lizards through the brush.

Then things started to get weird, truly outside all norms of Earth history.

For the last several weeks, the more perceptive of the Rexes may have noticed a glowing orb in the sky, far off in the distance - a hazy ball with a fiery rim, like a duller and smaller



version of the sun. The orb seemed to be getting larger, but then it would disappear from view for large portions of the day. The Rexes wouldn't have known what to make of it, it was far beyond their brainpower to contemplate the motions of the heavens.

But this morning, as the pack broke through the trees and emerged onto the riverbank, all of them could see that something was different. The orb was back, and it was gigantic, its shine illuminating much of the sky to the southeast in a cloudy psychedelic mist.

Then, a flash. No noise, only a split-second flare of yellow that lit up the whole sky, disorienting the Rexes for a moment.

As they blinked their eyes back to focus, they noticed that the orb was now gone, the sky a dull blue. The alpha male turned to check on the rest of his pack....

And then they were blindsided. Another flash, but this one far more vengeful. The rays lit the morning air in a fireworks display and burned into their retinas. One of the juvenile males fell over, cracking his ribs. The rest of them stood frozen, blinking manically, trying to rid themselves of the sparks and speckles that flooded their vision. Still no sound to go with the visual fury. In fact, no noise at all. By now, the birds and flying raptors had stopped chirping, and silence hung over Hell Creek.

The calm lasted for only a few seconds. Next, the ground beneath their feet started to rumble, then to shake, and then to flow. Like waves. Pulses of energy were shooting through the rocks and soil, the ground rising and falling, as if a giant snake were slithering underneath. Everything not rooted into the dirt was thrown upward; then it crashed down, and then up and down again, the Earth's surface having turned into a trampoline.

Small dinosaurs and the little mammals and lizards were catapulted upward, then splattered onto trees and rocks when they landed. The victims danced across the sky like shooting stars.

Even the largest, heaviest, forty-foot-long Rexes in the pack were launched several feet off the ground. For a few minutes, they bounced around helplessly, flailing about as they rode the trampoline. Moments earlier they had been the undisputed despots of an entire continent; now they were little more than seven-ton pinballs, their limp bodies careening and colliding through the air. The forces were more than enough to crush skulls, snap necks, and break legs. When the shaking finally stopped and the ground was no longer elastic, most of the Rexes were littered along the riverbank, casualties on a battlefield.

Very few of the Rexes—or the other dinosaurs of Hell Creek—were able to walk away from the bloodbath. But some did. As the lucky survivors staggered out, sidestepping the corpses of their compatriots, the sky began to change color above them. Blue turned to orange, then to pale red. The red got sharper and darker. Brighter, brighter, brighter. As if the headlights of a giant oncoming car were coming closer and closer.

Soon everything was bathed in an incandescent glory.

Then the rains came. But what fell from the sky was not water. It was beads of glass and chunks of rock, each one scalding hot. The pea-size morsels pelted the surviving dinosaurs, gouging deep burns into their flesh. Many of them were gunned down, and their shredded corpses joined the earthquake victims on the battlefield. Meanwhile, as the bullets of glassy rock whizzed down from above, they were transferring heat to the air. The atmosphere grew hotter, until the surface of the Earth became an oven. Forests spontaneoualy ignited and wildfires swept across the land. The surviving animals were now roasting, their skin and bones cooking at temperatures that instantaneously produce third-degree burns.

It was no more than fifteen minutes since the T. rex pack was startled by that first jolt of light, but by now they were all dead, as were most of the dinosaurs they had lived with. The once-lush woodlands and river valleys were aflame. Still, animals had survived-

-some of the mammals and lizards were underground, some of the crocodiles and turtles were underwater, and some of the birds had been able to fly to safer refuges.

Over the next hour or so, the rain of bullets ceased, and the air cooled. A breath of calm once again settled over Hell Creek.

It seemed that the danger was over, and many of the survivors came out of their hiding places to survey the scene. Carnage everywhere, and although the sky was no longer radioactive red, it was getting blacker as it choked up with soot from the forest fires, which were still raging. As a couple of raptors sniffed the charred bodies of the T. rex pack, they must have thought that they had survived the apocalypse.

They were wrong. Some two and a half hours after the first light flash, the clouds began to howl. The soot in the atmosphere began to swirl into tornadoes. And then-woosh—

-the wind charged across the plains and through the river valleys, blowing at hurricane force, hard enough to make many of the rivers and lakes burst their banks. Along with the wind was a deafening noise, louder than anything these dinosaurs had ever heard.

Then another. Sound travels much slower than light, and these were the sonic booms that occurred at the same time as the two light fashes, caused by the distant horror that had started the chain reaction of brimstone hours earlier. The raptors shrieked in pain as their ears ruptured, and many of the smaller criters hurried back into the safety of their burrows.

While all of this was happening in western North America, other parts of the world were going through their own upheaval.

The earthquakes, glassy-rock rain, and hurricane winds were less severe in South America, where carchardontosaurs and giant sauropods roamed. The same was true of the European islands that the weird Romanian dwarf dinosaurs called home.

Still, these dinosaurs also had to deal with quaking ground, wildfires, and intense heat, and many of them died during those same chaotic two hours that wiped out most of the Hell Creek community. Other places, though, had it much worse. Much of the mid-Atlantic coast was sliced apart by tsunamis twice as tall as the Empire State Building, which flushed the carcasses of plesiosaurs and other sea-dwelling giant reptiles far inland.

Volcanoes started to spew out rivers of lava in India. And a zone of Central America and southern North America-everything within a radius of about six hundred miles (one thousand kilometers) of the Yucatán Peninsula of modern-day Mexico m-was annihilated. Vaporized.

As the morning gave way to afternoon and then evening, the winds died down. The atmosphere continued to cool, and although there were a few aftershocks, the ground was stable and solid. The wildfires seared away in the background. When night finally came and this most horrible of days finally was over, many—maybe even most—of the dinosaurs were dead, all over the world.

Some did stagger on, however, into the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year, and the next decades. It was not an easy time. For several years after that terrible day, the Earth turned cold and dark because soot and rock dust lingered in the atmosphere and blocked out the sun. The darkness brought cold —a nuclear winter that only the hardiest of animals could survive. The darkness also made it very difficult for plants to subsist, as they need sunlight to power photosynthesis to make their food. As plants died, food chains collapsed like a house of cards, killing off many of the animals that had been able to endure the cold. Something similar happened in the oceans, where the death of photosynthesizing plankton took out the larger plankton and fish that fed on them and in turn the giant reptiles at the top of the food pyramid.

The sun did eventually break through the darkness, as the soot and other gunk was leached out of the atmosphere by rain-water. These rains, however, were highly acidic and would have scalded much of the Earth's surface. And the rain was not able to remove some ten trillion tons of carbon dioxide that had been blown up into the sky with the soot. CO2 is a nasty greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, and soon nuclear winter gave way to global warming. All of these things conspired in a war of attrition to knock off whatever dinosaurs were not felled by the initial cocktail of earthquakes, brimstone, and fires.

A few hundred years after that dreadful day—a few thousand years at the absolute most-western North America was a scarred, post-apocalyptic landscape. What was once a diverse ecosystem of sweeping forests, alive with the hoofbeats of Triceratops and ruled by T. rex, was now quiet and mostly empty.

Here and there, the odd lizard scurried through the bushes, some crocodiles and turtles paddled in the rivers, and rat-size mammals periodically peeked out of their burrows. A few birds were still around, picking at seeds still buried in the soil, but all the other dinosaurs were gone.

Hell Creek had turned to Hell. So had much of the rest of the world. It was the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

 

[Punp]

Also a personal vignette from today:

The streets of Brussels are manufactured of concrete and biofilm. The concrete is the hard, sculpted stone encasing a culture of people with lofty ideals of rainbow flags flapping from windows, "free gaza" graffiti and stickers which say "racism not welcome here" displayed proudly behind reinforced glass.

Growing in the inch-thick mud of the gutter are the African migrants, prowling the streets as packs of hyenas between hovels made from discarded chairs and corrugated boxes. They feed in this gapped gutter wasteland between road and façade, jutting shanties off the cold-fronted buildings of a traditional society who signal welcoming virtues but are afraid to go beyond their barricades.

The train announcer said in three languages to watch your belongings when you depart. Pickpockets soaked in gold are known to operate here.

Three men followed us for a block, snouting for the weak and infirm.

Piss-drenched streets. Art galleries with priceless works d'art. Fetid hot trash from overflowing cans. Air conditioned towers and grass verges which struggle to absorb any more faeces. Checkout is at eleven, press nine for room service. Airport to taxi to hotel, the streets are made of lava.

 

[Oasisboi]

Hell yeah

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

The intertidal zone makes my skin crawl with its beauty. The wind howls across the open flat, shadows of outstretched wings rake the ground and call attention to the two pairs of bald eagles circling above, in each pair the raptors trace opposing arcs in complement to the other. But unless stationary, it's not advisable to watch the dance for too long. The ground has hazards. Middens of expired clam and cone snail shells poke out of the sand, and the discarded limbs and shells of Dungeness crabs who have since molted litter the area. In the spaces between the sandbars are canals of shallow water warmed by the sun, within growing gardens of eel grass whose tendrils caress and tickle your ankles.

The sandbars in the intertidal zone have waves and miniature dunes on their surface. Every step down the sandbar you crush the peaks of the dunes and the sand clumps and nestles itself between your toes, compressing into mud cakes on the heels and balls of your feet. The foot, paw, and talonprints of creatures trace their paths throughout the intertidal zone, but do not remain for long - it is inevitable that the moon will make another quarter circuit around the Earth, pulling with it the dormant sea back into the spotlight, swallowing the foreshore and erasing again the evidence of foreign creatures who, in their opportunism, trespass while the sea is out to lunch.

As children we would occupy ourselves with building fortresses made of sand, the walls tall and concentric, in jest that our engineering could hold back the ocean itself. Not illusioned though - we knew the futility of this practice, and that's why we found joy in the preparation, not the inevitable wipe of the slate. Still, blind to the wider application of this philosophy, that life is apart of a cycle that must come to a close before it can begin anew. The joys must be found in preparation for release, being opportunistic and getting our kicks in wherever we can, and ticking our boxes in readiness for our slate to be wiped clean.

 

[CROCKPOT BROTHSOAKER]

Airport to taxi to hotel, the streets are made of lava.

Fantastic piece!!!!!!!!

 

[macrobyte]

Aggressive fluorescent lights burn the entire car harsh white. Looking dead ahead, there's a window to the outside world, currently just a void of darkness, with some lights every so often. I sit on a blue bench, clearly "ergonomically" designed. It's curved so that I can lay back, and sloped so that I don't fall off, but it's not cushioned. They don't want anyone to spread out to sleep on it. Above the window, there's a screen, showing periodically either an advertisement for MTA clothing, rules for riding the train, an ad for the MTA's new contactless payment system, or numerous other random advertisements. The car is plastered with advertisements for some healthcare provider, metro health plus, advertising free mental health care, and $0 or almost $0 healthcare. Looking down, one can the see the floor, which has a sort of rubbery consistency to it, is bespecked with random white and red malformed polygons.
While riding past a station, one looks out the window, to be assaulted by a torrent of ads. Shoes, makeup, basketball tv, more shoes, a movie, more shoes, a casino, over and over again.
I can then do one of the most forbidden stuff on the train, look around at people. To my front right, sitting on the bench opposite me, is a man who at first appears to be resting his eyes, but on further inspection is clenching them shut. He's wearing a plain blue hoodies and kaki pants, a backpack sandwiched between. To his left, a woman with jeans ripped at the knees, wearing thick earrings. She's on her phone, AirPods in. She scrolls down, her finger moving up, and a look of consternation passes through her face. She scrolls again, this time her mouth opens up, smiling. She's wearing a jacket adorned with reversible sequins, the two sides being shiny black and gold. She has it on the black. Adorning her jacket is also a pin, an anarchist flag.
Sitting next to my left is a Latin teen, no older than 16, wearing baggy sweat pants. He opens Apple Music, looking at World of Rap. He then opens instagram reels. He scrolls down. Soccer, soccer, soccer, a car crash (he lingers on this one), soccer (lingers on this one), a joke, soccer, soccer, shoes (lingers on this one, and keeps going, ad nauseam.

 

[macrobyte]

The wind gently blows outside, brushing the leaves of the trees. The sky is gray, getting darker the higher it goes. Only the lights of several planes, and Polaris, are visible, the light sweeping over the shorter houses, through my window. Coming through my window, the dull light combines with my monitor to form the only light available for my room.
From the street wafts a delicious scent, of some unknown food. It mixes with the smell of my microwave Udon noodles, to cause me to salivate. Guided by my monitor, I take a bite, savoring the taste of the noodles, with the smell of some foreign delight.
A soft, slow song from Nightwave Plaza permeates from my speakers, going all around my room, and out my window. Only broken up temporarily by some people, normally a couple, chatting and laughing on the street outside. Or some hotshot zipping down the street in either a motorcycle or a car with no muffler. Or some cop, sirens blasting, from over a mile away.
———
Man, writing these is fun! Haven't felt as good writing in a while. Nothing I write, however, can beat Neuromancer, no matter how hard I try.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Especially nothing I write can compare to how many parts of the book this is foreshadowing, and the mood it sets.

 

[Punp]

The wind gently blows outside, brushing the leaves of the trees. The sky is gray, getting darker the higher it goes. Only the lights of several planes, and Polaris, are visible, the light sweeping over the shorter houses, through my window. Coming through my window, the dull light combines with my monitor to form the only light available for my room.
From the street wafts a delicious scent, of some unknown food. It mixes with the smell of my microwave Udon noodles, to cause me to salivate. Guided by my monitor, I take a bite, savoring the taste of the noodles, with the smell of some foreign delight.
A soft, slow song from Nightwave Plaza permeates from my speakers, going all around my room, and out my window. Only broken up temporarily by some people, normally a couple, chatting and laughing on the street outside. Or some hotshot zipping down the street in either a motorcycle or a car with no muffler. Or some cop, sirens blasting, from over a mile away.
———
Man, writing these is fun! Haven't felt as good writing in a while. Nothing I write, however, can beat Neuromancer, no matter how hard I try.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Especially nothing I write can compare to how many parts of the book this is foreshadowing, and the mood it sets.

I've also woken in a room, and your post has inspired me to write!


I wake from some cacophony of a dream, doused in cold sweat, to a new sound of humming fans, a cool drone of something distant. I try to grapple with it, to conceptualise it as an extractor fan, an engine cooler, an insect, but I can't place it. I stagger to my window and pull the blackout blinds to find what I was least expecting — rain at last — succulent sponge-sucking salivating soggy sudden root plant mouthfuls. My garden is being watered.

I admire it from the grey 7am light and open my windows to bathe in its encompassing sound.