Weekly Writing Challenge: Snapshots

Posted in Challenges by angloswiss

This week, I challenge you to mark your phone as off limits. Rather than giving into the urge to take a picture, write down your impressions of the scene. Who’s around? How does the air feel? What sounds do you hear? What emotions are you experiencing?

The black crow was picking the earth crumbs, snapping at something unseen by human eyes. Suddenly he startled and flew, but not far and precariously landed on the edge of a gravestone. He had a good choice in the graveyard, there were many gravestones, but he selected one of the newer stones, a white rough stone with black engravings showing who the owner is, or should I say was. There were no old worn stones in this graveyard. There are never old worn stones in this country, even the graveyards seem to be subject to a regular cleaning session, as the windows in the houses. Everything neat and tidy and if you were longer than forty years in this graveyard you were removed, making room for the next customer.

All this did not disturb the crow gazing from his high perch, speculating which stone to select for his next landing place. The gardener arrived with his truck filled with a new selection of heathers and other winter plants and the crow was disturbed. He flapped off to quieter pastures on the other side of the cemetery, where the family tombs were kept: those that were wealthy enough to stay and not be removed after their forty years sleep. Somehow the crow knew that this was a place of peace where there would be no disturbances. Perhaps a spider or insect might wind its way between the stones searching for a home. Here the gardener had nothing to do, it was privately organised by the descendants.

In the meanwhile the gardener and his men were busy hacking earth, removing old dead refuse of summer and reviving a grave with a display of pink and white heathers, here and there a hellebore, an evergreen perennial which would stay preserved until the Spring bulbs again arose to life. Life was a rarity in this place, but examples appeared in the form of relations of the dearly departed or just the inquisitive few reading names on the stones and remembering that they once knew this person some years ago Then they walked on.

There were blank spaces, covered with green grass, fading now into a greyish green, frozen by the fingers of frost that would appear at dawn, only to disappear when the midday light warmed the air. These places were ready and waiting to be filled, and filled they would be by the end of the year.

The crow decided to explore this empty spaces, there would definitely be a nice fat worm somewhere and then it saw a rowan tree hanging with its orange berries. A feast for crow eyes and for him alone: untouched and ignored by human hand. That meal was reserved for the birds, a human could die from eating such a berry.

More crows arrived sitting in the branches of the old trees and watching the men excavating, the earth at the foot of the gravestones. The truck was now emptied of its cargo, a bare surface was left. The truck driver turned the key in the driver’s cabin and the truck roared to life. It did not wake the inhabitants of the graves, they were still resting in their eternal sleep, but the crows rose in a black cloud, cawing and singing with their high pitched calls and flying away to the nearby forest of high trees.

They now had a view over the graveyard, where the stones were neatly placed row after row, each grave the same distance to the one before. Yes, even in death there had to be order.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Snapshots

Snapshot Pingbacks

3Dec2013

Daily Prompt: Now you see me

Posted in Challenges by angloswiss

You have a secret superpower: the ability to appear and disappear at will. When and where will you use this new superpower? Tell us a story.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us EVANESCENCE.

Bluetit eating

This superpower would be very useful when taking photos. I have a small bird house hanging on a tree in the garden and during the winter it is like the rush hour on the London Underground/Subway. The sparrows like to take up most of the space, but the blue tits are more careful and fly to the food platform, taking their seeds and afterwards flying to a branch on a tree to have their lunch. The main problem is that as soon as I open the window to take a photo the birds disappear. They probably notice the vibrations in the air and have a secret mechanism which warns them that danger might be approaching, so I have to take my super prize suspicious photos of birds usually from behind a glass window, or wait in the freezing cold for five minutes until they are fooled into believing I am no longer there. Otherwise I have to depend on a close up lens and cropping and playing with the photo in a photo programme.

I appear and disappear most of the time. It is very easy when you no longer hear so well, at least when you do not want to hear so well. Mr. Swiss often listens to his music through his “earpods” – a new word I have just found in Internet. You know those funny little things you put in each ear to listen to whatever you listen to. It seems to me that the majority of teenagers walk around in an earpoddy state of oblivion. You do not have to appear and disappear at will, just put your earpod in your ear, attach the other end to a music source and life exists on another level.

As far as Mr. Swiss is concerned he does not need a superpower, he just plugs his earpods in and no longer exists. No problem: I can then write my prize suspicious blogs and do not have to feel guilty that he is not getting my full and undivided attention, as I am not getting his either. When I really think about it, an evening with Mr. and Mrs. Swiss is no problem. We do not have to disappear, the TV might be running, Mr. Swiss is playing with his iPad checking on the latest news and I am playing with my iPad playing an unintelligent game or reading a book with my Kindle app. The only interruption is when one of my felines wants to explore the outside world and I open the window for them. They do not yet have an earpod and probably would not need one. They hear a tin opener before I even take it in my hand.

Appearing and disappearing no longer needs a superpower, Apple did it all for us and I do not mean the ones that grow on trees.

Daily Prompt: Now you see me

Invisible Pingbacks

Being honest the title is based on a remark made on one of my blogs by a supporter.
"You always turn a topic inside out and on its head" were words also applied by a visitor to one of my blogs. I think she hit the nail on the head.

Prompts are there to act on, not just tell everyone what you had for lunch or your likes and dislikes. I trust that on my blog you find something spiced with humour. Mr. Swiss, my other half, has been known to say that not everyone always understands my humour (I do not always understand his).

Blogging is for me coupled with having fun. I do what I want to and not what I have to.

Disclaimer: Not reponsible for any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I do my best, but having two langugages revolving in my brain (yes, I have one), sometimes the result is more bi- than unilingual.