Tag Archives: antifables

December 27, 2013 · 2:55 am

A Drop

Once a drop of rejection fell on a young girl’s head.

It soaked into her skull, oozed through her brain, dripped through the roof of her mouth and fell onto her tongue.

She swallowed it.

Down her throat it ran and settling for a moment in her stomach, it soaked though the lining and slid into the lake of rejection pooled within her.

She flooded.

“It was just a drop,” said her mother. “I can’t understand why she is going on and on about it.”

“Clearly, she is overreacting,” said her father.

“She can be a drama princess,” said her friend.

She went to a therapist.

“Our psychic aquifers are made of individual drops that fall on us one at a time,” she said, “and trickling through us, find their way to all the other drops inside of us like them.”

I’m drowning,” said the girl.

“We drown,” said the therapist, “one drop at a time, and we dry one loving pat at a time too.”

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December 14, 2013 · 2:23 pm

Falling

He stepped to the edge, paused for 78 years, and then leaning forward, fell, off the cliff.

Below him, thousands of meters below, angled and jagged like the Alps, peaks, points, and particularized pro-frontal promontories rose to meet him; prior plans, past promenades and particularly attractive pouts, pips, pants and pie charts, familiar all, shot upward to meet him.

Falling fast, he looked to the sky above — nothing — then glanced down again at his fall. The jutting razor-sharp edges below were nearer now, and they seemed to be knifing up towards him as if alive, coming at him now like vicious sets of teeth, gnashing the air he would soon fall into and pass through.

He extended his arms, he closed his eyes, he relaxed his body, and swan-diving, he opened, and fell fast now, symmetrically, cutting through the hissing air, and then — as if his feet had exploded with fire — his trajectory altered, and he swooped, back up, began to ascend, and suddenly as if powered up, he rocketed back the way he’d fallen, shooting skyward like a small bottle rocket, flying upward now like a great space craft, charged now like a superman, he put his hands together in front of him and disappeared into the universe.

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October 14, 2013 · 8:37 pm

The Boy Who Ate a Bus

When he was only four years old he ate a box, and then went around sorting everything. His mother didn’t like it, and told him to eat his vegetables.

When he was ten, he ate a bicycle. It tasted good. At night he had dreams of going fast.

When he was fourteen, his mother took him into her bedroom and made him eat an improvised explosive device. She swore him to tell no one. He told no one.

When he was sixteen he ate a school bus. It was empty; it took a while. Afterward he thought about a career helping people.

When he was twenty-one his father made him eat a squirrel. After that he was prone to spite, very much like his father.

Then both of his parents died, of cancer. He inherited money, and a house.

When he was twenty-eight, he completed a Masters degree in sociology.

At thirty he was engaged to be married. It fell apart; he broke it off. Then he made several bad financial decisions and lost all of the money he had inherited from his father.

At thirty-two, with not prospects in sight for family or career, he concluded that he was a failure. He was angry, lost, alone.

He struggle along doing this and that, and then at thirty-five, unexpectedly, he found a bight star in the morning sky, and ate it.

After that, he immediately started a nonprofit for children. The vision, the theme, the driver — it was children helping children. He was good at this, at establishing vision, at setting up the infrastructure of the nonprofit, at putting the pieces in place, not at relationships, but he was smart enough to hire people for that. It went well. Children were helped.

Then at forty-one, stuggling with lonliness, he went to therapy and tried to make sense of everything that had happened to him.

He wasn’t able to actually figure it out, but one thing stood out, one moment with the therapist. It was just after he told her about his mom, about the IED, and his dad, about the squirrel, when she looked at him incredulously and said, “Amazing. You are amazing.”

“Why,” he asked.

“Because you” she said looking him intensely in the eyes, “You ate a bus!”

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September 26, 2013 · 4:49 pm

She’s Green!

“It as I’ve said before,” he said again,” she’s yellow.”

“That’s what you always say,” she said, “but I don’t think you know what you are taking about.”

“Then why does she go around acting like everything is fine when it’s not,’ he said. “She’s living in some kind of yellow-yellow land.”

“You forget where she came from,” she replied. “Her father had a lot of blue in him. She’s from that.”

“So, what are you saying?” he asked.

“Well, she doesn’t talk badly about people. Maybe she has some little yellow in her, but she also has a lot of blue in her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, just because you think you know what color she is doesn’t mean you really do.”

“I don’t?”

“No, what you see as yellow is mixed with blue, and really, she’s a beautiful shade of green!”

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September 26, 2013 · 1:55 pm

Consigned

Once, in the wooing season, a wise and beautiful girl fell in love with a handsome and foolish young man.

She pursued him; he pursued games. She asked if he would cavort with her and also sort with her, but all he wanted was sport, port, and snort, with toys, noise, and other fun boys.

“Let’s go out,” she said, “for coffee and talk.”

“Talk, squawk, ” he said. “Come gaming with me!”

“And there you have it,” she said to herself. “What does one do with silly boys who don’t know how to talk, feel, reel or deal, with life and wife and every emotion twice and thrice — or not.”

And then, with a pained heart, she consigned him to disobedience.

“What the hell is that?” He asked her. “What did you ever give to me that you could make rules about or take anything away from me? Who do you think you are, my mother?”

“I’m your brother!” she said.

“Your weird,” he said, “for a pretty girl.”

“I’ve given you everything,” she replied, “but you have given me nothing that you should expect anything in return.”

He quit calling her.

“Consigned,” she said.

“An odd girl,” he told his friends.

Then, over the next year, he got seriously bossed, crossed, lost and tossed. He called her.

“What have you got for me?” She asked over the phone.

“I’ve got nothin’,” he said and there was a long silence.

“Come see me,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

“What can come from nothing?” He asked.

“Actually,” she said, “Something, something can come of nothing.”

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September 10, 2013 · 5:01 am

The French King In China

Once their was a French king who had three daughters. One was beautiful, one smart, one loving — all were his raison d’être.

When they were little, he braided their hair, practiced their alphabet and hugged them when they cried. When they were half-grown, he dressed them de rigueur, walked them to school and danced with them in the great room. When they became women, he told them they were wonderful, sent them each to a université.

With them he was bon vivant and  au courant. He loved being a father. When his daughters married, he lost them a little, but loved them still, pulled it off, accepted their husbands and delighted in their children. He got down on the floor with his grandchildren, as in the days of old and called them mon petit chou-fleurs.

And then he decided to pass on his inheritance to his daughters, early, before he was gone, to see their eyes bright, their banks full and love made safe.

There was several other reasons. He tired of state, of intrigue, of debt fatigue and of the stress of the big league.

It was a disaster.

His beautiful daughter feared he would prefer his loving daughter and sued him. His loving daughter believed he loved his smart daughter the most and refused to see him. His smart daughter believed that his beautiful daughter would get everything and arranged a meeting of all the daughters.

“I think he might be losing it,” the beautiful one said.

“I wonder if we could get him to see a doctor,” the loving one said.

“Let’s see if we might get him into a home,” said the smart one. “Then we could have our lawyers meet and work everything out so everyone is happy.”

They arranged a meeting with him.

“My dearest little girls,” he cried out. “Whatever in all the wide and crazy world has happened to us? I’m your père. I will never be anything more. I am not your master. I am not your malfaiteur. I am not merely your bienfaiteur. I am your daddy! I love you each one of you with all my heart. Different as you are, yet you are each one to me the crème de la crème, the very sweetness of life itself.”

And with a cri de coeur he fell down before them. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

“You aren’t well,” they cried.

“You aren’t,” he shouted back at them. “En garde!”

“What?” screamed the smart one. “Will you threaten us?”

And with that the king rushed from them, out of the great palace. It was raining. He ran out into it. He tore off his clothes.

“Beauty comes of beauty,” he shouted at the sky,” and love comes of love. Smart come of smart, but what comes of greed, of jealousy and rivalry? Nothing,” he shouted, “nothing comes of that yapping, clawing, scrapping quintessence of nothing.”

“It is in a father and a mother to give their daughters faces, and to put some eyes and ears and mouths on them. It is ours also to give them legs, feet, arms, hands — to give to them of our own fingers and our toes. We give them these great things with but a moments passion, and with nothing more than love’s embrace, we also give them minds and souls and wills with which to love us back, or to turn us out. Terrible power of choice! It is in a father to give his daughters more than this. And when he does, when he has given them the greatest gift he has, his heart and all his amour, having given them so much, it is his tragedy to fall on the aching, empty, airless side of getting it all back.”

His daughters found him in the storm, raving as he went, and wrapping a tarp around him, they led him home and put him in his house.

He cried out as he went, “When parents die, their children howl and blow like these great winds; we had rather in the storm of life that they cried those tears of love before our deaths, while we could yet see and hug each other safe again.”

The next day they sent their avocats to his house.

He wasn’t there.

A few weeks later, each of his daughters received a letter from him expressing his love and asking if they would visit him soon at his new home.

It was in China.

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July 23, 2013 · 4:50 am

Jealousy

Once there was a young woman who grew up wanting. It was the kind of wanting that leads to aching which leads to more wanting.

She wanted to be given the same favor that her older sister received from their parents. She wasn’t.

She wanted to be strongly disciplined like her older sister, with the kind of discipline which attends strong expectation. She wasn’t.

She wanted to be sent to the same elite school as her older sister, but she wasn’t. She was sent to the mediocre school near her family’s home.

The upshot of this down-shot was that she was shot-through. But she didn’t tell her parents that, and she didn’t tell her sister that, and she didn’t tell her friends that, and she didn’t tell herself that either.

Off she went to college to try her luck there, excelled, graduated, got a job as a professional, got married, had two daughters, went back to school for an advanced degree, moved up the professional ladder, switch to the same profession as her sister, succeeded, and was left — still wanting and not knowing why.

She had a conflict with a rival at work. She went to therapy.

She talked, and she cried, and she talked and she said, for the first time in her life, “I’m jealous of my big sister,” and she hid her face.

“Why am I forty-three years old and for the first time in my life I am admitting to an emotion I have had since I was two?” she said with sobbing voice.

“Because,” said her therapist, “to admit to jealousy is a social crime. Jealousy, when exposed, is always punished severely, with disgust. We all know this, although we have never been told this. You are no different than the rest of us in this. Jealousy is the emotion everyone experiences but no one admits.”

“What do I do?” she asked her therapist.

“We may become thirsty in one place,” said her therapist, “but find that there are other places to get a drink.”

So she went home. She cried. She got up from her tears. She was resolved.

“You,” she said to herself, “are the little girl who needs to be special. And so, I need to tell you,” she went on, “that you are special, just as you are, to me, and I love you very much!” She said this to herself in the mirror, and that night, she got on the phone, and invited her parents and her sister over for dinner.

“I love you,” she said when they arrived, and welcomed them into her home.

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July 16, 2013 · 12:06 am

The Proverbist

When he was little he went to preschool. It was fun. It was A, B, C and Z, and 1, 2, 3 and free. It was short, sort and zippy snort.  It was “cat” and “rat” and “Mr. Dingly Bat.”

But then, things changed. He went to first. There he was introduced to second, uped to third and ushered into fourth, and on and on until he got it. His thinking extendified, his talking verbulated, his writing complimated. He mastered the art of expandification, the rhetoric of elaboronomy and the skill of eloquefusion.

He got a certificate, and could say pretty much anything — in a lengthy fashion.

He would have been left this way, prolix bollixed, but stuff happened.

He ran smack into a situation; it unnouned him. He had surgery; it deverbed him. His friend stabbed him in the back; it exlocuted him. For a time he was asyllabic, unworded and detongued.

And then, one day, with an “and” and an “or” he said  less which was more.

He delonged, delinged and delanged. He became a proverbist.

He went short on cats. He waxed brief on rats; he elaborated just a bit on a bat and spat, and he wrote a proverb about that:

A verbal hoot is a root-a-short-toot.

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July 6, 2013 · 4:27 pm

Chuff-a-Puff

Once there was a puffer who was skilled at smuff, huff and various sniffity stuff, and because of this, it was orduffed to lead a snuff.

Things went along swimmingly, and as time and space ran at its pace, the snuffers hired a team of puffers. This was good stuff, and resulted in lots of added fluff at the snuff, which fluffed and fluffed and fluffed.

However, there was one missed must. When the puffers were bemuffed, they kept it in their cuffs — sniff, sniff and sniffity snuff — except for an occasional, secret chuff-a-puff-a-muff-a-luff.

As is often the case, in such situcuffs, there was a notable lack of sniff-a-diff and no sift-a-lift.

Then came the much feared and most ominous puff of dust, and when it settled, one of the puffers was cuffed, one buffed, one huffed and one reduffed. Left was the first puffer, its wuff of fluff-a-tuffs and a much reduced snuff.

Everyone was bemuffed!

“Puff-a-luff!”

“What the huff?”

Various and curious were the respond-a-fluffs, but as it is written in the Schmuff, in 2nd Zuff, chapter juff, verse kuff:

“Chuff your stuff, don’t sniffity snuff.”

And in 1st Puff, chapter xuff, verse quff:

“Love your snuff as your own duff.”

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July 4, 2013 · 4:00 pm

The Sun and The Mountain Stream

The morning sun, blazing in a clear, blue sky, pieced the mountain stream, all the way to the rocky bottom. It shone its white, wavery lines into the cold, silver water.

The water in the mountain stream rushed away, down the mountain slope, crashed over the rocks and disappeared around a corner, running deep along the edge of a rocky cliff where the sun didn’t shine.

“What?” said the sun. “Did I say something wrong?”

The water ran dark and strong, saying nothing.

“I was just trying to help with a little advice,” said the sun.

“It didn’t help,” murmured the stream.

“It’s been ten years!” said the sun angrily, “Don’t you think it’s time to get over it. You have tributaries now, and you need to calm down, take life seriously, do what you need to do, for them.”

The water ran deeper now, dark and grey, along a stretch of the stream where both sides of the canyon rose up steeply and cast a dark shade over the whole of it.

The sun threw up his hands in frustration.

The water ran deeper now, within herself.

“It was good advice!” said the sun, “If she could just understand it.”

“It is a deep hurt!” said the water, “If he could just feel it.”

A cloud passed in front of the sun. The rays disappeared from the stream, even where it ran out into the open.

The sun darkened. The water darkened. Dark cried out to dark, and deep cried out to deep.

Then the sun, without a word, wrapped dark arms around the dark stream, and the stream reached up and hugged the sun, and then there was deep and quiet calm.

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