Search Results for 'ring'

Ann spent the morning (or a mere half hour, if truth be told) enjoying her physicality in the gentle autumn morning sun before returning indoors. The drop in temperature was still new enough to remember to appreciate fully. She felt at peace with her world, a happy balance of words and sunbeams, that is until she perused the latest additions to the BA (Bash Ann, by the looks of things) group project.

Ann frowned. Who the heck was Harvey? It was almost the last straw, despite Ann’s sunny mood. The very idea of trawling back through the paperwork to find out who he was, and indeed who everyone else was, was too daunting. “If it’s not fun don’t do it!” That’s what they all said. Over and over again they said “if it’s not fun don’t do it”.

The writing was fun, and the random reading was fun, but it wasn’t fun ~ in fact, it gave her a headache ~ to try and remember who and when and where everyone was. Perplexed, Ann wondered if she simply wasn’t cut out for working in a group. On the other hand, she simply wasn’t a loner either.

“Be remebering,” the disembodied voice whispered in her left ear, “That they are all YOU.”

Oh! Right, yes….herm….well where does that leave me?

“Right at the centre of it all, as always,” the voice replied.

Er, so it’s all MY story, then? The whole thing is all me, all mine? All the characters are ME?

“Quite!”

So I can do whatever I want, then?

“Of course!”

Right then, so I can write whatever I want, which is fun, and not write what I don’t want, which isn’t fun, and that will be quite alright, will it?

“Correct!” the voice chuckled indulgently. “And it may behoove you” it continued in a conspiratorial tone, “To remember than any flak from the others in the group, is in fact, YOU giving YOURSELF a flakking reflection.”

Oh. Well Right Ho, then. Toot! Toot!

“That perhaps is your task” Virginia was whispering in Ann’s ear”…to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist’s way…”

“Did you catch that, Walter? ‘Not spun out in the traditional lengthy continous way’ she’s saying.”

“…but condensed and synthesized in the poet’s way—that is what we look to you to do now.”

“I didn’t know you channeled Virginia Woolf, Ann,” replied Walter. “Doesn’t mean she is necesarily right, though, notwithstanding.”

“I didn’t say she was ‘absolutely right’, Walter. I’m just pointing out what’s right for me.”

Walter popped another anchovy stuffed olive into his mouth.

Ann was having a nightmare. In her dream she was an olive in a catering sized saucepan of spaghetti. The oily sauce made it impossible for her, especially given her round shape and lack of useful appendages, to gain purchase on the slippery strands.

“I didn’t know you couldn’t swim, Lavender. Oh!” Ann exclaimed. “Lavender sync! I left one of mothers Yardley English Lavender soaps in the car, and it’s great for covering up the smell of smoke.”

Lavender rolled her eyes.

“Oh well, the problem is Harvey, I can’t actually swim”, Lavender confessed. “So I didn’t see the dolphins blowing rings. But thank you so much for the movie. I think it was probably lying around in the rain pretending to be a mermaid which got me this cold. Last time I am doing one of Moosy’s daft classes”.

Lavender rolled her beautiful eyes and sneezed again.

Lavender was a little peeved she did not win the trip to the Worserversity for her fine limerick. She was wondering if she may drop out of Gubby’s course and enrol in one of Prof Moosy’s underwater dolphin experiences.

The summer Holidays were nearly over, or the Hollow Days, as they were known to some. The last days of summer had been a bit hollow for Ann at any rate, rattling around inside her own head, not really knowing whether it was full or empty. Ann had spent most of the summer sleeping, and with virtually no dream recall, it seemed as if half of the summer was missing. Probably just as well, what with it being such an odd summer. She wondered if she would simply sleep through the shift, like Ned Young slept through the mutiny. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Normally” the Worserversity students started rolling back towards Poubelleville round about now, but the word “normally” was becoming obsolete. What was normal, what could be expected? Ann didn’t know. She packed her coloured pencils, her detachable hand and her wooden men, and fished out her homework assigments for the holidays that she had only just remembered.

Alliteration. Bugger bollocks and blast, blimey but what a bother, too bloody hot and bored.

That’s a bit bloody depressing, she muttered to herself, try another letter.

Sweltering summer of sweat and sand, sleeping and sleeping, sublime surruptitious snooze, sail away in the sunset swell, sunrise surrender, ships ahoy!

Fan the flames, far sighted fellows! There’s a flash in the funnel for fast falling fishermen. Far flung, fun fueled, oh fast fleeting fantasies, follow the folks with the flags! Flounder not, fresh fishies, for fun feels fantastic!

Ah, wallow in wisps of wordless wonderings, weather the winds of wandering whispers, while weighty wells of wishes work winsome wonders, woven with worn wool and worrisome white weathered windows. Whether we will, whether we won’t, who will win, what will work, will we watch it water the weeds….

For her new course, Pr. Moose was a dolphin.
It was a fancy-dress course entitled: ‘Act out your characters’.

Pedro was naked, and when she asked him in what kind of disguise that could be, he told her “I’m the Universe”. She was, a moment, hypnotized by his so blue eyes that she’d forgotten her question. She gulped, speechless and looked at him more closely, appreciating the physique of his body…

— Is it real? she asked.
— It’s the Universe.
— Well, ok then, go get a seat and let’s begin our course.

Following him with her eyes, or more precisely following his butt with her eyes, she also noticed a few other students. Ann was wearing a nine-titsed alien costume and there were two glowing ladies with fishes stuck to their ghostly bodies…

This butt, she thought again, her attention distracted from the other students.

Godfrey stood looking up the pigeons sitting on the statue of the Academy’s founding father, Walter Melon, pondering the symbology.

“What do you reckon the symbology of that is, Aaeiulie?” he asked his colleague, this years alien-Xchange visiting professor, Aaeilulie Gub, from the Worserversity in the Slooperniff Dimension.

“No idea, God, I’ll use this as my next class assignment, see what the students come up with. Anything else, or just the statue and the pigeons? Keep it simple, profound? Or convoluted but with lots of options?”

“Oh keep it simple, if I know those students, they will manage to convolute even the simplest ideas.”

“If they didn’t, we’d be out of a job” said the alien.

“We don’t call them ‘jobs’ anymore, we call them S.M.I.L.E.S, or Something Marginally Interesting, Lucrative & Enlightening.”

With a perfectly straight face the alien replied “What rubbish.”.

Ann glanced vaguely over the bookcase, wondering where her dictionary was. Did people still use dictionaries in book form? I suppose any book will do for the purpose, she decided, and reached for the nearest book, a book about Rembrandt. She opened it randomly five times, using a ball point pen as a pointer, and selected five words for Prof Underbaker’s assignment.

…now…excite…

What a coincidence, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here, Ann thought, with a slight shudder at the bird killing metaphor (if it was indeed a metaphor, Ann tended to skip the Labelling Words classes)…

…someone…

Ah, but who? Who shall I excite?

…pointed…

Pointed in the right direction? Addressed someone pointedly? Not to put too fine a point on it…

….time

Ann was interested to note that her selection of words started with the word NOW and ended with TIME, and popped it into her clue box in an effort to stay on course and finish the assigment.

There was no time like the present. Indeed T’Eggy was well aware that All is Now, she’d heard about that theory in Wicks, the online magazine that she’d found so enlightening. She’d been reading a copy of Wicks (a reproduction, the originals were now collectors items and very valuable ~ in an artifact rather than a monetary value kind of way, monetary value having been devalued in the early part of the century) in the teleport waiting room when she met the handsome foreignor in the dusty blue robes. Of course, it was not unusual to meet foreignors in the teleport waiting room, not unusual at all, but the tall, dark, and handsome stranger had excited her. Perhaps it was the flash of long lean tanned thigh that she glimpsed as his robes caught on the door knob. Of course, even the ‘waiting room’ was a retro touch, because there was no need to ‘wait’ for teleport travel. It seemed ironic in a way that folks in the old days had perceived ‘waiting’ as an onerous thing, an somewhat unpleasant period of clock watching and crossword puzzle books. These days ‘waiting rooms’ were popular places to meet people and choose probability pools. The latest trend was Turtle Nights, and Frog Nights, where men and women gathered in waiting rooms to choose partners, to find that special someone, loosely based on the old Hen and Stag nights.

“Do teleport stations have door knobs, Ann?” Pedro interjected.

“Oh!” Ann was momentarily non plussed.

“Non plussed? Is that a word?” asked Pedro.

“Pedro, stop interrupting! The assigment isn’t to design a teleport station!”

The teleport station had been designed in retro style, a facsimile of the Atocha train station in Madrid. Lack of need for physical details had not resulted in a lack of appreciation for physical detail simply for it’s artistic merit, not to mention historical educational value, and the TRANS (Teleport Relative to Any Now Space) Station was an award winning example of old fashioned detail. Why, it even had doorknobs, even though doors had been dispensed with several decades ago.

“I thought the assigment wasn’t to design a teleport station?” asked Pedro.

“Does it bloody matter?” retorted Ann, with a hint of exasperation. “The overall point is to write rubbish, and that’s what I’m doing!”

“I’m glad you pointed that out, Ann” remarked Pedro helpfully.

“Oh my god, look at the time!” Ann exclaimed. “It’s time for class!”

“Bugger that!” snorted Pedro. “I’d rather hear about what happened with T’Eggy and that tall dark stranger!”

Arona had no idea what dimension she was in. Or indeed, whether she was where she was at all. Oddly enough, and it was not often now that Arona found anything odd, she was finding the experience rather freeing.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hoooooooooooooooooo” she shouted, and holding her arms wide open, began to whirl joyously around, till dizziness overcame her and she landed in a heap on the ground. She expected to land in a heap on the ground in a soft meadow with pretty spring flowers, but to her consternation realised that she had landed on what felt like polished concrete. She was even more concerned when she realised that she had a large audience watching her with interest, although at that stage all she really took in was a sea of feet around her. On further inspection she appeared to be in what looked like an enormous building full of shops, and, shoppers.

“Are you okay?” A kindly gentleman asked her in a concerned voice. At least that is what Arona thought he said. Although the words were familiar, the accent was strange, and not one she had heard before.

“I am fine, thank you,” replied Arona, trying her best to appear composed and rise gracefully from her sprawled position all at the same time. She must have looked convincing because, after a few more curious looks in her direction, the crowd began to disperse.

Good Grief, where am I now? she wondered. Determined not to be alarmed and to go with the flow, however rapid that flow may be, the intrepid Arona set off to explore her new surroundings.

“Wait!”

Arona looked around. It was the strangely spoken gentleman who had first offered assistance. He was brandishing a book towards her.

“Take this book. It is no good for me.”

Arona hesitated. The last time she had heard those words she had ended up with a funny little baby to look after. The man was insistent though, so, thanking him politely Arona accepted the gift.

“Hmmmm, How to Write Fiction, how very peculiar!” Flipping it open randomly she read:

[Random Words Epigraph] Step One: Randomly choose 5 entries from your dictionary. Just flip through the pages, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. Copy down the word that is closest to your finger. If your finger lands on a word that you don’t know, you can choose the word just above or just below it. For the purposes of this assignment, count paired words as a single entry (for instance, “melting pot” is listed as a single entry). Step Two: Shape your list of dictionary entries into a poem or story, using all of the entries.

“bugger that,” snorted Arona.