Glitter and Bone

There is surely a German word for comforting your crushes when they vent to you about their crushes ghosting them. 18 syllables long and carry the phonetic essence of Klingon and Hebrew.

After dinner and Vespers the scout was led down into a small, cold room by a monk with vitiligo.

A cat was sitting on a bag of onions. “There is something old beneath this monastery. It was here before we arrived.”

A silence occurred. The monk continued. “The cat’s name is Enzyme.”

Thus concludes the short story for March.

The delirious scout could see it from the air. A small flame of brick and mashed potatoes, built in defiance on this wet planet. A monastery.

That is my short story for February.

Days later and on the move, a scout from the army came upon a wild cinnamon tree. “Drats!” grumbled the scout. “I would have very much liked to put cinnamon on those zoo animals.”

And he was cross for most of the day.

That is my short story for January.

Deep into enemy territory, a hungry and marauding army came upon a zoo. So they ate all the animals in the zoo. That is my short story for December.

Raw history, I think, is void of romanticism and demonization. It is no secret that historical perception is often filtered through the lens of its era or to suit a cause convenient to it. Its edges ground down and sanitized to fit the mores or trending narrative.

Why would I be immune? Except, I swear to Gary, that I am.

Locking in a golden age amidst the river, the breathing story that God is telling, is child’s play. The Muslim world flash freezing the year 622AD as the year God was happiest with the planet. That is how you end up on the freeway with training wheels.

Or Jews not letting the law trickle down into the heart, but rather relegating it to a list of stagnant prescriptions. Jesus didn’t seem to be a big fan of elders polishing their training wheels as a flex.

Spellcasting is absolutely necessary for good folk to do dark things. Russian soldiers simply call a Ukrainian woman a Nazi and they are free to rape her. Rioters need simply call Pence a Traitor and they are free to hang him. The sanitizing magic of labels. It doesn’t have to be true, you just need to say the words. Good people need this preamble or they would no longer be good. The tributaries that flow from this magic are not new. History is riddled with good people who need this ward.

Intrinsic is a tricky word and one I am constantly tempted to invoke. Like a spell. I pull my steps on this wet planet like a man walks in a haunted house but that doesn’t make me more qualified to invoke shit. Even though I really feel that it should.

A lie quietly believed is insidious. It will seldom see the light. It doesn’t run off of the more obvious and salacious wildfire fuel of rumor. It implies it has a more noble source. It is softly held as to not upset other folk but held nonetheless- and so the lie has done its damage, the work it was meant to do. Dislodging the lie seems more work on the holder of the lie since it doesn’t entirely matter in the grand scheme of things, even though conclusions have already been hazyly drawn as a result of the lie. This is not Wormtongue 101, it is advanced deception. I wonder if it started shortly after leaving the Garden. And freewill opens up that tech tree to us all.

I never saw my best friends down the road. They were always a surprise.