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A Day in the Brine

~ Unkempt Mind dribbling in the seethe

A Day in the Brine

Tag Archives: New Year

The Journey is a State of Mind: Guest Hosting for #WQWWC #5 New Beginnings

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by smilingtoad in Uncategorized

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

#WQWWC, Abstract, Addiction, Animals, Black and White, Cinema, Death, Experimental, Florida, Grief, Hope, Nature, New Year, Night, Ocean, Photography, Quotations, Sunset, Water, Writing

As juke-box skies flame in a maze of trenchant light and sun-blotting days brand neon-frenzied holes into this guncotton mind, my grey stubble-feet dig deeper into the gelatinous ground.

What happened to me? I pulled out my own vertebrae somehow. My hands are sticky-brown, the bone is smiling white. There’s a saturating scent emanating from somewhere…

I became a flaccid unformed creature, self-entombed, scraping along the primordial murk of life on a truckling tide of apathy.

“My characters are drifters and searchers and they look for something. The journey is a state of mind for them.” -Wim Wenders

So many things can be used to build an enclosure…planks, steel-mesh, vanes, feathers, shadows, rage.

My legs are corked with lavender peelings of armadillo skin and punch along monotonously.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” -John Milton

I seep and writhe and scrabble about, tracing the arrow of time, completely unfelt. Through the years, I snuffle, mulling over decades, with gobs of mud dripping from milk-spot eyes and unwanted blotches of memory microfilming in the margin, I can hear the whir now and then.

“It all looks the same. You can’t imagine anything anymore. Above all, you can’t imagine any change. I became estranged from myself. All I could imagine was going on and on like this forever.” –Alice in the Cities (1974), screenplay by Wim Wenders and Veith von Furstenberg

Look at all those swarming micro-worlds beating against a drop of swamp water…feel the endless coquetry of the prancing night sky. There’s that rancid stench, again, all over me like a mucid skin. And I can see a maw wedged open, now, revealing the densest blackness I have ever seen.

“I want to remember that the sky is so gorgeously large, I feel stranded beneath it.” -Anis Mojgani

I was nineteen when my mother died, but I started stepping out long before then, retreating to the zebra-shadowed dusk beneath the sagging porch of childhood. The stagnation of grief only made it easier to inhume myself there.

When I was four, my brother did a strange thing to me in the summer’s panting heat, his eyes intent and empty. He said we were just like animals.

“This is YOUR world,” sang out from the television screen, lurking somewhere in the background.

“Today was a gloomy, rainy day without a glimmer of sunlight, like the old age before me. I am oppressed by such strange thoughts, such gloomy sensations; questions still so obscure to me are crowding into my brain- and I seem to have neither power nor will to settle them.”- Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

The smell, the smell, the wretching stench! It saturates her coarse dying-sheets, now blackish red and shining. She’s hidden her wedding ring between her legs…I can still hear the mewling cries she made, lost in a Roman candle of pain. “It’s safe, it’s safe,” she breathed, staring at the ceiling. The ring that would ultimately join a nest of others in the glitter of a pawn-shop display.

Like sun-burns on the bracing waters of an autumn lake.

How does one step out of the perennial gloaming and begin to disentangle from the overgrown nettles and mounds of grime, to disengage this automaton-existence? How does one fashion a new beginning after such a prolonged sentence? Years of existing as a mute with no face- a writer divorced from language, an artist who burned all his creations in a self-maiming tantrum that lasted 15 years.

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one. – Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

How does one dare to look up and meet the gaze of another, again?

The black maw is her mouth craned-wide in the shock of the final moment. I’d placed a white feathering of shamrock blooms and a bulbous, sherbet-orange-crested cactus next to her bed, just two days before. For the first time in months, I played her favorite music, and tears hovered in her eyes. A few hours later, she died.

Change. It is a vital thing.

…………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Over the years, I became, you might say…a haunted person.
I really wanted to see him again.
I never did.” –Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), screenplay by Nagisa Ōshima and Paul Mayersberg

There is a dull thrum tip-toeing through my mind as I gaze upon my big brother, his prone, plasticky body sinking deeper and deeper into the paunch of his hospital bed. It surrounds him like a cradle. His chest is bare and heaving slowly. His eyes are like clay, his face pocked and about to bleed in places.

I give him phone-numbers he’ll never call, an email address he’ll never write.

“I don’t take care of myself. I think, if I don’t take care of myself and I sit still and I don’t move, maybe they’ll forget about me. But then I’m scared of that too, because I think maybe if I sit there too long, maybe when I want to move, I won’t be able to move.” –Mikey and Nicky (1976), written/directed by Elaine May

“Caine was like a father to me,” he says more to himself, “When he found out I was fucking around with coke, he drove me out to a parking-lot one night and had me get out of the car. ‘Stop messing around with that shit!’ he screamed at me, then kicked my head into the pavement. He beat the hell out of me. Blood was everywhere, the cops came. We said we were just wrestling.”

His vacant eyes filmed with bitter tears, “I didn’t stop of course…but he was the only one who really cared.”

“I can feel myself dying,” he said, shortly before dismissing me with the twitch of his arm, that strong, familiar limb that would prise my own smartly behind my back, or fling me about like a rag, or barrel me up in a violently jovial embrace.

As I blinked in vanquished silence, he added:

“I can’t hug you this time.”

So many things have no resolution, abandoned to the scattered scree of the past. Entropy surges through, scrambling all that would be tidy and neatly arranged…if I had defter hands, a more obdurate determination…

No. I’d have to be a deity for that…and I’d much rather be a human being, as bizarre, brash and delightfully haphazard as they are.

“…if you laugh at somebody, you’re going to have to be connected with them…When friends get together, they laugh at each other. When enemies get together, no chance, baby. No laughter. Comedy is more interesting to me…because there is more life, more possibility in it. More different feelings.” -John Cassavetes

…………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“We all talked about leaving, but only one of us, one morning, without a word to a soul, actually left.” –I Vitelloni (1953), screenplay by Federico Fellini

A little over a year ago, I traveled north and did something I’d never done before. I toured a series of universities.

Abiding inside the sodden clam-shell of coastal Florida for well over a decade, I choked on the euphoria of my own torment and watched my aspirations bleach and feather in the roiling sea-wrack.

But I never lost those aspirations.

And somehow, I still remain on these two stub-feet. A little askew, with flecks of white in my sea-ruffled mane, leaning on a gnarled walking-stick with just a dram of possibility pulsing through the mist.

“There is really no better word to describe what electrons do than dancing, and it’s not embarrassing or random dancing either; they follow a beautiful series of patterns and steps that were laid out by a single mathematical equation, one named after the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who did extraordinary work in the field of quantum theory. These dance steps vary, and the electrons never tire, and no two will follow exactly the same steps, something known as the ‘exclusion principle.’” -Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun

Time for a new beginning.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
– Søren Kierkegaard

…………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

This little scattering was inspired by this week’s theme, “New Beginnings,” which is a part of the Always Write: Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays Writing Challenge, #WQWWC, created by my dear blogging friend, Marsha Ingrao. I invite you to post your own pieces and pingback if you would- how to create pingbacks here.

Here is further information on How to Participate in the Wednesday Writers Challenge.

Some previous posts from the splendid bloggers who contributed to last week’s #WQWWC #4 Celebration:

  • It’s Tradition by Myrna Migala
  • Here Comes the Holiday Season by Tina Schell
  • A very Merry Christmas by Sadje
  • Beach Walk Reflections by Frank who included some music via YouTube Fantasia on For All the Saints

For those who choose to join in- I cannot wait to dip into your own musings on this topic.

Wishing you all an edifying and ebullient New Year, and…

Thank you for drizzling by. 😉

Autumn Jade

Below: Song by Improved Sound Limited, from Kings of the Road (1976), written/directed by Wim Wenders

Un-Ring in the New Year With Sir

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by smilingtoad in Humour, Photography

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Disgruntled, Florida, Fun, Humor, Nature, New Year, Photography, Portrait, Rain, Sir, Swamp

Ring in the New Year, you say? More like UN-Ring in the New Year…

Blazing New Year01

What’s my New Year’s resolution this year, you ask? To lose this parasitic clicking proboscis snapping in my face…

She’s at it again…

Every day feels like a battle…

“You’re a real fashion model, now, Sir!” the terrible Lens-Slinger squeals through a series of gleeful snaps as I attempt to flee into the swamp…

(Lovely Frilled Lavender Scarf Design by local artisan: Barbara A. Alexander, who does custom colored shawls
E-mail:  Barbara10172002@yahoo.com
Scintillating super-model for scarf: Sir)

I try to hide in the soggy reeds, but the Lens-Slinger has no fear of cotton-mouth snakes, giant spiders and quick-sand mud riddled with hissing alligators. I, however, am terrified of these things and find I can no longer move as I begin to sink deeper into the muculent mire…and I still hear that persistent sound, clicking, in the brambles somewhere…

Even when I slip and fall on the slick and moldered green board-walks she marches me onto after dragging me out of the gurgling marsh, still NO stopping for a single drop of sympathy. Just an endless symphony of clicks buzzes over me as the great Black Orb winks at my corpse in complete lack of remorse…

With a cumbersome sigh I contemplate yet another year ahead…2015…I could just cry, attempting to fathom another 12 months of this incessant, photo-snapping torture…It’s not easy being a full-time super-model living in an endless slideshow-nightmare…

Happy 2015 to all from a wee Smiling Toad and a slightly disgruntled Sir!

Another Year of These Slide-Show Nightmares…

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Humour, Photography, Stories

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

2014, Abstract Photography, Black and White, Blur, Commentary, Florida, Fun, Humour, Nature, New Year, Photography, Portrait Photography, Seascape, Silly, Song, Story, Surly, Water

A fortnight into the 2014’s great nascent, and Sir (the somewhat crabby super-model) greets its sunny, smiling visage with…perhaps an ever-so-slightly surly, tongue-protruding, sort of attitude…for reasons…I am rather foggy on, at the moment…

Anyhow, onto more smiling things- some new portraits of Sir and some of his, er, affectionate, comments. Cheers,

Smiling Toad

The Nose

And so another year has dribbled by…and here I am again, startled awake by the monotonous scream of a clicking shutter resounding through my slide-show nightmares…

The EYE

Everywhere I go, that sound, and that dark, evil un-blinking EYE bending my reflection around every corner, as I try so desperately to ESCAPE.

Leave Me Here to Cry in Peace

Another year of this? It’s only getting worse. In this photo, it seems the darn camera-toting toad forgot how to focus and expose properly. Certainly has no mercy. It is obvious, despite her trying to hide it by “blurring”, that I am bawling bullet-sized tears, here.

The Fallen

Even when I fall down after bawling so hard, she just coldly and laconically steps around my corpse, with that lens probing about for the “perfect angle” like a bird’s bill probes for worms. No sympathy. Sometimes, I wish she would say to me, there, sprawled in the soggy ravine, “Poor Sir…what a terrible monster I have been! What a curse this photography rot has been for you, poor man; why I’ve caused you to cry so ardently you’ve fallen and suffered great bodily injury, beyond that of the mental mauling you must have already sustained!“

Sunset Chill

Even better if she continued with,”HANG this camera! I’m throwing it in the murky mire beside you there, brimming with some darling gators, I see; or better-yet, I’m going to pop the lens off it in a tree with a noose. Let the birds nest in it, let the squirrels toss their acorns into it- I don’t care, I’M FINISHED!” Yes…I still can dream…

Squiggly-Armed Reflection

But no such luck…as reality seeps back into sharp focus. And now she seems to be on a “fabulous rock star” kick, adorning me in flickering baubles, frilly neck-gear, leather coats, and shiny eye-wear…One night, I forgot to take off the “props” and went cruising into a little local restaurant. Suddenly, a whole slew of wide-eyed people accumulated behind the counter and sang out to me, “Oh my goodness! Are you a musician?! Did you just come from a gig? We just loooove your hat!” Why me? (wince) I know what’s next…guitars and violins and horns will be draped all over me and then her face will alight with a terrible sprightly pixie smile, as she breaks out the eye-liner and lip gloss…I think I miss the “hit man” shoots, now…

Life is an Endless Photo-Shoot

“Oh YES perfect Sir, a bit of a groovy Bono-esc look here!” she chortles at me delightedly through a fog of clicks in this photo here. Not fooling me. I know what it looks like- some nasty creep out on the prowl. He’s got shiny glasses, hoping to “blend”. Here he’s suddenly turned away from a poor victim in order to glower into a shoppe window as a mustached police officer with a cherry-red face slowly sashays by, rapping his palm with his shiny black cudgel.

Lustrous Hair

This seems to only enhance the ogling-masher-creep-effect. Oh why do I adhere to her silly commands? “Just kneel down there, Sir, yes lovely. The light is perfect now,” she cheeps, guiding me along with the muzzle of her camera. I protest, “But I don’t want to look at these ugly mannequins…” She replies, “Don’t worry about it; this is all for the lighting. Peeeeerfect.” A hundred snaps go off. Hmph. Bono my FOOT!

Pinned to a Cactus

Sometimes, it’s just best to give in and pose…especially if you are pinned to a great sniveling serpentine cactus with razor-sharp quills pressing into one’s shoulder-blades…

Get Me Back to the City

And try to keep the tears at bay…And just hope that something else will EVENTUALLY catch the EYE’s interest…

maybe I should push you in

Like this. Hmm…should I?

Moody Sunset

Or this.

Bleary Daze

Over time, though, you do develop some tricks of your own to combat the ultimate paparazzo protégé with. Ahhh the taste of rebellion! Or…near taste of it, anyway…

Bleary Daze 02

If you are afflicted with this problem of some atrocious imp shoving camera snouts in your face, try scuttling about in circles. Bob your head or twirl your umbrella. Throw a prop-hat into the wind. This works best in low light. Results in horrendous blurring, and hopefully, also in a photo-maker who flails off in defeat with arms flapping in frustration. Of course, do you know what my camera-toting tormentor cheeps at me whenever I do this? “OH BRILLIANT SIR! These photos are absolutely exquisite! So artistic, so abstract, and with such EMOTION!” (Sigh) Yes, that of deep, unfathomable despair…

Shuffling Off into the Drear

Another option- turn around and…RUN!

Consternation

Or try a scathing glare if your pursuer with the light-capturing device protruding forth happens to be a bit faster than you are…Ugh…that scarf! She was setting me up for disaster with that scarf and that bally stupid alpaca hat. Lasses kept bounding up in my face, squeaking how “cute” I looked. Boyfriends looked geared up to bash me so hard the scarf and stupid hat would go flying across the street…

Foggy Winders

Another tip- hide whenever you can, especially if your camera-wielding tormentor is distracted by a crack in the sidewalk or grime on a window or something. Of course…the determined paparazzo protégé will always find you…I know. They seem to have very keen focus. They don’t give up.

“And so, as I listen to a series of clicks reverberating through this foggy window, I leave you with a song that describes just how I feel below. Farewell. (I only dream that these nefarious images never, EVER find their way onto the great world-wide Web).”

Regards,

Sir

“Foggy Windows” by Unknown Hinson


Happy Boxing Day

26 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Humour, Photography, Stories, Video

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Animals, Brevard County, Christmas, Colour Photography, Dry, Florida, Fun, Holiday, Humour, Ibis, Lights, Nature, New Year, Nikon, Photography, Portrait, Silly, Squirrels, Surly, Video

And from Sir, a wee holiday message:

Misery Christmas

Misery Christmas, I mean, Merry Christmas….

“A happy holiday and she’s dressing me up again…

“Why me??

“Now she is forcing me to pose as some sort of sick Clouseau Doolittle for infamous VIDEOS of me being barraged, assaulted, beaten, bitten and viciously pecked at by a sea of rabid, wild creatures!

“‘What ART!’ the expert torturer chimes with the dead glaze of that stupid camera poking in my face.

“I certainly hope these beastly things NEVER EVER find their way onto the Internet…”

–Sir

Jubilant holidays, a most happy Christmas, and a glorious New Year to all.

Myriad cheers,

Autumn Jade

A “Happy” New Year from a Slightly Disgruntled Sir

31 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Humour, Photography, Stories

≈ 47 Comments

Tags

2013, Black and White, Cafe, Daughter, Dry, Family, Father, Florida, Fun, Hats, Humour, New Year, Photography, Photoshoots, Portrait Photography, Relationships

Stop taking my photo little girl, or you will suffer bodily injury

Hello, this is Sir. Happy New Year, you say? More like Crappy New Year… Why so dismal and dreary, so deplorably dark? Well…life is not the easiest to live when it consists of a series of endless photo-shoots. Yes…living with a paparazzo protégé has its hardships…

She Wants me to be an Irish Convert

First off…she picks out horrid outfits for me to wear, like I’m some kind of doll-like thing…I mean, look at this! The torment…and she has about 23,000 hats to put on my head. All to appease that dratted camera Eye clicking in my face, glazed over like that of a predator’s before the pounce…

When I look up, perhaps...she'll be gone??

Sometimes, I pretend to fall asleep and pray that when my eyes open again, she’ll have lost the camera….but I know it isn’t so, because I can hear the camera clicking incessantly the whole time I’m wishing in darkness

She exploits my tears for a photo...

Even when I start to cry, she doesn’t get the hint… “Why Sir, you’d make a perfect Scrooge with those sideburns!” (they were HER idea, by the way, so was this ridiculous coat, and all these blasted hats) She continues, “Aye, arg, you look like you’ve strolled right out of a Dickens novel!”

Maybe when I turn around, she won't be there anymore with that blasted camera....

“Brilliant!! You look just like a mobster, some horrid beast from ‘On the Waterfront’, ooo yes, work that gritty magic, fabulous! Woo work that aquiline nose, too perfect!” Is that supposed to be a compliment? Must gently remind her later she might not consider becoming a model-photographer…

I don't see how this makes a "grand" photo as you put it...

“There’s the calculating, gritty and arid city-slicker, oooo what a glare! Yes! You look just like a hit-man!” More flamboyant flatteries flow forth…

The Causeway

Sometimes, she finally stops shoving her beloved in my face to take a photo of something a bit more practical. I get some relief to brood.

Thank Goodness, she fell!

Sometimes, I can steal away whilst she’s busy falling into the river or something. Maybe even while she’s occasionally photographing something of interest…or something not so interesting…

No Peace...

Drat! The ambulating camera found me…”Oooo Sir, you have a Bogart look going there, I MUST capture it!” Another thing this camera-fanatic lacks whenever the “eye” is poised in hand, is decorum. See…car-fanatics or motorcycle enthusiasts or avid surfers still have a lot of time where they must be apart from their beloved darlings. They cannot tote their surf-boards, Corvettes, and Harley Davidsons everywhere they go- they can’t take them into the middle of the farmer’s market (hmm…some might try), to the theatre, or into a quaint little bistro or café for their dainty tea-time appointments. But the camera fanatic is different. She drags the thing everywhere with her like Linus and his blasted blue blanket. Her beloved is glued to her hands and poking in my face everywhere I turn…

I went in here to escape...with all these people, and she still found me with that blooming camera...

And the hats….Here our demonette was photographing so avidly that some nice lady came prancing up and giggled into my ear, “You must be quite beautiful to have so many photos taken of you! Haw haw!!” Her husband, a huge hulking guy in a fleece jumper, was beet red. Then the lady kissed the hat…I don’t know how she could stand it, darn things reek of cigar ash. Where does Babs find these blooming hats, anyway, and how did she accumulate SO MANY of them?! Meanwhile, Husband looks like he’s gearing up to beat my face so hard the darn hat will go sailing clear across the room…

The Panhandler?

When she’s not having me break up marriages, Babs also likes to “pose” me around downtown, to do a “noir” shoot… “Brilliant, brilliant Sir!” she chimes at me all the time, “You look suave, perfect, so smooth, so noir!” I know what she’s really made me look like…a panhandler…

You're not Fooling Me...I know who you've made me look like....some kind of goon in a checkered hat

Or this guy. She’s not fooling me…

Got Da Blues I Do

So, now a New Year is rolling in. I suspect 2013 is going to be filled with more and more of these “brilliant shoots” with Babs and her dratted pet camera…so, I’ll cry here in the blue light and think of days of old when she was only so high and gave me licked-dry doughnuts for a gift and thought it was funny to throw footballs in my face, call me a “bobo” and draw unflattering pictures of me- but did not OWN A BLASTED CAMERA! P.S. If any future prospective employers find these infamous photographs (that I know my tormentor will slap online with chop-slaking glee), the possibility of obtaining such job will become…toast…

A most content and deeply chuffed New Year to all, happy 2013 from a slightly disgruntled Sir and a wee smiling toad, Autumn Jade.

Cheers!

Recent Posts

  • “All the Bright Precious Things Fade So Fast…” Guest Hosting for #WQWWC
  • The Journey is a State of Mind: Guest Hosting for #WQWWC #5 New Beginnings
  • “No Terror in the Bang…”
  • Loch Ness Monster?
  • “An Atom in the Universe…”

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