seanessay.com more free fall writing, to free up one’s mind
They say people visit travel agencies in January, resolved to travel.
Prompt- take a hike
Sometimes I think I could go for a hike, but then I never do. I have a reliable car but… part of my situation is guilt about things I could be doing right here in town, and part is that I truly like towns.
Watch me on a road trip, and do I pull off to hike a trail? No, I pull into a wee town to hike the boardwalk and look for the local bookstore, preferable a second hand store with cool treasures.
Watch me go the British Isles. Not the Outer Hebrides. Not the fens and pastures green. Not the shrouded hills. No, you will find me under the neon lights. I am not going to spend my hard earned jet air fare to go look at a tree.
I will always go to Trafalgar Square. Not to hike the big square, although I do, but to hike through the national gallery, and the portrait gallery. And the local cool shops. Not to buy kitsch from China, but the second hand stuff. I now own a penny from when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four, and big Queen Victoria penny from when Wells wrote War of the Worlds, in 1898.
OK, for that Martian trip I hiked a little, simply because the narrator did. So I hiked along a canal no longer smothered in Red Weed, and I walked off the tourist map up to the highest point, where the hero could survey the gash in Saint Paul’s cathedral. Where he had looked at a still Martian fighting machine. I had promised myself as a boy that I would go to that hill in that park, and now I have. Far more satisfying than looking at some soil bare highland meadow.
Oh, and I hiked all back and forth through the huge park and common where Wells lived. I was imagining Rupert Bear and his friends doing the playing in the common thing, flying heir kites. Besides, I wanted to find the sandpit where the first Martian cylinder landed. And I did. In case you are wondering: Yes, on their crowded little island the English have big parks with big trees. And horse trails. And orange cinder trails for biking. Better than hiking, some cyclists say.
Did I exercise, you ask? Sure, too cheap to use a taxi or bus—OK, I did one token double decker bus— but the rest of the time I walked. Between the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert museum.
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Here’s traveling in time and space
Prompt-
everyone was wearing hats that day because, of course, this was the good old days, when women dressed decently. In those days the sterner folks, like my feared father, wouldn’t even let my sisters come to kitchen table bare headed, not even if only family were present.
But so much has changed. Nowadays, with no more restrictions on births—Father would say folks are reproducing like animals: Why don’t they just have a litter, and have them all at once—and mother would be scandalized, and since words always failed her at such times, go ‘shush-shush.’
Now the kids joke—they joke!—about getting married just because they were caught being alone with a member of the opposite sex… playing Space Invaders.
It was better when I was young. I remember everyone gathered, all wearing hats, festive hats were allowed because we wanted a good send off for Nick and Steve and Elmo because they were going off to be missionaries to Mars. Who would have guessed the Martians would take to religion? And who would have guessed they would out-do us economically?
Stevey and Nick have gone to their heavenly reward but Elmo is still on Earth. That is, between his cruises on a Martian ship with Martian furniture, playing made-on-Mars games like Space Invaders and Farmer Brown. Using Martian money to buy clothes in the latest Martian fashion. Strange: It was after we converted the Martians, not before, that they started to stop wearing hats. Father said they were too busy chasing money to remember to put on their hats. But there you are.
Strange. Now we all wear hats only for funerals.
I wonder what the Lord would say? After my funeral I will ask him. I wonder what my father will say?
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Or you can travel into the Twilight Zone
Prompt-the circle has been broken
I was having whisky in the evening with my mum. She was steadily increasing the ratio of whisky to water in her glass, ever since she started drinking with Auntie Flora. “It’s going to be a stormy evening,” Mum said. “I can just tell.”
“Well, there was a red sky this morning,” I said. “I wonder if Auntie Flora is going to have to drive home in a blinding rain? “
“Maybe not rain.” Mum sipped more whiskey “but storm winds for sure…. At least Flora works indoors… Too bad she has to work evenings.”
I shuddered. “Too bad anyone has to work there.” Why would anyone tamper with the paranormal?
Mum said, “Flora stays in the front office, but she hears the sounds. She said it’s like a banshee wailing. She said they say not to worry, because they have a pentagram and a mystic chalk circle to keep it penned in.”
I gulped whiskey. “Well, I wouldn’t work there,” and I gulped again.
The phone rang. Mum went to answer. She reappeared around the corner, the handset on a black curly cord. Mum looked more scared than I had ever seen her in my life.
“What is it”
“It’s Flora—” into the handset: “Come right home!”
To me: “Flora said—‘the circle’s been broken.’” And then mom stared into the handset, for it had gone dead…
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Sean Crawford
Warping into a new year
Where no one has gone before
December30, 2022
