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a response video to Writers Challenge Week 3. Photo Prose - the last photo was the inspiration for my story. I chose to use original photos so while I think they go with the story well enough they are more suggestive than literal. This is the first vid I've made with my new software so hopefully you'll enjoy the story enough to ignore the shoddy editing :-)

The dead speak...

Security Mirage.Trying to express concern for our lives.

The title tells it all. Well not quite. I've also left the circumstances undefined to see what you might imagine they are. Please post your guess in the comments section.

I don't want to live the rest of what time I have left waiting for death, I want them to be lived enjoying life to its absolute end. So my protest isn't in 'prose', it's in the character of two artists I have loved since I was a VERY tiny child....Walt Disney, and Dr. Seuss! A week ago I visited a favorite coffee shop for a latte. The shop continues to adorn its walls with local artists featuring elementary, high school, college and professional artists. Last week one wall was devoted to a number of senior citizen writers. I began to read the submissions and was dismayed, not because the authors were unable to write, but because both the subject AND the style were fairly typical of folks in the middle and latter years of life..... meandering, tangled, jumbled and pondering prose based on regrets, dark memories and grief for lost youth. Mostly you get lost after the first line which strings together, like pop-beads, snapshot thoughts. There is a time in life when all of us suddenly face the fact of our mortality. Sometimes that smack in the face begins at age 16, but for others it doesn't register until many years later. I had a friend who used to ambush me daily with long winded passages that somehow lifted my friend's spirit with grandeous ideas of unique wisdom, of credibility. The difficulty I have is that it's almost as though each of these individuals feels smugly secure in an establishing 'waiting years', years that are filled with living in the past as if they sit silently in a doctor's office waiting room while the clock ticks away for their turn (or end) to finally be called.

This piece of prose is something I wrote a few months ago. It is based partly on a dream and partly on real events. It is dedicated to someone I care very much about. This is the first piece of personal writing I have made any effort to do anything with. I have written and presented several sermons for our fellowship but nothing of my own personal writing has seen the light of day since 1970. The reason for this is that, way back in Grade 7 at York Street Public School here in Ottawa, our teacher, the rather inappropriately-named Mr. Joly (he was an asshole and someone I would happily kick hard and repeatedly in the knackers, given the chance) set an assignment. At the beginning of the school year, we were told to write a novelette. It had to be in by the end of November. For two solid months, I wrote a story which, according to my mother, then an English teacher, described as "excellent" and "better than some college-level writing" she had read. It was about a boy who, during WWII was sent to live with his aunt and uncle near Stonehenge. It transpires that he is mysteriously transported back to the time of the Druids and has an exciting adventure. Given that this was before the advent of computers or even "white-out" correction fluid, my double-spaced novelette was neat and without a single crossed out word. As this was also before the photocopier was in general public use, I was forced to hand in my only copy. At the end of the year, when we still had not received our stories back, I asked Mr. Joly when we were going to be handed them back. "Oh!" said Mr. Joly, "Didn't I tell you? Someone broke ito my house and stole them!" I was shocked, needless to say. As my friend Carol had been in his class the year before I called her and said "Guess what happened to Mr. Joly! Someone broke into his house and stole our novelettes!" "Gee," said Carol, "Isn't that interesting? Someone did the same thing last year!" I'm not sure what the reason for his deception was, whether just for the sake of being an asshole or because he was gleaning our writing for ideas. Given the general calibre of Grade 7 papers ("And then I woke up and discovered that it was all a dream!"), I doubt it to be the latter. The upshot for me, a shy child with extremely low self-esteem, was that this traumatic event made me question the point of ever really bothering with things I enjoyed.... What would the point be when no one else valued what you spent time creating? However, I have decided it is time to start doing something with the things I have hanging about in my brain and put them down on paper or something....

This prose piece was written years ago, but the video was created as a response to Samsarajade's "Poetry Evening!" Thanks also to Tahllulah who got me looking through my old writing folder.

Ken (30andout) made a video reply to Lem that I just didn't agree with. So here is my version of what Lem's beautiful music made me imagine.

THIS ULTRAVIOLENT PIECE. ROBERT WILSON GUITAR PLAYER FOR A BAND I KNEW CALLED BODY BAG SLAM WROTE THIS BIT OF PROSE, THAT I DID AS A SPOKEN WORD PIECE BACK IN THE DAY. THE VISUAL IS ME NOW , BUT USING THE ORIGINAL AUDIO RECORDING FROM '93.

Writing Challenge: "Photo Prose" What I'm going to suggest for this week is writing a short piece, fiction or nonfiction, using a photograph as your inspiration. It can be one of the photos provided in this video, a photo of your own or a photo from some other source. You can make up a story, describe the photo, write about the memories or thoughts the photo evokes in you, whatever you like. Start with a photo and go where it takes you. You don't have to display your photograph if you'd rather not or if you're submitting your piece in a comment (though it is fun to see the photo at some point). If you use one of the photos in the video, you can refer to it using the reference number in the bottom left-hand corner. Good luck and have fun.