injaynesworld "Today Is All There Is..."

I bloom for one day and then I’m gone.   For only one short day am I to feel the sun upon my face.  Imagine…

Look at how beautiful I was created.   See all that I offer up so freely to the world.   For hummingbirds, bees and tiny insects I provide nourishment and a place to land and rest, while for others who happen by it is their soul that is nourished just by the sight of me. 

Yet, for many, my appearance and passing matter not, so busy are their minds fretting over things that may never happen, creating conflicts that don’t exist, and living in a virtual world while missing so many miracles of their own.

I wonder if they would spend their lifetime any differently if they knew it was as finite as mine.

This beauty blooms in my garden once a year in July.  I’ve been fortunate to witness it for the two years that I have lived here.    

injaynesworld it's "The Writer..."

The lace curtain rose and fell like a single wing upon the gentle morning breeze as she sat at her desk looking out on the serene little valley still shrouded in clouds.  A gentle rain had come in the  night, “Camelot” rain she called it, and the earth, parched from an assault of intense summer heat, seemed to exhale with relief.

It was unusually quiet, as if time had simply stopped in place, waiting for humanity to cease its endless disharmony, withholding that which we all seek more of until we learn to appreciate that which we have. 

She wished for more faith in mankind, but the years had taught her that knowledge and wisdom were not the same, and that age could just as easily further ignorance as bring enlightenment. 

As patches of clear blue began to weave their way through the dense gray cover, her hands moved across the keyboard, “A mind clouded in fear will reject everything unlike itself.”

From the Five Sentence Fiction prompt “Wisdom.”

injaynesworld "Bang! Bang! You're Dead..."

I’ve lived by myself for most of my life and am well aware of all the news stories of violent crime against women.  I have even had friends who were raped in their own bedrooms by intruders in the night.   Yet, I have never once had the desire to own a gun; just the opposite, in fact.   You see, I fear that the temptation to use it would be too great.   

While I’m a pretty mellow person now, there were years in my life when the needle on my mood meter wavered somewhere between highly-irritated and righteously pissed off, and shooting someone – anyone – would have felt damn good.   So, maybe I couldn’t shoot the head of the network who had put the kibosh on my latest script, but I could damn well shoot the motherfucker who just cut me off and took the parking space I’d been eyeing.

 

Even today, I wouldn’t trust myself to be carrying.   Say someone approaches me with a gun and demands my handbag.  Like hell I’m handing over my Spring 2013 Michael Kors, so I pull out my gun.  Now the guy who really only wanted my stuff has no choice but to shoot my stupid ass and, in all likelihood, he’s going to get his shot off before I do.   

And I consider myself to be above average on the national intelligence scoreboard – a low bar, I know, but still… 

I don’t believe that every single citizen is mature, reasonable, or medicated enough to exercise their “right to bear arms,” those of us with impulse issues, for example.  Or that more guns on our streets make anyone any safer.   I don’t want to go into a bar for a drink where everyone’s packing heat.   Drunks do not have great judgment.  

Though I absolutely believe in self-defense, I’m real iffy about how that applies if you are the one who started the confrontation in the first place.   In the State of Florida, you can stalk a kid walking in your neighborhood whose looks you don’t like, get out of your car and confront him, and then when a fight ensues claim you felt “threatened,” shoot to death the kid that you picked the fight with and no foul.

In auto accident law, there is such a thing as “contributory negligence,” whereby you can be held partially responsible in some scenarios, even when you’re the one on the receiving end of a crash.  In the above scenario – oh, why be coy?  In the Zimmerman case, this would likely translate to manslaughter which, in my humble opinion, would have been a reasonable verdict.  But in America, it would seem that we value our cars more than we value human life.  Unless, of course, that life is still in the womb, and then it’s sacred. 

We’ll never know why Trayvon Martin was walking through that upscale community at that time of night, looking at houses he would never be invited into, because he was dead by the time the police arrived to ask.

I don’t mean to make light of any of the recent events in Florida.   What has occurred there is not only a tragedy for those involved, but the Pandora’s Box that’s been opened can only lead to more of such cases.   While the “Stand Your Ground” law was not technically used in the court case, it would be hard to believe that its influence didn’t emboldened Zimmerman in his actions.   This law is so subjective that it puts more people at risk than it protects and has created a prosecutorial nightmare.   So please.  Do not allow me to have a gun.  I may decide that I “feel threatened” by you, blow you away and who is going to prove otherwise?

Oh, and I’d avoid doing my Christmas shopping on “Black Friday” in the hanging-chad state if I were you.

injaynesworld it's "The Nature of Flight..."

Likely to change her mind as quickly as a hummingbird changes course, Simone was not someone one could depend on to complete a task, and so it was with considerable surprise when she announced to the congregation that she wished to be in charge of this year’s Christmas pageant and with even more trepidation that the congregates, ever mindful that the Lord works in strange ways, allowed her to do so.

Given her reputation with the gentlemen of the county, Simone’s decision to cast herself as the Virgin Mother raised more than a few eyebrows, but holding strong to their belief in the power of redemption, they also held their tongues.

The day of the pageant arrived with a flurry of newly fallen snow, and the small country church, alight with candles and scented with fresh pine from handmade wreathes carefully placed at the ends of each pew, had never looked more beautiful.

The music swelled, the actors took their places and, to no one’s surprise, Simone, true to her nature, had flown the coup, leaving poor Pastor Fred to fill in at the last minute as the Virgin Mother. 

Everyone agreed; it was the best pageant they’d ever had.   

This post from the Five Sentence Fiction prompt, “Flight.”

injaynesworld "Hell Is Other People..."

I’m spoiled and I know it.  I live in a place where I don’t have to see another person unless I choose to.   Even when I do leave my home, the number of people I encounter at any given time is always manageable.  Because we are a small community, we are unfailingly polite to each other.  I’ve sat at a four-way stop sign with cars at each corner for up to several minutes while the drivers repeatedly gesture to each other:  “After you.”

“No.  After you.”

“I’m sure you were here first.”

“It’s okay.  You go ahead.”

“You’re very kind, but I just wouldn’t feel right about it.  Please.  You go.”

“Well, if you’re certain.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Have a lovely day.”

“No.  You have a lovely day.”

It’s just the way we roll here.   Space is abundant and no one is in any particular hurry.   

Each year on the Fourth of July the Rotary Club sponsors a fireworks display in a field beside the Catholic mission for the locals.  On this occasion, I come down off my mountain top and, along with a friend, venture into town to a small, normally sparsely-filled parking lot where we have scoped out the perfect place from which to view the festivities.   We get there early, set out our lawn chairs in front of the organic food store and open a nice bottle of Pinot, as is our tradition.  It’s all very laid back.

This year that was not the case.   This year this was the case. 

And this:

We could not figure out who all these people were, where they had come from or how they had discovered our place.  And nobody was polite.    When space is limited, people will fight each other for it like hungry rats over a mold-covered crust of bread.   Some woman persisted in coughing on me for an entire hour.   Not the polite, mouth-covered cough either, but a phlegm-filled hack that, upon returning home, had me checking to see if all my inoculations were up to date.

I realized something last night.  Much like Jean-Paul Sartre, originator of the title of this post, I like people.  I truly do.  It’s humanity I can’t stand.