And yes, I believe that . There s no other explanation for my stupidly good luck or the consistent little miracles which always make my heart lift a little bit in my chest as my hands fly to cover my face from either shock, delight or both. I m a girly-girl and a Christian one at that, so for me, this is a season for miracles.
True to my Orthodox roots (and like a certain Uncle and Auntie in Florida who used to wear buttons pointedly declaring this fact), I believe that Jesus is the reason for the season. If I do THAT, then I have to suspend cynicism, don t I?
7:15.
Metro. Red line to Glenmont. I hear the infamous, Doors closing!
as I m rushing down the escalator at Tenleytown, just as fast as my -colored mukluks could take me.
I skip the last three steps but it s too late. Six minutes to the next train.
That s not so bad it seems better than the Orange line, anyway. Six minutes pass, I board and after Cleveland Park, we pause for no apparent reason as the operator announces Stand by. I roll my eyes.
I just want to get home.
7:35. Dupont Circle metro.
I climb the obscenely long escalator, hang right and rush towards the other side of Connecticut Avenue, where and Kramerbooks is there s some commotion but this is Dupont Circle and weird crap happens all the time.
7:45 Two plain-clothes-clad police officers or detectives stop me outside of Ruth s Chris.
Miss, did you just walk up Connecticut Avenue?
There have been a series of muggings in the area the perp has a knife and is considered dangerous. Please look at this picture and tell us if you ve seen him.
I do.
That s okay. Take the flyer and be careful, he s here somewhere and armed. We just missed him.
He s pointing down the street, exactly where I just walked.
WHAT?
Yes, around 7:30, down by Kramerbooks.
Stay alert.
As I walk away, I hear the other officer say, I can t believe we just missed him.
My friend was violently mugged in the same area the next day (he s okay).
Considering the amount of time I spend running around D.C. AND the fact that it gets darker earlier, I feel lucky to have not suffered the same fate.
No, I don t think I m the beneficiary of the randomness of the universe. :) Mock it if you will, I don t mind.
This Friday, write 55 word short stories about the moments which leave you with flesh more suited for geese; whether you are a fan of the movies I commenced this post with or the X-Files (or hell both), find inspiration in the ethereal and the intangible.
Explore intuition or celluloid depictions of destiny (and frozen hot chocolate), and if none of those ideas move you, disregard me entirely and write about a subject you prefer just leave your in the comments below if you haven t posted a link to where we may find it.
Jai: As someone recently mentioned on the News tab, this blog is screaming for a Bad Sex in Fiction-themed 55Friday, like a man and woman simultaneously exploding in a 2000-gigaton thermonuclear detonation of desire and mutually-assured destruction, the mushroom cloud of their passion suffusing the bedroom like acid rain in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter. A N N A did respond to my suggestion with a Hell, yes!
Wait no longer, my pets (though allegedly, if you do it s that much better) the porntastic version of is here. Jai and Pooja? Membership has its privileges, because this DJ doesn t always take requests.
;) For those of you who are utterly confused as to what we three book-lovin pervs are going on about, Ennis wrote a post entitled about a dubious competition the Literary Review s which inspired the comments you see quoted above.
Now in its 14th year, the award is given to the passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel The judges said the award s mandate is to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it . [ ]Hopefully you still have enough stamina to mount an attempt at some 55age, though I know some of you must be exhausted from all of that passion expended over on the thread.
You may write total fiction, obscure some, ahem, non-fiction or use Mutineers or anyone else you please in your nanofiction. Come now, it can t take you all that long to recover. ;) After all a 55-word story is nothing but a quickie.
You ll be done (and so very satisfied) before you know it.
1) I m referring to IWYS part one; appositely enough, it had some of the most cringe-inducing lyrics ever and I m someone who had pictures of Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou up in my locker Freshman year, so you know if I m dissing it
2) This is a bit of a departure for our 55s I usually pick songs which I love, which meant something to me (and often, still do).
What, like you expected somthing else, after ?
:)
Due to one memorable class I took in 2003, I have spent the last few years growing more conscious of how we are surrounded by opportunities to be grateful. It s been such an eye-opening experience, to the point where I feel horrible about the past, because I know I was oblivious to so much goodness which I didn t acknowledge. I can t do anything about that, but I ve tried to incorporate gratitude in my daily life, because the truth is, the act of appreciating something or someone can be transformative and beyond that, it s just the right thing to do.
Around this time of year, it s even easier to say Thank you . :) After all, you get time off from work to do it! I m not sure if some of you partook in that ritual last night where you go around the table and state whatever you re thankful for, but if you did, I d love to hear what bullet points you offered to your family and the turkey carcass.
Perhaps you can , but because it s a holiday, I ll be just as appreciative if you haiku it. I m just grateful that you kids play along with my inconsistent of silliness and I m delighted that a few of you mentioned how you are thankful for 55s in the comment thread of my last post. It s nice to know you care.
:)
This week, our theme song is extra flexible, because I can t decide if I m referring to the Dido version of Thank You or Alanis Morissette s much-mocked take on the phrase. I know, the fact that the latter contains the phrase, Thank you, India might militate in favor of choosing THAT as our tune du jour, but then, if we invoked the Manish-Vij-anti-exotification clause ;)
So, write about flavor-free poultry, family, cranberry sauce, gratitude, popular female singers (one of whom was naked!) or whatever else you are loving right now.
While you do that, I have to go remind my Mom to make her while the berries are still available, because that exquisite hotness is ridiculously yummy. Unlike the rest of you foodies, I didn t stuff my strict-vegetarian face yesterday so I m still hungry. I could totally go for some chor, mor and pickle right now and you d best believe I d be thankful for how good rice, yogurt and an extra-spicy condiment always taste.
:D
, a certain whispered my way late last night, so I happily complied. Careening down Rock Creek Parkway, I thought I was already as blissed as I could possibly be, since I had a sticky car on a curvy road obeying my right hand s every whim. Then I realized that was sending me some David Bowie-flavored sweetness; I hadn t heard Blue Jean in at least a year, which is unfortunate, because it s one of my top three Bowie songs of all time.
Laughing out loud, I made the volume dial spin clockwise as I threw caution out the sunroof. My wrist chose sixth and my night was sublime.
I tend to name our nanofiction orgies after high school and Blue Jean can definitely take some credit for that feat.
No, seriously I don t have any other reason for choosing it. It s not like I m trying to indicate when it comes to college sports or anything. CoughGOBLUEcough.
Today, we re going to do something a little different with our . Yes, you have a theme, which you can mutilate as you see fit (blue, jeans, space oddities it s a very special Abhi-edition of the 55). You may also ignore it, if you have words within you that have nothing to do with the song which is still stuck in my head.
However, if you are not inclined to write an of a tale which is composed of exactly 55 words, I have another option for you.
I seek out and usually yenjoy a certain part of the Sunday Post s Style section; it s called LIFE IS SHORT | Autobiography as Haiku and it is wonderful. Like the Mutiny filing 55s under this particular category, WaPo stretches the word Haiku to accommodate more than a spare, three-line poem would; in this case, the submissions are 100 words or less.
Here s a brown example of one from last year, :
Post-Ivy League, post-investment bank, pre-grad school. I m comfortably nestled in the quarter life crisis void where every vodka and tonic chips away at my savings and the line, I m Raj, 26, and unemployed is met with muted smiles and calculation of my marital market value, determining if I can provide the BMW, basset hound and MTV-crib-style house by 2011. Being Sri Lankan, not dark enough to be black, not light enough to resemble European, leaves me in genetic No Man s Land with the ladies.
Love is blind, but not to income or skin pigment. I know. Normally, there is plucked fresh from my iTunes to grace that prominent, headlining area, but today, by very special request, your girl Friday is going to acknowledge one adorable-assed from a few weeks ago and sample it for this post.
This is the remix, etc etc
So I see a word I don t recognise. I go to dictionary.com to look it up.
I find out this word means: I suddenly discover a whole new meaning to my life, to insert this word into conversations whenever I can, because it is as curvacious a word as the thing it describes. I think this has taken over as my favorite word in the English language, which used to be Serendipity , followed closely by luminous and in third place lepidoptery . But now I know what callipygian means, I am in love with that word.
Please write a post featuring this word in the headline.[ ] And you thought I wouldn t remember silly sepiates. I m all about the love, especially when that s MY word you re crushing on (well, it s mine along with can t overlook that one).
Red Snapper s kind command has been playing on my mind for these past two weeks, as I considered what post would be um apposite for such curvaceous titling. Finally, I have decided to take the easy way out. ;)
This Friday, take a crack at , with just 55-words to flesh it out.
Take your inspiration from , or anyone else who s got love for the booty (HELL, YES!). Write nanofiction about , extra-memorable episodes, who innocent songs or how is going to be Sepia Mutiny s big contribution to the emerging 2nd gen cross-cultural lexicon (HA!
Take THAT Northies!). Or, write about something else which .
Just write something. And then post your astounding ass-terpiece in the comments below, so we can ogle it shamelessly, okay? Get crackin , .
Sepia Mutiny does not waste your time. [ ] It does on Fridays, . ;)
One of my best friends sent me a virtual pep talk at 5:15 pm; he had no possible way of knowing that from Winston Churchill to make his point were already on my mind.
Reading his GMissive on my august, meager screen while parked in traffic at M St + Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown reaffirmed my belief that nothing is accidental and that especially in my life, continental, oceanic and ironic plates clash together to create quaking moments which belong on celluloid. What are the odds? I get that email when I m already pondering the British Bulldog, while Black Dog by Led Zeppelin blares through every straining speaker of this red morsel of German perfection, which is mine for the evening?
G-d is one hell of a director; I dig all the synchronicity.
Currently, I m being haunted by the spectre of myself, as I reboot my entire life and go it alone, in every possible sense of the word. I desperately wish that I had just one pair of my venerable Docs with me in this cocoa city, to stomp through with alas, every set of bouncing soles lives with Moms, 3000 miles to the left.
Incidentally, that picture you see above was taken the day I met Sepia Wizard Paul for the very first time, in North Beach, for a day of molesting Harry Potter (that was me), being confused by elderly Asian people (both of us) and mais oui, espresso at Greco (that SHOULD be everyone). I m always a sentimental old bat, but I think tumult like this makes it even easier to conjure the past, as if to remind myself that this, too, shall pass, just like everything else has.
We haven t held a festival for in weeks, so this Sunday, write about your black dogs, your love of fog, your fear of being a cog.
Whatever floats your -smoking, black wet-n-wild nail polish-wearing, boat. If you re not too black and blue to do so, that is
Today is Friday and at the Mutiny, we write . Co-ink-i-dinkily, today is also August 18th and thus, a very special holiday.
It s !
Bad Poetry Day is a day to create some really bad verse. But, why you ask?Indeed, it does, especially if you ignore that part about sending it off to a teacher I mean really, who has the time?Perhaps, the answer is simply because you can . Maybe, it exists to allow us to better appreciate good poetry. Or, perhaps it is to be written to irritate someone the intention is to gather a group of old high school friends, and write some really bad poetry.
Then, send the poetry to your old high school teacher. Wow!, That sounds like a lot of fun [ ]
The last time the Mutiny did anything collaborative with poetry, and we invited you to submit ; since you enjoyed that so much, I thought I should encourage you to write more of those spare, elegant poems, especially if it means that people who normally don t 55 can participate in our creative corner of Sepiadom.
Many of you ask me either in person or via email, but how do you write one of those ? To which I generally and unhelpfully respond, You just do.
MS Word. Wordcount. Before you know it, you ve got 65 words and then you find yourself doing some careful pruning.
The reaction to this incoherent response is almost always further confusion or frustration. Well, it may seem daunting to tell an entire tale using less than five dozen words, but what about a three-line ? You could manage that, right?
It s a mere 17 syllables (arranged thusly: 5-7-5), you can so do it.
Annnnnd, I think I m done here. I have one of the most addictive hits EVER happily lodged in my head, you have TWO options to get busy in a thoughtful, literary way and we all have fantastic reading material to look forward to ?
Any mentions of
- snakes
- hairstyles which are all business in front, party in the back
- the power of the interweb (in both of those situations!)
- Samuel L. Jackson
Now get crackin , macacas.
I think this is I ve had to reach beyond my treasured, 120 Minutes -era musical fetish to find a tune which fits a Flash Fiction Friday. I blame Siddhartha, for , since it reopened that festering debate about how cringe-inducing cliches which brown writers seem to sweat (henna, silk, spices, MANGOES) make us all want to vomit curry.
Or something. I m not too broken up about this, though; if I had to use something other than excellent alternative music for our theme song, ain t no shame in my Nina Simone-soundtracked game.
It s the second time for something else, as well.
Today, I invite you to create 55-word stories which sound like they were taken from The Arranged Marriage of Crazy Curry-lovers in Marin or whatever disposable lit you care to mock mercilessly. The December 16th, 2005 nominally used a similar theme, though what I really asked for then was for you to borrow the voice of someone famous for us to later guess Sajit made for some tamarind-flavored 55age and you came through like champions. My favorite two from that edition are below.
Desire crowded his mind like pilgrims at Benares. Her silken lips, cinnamon eyes, lashes like Assam tea. Her breasts, twin Taj Mahals at sunset.
How exquisitely she played his shehnai. The taste of her mango lassi.
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