the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop

Denise is the host.

Six are the number of sentences required.

(Note: Sometimes I’ll write a Six as a effort to duplicate a ‘style’ or rhetorical construct (or whatever the proper term is for, ‘How did the author do that?!’ This week, as I sifted through Sixlettes, one my favorite books, ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ by Ursula K Le Guin. reminded me why I loved the book.)

Prompt word:

ANGLE

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about this week, you’re looking rather pensive,” what remained of his white hair made the doctor’s grey goatee look like an exclamation point; the concern in the old man’s eyes took the threat out of everything, except his questions.

Looking uncertainly at his hands, the young man tried to decide if it would be better to respond to the doctor’s question or wait for more information to hedge his bet; the silence spread, like water on a basement floor fed by leaking pipes hidden among cobwebs and bad lighting.

“Yeah, the dream again,” the man glanced up at the office wall, the diplomas and awards looked like badly pressed flowers or Rorschach butterflies trapped under glass; the psychiatrist’s wire-rimmed glasses held a reflection of a man sitting in a leather chair like it was the ledge of a tall building.

“This time it started with hotel ballroom full of young people who didn’t want to be there, they had to guess a single word to win an award; then the next thing I know, I’m in an old-fashioned prison, where I was some old black guy and another prisoner was about to get himself in serious trouble with the head guard and I knew that all I had to do was prevent the young guy from saying a certain word, which, of course, I couldn’t remember.”

“I’m sorry, our time is almost up; I want you to put a note pad next to your bed, so next time, you can preserve as much detail as possible; this, in my opinion is the most productive angle of attack to solving the meaning of your dream.”

The young man looked at the beautiful woman, now standing behind her desk and smiled, as he felt the world reassert itself, for now.

*

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Six Sentence Story

Denise

Prompt:

BRIDGE

The boy and the man walked through the woods.

One darted, then paused long enough to establish a new trajectory, a novice explorer on a new world; the other moved as deliberately as an usher at either a wedding or a funeral.

His path drawn by the calculus of curiosity, the boy focused on seemingly random elements of the woods; handed a baton and pushed out in front of an orchestra, the old man sought a tempo balanced between the joy of discovery and fear of the unknown.

“Look, a bridge!” the boy’s voice rang out with the unselfconsciousness found most often in the very young and the very, very old, “but why is there a rock on top of the bridge?”

“It’s a reminder, the only thing Adam and Eve were allowed to take with them,” the man crouched carefully at the base of the bridge and traced his finger over three letters impressed in the concrete.

“The single stone represents the promise of hope, that no matter how wide the space between us, as long as we stand on solid ground, we can, someday, be together again.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Six Sentence Story.

This is hosted by Denise

This story better have six and only six sentences.

This is the prompt word:

CIRCLE

“…will be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by.”

The lyrics attached themselves to the Medulla Auditoria, or whatever lobe of the brain is responsible for subvocal sing-a-longs, remembering a loved one on the basis of less than a syllable and those almost-real voices reminding us Shakespeare was on the money about philosophy and dreams.

He had really no decent reason to feel depressed. A funereal for a relative of a friend, an hour spent in soaring edificae legitimizing the fear of extinction, emceed by an official of an organized religion that has bet the farm that their deity prefers sacramental vestments be brightly colored and soundly unisex in both cut and design.

Nothing elevates an ordinary day more effectively than news of death. Hearing, receiving or otherwise becoming aware of the end of life for someone we can put a face to, is the moral/ philosophical equivalent of those little red, square tabs in the middle of every GFI switch; it is as graphic a reminder of the temporary nature of life as a anvil in a wading pool.