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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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

This is our weekly submission to the Six Sentence Story.

Denise is the hostinae of the bloghop.

Hey Sixarians. If you’re starting to think, ‘I could swear I’ve seen this urban nightspot in another Six’, you are not mistaken. There’s been developing, among some of the contributors to these pages, a certain virtual locus, a gathering place, if you will, where ideas are exchanged and whimsy is always on the menu. It’s becoming a place where a body can go to watch what happens when characters, avatars and ego projections are allowed to relax and hang out with each other. If you think it might be fun to visit this ‘place’, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can’t get you on the guest list. ya know?

ed note. A Tale of Two Sixes, a study on the influence of music on the emotional tenor of a story. The following story is but a single side of a narrative coin. Chance and time, conspiring to express themselves, in defiance of the instability of reality’s narrow edge. A moment of temporary resolution. (btw the alternate mood music? Hot Chelle Rae’s ‘Tonight Tonight’)

…damn!

The prompt word is:

MUNDANE

“Dude, what are my chances of, you know, getting a job here?”

Four hours, alternating between being entranced by the night’s musical act and practicing his thousand-yard stare, left the college sophomore exhausted; his original confidence replaced by a dogged determination not to stop the emotional CPR he’d been self-administering since the band left the stage and the too-bright ceiling lights chased the customers out of the club, onto the 3 am-dark streets of the city.

By a process he uncharacteristically did not give a second thought, he identified the seven people who yielded power at the Six Sentence Café & Bistro: a tall, thin man who moved with an absent-minded grace; a woman with an intensity that ebbed and flowed in response to who she interacted with; a woman who sat at the bar throughout the night like a sentry, exuding a kindliness all the more in contrast to the mundane avarice of nearly all the customers; the bartender appeared to be possessed of a multiple personality, flaring with good will to some and scorching the air when a customer mistook himself for the image he saw in the bar mirror; a glimpse of a man at once the center or a group of models and actors, transitioning to deep conversation with the intense woman, fanning her aura like a amphetamine’d Boy Scout on his first jamboree and, the penultimate person of authority, more a presence than a person, sat seemingly alone yet clearly interacting with the world around her.

The last person, among the people the young man found himself thinking of as, ‘the Proprietors’, and the only one he directly addressed, defied all attempts to categorize: the bearded man seemed to shed definition as rapidly as they could be applied, one moment he was an hourly waiter-cum-mop, moving among the inebriati like a good-natured shark, the next moment he’d shoulder-walk the drunken Lothario to the door, the incongruity of the Patek Philippe on his wrist lost on all, except the woman behind the bar smiling in gratitude, and without any perceivable transition, sat down with the band during their break, their faces reflecting a respect and appreciation.

“Listen, you got the attitude, but there’s no way I’m gonna let you through that door.”

The ‘door’ in question was at the end of a short corridor to the left of the bar, and the determined student, carrying an overloaded tray of empty glasses, his impromptu resume, came to a halt, as the man in his way was now in full-on bouncer mode, “Bad ju ju, my man; maybe someday, but,” the Proprietor glanced, for a brief second past the would-be employee, to the far side of the club, nodded and smiled, “But not tonight”.

 

 

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clarkscottroger About clarkscottroger
Well, what exactly do you want to know? Whether I am a clark or a scott or roger? If you have to ask, then you need to keep reading the Posts for two reasons: a)to get a clear enough understanding to be able to make the determination of which type I am and 2) to realize that by definition I am all three.* *which is true for you as well, all three...but mostly one

Comments

  1. Chris Hall says:

    You’ve got the Seven nailed, Clark, and – quite in character, I think – I’m going to pick up that movie poster and pin it to the wall, murmuring, ‘I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers’.

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Thank you Chris.
      (The process of finding the ‘proper’ image is nearly as interesting as the music. This one was purely a case of an unstated potential overtone… not sure what that’s supposed to mean* but I kept coming back to it.)

      *you’d think I’ve figured it out by now lol

  2. Spira says:

    What can I say…what?
    I’m just gonna enjoy my drink and fill the place with cigar smoke…if I may D ?

  3. Frank Hubeny says:

    I like the bouncer at the end and the links to those who made it through the door.

  4. “moving among the inebriati like a good-natured shark”

    Oh, Clark you are in fine form here! Love the descriptions and the setting can’t be beat!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Why thank you, Miz Avry
      A fun ‘place’ and the company here is surely 21st C Algonquin Round Table*

      *way before my time, especially before the time of my acquiring this writing jones, but the imagery is fun. and if there’s one thing about the virtual world, it’s creative imagery shared and exchanged

  5. jenne49 says:

    And yet the woman sitting seemingly alone senses that the young sophomore is inextricably linked to the group and that without him its very existence – and here she glances down at the book lying open on her table – its very existence, its meaning and purpose will be in question. She smiles over at him and raises her glass in salute.

    • jenne49 says:

      I meant to say, before I got carried away by the cafe atmosphere, that it’s a fine six that really sets the scene for this SSC&B and its characters.

      • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

        oh man, I’m liking the place more with each Six I read and every comment exchange, especially among ‘the Proprietors’

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      [nod]
      {pressed-lip smile}*

      * a primary identifying mannerism of my people

  6. Zelda Winter says:

    This is my Fave pick: “his original confidence replaced by a dogged determination not to stop the emotional CPR he’d been self-administering”. Emotional CPR–Wowza!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      lol thank you Zelda (that) was a fun one when it ‘showed up’ on the screen of my computer.

  7. Your descriptions flow like water over the rocks, sometimes soft, sometimes with an intensity to slam you out of your raft.

  8. phyllis0711 says:

    nothing mundane about this six.
    Thank you for the trip.

  9. Very cool place the Six Sentence Café & Bistro, Clark. Thank you for a most enjoyable “night in the life of”.
    (You’ll have to excuse me now. Dawn’s on the horizon; still lots to do before I head out – end of night stuff, ya know?)

  10. Stella showing, clark.

  11. Woop-woop Clark! I got some serious walk-on catching up to do now… from small acorns, ay? From The WD to InSPIRAtion to GirlieontheEdge… I like how this thing is grooving!
    You pretty much made the individual posters of the ‘seven’ for their debut film… to go out and about on billboards and in the pages of magazines… great job!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      ain’t it fun?!
      thanks, Ford… (don’t tell anyone, but the thing I get the biggest kick out of is that sense of ‘no reason, on paper at any rate, for any of this to work’

      not only does it, but it’s fun
      (totally seals, for me, the musical improvisation/open mic night metaphor that we started using back whenever that was…)

  12. ceayr says:

    Hmm…
    Seems I’m reading these out of sequence!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Sequence? Sequence?!?! We don’t need no steekin sequence…
      lol

      hey! C. don’t laugh… at it’s current rate of evolvement*, the Six Sentence Cafe and Bistro will be totally achronologic before summer… (which if you like time travel movies, as I suspect you do, you owe it to yourself to see ‘Predestination’ (with Ethan Hawke) simply the best time travel moves ever.

      “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1949)
      https://youtu.be/VqomZQMZQCQ

      * not a ‘real’ word

Trackbacks

  1. […] Six Sentence Stories  (the prompt word for this week is MUNDANE) – As a continuation of the Wakefield Doctrine‘s submission – whatever is that we are drinking/smoking at The Six Sentence Café & […]

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  3. […] Thursday or heck, just for holidays. Doesn’t matter. Time is irrelevant. Not here, not at the Six Sentence Café and Bistro. The invitation stands. You are cordially invited to join us this week and write 6 and precisely 6 […]