Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
The proper, as defined as the creators, Jenne and CE, name of this bloghop is ‘the Unicorn Challenge?
Appy-polly loggies for my abscence last week. Like a weight lifter trying to come out of retirement, I totally underestimated my capacity to deal with a special event at another bloghop, while still creating something for ‘the ‘corn’. I trust Jenne and ceayr will suffer my insufficiency and permit me to again participate in their marvelous 250-word-limit photo prompt event.
Prompt photo:
I stop at the end of the dock and try to remember my path in reverse.
Closing my eyes doesn’t help. The pre-dawn silence screams of disassociated context. A footstep on broken shells, like china cups grinding in a wool blanket; the thud of a car door, rock-skipped over the water, its origin the far side of the anchorage.
I don’t belong. As soon as the first suburban mariner arrives, weighed down with sunscreen, bottled spring water and a family he never dreamed of, I will be trapped here.
Forever out of place, quarantined in time.
Had I only not, in a moment of denial, like Adam insisting the dietary Warning was just a hungry man’s dream, stepped off the boat and onto the dock. Angry and resentful after tying up in port after too-long-a-trip with too-small a catch, I put my foot on the rail and the body followed.
My anger shouted to the midnight port: no more nights in a foc’sle reeking of exhausted men and worn-out dreams, no more working the deck that, like a runaway spouse, offered only unpredictable days and boring nights. What could be worse?
Where I was now, a place clean and reeking of privilege, as alien in form as it is in time.
My vessel, my home, the wooden Eastern rig FV Christine Denise, is nowhere to be seen in a harbor where she would have been as out of place as child’s wish in the treasury of the Vatican.
About clarkscottroger
Your apology for absence is accepted, Clark, not only because of your craven whimpering intro, but also for the excellence of your contribution.
‘a car door, rock-skipped over the water…’
‘Adam insisting the dietary Warning was just a hungry man’s dream…’
Superb, auld yin!
thankee Meester Year!
Your ‘hop is fun. Like, back when we all played in bands, the higher word limit encourages longer (but still brief) solos
Thanks, Clark.
We feel that 250 words leaves room for some creativity while still imposing some (often necessary) discipline.
Pleased to see it working so well for you.
Is th he another view on the cursed Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Or just a lone s as pilot, too long at sea and in sore need of a shower? Haunting tale, eithercwsy it goes.😉
just a conflict in lifepath… or a study in contrast… while the boats in the photo did not smell like a working fishing boat, if one were stuck in bad weather, the old wood boat would be my only choice
Your last line seals the alien feeling.
…in world there will always be a fringe, where the light is not direct and the line-of-sight circuitous
‘as out of place as child’s wish in the treasury of the Vatican’. A chilling gem. Great work, clark.
thx, man
He clearly felt an estrangement from everything around him. Sad.
or, simply, a state of being (one) way of relating oneself to the world around them and the people who make it up
:)
Chillingly good!
(Apologies accepted, Clark, especially since I need to add my own for not reading your story earlier – big problems with my internet connection, I hope now fixed. Unicorns can do anything, it just takes time!)
‘Forever out of place, quarantined in time.’
Wonderful line, centrally placed with superb illustrations balancing either side of it.
Such a good story, definitely worth a ‘Damn!’
Thanks, Jenne
Chilling concept, the disconnection with the internet, no? “Clark? No, I’m sorry clark can’t come out to play, he’s fallen into a virtual coma… please remain on the line*
*true what they say about fiction writing, it’s not about ideas, it’s about execution… totally had a flash of a story idea, being cut off from the internet… better yet, finding out that no one in your life knows what the blogosphere is and can’t help you get back to it