Six Sentence Story | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [ a Café Six ]

November 18, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Occurring but once a week, Denise invites all to participate in the exercise and joy of prompt word story-writing.

It’s fun, exciting and deterministic.

This week’s prompt word:

ETERNAL

“Times up! Pencils down, close your test booklets,” the boy in the back-row desk closest-to-the-door watched, as twenty-five arms moved in unison, (twenty-six, he hastily amended, remembering that Ashley, (oh, wonderful Ashley-from-afar), was left-handed), and thought of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’.

The tall, thin man, noting that the other Proprietors had not yet arrived for the monthly board meeting, (‘Bored meeting,’ Tom‘s favorite bon mot when asked to prepare something to ease the tedium of minutes of the twelve-times-a-year gathering), addressed Húnga, “We humans, lacking the extraordinary sense you and your kind enjoy, are, perforce, compelled to invent novel beliefs to hold back the crushing weight of the eternal truth of Time”.

“That includes you, our most-likely-to-recede,” the words reached him a heartbeat before the teacher smiled for reasons of her own as nearly all the other members of the eighth-grade English literature class smiled for reasons not their own; cardboard applause followed as twenty-six textbooks breast-stroked into a stable, open position and the classroom acquired a golden-yellow hue courtesy of the old window shades and the fall semester sun.

“Consider: Time,” the manager continued, as the dog, laying on a quilt covering the dark-brown leather sofa in the Manager’s office, maintained a posture that demonstrated a level of non-judgmental attention available to men and women only until their first birthday.

“For next week’s book report we will read and discuss Madeleine L’Engle’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’,” an orchestra entirely made-up of conductors, blue Lindy pens kept time with the teacher’s voice; almost immediately she held up a single finger and the classroom of twenty-five students turned like a clockwork puppet show at the source of the only sound in the room, that of a No. 2 pencil on yellow paper, scraped smoothly like a güiro solo, the boy in the back-row desk, closest-to-the-door looked up and said, “What?”

Hearing the other Proprietors arrive in the café beyond his closed doors, the tall, thin man stood, “Well, as always, I’ve loved the time we spend together,” Húnga exposed his teeth in the winning smile of his species; as the two approached the office door, the man paused, “Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, I should invite all the Proprietors to join the GateKeeper and the Bar Tender on the Livestream this weekend“.*

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 17, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is (one of) the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Curated by Denise, attended by over ten thousand Readers and, on average, twenty-six contributing writers.

Prompt word:

ETERNAL

The day waited, with desiccated patience, for the man to accept that his eyes were open.

His surroundings, familiar in a way that reassured, even as anxiety gathered, was the expected empty bedroom; like a newspaper left in a car’s rear window for a week, his hope for an eternal and consistent sense-of-self was deprived of the certainty of contrast; ‘you’d never’ became ‘maybe’ and ‘not possible’, a new undefined section of an expanded map.

The man decided to try and get a cup of coffee, (or something), so, with the methodical confidence of the long-indentured, he first visualized the trip to the kitchen in the next room; upon standing he was buoyed by the fact that, other than the feeling he was wearing socks made of foam rubber, proceeded from the bed towards the door to the kitchen.

The apartment was cold, all the lights were on and the sun threw a harsh rectangle across the top of the gas-on-gas stove; on the rare evenings he wasn’t alone at home, he would point to the refrigerator immediately next to it as a perfect example of the cast-iron irony of an unimaginative landlord.

As the man repositioned himself in bed, instant coffee an undeniable, if not somewhat pyrrhic a victory over the enemy that his remaining friends tiredly whispered warnings, he heard the sound of running water coming from the closed-door bathroom.

As the door to the bathroom creaked open, the phone next to his bed rang.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

November 10, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is our weekly contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Our host, Denise, provides a prompt word each and every week and invites all and sundrie* to write a story, employing this word of six (and only six) sentences in length.

(Full Disclosure: there are times, with prompt words, when one is stuck with a specific use of the word, one manifestation, if you will. This can be especially bothersome when it is drawn from an established context of use, specifically from one of Shakespeare’s play. Hey, will if help if we used the word homage? Probably not. Since we don’t have the mad rhyme skills of Keith or Doug, we’re not gonna say, parody. For the record, we totally loved Ethan Hawk’s take on the title role in the movie version of Hamlet.)

The prompt word:

PLAY

“I’m telling you, Tom will be back, we just have to give him some space.”

The woman’s voice held the edge of a knife in a velvet sheath; the question an interested stranger, of which there were at least eighty-three on the public side of the double swinging kitchen doors, could be forgiven for asking was: which was more essential to her nature, the knife or the holder?

The Six Sentence Café & Bistro was midway through it’s first day as host to a professional organization, specifically the annual meeting of the Association of Costume Jewelry Designers and Manufacturers; where, during it’s normal hours of operation, was a sea of round tables filling the open floor space and a low stage against the far interior wall, now stood long tables in dark cloth, plexiglass display cases and LED highlighting of samples on display and, in place of the stage, tables with rows of chafing dishes and coffee urns, currently suffering the onslaught of hungry sales people and manufacturer reps.

“I’m just suggesting, M, since our contract with the Jeweler’s Association,” the Proprietor turned from the round windows in the swinging doors to face the woman in white, “left the menu to our discretion, having him back in chef’s whites would be good for you; not that anyone out there is turning up their noses at your menu, I freely admit to having my eye on your Maque choux,” the play of affection and worry rippled across the face of the tall, thin man.

“I should go out and check on the urns and the chaffing dishes, would hate to run out of coffee and food on the buffet tables.”

“Worry you not, I have grounds aplenty, and if you’re concerned about your coveted side-dish, the maize’s the thing; (with or without Tom), the jewelry show today will proclaim the affluence of the bling.”

* quite the history, this common phrase

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

November 4, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Denise is the host.

This week’s prompt word:

ENERGY

“It’s obvious you people have the organizational energy and requisite expertise, the only negative my auditors can find is in the make-up of your Board of Directors,” the fund manager glanced towards his entourage, silent preface to what he considered a most urbane witticism, “I understand they refer to themselves as the Proprietors?”

Expensively-tailored chuckles ensued, as the individual members of the appraisal team seized on the next thorny branch in their upwards climb to corporate heaven; the merriment faltered into silence as the tall, thin man turned towards the group with an expression that, in the realpolitik of finance and lending, made Mr. Potter, the banker in the movie, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, look like Saint Francis of Assisi.

As it happened, the tour of the interior of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro ended at the waitress station which permitted access behind the bar and, from there to the kitchen; scrambling like clowns out of a car suddenly dropped into a junkyard metal crusher, as the fund manager began to stutter that he was not making fun, rather that he was impressed with the level of sophisticated professionalism in everything he’d seen, he was interrupted by a dog’s bark and a woman’s voice.

Stepping through the double swinging doors and around to the outside edge of the bar, a woman and a dog stood in front of the group; without a word, the tall, thin man crouched in front of the dog and, ignoring the uncomfortable silence of the bankers, stuck out his tongue and did a passable imitation of a dog panting and inviting play.

Looking down at the dog and man, the woman smiled with obvious affection and, after a moment, said, “I believe you gentlemen,” a nodded acknowledgement towards the sole woman in the group, “have nothing we need.”

Looking back to the man and the dog on the floor between her and the bankers. she appeared to speak to the dog, “I trust you’ll forgive our species as some of it’s members mistake the meanness of sarcasm for clever humor and since we haven’t time for paper-training, they’ll be leaving now”; Húnga wagged his tail and the tall, thin man smiled.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 3, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Denise is the host.

This week’s prompt word:

ENERGY

“Good morning,” the cigarette-and-coffee contralto from the far-side of the previous night’s negotiation table, (pillows for easels, stacked with cardboard charts of future performance and twisted sheets as silent concurrence to a final meeting of the minds), contained a confident slur on the first word and an evocative lilt to the second.

“ok, I guess,” his inflection characteristically added a bi-furcation of the first colloquial, (that failed to hide surprise), and to the second, a mishmash of excitement, as the minutes of the night’s board meeting read themselves back; “I can’t imagine where you get the energy,” batting away the snort of repressed laughter from the girl, the young man persisted, “I mean, it’s not about how important we are to me, it’s just that I get tired thinking about even hoping to keep up.”

“You’re using the word ‘energy’ instead of ‘enthusiasm’ because we’ve all been brainwashed into seeing the world subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, therefore bound to run down; enthusiasm is our acceptance of our relationship to the world around us and not some stupid inventory list,” she brought home her point by retreating, almost unnoticeably, to the bank of pillows, now somehow arrayed against the wall.

“You remember last night,” the girl, feeling, despite the sheets and blankets somehow shrinking on the bed, that her point was not established, held up her hand and continued, “When you asked me to dance last night, the volume of the band was, to anyone not there on purpose, deafening; you didn’t try to shout the music down, you put your lips as close to my ear as you dared and asked.

And afterwards, when we sat in your car, the silence was like our own blanket tent,” rising from the bed, blankets as ceremonial robes avalanching down from her shoulders, the coed brought her presentation on energy versus enthusiasm to a close.

“What you call energy is really only a shout in the silence, when the fact is, most of us spend our lives in silence because we don’t allow ourselves to remember the collective sound that exists among people, like a loud band in a nightclub; life is about enthusiasm, about how we choose to relate ourselves to the world, not how loudly we can shout.”

so, as it happens, history is not only informative, it can be enhancing of our enjoyment of the contemporary. For example, this week’s music vid is not really so much about today’s post, but rather provides a pleasurable echo from the before time, back when we were a student to school. From 1971 (fill in your own contemporary cultural landmarks), when rap and hip was just beginning ).