A Comfy Kind Of Restless

Hey 🙂

Here is the last instalment!

[If you need a link to one, two, three and four…you’ve got ‘em 😉 ]

These are the nine words Random Word Generator came up with for me to use today:

Scrape   Salmon   Child   Marketing   Enemy   Rifle   Tidy   Seize   Observation  

He’s been shouting at me for a long time.  At least, he thinks it’s directed at me.  I’m waiting for his breakthrough.

Standing in this kitchen, my hands morphing into hers as I scrape the brown meat from the salmon, I have the clarity of a child.  His hurt is coming off him in waves.  It could engulf me, so I am keeping up the walls.

My internal monologue is changing.  I am starting to realise that this long 18 months of writing/discovery/marketing/being sought out has made us rail against each other as one does against a foe.

But he is not my enemy.

I saw his copy in the same bag.  He was using her photo as a bookmark.  There were passages highlighted from every chapter.  I almost felt proud…

The rifle was bulky, but he still had room for my book.  He hadn’t brought a change of clothes.

“Why did you take it?!”  he wails.

My tiny, tidy, living room whirls into view as he spins me round.  The knife skitters along the worktop.  I feel lucky he didn’t seem to notice that, as his large hands seize mine.

One thing most of my positive reviews pick out is my keen observation skills.  I feel as though I have not studied his face properly in a very long time.  I can see the panic in his eyes now that his last resort is gone.  I can feel his thundering pulse through the pads of his fingers.

I suddenly know what I must do.

“Dad, I love you” I say.

I hold his head in my lap as he cries.  This cottage can shelter us both for a while.

I’ll have all my family at my fireside tonight.

I hope that you find this ‘ending’ satisfactory and you have liked where I went with this prompt picture and the generator that Sandy asked for me to use.  I’ve enjoyed wrapping my head around the inspirations, and I will be starting a new story (for a lovely new reader, Helen) on Monday…using Jimpix again!!:)

Catch you then…

(see my Facebook’s ‘sticky post’ challenge for details if you want to bagsy a week inspired by a picture and generator you chose)

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi!

We are on the penultimate post for this story already!  The picture from here is the one that Sandy (one of my regular readers on Facebook) asked me to use as inspiration for this week, and I again utilised her specified generator to decide what direction this part of the narrative would take. 

(Here are parts one, two and three if you missed any)

These were the words for today:

From Random Word Generator

And this is how I used them in my 20 minute writing session…

Rider   Fair   Distortion   Complete   Pursuit   Represent   Glimpse   Publication   Owner

I shudder when motorbikes pass by.  If the rider looks at me I hold my breath and wonder if they notice.  I always imagine guns and shattered bones and blood.  I see my once-fair hair soaked in scarlet, my life ending, illuminated by blue lights.  I know I shouldn’t give the universe such visual prompts, but I can’t help it.

I have my Father’s hair.  It doesn’t suit my dark eyes, but I live with the distortion.  The rest of me is Mother.  I am standing trying to make out what she saw in this complete fool of a man, and his pursuit of material gain.  Maybe she found his confidence refreshing? 

He doesn’t defer to any higher power, he’s all about the now: this moment, how he can squeeze it to produce the ultimate gain.  I can’t remember if he’s always been like this?  I know he was forever working late and that they rowed.  But I don’t quite understand how he came to represent the opposite to all I feel to be real in this world.

I idolised him once, my Mother said.  There are photos in the cottage of me sitting on his shoulders, but I feel that they are other souls.  I catch no glimpse of him today, that man with the adoring eyes and gentle hands.  Where did all our vulnerability go?

I think it left with mother…

Back at Lake Heaven I can forget he exists.  There I feel like Mother is in every leaf and stone.  She caresses my cheek by the water, and guides my hand while I write; whispering wisdom through the wood-smoke and always visiting in peaceful dreams.

The publication of my experiences did not mean I became the assured owner of them.  Instead it felt like sacrilege: an alchemist exposed.

How will this end?!  Come and see what the generator spits out for me tomorrow, and I’ll try and fashion something fitting 😉

(see my Facebook’s ‘sticky post’ challenge if you want to bagsy a week inspired by a picture and generator you chose)

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hiya!

We’re on part three, here are parts one and two if you need them 😉

Today’s selection had a food connection again!  I’ll have to stop munching snacks at my laptop…

From Random Word Generator

Frank  Detector  Movie  Ignorance  Calorie  Dish  Faithful  Intelligence   Book

“I have always been a frank detector of bulls**t, as you know” he says.  “When someone offers us a movie deal, but then is cagy about the money question, I know they are hoping to rely on my ignorance.  But you and I know, baby: I’m not in any way naive! I’ve been in this game far too long to have the wool-pull done to me!”

I cringe at this swiss-cheese statement.  The old me would have added to the ironies, but I keep quiet and try not to openly scan for exits.

Every calorie I forced down seems to be rising in my throat again, waiting to dish revenge on the tablecloth.   I long to flee this place, with its glowing screens and complicated days; circular talk and meaningless adulation.

Why did I promise to be faithful to this madness?  Where was the intelligence in ripping myself away from the place my creativity thrives, and returning to the turmoil that broke me?

I did not write a book to become a commodity for a spiritually starved population.  I wrote to free my own soul, dance in my uniqueness, find a drum beat that made sense. 

Somehow I have summoned a torrent that is anything but refreshing.  Now I am gasping for air.

Join me tomorrow for part 4 😉

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi 😉

So where is the story going today?! 

[Here is part 1 if you need to catch up]

Again I went to Random Word Generator as per Sandy’s instructions, and this is what I got:

Annnd I got to work…

Paradox   Double   Boom   Stimulation   Elect   Strength   Review   Breakfast   Hang  

Waking in the city feels like an act of war.  Nowhere do I experience the ‘connection paradox’ more keenly.  So many faces, and yet the loneliness is stifling.

“Double boom!” he cries, as the stock market opens.  I am dizzy already from over-stimulation.  I do not feel part of the universe’s elect here.  The strength I gained in silence is leeching from my soul, and I have nowhere to go to get it back.

He crows at every positive review online, as if it matters on any level.  I sit down to breakfast late, E.E. Cummings surging through my brain.  Sampling my tasteless freedom, I consider the leaf I am growing; the tree I belong to, how long I can reach for the sky…

The whole way through, my ‘companion’ doesn’t hang up the phone.  I miss the days when eating was a shared event.  When all the participants in the conversation could be touched both physically and spiritually – when that conversation made me feel safe, enlightened, part of something warm.

He looks at me and my grave feels stepped on.  There’s something about those eyes…

Join me tomorrow for part three! 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello!

The lovely Sandy gave me this Pixabay picture to inspire my scribblings for the week (see my Facebook’s ‘sticky post’ challenge if you want to bagsy a week inspired by a picture you chose):

Sandra also instructed that my generator for the week was to be…Random Word Generator!

I first requested 5 words to get a title for this story.  The generator gave me: lake, nose, method, strain and heaven.  Whereas ‘Nose Strain’ and ‘Strain Method’ brought up interesting alleyways in my mind (!) I was really drawn to ‘Lake Heaven’. 

Google says both Lake Heaven and Heaven Lake are real places (in Thailand and Northeast China, respectively) but mine feels like it is in America 😉

[There is also the ‘Heavenly Lake of Tianshan’ and John Dalton’s debut novel…]

Anyhoo, that was my title sorted.  I then generated 9 words, set 20 mins on my computer’s timer, included all the words in 10 and woke up when the timer went.  I shouldn’t try to write late at night.  I committed another 10 mins eventually…hope you enjoy this first instalment!

Noise   Haunt   Orbit   Frame   Linear   Award   Flatware   Stubborn   Important 

I am not a fan of noise.

The pulse of blood in my ears can sustain me for many hours; the gentle lap of water and the calls of the birds that haunt these shores are all the companions I need.  I orbit my own sun, I frame things through the one prism.  My thoughts may not be linear, but they belong to me.  I take each award society offers for this time I’ve carved for myself, and forge forwards.

But today I share my meals with him.  Today I pass out flatware and those conversational nuggets I’ll hate myself for later.  He remains a stubborn mass of blame: chewing and boasting but not ever connecting.  He can’t see why that’s important, but I can; and I’m enraged.

He says I am a loner, like him, and that we know the truth about how the world works.  We can stand on the outside and look into the centre because we are not afraid. 

With all this natural splendour around us, he is still telling me it’s a game we are winning.  That we can conquer ­- and laugh with our spoils. 

He has brought business to my fireside.

I see tyre tracks in the logs…the flames grow fierce…a taste is rising from my last bite that wasn’t there before.

“Come home” he says.

See you tomorrow 😉

[Fire pic is from here]

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!