Showing posts with label Kind of Blue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kind of Blue. Show all posts

Monday, September 28, 2009

SHORT STORY MONDAY

This is a very short story about the origin of the blues. It was inspired by Mark Twain's Diaries of Adam and Eve. I only recently learned that Twain only wrote Adam's diary initially, but then wrote Eve's thirty years later. Or vice versa. The two were blended eventually and you can purchase it at Amazon.

BLUE

Blue began when the world was new, but not so new as the very beginning. The original world was black and white. Eventually, God decided that color should be added to His wonderful creation.

In an effort to protect His integrity (He had already declared all things good) He broke white light up into sections and called it color. This was how the color blue came into being.

At first, Adam and Eve were so enamored by their new experiences with color that they never even thought about why the world was originally created in black and white. But after a while, when they had settled into their new technicolor paradise, they began to wonder. "Why did God originally create the world in black and white? Was He trying to withhold something from us?"

It was at this point that they doubted God’s goodness. Was He really concerned for their best interest? What was the point in making a black and white world if He had been capable of making color right from the start? Had the black and white version of the world been a mistake? Does God really know what He's doing?

Such questionings, it would appear, led directly to Eve's being seduced by the serpent. (Though it may have been that forbidden Red apples are more enticing than forbidden black and white ones.)

After the Fall, Adam and Eve became acutely aware of why God had been so reluctant to give them a full-spectrum technicolored world.

As a result of the apple incident, Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise forever, which put them both in quite a bad mood. Adam sank into a depression. The following evening, (a time of day which he also blamed on his significant other) he lay on his back feeling particularly mournful and low. As he lay staring at the deepening twilight sky it entered his mind to compose a poem, soon to be published in an early anthology called Man's First Poems, Volume One. The poem was rather inferior in quality, but still maintains its historical significance. Whether it was the color of the sky he was trying to name, or the feeling he was analyzing at that moment in time, the word has forever become associated with grief and sadness.

This is the true origin of the blues.

EDNOTE: Unless otherwise noted, the paintings and illustrations on my blog are my work alone and available for sale. If you see something here that makes you say, "I gotta have it," be sure to let me know and we can negotiate a price. Feel free to click on images to enlarge.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Three Words Too Many

For Father’s Day this year my son gave me a book called The World’s Shortest Stories, edited by Steve Moss. Evidently, being fascinated by the short short story form, Moss started a competition called Fifty-Five Fiction. That is, each story could only have 55 words.

The stories are nearly all mini-O. Henry type stories with clever twists and surprise endings. I mean, ever sentence of phrase, in some instances, is a sidewinder. The themes are as varied as story telling always is, but that 55 word constraint is more tightly adhered to than a highway speed limit. It’s the one hard and fast rule.
So, I pondered, and decided to count the words in one of my own short poems which I believed would make a great piece of Fifty-Five Fiction. And guess what? As short as it was, it is still three words too long! And when I tried to figure out which three words to cut, in order to submit it, I was stymied.

The book has been fun. I hope you’ll find my little 58 word piece here fun, too.

Bad Break
Agitation, face white, deep breath hold tight,
run down, look round, hope hard underground.

Ten seconds, ten years, dull moans, shrieked fears
wild thoughts, no tears, eyes wide, all ears.

Push, shove, hide fast, screen view whole past.
Breathe deep, make haste, taste death, bad taste.

Sky tear, bright light, no air, stomach tight.

Flame flash… all ash.

Sixty words including title.

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