Tag Archives: slice of life

FICTION FRIDAY – Notes On How A Man Loves

There are four of us around the table at our regular catch up. I can tell you my best friend’s kebab order (chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion, tabouli, hummus and chili sauce), his favourite band and how we’re going to see them live the next time they tour but not his deepest fear. I can tell you my friend’s fastest time over five k’s and what sized t-shirt he wears and how we all chipped in to buy him Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing Lego set for his 40th birthday a couple of years back but not if work is stripping him of his sense of wholeness. I can tell you my friend is still working on that novel he’s been talking about for three years and we will start quoting Stewie’s monologue to Brian from The Family Guy about writing a novel but I don’t know how he and his wife are doing since he briefly mentioned something a couple of months back and hasn’t spoken of it since. I won’t tell them that last week I drove through Macca’s for a box of nuggets and ate them in the carpark, swallowing tears with mouthfuls of post-mix Coke because I am so fucking scared of the darkness digging under my fingernails that I bite them down to the quick to prevent it seeping in and I will never have the courage to ask for help.

I look up from my reading in the school library, and beyond the window, a baker’s dozen of swallows perform their murmuration. Further afield, above the terracotta replication of tiled rooftops, a flock of pigeons circle their roost in practiced ellipses. I wonder which is the truer vision of my life. Wherein I tie a string to my dreams in the hope it will become a kite. Instead, perhaps, it may become an anchor grounding me to solid earth.

FICTION FRIDAY Once Upon A Kitchen Bench, A Jar of Vegemite…

(a little nod to Calvino)

On the kitchen bench is a jar of Vegemite, the lid left beside it. There is a knife on the blue plastic cutting board smeared in streaks of viscous Vegemite and mascara mops of margarine. Scattered across the blue plastic cutting board are breadcrumbs, like specks of clouds. You know there is a story here. You are the protagonist (in another iteration, you are the antagonist). As this is a literary fiction story, you recognise the suburban symbolism of the scene as lower middle-class and the tension between want and need, both physically and emotionally. Through another lens, the scene is a point of conflict between a parent and child, or between a couple and you make another connection to the tension of physical and emotional want and need. Walking to the other side of the kitchen bench, the camera tracks with you and the event is a key aspect in understanding how you use physical sustenance in your stories as a metaphor of your need for intellectual intimacy beyond quoting song lyrics and movie quotes as a shorthand of relational connection with your friends. To continue this narrative in different refracted opportunities, go to page 17. To exit the story, go to The End.