Saturday, October 8, 2011

Write by the Park with Purple Mark ---William James

 

Kunta lay on his mattress of straw dreaming about the power of invisibility and what he could do with it. Kunta could free his bothers and sisters who had been held captive on Webb’s plantation. They were forced to work without hope of reward or freedom. Kunta dreamed of an Africa he’d never seen. His father was born there. He imagined running on the steppes with lions and cheetahs. He imagined laying on his back in dry heat watching the Southern Cross march across the night sky. His father always said the Southern Cross was a magic symbol. Kunta doubted if this cross and the cross his master’s wore, heavy around their necks, were the same cross. Yes, they had magic. Magic, Kunta wanted. If only he could be invisible.

The killer lurked in the empty space between the chicken coup and the storage barn. He wielded a long dull machete that he found in the cane fields. But was he a killer? Babinet thought he was. The killer killed Fraunhofer. Webb was out there now hunting the killer down.

Fraunhofer had reached the end of limit. He saw diffractional patters of light and dark every time he closed his eyes. Babinet stood over him like a wave of fresh air. Holding his hand. Tracing crosses on his forehead and hands in oil. Whispering that he would be ok. Babinet looked pretty today like when they had first married. Fraunhofer felt light. He wondered if he was dreaming. He opened his eyes and Babinet was weeping. And it was at that moment that he knew that he was going to die.


 

William James' Prompts:                                                                         

  1. Quote1:    "Babinet’s principle states that the diffractional patterns of complementary diffractors are identical in the Fraunhofer limit," Robert H Webb. Elementary Wave Optics. (Academic Press, New York, 1969) page 149.
  2. Quote2:    "Kunta lay on his mattress at night for weeks afterward thinking about freedom," Alex Hailey. ROOTS. (Dell Publishing Company, New York, 1976) page 297.
  3. Question:    What skill/super power do you dream of knowing/possessing?
  4. Random Word:    Killer
  5. A Precious Artifact:    Space / Free-time
 
 

Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open. I will be publishing literary works, explicit language pieces, and eventually a journal a relative wrote in the late 1800's detailing their journey to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. And when I gather enough submitted works from other people, I will be cobbling together an e-anthology called Randomly Accessed Poetics.

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