GRIZZLY PEAR
Our backyard is a sea of landscape rocks.
A shaded corner harbors a scrawny patch of wild grass.
The boy harvests the grain.
He severs the seeds from their slender stalks with a chipped rock.
It was her idea.
They’ve discovered the stone age.
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Nothing means anything except by having qualities.
from “Pronouns & Roles”, by Fred Hatt
The world is woven by thrummed strings.
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He jumped off a box set of Roald Dahl books onto the ottoman.
He jumped back onto the floor to repeat this routine.
He paused and stared at the hanging light in the center of the room.
He grabbed the box set, placed it on the ottoman, climbed up, stepped on top of the books, and stretched.
He was a few inches short but grabbed my attention.
He didn’t get a second chance.
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For Lucretius, letters were atoms in continual motion, creating the most diverse words and sounds by means of their permutations.
“Lightness”, from Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino
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The boy leaned over a pile of rocks.
He grabbed a faded bottle with both hands.
Fluid grey shapes appeared on the patio.
I knocked on the window.
He looked up.
What are you doing? 你在做什麼?
我在煮饭. I’m cooking.
好.
OK.
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I invented some people telling the story in a comic way in order to make it harder and more pitiless.
Jorge Luis Borges on “The End of the Duel” in Borges on Writing
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A United States Senator toured my building!
What an honor!
No.
The real:
They let me to deliver a daycare that serves forty eight children.
Every day, year over year, decade after decade.
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The purpose of a sentence is to say what it has to say
from Several short sentences about writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg
but also to be itself,
Not merely a substrate for the extraction of meaning.
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I cut myself.
An experimental bread process left a hardened loaf.
The knife slipped and tapped my finger.
I had just sharpened the knife.
It landed true.
Should I rue the success or celebrate the failure?
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As Hoffmannsthal said: “Depth is hidden. Where? On the surface.”
“Exactitude”, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino
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The boy was wearing a sock on his right foot.
He started the morning with a pair but shed the left when it developed a hole.
I went upstairs and found a replacement.
Two hours later, he was wearing the new sock on his left foot.
The sock on the right had developed a hole.
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You give me money, I’ll give you creative.
I’ll start when the check clears.
Time is money. More time is more money.
I’ll listen to you. You listen to me.
You tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what you need.
You want me to be on time, I want you to be on time.
What you use is yours, what you don’t is mine.
I can’t give you stuff I don’t own.
I’ll try not to be an ass, you should do the same.
If you want something that’s been done before, use that.PRO BONO
If you want your way, you have to pay.
If you don’t pay, I have final say.Let’s create something great together.
Segura Contract, via Signal v. Noise
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I tuck the kids into bed.
At their feet, I swing the blanket up into the air and let it float onto them.
We call it a floooph.
Occasionally, I’ll whip the blanket down with a whoosh!
The kids clamor for this 快 (quick) floooph, but mommy frowns upon this ritual of generating dust clouds.
We laundered the sheets this afternoon.
Tonight’s dust is clean.
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We’re It!
“A Cosmic Belly-Laugh“, William Martin
We always have been, and always will be.
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Grizzlypear would have hit four digits last year, but I had moved some old posts to private.
It was worth the wait because this moment coincides with a programming change.
For the past month, I’ve been playing with a new format. These Penny Delights started as a one-sentence story, but have expanded to include a short vignette, quote, and linked photo.
Beyond the format, I have a rule — I don’t schedule Penny Delights. If I don’t write today, I don’t post today.
I’d like to post every day.
So I’m slowing down on the longer posts. I’ve also revised the Grizzlypear newsletter to publish a weekly digest on Sunday mornings.
If you’d like a Penny Delight each morning, I’ve created a daily newsletter (that will also include the longer posts when they are published). Send me an email if you want to try it out.
Over the years, Grizzlypear has been the home of many experiments, and this hobby has become more fulfilling with each iteration. It’s totally 2008, but everyone should start a blog. The internet was supposed to be a utopia of shared knowledge, not a mindless scroll of spoon-fed consumption in the walled garden of a soulless corporation. Plant your flag and start writing. Even without a big audience (we’re up to nine!) the exploration is its own reward.
One of my mottos is “to tinker and delight, together”. Thanks for following this meandering journey. Please forgive my tinkering; I hope you enjoy the new delights.
Who knows, maybe I’ll be writing about five digits in 2052.
Until then, cya tomorrow!
Justus
The kids love making pancakes, but an eternity extends past pouring the batter.
They run off.
I glance up as they race out the kitchen.
Her arm stretches right out of the room. His leg kicks back to the left. He pushes his head towards his sister. She angles her torso above her brother.
They flash two grand smiles.
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An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem… The brain just edits it out.
Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams
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The girl scootched up the slide, but couldn’t quite make it.
The boy ran up the structure. He offered a little hand.
Ssssssstttrrretchh…
Clasp!
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Every door stands an open door:
our human settlements all temporary.We share together the incidental shore
and teach the young to tend the lamp’s wick,weary of anyone small enough to bar our entry.
“Visitors” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, via American Life in Poetry 887
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