literature
Whether written centuries ago or just last year, literary couples show that love is timeless.
CREATING YOUR ABUNDANCE
CREATING YOUR ABUNDANCE I wonder if Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg ever signed up to a course called 'Creating your Abundance'. I suspect not. The only abundance being felt is by the company running the course, and being urged to think positively is not alleviating the stress of dealing with my very real bills. I normally work in tourism, something of an oxymoronic statement nowadays.
By Deborah Wilson5 years ago in Humans
Somewhere Safe
The tin sparkled in the mud of the Thames, practically calling out to her. Well, that’s not true; it didn’t sparkle. Urban as it was, London’s river was not precisely well lit. But in her memory, the tin shone like silver in cascades of moonlight. Once she’d tugged it free of its brown-gray prison, it felt rough: battered and worn from the tide, covered in grime and sand and fish turds. But then again, so was Molly.
By Jamie Heminway5 years ago in Humans
Avaji in Euvoia
In an art studio called Euvoia in Manhattan, New York, the modern artist Benjamin Avaji paints a portrait. The painting contains a clock, a glass of water and a little black book.Benjamin brushes another long black Gouache stroke on the white Blick with a black coloured Blick Masterstroke Golden Taklon brush, laying the edge of the desk down onto the canvas.He looks over at the blazing fireplace and smiles. The artist steps away from the portrait to prod the flames in his study and when he turns back towards his painting, over at the edge of his desk there now a little black book rests... appearing exactly in all likeness such as the one he has been painting for the last couple of days.“I, I don’t think I...” Benjamin says and picks up the little black book from the edge of his desk. “How strange... I don’t remember having placed this book on my desk...” Benjamin Avaji flips through the empty little black book and finds nothing written inside. “Perhaps the performance has accomplished itself.” He says, referring to the experiment with magic he’s been working on the last few days. His assumption being that he could, through the translation of representations of objects which are in the world, cause the manifestation of objects in a dream-like way by the motion of light energy and traditional magic elements, in this case... fire.Benjamin Avaji walks up to the portrait he’s been working on and says, “Assuming that this little black book has manifested itself as a result of my having painted this portrait, my intentions coming to operate as a result of the magic afforded to me by the fire in my fireplace then I can assume that anything I write inside of it will come true if I cause the appropriate symbolic machinery to function and operate by fire... and just as the many ancient esoteric texts I have studied, in combination, appear to indicate...”Hours go by and the artist looks at the clock which reads eleven o’clock at night, says, “I should get some rest though... this is good enough progress for today...” and then, with a black ink pen, from the interior pocket of his black business suit jacket, he writes in the book, “and then, in the life of Benjamin Avaji, on April, seventh 2021 $20,000 appeared in the art studio, the Euvoia.” where then feeling quite accomplished, the artist puts out the fire in the fireplace, relaxes on the couch in his art studio, rests and falls asleep... and falls into a dream, a most wonderful dream...Benjamin finds himself laying down, in a dream, in a dream-trance, on a long, flat concrete bench in the white walled hallway of a mansion adorned with golden baseboards, where now here, thousands upon thousands of white feathers spin in the air above him, sparkling the effect there like diamonds, the dream atmosphere, smooth like whole milk, gleaming soft and effulgent like if Greek architecture were composed of pillows, with his hands extended out towards the bright, glowing feathers... reaching out to them, the life drama bending to break in the extraordinary in this... dream.He lay, the hands outstretched, while the feathers spin quickly in the air above him where now the artist begins to gain some lucidity in his dream and just as his gaze intersects with the ethereal glow of the fast spinning white feathers a gale rushes in, somehow blowing everything around in the hall except the feathers. Glasses of water are rushed up into the air, papers fly, thrown to the west end of the long hallway and the feathers now appear to take on an edge of like fire. Blazing here, the spectacle is wonderful, those feathers burn brighter, the performance is marvelous, magnificent so, and those fiery feathers spin faster.As the feathers appear to be on the edge of burning themselves out, bearing themselves against the burning, the blaze, a single American dollar bill flits through the air, the hundred dollar denomination, and in like beside the slow motion of crashing things about the whirlwind of the astonishing weather, the one hundred dollar bill flutters swiftly where now it comes to a sudden halt, with like some kind of liquid slack, prostrating itself in the air, below the white feathers burning, the white feathers burning their boundaries... out.Benjamin Avaji sits up in the hallway of his dream and plucks the one hundred dollar bill from its place in the air. The feathers let out a single burst of flames, in unison, burning themselves out, completely now, coming to disintegrate where here, instead of falling to black ash, their soft white material burns away into what appears to be a desert sand and Benjamin extends his hand out, allowing the once fluttering feathers to pour out on his left hand as a most fantastic medium... soft desert sand, gold, like a grand hill of wheat ground up to grind the gears of time itself by self-referentiality. The room begins to expand as the sand pours out and off of his hand onto the ground.When it’s all gone to the ground and the last grain falls down the sand begins to glow. The gleam grows and then, suddenly, golden bells fall upwards from the small piles of sand, the bones of those floating spinning white sparkling feathers burned up in their passion, resurrected once again to fly, like the phoenix. The bells, thousands of them as they go, populate the expanse of the ceiling in this mansion as it has expanded to appear now as an auditorium of sorts, and expand as they make their journey to that higher place.The golden bells hang in the vault, grandiose, now to resound that comfortable swell of the sweetest song, the bright beam of beauty and it’s radiance lays itself out on the space here, thickening the quality of life about the element of the beauty. When the wave hits Benjamin, the brightness takes it’s transcendental course and the one hundred dollar bill in his pocket is drawn to translate, transformed by the multiplicity of golden bells in the up there of the upside of the auditorium. It twitches in his right hand and, through like plexi-glass, pops, once where thus was only one has now become about itself as two. Benjamin Avaji looks down at his hand which now holds two hundred dollars with awe in the auditorium of his dream, under those bright and golden bells who, bringing about all of that resplendency, appear to be growing in size now.Those grand bells let out another enchanting bellow of the bright, where here now, amidst the whirlwind of a dream churned up on the flames of dream feathers and the sands of their own time coming to burn away only to be resurrected up into their aerial arrangement again, the level of the threshold is slammed soft into it’s second stage by the glowing resonance in reverberation... something like the heaven I suppose, as the sound of light absolved the life, making like itself life in the auditorium place, most beautiful and ever more beautiful so.Once again, Benjamin Avaji’s money is caused to multiply as the energy of bright beam of the golden bells breaks the dollar into many and much more of itself. From his hand two hundred dollars bursts into two thousand, the American notes appearing to sparkle as they blossom, the monetary flower, into the addition of themselves, Avaji’s accumulation. The bells resound once more and two thousand dollars then bursts into twenty thousand dollars in front of Benjamin Avaji, the black suit wearing artist, now made dream magician who wakes up along with the burst on the couch in his studio, the Euvoia, with a suitcase in his arms, at his chest.He is taken aback and, with his eyes wide open, is surprised to find himself on the couch in his studio... with the black suitcase in his arms. He hurries to open the suitcase and finds the twenty thousand dollars within. Benjamin Avaji closes the suitcase, picks it up to hold it at his chest and hugs the black suitcase containing twenty thousand dollars.“The performance has accomplished itself again...” he says and looks down to where his little black book rests on the ground beside the couch, “I’ve been given a gift by the magic of the little black book...”
By Elliott Maxwell5 years ago in Humans
The Nordic Legend
The sweat dripped from her brow as the glaring afternoon sun burned her skin. Yet that was the least of her worries. For years she’d succumbed to the rough and scorching terrain, of the Sicilian coastline, and had obtained enough freckles to prove it. For years she’d persevered through the dreadful aches in her joints, enough to put an elderly to shame; nevertheless, that was all a part of the job and all a part of the thrill and adrenaline that coursed through her veins on a day-to-day basis. Any archaeologist would agree that digging was as addictive as gambling. Each day was a new day and in it lay the possibility of it being the day that one would unearth what that had lay untouched for centuries. Her father had always said, “if you give up now another fool will come along and brush away an inch of dirt to reveal what you’d been searching in for the past four metres.”
By Hannah Grace5 years ago in Humans
Everything and Nothing at All
Her knuckles rap quickly on the rough, wooden door before she loses the nerve. She turns away, chewing the inside of her lip and crunching the fallen leaves underfoot. Seven beats of her heart pass before the latch draws back within the mechanism. She misses a beat, a terrible fluttering in her stomach, but turns back in time to see a piercing, dark eye glowering at her from a crack in the door.
By Cheyenne Goetz5 years ago in Humans
Unprincipled Error
“The total amount, A, equals the principal, P, multiplied by the summation of one plus… where n is the number of times interest is compounded…” I feigned Herculean effort and grunted like I had just successfully squatted mom’s minivan. Mr. Purdue’s Advanced Algebra was my final labor. Pass the exam, and summer was mine.
By Nom de Guerre5 years ago in Humans
Short-changed
“C’mon, Billy!” He snapped his gaze up from the palms of his hands. His heart leapt into his throat, his stomach sank. Billy’s body was already riding the roller coasters right beyond the amusement park’s turnstiles. Two sets of anxious, questing eyes savaged Billy to the brink of tears.
By Nom de Guerre5 years ago in Humans
The Gratitude Journal
When my sister told me I should start a gratitude journal, I rolled my eyes. Really? After the year I’ve had? What could I possibly have to be grateful for? I lost my aunt, best friend and entire business to Covid. The idea of “giving thanks” seemed completely paradoxical. But she insisted. I didn’t even know where to get one.
By Christina Walkinshaw5 years ago in Humans
HEEDLESS
“This book contains $20,000 cash. Whoever comes to own this book is free to spend this money however they like. However, every purchase made with the money within this book will cause the death of someone known to the owner within 12 hours. This person can be anyone the owner knows by name or face.”
By Andy Salads5 years ago in Humans
