Harper Kingsley blog

March 27, 2017 0 comments

What is this even #weedthoughts

I write more when I smoke weed. Is that a terrible thing to say? But it’s not like I’m going to mess up anyone’s life if I toke up. I’m not a doctor. I don’t drive at the moment. I’m not handling anyone’s money.

I’m a very nervous person. I don’t quite know how I got this way, but here I am. Broken before I even started; that one colored pencil that draws a few vibrant lines of color, then the tip falls out. Eventually you get tired of always having to resharpen something.

Left to my own devices, I would sit somewhere and read.

It’s only necessity that gets me washing dishes and wiping down counters. It’s only the people around me that keep me from winding down and just stopping somewhere. A silent, motionless humanoid shape, gradually losing all definition as it is caught in the spell of time.

So I smoke some weed.

It focuses my mind on the here-and-now. My brain chemistry has always been a bit different (that’s the problem you know, my brain chemistry. Ups, downs, and the short in-betweens). One Sudafed knocked me out for 12 hours once. I hallucinated for hours on a sleeping pill. Coffee calms me down. Music pours itself into my skull, reshaping my mood with its passage. And weed breaks me out of my obsessive compulsions.

If I start reading a book, I am driven to finish it. No sleep. No food. No rest.

I learned to read fast as a survival technique. It’s how I can read something like Dune in three hours and finish the whole series in a weekend.

As a kid, I would get weird notions caught in my head. I remember being abducted by aliens, the light shining everywhere, the gladness of never having to go back–It must have been a vivid dream for a child to have, because for years in my preteens and early teens, I was waiting for them to come back like they promised. I got a notion in my head that aliens had taken me up, and I believed it. Quietly in my head, child-me was sure someone was going to come and take me away.

My teenage years were hard. The giving up of childhood things and the entry into the real world. I took things especially hard.

I’m pragmatic. I’m agnostic to most religions–I don’t believe but I don’t disbelieve either; anything is possible in the afterlife. I love beautiful things, but I don’t have many beautiful things in my life. I’m prickly. I’m perky. I’m weird. I’ve got wacky brain chemistry.

Smoking weed helps me focus my thoughts. It breaks my obsessive thinking. It lets me write coherent prose.

And it’s legal in my state for recreational use.

BTW, I got these waterbrushes from Amazon, and I’m trying my hand at watercolors.

It is not going as well as I was hoping. But maybe someday I’ll be good.

March 27, 2017 0 comments

Prompt: 086. dartboard

1. Someone had taped a picture of the deputy mayor to the dartboard.

A. Someone had taped a picture of the deputy mayor to the dartboard. There was a dart sticking out from between the grayish-blue eyes, one that had left streaks of what looked like blood to drip off the ends of the paper and puddle on the floor.

On seeing the dartboard, the mayor insisted that his deputy receive extra security. He was near panicked at the thought of his favorite employee being harmed. Everyone could tell that he was concerned.

2. Having drunk more alcohol than she ever had in her life, she somehow found herself throwing darts at a dartboard while a crowd of people cheered.

A. Having drunk more alcohol than she ever had in her life, she somehow found herself throwing darts at a dartboard while a crowd of people cheered. Or maybe they were jeering, she didn’t know anymore. She’d drunk several fruity cocktails before letting herself be talked into downing shots, and now she was having trouble getting her eyes to focus and her ears were ringing.

Her stomach felt warm with almost-indigestion and she had to catch herself several times to keep from listing to the left.

3. Pulling the metal-tipped dart out of the makeshift dartboard, he seethed on realizing he was going to lose his $800 security deposit because of Wayne.

A. Pulling the metal-tipped dart out of the makeshift dartboard, he seethed on realizing he was going to lose his $800 security deposit because of Wayne. The dart had gone through the dark wood of the door, taking out a thumb-sized chunk. There was no way he was going to be able to hide the damage.

“Dude, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think it was going to go all the way through like that.”

“Really? You didn’t think a metal dart would go through a piece of printer paper glued to a cereal box?”

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The Way of the Househusband 01 at Amazon

March 26, 2017 0 comments

Prompt: 085. forgot to set the parking brake

1. The car was already rolling by the time he realized he hadn’t set the parking brake. Then it was moving too fast for him to stop.

A. The car was already rolling by the time he realized he hadn’t set the parking brake. Then it was moving too fast for him to stop it.

All he could do was step out of the way and watch as it slammed into a tree with a horrifying crack of splitting wood and the shatter of tail lights.

He stood there, ashen-faced, as the door of the picturesque house slammed open and the owner came running out. “My tree! What happened? What did you do?!?”

2. The Chief yelled himself hoarse when he discovered that someone forgot to set the parking brake on the rig.

A. The Chief yelled himself hoarse when he discovered that someone forgot to set the parking brake on the rig. Alden was fired and Orlando was going to have his wages garnished. It was a disaster for them all though, as they were going to be one truck short for upcoming holiday deliveries.

They would either end up working extra shifts or some orders would have to be canceled. Either way, the likeliness of there being bonuses this year were going down.

3. The bed frame had scraped a furrow into the hardwood floor. She’d forgotten to set the parking brake when she’d set up the bed.

A. The bed frame had scraped a furrow into the hardwood floor. She’d forgotten to set the parking brake when she’d set up the bed and his jumping on the mattress had caused the frame to shift around.

She stared at the large marks dug into the floor. They were obvious to see and there wasn’t a chance the landlord would miss them. He would probably insist that she pay to have the flooring in the entire apartment replaced.

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March 25, 2017 0 comments

I’ve found a love for the Bronte sisters

I’ve found a love in myself for the Bronte sisters.

I’m a bit interested in what was going on between Charlotte and Anne, that’s for sure.

Seriously, read their Wikipedia entries. They’re a novel of their own.

Like their birth order, start with Charlotte first. She seems to have been a genuine character, and not wholly in a good way.

“A Death Scene” by Emily Bronte:

1. ‘O Day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;

2. ‘He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!

3. ‘Edward, awake, awake-
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden’s lake-
Arouse thee from thy dreams!

4. ‘Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend! I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:

5. ‘I hear its billows roar-
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.

6. ‘Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.

7. ‘It is not death, but pain
That struggles in thy breast-
Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again;
I cannot let thee rest!’

8. One long look, that sore reproved me
For the woe I could not bear-
One mute look of suffering moved me
To repent my useless prayer:

9. And, with sudden check, the heaving
Of distraction passed away;
Not a sign of further grieving
Stirred my soul that awful day.

10. Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting;
Sunk to peace the twilight breeze:
Summer dews fell softly, wetting
Glen, and glade, and silent trees.

11. Then his eyes began to weary,
Weighed beneath a mortal sleep;
And their orbs grew strangely dreary,
Clouded, even as they would weep.

12. But they wept not, but they changed not,
Never moved, and never closed;
Troubled still, and still they ranged not-
Wandered not, nor yet reposed!

13. So I knew that he was dying-
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.

I’m suddenly struck by the beauty of these women. Caught up in the moments of their words, and the way they might have been.

I don’t want to read their biographies. I don’t want to wrap myself tight in the stifling truth.

I want to take the short Wikipedia accounts, and churn them into butter in my head. And I will swipe their passions across the biscuits of my own baking … and it will be lovely.

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