Custom Made

January 19, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Flash Fiction, Magic, Merchandise, Micro-fiction, Mystery, Photo prompt, Sale, Trouble, Writing prompt, Zippers 14 Comments

“We have every kind you want. Every length. We can tailor one for you. Custom-made.”

The prospectors nodded and ambled across the display, hands clasped behind their backs. It wouldn’t do to knock anything off a peg. You never knew what could unzip itself from one of those. Bounty, sure. But just as possible was war. Or flood. Or plague.

The proprietor smiled. Not quite reassuringly. The merchandise was safeguarded against accidental activation, but there was no need to divulge that trade secret. It was best to keep a customer unsettled, a bit in need.

“Do you have any for, say, the ocean?” A woman in a too-tight herringbone suit and utterly-too-high heels, dared to voice the first request.

“We do,” Zip-location’s manager nodded sagely. “We can zip to a hurricane, or a shark-attack. Long one here would take you to the Mid-Atlantic. Last time used for the Titanic.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge #62

What Could Not Be Untold

January 19, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Ancestry, Culture, Family, Flash Fiction, Heritage, History, Micro-fiction, Sotho, South Africa, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 21 Comments

Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa (Photo: redcharlie on Unsplash)

“Is that where we’re going?” the boy pointed at the road snaking below. He squinted, hoping to see a car. They’ve walked long. He was tired.

“There,” his father’s finger angled higher, at the cliff. Beyond.

The boy scrunched his lips but kept quiet. Time with his ntate oa was precious. Also, at eight, he did not want to be seen as a baby who should’ve been left home with the women.

The father nodded approval. His son was growing to be obedient and mindful. It was good.

“What’s there?” the boy adjusted the Basotho blanket over his shoulder. He hadn’t been happy to be told to bring it earlier, but was now that the sun hid.

“Rocks. Earth. Bones. Your ancestors’ homes.”

Khotso nodded. His father was a man of few words, and Khotso knew he was being trusted to understand the power of what could not be untold.

For What Pegman Saw: Free State, South Africa

Six Year Anniversary

January 18, 2020January 18, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Uncategorized, Writing Tags: A moment in time, All is One, Anniversary, Blogging, Community, Gratitude, International, Just because, Milestone, Statistics, Thankful, Writing 34 Comments

wordpress6yrs

So … the above just appeared in my notifications.

I stared at it a moment. Because, you see, I would’ve thought it was longer than six years. I also would’ve thought it couldn’t possibly have been six years already … Yet, there it is. Time doing the odd thing it knows to do as it spirals around.

Can’t ever hold on to time. It is a slippery thing, it is. Can hardly hold on to stats, seeing how they dance around. It is folly to try.

But I thought I would, anyhow, just for fun, post a snapshot of this moment in time. Even if it will change as soon as I post this, as soon as you see this, as soon as any one of you reacts or comments or clicks on this.

Still. Just because …

Here are a few stats:

1681 posts
5922 comments
115,515 views
72,111 visitors from practically every country in the world!
23,743 likes
921 followers

By the time your eyes rest on this, the numbers are already different … The values are not … Because the numbers have little meaning. Many blogs have more than this a day. Many more still have less. What does matter, to me, is you. That you read this. That you are part of this. That you matter. That you are you. You made this. With me.

I am especially moved that this little tiny sliver of a blog in the big vast space of the Internet, has had visitors from every corner of the globe. From countries large and small, from the smallest islands to the largest landmasses, from a multitude of cultures and languages and ways of life, from countries that we’re supposed to believe don’t get along, or won’t, or don’t care.

This is proof we do. Care. Because we are first and foremost humans. No matter where we were born, under what flag, to what faith or belief or upbringing, in what skin, to what family, to which doctrine. We all share this one home. We’re roommates on a blue marble hurtling through space. Equally precious. Equally worthy. We all are made of the same atoms. We breathe the same air. Drink the same water. Are tethered to the same core gravity. The same moon. Under the same sun. In the same cluster of souls riding the great vastness of Space.

So, you see, to me this little corner of the Internet — along with many others like it — is a window to our universality. To what we can be if we so choose. I’m honored. I’m humbled. I’m grateful to have the opportunity see through this window, through others’ windows, to have others look in through mine. To share light.

So, in this moment, and every moment, know that I am deeply thankful.

For you. For each and every one.

And I’m hopeful that we can, together … read more, write more, see more, share more, listen more, understand more, be more, be kind.

Embers Of Dreams

January 18, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Anew, Be gentle, Creative writing, Dreams, Hopes, inspiration, Micro Poetry, Patience, Poetry, Weekend Writing Prompt 11 Comments

Photo: Pablo Martinez on Unsplash

Blow gently into the embers

Your dreams.

So the quiet flames

Of what you’d always wished

And perhaps did not know how

To do

Can lick them into hope

Anew.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Anew in 31 words

Frozen

January 17, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Frozen, Hibernation, JusJoJan, Movies, Patience, Poetry, SoCS, time, Waiting, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 21 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

Inside the core of frozen

Lore

There beats a tender

Heart.

Beneath the glaciers of

Dearth

Unfurl forgotten

Paths.

Amidst the howling winds of

Cold

Whispers bid to

Start,

And feed the seed ‘neath Tundra’s

Soul

Awaiting summer’s

Part.

Note: just the other day, I watched parts of the movie “Frozen” (the first one) with a young child, in preparation for that child’s going to the movies with friends to see “Frozen 2.” Now I have an ear-worm and am yet to “let it go” … 😉

For Linda Hill’s SoCS and JusJoJan challenges: Movie title

Allegiance

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Allegiance, Allegory, control, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Folklore, History, humanity, Myth, No More War, WritePhoto, Writing prompt 13 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

They called her Allegiance.

Contract and insurance, she was. Revered and guarded, both.

So well revered and so well guarded, in fact, that with time she became almost forgotten and had turned more a symbol than a soul. She sometimes wondered if she was in that way not too dissimilar to many of her kind through time, even if they had been so for far shorter spans.

Women often were made ornamental. Used as symbolic pawns, utilized as cementers of allegiances, then blamed for those that broke.

It helped her feel less lonely, knowing that even in her immortal isolation she was still in some way a member of a community of others who’d been perched into positions, as she was, without much of a choice. Possessions and producers, keepers of the continuity of power, serfdom and thrones.

They called her Allegiance.

And she sat in her fortified tower, aware of the two rows of guards: One row looking out against any who may get it in their minds to sabotage, the other row looking in against any indication that she may get it in hers to leave.

They needn’t have worried. At least not about her.

There was enough of misery without adding heads to spikes in any kind of rebellion, where those most likely to be harmed were those least likely to have been given part in the decision.

She accepted her place. A figurehead to keep the heads of others firmly on their shoulders and their children’s hearts safer from the sorrows of orphanage and war.

So she stayed.

As centuries passed, those who’d placed her there took less care with guarding her and the promises she’d represented. The tower crumbled. The guards played cards and drank and slept and grew lazy, and she took comfort in knowing that at least this meant they weren’t in battle. Even if she shivered, windowless, her walls crumbling all around.

Perhaps, she thought, as winds whistled and the stories of her had become lore printed onto metal plaques for tourists to ignore, it was all as it should be.

Perhaps one day there will not be a need.

Perhaps one day allegiances will be built-in, rather than built-up and set with guarded fences that time and lassitude and apathy were certain to erode.

Till then, Allegiance waited.

For the moment, the ruins of her tower stood.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto