Wednesday 16 June 2021

Write... Edit... Publish... June 2021 : Great Wave

 



'Fractured' seems the right thing right now. So here's another one from far away and long ago - repurposed to fit the Write...Edit...Publish...Lite - 


The Hearthopper and the BusyBody


Take the heart.  The heart’s the dragonfly. It’s the grasshopper, that sings all summer and takes leaps of faith, from grass to leaf, from leaf into sky, halfway to the stars and falls back to the grass again, nonchalant.  Who vaguely knows that winter will come but will take care of itself.  Meanwhile the ant, oh god, the ant plods on.  Eat.  Sleep. Hoard.  Clean.  Eat.  Sleep.  Hoard. Clean.   The ant is the body, and her demands must be met, at all times.  Punctually.   To-everything-there-is-a-season-and-a-time-to-every-purpose-under-the-heaven kind punctually.  You know the type.  There’s one in every neighbourhood.  Earnest.   And sternest.  And lectures everybody far and wide about the importance of being both.

 

Now that winter’s almost here, she is rubbing her forelegs together in glee, waiting for the heart to turn up in her somewhat shabby but comfortable pad so that she, the ant, can tell her, the grasshopper, royally off for dereliction of proper duty.  She even tries out her lines with different inflections – you sang all summer? now go and dance all winter, and then tries it out with the emphasis on “sang” instead.  She has both of them pitch perfect.  She’s so conscientious, she doesn’t know when it’s enough.

  

But the hearthopper doesn’t turn up, she’s MIA.  Making most of the summer before it fades.  Rocking the equinox.  Living it up and down and sideways, burrowing real deep into the moment.  So the ant goes out in search of the grasshopper. Besides being the body, the ant is also a busybody.  And when she finds the grasshopper this is the conversation they have, the hopper and the ant, the heart and the body.

 

 

A:  What are you doing?  It’s going to be winter soon.

G: I know!  I have to finish this before the season flips,  this tune is for winter.  Requires some – um - fine tuning hunh?

A: What are you going to do for the winter? Have you got any food?

G (stops singing for a minute):  Food? Food?  Music is food, you illiterate nutcase, haven’t you read your thingamajig?

A: No, I mean really, what are you going to eat? How are you going to keep warm?

G: Listen, I got warmth completely sorted.  This tune? This tum ti ta tum tum ti ta? It’s to learn the shiverdrivel dance with. Dancing is going to keep me warm.

A (flustered and angry because the grasshopper keeps going off script) :  What the hell’s going on here? That’s supposed to be me telling you to dance all winter.  You’re being very irresponsible!  No food, no firewood, and dancing to keep warm. Jeez!  You’ll freeze to death!  Look at me, I’ve worked hard all summer and gathered everything, and now I am all set for the next three months.  You’d better do something fast.  Because I am not sharing any of mine.  Food. Or wood. 

G: No-o-o! You wouldn’t do that? You would? Not even wood?

A: No, certainly not.

G:  Okeydoke.  Keep it all to yourself.  But you do know that food tastes terrible when you eat it on your own alone, don’t you? Turns to ashes in your mouth.  That’s a scientifically researched fact.  Something to do with horrormoans.  Or is it pheromoans?   At any rate, some kind of moan interferes with the taste buds and messes up the entire chemistry of your oral cavity.  Tum tum  ti tum, tum tum ti tum.  Food’s in one end and out the other/memories are the thing to gather. 

A: Oh, you are incorrigible!

G:  Yup, that’s my first preference.  Corrigible is horrigible.  Not at all my cuppa. Or suppa. As you like it.


The ant finally sees she is making no headway and goes back miffed to her pad in the anthill.  In spite of being so well provisioned and warm, she doesn’t really enjoy her winter much because she has this nagging suspicion that the grasshopper is having way more fun. 


The grasshopper meanwhile learns the shiverdrivel dance and dances her way a little closer to the equator, where the grass is still green, and the trees are still in leaf; where the ocean raises great wave after great wave; and the river flows sharp and silver like the glint in a rascal’s eye; and the keenest stars hang like crazy huge fruits from the sky in the early evening even before the light has flickered completely out.

 

 

WC – 737

FCA


Read the other entries here

 


57 comments:

  1. Hari Om
    LOL - I know all about the 'horrormoans' - y'know, being menopolyxinaemic and all..!!! This was a delightful read, as I head to bed, in hope of the great wave of slumber... YAM xx

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    1. I hope you got to surf that great wave...! :)

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  2. I sadly fear that I am an ant.
    And wish that I could be an incorrigible grasshopper. Grasshoppers get soooo much more from life.
    Loud applause. As always.

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    1. I believe we are all on a continuum - no perfect grasshoppers, no 100% ants. I tend towards ant too, unfortunately and wish had more grasshopper in me.

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  3. I love the humour in this Nila. Love your made up words like 'shiverdrivel dance'. Funnily, I can see it in my mind. Like Sue said, it seems grasshoppers have more fun. Yep. Good idea to recycle stories for WEP lite. I couldn't cope otherwise.

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    1. These old ones are an escape to a more lighthearted time and space, I am so fed up with this excruciating pandemic nonsense going on...glad you enjoyed the entry.

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  4. Picturesque and Poetic.
    The differences in lives needs and philosophies and behaviors and everything very lightly, comically and playfully planted in the piece. Like a grasshoppers' shiverdrivel dance, its rhythm is cool and smooth.

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  5. Such differences in personality of the conscientious and the frivolous. I always wonder which causes more stress, the anxiety of planning or the consequences of not planning. Love this turn of phrase: Corrigible is horrigible.

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    1. I personally think stress and no-stress are unrelated to planning. The ones who stress will find something to stress about. The unfazed don't stress either way :)

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  6. I can understand the ant, and I do often figure I've missed out on the fun of the grasshopper. Excellent retelling of an oldie tale.

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    1. Yeah, me too. Though I think I am improving with age... :)

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  7. Love!!! "Corrigible is horrigible" is my favourite line!
    I need more grasshopper :)

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  8. What an utterly delightful telling of the grasshopper and the ant story.

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  9. What a delightful entry. I loved how playful it was. Makes such a happy change from all the gloom and doom the Great Wave seems to have unleashed. Brilliant Nila!

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    1. Thanks, Kalpana. I'm so exhausted with the 24/7 gloom and doom that I retreated back a long way to fish this out :)

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  10. Hi Nila - I could imagine listening to Ant and Grasshopper as they have get togethers over the years ... the tales they would tell - this is delightful - a great book perhaps. Wonderful fun read - I'm happily chuckling away ... cheers Hilary

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    1. I'm glad it made you chuckle, Hilary. I needed to clear the cobwebs and happily this rewrite managed that.

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  11. Such a charming, lighthearted story. I think I'm an ant, like Elephant's Child, but I would never berate the grasshoppers in my life. I wish I could be like them, at least a little bit.

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    1. Most of us are ants, to a greater or lesser extent. Being grasshopper would be a dream come true! Not in this birth, am going to seriously try for the next one... :)

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  12. Love this story. So well written and cool characters. I'm a bit ant and a lot grasshopper. I hop from thing to thing without giving it much thought. The ants pull me back when I'm out of control. Thanks for a wonderful read.

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    1. You lucky creature! A high mix of grasshopper is ideal imho. Thank you for the feedback.

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  13. What fun. Both are content in their life. Well written.
    Nancy

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    1. Thank you. The grasshopper by nature inclined to greater contentment than the ant. :)

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  14. This was such an enjoyable read! I think it is ideal to have a little ant and a little grasshopper in each of us. I'm currently enjoying some beautiful weather where I live, so the call of the grasshopper is powerful today.

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    1. Yes, agree completely that we are all made up of grasshoppers and ants. Your comment about the weather reminded me of the poem I Meant to Do My Work Today...

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  15. Nila...I just adored your dialogue. SO FUN and SO REAL. Reminds me a bit of the Tortoise and the Hare... IT put a smile on my face!

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    1. I am so glad you enjoyed it, but even gladder to see you here at the WEP!

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    2. Nice to be back!!!! I missed you all, too!

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  16. I think the ant and the grasshopper are endlessly battling inside me. I love the analogy of how the heart and body interact. I have been enjoying a lot of folk tales lately, and this one is just as fun!

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    1. They battle incessantly in me too, but the ant ends up winning more often than I'd like. :)

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  17. So true, I'll have to come back and read it again and again. The tales this time are a bit gloomy, mine too. I think we all need a bit of ant and a lot of grasshopper, especially now. Thank you for this beautiful tale!

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    1. Ya, I just wanted a dose of lightheartedness right now, too much of heavy stuff offline...so glad you liked the flash.

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  18. Hi,
    I like this light tale about the grasshopper and the ant. It is humorous and says much about how we look at life.
    I especially enjoyed the humour.
    Shalom aleichem

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    1. Hi Pat, I am so pleased you enjoyed the humour. We've all had a rough time this last year, each in our own way, so I just wanted to flip the mood a little...

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  19. Love your play on words and beautiful made-up words - I'm going to try and use some of them in my vocabulary at some point.

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  20. That was fun! And I loved your use of new words. I hope some catch on!

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    1. I hope the grasshopper attitude catches on too haha..glad you liked it, thanks.

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  21. Darn, I think I'm an ant. Nicely done

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  22. What a splendid read Nilanjana. I so wish I was the hopper!

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    1. Oh me too, me too! Glad you liked it, thanks.

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  23. Nila, that was brilliant. LOVE it. A friend and I, both grasshoppers, or as we say unstructured, reckon that we are going to live longer... at the cost of the structured (ants)!!!

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    1. Oh for sure! and squeeze more fun out of that extra time too :) Stay unstructured and superblessed.

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  24. This sounds like the way the two sides of my personality interact.
    Your post is included in this week's Roost Recommendations. I share the Roost Recommendations posts on Twitter with readers looking for their next read.
    https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/2021/06/roost-recommendations-15-june-2021.html

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    1. Thank you for the recommend. Glad you liked it.

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  25. Very well done, Nilanjana. I loved the humor and the characters in this Ant the Grasshopper tale.

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  26. Wonderfully orchestrated Nilanjana. Cross between the Fable de Jean de la Fontaine and the great migration of birds. The setting up is classic, to the dot from the script of a play, seemingly already written. Then , thanks to your humorous dialogue, you succeed in creating the perfect ‘pied de nez’ with the grasshopper’s waves of responses and points which submerge the ant… thus losing the argument it was wont to win, as if by decree.
    A wave of glee enveloped me. Thank you. Wishing you an inspiring summer of creativity.

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    1. Thank you. Glad you enjoyed reading. You have a great summer too!

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