Potentiality
Here’s another draft of the short story for the Right Left Write project.
It’s still not there,
but I wiped plenty of words.
There’s a few shiny stones,
but it’s still far from home.
It’s 6am Sunday morning,
and my 5-year-old daughter just got up.
She’s going to do some drawing
while I navigate this post.
Most of the draft happened at work
in the breaks with a pen on paper,
and early in the morning on the computer.
The title changed —
gave the words a home,
setting the scene from the beginning,
in line with the brief — One Room Story.
Laundromat
Round and round, and round the other way.
“They make em so they break, the machines, on purpose, so you have to buy more.”
Heather smiled and nodded at the old man. He was always there. Every Friday night. Every laundry night, talking.
“It’s the way it is now, all about money, making a profit, for the shareholders.”
‘Shareholders’
He squeezed the word through bare teeth.
“And I fought in Vietnam for that, so they could do that.”
He reached in his tote bag. Out came the brandy.
“Don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “Want some?”
She smiled and nodded. He swigged and swallowed.
“Ahhhhh, that’s better.., now like I was saying love, if I had my time again there would be no…”
Round and round, and round again. Every Friday night. She did like him, and sometimes his stories where good, but tonight the talk was grating her bones, and he stank, really stank, sweet liquor and sweat. She needed a bigger flat. One with a washer and dryer.
“Yep they’ll take what little ya got then take the rest, suck you dry, chuck you in a ditch.
He swigged again offering it to her. She nodded. He talked.
“Used to be different, you helped each other, but these days…”
A pokey woman in a pale purple tracksuit shot in from the street, opened two dryers, pulled the warm clothes onto a long white table, lit a cigarette, and started folding at breakneck speed, smoke in her mouth, mumbling.
That was the last straw. The heat, the noise, the sweat, the raving, and now the smoke. She grabbed her handbag but – Beeeeep – her washing. She rolled the damp clothes out in front of an empty dryer, pulled her phone and swiped another twelve dollars, started the cycle, and headed to the door.
“Finished love?” He shook his head. I’ve had enough to, but I got nowhere to go. And the machines hum, they sing to me. My mum used to sing. Long ago.”
She stopped in the door and looked at him. They looked at each other, and a smile grew on his ruined face. A pillar of wind from the street outside eddied the smoke between them, in the space between the machines.
Then from outside a sinewy man strode in and pushed her hard against the table, jittering a drugged sickness, fuming out through psycho eyes.
“Give me money maggot, where’s the money.” He wrenched her bag, but she held it tight.
“Bitch I’ll do you!” He stepped back, flicking a blade, elbow bent to thrust, but it never did.
An arm crushed his neck from behind, another pulled his arm back jolting the knife to the floor, and the old man nailed that asshole to the tiles. With a knee in his back and holding him still he turned to Heather.
“You alright love?”
She nodded and the old man seethed.
“No-one hurts my friend, no-one.”
What's Working, What's Not
The woman in the purple track suit is great.
She creates a change in rhythm
that pushes the story to the next phase.
The sentences are longer and flow.
Also, the wind coming in from outside
and swirling between the characters
stops the action
and makes for a space of recognition.
They connect here,
and that makes the end more meaningful.
The end dialogue is a bit corny,
like in a bad short film
(like the one we made in high school
which you will never see).
Gotta change some words,
but the structure is there.
There’s an interesting YouTube interview I listened to while doing all this. One of my favourite interviewers, David Perrell. Here is a link to it.
Quantum Captain
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes one thing by directly equating it with another, revealing hidden similarities between them.
It invites the imagination to leap across meanings, often giving abstract ideas a vivid, tangible shape.
I like to confuse myself by reading things about Quantum Mechanics.
Where reality becomes fluid and spooky.
One idea that keeps circling back is Superposition: the notion that a particle can exist in multiple states simultaneously until observed.
This reminds me of how metaphor works.
A metaphor holds layered meanings in tension.
It places disparate entities—images, sensations, ideas—into a shared space, allowing them to resonate, interfere, and suggest something new. Until the reader engages, the metaphor remains in a kind of semantic superposition: not one thing, but many.
Different entities (phrases or words) with indeterminable links, are put into a context (story), that brings them together to form a new idea (feeling, image, movement, thought).
The context in which all this lies is also particular to individual perception. So, in a way a metaphor enables different dimensions to exist in the same context simultaneously.
Contextual Entanglement
In quantum theory, particles can be entangled—linked across space and time. In metaphor, words are entangled across emotional and conceptual domains. Their meaning is not fixed, but context-dependent, shaped by the reader’s internal landscape.
Every time the metaphor is observed it is somewhere else. Not moving apart but being together in the same infinitely perceived context beyond time.
Dimensional Interface
You can’t beat a good metaphor.
They can make jokes of hardship, parables of dropped cutlery, and turn whiskey into wine.
Absolute convoluted rambling.
Next?
Letting this draft breathe for a week.
It’s not due till the end of the month—plenty of time (space).
Meanwhile, I’m working on a longer story called Mrs Noden.
It’s about a teacher I had in primary school, a boy, and Popov the Clown.
Here’s a picture of my freind Moshab.
