Daily Prompt

Bitter Angels

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“I’m glad I found this meeting,” a newcomer said this morning. “I went to one in” (name of nearby city that is big enough to have a dilapidated downtown) “yesterday and I was scared. I thought my car wouldn’t be there when I left.”

He was not speaking with me. I slowed down my already slow pace to hear the rest, and he supplied it: “You know, because I was the only white person there. I assumed it would be broken into or stolen.” I thought to myself, “Did I really just hear him say that?” I am grateful that racism and sexism and the rest of the hate-filled isms still possess the capacity to surprise me when I encounter them; I am furious every time I am exposed to that level of ugly stupidity, that degree of odious and casual hatred. If he had been speaking with me …

Yeah, and what, Mark? What would you have done?, I imagine someone sarcastically asking me. He was not speaking with me, and I went on with my after-meeting chores, but with my ears tuned to our new racist acquaintance, to hear if he had anything else of note to share about his fears. I do not like that I was shocked into a dull complacency, that I did not speak up.
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Captain Chaos

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

There are the Facebook games that must be visited every 23 hours … or else! … and the world headlines to catch up on and oh! Twitter, of course …

My day does not unfold like Ben Franklin’s typical day, depicted in the image at the top. It is more of a stumble and flow. Rinse and repeat.

A writer and editor named Mason Currey started a blog almost a decade ago with the intent of compiling the habits and day-to-day minutiae of famous and successful individuals. The web site was titled Daily Routines and several years later he had compiled so many entries that a book was published, called “Daily Rituals.” It is a fun website and an interesting book, and they are both great to get lost in and waste time reading, which may not have been Currey’s intention.

That was probably a fun meeting, the one in which they decided to change the name from “routines” to “rituals.” Being that I have named approximately zero things that have become successful, I am not going to second-guess the decision. “Rituals” certainly does sound more interesting—and purchasable—than “routines,” because routines are something we are told we must get out of.
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A Stroll into the Past

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The child has few memories, so those he has are detailed.

We were in my hometown for some reason one summer Sunday afternoon a couple years ago and I said to my girlfriend that I wanted to show her where I grew up. (As if I have grown up.) We drove down roads I used to bike on, walk on.

I grew up in the suburbs, in upstate New York, in the 1970s and ’80s, a neighborhood without sidewalks, with kids biking across their neighbors’ lawns (well, I did) without fear of criticism. I remembered knowing which houses had dogs that were poorly restrained (avoid those lawns or else find a new speed in my pumping little legs) and which houses were simply scary for reasons no one could explain but everyone knew which houses simply seemed scary.

(Years later, in high school, I was fundraising or campaigning for something and I dared, out of my OCD-ish sense/need to knock on every single door in the neighborhood, I knocked on the door of one of the houses that I always thought was scary. The owner was as friendly and nice as could be. I felt like I had discovered something.)
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