Contentment

Claudia McGill 10 Comments

Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. I’m thinking of them as “Minuscule” and quick to read.

Read the first Minuscule, the explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Fiction/Poetry Combination for others in the series.

Contentment
Typical day: I listen to pleasant classical music broadcast from a high-end sound system, sit in an exceptionally comfortable office chair that had all but begged to be the chosen one to support my bottom, associate with intelligent and perceptive colleagues, and tap out numbers on a computer that does nothing all day long but accept my instructions, process them at high speed and spit out ground-breaking data – all for a lucrative paycheck.

Get real, I think as I make my gold Waterman pen do flips in the air, you know you were meant to work in an office with stained carpet, listen to staticky rock and roll blaring out from a radio with a blown speaker, and curse the accounting department while eating a soggy salami sandwich, and you’ll never be happy until you can get out of this living hell and into a broken office chair – and with that I opened my desk drawer, flung the Waterman into it, and pulled out my cherished and only remaining Bic to start revising my resume.

The pen writes.
It is not the pen
but the words
on the page
that matter. Or so you think.
You dislike the pen.

(Shadorma 89)
4/9/18

10 thoughts on “Contentment”

  2. So Claudia, I just love those Shadorma! This one instantly had me looking up this quote by Omar Khayyam: “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

    • Thank you. I remember when I first read that quote, and it was a LONG time ago, it has stayed with me since then, and I try to remind myself that this is why it is important not to stray too far out of knowing what you want, and trying to adhere to it. Life is just too short. And shadormas, they are pretty new to me but I love doing them, they seem to have the rhythm and structure that suits me just perfectly.

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