Jeff Coleman's Blog: Jeff Coleman Writes, page 28
January 18, 2016
The Machine
If you listen carefully you can hear it, the low bass rumble of hulking iron gears winding behind a cosmic curtain, beyond space and time. It sustains the universe, scaffolds reality. Once, when the machine was new, when it was well oiled and regularly maintained, it made little sound at all, just a gentle soothing hum that saturated the universe with newborn energy.
But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the steady nearly-silent rhythm began to change. At first, it was just a tiny ping in the...
January 11, 2016
Grace
Grace clutches a ragged teddy bear to her chest. It reminds her of her parents. The memories are bittersweet.
She gazes up, squints when her eyes reach the bright lines of yellow light that penetrate the wooden slats a hundred feet above. She blinks away tears.
She sidles to the right, her long dress brushing the dirt beneath her legs, and she feels the tug of iron chains binding her to the stone wall. She expects it, though it continues to fill her with despair. She returns to her previous...
January 8, 2016
Friday Freewrite
What’s Friday Freewrite? Find out here.
Sometimes, when I realize something about myself, I wonder if what I’ve seen is true or if it’s just a vain reflection catching sight of another reflection. I feel like my soul exists in a hall of mirrors, capturing all the worst and most superficial aspects of myself and reflecting them back in disproportionate and grotesque detail.
Sometimes, even our search for the truth, the most noble, intimate, vulnerable and purposeful aspect of our soul, beco...
January 4, 2016
How Do We Vanquish Evil?
Evil. The world groans under its weight. It surrounds us, holds us hostage. Like a choking vine, it slithers through our cities and our streets, latching onto our souls, squeezing the love and the life out of them until we’ve grown jaded and hard of heart.
The seeds of this deadly vine are our uncharitable acts, our lies, gossip, and petty acts of vengeance. The world burns by our own hands, and all we can do is look away, ashamed, wondering in the darkest corners of our souls if the world m...
December 28, 2015
The Tunnel
There is a tunnel, burried beneath the layers of the world, outside time, outside creation. It is dank and musty. It is covered in slime, moss and lichen, pregnant with rot and decay. The walls are smeared with the stale blood of creatures that had been extinct billions of years before the Big Bang.
It is a prison, erected to contain a race of pestilence and destruction that had once spanned the breadth of creation. They spread like cancer, defiling everything in their path, a cosmological b...
December 21, 2015
The Creator of Worlds
I see it, glimmering beneath the surface of the universe in an unformed realm that precedes creation. It is primordial, a complex composition of ageless utterances transcending language, space and time. I hunch over a stack of paper with my pen in hand, ready to surround it with a net of words. They are crude in their expressive power, yet capable enough to capture its essence, to trap its soul so I can slowly reel it in, a whole new world, young and still crackling with wild newborn magic.
...December 14, 2015
How Do You Navigate Life?
You’re a wanderer, a cosmic vagrant lost in space and time. You’ve spent your life stumbling about in a drunken stupor. You flit aimlessly from one moment to the next. You have no idea where you came from, and you have no idea where you’re supposed to go.
What’s your purpose? Do you have a purpose? All you know for certain is that at some point you’ll run out of gas, that your body, your vehicle for this cosmic journey, will break down. From time to time, you wonder where you’ll be when that...
December 11, 2015
Friday Freewrite
What’s Friday Freewrite? Find out here.
He saw the old man standing there after communion1, looking so serene. Surely heaven2 waited for the likes of him. But what if he were to stumble? To fall, to lose grace before he met his end?3, 4
He could make sure the man got to heaven2, could hasten his appointment with Christ to make sure he was in a state of grace when he died.
Yes, God would be pleased with him for his holy work, for his effort to save a soul.
He lunged forward, knife in hand. H...
December 4, 2015
Friday Freewrite
What’s Friday Freewrite? Find out here.
I reflected on the state of my life, thought about all the many flaws I have in my character. They say that knowing yourself is a good thing, but I think that this kind of introspection is worse.
I know that I’m a loose cannon, that I overreact to small things1, but I’m helpless to stop it, can only watch as my life becomes a train wreck.
At least if I were unaware, I could feel that I was being righteous, like I was a crusader for good. Instead, I ge...
December 3, 2015
Life is Full of Surprises
“Life is full of surprises.” It’s a statement we hear all the time, so often that it’s become a cliché. Just when we think we’ve got things figured out, life lunges from around a corner, throws us into an unmarked van and whisks us away.
I was never so naive in my adult years to believe I could foresee the future. I realized a long time ago that long-term goals are futile, that aside from a few common sense preparations, my time was best spent living in the present. Still, I found myself mak...
