space is deep but the ship is small

space is deep but the ship is small

fiction
edward w pritchard

It's hard to avoid periodic contact with one that one has been intimate with when far across the galaxy on a journey of exploration. Space is deep but the ship we travel on is small in the vastness of the expanding universe.

This vessel owed by Rand corporation bringing rare minerals back to Earth is seven earth miles long and nearly two earth miles deep with over sixteen thousand quadri-deck levels transporting along with all the economic cargo several thousand scientists, Doctors, engineers and at least one attractive lady lawyers among the crew and personnel. In such proximate quarters and habit I am bound to bump into my former mate now and then.

It's awkward for me because Rand personnel number 27,888 refuses to follow standard space travel protocol rules 28 to 32 when we randomly meet. At such times I often become distracted on my mission to the mystic source. Later recriminations and regrets interrupt annual six month deep sleep suspended animation patterns sometimes for hours at a time.
      

the super computer in the head that comprehends it all

the super computer in the head that comprehends it all

fiction
edward w pritchard

Ring.

The phone never rang and should have been off the hook anyway. It was an inopportune time for a phone call on the stout black solid bell phone that never rang and shouldn't ring because the only person who ever called out on the phone was occupied and the
only
ever
caller on that Bell phone that
cost fourteen dollars a month to sit most of the time silently waiting for a mysterious phone call  was the occupier.

One ring and the super computer in the head that comprehends it all raced through fifty million future
intereactions
and starved for opportunity and danger answered the phone. Uncharacteristically impolite
the deal was set, the future mortgaged, joy/sorrow,exhilaration/regret two grandchildren with another on the way
later
no one has a stout black solid Bell phone anymore, viewing texted messages instead at inopportune times now a days and where will future grandchildren come from and where will the super computer in the head that comprehends it all glean the opportunity and danger that procreates the Earth?

what time is it

what time is it

fiction
edward w pritchard

Here where I stay there is the party going on but we can't find it anymore. Something about a very fine building with cascading decks and new never driven cars and long term contracts and enjoyable music but we can't hear the music, we can't find the party, and the new car is very old and needs expensive stuff from the auto zone pretty much everyday anymore.

No one I know is at the party. At the party are the people from television, the movies, the internet social clubs, the one's who take long expensive trips, have extra new cars parked about and who are always courted by the banking and financial industries about their retirement. The people at the party spend a lot of time thinking about long term phone/data contracts, all kinds of insurance stuff, medical problems and prescriptions, tables and tables of restaurant food,  and minute to minute changes in the President's opinions about the first hundred days.

The music has stopped, I can't find the party anymore and the contract we signed has expired. What happens next?

more politics

more politics

fiction
edward w pritchard


Is the world a global village or just a big quagmire of troubles better avoided.

Here's what we wrote before on the timely subject of North Korea:

North Korea/South Korea

fiction
edward w pritchard

Avoid foreign entanglements America.

The United States continues to police the world, far away in Asia. China drives up the price of everything for everyone, too busy accumulating all the world's wealth to worry about North Korea for now. Why does the United States have to police China's backyard. It's no longer 1950. The United States cannot afford any longer to police the world. The big picture has gotten too big and too expensive for the United States to control alone.

Let's just be another player on the world stage. Concerned yes, humanitarian aid always; obsessed with controlling everything and everyone no. Avoid foreign entanglements America.

Syria's President

Syria's President

fiction
edward w pritchard


Along with the Nationalism toward homeland goes strong paternal feelings toward one's President. Here I what I wrote before on President al-Assad of Syria.

ADBRIGHT

MONDAY, JULY 23, 2012

big deck/ more on Syria

big deck

fiction
edward w pritchard

Near the souk but not within the souk the lanes are narrow, not meant for large vehicles. Big deck is  a 1981 Ford stretch van, white with a sliding side door leading to four rows of uncomfortable seats. A very ugly carriage but she has supported me for thirty years as my taxi here in Damascus. This week, I have been using big deck as an ambulance during the uprising here in Damascus; being a poor man I have been forced by circumstance to charge my fellow citizens who are suffering terribly during the violence for my services and those of big deck as an ambulance.

At the hospital the chief surgeon ordered me to take one lone passenger to an outpatient clinic for recovery. It was an eight year old girl whose eyes have been hurt badly in an explosion and was temporarily blind. I am being paid to sit with her during the day until she can return to the hospital for further surgery on her eyes to restore her sight. I had a lot of trouble getting big deck and the girl through the narrow alleys south of the souk here in Damascus. Of course adding to my troubles is the potential of violence caused by the uprising. Many commercial ambulances are reluctant to entering some of the areas of the violence and I have been making more money than usual. The chief surgeon at the hospital paid me three hundred Euros to transport the girl and has promised me another 700 Euros when I return with her in three to four days.

The clinic where I brought the girl is for wealthy patients recovering from surgery in normal times. Now the clinic is mostly empty, because of the violence there is little elective surgery being performed. The little girl is nearly alone here and all of the other patients are adults. To keep her company and myself busy, for I am being paid to sit with her, I have been reading to her. The only book for a child I could find here was an American story for girls, Nancy Drew " The Bungalow Mystery". My English is now poor although I attended University in New Jersey over fifty years ago.

I continued with my reading. I had to be careful. Although the girl's eyes were heavily bandaged like all children she knew when i was skipping parts of the novel and she would call me on it. As she was ill I did not want to upset her so I read carefully.

The unexpected prow--ler

"An embezzlement case! Nancy was excited. What she wondered,"

I stopped suddenly for in my concentration on the book I had not noticed our Syrian President enter the room.  He was standing next to me smiling and nodding at me. He had come to visit the little girl.

He asked me if he could read for a moment. Taking the little girl's hand our President continued the Nancy Drew story.

" what she wondered did her father want her to do."

Nodding very slightly to me our President put the book down and still holding the girls hand and talking softly to her now in our language he began to review her medical chart that he had apparently  carried into the room.

I watched our President intently as he read. He was a tall handsome regal man and I was very proud of him and proud to be a Syrian.  Gently placing his spare hand on the girl's face he looked at the skin around the bandages, touched at her neck, I think taking her pulse.

As quickly as he had entered the room our President handed me the book, bowed to me ever ever so slightly and exited the ward where the girl was laying.

I still remember that meeting in the hospital as one of the most important days of my life.

end

Nancy Drew
" The Bungalow Mystery"
quoted page 45[ chapter 5]
Book #3 of series
by Carolyn Keene
Grosset&Dunlap

mystical thinking

mystical thinking

fiction
edward w pritchard

Mystical thinking has replaced magical thinking as mine latest life force. Course I miss the ease of a life lead in honor of magical thinking as it had a naturalness to it. A neither this nor that non dualistic patina, the shining light in the eternal night of darkness that guided my stumbling on the path to nowhere. Then being and nothingness were neither this nor that to myself and I. Merely did this entity preservere till fortune dealt a timely, lucky hand of cards this Way.

Mystical thinking takes preparation and rigor in following the deleted stages of a difficult physical regimen of selfless sensual and spiritual purgation. Night after dark night one is hungry, cold and alone. But eternal joy, should it happen, that we will hear and see when understanding, reason and the senses are negated. What sights shall we behold?

Meanwhile, patiently must the non self wait in timeless duration for the reunion without entity within.

where will be the American Bastille

where will be the American Bastille

fiction
edward w pritchard

Where will be the American Bastille?

Will it be in a housing project in Saint Louis after another child is hit by a stray bullet?

How about a few million gun owners acting in unison?

Or maybe at a colossal wall in Texas separating us from Mexico?

Will the American Bastille be an electronic message denouncing the Administration with four million Likes in one minute?

Or an American soldier walking off the line in North Korea done in by the paranoia?

Will it be an older person opening his mail and silently reading another high handed proclamation from the capitalistic establishment about why the cost of living is jumping skyward again?

Where-ever and whenever the American Bastille [1] occurs please don't behead the Governor-he was just doing his job the best he knew how at the time.

[1] french citizens July 14, 1789 beheaded the governor in charge of the Bastille when they broke down the doors of the hated State Prison.  I am glad I wasn't there. I so detest mayhem, disorder, lack of civility and violence; whether in the classroom, the streets or the prisons.