Do you often think about life?
If you’d like to read a short story that I published on my Short Stories By Richard blog about time and memory, light and reflection–in other words about life–then click here.
Would you like to read a few absurd short stories? Do you like to laugh? Then click here!
I’ve published another very short story. It can be read in just a few minutes. It’s titled One Strange, Shimmering Dream.
Would you like to be inspired? You might enjoy reading it. Click here.
What is your dream?
My blog Short Stories by Richard has slowly grown. It now contains a collection of six stories.
These very short works of fiction attempt to dissect human life using sudden, sharp cutting edges. The revelations can be surprising.
Many endings are uplifting. Some aren’t.
Almost every time I reread one of my stories I make changes. New eyes–new dissatisfaction–new inspiration. So you might notice they’ve evolved a bit. Hopefully for the better. To read, click the links:
Light on the Restless and Small is a fast flirt with philosophy and one difficult question.
The Drawing of Leaves suggests that nothing we do is unimportant.
A Few Words and a Pelican touches upon life and death, and the need for compassion during our journey.
A Voice in the Shell reminds us that beauty is infinite and that listening is vital.
A Miracle on Sixth Avenue instantly takes the reader from hopelessness to hope.
An Unexpected Sunflower is my favorite short story so far. It proves that small things can change the world.
I wrote another short story! It’s titled A Voice in the Shell.
A photography blog concerning “Cool San Diego Sights” probably isn’t the best place to post unrelated works of fiction, so I started a new writing website! It’s called Short Stories by Richard. That’s where I’ve published my new story.
Unlike my other writing blog, Foolyman Stories, which is mostly just silly nonsense, Short Stories by Richard contains thoughtful pieces that are meant to challenge minds and touch hearts. I’d be honored if you checked it out!
What lies ahead? I don’t know! Come along for the ride! Perhaps we’ll be surprised!
Here’s another very short story I wrote this morning. It might be somewhat true. I simply had to get these words out of my system. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
A MIRACLE ON SIXTH AVENUE
by Richard
John walked slowly toward his parked car. Sixth Avenue was just another street in the city.
Without thinking, he searched the sidewalk with downcast eyes. Cigarette butts, rotting food, a discarded bottle, a dead cockroach, bits of toilet paper. Disgusting stains, crushed things.
A plume of smoke up ahead caught his attention.
As he neared, John noticed a crowd of people had gathered close to the rising black smoke. Excited faces were staring down at the freeway from an overpass.
A van was on fire below. Traffic on the freeway had been stopped by a police car with flashing lights, and two firemen with a hose were getting ready to put out the flames. The empty van, alone on the concrete, simply burned, nothing more.
At least forty people on the overpass leaned forward to stare down at the freeway. More were arriving, drawn by the smoke, as ants are drawn to sugar. Every person in the crowd held up a phone, carefully framing a photograph. A photograph of an empty van on fire.
The people checked their phone, appeared unsatisfied, changed the angle, held it higher. Needing to capture destruction, meaningless and distant. They watched with perfect fascination and took a second and third picture. A hundred identical photographs.
John kept walking. He’d never before felt such a wave of disgust.
That night he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t purge from his mind that crush of people. Gawking, predictable, animal humanity, eagerly recording flames and black smoke, because flames and black smoke seemed exciting. Why? For what reason?
People were shallow and disgusting.
But what in the world is new?
And so John walked from his parked car up Sixth Avenue the next morning, a remnant of that dark shadow in his mind.
The sun was up. At the overpass there was no smoke. Cars passed in a blur on the concrete below. The incident was erased. Time swallows everything. Just different trash on the sidewalk.
“Good morning,” said an approaching person. The stranger’s eyes were wide, directly meeting John’s own eyes. A sincere, friendly smile was on the stranger’s lips.
“Morning,” John half-smiled.
And the passing person was gone.
The sun rose higher.
A small miracle had saved everything.
…
To read more stories like this, visit Short Stories by Richard.
You might also want to check out my Foolyman Stories blog, for some creative writing that’s just plain silly!
Please forgive me for this imaginative little story. It’s hot today and perhaps my brain overheated.
The summer heat is why I went down to La Jolla this morning. By the water it was thankfully a few degrees cooler. While I walked along the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla Cove, I watched some kayaks enter the nearby sea cave.
Upon studying my photographs, this short story emerged. For the exciting conclusion, please read the captions, beginning with the above first photo…
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Follow this blog if you like to be occasionally surprised! Join me on Facebook or Twitter.
With love and (what seems) magic we can actually change the entire world. I’m absolutely serious.
Here’s a very short story I wrote a couple months ago. It seems to affect people deeply. I’m going to reblog the story just this once. Perhaps you might enjoy reading it. The story is titled An Unexpected Sunflower. Simply click the link. As you will see, you can truly change the world.
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Every few years, it seems, an unexpected sunflower springs up near the place where I live. So I decided to write a short story…
AN UNEXPECTED SUNFLOWER
(a small story)
by Richard
Lucy was surprised to see that an unexpected sunflower had sprouted in a corner of her backyard. Where it came from, she didn’t know. Every day she carefully watered the plant. It quickly grew.
When the bud opened the bloom was just glorious. Large, yellow and beautiful, like a cheerful sun in a small green world.
Gazing at the sunflower, Lucy felt that life was indeed good.
Every person on Earth, she thought, deserved the feeling that life is good. Why not? Suddenly she had an absurd impulse: to give that one magical flower to the entire world.
Every person should see it. Smell it. Touch it.
At last Lucy settled on her best idea. She’d give the sunflower to a friend, who would then pass the flower to another friend, who’d pass it to another friend… And so on.
Seven billion people on an impossibly big planet wouldn’t see her flower, but a few would. That’s the best she could do.
Several days later she carefully harvested the sunflower and placed it in a tall vase. She brought the flower across town and gave it to her Uncle Carl, who was under blankets with a bad case of the flu. A note was tied to the sunflower’s stem: Once this small bit of sunshine has been enjoyed, please give to a friend.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerely.
The next day Uncle Carl was visited by Alfonso, one of his war buddies. “Now you have to give this to one of your friends,” he said. “And add a little water.”
The sunflower descended like a beam of golden sunshine when Alfonso handed it to his daughter, Maria. She rose from her dining room chair, stunned. “That’s for me?” she asked, with absolute disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” he smiled. “You’re my friend, right? But read the note. You now have to give it to someone that you think is special.”
Maria gave the flower to William.
William gave the flower to Jerry.
Jerry gave the flower to Daniella.
Before class, Daniella handed the sunflower to her Geometry teacher. Mr. Harrow didn’t know how to react. “Read the note,” she explained.
“But the flower is drying out,” he said. “It won’t last much longer.”
“You’re the best math teacher I ever had. So take it.”
Mr. Harrow took the vase containing the sunflower home. He read the note attached to the stem: Once this small bit of sunshine has been enjoyed, please give to a friend. He wondered who had bought the vase. He placed the vase by the television and thought of his late wife.
Next morning the flower had entirely wilted. The crumpled petals had lost their brilliant color and several had fallen off.
Mr. Harrow removed the note from the stem and put it in a drawer. He carried the vase out to his compost pile, and quickly tossed the flower onto the heap. The vase he carefully cleaned and placed in a corner of his quiet house.
The following spring Mr. Harrow took a slow stroll through the backyard on a gloomy, gray day. As he came around the garage he was taken by complete surprise. Two sunflowers were rising from the dead compost.
The small miracle caused Mr. Harrow to wipe away a few tears.
Perhaps, he thought, being a teacher of math wasn’t such a useless thing. Because he appreciated the revealed meaning of the sunflowers. And it was: simple multiplication can quickly encompass the world.
If seeds were carefully harvested from a dying bloom–and just two seeds sprouted–one sunflower might become two. Then, repeated, two sunflowers might become four. Four sunflowers might become eight. Eight sunflowers might become sixteen. And in 33 generations–33 years–one seed might produce well over seven billion sunflowers. Enough sunflowers for everybody. Everybody in the world.
Mr. Harrow found the old note in the back of the drawer. It still read: Once this small bit of sunshine has been enjoyed, please give to a friend. He then added in his own writing: When the bloom finally fades, harvest the seeds and grow more sunflowers. He made two photocopies of the note, one for each of his miracle sunflowers.
In math, even the smallest fraction contains world-changing power. One in seven billion seems like nothing, until it is turned upside down.
. . .
Lucy lay in a dark hospital.
The memory of her miracle garden had long vanished. She had become very old.
Judy, her granddaughter, came to visit one late Thursday afternoon. She was holding a surprise behind her back. She presented a sunflower, like sunshine, in a new vase.
“Can you believe it? Out of the blue my best friend gave me this! Isn’t it amazing? And it has a strange note. I’m supposed to give this flower to someone I love. I would like you to have this.”
Attached to the stem of the sunflower was a small photocopied note. The first half of the handwriting Lucy recognized. It was her own.
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To read more stories like this, visit Short Stories by Richard.
You might also want to check out my Foolyman Stories blog, for some creative writing that’s just plain silly!
Cool San Diego Sights! 