Explanation: First, an explanation (just in case someone someday actually reads this). The following is an exercise in creative writing that I used to occupy my time while flying from Minneapolis to Boston. The story has no full plot line that is known to me as I simply wrote what came to mind and tried to take it somewhere (probably knowing that I didn't have to take it anywhere). I suppose the goal was to continue my recent attempts at trying to be more descriptive. In is an interesting exercise, but probably only to me as it is the creative process itself that is the goal. My attempts at creative writing are not new. For example, when I returned to Omaha in 1974 (or was it 1975), I enrolled in a creative writing class at the I enrolled in a creative writing class. Perhaps it was to improve my writing skills to see if I could "go somewhere with writing", but it was just as likely for the purpose of meeting new people (as in women, but that is an entry for another day). I also kept a journal during some of those years in Omaha and during my travels to ISrael and Europe, and I hope to find it at some point so that I can post some of the "writings from the early years" and to see how my thinking has changed. These days I write for the same reasons that I make my movies. It is a creative outlet that lasts beyond the instance in which the creative process takes place. Will the movies be watched and, if so, for how long? Will these entries be read and, if so, by whom and when? Perhaps it will be me who, later in life, looks back at what I was creating in my fifties. In that case, what will the later Ron Fellman think of this Ron Fellman? Time will tell.
Thought for the Day: An important part of the human experience is the desire and perhaps need to create. The question that faces each person is in what part of the creative process will she or he participate. Clearly, this creative process is not limited to one or two areas for creativity takes place throughout each day and certainly throughout life. For me, the creative process needs to take place at many levels - family, community, work and personal, and it is too often that the balance between these creative arenas becomes skewed. So, as a mentor of mine once stated, in life (and, I would add, in the creative process) one must be the conductor of a symphony keeping balance and allowing each section to lead at different times.
So, the following entry was written yesterday, August 31, but is being posted today.
Chapter One
The gentle vibrations pulse through the carpet covered metal floor rising through the silver aluminum legs to the cloth encased foam seats and finally to my weary resting body. As the doors close and the final instructions are given, the meticulously shaped capsule of steel filled with a mixture of high octane potentially explosive fuel and people of all ages, shapes and sizes also of a potentially explosive nature, begins to lumber down the concrete ribbon. The plane accelerates and the view through the portal shaped scratched plastic window begins to blur the close by landscape while the buildings risingin the distance like gray brown stalactites barely move.
My mind is filled with my standard take off thought of whether this mass of fuel, metal, plastic, rubber, wire, food, uniforms, flesh, bones and blood will me able to lift into the air before the runway turned to grass then sand and then nothingness resulting in the plane dissolving with all that of held within its bowels. Hard to believe that after the number of flights I have been on that this still concerns me. Even harder to believe that I allow my mine to wander to areas over which I have no control. I rub my aching temples, the result of one too many vodkas and a few too little hours of sleep. I know I need to focus on my mission, which is not to will the plane onto the air, but is making sure that the plane lands safely at its destination with the one person who may me able to stop the madness taking place on our nation's Capitol.
Chapter Two:
It was a crisp sunny day, cooler than the norm for the end of August, with a seemimgly constant breeze moving the leaves and small branches of the trees that had long ago blossomed. The endless litter that filled the streets and walkways, notwithstanding the ongoing efforts of the District's finest sanitation workers, danced to the symphony created by the wind and leaves accompanied by the rumbling trucks that were the life giving cells of the city and the constantly blaring horns of the thousands of cars taking their mostly individual wasteful passengers to places where they thought they had important work to do. In fact, nothing could have been farther than the truth, but they could not have known that any more than I could have nor could any of the safety personnel have known, not the police with their soon to be useless revolvers strapped around their protruding doughnut filled bellies or the firemen who rested in their always red brick firehouses with rubber boot and jackets, and emblazed metal helmets at the ready, and not even the generals with their tens of thousands of uniformed soldiers with every human life destroying weapons at their command. For the challenge that each of us would face was one that brute force could not combat.
Chapter Three
As I walk down the aisle, I search the faces of each passenger looking for any clue that can narrow the list of potential adversaries. There is no need to narrow the list of potential victims for if I do not find some way to stop the person who intends to take the steps necessary to divert this plane from its destination, we will all be the victims and perhaps the entire human population of the world will the ultimate victims.
Chapter Four
On a hillside near the Lincoln Memorial, a symbol of the resolve of man for freedom and dignity, a seedling broke through the fertile earth surface and stretched itself toward the sun much as the hibernating black bears first stretches after a long winter of sleep. This little plant may have been laying dormant in that spot since god knows when, but if there is a god and he (or even she)knows when, then the question is why such a plant would be allowed to survive. On the other hand, perhaps the seedling journeyed to Earth as a hitchhiker on a roving meteor or comet. In the end (not even a phrase that I want to use), it didn't matter where the seed came from but only whether the growth of this rainbow colored plant with its cable like vines and tempting sweet fruit can be contained and eventually destroyed before the District then the eastern seaboard then North America and eventually the entire world is choked by this intruder.
To be continued - maybe
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